Mort Sahl- A Forgotten Comic Pioneer

Mort Sahl’s routine might not sound quite funny these days, but don’t sleep on his Schtick- Sahl is one of stand up comedy’s most important men. His fame is all the more remarkable considering that his material was not geared towards getting laughs. Instead of adhering to the vaudeville comic’s formula of Wife Jokes and Wordplay, Sahl pioneered an intellectual and politically charged act. Armed with a newspaper in hand, Sahl’s act that exposed the absurdity and hypocrisy of statesmen, beginning a life-long battle against the media, the government and good old fashioned American complicity. Mort Sahl’s act was so dangerous it led to his own ostracism and banishment. Who would have known a kvetch from Montreal, in slacks and a sweater, would be the man most responsible for the John Stewart’s of the world.

 “Liberals feel unworthy of their possessions. Conservatives feel they deserve everything they've stolen.” This is a slice of the genius of Mort Sahl. His comedy is more about sincerity than smarm or swagger, more about rants than jokes, more about precision and eloquence than punchlines. He would appear in slacks and a sweater, appealing to the brain rather than the gut. His dry, hip, improvised irony endeared himself to beatniks and the politically who filled San Francisco’s Hungry I nightclub in the 1950s.

Sahl would take the stage, armed with a copy of the day’s newspapers. He’d open his set, by opening the paper, and commence to tearing a gaping rhetorical holes in every  single headline. The sum of his tempered attacks on the hypocrisy of media, culture, politics, and society in his routine was something almost entirely new. Sure, Mark twain had done it in letters, but Sahl was the first master of the medium of comedy for political purposes. There are now endless permutations on Sahl’s schtick (minus the sweater of course) in the form of The Daily Show, Politically Incorrect, or any late night comic’s opening monologue.

The U.S. government was Mort Sahl’s best friend and worst foe. The government provided the butt of his jokes and even a semblance of legitimacy. President John F Kennedy would use Sahl’s jokes in speeches. However, Sahl’s prophecy that, “If you maintain a consistent political position long enough, you will eventually be accused of treason,” was self-fulfilling.

Sahl’s sharp tongue and political wit became substantial enough, that it could no longer be tolerated under the First Amendment. He was quoted, at the San Francisco’s the Hungry i, “Every time the Americans throw an American in jail, the Committee throws an American in jail to get even.” The Ed Sullivan Show stopped allowing Sahl appear, after a night of jokes critical of the Kennedy administration. The rest of America followed suit, Sahl was effectively blacklisted, and his career came to a sudden halt.

The Kremlin, Washington had made the decision that the stand up comedian was no longer protected under the First Amendment. McCarthyism looked to quash any dissent as a red threat. Lenny Bruce’s 1964 obscenity consumed his life and led him down a path to death at 40. George Carlin was tried for obscenity as well. The government killed a few kids at Kent State. America was no longer a safe place for social criticism.

Sahl’s blacklisting and downfall was compounded by his obsession with the Kennedy assassination. The irony and satirical twists that characterized his previous material were now replaced with obsessive, manic conspiracy theories. Sahl succumbed to what professor Will Kaufman coined as “irony-fatigue.” The syndrome refers to the point where a comedian loses the ability to spin demoralizing news as humor, instead turning into a ranting pessimist. It happened to Lenny Bruce, Herman Melville, and Bill Hicks and others, who, like Sahl, had become the proverbial sad clown, sick of juggling for the crowd.  When Sahl was questioned on the state of comedy, following his decline through the 1970s, he ironically replied, “It has changed, it isn’t funny anymore.”

Sahl’s personal life since the peak of his fame hasn’t been too shabby. He married a playboy playmate and a flight attendant. Still, its painful to think that one of comedy’s most influential men and ambassadors went from 1988 to 2001 without a single invite to perform on late night television. He teaches at the Claremont McKenna colleges, on his favorite topic, the Kennedy Assassination and the Warren Commission.

Despite the fall from grace, Sahl remains a godfather figure in the history of Stand-Up comedy. The acts of Lenny Bruce, Lewis Black, Bill Hicks, Letterman, Leno, John Stewart, Woody Allen and Bill Mahr all are offshoots of the subversive political comic subgenre that Sahl pioneereed. Mort Sahl’s status as a countercultural icon is cemented even further every time a disenchanted citizen grabs hold of a microphone.

Comments

Be the first to comment!

Leave a Comment

In order to post a comment, you must first log in.
Are you looking for user registration? Or have you forgotten your password?