Mort Sahl

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Morton Lyon Sahl (born May 11, 1927) is an American comedian, actor, and social satirist who is regarded as the first modern stand-up comedian since Will Rogers.

Sahl pioneered a social satire that mocks current events by inventing improvised monologues and only a newspaper as a prop. Sahl spent his youth in Los Angeles and then migrated to San Francisco Bay, California, where he made his professional appearance at the hungry i nightclub in 1953.

His fame soared quickly, and after a year at the club, he toured the country performing shows at well-known nightclubs, theaters, and college campuses.

He was the first comedian to be published in Time magazine in 1960.

He appeared on several television shows, appeared in a number of film roles, and appeared in a one-man show on Broadway. Sahl was "the only authentic political philosopher we have in modern comedy," TV host Steve Allen said. His social satire performances established a new standard in live entertainment as a stand-up comedian arguing about the actual world of politics at the time was deemed "revolutionary." Many late comedians, including Lenny Bruce, Jonathan Winters, George Carlin, and Woody Allen, were inspired by the film's popularity.

Allen attributes Sahl's latest humor to his ability of "opening new vistas for people like me." "Numerous politicians became his followers, with John F. Kennedy requesting that he write his jokes for campaign speeches."

Sahl became obsessed with the Warren Report's inaccuracies and conclusions after Kennedy's assassination in 1963, and he spoke about it often on his shows.

This alienated a large portion of his audience and resulted in a decrease in his fame for the remainder of the 1960s.

However, his appearances and fame staged a partial comeback in the 1970s that continues today.

In 2017, James Curtis' biography Sahl, Last Man Standing, was published.

Early life and education

Sahl was born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, on May 11, 1927, and was the only child of Jewish parents. Harry Sahl, the son of an immigrant family on New York City's Lower East Side, aspired to be a Broadway playwright. When Dorothy (Schwartz) responded to an advertisement in a poetry magazine, Harry met his wife. They migrated to Canada, where he owned a Montreal cigarettes store.

Sahl's family was later relocated to Los Angeles, California, where his father, who was unable to become a Hollywood writer, served as a clerk and court reporter for the FBI. "My dad was dissatisfied in his dreams, and he feared this place for me." "55 Sahl was a student at Belmont High School in Los Angeles, where he wrote for the school's newspaper." Richard Crenna, an actor, was a classmate.

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After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Sahl, then aged 14, the United States entered World War II, the Reserve Officers' Training Corps joined the program (ROTC). He was given a medal for marksmanship as well as an American Legion "Americanism award." 55 Years old, he wore his ROTC uniform to school and in public, and, when he turned 15, he dropped out of high school to join the United States Army by lying about his age. 55 year-old Mr. He was tracked down and returned him home two weeks after she had discovered his true age.

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When he retired from high school, his father attempted to get him into West Point and had received his congressman's assistance, but Sahl was already enlisted in the United States Army Air Forces by now. With the 93rd Air Depot Group, he was later stationed in Alaska. He had resisted discipline and authoritarian oversight over his life in the military, but not so much. He showed his nonconformity by growing a beard and refusing to wear a cap as required. He also wrote articles for a small newspaper criticizing the military, resulting in his expulsion for three months of KP service. Sahl said in an interview that he loved his military service experience, which he described as "spiritual."

Sahl was dismissed in 1947 and enrolled in Compton College, followed by the University of Southern California. He obtained a B.S. A degree was earned in 1950 with specializations in traffic engineering and city administration. He continued to study masters but decided against becoming a writer and playwright.

Personal life

Sahl has been married three times. In 1955, he wedded Sue Babior; the marriage ended in divorce less than three years later. Tippi Hedren, his faithful girlfriend, was in the early 1960s.

In 1967, he married actress and model China Lee, and the two separated in 1991. Mort Sahl Jr., their son, died in 1996 at the age of 19, from an unknown drug reaction.

