I am a comedy history nerd.
My bookshelves are crammed with titles like “Joe Franklin’s Encyclopedia of Comedians,” “The Slapstick Queens,” and “Mixed Nuts: America’s Love Affair with Comedy Teams.” My vinyl collection has more Bob Newhart than Bob Marley and more Carl Reiner than Carly Rae Jepson. My movie and television watching are “dated” – so much so that my daughter was the only 10-year-old I knew who asked for (and got) the complete DVD set of the Bob Hope/Bing Crosby road movies for Christmas one year.
I am fascinated by vintage comedy partially because it feels like home. My grandfather, whose picture sits in my office between one of Phyllis Diller and one of Bill Irwin, was an extraordinarily funny man. He was a barbershop baritone with ba-dum-bum timing and a huge heart. Because of him, my sisters and I all knew how to recite the following by the time we were in elementary school:
One evening in October
When I was far from sober
I was carrying home a load with manly pride
My feet began to stutter and I sat down in the gutter
And a pig came up and sat down by my side
We warbled about the weather
When good friends get together
And a lady passing by was heard to say
You can tell the man who boozes
By the company he chooses
And the pig got up and slowly walked away
Listening to the rhythms of legendary comics and writers is like going to school for me and studying their comedy is incredibly informative as I create original material. The fact that I get to explore their work with shows like Together Again for the First Time is even more thrilling because I’m doing so with my dear friend and fellow comedy nerd, Tony Braithwaite. He is just as fascinated by Rodney Dangerfield and Tom Lehrer as I am by Joan Rivers and Carol Burnett. And when we discover new gems to include in each show – like a rare routine by female stand-up comedienne Jean Carroll from 1960 – we are as giddy as kids at Christmas. It is our hope with Together Again that audiences get to experience vintage material that they remember (or are discovering for the first time) and that, in the original material we present, they see how we have been influenced by these comedy pioneers.
In addition to my work with Tony, I’ve created a lot of work for 1812 over the years that looks at comic history – The Big Time looked at vaudeville, Like Crazy Like Wow looked at 1950s nightclub comedy, Something Wonderful Right Away was a history of improvisation and This Is The Week That Is started out as a history of political humor before it became our annual year-end political satire. Other than the nostalgia value of these shows, I’ve always felt it important to hold up that history because I believe we can learn a lot about who we are as a society by looking at what we’ve laughed at over the years. Why are some things always funny, while other jokes that killed in 1920 are no longer funny in 2020? Humor, like hem-lines, changes with the times. For Together Again we tried to find jokes that are the little-black-dress of the comedy world – timeless.
Tony and I are having a great time— I hope you can join us.
Tony Braithwaite and Jennifer Childs. Photo by Mark Garvin.