Lenny Bruce in 1959, guest at the first airing of the Playboy's Penthouse show, reported that Time made an article indiscriminately grouping seven new comedians, labeling them as "sick comics"; they were Lenny Bruce, Mort Sahl (a brilliant author of political satire), Shelley Berman (considered by Bruce a mediocre comedian), Jonathan Winters, Mike Nichols & Elaine May, and Tom Lehrer.
Script doctor Daniele Luttazzi says: "the term sick comedy then ended up being used to encompass a bit of everything: the humor of the Mad magazine as Jules Feiffer, the cartoons by Charles Addams as the monologues by Mike Nichols and Elaine May, the traditional comedy by Shelley Berman and the hipster comedy of Dick Gregory."
When Time magazine labeled Lenny Bruce as a sick comic, he replied: "The kind of sickness I wish Time had written about, is that school teachers in Oklahoma get a top annual salary of $4000, while Sammy Davis Jr. gets $10,000 a week in Vegas.
References
- Daniele Luttazzi (2001), foreword to the Italian edition of Lenny Bruce's (1972) How to Talk Dirty and Influence People
- Lenny Bruce, appearance at the first airing of Playboy's Penthouse, 1959
- Lenny Bruce (2004) Let The Buyer Beware, Disc One, last track Lenny On Playboy's Penthouse (with Hugh Hefner & Nat "King" Cole)
- The Sickniks - Time, Jul. 13, 1959. p.2 p.3
- The Third Campaign - Time, Monday, Aug. 15, 1960, p.8
- Lenny Bruce (1972) How to Talk Dirty and Influence People
See also
External links
- The Lenny Bruce Originals
- Lenny Bruce and Let The Buyer Beware (2004), 7-1/2 Hours Of Mostly Unreleased Lenny
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Last updated on Thursday October 09, 2008 at 08:02:13 PDT (GMT -0700)
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