over this very silly thing. it is really it gets you tied up in things that do not matter. it is more significant for governor ron desantis to be tearing into the classroom saying what should and shouldn t be on the curriculum. it is far less so about, like, what color splash mountain is painted. i think it is a distraction from real political issues. for me it is just a solution that if you want to keep splash mountain the way it is, again, it is voluntary, it is the long list of things people want to keep the way it is gets longer and longer, right? that is part of this issue. time marches on. there is plenty of things that we don t do anymore including vaudeville. but this idea now that there are certain traditions that only certain people get to pick and choose which ones we should keep, it is pervasive and it is exhausting. don t you think it is it depends on what it is, like, it should be case by case, don t you think? yeah, but who decides? i think we decide. w
what george burns and gracie allen did was not unique, the character of the dizzy dame, what they used to call her, was a trope and vaudeville humor, but they just did it better. the even laughed at joan of arc, but she went ahead and built it. gracie had such a nacve, wonderful, touching to the truth . she was the funny one. originally, gracie allen was the straight woman, and a specialist in comedy suggested to them, why don t you flip it around? i heard a political speech on television yesterday. it was very interesting. was the speaker a republican or democrat? i think so. i would say to gracie, how is your brother? and she would talk for 70 minutes and i would smoke a cigar. then, when she would dance, i would point and tap my foot. and then we would exit and split salaries. now, fellas, get set for
hey buddy! come here. hey, buddy, we re christians. we don t like what you said. i said, then forgive me. what we consider offensive or blue evolves with every generation. with vaudeville, for the first time, comedy becomes an industry. my poor father, he died of throat trouble. they hung him. vaudeville is created commercially to clean up humor. there s no cursing. there s no blasphemy. why? they want men, women and children to be able to come there. they want a bigger audience. if a vaudevillian did something onstage that was objectionable, they would send a blue envelope backstage with the material they wanted excised from their act.
from the table. when i am close up i see it. weber and fields gave us a lot of what we feel like are the identifiable marks of the comedy team. they invented slapstick, ethnic jokes, high in the face. pretty much anybody doing comedy and vaudeville at the turn-of-the-century, more or less, was in 18. the marx brothers s uncle was in 18. al sheen, gallagher and sheen, bert williams, and george walker were the first african-american performers to receive headline status, and there was smith and dale, notoriously the veterans of vaudeville. for goodness sake, if you should die, what would your wife harriet win? many vaudevillians were tiny enough to realize that radio not only opened a new door, careerwise, but could become a major vehicle to their careers. say hello to everybody. hello, everybody.
yeah, yeah, yeah. she bounces the little rubber ball up and down, okay? and she stands with her legs like this. and when the little ball bounces up and down, the little ball disappears. well, what are you bragging about? what? my wife does the same thing with a basketball. sure. yeah, she does it the hard way. she s knock-kneed. vaudeville is clean. burlesque is dirty. the thing about burlesque is that audience is all male. you re not going to burlesque to see the comic, okay? you re going to see the boobs. the dean martin celebrity roast coming to you from the mgm grand hotel. dean, i d like you to know that i canceled a proctologist appointment to be here tonight. and i think i made a mistake.