{"id":21155,"date":"2011-09-22T08:10:12","date_gmt":"2011-09-22T12:10:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=21155"},"modified":"2011-09-22T12:27:57","modified_gmt":"2011-09-22T16:27:57","slug":"stop-me-if-youve-heard-this","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2011\/09\/22\/stop-me-if-youve-heard-this\/","title":{"rendered":"Stop Me If You’ve Heard This"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Abe Vigoda by Drew Friedman from 'Even More Old Jewish Comedians.'<\/p><\/div>\n

Veteran actor Abe Vigoda\u2019s friends think it\u2019s funny that he\u2019s not dead.<\/p>\n

\u201cAbe, was the ground cold when you got up this morning?\u201d asked Stewie Stone, who was comp\u00e9ring a party for Even More Old Jewish Comedians<\/a><\/em> at the Friars Club last Thursday evening. The book, by artist Drew Friedman<\/a>, is the third in a series of caricatures of his Borscht Belt comic heroes. For the occasion, the midtown club\u2019s Milton Berle room was full of elderly Jews and even older jokes.<\/p>\n

\u201cMilton Berle was famous,\u201d Stone announced, \u201cfor the size of his cock. When he died, he left it to the Friars Club. So if you wanna see it, it\u2019s on the second … third and fourth floors.\u201d The crowd, sipping wine, laughed knowingly. They had heard this before. The wood paneled room hosted a mix of retired dentists and doctors; senior women sporting sparkly blazers, cloying perfume, and vibrant hair; comedy nerds seeking autographs; and a lot of quick-witted wisecrackers in their eighties and nineties.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Freier<\/em> is \u201csucker\u201d in Yiddish. In modern Hebrew, it\u2019s considered a major insult: someone who can be tricked into doing almost anything, however self-defeating. The Friars Club hosts legendary roasts. \u201cDo you think it\u2019s intentional that the club\u2019s name means \u2018sucker\u2019?\u201d I asked Eddie Lawrence, a ninety-two-year-old whose comedy single, The Old Philosopher<\/em>, climbed to the top of the Billboards in 1956. \u201cI don\u2019t speak much Yiddish, Bunkie; you\u2019ll have to ask somebody older,\u201d he quipped.<\/p>\n

Lawrence had paired a trim cream suit with a bold, red-and-blue cravat. I remarked that he looked dapper. \u201cIt\u2019s my scarf,\u201d his wife, Marilyn, informed me. \u201cHe steals all my scarves.\u201d Our conversation was regularly interrupted by people asking Lawrence to sign the book or to pose for photos. In the background, pigs in blankets, pizza bagels, and egg rolls circulated sporadically.<\/p>\n

Comedians and partygoers spoke fondly about Borscht Belt hotels that closed decades ago: the Concord, Grossinger\u2019s, The Nevele. Lawrence, at least, didn\u2019t seem to lament their demise. \u201cRemember, the whole world\u2019s a stage,\u201d said the nonagenarian renaissance man, who paints daily and is writing a novel on his Paris years, \u201cand there\u2019s still no work.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe club\u2019s membership is dwindling,\u201d said one member, Dr. Sanford Blaustein, a retired radiologist. \u201cI come here every day,\u201d he added, \u201cI\u2019m ninety-one years old\u2014I mainly use the health club.\u201d He isn\u2019t a fan of the annual roasts. It\u2019s the one night a year that the club, says Dr. Blaustein, \u201cgets too packed.\u201d Since 1950, the Friars Club has roasted such notables as Humphrey Bogart, Sammy Davis, Jr., Barbra Streisand, Bruce Willis, and Quentin Tarantino.<\/p>\n

