Pretend the World Is Funny and Forever

A Psychological Analysis of Comedians, Clowns, and Actors

S. Fisher, R. L. Fisher

• Éditeur: Psychology Press
• Année: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317770053
• Édition: 1
• Sujet: Psicología
• Sous-sujet: Historia y teoría en psicología

First published in 1982. The intent of this book is to build an understanding of the people who create humor and are expert at making people laugh. Who are the comedians and clowns of the world? Where do they come from? Why are they so dedicated to tickling funny bones? In what ways are they unique? It is primarily to studying comedians, clowns, and other funny people. It seeks to provide an understanding of the origins, the motivations, and personalities of those who make humor and in exploring the factors that shape actors and other public entertainers.

1
Where and How Do Comedians Surface?

Introduction

What is the pathway to dedicating your life to being funny and manufacturing laughter? How do people like Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton or Milton Berle or Martha Raye or Will Rogers or Groucho Marx get launched? Are there typical pathways?

We can provide information about this matter on the basis of two sources. First, as we shall describe in detail later, we interviewed over 40 professional clowns and comedians and learned a good deal about their life patterns. Second, we collected published biographical and autobiographical accounts of 40 comedians and clowns.¹ Putting these two sources together gave us a rather reliable picture of how professional funny people evolve. We would like in this chapter to provide some general, fairly impressionistic information about the beginnings of the comic-to-be² and also about some of his special perspectives on life. This information will provide an overall framework for making sense of more detailed and technical material we present later.

Early School Experiences

One of the first things we discovered is that comics are usually funny quite early in life. A majority recall that as kids they enjoyed saying and doing funny things. They especially recall being funny in school. Again and again they remember being the "class clown." It is interesting how consistently this class-clown theme appears. The comics would do things in school which involved mocking teachers and getting the kids in class to laugh at the rigidities of the school culture. They cultivated this role with zest and would often devote more time to it than to their studies. They seemed to glory in the laughter of their school mates. Here are a few examples of memories bearing on this point that were conjured up by some of the comics we interviewed:

In school in the fourth grade I'd sit in the back of the room. I'd make paper airplanes. I'd defy the teacher and all the kids laughed.

The teacher would tell me to go to the board and spell ' "petroleum" and I wrote "oil." Sometimes the teacher would get exasperated. . . . Sometimes I'd go with a joke too long.

As a kid I always hung onto humor. I was one of the funniest in my school. I was voted funniest in our yearbook.

I had a lot of trouble in school. I was nasty. I had an English teacher who was very ugly. She'd ask the girls, "Can you see through my dress?" I'd imitate a girl, "Yes, I can." She slapped me.

Tommy Smothers, a well-known stand-up comic, gave us a great deal of material about his attempts to be funny in school. He recalls that when he was late for a class, which was apparently not infrequent, he would stage the most visible entrance into the room as possible. He would make a point of walking directly up to the teacher's desk and begin a litany of apology for his tardiness. He would loudly and solemnly proclaim how sorry he was and the more annoyed the teacher became the more he would reaffirm his guilt. The class would roar and he got a big kick out of it. He was quite aware of what he was doing and the impact he was making. Similarly, he would often attempt to turn an occasion when he was supposed to address the class into a hilarious performance. It is worthwhile quoting one of his memories:

I would look them straight in the eye. I would not smile or laugh or giggle and say exactly what I had to say. Well, this straightness cracked people up. When I once gave a nomination speech, in the ninth grade. . . . I memorized a very long speech with every big word I could put in, with this straight mock seriousness and the people fell apart. . . . I got a big kick out of them laughing, but I didn't know what it was that made them laugh, but I knew I could make people laugh. . . . I wrote the speech hoping it might be funny. Because I put, "It's a great pleasure to be in this edifice with so many of the students gathered together on such a serious occasion."

Johnny Carson, who has had occasion to know a wide range of comics, reaffirmed the importance of school experiences in the comic's life (Wilde, 1973, p. 177): "I think, by the fact that you find you can get laughs when you are in school—and this is where most of the guys start, when they are growing up in the neighborhood—they're jerking around, doing silly things, interrupting the class. It's an attention-getting thing, and that, in effect, is saying, 'Hey, look at me, folks, I'm getting your acceptance'."

The comics' funny behavior in school often conveyed a mocking attitude toward the teacher and this symbolized their generally negative attitude toward the whole school establishment. The great majority clearly hated the kinds of things they were supposed to do in classrooms. It is rare to find a comic who was a good student, despite the fact that as a group they are of high intelligence (Janus, 1975). In fact, a majority got poor grades and tried to miss school whenever possible. There is evidence that the expectations of teachers upset them. Woody Allen found school so upsetting that he fled from it day after day. The young boy, Charlie Chaplin, resorted to strategems that would do credit to the Little Tramp to evade school classes. Jack Benny was involved in a running battle with his parents in his refusal to do his school work. It is a common pattern for the future comic to play truant and to spend the day not in school, but rather in places of entertainment like the movie house or the vaudeville palace.

