Who is the oldest comedian whose work is funny today?

Cafe Society
61

The producer was David Merrick.

62

I don’t think anyone has mentioned Alan King. I always found him very funny. He was a Borscht Belt comic but he was the bridge between the old style one-liner comic and the more modern conversational style. His delivery and material would not seem that out of place today unlike someone like Bob Hope.

63

I discovered King through his paperbacks* – initially Help! I’m a Prisoner in a Chinese Bakery and later Anybody who owns his own home Deserves it and then others. What I particularly liked was that he definitely didn’t talk down to the audience or overexplain. In a pre-internet world, this was pretty significant. He had chapter titles like “Morning Becomes Electric” (which I thought at the time was pretty funny, but when I learned about Eugene O’Neill’s play Morning Become Electra became transcendentally hilarious) or “Harry K. Thaw, you shot the Wrong Architect” (Look it up**. )

When I finally did catch his act o n TV, I was surprised how many jokes were recycled from his books. Which were probably recycled from his act in the first place.

  • I know he didn’t write these unassisted – he acknowledges his co-authors on the covers. But I doubt if he had nothing to do with their composition.

**The movie “The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing” had come out almost a decade earlier, so it wasn’t exactly a current reference

64

I thought he was very funny when I first found him, maybe in the 70s, but now most of his stuff seems to me rather mean-spirited and depressing. He was very clever with a piano, though.

And speaking of mean-spirited and depressing, a current (well, nearly current, he died 2 years ago) somewhat older comedian who I thought was brilliant and very funny was a Brit named Sean Lock. He was only 58 when he died, and I’m sure he would still be making me laugh if he were around. His comedy was pretty counter-culture, he could joke about things that might make you cringe, like kicking puppies, and still make you laugh about it. You can find him on YouTube if you’re interested.

65

  1. George Carlin - George credited Mort Sahl as the real developer of modern stand-up, but George is the furthest back pure stand-up who is still hilarious. Granted, most of his best stuff is 1990’s and 2000’s, but he is much funnier than Richard Pryor or any other comedians his age.

  2. Shakespeare still makes us laugh, but in terms of movies and so forth, I find some of the Marx Brothers things to be hilarious. They really were smart and funny guys.

  3. Yes, a ton.

  4. Almost all of them. I find many modern comedians unfunny as well. I will go on record as barely ever finding Richard Pryor’s comedy very funny. His movies are OK, but his routine was only OK.

  5. No idea.

66

I haven’t seen/heard a lot of his stand-up, but from what I have seen, he was a virtuouso performer but I don’t particularly relate with his material.