Mort Sahl
Too Conventional?
Mort Sahl
A recent chat-room started up a discussion by asking "Was Mort Sahl Really Funny?" The opinions varied, of course, but the consensus was pretty much that he was funny at one time, but not so much anymore.
This sentiment was echoed by a reviewer in a college paper who saw Mort decades after his heyday. "At first glance," she wrote", "the number of balding heads and hearing aids in Mort Sahl's audience is daunting." She did concede, though, that "My mom really likes Mort Sahl."
Of course, nothing sends the older crowd into spittle-flinging diatribes quicker than young whippersnappers thinking old folks are corny and out of date. That applies to books like The Lord of the Rings (popular in the hippie era but often derided as boring today), motion pictures like Singing in the Rain (lauded as an overnight classic but now frequently regarded as horribly treacly), and yes, humor.
But c'mon. Mort Sahl?
Out-of-date?
Corny?
Blasphemy!!!!!
But the sad, lamentable truth is that if you wait long enough any joke becomes out-of-date and corny. A joke, after all, relies on setting up a scene that creates certain expectations. Then the punchline comes in and throws us a curve - an unexpected outcome. This abrupt shift in point-of-view is what makes us laugh.
But what happens if the joke is about something that the listeners have never heard of? Then you can't understand the set up or recognize the shift in point-of-view. Ergo, the joke isn't funny.
For instance here's a knee-slapper from nearly two centuries ago:
A gentleman was going into a meeting-house, and stumbling over one of the forms that were set there, cried out in a passion, "Who expected set forms in a meeting-house?"
In 1850, most people would understand this joke. But today with the exception of students of the history of comparative religions or members of the Society of Friends the point will be lost. Ergo, no one will laugh.
But what about Mort - or rather his jokes? Well, let's look at some of his hoots.
A bank robber went into a bank. He went up to a teller and handed over a note that said, "Give us all the money in the bank. Act normal. You will not be harmed." The teller read the note and handed it back with his own note saying, "Define your terms."
What? You don't get it? Well, how about:
"I took a course at Cal once called Statistical Analysis. And there was a guy in the course who used to make up all his computations and he never used sigma. He used his own initials. 'Cause he was the standard deviation."
Still nothing? Well, what about this?
"With benzedrine you can have a very wide view of the world, like you can decide the destiny of man and other pressing problems, such as which is the left sock."
We have to be honest and say that these are not necessarily quintessential Mort Sahl. Much stand-up humor depends on timing and delivery and a joke written down can seem lame compared to when it's delivered viva voce. But we still see there is difficulty in identifying the point-of-view shifts that will elicit, if not a belly-laugh, then at least a chuckle.
On the other hand, there are some of Mort's bon mots that with some modification and name changing you might hear today.
Take this joke - please!
Nixon's the type of man who if he sees a man drowning fifty feet off shore will throw him a thirty foot rope. Then Kissinger will go on the air and say the President met them more than half way.
This joke will still work as long as you adapt it to modern conventions. So let's re-write it for today's audience.
----- is the type of [bleeping] [bleep] who if he sees a [bleeping] man drowning fifty [bleeping] feet off the [bleeping] shore will throw him a [bleeping] thirty foot rope. Then that [bleep] ----- will go on the [bleeping] air and say the [bleeping] President met them more than [bleeping] half way.
This indeed might get a laugh in a modern comedy club.
Despite some of the younger generation finding Mort and his older jokes a bit incomprehensible, no one questions that he was a pioneer in modern comedy. First appearing in night-clubs in the 1950's, he would walk on stage in casual clothes - his sweater was his trademark - and a newspaper folded under his arm. Then he'd start delivering barbed commentary on current events. Some reviewers cite Mort as the first modern political humorist and even as the inventor of stand-up comedy.
Of course, we have to admit most people have forgotten Will Rogers - or more likely, they don't realize he ever existed. Starting around 1900, Will would walk out on stage dressed in his causal cowboy garb and during his rope tricks deliver commentary on the day's news. Later Will moved on to radio and films, where he dropped the tricks, donned a rumpled suit and battered hat, and delivered monologues where he tossed slings and arrows at the politicians and public figures. Will soon became the most popular comedian of the time and the leading box-office draw. He wrote a daily newspaper column read by millions and wrote best selling books. In the first decades of the twentieth century Will was the most famous entertainer in the world.
