The 50s

by The New Yorker Magazine

  For the same program, which was broadcast last week, Funt posed as a businessman and called up a messenger service and asked to have a boy sent around to his “office” to pick up a package he wanted delivered. When the messenger arrived, Funt handed him an unwrapped dead fish and ordered him to take it to a certain address. The messenger wondered, politely, whether he might wrap the fish. Nix, said the man (Funt), deliver it as is. “Holy cow!” said the messenger. “Down Fifth Avenue you want me to deliver this fish, walking down Fifth Avenue with fish—holy cow!” He was terribly, terribly embarrassed, and he wondered if he might call his office and find out whether he had to fulfill this dreadful mission. He called his office, and somebody at the other end of the line apparently told him to go ahead and deliver it. I shall not soon forget the essential nobility of this messenger. Mr. Funt had faced him with a painful situation. Obviously, his inclination was to tell the man (Funt) to go to hell, throw the fish in his face, and depart. But the messenger had a job, and, I gathered, needed the job, and at unknown risk to his self-respect he said, “O.K., I’ll take the fish.” Preparing to leave, humiliated, fish in hand, he remarked, quietly and expressively, “It would be different, you know, if I had caught this fish myself, somewhere out in the country.”

  Mr. Funt and C.B.S. and Philip Morris feel, I suppose, that Mr. Funt is giving the television audience portraits of “life in the raw,” pictures of ordinary human beings trapped by strange circumstances and reacting like “people.” In reality, he is demonstrating something that spies have known about since spies began to operate; namely, that most people are fundamentally decent and trusting and, sad to tell, can readily be deceived. Mr. Funt bases his program, purely and simply, upon deceit. Persuading his subjects that he is something he is not, he succeeds in making them look foolish, or in forcing them to struggle, against unfair odds, for some vestige of human dignity. For my money, Candid Camera is sadistic, poisonous, anti-human, and sneaky. The men who control television have tremendous opportunities for recording our times; they can go into people’s homes and offices and factories, they can go through the great cities or take their cameras to remote parts of the country, as Robert Flaherty did in Louisiana Story, and show us how people live and behave. The catch is that the true documentarian must respect his fellow-man and feel that what he has to say is worth hearing. For years, radio has been showing its basic contempt for the dignity of man, and now television, with Candid Camera as a conspicuous example, is following suit.

  JOHN LARDNER

  APRIL 19, 1958 (ON TV COMEDIANS)

  WROTE A CONSIDERABLE number of words here recently to the effect that Sid Caesar, in his Sunday-evening program Sid Caesar Invites You, is the only performer on television at present who does true, undiluted comedy on a regular basis. That’s a broad and hazy proposition, and also, perhaps, by implication a gloomier one than I meant it to be. In the first place, it raises questions of definition, and of boundary lines. Jack Benny, for instance, provides regularly a program that goes beyond the limitations of mere situation comedy; it has certain of the outward marks of true comedy. Bob Hope, regardless of the quality of his work, adheres bravely and steadily to the comic tone; he’s an undiluted comedian. Besides these two, there are many people in the field—some of them, to my mind, less synthetic than Mr. Benny and more original than Mr. Hope—who are funny by fits and starts. The fact that they can’t, or don’t, sustain the quality over a full, exacting season of television doesn’t by any means cancel their usefulness or their importance. The material of television these days is generally so grim, so stiff with discretion, and so doughy with portent that it needs comedy to make it fit for human consumption. I didn’t intend, when I first discussed Mr. Caesar’s show, to suggest that comedy on the air had to be done his way—with a kind of desperate consecutiveness, by weekly performers—or not at all. There must be other, easier ways of bringing the supply of comic talent to bear. What’s required, I think, is a formula that will allow as many good comedians as possible to do their stuff when and as best they can. The formula should also (this is a vital point) allow them to be wholly, unremittingly comic in character, with no forced excursions into sentimentality or public-spiritedness or that strange, degrading line of behavior that might be described as announcerism.