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He married Kenslea Ann Motter in 1997, and they divorced about 2009. He regretted the end of his marriage and said, "I'm sorry I divorced Kenslea; I'm still in love with my wife." If you love a woman, it'll make her a better woman."

Sahl's autobiography Heartland was published in 1976.

A number of well-known comedians, including George Carlin and Jonathan Winters, paid tribute to Sahl in June 2007.

Sahl did not use profanity on or off stage, nor did he drink, smoke, or use drugs.

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Sahl went from Los Angeles to Mill Valley, California, a San Francisco suburb, where he met comedian Robin Williams, who lived nearby.

Sahl appeared on Thursday night, live audience and Periscope/Twitter, before the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

Sahl died of natural causes at his Mill Valley home on October 26, 2021, at the age of 94.

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Career

Sahl attempted to work as a stand-up comedian in more than 30 nightclubs around Los Angeles between 1950 and 1953, but no success was achieved. He would never be a comedian as a comedian, according to NBC, where he once auditioned. He even offered to perform free during intermissions to demonstrate his talent. "Despite all the myths surrounding the faith of friends in the struggling young artist, my friends never discouraged me." "He and a friend then rented an old theater for "experimental" use, and he started writing and staging one-act plays. Nobody Trusted the Truth, which was one of his plays. They eventually closed the theater after being unable to attract a large enough audience.

Sahl began doing odd jobs and writing for money. He worked as a used car dealer and a messenger, as well as a book that went unnoticed and short stories. He went to New York in the hopes of securing his shows, but after eighteen dollars a week, he only managed to make eighteen dollars. "I couldn't get a thing going," he said. I was writing a book, I was out of work, and I was out of gas." As a result, he decided to try something new by presenting his plays as monologues. He felt it would be quicker to perform his monologue on stage rather than trying to sell it to others. 56 "I knew that if I was going to get something done, I'd better do it myself," he says. 56 He returned to Los Angeles, where he appeared in several clubs, but his new style of monologue comedy attracted little attention, but not much attention.

Sue Babior, a female from 1953, began dating him in 1953. Sahl arrived in Berkeley to attend the University of California, and she wanted to be with her. He spent his time reviewing classes and hanging out at local coffee shops. He wrote for a few avant-garde journals to earn money. Since Babior was living with roommates, he slept in the back seat of a friend's car. "Things were simple back then," he said. "All we had to worry about was the man's destiny." "I was 'born' in San Francisco,' at home in the San Francisco Bay Area," he said. He said that the three years he lived in Berkeley were a valuable learning experience.

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Sahl tried to find a club where he could be a stand-up, and Babior suggested he audition for San Francisco's hungry i. Enrico Banducci, the company's owner, took an immediate liking to Sahl's comedy style and gave him a paycheck of $75 a week (roughly $720 in 2020), his first steady job as a stand-up comedian.

Sahl's satirical comedy performance quickly spread. After watching his show, he received some good reviews from influential newspaper columnist Herb Caen: "I don't know where Mr. Sahl comes from, but I'm glad he's here." Danny Kaye and Eddie Cantor, two film actors, started inviting 62 people to watch Sahl's performances. 62 Cantor took him "under his wing" and gave him suggestions. 71 Sahl, a star of the hungry i, was earning $3,000 a week (roughly $29,000 a week in 2020) and playing to packed houses by the end of his first year at the hungry i. "I'd be washing cars if it weren't for Enrico," he said later in his career.

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Sahl began appearing at clubs around the country, including the Black Orchid and Mister Kelly's in Chicago, the Crescendo in Los Angeles, and the Village Vanguard and The Blue Angel nightclub in New York City. Many of the clubs had never seen a stand-up comedian perform before, which required Sahl to break in as a new kind of act. "I had to develop my own network of places to play," he said.

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Following news of the "new phenomenon," a number of celebrities stopped by to see his shows, many of whom referred to Sahl's distinctive style of comedy. Woody Allen, who appeared at the Blue Angel in 1954, wrote, "he was now this brilliant genius who appeared to have invented the medium." "John Cleese, a 68 British comedian, became immediately interested in Sahl's fresh style of comedy, and The Beatles treated him with the same reverence as The Beatles once reserved for Elvis Presley."

