# Who is the oldest comedian whose work is funny today? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** comedian-jokes\ **Created:** [July 17, 2023, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-the-oldest-comedian-whose-work-is-funny-today/987171 "2023-07-17T17:48:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2023, 9:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-the-oldest-comedian-whose-work-is-funny-today/987171/21 "2023-07-17T21:13:37Z")
I saw Mel Brooks onstage back in 2016, when he was 90. Damn, he was _funny!_ ---
**Author:** ![Banksiaman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banksiaman/32/3334_2.png) [@Banksiaman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banksiaman)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2023, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-the-oldest-comedian-whose-work-is-funny-today/987171/22 "2023-07-17T21:47:21Z")
Numbers used to be much funnier back in the olden days: - Four Yorkshiremen - 1967 - Two Ronnies, Four Candles - 1976 ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2023, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-the-oldest-comedian-whose-work-is-funny-today/987171/23 "2023-07-17T22:07:29Z")
That headline is absolute bullshit. Telling funny stories undoubtedly goes back to early Homo. Telling funny stories is not stand-up, as was noted in the OP. It’s a specific form. Exactly when it started and who were the earliest practitioners is basically a game academics play to get a paper published. My personal opinion is that it evolved in vaudeville, from the need to keep audiences from walking out when lengthy stage setting was needed. They’d send someone out “in one,” or standing alone in front of a dropped curtain. That person might sing or tell jokes or sing jokey songs or whatever they were good at. Anything that worked was immediately copied by others. If jokes worked, then they found a copy of _Joe Miller’s Jests, or the Wit’s Vade-Mecum_, written - not by Joe Miller - in 1739 and reprinted hundreds of times. Even better, they thought up their own. Virtually all the famous radio comics of the 1930s - Jack Benny, Fred Allen, Bob Hope - played “in one” at times and used that to hone an act and a personality. I find almost all radio humor from that era to be unlistenable today. I have a book of sketches transcribed from the radio and there’s not a laugh in it. Even when I listen to the original shows, the jokes are basically sausage, ground out by the thousands without enough spice to have flavor. A few exceptions exist here and there. Some of the early sketches between W. C. Fields and Edgar Bergen’s Charlie McCarthy still hole up before they got formulaic. But sketches aren’t stand-up. Who’s On First is not stand-up. Bob Hope was the closest thing to stand-up, and he was often funny, but the good stuff is buried in the thousands of formula jokes his writers needed to make it through another day. Whether Moms Mabley and Redd Foxx invented stand-up on the “chitlin circuit” is questionable. That Foxx put out the first stand-up comedy albums as we know them is pretty well established. [Laff of the Party - vol. 1](https://youtu.be/88O2cdiafxI) is at best sporadically funny. He starts with spoonerisms! ---
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2023, 11:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-the-oldest-comedian-whose-work-is-funny-today/987171/24 "2023-07-17T23:35:14Z")
Dorothy Parker wasn’t a stand-up comic herself, but other people have turned her works into performable pieces that still play well. I personally did a monologue of her short story “The Waltz”-- which is written in a monologue form, and the reader is left to imagine the responses of the other person, and that makes it funnier. Some of it is things the monologuist actually says, but most of it is things she says to herself that she’d like to say but doesn’t. I find “The Waltz” especially hilarious, and it is just pure laughs-- there’s only a small bit of poignancy, and no bathos-- it is of the same comic tenor all the way through, even though there is a slight twist at the end-- slight. If it’s performer right, it _less of a surprise._ Short plays have been made of a number of Parker’s short stories, such as “Here We Are,” where a young, just-married couple after the frenzy of the wedding finally reflects on what they have actually done. Then, there’s the poetry. This she did used to personally recited, and once one person in the audience tittered, and then another giggled, finally giving a few more who really understood permission., to laugh. Then all and sundry would finally l am 130 more later ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2023, 11:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-the-oldest-comedian-whose-work-is-funny-today/987171/25 "2023-07-17T23:49:53Z")
**Exapno** is right – what we would call standup today didn’t exist until after WWII. There were vaudeville comics that still might fit. Will Rogers did a topical comedy act – writing his own material and telling jokes. His act was topical, so the jokes don’t land today, since they’re referring to events and people from a century ago. It was almost all original material, much like his newspaper columns. Here’s a taste of one of his radio monologues. > [@](#): > > We are right at home tonight, folks. We are talking about the > Democrats. Yeh, Ia m going to talk about the Democrats, the Lord’s > chosen people. He loves the Democrats. He wanted to keep them exclusive, > that is why he made so few of them. The Republicans, they > are common. They are not only common because there’s lots of them, > but Id on’t know, they are just naturally common anyhow, you know. > Why is there more Republicans than there’s Democrats anyhow? Well, > because the Republicans pay more for the votes, and the reason they > can pay more is because there’s more in office all the time and they > have more to pay than the Democrats do, and the reason they are in > office more is because the Democrats can’t buy enough to git into > office. Jack Benny also did jokes, playing a few notes on his violin and then joking (much like Morey Amsterdam’s act with a cello). Here’s a transcript of his first radio broadcast: > [@](#): > > Ladies and gentlemen, this is Jack Benny talking, and making my first appearance on the air