Børge Rosenbaum, known professionally as Victor Borge, was a Danish-American comedian and pianist who achieved great popularity in radio and television in both North America and Europe. His blend of music and comedy earned him the nicknames "The Clown Prince of Denmark", "The Unmelancholy Dane", and "The Great Dane".
Stand-up comedy is a comedic performance to a live audience in which the performer addresses the audience directly from the stage. The performer is known as a comedian, comic, or stand-up. It is usually a rhetorical performance but many comics employ crowd interaction as part of their set or routine.
Black comedy, also known as dark comedy, morbid humor, gallows humor, black humor, or dark humor, is a style of comedy that makes light of subject matter that is generally considered taboo, particularly subjects that are normally considered serious or painful to discuss. Writers and comedians often use it as a tool for exploring vulgar issues by provoking discomfort, serious thought, and amusement for their audience. Thus, in fiction, for example, the term black comedy can also refer to a genre in which dark humor is a core component.
A comedian or comic is a person who seeks to entertain an audience by making them laugh. This might be through jokes or amusing situations, or acting foolish, or employing prop comedy. A comedian who addresses an audience directly is called a stand-up comedian.
A humorist is an intellectual who uses humor, or wit, in writing or public speaking, but is not an artist who seeks only to elicit laughter. Humorists are distinct from comedians, who are show business entertainers whose business is to make an audience laugh. It is possible to play both roles in the course of a career. A raconteur is one who tells anecdotes in a skillful and amusing way.
Jackie Mason was an American stand-up comedian and actor.
The Borscht Belt, or Yiddish Alps is a colloquial term for the mostly defunct summer resorts of the Catskill Mountains in parts of Sullivan, Orange, and Ulster counties in the U.S. state of New York, straddling both Upstate New York and the northern edges of the New York metropolitan area. A source interviewed by Time magazine stated that visits to the area by Jewish families were already underway "as early as the 1890s ... Tannersville ... was 'a great resort of our Israelite breathren [sic]'...from the 1920s on [there were] hundreds of hotels".
The tradition of humor in Judaism dates back to the Torah and the Midrash from the ancient Middle East, but generally refers to the more recent stream of verbal and often anecdotal humor of Ashkenazi Jews which took root in the United States over the last hundred years, including in secular Jewish culture. European Jewish humor in its early form developed in the Jewish community of the Holy Roman Empire, with theological satire becoming a traditional way of clandestinely opposing Christianization.
Alan King was an American comedian and actor known for his biting wit and often angry humorous rants. King became well known as a Jewish comedian and satirist. He was also a serious actor who appeared in a number of films and television shows. King wrote several books, produced films, and appeared in plays. In his later years, he helped many philanthropic causes.
The Joys of Yiddish is a book containing a lexicon of common words and phrases of Yinglish—i.e., words originating in the Yiddish language that had become known to speakers of American English due to the influence of American Ashkenazi Jews. It was originally published in 1968 and written by Leo Rosten.
American humor refers collectively to the conventions and common threads that tie together humor in the United States. It is often defined in comparison to the humor of another country – for example, how it is different from British humor and Canadian humor. It is, however, difficult to say what makes a particular type or subject of humor particularly American. Humor usually concerns aspects of American culture, and depends on the historical and current development of the country's culture. The extent to which an individual will personally find something humorous obviously depends on a host of absolute and relative variables, including, but not limited to geographical location, culture, maturity, level of education, and context. People of different countries will therefore find different situations funny. Just as American culture has many aspects which differ from other nations, these cultural differences may be a barrier to how humor translates to other countries.
Myron Cohen was an American comedian and raconteur.
Betty Walker was a Jewish-American actress and comedian who performed primarily during the 1950s and 1960s.
Monroe Silver was an American actor and singer who was also a comedian and monologist using a Jewish dialect-accent in his performances.
American-Jewish comedy is, in part, a continuation of the traditional role of humor in Jewish culture among historical and contemporary American performers. It has appealed to both Jewish and wider mainstream audiences. At various times in American history, the field of comedy has been dominated by Jewish comedians.
Larry Wilde was an American actor, comedian, motivational speaker, university instructor and publisher. He is best known as the author of 53 published books of humor.
Jay Jason was an American stand-up comedian who continuously performed in the show-business industry from 1933 to 2000.
Lou Menchell was an American comedian and emcee who used Yiddish humor in his impersonations, songs, and standup.
Jacob Adler, also known by his pen name B. Kovner, was a Galician-born Jewish-American Yiddish writer, poet, and humorist.