  To get back for a moment to the question of definition: The reason Mr. Caesar is able to produce pure, unmixed, spontaneous comedy week after week is, I believe, that his work is essentially creative; that is, his humor comes primarily from his own special view of life, rather than from plots, props, jokes, and other contrivances of writers. Creative comedians are scarce. There have probably been no more than a dozen or so in this century. (In addition to W. C. Fields, Bobby Clark, Ed Wynn, Jimmy Durante, Groucho Marx, and Harpo Marx, whom I’ve mentioned before, the list might well include Beatrice Lillie, Victor Moore, Frank Tinney, Fannie Brice, Bert Williams, Bert Lahr, and a singing satirist of fifty years ago named Charlie Case. And, to be sure, Charlie Chaplin.) Most of them formed their styles and working habits in mediums more static and leisurely than television. Among comedians who have specialized, more or less, in television, perhaps only Jackie Gleason and Milton Berle, besides Mr. Caesar, have been even touched by the spirit of true, creative comedy; and Mr. Gleason and Mr. Berle, although they scrambled gamely against the odds of so-called exposure, were obliged in the long run to fall back on situation comedy or joke-book material or both, and then to retire—temporarily, I hope—from the wars to lick their wounds. I spoke a little earlier of Jack Benny as a performer who has managed to present a comic program at regular intervals. His stamina and his success have, of course, been prodigious, in television as well as in the calmer field of radio. Since his program is only superficially situation comedy—it qualifies, in part, because of the star’s skill and influence, as the straight, personal comedy of the comic virtuoso—Mr. Benny’s case calls for a word or two of explanation from me in defense of my first proposition. The fact is, I consider Mr. Benny to be not a true, creative clown but a shrewd politician and an immensely resourceful mechanic. On the face of it, his comedy is satiric, and thus genuine, because he dwells on human frailties: vanity, greed, arrogance, selfishness. But it seems to me that he forfeits any claim to the creation of sound social satire by spelling out the weaknesses of his characters, including himself, as though they were labels; and by taking care to show, quickly and consistently, that it isn’t true, that it’s all in fun. His program is an expert job of commercial demagogy. It represents, I feel, Mr. Benny’s idea of just how far character study can be carried in front of a mass audience; and the stopping point is as carefully timed and calculated as every other phase of the Benny technique. At that point, Mr. Benny and his cast say “We’re kidding.” And they are. The show (The Jack Benny Show, Channel 2, 7:30–8 P.M., alternate Sundays) is, in short, a charade, a game of make-believe social criticism. It avoids the strains and risks of complete, uncompromising comedy, and therefore, as I see it, fails to challenge the bold loneliness of Mr. Caesar.

  I have, nonetheless, a strong respect for Mr. Benny’s good humor, mechanical or not. He is loyal to the mood of comedy. I also admire the doggedly fun-loving spirit of Mr. Hope (The Bob Hope Show, Channel 4), who is, if not the last, certainly the most tireless and confident of the stand-up comedians, or gagmen. There are, as I’ve said, comedians in circulation who strike me as being potentially funnier than either of these steadfast technicians. But the others—largely, I guess, through no fault of their own—are not doing themselves justice. Their activities are sporadic, or shamefully mixed. It’s depressing, for example, to see a wit and comedian of the calibre of Steve Allen (The Steve Allen Show, Channel 4, 8–9 P.M., Sundays) performing the chores of an Ed Sullivan or a John Daly—introducing guests, promoting causes, running commercial errands, leading troops in the rating wars, behaving at times as blandly and institutionally as any other master of ceremonies. To take an austere view of the matter, it doesn’t become an honest
comedian to present Photoplay’s awards of the year to movie actors…or to plug even such respectable authors as J. Edgar Hoover, whose books expose, as Mr. Allen was saying the other night, “that ugly philosophy”…or to wish the world a happy St. Patrick’s Day…or to use the industry’s key word, “wonderful,” fifty times in an evening. “You speak wonderful English,” we find Mr. Allen saying. And “What do you like to do? Collect stamps? Wonderful!” And “You come from Denver? Wonderful!” And, by way of sweeping the board, “I’d like to thank all our wonderful guests!” It’s possible, though not medically certain, that a comedian can injure himself organically by too much master-of-ceremonies work. As for some of the other present-day sidelines of comedians, they are patently dangerous. It’s hard to see how George Gobel, for instance, who shares his program with a singer, can survive the experience with his native talent uninfected, in an age when singers are gaily and ruthlessly poisoning the wellsprings of humor.

