BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE: COMEDY

A popular joke of the 1920s was "Don't step on it; it might be Lon Chaney!"
iMDb trivia-Lon Chaney
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The Oldest Recorded JokeThe oldest joke on record dates back to 1900 BCE in ancient Sumer, the earliest known civilization in Mesopotamia. Rather than a conventional setup and punchline structure, the joke is more of an observation: “Something which has never occurred since time immemorial; a young woman did not fart in her husband’s lap.” The double-negatives throw in a bit of confusion, but the joke gets at a primary urge to hide certain imperfections from a romantic partner. "

HISTORY FACTS WEBSITE (July 24, 2024)
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THE PHILOSOPHER HENRI BERGSON, COMEDY, AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE TELLING JOKES 

"Bergson saw comedy as distinctly human. That may be in part because he understood that'it's deeply, inescapably social. We not only laugh more in groups,ut also what we find funny depends on who is telling the joke. A  punch line about a car crash will be hilarious ... but it can require emotional intelligence to make them work. What makes people crack up is not just the joke but also the connection with a human conciousness telling it." 

Jason Zingman. "Are Comedian Bots Ready to Kill?" in The New York Times (Sunday, August 20, 2023)
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  THE PRE-WORLD-WAR I  GERMAN SENSE OF HUMOR

W.C. Fields while juggling "kept dropping hats, he couldn't seem to get under them. He was unused to German audiences at this time and had no idea how things were going, but he fancied that they could scarcely be worse. At last, with another hat down, he stepped forward in a perfect rage and kicked it far out  over the  footlights. The spectators were charmed...."...they yearned for something new. 'Ya, iss gute,'Oh, fonney!' and 'Ha,ha, ein mann vill kicken der hat!' Were among the pleased cries that floated up to Fields."

Robert Lewis Taylor. W.C. Fields: His Follies & Fortunes (Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, 1949) 
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THE UNSPOKEN PACT WITH THE AUDIENCE

"Every comic has an unspoken pact with the audience....Whether or not critics like me think authenticity is important, it matters to the audience. So does honesty. And comics understand that. It's no accident that many of the political comedians working today,especially in television, employ researchers from traditional newssources. Getting facts right matter, especially when the comedy isabout grave social issues." 

Jason Zingman."Can Comics Stretch the Truth too Far" in The New York Times (September 21, 2023
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ONE MORE ASPECT OF JOKE MAKING

But another aspect of joke making is to express what many people are thinking about. As Joan Rivers commented,"I  succeeded by saying what everyone else is thinking."Or expressing what people may be thinking but can't quite bring themselves to say out loud: Since the days of Pigmeat Markham, not to mention Lenny Bruce, the comedian's job has been to say  the unsayable -- to give voice to the things that stink or bite us in the heart.

Hilton Als. "Bros' Night Out," in The New Yorker (February 10, 2020)
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BEST NEW COMEDIAN OF THE DECADE (1960s)

"Playboy magazine hailed me as the best new comedian of the decade,"  Mr. Newhart wrote in his autobiography. "I Shouldn't Even Be Doing This: And Other Things That Strike Me as Funny" (2006), during this period. :"Of course, there were still nine more years left in the decade." 

from The Obituary for Bob Newhart in The New York Times (July 19, 2024)

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 WHEN VICTOR BORGE AND HIS WIFE  FLED FROM THE NAZIS AND ARRIVED IN AMERICA, HE KNEW NO ENGLISH AND COULD NOT PEFORM HIS MUSIC/COMEDY ACT 

"While the Danish comedian could speak Swedish, French, and German, he knew no English. After trying unsucessfully to learn from his wife and from a language school, he taught himself American English by going to inexpensive movies and sitting through many showings while he repeated the'dialogue with the actors. This he did for months, sometimes picking up a gangsterism or comic dialect which he would later have to discard, but finally he was able to translate some of his comedy routines into English and memorize them." 

Current Biography 1946 
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"Never Squat on Your Spurs"--Will Rogers
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"I take vitamins. They drop and roll under the refrigerator. I don't pick them up. I have years of vitamins under the refrigerator.   I'm going to come home one night and find a six foot roach singing 'I feel good!"                                Elayne Boosler
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JOE E. LEWIS & THE JOKER IS WILD 

"When I was very young, to supplement my income,I wrote one liners for him - he paid me twenty-five dollars a page. Much later, after Frank Sinatra played Joe E. in The Joker is Wild --a picture in which Frank was surrounded with pretty women -- I gave Joe E. ajoke to use at the Copa. He would come out and tell the audience, 'I went to see The Joker is Wild. And I realized that Frank Sinatra  had more fun playing  my life than I had living it." 

Alan King, with Chris Chase. The Life and Lies of Alan King: Name-Dropping (New York: Scribners, 1996)
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"I’m not offended by blonde jokes because I know I’m not dumb…and I also know that I’m not blonde."— Dolly Parton  
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JOHHNY INKSLINGER IN A BAR WITH ROBERT BENCHLEY, DOROTHY
PARKER, KRAZY KAT, OGDEN NASH, JAMES THURBER, ARCHY,
MEHITABEL, et. al. MOURNS THE DECLINE OF AMERICA'S SENSE OF
HUMOR

Here come smolder and snarl ask those 2 for their autographs
it seems to me pal 365 days of lent our gloomside 'tis of
thee quack quack ducks of morose didja hear the one about...
forget it boss if it don't have bubonic celery dynamite doom
prosecuting attorneys no one wants it fizz fizz mouthwatering
human effervesce light verse vaporized into high-minded giggle
bring me a plate of boarfish with fries diazine cocktail this is
America better to be a glottochronologist than coax a smile out
of those suckers