Old Jews Telling Jokes is Back

Above, award-winning television writer Norman Stiles. New episodes every Tuesday and Thursday. Old Jews Telling Jokes. (thanks, Eric Spiegelman)

[#1 posted by shakespear, June 9, 2009 8:41 AM]

He is a really nice guy. I met him this year when I worked on Between the Lions

[#2 posted by airship, June 9, 2009 9:05 AM]

I grew up on 50's and 60's TV, which was a pantheon of corny old vaudeville-era Jewish comics and their somewhat more hip & sophisticated offspring: Milton Berle, Jack Benny, Sid Caesar, Joey Bishop, Red Buttons, Professor Erwin Corey, Rodney Dangerfield, Shecky Greene, Buddy Hackett, The Three Stooges, Georgie Jessel, Danny Kaye, Alan King, Richard Klein, Jerry Lewis, The Marx Brothers, Jackie Mason, Stiller & Meara, Carl Reiner, Don Rickles, Joan Rivers, Mort Sahl, Soupy Sales, Peter Sellers, Alan Sherman, Phil Silvers, Henny Youngman, et. al.

I thought all comics were Jewish, until Johnny Carson came along. :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Jewish_comedians

[#3 posted by zikman, June 9, 2009 9:22 AM]

sweet! I've been passing some of these videos around to friends on facebook. they al love it.

[#4 posted by Sarah Neptune, June 9, 2009 9:46 AM]

Old Jews telling jokes is back? Oh, good, my grandparents are in vogue again.

[#5 posted by buddy66, June 9, 2009 11:15 AM]

Obliquely speaking...

Somewhere there are tapes of a southern white guy who in the early 90s went around to black churches with a routine called Stories Old Black Men tell, or something almost like that. Now I know that most comment questions either go unanswered (or are snarkily responded to) because few commenters RTFPs, but does anybody know anything about this? My searches come up either empty or irrelevant.

He was regarded as knee-slappingly funny by his selective audiences, at least according to Time or Newsweek or wherever the hell I read it. Remember: This was a white man cracking up black audiences by telling black stories! Man, they HAD to be funny.

Any of you Happy Mutants know anything about this?

[#6 posted by bex, June 9, 2009 2:46 PM]

that was super funny and no you are not in the USA rubbish

[#7 posted by SomeGuy, June 9, 2009 3:02 PM]

In 1968 and '69 I worked for a man named Leo Weiner - an absolute mensch if I ever knew one. Leo had a habit of telling the same jokes over and over. Here's an example:

Some guys are sitting around at the B'nai B'rith and after a while they start telling jokes. Finally one of the guys gets hot under the collar. "You guys keep telling the same stupid jokes....two Jews are walking down the street....a Jew and his son are having an argument....two Jews are sitting at a deli.... Why do all your jokes have to be about Jews? How about the Italians or the Irish or the Chinese? Yeah, that's it. Why not tell a joke about the Chinese?"

"OK, I got one" says one old guy from the back of the room. "These two Chinese guys are walking down the street and the first one turns to the second and says. 'Nu? How was your son's bar mitzvah?'"

[#8 posted by TroofSeeker, June 9, 2009 3:49 PM]

Alan King. Man, I loved that guy!
Airship, how could you not START with Mel Brooks!

[#9 posted by Anonymous, June 9, 2009 5:08 PM]

Remember Isaac Asimove,he could make any classic jewish joke funnier. FYI my captcha was Saudi Exports,there is a jokester mebbe?

[#10 posted by buddy66, June 9, 2009 9:54 PM]

The best teller of Jewish jokes is the genius/reputed madman Gordon Lish; except he writes them, he doesn't recite them. His masterful shaggy dog short story, "For Jerome — With Love And Kisses" is supposedly a letter to J.D. Salinger from his father, but is actually a series of Jewish jokes that the old man misunderstands as serious life lessons for his reclusive writer son, who should do more to publicize himself.

It's the funniest short story I've ever read.

[#11 posted by TroofSeeker, June 9, 2009 11:59 PM]

Soupy Sales. What a goofball! There couldn't have been a PeeWee Herman without him.
I'll tell ya the RUMOR of why he was fired. On the air he was said to have told this joke:
"My wife can't bake an apple pie, but she can sure make my banana cream!"
True or not, the man was a real pioneer in humor.

[#12 posted by Anonymous, June 10, 2009 6:59 AM]

I'm embarrassed to say, but I don't get the joke.

[#13 posted by buddy66, June 10, 2009 12:15 PM]

Soupy had two daily shows during the1950s: a morning show for kids and absurdists, and a midnight show for hipsters and jazz buffs. He was considered super hip and ultra cool in the latter guise, and any jazz musician who was anybody came on his show when they played Detroit

[#14 posted by MESHUGENEH MORT, June 30, 2009 1:25 PM]

This is my first time commenting. I'm on the phone/computer all day trying to convince schools & libraries to preview books and do I get some doozies! When I get a particularly rough one, rather than telling them I'm rally their proctologist & I just found their head, I log onto this site and absolutely laugh myself back to my joyful old self. This place is an instant vacation. Also, for anyone w/COPD or asthma like me, it causes you to take in vast amounts of oxygen as you laugh and laugh. My personal favorite of all time is Myron Cohen who, though he may have passed on the the comedy cabaret in the sky, remains w/me always. I think I know all of his jokes by heart. Since he's no longer w/us, ths site is a laudable replacement. A true treasure, especially in these times! Thanks to whoever thought of putting this on the web.