  And yet comedy—true, expert, original comedy—does continue to exist in television, in small lodes and veins that must be earnestly dug for. You’ll find it on the Allen show, among others, if you’re patient. Mr. Allen, when his mind is free of his hostly duties, is not only a smooth and versatile comedian himself but a patron and a collector of comedy. I’ve seen at least three excellent comic skits on his program in recent weeks, in which he ably and unselfishly played straight man. In one of these, Keenan Wynn analyzed different types of waiters. In another, Peter Ustinov analyzed national types of customs officials. In the third, Mr. Allen’s panel of house comedians—whose work is sometimes a little blatant and hard on the nerves—were very funny, with Mr. Allen’s help, as members of a research board called the Allen Bureau of Standards. Jack Paar (The Jack Paar Show, Channel 4, 11:15 P.M.–1 A.M., Mondays through Fridays) has also given valuable service as a collector and exhibitor of fragments of true comedy. Mr. Paar’s own performance has in the last few months, I’m sorry to say, taken on an unaccountably sullen, tired, and arrogant tone that has done his program no good at all; a man of his ability and intelligence should not be using the audience-needling routine, which consists of remarks like “Are you dead out there?” and “Maybe I should try that again.” But he does occasionally unearth a sound, fresh comedian whom the public might not otherwise see or know about; one such was a brash and nonsensical fellow named Charlie Weaver, whom Mr. Paar has been putting through his paces. And Mr. Hope, in one of his shows in early February, made his audience a handsome and unexpected present of two sketches—a rock-’n’-roll parody, and a burlesque of Lassie—involving Wally Cox, an exceptionally deft and polished clown.

  Since there are comedians available, it would seem that the problem is, first, to segregate them and, second, to find a way to put them to steady, sensible, organized use. Those who are now bogged down in serial stories or variety shows or ceremonial duties should be separated from their sticky surroundings at least for short, stated periods; as noted, a comedian, to be completely effective, must be completely comic, and completely uncommitted to anyone’s mood or style but his own. History indicates that few true comedians—Mr. Caesar being the current exception—can beat the odds of exposure for any length of time with a weekly, or even a monthly, program. If that’s the case, other means of distribution can be found. I devoutly hope that some network—or some high-minded combination of networks—will see its way soon to scheduling a full thirty-nine-week season of comedy, with a different comedian dominating each show. Small efforts have been made in this direction before, but none, as far as I know, that was thoroughly and ambitiously planned. The program might be staged biweekly, at a given time on a given night, to alternate with another kind of theatrical show, perhaps a play. In that event, only twenty major comedians would be needed for the comedy program. The quota, I’m reasonably sure, could be filled without trouble.

  The comedians—that is, the dominating comedians—would be the best comedians. If Mr. Caesar were still fully engaged with his own show, as I trust he would be, I’d exempt him from the extra work. There would be a show apiece for, among others, Mr. Durante, Mr. Clark, the Marx Brothers, Miss Lillie, Mr. Moore, Mr. Lahr, Mr. Wynn (I’m speaking of Ed Wynn, but I’d be glad to see him supported by Keenan Wynn), Mr. Cox, Mr. Gleason, Mr. Berle (if he stuck to his historic, early-television form), and Mr. Allen. Because of Mr. Allen’s special gift for the management and promotion of comedians, I’d expect him to bring along and manipulate his own private herd. I’d expect the same of Mr. Hope, if he were given a show, and Mr. Paar. Since Mr. Cox has proved that situation comedy, which he once practiced, does not necessarily destroy the reflexes and muscles needed for real comedy, I’d be willing to extend amnesty to Phil Silvers, and perhaps to Danny Thomas. I’d like to see Mr. Benny have an hour in which to demonstrate his slick but consummate art. I think the freedom of the hall might be awarded, for a full hour or less apiece, to three men of marked, if dissimilar, gifts, all television comedians emeritus—Ernie Kovacs, Henry Morgan, and Red Buttons.