Steve Allen, the show's producer, said he was "astonished" by how amateur he appeared, but that the analysis was not meant as a critique but as a "compliment." All the previous good comics dressed informally were glib and well-rehearsed, and they were always in charge of their audiences, according to Garca. When I first saw Sahl work, I thought his "very unshow business demeanor was one of the things I liked."

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Sahl wore casually, without tie, and mainly wearing his signature V-neck campus-style jacket. His stage presence was described as "candid and cool, the antithesis of the slick comedy," according to theater critic Gerald Nachman. Even though Sahl was known as a brilliant comedian, it was still an image he detested and condemned: "It was ridiculous." "I was only a C student," he said. 67 His natural charisma on stage was partly due to his preference for improvisation over rehearsed monologues.

Sahl explained:

Lenny Bruce and Dick Gregory's casual style of stand-up, where he seemed to be one-on-one with his audience, influenced new comedians, including Lenny Bruce and Dick Gregory. Sahl was the least controversial, however, because he dressed and looked "collegiate" and concentrated on politics, while Bruce confronted sexual and language conventions and Gregory concentrated on the civil rights movement. After seeing Mort Sahl on stage, Woody Allen, whose writings were often about his personal life, decided to give it a try: "I'd never had the courage to write about it before." Mort Sahl, a comedian, came up with a whole new sense of humor, opening up new vistas for people like me.

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Nachman referred to Sahl's monologues as a "gifted narrator" who was so good at involving you in his travels that you didn't even know you were on a labyrinthine journey until the show was over. "64 Sahl's monologues were also a hit." Penelope Gilliatt, a British film critic, recalled how Sahl's creation "goes on a breakneck stammering loop, and you'd expect it to never make the circle." It never does." "He freewheels a bike on a wire tightrope with his brain racing and his hands off the handlebars, it was like watching a circus act."

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"Simply put, Mort Sahl reinvented stand-up comedy during the 1950s," Sahl's fame "mushroomed like an Atomic cloud during the 50s," adds filmmaker Robert B. Weide. In 1960, Time magazine published a cover story about him and his ascension to fame, in which they referred to him as "the best of the New Comedians [and] the first well-known American political satirist since Will Rogers. He appeared in several films and on television shows, including his network debut on The NBC Comedy Hour in May 1956. Following Jack Paar's departure when the network waited for Johnny Carson to become available, he was one of the show's interim hosts on The Tonight Show.

His fanbase had widened to include not only students and a "hip" crowd, but now recognized politicians and politicians were also on display. Some of them became colleagues, such as presidential candidate John F. Kennedy, who begged him to have a bank of political jokes he could use at public functions. Kennedy adored his style of political satire and Sahl's "insatisfied pursuit of everyone," according to him. Adlai Stevenson and Hubert Humphrey were supporters, with Humphrey stating that "whenever there is a political bloat, Mort sticks a pin in it." Ronald Reagan was one of Sahl's closest friends.

He stayed current and obtained content from major newspapers and magazines, which attracted them. He kept his material fresh, wrote few notes, and amused his audiences by delivering otherwise serious news with his brand of humour. He was not fond of television news, but he blamed 1960 for "spoon-feeding" the public and was therefore responsible for the "corruption and ignorance" that could sink this nation.

In addition to being on Time's front page, Sahl became the first comedian to perform in college and became the first comedian to win a Grammy.

Following Kennedy's assassination in 1963, Sahl's curiosity in who was behind was so high that he became a deputized member of District Attorney Jim Garrison's team to investigate the assassination. As a result, Sahl's comedic comedy would often reflect his views and include readings and commentary on the Warren Commission Report, of which he has consistently denied its accuracy. He alienated a large portion of his audience, and more of his planned shows were cancelled. By 1964, his income dropped from $1 million to $13,000. Sahl's demise and career stifled his career as a result of his excessive focus on the Kennedy assassination details, according to Nachman. Later that day, Sahl admitted that "there's never been anything that had a bigger influence on my life than this one," but that he nevertheless "thought it was a wonderful journey."