Al Jaffee, the ninety-year-old Mad<\/em> magazine cartoonist, and comedian Gilbert Gottfried schmoozed on the sidelines. Gottfried famously told the joke \u201cThe Aristocrats\u201d at the Friars Club roast of Hugh Hefner in 2001. In the bawdy joke, which dates back to the years of vaudeville, a family of performers visits a talent agent, whereupon they engage in as many lewd acts as the joke-teller can imagine. \u201cWhen a joke works, it just works\u2014no matter how many times you hear it,\u201d Gottfried said that night. He didn\u2019t have to add that the gag itself need not be funny. The comedians honored in the Old Jewish Comedians series have been doing the same bits for generations.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlan King told me this joke,\u201d said Stone. \u201cWhenever I worked in Florida or anywhere, I told this joke: A very successful furrier has one daughter. His daughter\u2019s his life. His daughter comes to him and says, \u2018Daddy, I want to get married.\u2019 The father says, \u2018Terrific, this is what I live for!\u2019 She says, \u2018There\u2019s a slight problem.\u2019 \u2018What\u2019s the problem?\u2019 \u2018The boy\u2019s a Hasid.\u2019 The father replies, \u2018Well, send him in tomorrow. I\u2019ll look at him.\u2019 The boy comes in the next day: black hat, peyes, tzitsis hanging, long black coat. \u2018Young man, I understand you love my daughter,\u2019 he says. \u2018Yes, sir, with all my heart and soul.\u2019 \u2018Let me ask you a few questions. What do you do with your life?\u2019 \u2018I\u2019ve been a professional student all my life. I study the Torah, the Talmud.\u2019 \u2018Well, how do you live?\u2019 \u2018I pray God will provide,\u2019 replies the Hasid. \u2018You wanna marry my daughter?\u2019 \u2018Yes, sir.\u2019 \u2018Who will support my daughter?\u2019 \u2018I will pray; God will provide.\u2019 \u2018What about children?\u2019 \u2018We\u2019ll have a lot of children.\u2019 \u2018Who will support these children?\u2019 \u2018I will pray; God will provide.\u2019 With that, the daughter walks in: \u2018Daddy, do you like him?\u2019 \u2018Like him?\u2019 he replies, \u2018I love him! He thinks I\u2019m God!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The crowd\u2019s spirits were high, which seemed due to more than just the release of Friedman\u2019s book, or even the emergence of more canap\u00e9s. Guests were happy to meet their idols; the comics were happy to convene for an event that wasn\u2019t a funeral. And the celebration of the comedians\u2019 Jewishness was significant. The majority of performers in the book had changed their names for their careers, but Friedman\u2019s book listed their original, invariably more ethnic names alongside each entry. Eddie Lawrence was Lawrence Eisler, Jack Benny once again Benjamin Kubelsky. Now, for posterity, the Yiddish punim<\/em> is reunited with its Jewish surname.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m so proud to be in this book,\u201d Stone said, \u201cbecause the worst curse in show business, when we all started, the first thing you were told was \u2018Don\u2019t be too Jewish. Don\u2019t be proud of your ethnic background. Don\u2019t mention it onstage.\u2019 So if a New York comedian would come to Las Vegas, they would say, \u2018Borscht Belt comedian comes to Las Vegas.\u2019 That meant: Jew was in town.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thirty years ago, it was widely reported that Vigoda, who\u2019s now ninety, was dead. The comics in the room represented the last of a generation that\u2019s close to extinction. They addressed the issue of loss in time-honored fashion. \u201cAn old Jewish couple,\u201d said Stone, \u201care at the doctor\u2019s. The doctor\u2019s nurse comes out and says, \u2018Mrs. Feinstein, you\u2019re next.\u2019 She goes in and the husband is waiting outside. During the examination, in conversation, the doctor asks Mrs. Feinstein: \u2018Do you and your husband have intercourse?\u2019 She has a blank look on her face. She says, \u2018Wait a second,\u2019 and sticks her head out of the examination room, into the waiting room. She yells, \u2018Sam, do we have intercourse?\u2019 and Sam says, \u2018No, we got Blue Cross. I told ya!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Daniel Herbert is a writer living in Brooklyn.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Veteran actor Abe Vigoda\u2019s friends think it\u2019s funny that he\u2019s not dead. \u201cAbe, was the ground cold when you got up this morning?\u201d asked Stewie Stone, who was comp\u00e9ring a party for Even More Old Jewish Comedians at the Friars Club last Thursday evening. The book, by artist Drew Friedman, is the third in a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":241,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[3997,4014,4017,4001,4003,4004,4000,4006,3998,3999,4016,4008,4012,4009,4018,4011,4015,4002,4010,4005,4013,4007,3037],"class_list":["post-21155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-events","tag-abe-vigoda","tag-al-jaffee","tag-alan-king","tag-borscht-belt","tag-comedian","tag-comic","tag-drew-friedman","tag-eddie-lawrence","tag-even-more-old-jewish-comedians","tag-friars-club","tag-gilbert-gottfried","tag-grossingers","tag-high-hefner","tag-humphrey-bogart","tag-jack-benny","tag-jr","tag-mad","tag-milton-berle","tag-sammy-davis","tag-stewie-stone","tag-the-aristocrats","tag-the-concord","tag-yiddish"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nStop Me If You've Heard This by Daniel 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