The Fall, Rise, Fall, Rise, Fall, Rise and Death of Jacob Cohen (Part 2)

Dear Readers, if you have a short attention span, just skip to the rap video.

If you have an interest in one of the greatest failures at in the history of comedy, please continue on as if your sense of humor depended on it.

In our last visit with Jacob Cohen, the man had been condemned to a life selling insurance and aluminum siding around New York. After a childhood filled with of abuse, neglect, work as a singing waiter, and molestation, he tried comedy as an outlet and failed. When Cohen quit, in his late twenties, he was the only guy who knew he quit.

 “Oh, when I was a kid in show business I was poor.  I used to go to orgies to eat the grapes,” he joked.

He settled into married life, and produced two soul-sapping children. He joked, “My wife and I were happy for twenty years.  Then we met.” At age 40, dejected and in the throes of a midlife crisis, Jacob Cohen, aka. Jack Roy looked back to the stage for an outlet.

Luckily for him, his depression and gut wrenching and self-deprecation oozed out every pore in his body. Add a decade of a lousy marriage and a lousy job, to his childhood, and the man had an encyclopedia of material to draw from. He got back on the microphone, ready to start fresh, with a new name, Rodney Dangerfield, and the perfect way to articulate his life, ‘No Respect.’

The new image and the catchphrase, explain only part of the story of Dangerfield’s mid-life ascent to stardom. He had to tweak his style as well. Dangerfield cut out his long-winded material, whittling his set to a collection of one-liners. By stacking one joke on top of the other, the whole of a Dangerfield set became much greater than the sum of its parts. Rodney rattled off jokes like they were shot from a Tommy Gun, even if he told a weaker joke, the audience would still be laughing from the one before it. The breakneck pace of Dangerfield’s comedy helped push his set to the next level, and forced his eyes to bug out a little.

Want evidence? Take a look at Dangerfield’s set build his set to a bladder-splitting frenzy that convinced half the crowd they needed Depends, as he absolutely kills from his chair on the Johnny Carson Show. :

Dangerfield has put it all together, and now he only needed an opportunity. His luck came one night in the late 1960s, when the comic scheduled for the Ed Sullivan Show came down sick, and forced to cancel. Rodney was called in as the substitute comic- and he killed. The shvitzing dirty old man in the red tie made for a heck of a change from fresh-faced mild-mannered talent that dominated the airwaves. 

Rodney would go on to do the Ed Sullivan Show over a dozen.  He was a regular face on the Tonight show with Johnny Carson, setting a record by appearing seventy times.

Dangerfield ran with the success. In the 1980s, he became a bona-fide film star, in, the 1980 classic, Caddyshack. In order to stay close to his family, he opened his own Club, Dangerfield’s in New York City, that helped launch the careers of Jerry Seinfeld, Sam Kinison, Jackie Martling, Andrew Dice Clay and Roseanne Barr. He’d finally earned a little respect, and become the poster boy for persistence in comedy. This was much better than his previous experience as, “the poster boy for birth control.”

Anybody with a funnybone, Rodney’s 1981 Grammy award winning comedy recording, No Respect, is a must own. The album is a landmark monolith in the history of recorded comedy.  It is Dangerfield at the peak of his game. The album is peppered with his best one-liners like, “This girl was so ugly she was a two bagger, you put a bag over your head in case the bag over her head breaks,” and, “I was tired one night and I went to the bar to have a few drinks. The bartender asked me, "What'll you have?" I said, "Surprise me." He showed me a naked picture of my wife.”

It took about forty years for Rodney to make it to the top, and he did it the old fashioned way, through hard work. Rodney was once asked if he’d done any publicity stunts, his response was, “I once went down on a shark to stay hot in the business.”

Dangerfield may have metaphorically gone down on the shark when he took a brief detour into hip-hop, paving the way for artists like Jay-Z, The Wu Tang Clan, and Nas Afroman. Maybe I exaggerated, but the 1984 track ‘Rappin Rodney is a phenomenon. It was released at the height of the MTV phenomenon, and received heavy airplay. In this clunky, funky groove, Dangerfield is backed with an absurdly dated Kurtis Blow Style beat, and chorus of Buxom women, with his one-liners are set to rhyme, like:

When I was born, I brought no joy

(no respect, no respect)

My old man said he wanted a boy

(no respect, no respect)

I got some money, what did I do?

(no respect, no respect)

I bought some quicksand; the deal fell through

Dangerfield became first Jewish Man to chart a rap single, beating the Beastie Boys to the punch by almost two years. This video is a much watch, check it out for yourself:

By the 1990s, he’d cemented his status as one of the most respected comics in the business. The Smithsonian asked for one of his Red ties to display, and he was given the Creative Achievement Award at the 1995 American Comedy Awards.

Rodney’s legacy goes far beyond his own body of work. His style of joke became a standard format for late night-comedians. Jay Leno thanked Dangerfield for his style of joke in his final television show, giving special attention to the “my wife is so fat… how fat is she” style joke.

Rodney’s lifelong fictional doctor, Doctor Vinnie Boombatz, is a legend in his own right.  David Letterman still makes numerous references to doctor boombatz. A typical medical visit with the doctor is never easy easy:  “I Went to see my doctor... Doctor Vinnie Boombatz. Yeah...I told him once, "Doctor, every morning when I get up and look in the mirror I feel like throwing up.  What's wrong with me?  He said, "I don't know, but your eyesight is perfect.”  Unfortunately, Dr. Vinny Boombatz couldn’t help Rodney kick what he called, ‘The Heaviness.’

The heaviness got to Rodney. He was depressed his entire life. Dangerfield’s health worsened, he would require multiple surgeries for Aneurysms and Heart Conditions. “I’m getting old,” Dangerfield joked, “At my age I get jealous of a stiff wind.”

Dangerfield spent much of the tail end of his life, sedated in his apartment. He took over 100 pills a day in the year before his death. He was often found smoking joints in a bathrobe with his genitals and a big scar down the center of his chest on display. At the age 80, Dangerfield got himself in a bit of trouble for smoking marijuana in the intensive care unit.

Rodney Dangerfield, born Jacob Cohen, also known as Jack Roy and Percival Sweetwater, passed away on October, 5 2004, at age 82. He’d fallen into a coma following brain surgery a few months earlier. Dangerfield was once asked in an interview, if he thought there was an afterlife. His response, “I don’t know. But if there is, where I’m going, I’m going to need plenty of air conditioning.”

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