@waynewv Red Skelton is an all time favorite of mine. His characters Klem Kadiddlehopper and Freddie The Freeloader were pure genious.
I could not rank any one comedian as “greatest.” There are so many good ones and each has their own unique style.
Glad that Lenny Bruce and Garrison Keillor were mentioned. Bruce was a real trailblazer and set the stage for Carlin and many others years later.
I loved Garrison Keillor and miss him. I was dating a guy from Fargo, ND, and in the beginning had a hard time understanding some things about him. At a point he said to me, “You know those Norwegian bachelor farmers Garrison Keillor talks about? That’s my family.” Suddenly lots of things fell into place.
Lucille Ball and Gracie Allen. They both played ditzy women but in real life they were very savvy business women who helped create a place for women comedians. Lily Tomlin and Whoopi Goldberg are two of my favorites.
Robin Williams - yes! Genius.
Here’s one who may not be particularly familiar: Mom’s Mably. I don’t know what made me think of her recently. She was a hoot.
Which also makes me think of Mae West and W.C. Fields. West wrote all her own lines. What a pair. Mae West was scandalously bawdy at a time when women just did not do that and got away with it.
Might as well mention Charlie Chaplin. I once went to a Charlie Chaplin film festival at the art museum. They filled every single seat in the theater and had to turn away some folks. There were children and old people and everyone in between laughing hysterically. That’s genius, getting people from 8 to 80 laughing 60+ years later.
These days I’m especially fond of Trevor Noah. He makes the news palatable. I love his perspective, like his contrast of American and South African police.
It has been a quiet week in Lake Cuddfort. Summer is at its height, and the bright gold of the fields seems to take the edge off and make cuddling seem somehow irrelevant. It's too hot to get within an inch of another person anyway. The tomatoes - oh how we are sick of tomatoes - warn of the perils of excessive touch, with unwelcome squidginess never far away. Even the dogs squirm if you hand lies for more than a second or so.
I think my favorite comedian is Robin Williams. Steve Martin is also a contender for #1. Oh and Leslie Nielsen is also at the top of my list. Others would be (in no particular order) Jerry Seinfeld, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Tina Fey, Steve Carell, Amy Poehler, Kristin Wiig, Will Farrell, Phil Hartman, Jason Segel, Eugene Levy, Catherine O’Hara, Jane Lynch…ok this could go on forever so I’ll stop with the actors here.
I love George Carlin’s standup as well as Jim Jefferies. I also love Bo Burnham, John Mulaney, Dimitri Martin, Brian Regan, Chris Rock, and I loved Mitch Hedberg (😢). Adam Sandler had hilarious standup back in the day, and I almost died laughing at Dane Cook’s early shows. I have loved Dave Chapelle, and I know nothing should be off limits in comedy, but some of his stuff now is just cruel imo.
@Babichev I listened to the audiobook “Born a Crime” that Trevor Noah wrote (and narrated!) and I really enjoyed it. I love him and think he’s hilarious.
@Btown: I'm envious. Garrison Keillor seems like he would be great to meet in person.
@Babichev: I haven't heard of Mom's Mabley. I'll have to do some googling. If you like her—well, based on the other comedians you listed, odds seem high that I'll like her too.
Edit: I have googled, and now I see that I could've saved myself some typing by clicking on the video in your post!
Also, I added an E to her name.
@DaringSprinter - Moms was a hoot. Television was highly censored in those days but in a few of her jokes she made some slightly bawdy references. Off television I think she was even more so. In one interview, I think on Dick Cavett or one of those, she said she was traveling in the South and said oh, the people there just love me. What was Roy Roger’s horse’s name? Oh, that’s right, Trigger. Everywhere I went they called me Trigger. (like that was a term of endearment) Then, after a pause, “At least I think that’s what they were saying.”
