Mo’s History of American Alternative Comedy, Part 1

Occasional contributor Mo Diggs did the legwork to outline alternative comedy through history. He’s got a bit more of a broader definition for it, as you’ll see in his introduction below.

Introduction: What’s The Deal?

Alternative comedy as a genre was officially recognized in the ‘90s. But the idea of stand-up comedians defying the mainstream is as old as stand-up itself. In each chapter of this gloss, you will learn about the comedians who railed against convention and the establishments that they were trying to undermine.

Just The Garnish: ‘20s-‘40s

At one point in the history of comedy, Bob Hope and Jack Benny were considered avant garde.

In the vaudeville days, jokes and one liners were meant to be the garnish for a vaudeville act. An emcee would tell jokes and introduce a juggler. The comic acts often involved ethnic clowning—either minstrelsy or dialect comedy. Bob Hope was a blackface performer.

But a writer named Al Boasberg—who wrote for Bob Hope and Jack Benny—wanted to forge a new style of comedy; one that eschewed funny suits and accents.

Boasberg’s ideas were new in comedy: a modern style that required no goof suits, make-up, songs, tap dance, seltzer bottles, Will Rogers rope tricks, cream pies, or accents — just talk. He turned Jack Benny, Bob, and a few others onto his stripped down, sleek humor. He called it “smart dress” comedy. Today we call it “stand-up.” (Suck.com)

From its inception, stand-up comedy railed against all that was hackneyed and conventional. When audiences first saw Jack Benny, they saw him wearing regular street clothes and felt alienated since they were accustomed to their performers wearing grease paint and costumes.

And Benny didn’t exactly set vaudeville on its ear, especially when competing with the Marx Brothers or Sophie Tucker in 2000 seat theaters that had no PA system. Critics kidded him for looking more like a doctor than a comic. Other acts thought him too dull to make it. Despite that, he gradually became a respected headliner through the 1920s, until 1932, when he took a job as an emcee introducing bands on a radio show. (suck.com)

Though he did not affect an ostentatious guise, Benny was not the miserly, self-absorbed schlemiel he appeared to be onstage either. Indeed, that was his greatest legacy: using the same name onstage and offstage (though Benny used a stage name he often was referred to as Jack Benny on and off stage) but playing a completely different person onstage. Albert Brooks, Larry David and Sarah Silverman would all play themselves in a similarly grotesque fashion, portraying themselves as despicable people.

Hope’s legacy was everything else:

His influence on American comedy is so profound we don’t even notice it. His stand-up defines stand-up. Look at it this way: Bob went on in street clothes talking about pop culture, lightweight politics, his (fictional) life, and the front page. (suck.com)

No more hackneyed accent comedy. No more paint on the face. Now comedians would use everyday life as their materials.

Much as the web has helped alternative comedy today, the radio was the medium of choice for the revolutionaries of yesteryear. Juggling didn’t work on the radio. Words were all a comedian had. Benny, along with a new writer, Harry Conn, helped create “group comedy” or what is currently called the sitcom. Catch phrases, recurring characters, insults: The Jack Benny Program had it all.

By the end of the ‘30s, America had its first stand-ups and its first sitcoms, even if they weren’t on television yet. The alternative comedy of the early ‘30s quickly became the mainstream by the end of the decade.

Indeed, for decades, comedians like Hope and Benny were the only game in town. But in the ‘50s kids were railing against their pappy’s comedic sensibilities again.