Woody Allen, in referring to the escapist things he did to avoid going to school, said (Lax, 1975, p. 30): "It kept me isolated from the world. It was so much better than school, which was boring, frightening. The whole thing was ugly. I never had the answers. I never did the homework."

Bert Lahr is another example of a comic who hated school. His son comments (Lahr, 1969, pp. 21-22): "School was the bane of Lahr's early years. He had never been a good student, but at P.S. 40 in the Bronx, he seemed to get worse. His parents were outraged by his curious inaction. He did not work; he would not even try. 'I was like a caged animal in school', he says. . . . He could not explain to his parents about the classroom—the anxiety over gray walls and long rows of wooden seats, the sadness of the winter stench of damp clothing and moth balls. . . . 'I didn't feel free at school; it just didn't mean anything—nothing'."³ The only pleasant memory Bert Lahr could recall about school related to a school play in which he participated. He had a funny part and he was ecstatic about the impact he had on the audience. His biographer son noted (p. 22): "He felt completely in control on stage, proud and curiously powerful. He had enjoyed it all—the make-up, the clowning, the noisy laughter." His sister recalled that (p. 23), "after that performance . . . he was the clown of the class and they couldn't do anything with him."

There is no question but that something about being in school turns the potential comic off. This is not a universal truth. Occasionally comics have done well in school. But they are the exceptions. The school atmosphere, with its emphasis on discipline, sitting still, and being seriously devoted to abstractions seems to frighten and anger the neophyte comedian. But, interestingly, it is often at school, where he is looking for some way to comfort himself and to assert that he has talent (even if the school does not formally recognize it), that he proves he can make people laugh. The classroom becomes a stage for attracting attention by displaying defiant funniness. Also, school plays and skits often provide the potential comic with a chance, as was true for Bert Lahr, to try his hand formally at amusing and entertaining an audience. For many, it is the first official taste of glory and success. Teachers are typically surprised at the talent revealed by the young comic when they get a chance to see him give his first formal public performance, because their previous experiences with him in the classroom have been so negatively slanted. The potential comic also does a good deal of kidding around at home and in his neighborhood. He says funny things to his parents and he jokes around a lot with big brothers and sisters. Actually, he has a way of getting people to see him as a bit on the laughable or silly side. Quite a few comics recall their surprise and also pain when they discovered that some of the laughter directed at them was depreciating. Jimmy Durante (Fowler, 1951) was very unhappy about the kidding he received about his nose. Joe E. Brown (1956) describes vividly his embarrassment when, as a child, he discovered that adults thought he had a funny-looking face.

One logical question that arises is whether the comic typically models himself after someone in his family. Is he imitating a funny father or mother? Our interview material does not suggest this is the usual case. Only about 15% of the comics we questioned recalled that one of their parents was unusually funny or dedicated to joking. By the way, whenever a parent was described as funny, it was almost always the father.⁴ In general, from the information we have uncovered it does not seem reasonable to trace the average comic's development as a humorist to the simple copying of the behavior of one or both of his parents.

Pathways to Comedy

For most comics the road to becoming an expert humorist is a gradual one with a good many detours. They discover over a period of years at home and at school that they possess a talent for making people laugh. But they have mixed feelings about this talent because not infrequently they sense that the laughter directed at them echoes overtones of derision. Getting laughs has its negative as well as its positive aspects. But whatever the discomfort involved, comics are strongly attracted to the power implicit in being able to "make" people laugh. They are intensely conscious of the power of the funny person. They refer again and again to the satisfaction they get from knowing that they have control over an audience. They frankly discuss their chronic fear that they will lose this control. There is no greater threat in the comic's life than the possibility that he will not be able to "make" people laugh. In his developing years he is conscious of his special humorous prowess, but does not know what to do with it. His uncertainty is reinforced by the fact that he periodically may be very uncomfortable with being funny because it is associated with the dumb silliness of the clown.