Here’s an example of what TV censorship was like in the 60s: I saw Joni Mitchell in concert and she told a story. I don’t recall the name of the song but the opening lines were, “When I first saw your gallery I liked the ones of ladies,” meaning the paintings of ladies. The censors thought she said “wombs of ladies” and nixed it. Even after they were told the correct lyrics they still would not approve so she had to sing a different song. She said she wondered what were they imagining, paintings of giant purple uteruses? Along those same lines, I watched The Rolling Stones sing “Let’s spend some time together” on the Ed Sullivan Show because they weren’t allowed to sing “Let’s spend the night together.” It all seems so quaint now.
@Babichev: Oh no. Oh gosh. She sounds like a hoot, all right!
These days you can actually buy a hook-up for your TV that will do the 60s censorship for you: my parents use TVGuardian. It gets just as confused as the old censors. For example, whenever we watched Toy Story we had to turn it off, because otherwise it would cut the sound every time the main character's name was said.
It was a few more years before I figured out what was wrong with the name "Woody." To think some people are no brighter than a cheap algorithm—!
Three of my favorites left us all too soon and I wonder what they would have offered us in the future:
@DaringSprinter - Funny that Woody Woodpecker got away with it.
The book Dangerously Funny tells about the Smothers Brothers Show. They were constantly tangling with the TV censors. It wasn’t just sexual content and innuendos, it included politics. They hosted Pete Seeger who had been blacklisted from TV for I don’t know how many years because of the McCarthy era. I was a fan of both and remember that. I don’t recall what Seeger sang but at the end of the the song the Smothers Brothers said they would have him on again and next time he would sing the song he wanted to sing but wasn’t allowed on that first show. (It was The Big Muddy, an anti-war song whose recurring refrain was, “We’re waist deep in the big muddy and the big fool says to move on.” In the song, it’s the leader of a platoon but it was obvious the Big Fool was President Johnson and the “big muddy” was the Vietnam war.)
The movie Cinema Paradiso (the original version, not the director’s cut) tells the story of a boy in a small, poor Italian town who is friends with the projectionist at the local movie theater. In the film, whenever he would get a new film it had to be previewed by the local priest who would ring a bell every time there was a kissing scene and the projectionist would mark the film and later cut out the offending scenes. At the end of the film, the now grown boy, a movie director himself, returns home for the old man’s funeral. His widow gives him a can of film, a gift from the deceased projectionist. Later, he sits and watches the film and it’s all the cut out kissing scenes spliced together in one long strip.
In all the old TV sitcoms and many of the older films if they show the bedroom the married couples always have twin beds. Crazy, no?
But I digress. Sorry. But not too far off the subject. Comedy and censorship have always had an uneasy relationship. Comedians have long been constrained by social norms and politics. Lenny Bruce went to jail for talking publicly about things that many people did routinely in their private lives.
I remember when the 2nd Eddie Murphy stand-up special came out way back when. That was before streaming when you saw comedy specials in movie theaters. People were literally falling of their chairs and rolling around in the aisles laughing. I love Dave Chappelle and lots of other guys but none of them made me laugh as hard as Eddie Murphy at his peak.
Not long ago I got into binge watching Native American comedians. This guy wrote the song “John Wayne’s Teeth” for the movie Smoke Signals.
@Babichev: No, not too far off topic at all. Comedy requires violation—of expectations, of norms, of assumptions. The trick is not hurting anyone with it, or at least not hurting people who're hurt already.
Censorship tries to prevent harm, but the premises it uses to decide what's harmful and what's not can be... questionable.
Edit:
As an example, my dad used to hold the popcorn when the family watched movies. And sometimes, when a kid reached for the bowl, he'd pull it away and go, "Hey! Keep your cotton-picking fingers outta my popcorn!"
This is funny because it violates expectations on a couple different levels:
1 We're watching a movie and the popcorn is expected to be for all of us! We didn't expect to be (jokingly) accused of theft!
2 So far as I know, no one in our family has ever been a picker of cotton, and we're all Caucasian. We didn't expect to be called by a racial epithet meant for a different race!
This is harmful because it reinforces the idea that black people are thieves. Knowing what I know now, I would censor my dad.