professionally. By that I mean, I am finally getting paid, which of course will be a great relief to my creditors. I really don’t know why I am here. I’m supposed to be a sort of master of ceremonies and tell you all about the things that will happen, which would happen anyway. I must introduce the different artists, who could easily introduce themselves, and also talk about the Canada Dry made to order by the glass, which is a waste of time, as you know all about it. You drink it, like it, and don’t want to hear about it. So ladies and gentlemen, a master of ceremonies is really a fellow who is unemployed and gets paid for it. It sounds quite modern. ---
**Author:** ![Robot\_Arm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robot_arm/32/18280_2.png) [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2023, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-the-oldest-comedian-whose-work-is-funny-today/987171/26 "2023-07-17T23:59:49Z")
> [@RivkahChaya](#): > > …is written in a monologue form, and the reader is left to imagine the responses of the other person, and that makes it funnier. Sounds like Bob Newhart and his famous one-sided phone calls. I’ve sometimes said that Newhart could be alone on stage and the other guy still got all the funny lines. ---
**Author:** ![Moriarty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/moriarty/32/49_2.png) [@Moriarty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Moriarty)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2023, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-the-oldest-comedian-whose-work-is-funny-today/987171/27 "2023-07-18T00:11:22Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > Hal Holbrook had a whole second career doing Mark Twain in his show “Mark Twain Tonight”, a show he performed from 1959 to at least 2014. Val Kilmer also had a one man Mark Twain show. > [@](#): > > Kilmer [told _Vanity Fair_ in 2012](https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2012/03/val-kilmer-interview-mark-twain) that he came up with the idea of writing and performing a one-man show as Mark Twain while doing research for _Mark Twain & Mary Baker Eddy_ . He performed the show, called _Citizen Twain_ , at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in 2012, before [touring the country with it](https://io9.gizmodo.com/it-toured-the-us-he-was-in-my-neck-of-the-woods-dalla-1156372620). > **[A Short History of Val Kilmer’s Obsession With Mark Twain](https://www.vulture.com/2020/05/val-kilmer-mark-twain-obsession.html)** > > Rumors of his blah, blah have been greatly blah. I accept the edification in the posts above, so I understand that Twain wasn’t doing “stand up”. But he was a funny orator. ---
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2023, 12:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-the-oldest-comedian-whose-work-is-funny-today/987171/28 "2023-07-18T00:33:59Z")
The problem with the OP as written is that many of us exhausted the meager recordings of that first generation of stand up comedians long ago. Bob Newhart, Shelly Berman, Bill Cosby, Red Foxx…were all funny when I first heard their records 40 or more years ago, but how many times can you listen to the same jokes. None of those records are going to make me laugh today and I have no way of telling if that’s because of overfamiliarity or if they just haven’t aged well. ---
**Author:** ![Askance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/askance/32/8281_2.png) [@Askance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askance)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2023, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-the-oldest-comedian-whose-work-is-funny-today/987171/29 "2023-07-18T00:39:25Z")
Woody Allen’s stand-up from the early 60s is timelessly brilliant! > **[Allen, Woody - Stand-Up Comic: 1964-1968 - Amazon.com Music](https://www.amazon.com/Standup-Comic-Woody-Allen/dp/B00000IMSB)** > > Allen, Woody - Stand-Up Comic: 1964-1968 - Amazon.com Music ---
**Author:** ![Robot\_Arm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robot_arm/32/18280_2.png) [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2023, 12:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-the-oldest-comedian-whose-work-is-funny-today/987171/30 "2023-07-18T00:43:34Z")
> [@Askance](#): > > Woody Allen’s stand-up from the early 60s is timelessly brilliant! The one about the moose is very good. ---
**Author:** ![dorvann](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/df705f/32.png) [@dorvann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dorvann)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2023, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-the-oldest-comedian-whose-work-is-funny-today/987171/31 "2023-07-18T00:47:11Z")
I think this why George Carlin’s more observational rant-based comedy has lasted longer than straight up joke based comedy. Because a lot of Carlin’s rants have been become MORE insightful and relevant over time. ---
**Author:** ![TreacherousCretin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/treacherouscretin/32/476_2.png) [@TreacherousCretin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TreacherousCretin)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2023, 12:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-the-oldest-comedian-whose-work-is-funny-today/987171/32 "2023-07-18T00:56:41Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > Mark Twain gave public “lectures” which may have been close enough to count as stand-up comedy. I’ve run across [bits](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/funniest-twain/659363/10) from his published writings that I could imagine him doing as stand-up routines. Another vote for Mark Twain from me. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2023, 1:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-the-oldest-comedian-whose-work-is-funny-today/987171/33 "2023-07-18T01:14:47Z")
I would have liked to see that. Parker was a fine, sharp writer as well as a wit. I did see a presentation of selections from John Lennon’s books, with a cast of about a half dozen. The pieces worked much better when spoken than they did in print. Everybody forgets that Woody Allen came to fame as a stand-up comic. He was indeed absolutely brilliant, and never sounded like anyone else. Any good list of top stand-ups probably should include him, though his career was so short. He only did a couple three albums and then went into films, with a side career of writing humor for _The New Yorker_, both of which meant he didn’t have to face audiences. ---