Have people forgotten?
But Will wasn't just famous in his own time. He remained in the national consciousness for decades after his death at Point Barrow, Alaska in 1935. So it was inevitable once Mort had become the hottest comic in the clubs and on television he was called "the first notable political satirist since Will Rogers." And we learn that in 1960 Mort became the first entertainer and comedian to appear on the cover of Time Magazine.
Well, except for Will Rogers. Will was on the cover on July 19, 1926.
Of course, there were differences between Mort and Will. Mort tended to be more barbed in his comments. Will joshed the politicians. Mort stung them.
Mort began doing stand-up comedy around Los Angeles. In 1953, he traveled to San Francisco, then becoming the hub of the Beat Generation. At that time the cool SF club was the the hungry i, and Mort's performance there was recorded for an album. Mort's style was unusual and tended to be rapid fire without clearly defined beginnings and ends of the jokes, a delivery that was later satirized by a young George Carlin.
By the late 1950's, Mort had reached the big time. And 1960 was indeed a big year. Not only was he on the cover of Time, but he was mentioned in a Peanuts comic strip - clearly the pinnacle of fame. In the strip of September 28, Schroeder was reading parts of a book to Lucy.
" 'He would sometimes startle people in public places,' " Schroeder read. " 'He flew out in anger against all that was petty, dull, or greedy in men. Often, however, his scorn would turn to high hilarity and humorous jests.' "
Then Lucy asked, "Are you reading about Beethoven or Mort Sahl?"
As the 1960's rolled in Mort was a top-line celebrity. He appeared as a performer, panelist, or guest host on mainstream shows like What's My Line, The Tonight Show, The Match Game, The Ed Sullivan Show, and the early Regis Philbin Show. He even hosted the Academy Awards.
Then in 1966 a newspaper article appeared titled "Whatever Became of That Witty Mort Sahl?" The article noted that Mort - once such a hit - was suddenly no longer around. What, the reporter asked, had happened?
Mort had the answer. He had been blacklisted.
But not, he hastened to say, by the conservatives. No matter how much he zinged them, he said no one on the political right - not even the extreme right like (non)Tailgunner Joe McCarthy - ever tried to silence him.
Instead, it was the liberal minions who had hitched their wagon onto the new young and vigorous President John Fitzgerald Kennedy. It was they who had driven him out of the clubs, off the stage, and away from the screen.
Nonsense, said the people Mort mentioned. Mort was just getting stale, they said. The audiences were tired of the never-ending razzing - particularly when it was directed at one of the most popular sitting presidents in history.
Mort didn't buy it. Instead, there was deliberate action against him. And he had no problems giving specifics. He said he was once about to go on a well-known and popular TV show but was told to switch his jokes from the Democrats to the Republicans. Then when he refused, he was thrown off the show. And Mort claimed that Joseph Kennedy himself - JFK's then still-powerful father - had said that Mort was "going to be stopped."
Regardless of the rights or wrongs in the matter, that the frequency of Mort's appearances were inversely related to the popularity of the administration can't really be denied. Once LBJ took over and the Vietnam War escalated, it became not only popular but de rigueur for young people to trash "the establishment".
And Mort found himself back in demand. He returned to network television - not just on shows with a political bite like Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In and the then-controversial Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour - but mainstream shows as well. Audiences saw him on The Tonight Show, Dick Cavett, Joey Bishop, David Frost, and even on the rather mundane variety show the Hollywood Palace. Mort was even on the Hollywood Squares, for crying out loud!
Strangely, although Mort enjoyed more television time as the Turbulent Sixties rolled on, he was no longer a household word. He still told of how he was kept off the air and out of the clubs. Others, though, again dismissed any talk of a blacklist. What was causing Mort's problems now, they said, was Mort's routines were just not funny - particularly since he had become a staunch supporter of New Orleans District Attorney, Jim Garrison.
