"Dying is easy; comedy is hard."  (attributed to Edmund Kean)

GREAT COMEDIANS

A LIST AND DESCRIPTION OF GREAT COMICS AND COMIC ACTORS

Bob Hope:

One of the important links (as are many in this list) between Vaudeville circuit performance and modern entertainment, he was present for the changes from the original 20th century progression from radio/newspaper/film media towards television, videotape/disc and cable distribution.  His persona (cited as a basis by performers like Woody Allen), often relied on comic uses of cowardice and confusion.  The reaction to these confusing circumstances (much as with Johnny Carson later) gave unanticipated benefits as well as a consistent character for which writers could be hired to write.  This last allowed him to leverage the Hollywood system to his advantage, while contributing original elements to the charachter (as well as the shepherding of cooperative characters as with Jerry Colonna).

Jack Benny:

Benny was a rather ordinary figure in comedy until he hit on the persona of the vain (forever 39 years old and not as good a violin player as he though) cheapskate (mugger: "Your money or your life!" - pause - "Hey!  I said your money or your life!"  Benny - "I'm thinking!  I'm thinking!").  Unlike many, he made the jump from radio to film and television probably due to deft use of basic acting abilities.  He even combined acting references and comedy a few times, as with the "OUTRAGEOUS fortune!" line from the film "To Be Or Not To Be".

George Carlin:

Formerly of the team Burns and Carlin (with Jack Burns, who produced the first Muppet film with Jim Henson and company), Carlin was one of the originators of the contemporary form of observational humor, which relies on recognition rather than contrast.  Rather than surprise, the observationalist gets a laugh due to a listener's identification with the situation described.    His use of hippie drug humor contexts didn't limit him as much as it would most comedians, since he stepped out of the persona often to comment on the drug culture itself.  

Phil Silvers:

Probably the closest to "Comic Actor" in my Comedian category, Silvers is best known for the "Sgt. Bilko" series from the 1950's.  Although he acquitted himself handsomely in just about every media form except comedy record albums, much of his exposure visible today is recorded in film.  His greedy trickster foil to Don Knotts' clueless goofball and Jonathan Winters' dullard truck driver in "It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" are high points in a film with so much talent competing for one's attention.  Back in the 1940's, though, he proved his mettle as a dancer by keeping up with Rita Hayworth and Gene Kelly in "Cover Girl".

Red Buttons:

... or "Blue Zippers" (as his pal Dean Martin was to razz him), he was a mainstay of the second wave of Martin's TV show, which changed in the early 1970's from a variety format to the famous "Roast" events.  Button's routine was always a reprisal of the same theme, "Why are we giving this guy a dinner? ...(since a different person, usually a figure from history) never got a dinner!"  In earlier times, during the Fiorello La Guardia administration's attempts to clean up NYC's Broadway entertainment district (an effort that continues today), 1941 saw the final raid on Minsky's Burlesque house.  At that instant, the comic on stage was Red Buttons.

Milton Berle:

From one-liners to outrageous cross-dressing characters, Berle had one of the most self-referential personas of anyone, and it was bolstered by what others would confirm or deny about it: he was alleged to be an incurable joke thief.  Oddly, sportswriter Jim Bacon's biography of Jackie Gleason describes an (actual, as in not-an-act) argument between Gleason and Berle with Berle claiming to be the victim of such theft.  And he apparently actually was ripped off, but the agreement by which a truce was drawn will be recounted below, not here.

Louis Nye:

Getting into comedy in the 1940's at about age 20, Nye (first name pronounced "Louie") hit his stride in a continuing characher backing up Steve Allen on TV in the 1950's.   One of the first second-banana characters from which the Ed MacMahon-Johnny Carson team took cues, his screen name was Gordon Hathaway, a comedically effete and snobbish rich boy.   In TV and movies, he used this act as a basis for bringing to parts a grating personality which would impel the audience to identify with whomever his opponent was.  

Rita Rudner:

"I've never fallen in love.  I've stepped in it a few times."  That line (or variations upon it) guarantees a place in history for Rudner.  She made use of her attractive "babe" image to become one of the 1980's most popular comediannes, performers that benefitted from the efforts of Fanny Brice and Phyllis Diller (more about whom later).

Jack Mayberry:

Johnny Carson used this standup comic in sketches when he needed someone to impersonate H. Ross Perot, the information systems magnate who ran for US President in the 1990's.  Still working today, Mayberry's recurring routines include slamming his hometown of Lubbock, TX, as well as generic middle-of-nowhere situations.  This can dovetail into character commentary, as with old people:  "Old people are from the land of Nothing.  When you drive somewhere with them, it's "I can remember when there WASN'T ANYTHING OUT HERE..."

Nipsey Russell:

Another alumnus of the Dean Martin Celebrity Roast show, this standup comic had a routine that drew from poetry and the liberal arts.  His well-read and well-spoken act countered the image of black people at the time, considered by many to be unlettered.  He also had an unusual writing method, stating that his approach was to start from the joke line and then to add detail, working backwards to the beginning of the joke.

John Byner:

A New Yorker standup comic and impersonations artist who broke into TV in the middle 1960's courtesy of Merv Griffin and later went into production, he organized the 1980's comedy variety show "Bizarre" and helped sell it to cable distribution.  It went beyond the boundaries of good taste when compared to the "John Byner Comedy Hour" from the early 1970's, which had been restricted by broadcasters' standards.  He used props in surrealistic and even reconstructed ways, as with the ear-splitting police whistle built into a pipe.  Also an expert voice actor, he worked on the "Ant and the Aardvark" segments from the "Pink Panther Show", which made use of his uncanny impressions of Dean Martin and Jackie Mason.