Sahl's partial return as a veteran comedian by the 1970s was fueled by the rising tide of counterculture, and he was a part of the young comedians to break into the field, including George Carlin, Lily Tomlin, and Richard Pryor. 89 In the 1980s, he headlined for Balducci's new clubs in San Francisco. He was writing screenplays in the 1980s, rather than doing sporadic shows around the country. He had a fruitful multiweek run in Australia in 1987.

Sahl was back in New York City in 1988 and performed Mort Sahl's America, a one-man Off-Broadway show that, despite receiving good feedback from critics, was not a box office hit. Mort Sahl has been restored to the spotlight when he is most needed, according to the New York Times. His style is characterized by an intuitive spontaneity. His presence is contagious. "92 Robert Weide produced Mort Sahl: The Loyal Opposition, a biographical documentary that appeared on PBS in 1989."

Sahl's previous success was increasingly difficult to recapture, according to one Los Angeles Times columnist, "Sahl is a man with a nation but not a stage." 96 A number of television specials gave him a stage to perform in front of live audiences. Mort Sahl Live, the Monitor Channel's flagship show began in November 1991.

He appeared in theaters and college auditoriums from the 1990s to today, but less often and mainly in theaters and college auditoriums. Allen told Woody Allen, "this is crazy" because he appeared in 2001 at one of his rare New York club appearances, "you should be working all the time." "Listen, this guy is funny," Allen told his boss Jack Rollins. We need to bring him to New York. "96 Sahl performed shows at Joe's Pub in Manhattan to standing-room only audiences."

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Sahl appeared at B.B. in 2008. Woody Allen, Elaine May, and Dick Cavett were among the King's Blues Club & Grill on 42nd Street, with Woody Allen, Elaine May, and Dick Cavett in attendance.

Sahl was ranked #40 on Comedy Central's list of the 100 best stand-up comedians of all time, ranked between Billy Crystal and Jon Stewart. The National Foundation for Jewish Culture gave Alan King Award in American Jewish Humor in 2003. On the National Recording Registry in 2011, the Library of Congress published his 1955 film At Sunset.

Sahl's humour was based on current events, especially politics, which led to Milton Berle's description of him as "one of the finest political satirists of all time." He was expected to arrive with a newspaper in hand, casually dressed in a V-neck jacket. He would often cite some news articles with satire. By Time magazine in 1960, he was named "Will Rogers with fangs."

For the first time, Sahl would address people or events as if he were covering them for the first time, and would devolve into related stories or his own experiences. Roger Ailes, a television executive, said he saw him read the newspaper one day and that after a few hours Sahl emerged onstage with an entire evening's worth of new material. "He didn't write anything, so he did what he had read in the afternoon paper." He was a genius.

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Adlai Stevenson, Marlene Dietrich, S.J., were among Sahl's celebrity and political followers, including Adlai Stevenson, Marlene Dietrich, S.J. Perpetu's Perpetualist, Saul Bellow, and Leonard Bernstein are among Perlman, Saul Bellow, and Leonard Bernstein. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., said his fame was due to the public's "yearning for youth, irreverence, trenchancy, parody, parody, and [and] a clean break with the past. "The only authentic political philosopher we have in modern comedy," Steve Allen described him on one of his shows.

Sahl's naturalness was also considered unusual for a stage performer, as well as his improvisational skills. Woody Allen argues that other comedians were jealous of Sahl's stage presence and that he might not know how to act by simply speaking to the audience. The "mere idea of a stand-up comedian talking about the real world was revolutionary," Lenny Bruce, Woody Allen, Dick Gregory, Phyllis Diller, Jonathan Winters, were cast in a familiar nightclub style.

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