In 1967 Jim Garrison had been district attorney of New Orleans for five years. But that year he began investigating the Kennedy Assassination. Jim's theory of motive evolved over time but he ended up holding that the assassination was a coup d'état because the CIA didn't want JFK to work toward ending the Cold War.
Recent polls show that the majority of Americans believe Oswald did not act alone and was part of a conspiracy. As to what kind of conspiracy, though, this is pretty much wide open. When asked, Joe and Josephine Q. Public have hazarded that the mastermind behind the crime was the Mafia, the US Government, Fidel Castro and Cuba, the Ku Klux Klan and other racist groups, Lyndon Johnson, the Soviet Union and the Russian Commies, some other foreign country, the Secret Service, the FBI and J. Edgar Hoover (either separately or in tandem), the Teamsters or some other labor union, the Military Industrial Complex, anti-government right-wing groups, other miscellaneous political groups, and, yes, the CIA. And 40% of those polled had no opinion.
That said, in the ranking of conspiracy scenarios, commentators tended to rank Jim's theories among the less credible. In fact, among the most vocal of the Doubters of Jim were those who believed there was indeed a conspiracy. What Jim did, they said, was grasp at thin straws trying to prove his personal conspiracy theory. And in doing so he ended up undermining the credibility of serious minded researchers who also doubted the conclusions of the Warren Report.
But in 1991 Jim's theories got the proverbial shot in the arm with the release of the movie JFK. The Jim Garrison that Kevin Costner portrayed was no attention-seeking publicity grabber going after one of New Orleans's most prominent businessmen and civic leaders. Instead Kevin was an idealistic young DA bent on uncovering the treason within the heart of the government. Naturally, since the story had been made into a movie, many Americans believed it had to be true - even though some of the names were changed to protect the producer.
It's sometimes said the case Jim built was based on the testimony of a single witness who said he heard New Orleans businessman, Clay Shaw, and a couple of friends plotting to kill Kennedy. This isn't correct as there were a number of witnesses who testified they saw Clay with Lee Harvey Oswald and that they overheard talk of killing the president by getting a number of gunmen to fire from different locations. Clay was brought to trial in 1969.
We will not go into the details, pro or con, of Jim's case as it is extremely complex and takes (literally) volumes to discuss properly. But there's no doubt that Jim had problems with witness credibility. At first the primary witness was not able to connect Clay with any of the other supposed conspirators. So his memory was "enhanced" with hypnosis (which some people don't believe is even real) and sodium pentathol (which is very real but of dubious effectiveness).
Today memory - quote - "enhancement" - unquote - has fallen into disfavor and is often more of a legal liability. The problem has that it has never been shown that hypnosis really enhances true memories and it has definitely been proven that false memories can be planted into the witness. There are some countries that now prohibit any testimony using hypnotic memory enhancement ("refreshment" as some prefer), although in the United States the issue - as usual - is unclear. Most states have prohibited the practice outright but at least one of the laws was overturned by a federal court.
But in Jim's day memory enhancement and "truth serum" were more widely accepted or at least was not - as the Rabbi told Perchik - specifically prohibited. On the other hand, Clay's lawyers now had the perfect opportunity to claim the prosecutors had put the words into the mouth of a suggestible witness while pumping him with drugs. Following a two month trial - for the time a long duration - Clay was acquitted after only 54 minutes of deliberation. For his part, Clay said he was flabbergasted that he was ever charged.
Mort, though, not only believed Jim was onto something but even volunteered to serve as an investigator. Like other of Jim's assistants, he went out, hit the streets, and interviewed people. Mort did all this at his own expense although we don't have many details of his exact assignments.
Mort continued to appear as a comedian, and he began to bring copies of the Warren Report on stage tossing his barbs toward the Commission that decided that Lee Harvey Oswald had acted alone. There is no doubt that Mort was sincere, but the trouble with being a sincere comedian with a serious message is that it's sometimes hard to tell when the audience is supposed to laugh. One author even seemed to think that Mort was joking about Jim's conclusions rather than agreeing with them.
Of course even a website dedicated to eradicating ignorance and superstition will not easily resolve the merits of the Conspiracy vs. the Lone Nut Theories. But we can at least delve a bit into a type of - quote - "evidence" - unquote - that we encounter when talking about such theories.