  The formula of limited exposure, of the once-a-year show, has been developed with particular skill by still another comedian, Victor Borge. I regard the comedy of Mr. Borge as being on the artificial and tricky side. I think it relies heavily on a bogus effect—on the kidding or negation of a serious accomplishment of his own, on the exploitation of his musicianship. The late Fred Stone exploited athleticism in the same way, and passed as a comedian. But, because Mr. Borge has paved the way for one-shot showmanship on television, I’ll concede him a place on the new program, provided he remembers one of the program’s rules: Don’t mix in with the salespeople. In his last show, he did commercials. I’ve heard it said that the commercials were amusing, because Mr. Borge did them only semi-seriously. I defy any man, including Bob and Ray, to make a commercial funny if he is 1 percent serious—if, for that matter, he as much as mentions the product’s name.

  JUNE 6, 1959 (ON ON-THE-AIR LANGUAGE)

  NTERVIEWING GOVERNOR ROCKEFELLER recently on Station WMCA, Barry Gray, the discless jockey, felt the need to ask his guest a certain question. He also felt a clear obligation to put the inquiry in radio-televese, the semi-official language of men who promote conversation on the air. Though it is more or less required, this language is a flexible one, leaving a good deal to the user’s imagination. “Governor,” Mr. Gray said, after pausing to review the possibilities of the patois, “how do you see your future in a Pennsylvania Avenue sense?” I thought it was a splendid gambit. Another broadcaster might have said “How do you see yourself in the electoral-college picture?” or “How do you project yourself Chief Executive–wise?” The Gray formula had the special flavor, the colorful two-rings-from-the-bull’s-eye quality, that I have associated with the work of this interviewer ever since I began to follow it, several years ago. For the record, Governor Rockefeller replied, “I could be happier where I am.” He might have meant Albany, he might have meant the WMCA studio. As you see, radio-televese is not only a limber language, it is contagious.

  The salient characteristic of remarks made in radio-televese is that they never coincide exactly with primary meanings or accepted forms. For instance, Mr. Gray, a leader in the postwar development of the lingo, has a way of taking a trenchant thought or a strong locution and placing it somewhere to the right or left of where it would seem to belong. “Is this your first trip to the mainland? How do you feel about statehood?,” I have heard him ask a guest from the Philippines on one of his shows (the program runs, at present, from 11:05 P.M. to 1 A.M.). On the topic of Puerto Ricans in New York, he has said, “How can we make these people welcome and not upset the décor of the city?” On a show a few years ago, he described an incident that had taken place in a night club “that might be called a bawd.” A drunk at a ringside table, Mr. Gray said, “interrupted the floor show to deliver a soliloquy.” “When did the chink begin to pierce the armor?” he once asked, in connection with a decline in the prestige of former Mayor O’Dwyer. “The fault, then
,” he said on another occasion, “is not with Caesar or with his stars but with certain congressmen.” Speaking of the real-life source of a character in a Broadway play, he has observed, “He was the clay pigeon on whom the character was modelled.” When Mr. Gray called Brussels “the Paris of Belgium,” I was reminded of an editorial I had read in a Long Island newspaper long ago in which Great Neck was called “the Constantinople of the North Shore.” There is an eloquence and an easy confidence in Mr. Gray’s talk that stimulates even his guests to heights of radio-televese. Artie Shaw, a musician, in describing the art of another performer to Mr. Gray, said, “He has a certain thing known as ‘presence’—when he’s onstage, you can see him.” Another guest declared that the success of a mutual friend was “owing to a combination of luck and a combination of skill.” “You can say that again,” Mr. Gray agreed, and I believe that the guest did so, a little later. The same eloquence and the same off-centerism can be found today in the speech of a wide variety of radio and television regulars. “Parallels are odious,” Marty Glickman, a sports announcer, has stated. “The matter has reached a semi-head,” a senator—I couldn’t be sure which one—said at a recent televised Congressional hearing. “I hear you were shot down over the Netherlands while flying,” a video reporter said to Senator Howard Cannon, a war veteran, on a Channel 2 program last winter. “Where in the next year are we going to find the writers to fill the cry and the need?” David Susskind demanded not long ago of a forum of TV directors. “Do you have an emotional umbilical cord with Hollywood?” Mr. Susskind asked a director on the same show.