**Author:** ![digs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/digs/32/14889_2.png) [@digs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/digs)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2023, 1:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-the-oldest-comedian-whose-work-is-funny-today/987171/34 "2023-07-18T01:17:03Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > Telling funny stories undoubtedly goes back to early Homo. … but they always had a straight man. ---
**Author:** ![Dr\_Paprika](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr_paprika/32/3042_2.png) [@Dr\_Paprika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr_Paprika)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2023, 1:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-the-oldest-comedian-whose-work-is-funny-today/987171/35 "2023-07-18T01:40:16Z")
Some of my questions are problematic, but as a rule I don’t like to clarify statements or insist on only one interpretation for questions of opinion It is true past outputs were more meager than now. I grew up listening to Cosby, who was fairly funny but not LOL. His experiences are a bit too far removed from my own. I liked the television show Fat Albert but never watched The Huxtables. I haven’t relistened to these old routines in decades (only a few appear on comedy radio). A friend of mine had a father who would play funny songs: _When you visit American city/ You will find it very pretty/ Just two things I must declare/ Don’t drink the water and don’t breathe the air._ Newhart is genuinely funny. Will never tire of his driver instructor thing (nor its less sexist modern update). Foxx has some clever moments as does Berman. But it’s not like I ever played their routines again and again, so I feel if I heard them I could assess my opinion their humour fairly accurately. Lots of comedians quote Pryor as a touchstone. I much prefer Murphy. ---
**Author:** ![digs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/digs/32/14889_2.png) [@digs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/digs)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2023, 1:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-the-oldest-comedian-whose-work-is-funny-today/987171/36 "2023-07-18T01:45:47Z")
> [@Robot\_Arm](#): > > > [@Askance](#): > > > > Woody Allen’s stand-up from the early 60s is timelessly brilliant! > > The one about the moose is very good. For a long time, this was the only Woody Allen I’d heard (it was on a comedy compilation album). It now lives on my phone, in a ‘Destress’ playlist. So I’ve listened to it a couple hundred times, and I’ve never gotten tired of the moose that Woody hit, tied to his fender, but when it woke up he decided to take it to his friend’s costume party… Here’s the [transcript](https://www.ibras.dk/comedy/allen.htm), so you can find out what happens to the Berkowitzes. Oh, even better, there’s a video! > **[Woody Allen - The Moose](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmnLRVWgnXU%2F)** > > Classic Woody Allen Stand Up On English Television From 1965 ---
**Author:** ![Askance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/askance/32/8281_2.png) [@Askance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askance)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2023, 2:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-the-oldest-comedian-whose-work-is-funny-today/987171/37 "2023-07-18T02:42:03Z")
> [@Dr\_Paprika](#): > > A friend of mine had a father who would play funny songs: _When you visit American city/ You will find it very pretty/ Just two things I must declare/ Don’t drink the water and don’t breathe the air._ That is of course Tom Lehrer, another outstanding candidate for this thread! I should have thought of him first. ---
**Author:** ![JohnGalt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johngalt/32/184_2.png) [@JohnGalt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnGalt)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2023, 2:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-the-oldest-comedian-whose-work-is-funny-today/987171/38 "2023-07-18T02:52:32Z")
A few months ago TCM showed the Milton Berle movie _Always Leaving Them Laughing_. It’s the story of a comedian (MB) who takes over the act of another successful but seriously ill comedian, who just happens to be Bert Lahr (of Cowardly Lion fame). Lahr does a bit of his routine, which to me sounds like a cross between the Lion and Rodney Dangerfield. I’ve heard some say that Bert Lahr was the greatest standup of his time: > [@](#): > > Lahr contributed ad-lib comedic lines for his character. Many of Lahr’s scenes took several takes because other cast members, especially Garland, couldn’t complete the scenes without laughing (from Wikipedia) The movie is pretty bad, but it was fun to see Lahr do some of his skits. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2023, 3:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-the-oldest-comedian-whose-work-is-funny-today/987171/39 "2023-07-18T03:14:52Z")
> “Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.” I love Tom Lehrer! I have a 10" recording of his first album. Those who don’t remember vinyl will probably see nothing odd about that sentence. Talk about old times. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [July 18, 2023, 7:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-the-oldest-comedian-whose-work-is-funny-today/987171/40 "2023-07-18T07:10:54Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > I love Tom Lehrer! I have a 10" recording of his first album. Incidentally, many of his songs can be heard in one video. This is a concert he did in Copenhagen in 1967. I can’t attach it to this post. You can see if you go to YouTube and put in “Tom Lehrer Full Copenhagen Performance”. Click on the video that’s not an advertisement. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-the-oldest-comedian-whose-work-is-funny-today/987171.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-is-the-oldest-comedian-whose-work-is-funny-today/987171.md?page=3)