Today attempts to resolve controversial topics when there is no clear cut evidence is to use the let's-put-together-the-pieces-and-solve-the-puzzle approach. Such "evidence" (again note quotes) is usually of the combinatorial and probabilistic nature which is notorious for even leading experts astray.
For instance you will read that Lee Harvey Oswald had Jack Ruby's private unlisted telephone number. So this proves a connection between the two men, nicht wahr?
Actually Oswald had no such thing. Instead there was the number "19106" written down in either a notebook or address book that he owned. But Jack's phone number was "15601".
But hold on there, said Jim. This is Jack's number - in disguise. But Jim said to retrieve the number you have to do some decoding. And we'd like to know how you do that.
I thought you would as Captain Mephisto said to Sidney Brand. It's very simple really.
- Take the first number "1" and write it down.
- Take the last number "6" and write it down after the first number. You now have the number "16".
- Take the second number "9" and write it down. You now have the number "169".
- Take the second from the last number "0" and write it down. We have "1690".
- Take the third (center) number "1" and write it down. We have "16901".
- Now subtract "1300" from "16901".
- You get 15610 - Ruby's phone number!
Can this, snort Jim's fans, just be coincidence?
Uh, yes, say Jim's critics. Very easily. Note that what you have here is an initial number - 19106 - and a "target" number - 15601. And we know both of these numbers before we do our figurin'. The goal is then to figure some way - any way - to get from one number to the other. And you can do it anyway you want.
To determine if the transformation is really a deliberate code is nigh impossible. In fact, cryptographers have shown that any intelligible message can be deduced from any given cipher of the same length. Certainly if the two numbers can be connected by more than one routine, then we must suspect the "code" is spurious. Similarly if we can arrive at some other "interesting" number from the original by some other not-too-difficult manipulation, we can legitimately suspect that we have just a probabilistic fluke.
So let's see what we can do. The first part is actually easy, and in fact, we don't have to go through all of Jim's manipulations to extract Jack Ruby's phone number from the one found in Oswald's book.
First we ask: Why use 1300 for the last step? The obvious answer is that it was easy remember and so the code didn't have to be written down.
But a number like 3505 is just as easy to remember - particularly when partitioned as "thirty-five oh-five" as you learned in freshman psychology classes and remembering that the product of the first two digits - 15 - is the number of letters in "Lee Harvey Oswald". Then just subtract 3505 from 19106 and you get 15601 right away without any complex shifting of the digits.
As far as getting other answers from the same number, Martin Gardner showed how to do this in one of his amusing "Dr. Matrix" columns which were part of Mathematical Games section which ran in Scientific American from 1956 to 1981. By partitioning the number 19106 in different ways Martin was able to derive the initials BJKG - that is, "Big Jim 'Kennedy' Garrison" and also the initials "BGJA". That is, "Big James".
Ironically, Jim himself came up with another code which ended up transforming 19106 - not to Jack Ruby's phone number - but to the number of the local branch office of the CIA. However, why Oswald would need to code a phone number that was actually listed in the Dallas phone book remains unanswered.
So we see that the problem isn't whether something is a real code or a fluke, but that flukes and purposeful codes are indistinguishable. We can easily have a sequence that appears to arise from a rational starting place and then follows a logical sequence to the secret message. But what we really have is just meaningless reverse engineering from one number to another.
For instance, let's start with the number of letters in "Oswald" and count backwards to the number of letters in "Lee":
6, 5, 4, 3
Double the numbers:
12 , 10 , 8 , 6
Partition the sequence in half using the first letter of "Oswald":
12 , 10 / O / 8 , 6
... and treating the "O" as a zero, add the number found in Lee Harvey Oswald's book:
12 + 1 , 10 + 9 , 0 + 1 , 8 + 0 , 6 + 6
... and we have ...
13 , 19 , 1 , 8 , 12
Now count in the alphabet until you find the letter of the numbers:
13 = M , 19 = S , 1 = A , 8 = H , 12 = L
Yep. That's "M. SAHL".