On the other hand, consider the argument that sexual innuendo should be removed from jokes because having sex is morally bad (only barely acceptable within marriage), thus talking or thinking about it will cause moral harm: one needs to take sin seriously.
It's... interesting.
George Carlin Bo Burnham Wanda Sykes James Acaster John Mulvaney Ali Wong Iliza Shlesinger Nikki Glasser And of course, Eddie Izzard
@DaringSprinter - I never associated the term “cotton-picking” with a race, just with the activity, though I can see how that might be the case since the majority of the folks who picked cotton were black. If I’d heard someone saying that, I would not interpret it as insinuating (black) cotton-pickers were thieves but that “cotton-picking” was a substitute for a curse word, like “gol darn.” But you know your dad better and what he would have meant.
I tried looking up the origin of the phrase and the explanation given was that the hands of cotton pickers would be rough and calloused and, thus, not desirable to be touched by. That seems plausible enough. I can see how it could have racial overtones, particularly in the south, that might have been oblivious to someone from outside of the region and may have been intended as a racial slur. I can also see it being associated with a cotton-picker being of low socioeconomic status and dirty, because of the nature of the work, all of this indicating that the person was undesirable to be touched by those who were clean and of higher status.
On the other hand, “pea-pickin’” seems to have been a term of endearment as in “Bless your pea-pickin’ heart.”
I did not know the word “gypped” was derived from the word gypsy until way into adulthood and definitely came from the assumption that gypsies were thieves.
Well, thank you for that lesson. I’m not in the habit of using the term but now would definitely avoid it.
@Babichev: Yes, I'm going off the explanation my dad gave me when I asked what "cotton-picking hands" were.
Not that he was as clear as I was above—he just said it meant black-skinned, dirty hands, and that some black people stole a lot, especially back in the day. His tone was a little apologetic, so I think he knew it was at least a touch racist... but he never stopped using it. He once said racism was basically over, that it had ended when he was a kid; I suppose that's why he figured using the term humorously was okay. How could it hurt?
He probably picked up the term (and his idea of what it meant) from his parents. They were... well, they were what they were, and they sure didn't think "racist" was it. They just stuck to the facts, was all! 🙄
...They were heavily racist. Grandma especially.
General call to the universe: please let me know if I say, do, assume, or imply something horrible! I swear I don't want to be like my ancestors. Not in that way, anyhow.
Interesting note on "pea-picking"! That's charming.
Sometimes your reaction when you come face to face with the greatest comedian of all time...
https://youtube.com/shorts/fICFgviU3-0?feature=share
Loved Carlin , had a chance to see him live twice . Took my mother to see him for her birthday back in the mid 90s and again saw him a couple yrs before he passed.
I am also a huge fan of Mitch Hedberg🥰
@pmvines That Hedberg video is hilarious.
@achetocuddle he was great. never had a chance to see him when he was alive. The Stardome Comedy Club here in Birminghsm names their food after different comedians and they have a Mitch Hedburger (burger );that is amaze balls
Robin Williams is the best of all times. No one will ever be able to beat him.
@Mama_Bre - thanks for the link! After years of watching and loving Robbin Williams as “Mork”, a stand up comic, and a comedic movie actor, I was absolutely blown away to see him in more serious roles. His range and talent were truly impressive!
Sam Kinison was a rising star before his untimely death. He was referred to as the screamer because he did a lot of that in his stand up.
@Btown you mentioning Sam Kinison reminded me of Bobcat Golthwait. He opened a routine once talking about how he had lost his job, “well I didn’t actually lose it… I still know where it is, but when I go there somebody else is doing it.”
@JohnR1972 lol. I love the Bobcat
Bill Hicks is one of my fave’s
I loved Richard Jeni and Gilbert Gottfried
Robin Williams all the way. 100%
Don Rickles Richard Pryor George Carlin Steven Wright Rodney Dangerfield Lenny Bruce declares a truce and plays his other hand
On Antenna TV tonight Johnny Carson has George Carlin as a guest. Friday night it's Don Rickles. That's if anyone besides me still watches these reruns on TV considering they are probably all on YouTube.