There are not many comics who directly concluded that because they are funny they ought to become professional humorists. Only about 10 or 15% in our sample of comedians followed such a direct route. This is also true for comedians described in published biographies and autobiographies. Some few comedians got directly started in comedy at an early age by virtue of being in vaudeville families who cast them in such a role. For example. Buster Keaton (Blesh, 1966) was barely out of infancy when he was incorporated into the funny business of his parents' vaudeville act. He started as a comic and stayed in that straight line course throughout his life. Woody Allen (Lax, 1975) identified himself with the world of humor from a very early age by writing comic material for others, although he did not personally become a stand-up comedian until he was an adult. Bert Lahr (Lahr, 1969) went rather directly into the role of a comic as the result of an early successful audition for a comic vaudeville part which had been called to his attention by a friend. The majority of comics in our sample and also those described in published biographies and autobiographies became comedians by first getting into some other phase of show business. Most frequently they began by participating in a musical act or group. A surprisingly large number were at first attracted to music and were excellent musicians. Music was initially a major vehicle for such well-known comics as Jack Benny, Beatrice Lilly, Martha Raye, George Burns, Ed Wynn, and Jimmy Durante, just to name a few. A story we commonly heard from the comics in our sample was that they entered show business by playing and singing in some group and gradually discovered that people were amused when they made side remarks or constructed funny bits in between musical numbers. They would, at first, not believe the impact they could achieve by putting out a line of funny chatter. Then, they became more and more intrigued with the laughter they could evoke and began to consider the revolutionary possibility of abandoning their music and risking a straight comic role. Jack Benny was for many years primarily a violin player in his vaudeville act. Even after he discovered, almost by accident in the course of service in the Navy, that he had comic talent, it took him a long time before he banished the violin from his performance and opted for pure comedy. Jimmy Durante was largely a musician for many years and he introduced comedy into his work only slowly and with some misgivings. The Marx brothers were initially a singing group (Four Nightingales) that had been organized by their mother. They were not very good and the going was tough. Their switch from singing to comedy apparently happened almost by accident. The story, which may or may not be true, is told that they were performing in a small town in Texas when suddenly in the middle of the show a substantial part of the audience ran out (apparently to watch a runaway mule). The Marx brothers did not know why the audience had deserted them and they were enraged when the spectators finally drifted back. So, as Marx's biographer son describes it (Marx, 1954):

They were no longer interested in giving a good performance. All they wanted to do was get even with the audience, and the only way they knew how was to burlesque the kind of singing they had been doing so seriously.

They quickly evolved into a rough-house comedy bit, with the Marxes, led by my father, flinging insults about Texas and its inhabitants to the audience as rapidly as they could think of them. . . . They fully expected to be tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail. But instead the audience loved their clowning and greeted their insults and the most tired jokes with uproarious laughter.

And so they were suddenly comedians

[pp. 20-21].

Actually, the groundwork for such comic behavior had always existed because the Marx brothers were funny people who engaged in a lot of horseplay and extravagant kidding within the family and with their friends.

Comics have also variously started out in show business as jugglers (W. C. Fields), actors (Milton Berle, Charlie Chaplin), radio disc jockeys (Ernie Kovacs, Johnny Carson, Ed McMahon), rodeo performers (Will Rogers), and circus performers (Joe E. Brown). It is important to keep in mind that most comedians did not intend to be comedians. Rather, they began with the idea of performing in front of people. They were attracted to show business, to being on the stage, to getting applause, to entertaining, to being publicly admired.

The average comedian that we interviewed did not get much support from his parents in his desire to be in show business and especially in his comic ambitions Again and again we heard lingering hurt in the voices of these comics when they talked about the contempt they had detected in their parents toward their vocational aspirations. It was rare to find a comic who felt that his parents were really overjoyed that he wanted to become a comedian. The comics repeatedly referred to how much more satisfied their parents were with those brothers or sisters who had gone on to advanced education and entered more respectable professions. The neophyte comic not infrequently had to put up with gross opposition and contempt from his parents when they got wind of his desire to be a comedian. One well-known comedienne was told by her father that she would be no better than a whore if she went into show business. Jack Benny's parents were bitterly opposed to his stage aspirations. Henny Youngman's father was really contemptuous of his son's comic interests. Will Rogers's father could not at all understand his son's desire to make it on the stage. A number of the comics we interviewed rather wryly remarked that only after they had achieved considerable financial success did their parents begin to show favor toward their comic vocation. It would be a distortion, however, not to add that a sizable minority of parents did support their offsprings' show business goals. Milton Berle's mother is a prime example. She invested her entire life in getting his career started and then furthering it. The Marx brothers' mother was very active in getting them into vaudeville. People like Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Beatrice Lillie, Stan Laurel, and Jerry Lewis came from families in which either one or both parents were invested in show business and they had at least the implicit support of such investment. This is a pertinent place to point out that many clowns grow up in circus families and find that they are directly supported in their clown aspirations. About fifty percent of the clowns we interviewed had had fathers who were clowns. Only two clowns in our sample had to overcome opposition from their parents. One had to threaten to run away from home in order to get permission to leave school and join up with the circus. Another, who became a clown in an ice show, sensed a good deal of concealed resistance in his parents who wanted him to enter a profession rather than show business.

Similarities and Differences among Comics

In referring to a general class of people, like comedians, it is easy to fall into glib overstatements. Our previous reading of the journalistic literature had led us to believe that comedians would, in their overt personal styles, show a lot of similarity. It would be hard to verbalize what similarity we expected to find. Perhaps they would all do a lot of kidding. Or perhaps they would all be reserved and a bit depressed. Or perhaps they would have an exaggerated and compensated way of calling attention away from their presumed sense of inferiority. Whatever our assumptions may have been, they proved no more valid than if we expected all physicists or physicians or plumbers or bankers, as individual groups, to display unique overt similarities in their behavior. In face to face encounters, we discovered that comics can be quite different from each other. One appears to be intellectual and quietly introspective. Another is brash and loud. One is on the edge of tears during a good part of the interview, and another is the joker throughout. One seems angry at the world and another is placidly accepting of his life. One spends...