Club Comic

The comic at the club was Lifty (real name Nat) Denning (real name Cohen).

He made $400 a week.

He would never make more.

That's bad?

Lifty Denning's life in the entertainment business was a paradox.

He would never make more than $400 because he didn't have any material of his own, and he never got any new material because he figured it cost too much.

He was mighty fast with other people's lines.

And he was just as quick at recovering from a silent reception.

Laugh it up.

These are the

jokes!

If a Milton Berle gag didn't connect, he could come back with a funny Danny Thomas story.

He stole from none but the best.

Lifty Denning was a little fellow who thought he should be bigger.

He lived on – or off – this thought, feeling, belief, opinion and viewpoint.

It sustained him.

It was his daily bread.

It meant more to him than ham and eggs.

Chances are that Thomas Wolfe never made $400 a week in his life.

So what?

Lifty Denning had never even heard of him.

Wolfe? Wolfe? Legit theater?

No, a writer.

A writer!

Yeah.

What paper? Say, this Earl Wilson . . . Read what he wrote about Zsa Zsa and Rubirosa the other day?

A comic's literary world is bounded by Walter Winchell, Earl Wilson, Ed Sullivan, Leonard Lyons, Danton Walker, and maybe Dorothy Kilgallen if you want to toss in a dame.

Lifty Denning could never understand why guys like Thomas and Berle and Joe E. Lewis and Jack E. Leonard and Jackie Miles and Phil Foster and Jerry Lester and Harvey Stone and some of the others got so much more per week than he did.

I don't have to

do this for a

living, but I'm

too nervous to

steal!

He complained about this, earnestly, to anybody who would listen or anybody he could corner.

Nightclub owners, on the other hand – and never the twain shall meet – always wondered why they had to pay him $400.

But you gotta have a comic.

Gotta have laughs.

People want laughs.

You can get the best dancers (tap, ballroom, ballet, or acrobatic – or even strip), the best tumblers, the best magicians, the best acrobats, the best singers (except for the jukebox kings and queens, valuable only when sporting a hit record of the moment), for a couple of hundred.

But you die without a comic.

Even the worst in the world.

It is not true, however, that lousy comics are apart from the human race.

My mother and

father never

had any children!

They are not born of baboons.

They go to school as children.

Some become fathers.

And they have hearts.

They use the hearts in songs about show biz (There's no business like show business), tunes which they milk in lieu of cows.

And they can be hurt.

For $400 a week, that's bad?

. . .

Lifty Denning had told two jokes.

They had died.

He now walked over to a small girl, about ten, who was seated with her beaming parents at a ringside table.

"How old is the little girl?" he asked them.

"Isn't she a cute little thing?" he asked the crowd.

"Just ten," the parents said.

"And do you have a boyfriend?" he asked the girl.

She shook her head no and turned beaming at the other diners, breathing in her moment in the limelight.

"No boyfriend?"

She shook her head more emphatically, hamming it up now.

Lifty shook his head in disbelief.

"You crazy mixed-up kid!" he said.

And the crowd laughed for the first time.

When the crowd laughed, Lifty moved into the spotlight alone – "Spot on me," he cracked, "I'm the show" – and repeated his smash phrase. "There's a crazy mixed-up kid for you," he said. "Ten years old and no boyfriend!"

The crowd laughed again.

Lifty ate it up.

It was better than ham and eggs.

Crazy mixed-up was a popular phrase of the day.

It was almost as common as atom bomb, H-bomb, Russia, Red atrocities, spy ring, the Dodgers, Dior's Flat Look, spy scare, Fifth Amendment, dirty birds, spies (in government, schools, plants, Army installations, and your own backyard), high cost of living, and Marilyn Monroe.

Everybody was supposed to be crazy and mixed-up.

Nobody ever explained why it was funny.

Certainly not Lifty.

After the show,

I park cars!

. . .

Lifty came on fast for the second show.

He always came on fast, darting from behind the drapes, sliding halfway across the stage, coming to a stop quickly, waving one arm in a circle, as though it were a brake.

A dynamo of energy, Lifty.

Fake energy.

"There you are, all you people . . ." Yeah.

"All you lucky people! Lucky, lucky, lucky!"

Lifty had a motto, a credo:

Hit 'em over the head right off the bat.

I may not be good

looking, but as a

comedian I'm not to

be laughed at!

For every one that squirms, maybe two are full of suspense.