The only way to tell if a code is really a code is to get more messages. If your supposed code is simply a back-engineered fluke, the new messages will be gibberish. If you have a real code, new messages will make sense. This is why modern ciphers change all the time.
The point is that none of this brouhaha has anything to do if there was a conspiracy or not. But it does show us that definite conclusions are never possible by just fiddling with numbers or finding indeterminate blobs on blurred and grainy photographic film.
Starting in the late 1980's Mort had a resurgence. His "Mort Sahl's America" - based on a Broadway appearance - was well-received, and he was a subject of Public Broadcasting's American Masters series. Mort continued performing into his 90's only slowing down a bit in his later years.
On the other hand perhaps we should lament that Mort has become just a bit too mainstream.
After all, during the 2008-2009 academic year, students at Claremont McKenna College could take courses on politics, critical thinking, and screenwriting from ...
Yes, from Professor Mort Sahl.
References
Seriously Funny: The Rebel Comedians of the 1950's and 1960's, Gerald Nachman, Pantheon, 2003.
Mort Sahl - Official Site, http://www.mortsahlofficial.com/biography.html.
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Democracy: Comedy and Politics in the Twentieth Century, Robin Haynie, Ph. D. Thesis, The University of Texas at Tyler, 2015.
"Was Mort Sahl Really Funny?", Straight Dope, April, 19, 2005.
"Mort Sahl", Peter Quint, Harvard Crimson, October 21, 1960.
"Mort Sahl Speaks", Sarah M. Rose, Harvard Crimson, October 13, 1994.
"Whatever Became of That Witty Mort Sahl?", Mike McGready, St. Petersburg Times, July 31, 1966.
Mort Sahl: The Loyal Opposition, American Masters, Public Broadcasting System, 1989.
"That Good Night: Caustic Comic Mort Sahl Gears Up for a Broadway Comeback", Ken Gross, People, October 12, 1987.
"Mort Sahl Continues To Deflate Pretension", Stephen Holden, New York Times, April 5, 1994.
"Mort Sahl Invented Stand-up Comedy - So What's He Doing at a Community Theatre in Northern California?", Tristin Hopper, National Post, May 25, 2015.
"The Kennedy Assassination: 50 Years Later", Michael Kurtz, New Orleans Magazine, October 2013.
"Mort Sahl", Internet Movie Data Base.
"Majority in U.S. Still Believe JFK Killed in a Conspiracy", Art Swift, Gallup, http://www.gallup.com/poll/165893/majority-believe-jfk-killed-conspiracy.aspx.
"Garrison", Edward Epstein, The New Yorker, pp. 35 - 18, 1968.
Counterplot, Edward Epstein, Viking, 1969. The original edition.
The Assassination Chronicles: Inquest, Counterplot, and Legend, Edward Epstein Carroll and Graf, 1992. Compendium of three books. We will anticipate comments and mention that not only was the number 19106 found in Oswald's notebook, but the number was also found in the address book of Clay Shaw. This seems almost impossible to have been coincidence and certainly seems most suspicious.
However, the number in Clay's book was a bonafide post office box of one of Clay's potential business associates who was verified as a real person and who did indeed have that post office box. The number in Oswald's book was preceded by Russian Cyrillic characters but was written some years earlier and before 19106 was a Dallas PO Box. What we have, then, is indeed the of irritating coincidences that arises to bedevil investigations.
"Review: 'Mort Sahl's America' ", Julio Martinez, Variety, July 24, 1996
Canada Bans Post-Hypnotic Evidence, Tonda MacCharles, Toronto Star, February 2, 2007.
"Is There a Future for Investigative Hypnosis?", Graham Wagstaff, Journal of Investigative Psychology and Offender Profiling, Volume 6, Issue 1, January 2009, pp. 43-57.
"False Witness: Why Is the US Still Using Hypnosis to Convict Criminals?" Ariel Ramchandani, The Guardian, October 4, 2029.
"Mort Sahl, Father of Political Comedy, Still Has the Stage", Peter Hartlaub,, San Francisco Chronicle, November 27, 2015.
"Mort Sahl", Claremont McKenna College, https://www.cmc.edu/gould/about/mort-sahl.
Return to Mort Sahl Caricature