Comedians who got their start or regularly performed in Borscht Belt resorts include: [1] [2]
There were so many fabulous Jewish comedians, many of whom started in the Jewish Catskills; Shecky Greene, Red Buttons,Totie Fields,Joey Bishop,Milton Berle,Jan Murray,Danny Kaye,Henny Youngman, Buddy Hackett, Sid Caesar, Groucho Marx, Jackie Mason, Victor Borge, Woody Allen, Joan Rivers, Lenny Bruce, George Burns, Allan Sherman, Jerry Lewis, Peter Sellers, Carl Reiner, Shelley Berman, Gene Wilder, George Jessel, Alan King, Mel Brooks, Phil Silvers, Jack Carter, Rodney Dangerfield, Don Rickles, Jack Benny, Mansel Rubenstein, and so many others.
As a young boy, I would run home from school every day to turn on the TV and drink in whatever show or movie was playing. It turned out all my favorite performers were veterans of the Catskills, Borscht Belt comedians, mostly Eastern European Ashkenazi Jews, who cut their teeth in the Catskills at resorts like Grossinger's, Brickman's, and The Overlook. The catalogue is thick of the funnymen with Catskills cred who flickered in my living room: Woody Allen, Morey Amsterdam, Bea Arthur, Milton Berle, Shelley Berman, Joey Bishop, Mel Blanc, Mel Brooks, Lenny Bruce, George Burns & Gracie Allen, Red Buttons, Sid Caesar, Billy Crystal, Rodney Dangerfield, Phyllis Diller, Totie Fields, Shecky Greene, Buddy Hackett, Danny Kaye, Alan King, Robert Klein, Harvey Korman, Jerry Lewis, Richard Lewis, Chico + Harpo Marx, Jackie Mason, Zero Mostel, Carl Reiner, Don Rickles, Joan Rivers, Rowan & Martin, Mort Sahl, Soupy Sales, Dick Shawn, Allan Sherman, Phil Silvers, Arnold Stang, David Steinberg, Jerry Stiller, The Three Stooges, Jonathan Winters, Ed Wynn, Henny Youngman; and on, as some above would say, ad libitum.