They paid for the show, and they're ready and willing to enjoy it.

In his last comic turn . . .

The word comic is a misnomer. It means, merely, that your objective is laughter.

In his last turn, Lifty always did his impressions.

He had a batch of them.

If he had ever put them in a bag, he would have made Santa Claus look like a piker.

And they were the best part of his act.

He had been doing them for years and they always – well, almost always – got a good hand.

With the impressions, they didn't necessarily have to applaud Lifty.

They could applaud all of their favorites, dead and buried, alive and kicking.

They could applaud Jimmy Stewart.

nice guy, nice bashful

American type

They could applaud Al Jolson.

great entertainer, great

job for the servicemen

They could applaud Edward G. Robinson.

what a tough guy he was

in all those

gangster movies

They could applaud Jimmy Cagney.

no guy to mess with, this

Cagney "My father thanks

you, my mother thanks you . . ."

They could applaud all of them. Stewart, Jolson, Edward G., Cagney, Eddie Cantor, Frankie Laine, Lionel Barrymore, Billy Daniels, Bette Davis, Johnnie Ray, Barry Fitzgerald, Cary Grant, Peter Lorre, Frank Sinatra, Arthur Godfrey, Wallace Beery, Hugh Herbert, Harry Richman . . .

Young and old, here and gone.

And if they didn't particularly like Cantor or didn't remember Richman very well, they could applaud anyway.

The names meant something.

The people in the audience were pleased with themselves for having recognized the subject of parody.

It gave them self-esteem.

Self-esteem is a feeling sought avidly and found rarely by people all over the world.

How could impressions miss?

They were a sure thing.

A guy couldn't go wrong with them.

When isn't Cagney going to get a hand?

Or Edward G.?

And Lifty did a mess of them.

Quick, one after the other, pausing only to get a helpful prop occasionally, never giving the people a chance to recover and rest their analytic minds.

"Sure, that's Richman,

Harry Richman . . ."

Some of Lifty's subjects had been dead for a considerable time now. But they remained a part of his impressions.

He still did Jolson.

He still did Hugh Herbert.

Sometimes, straining hard, he still did Joe Penner.

"Wanna buy a duck?"

And sometimes, for an audience that ate him up, he even did Sir Harry Lauder – after a proper introduction, of course, for the younger elements.

Thus, of Lifty, it could be said that he was versatile.

And it could be said, further, that he gave even the dead a certain night-after-night, after-dark, immortality.

He brought back the ghosts of the great, did Lifty.

And who was he to spurn a laugh over a dead body?

No sir, Al Jolson or Hugh Herbert would never be completely dead as long as Lifty Denning remained on the entertainment scene, in the world of show business.

. . .

It was a tough audience this night.

Cantor left 'em cold.

Banjo eyes and all.

Edward G. Robinson didn't really send 'em.

Cigar notwithstanding.

Billy Daniels didn't make 'em sigh.

More Black Magic needed.

These people from Hunger?

Jeez!

Try Peter Lorre.

Goggle eyes, whiny voice.

Not even Lorre? Jeez!

Get Barry Fitzgerald in. Quick.

Must be a lot of Irish in the crowd.

Shoot them some religious stuff from Going My Way.

That does it.

Great!

Barry saved the day.

Good applause.

Cagney won it.

Loud applause.

Lifty bowed graciously.

He hated to go off.

The applause was a caress upon his ears. It was more beautiful than music by Beethoven.

It was a Queen kissing his hand.

It was a loaf of bread, a jug of wine, and thou – and you can have the Rubaiyat.

He couldn't go off.

He told some jokes.

First two fairly clean.

Flops.

He tried the surefire one.

I just flew in

from California

and my arms are

tired!

Flop.

Next two very dirty.

Hits.

I'll tell you how

unlucky I am. If

they sawed a woman

in half, I'd get the

half that eats!

Laughter.

"Ah, so it's a high class audience. Why didn't you tell me you wanted the high class material?"

More laughter.

And more jokes.

Lifty rarely timed his exits well. He liked the crowds too much to leave them when they wanted more. He usually wore his welcomes thin before taking his leave. Usually, but not this time.

This time something saved him. Something made him blow, make his getaway, leave 'em laughin'. This time his timing was perfect. He bowed once more to his audience and backed out of the spotlight.

Like everyone else from time to time, Lifty had to take a leak.

I'd like to stay on

longer, but the

lights fade my suit!