Good call on Lee…
…and wise words on what he does.
j
A truer story would have ended with the owner saying, “By the bar receipts.”
Bob Hope was very talented. Unfortunately for his reputation, he had a tendency to depend far too heavily on current events for his comedy. It’s very hard to understand why something is funny when you have no idea who “Mr. X” is.
I’m at least somewhat familiar with most of his contemporaries (Phyllis Diller, etc.), and I probably have a better knowledge of the events of the 60s and 70s than half the (current) population does–but many of his references I simply don’t understand.
Have any of you heard Woody Allen’s standup? I actually own a double album of it. Pretty entertaining stuff, to me anyway.
mmm
Best: Tim Conway/Harvey Korman
Worst: Hard to say. I loathe Rosanne, but some of her early stuff was killer. Carrot Top’s act at Luxor is hysterical. He works hard at his craft and it shows. Richard Lewis, OTOH, can be erased from history like an enemy of Stalin’s for all I care.
Yes. Woody was really good in his stand-up days.
I’ve mentioned how my wife, before we married, had fallen in with the Second City/Chicago theatre crowd. I dunno if Roseanne knew some of the same people, but the first time I saw her I yelled to Wife, “This woman is stealing your material.” That was when Roseanne was funny, but she ran out and had to write her own. That was when she stopped being funny.
I got the chance to see Bob Hope do standup when I attended the taping of a Bob Hope special in Los Angeles in about 1988 or so. He did about 45 minutes of material, which would be edited down and used as his monologue at the top of the show when it was broadcast. Funny stuff, and the audience was genuinely laughing.
But your observation is spot-on. It was all contemporary stuff: current events, people then in the news, a few bits about what was then happening in the world of sports, and so on. I doubt very much that that particular monologue would translate well to today’s audiences, thirty years later–they would have little to no idea who or what he was talking about.
I live in Australia, and in fact he’s playing tonight just down the road from me, hosting a gig. I think he’s past his peak, but still doing very well. He doesn’t produce DVDs of his shows anymore, and he barely appears on panel shows, and also he spends a lot of his time riding motorbikes, so he’s probably heading into a semi-retirement phase of his career.
The reason my list is so British is because I grew up watching a lot of UK shows and so that’s been my sense of humour. Local (Aus, Kiwi) comedians can be funny in a controlled environment like a TV interview or acting in a series, but I don’t find I like their stand-up so much.
Dave Allen from Ireland was very funny on the BBC but I don’t think he was ever popular in the US. I saw his show on a local PBS station right after they showed Fawlty Towers. Dave ended his show with “Goodnight and may your God go with you”
Lot of people in this thread need to watch some standup comedy from this century. But maybe it’s harder to relate to once you get beyond a certain age. When I watch the old classic acts, Pryor, Murphy, Carlin, I see the appeal… but compared to the best comedians of today? Doesn’t come close.
My favorites:
Jim Gaffigan - this guy puts out a ton of material, and it’s all pretty good. Mostly kid friendly too, which I appreciate.
Louis CK — yeah he screwed up and lately has gone off the rails. But when he was at the top, he was really something.
Mike Birbiglia — almost more of a storyteller than a joke teller, but I love him. Check out “what I should have said was nothing”
Bill Burr — this is an interesting one, because most of the time, he’s just above average. Good enough to satisfy. But he has one special which is just a tour de force performance. So far above all his other work, and totally amazing. “Let it Go” check it out on Netflix, it’s amazing
Best comedian of all time? I’d have to go with my current favorite, which is…
John Mulaney! All of his specials are hilarious. My favorite is “Kid Gorgeous in Radio City”
Humor is pretty subjective. Emo is one of my personal favorites. His jokes are the type that catch you off guard with the misdirection set up and make me laugh out loud.
I know every one loves Carlin but I rarely even crack a smile when I listen to him. It’s more of a “heh-heh, I guess that is a humorous observation.”
Ellen Degeneres is very funny , seen her do a few HBO specials. Maz Jobrani is very good too.
Kathy Griffith gets my down-vote. She even sucked on Whose Line Is It Anyway?
How can we have made it this far without anyone - myself included - mentioning the terminally unfunny Russell Brand?
I loved Mark Russell’s PBS specials in the 80s and 90s. He’s still living but retired many years ago; I’d love to see what he would do with modern material, I guess.
(ducks behind flameproof shield) I don’t think David Sedaris is funny, in print or onstage.
Best Bob Newhart, as he has been consistently funny from 1959-2019. All other great ones have one phase or period that I like, but slower points or declines as well. Joan Rivers is close, though I didn’t care for her fashion police shows later in her life.
IMO Don Rickles was far funnier in his talk show appearances trading jabs with hosts than he was on stage. He was also the best guest host for the Tonight Show by far. He was quicker than anyone, and seemed to sharpen with age. But he generally rehashed the same stock insults over and over.
He was also a good actor, and despite the insults, he seemed like a genuinely nice guy.
Worst - Jay Leno…though he seemed funny enough in the late 1970s.
I never thought Rich Little really sounded like the people he impersonated, even Johnny Carson, who he portrayed in a couple of programs. I thought the same of Dana Carvey too, though he did have a couple of good character portraits.
Frank Caliendo at least sounds more like some of the people he impersonates. But that is not, in itself, grounds for much humor.
So, I just watched about an hour and a half YouTube clips of John Mulaney. He’s good! I don’t know why I’ve never heard of him before.
In the Baltimore/Washington area, Dave Allen’s imports showed up on tv about the same time as Benny Hill’s. I loved Dave’s humor right off. He was cerebral, irreverent, and a great story teller. Hill, on the other hand, I had to gradually learn to really enjoy. I saw him as the lowest common denominator between British and American humor. Taken as that, he was damn good at it.