A Real Free-Form Guy

The informal fellow in the red sweater and the absent necktie was introduced by the m.c. as "... America's only working philosopher." He stepped upon the supper-club stage clutching a rolled-up newspaper, shyly requested a little more light, and then plunged into an extended dissertation on foreign policy, the Senate, segregation, religion, the American Medical Association, the Army and the President of the United States. Strange stuff for a club comic to concern himself with, but Mort Sahl is a strange sort of comic. His speech is salted with socio-psychological phrases like father figure, value judgment and group hostility. The uninitiated in the audience may not only miss the point of much of his humor, they may have difficulty even following what he is saying, as when Sahl discusses the social significance of a movie poster:

"Outside the theatre there's this picture of a girl about 25 feet high and she has a towel around her from the Hilton Hotel chain. It's kind of like, you know, like good taste in panic ... and she's got this kind of terror in her face, she looks real bugged, and her face is a social indictment of the entire insensitivity of society, you know, and uh, there's a synthesis within her expression of a rejection of Old World thinking and yet a kind of, uh, dominance of this phony puritanical strain which makes our mores, you know. In other words, she's operating under the ostensible advantages of suffrage and, on the other hand, this phony double-standard of morality. So, anyway, over her head there's an indictment of all of us and it says, 'You did it to her!' Wonderful. I was standing there on the street digging this sign, and I noticed a lot of young men walking by had a look of communal guilt across their faces."

The typical nightclub conventioneer will sit through this with a blank or bewildered expression, but the more aware in the audience, bored by routine comic fare, will break into pieces on the spot. Jazz lingo exists right alongside egghead argot in Sahl's vocabulary and he spends much of his time with jazz musicians. Stan Kenton was one of Sahl's early sponsors and placed him on the same program when the band played the Palladium. Mort also digs such urban interests as hi-fi and sports cars, and uses the subjects in his act:

"These sports car bugs are the most. One enthusiast has this car which was built around him -- sheet metal pounded around his body. Luckily he has contemporary features. Kind of stark looking guy anyway, looks like his face muscles are receding. So he's in this womb position with the car pounded around him, all around him except for this plastic slide which is over his mouth, so he can order gas. Sort of a No-Man-Is-An-Island-style slide. Wonderful.

"Sports cars are becoming very safety-oriented these days. There's a new model out now -- you can run it into a wall and not be hurt. That's because of the way the car is put together. First of all, it has these new Ivy seat belts. They're thin and they buckle in the back. Good taste. Then there's foam rubber, about six inches of foam rubber, all over the dashboard, and a dished steering wheel with a 22 degree camber, so it won't impale you on impact. And safety glass that breaks up into gelatinous cubes, with no sharp edges ... and fly-away hood, hood ornaments and grill ... and jettisonable deck and doors ... and pop-out plastic tail lights and rear bumper. So, in effect, if you'll just cool it as you come to the wall, light a cigarette and Have Faith, the car will realize the futility of what you're doing and what it will do ... well, actually, it will sort of chicken out."

Sahl's routines are anything but routine and no two performances are quite the same. He works within general areas of topicality often suggested by the newspaper which is his prop, his emblem and, as he might put it, his "security symbol." He does have a few prefabricated punch lines, but his method of getting to them is never the same. It is, rather, almost a lack of method -- a sort of free association. He will ramble and digress, drift away from his story (sometimes never to return) and constantly be reminded of new things. The rambling is genuine, on-the-spot creativity -- a kind of impressionistic yackety-yack that happens right on stage and is one of the essential elements of his style.

Ingenuousness is part of his style, too. When Sahl gets off a particularly good remark, he will quite unashamedly enjoy it with his audience. His nose will wrinkle and his teeth will flash in an uncontrollable expression of delight. Then, as if suddenly realizing this is not quite the proper thing to do, he will take himself in hand, scratch his head, and mumble, "Well, OK. Fine. Onward!" And the free association will resume, in a delivery that is rapid and without pause -- not the artificial machine-gun patter of a Walter Winchell but, rather, the headlong excitement of the inspired conversationalist whose ideas run ahead of his tongue.

Sahl went to school on the West Coast and he is filled with stories -- both true and fanciful -- about collegiate life in that area. He describes his difficulties studying engineering at the University of California. "They're kind of backward about it, and the Dean of Engineering School is a real executive bottleneck -- he wears a mortarboard and gown to classes, you know, the worst -- and he's always making trips to Europe to study Florentine architecture and -- there's no reception to new ideas is what I'm getting at. Well, when I went into Graduate School, my project was a bridge. That's all you build in San Francisco -- bridges.

"So, I took my idea into the Dean of Engineering who, as I say, was nowhere -- very conservative and, uh, he didn't want to look at it, and he'd say, 'Whatta you want?' You know, very backward -- Chairman of the Committee, you know. I wanted to make a genuine contribution to the field I'd chosen to enter, so I had this idea for a crazy free-form bridge. I wanted to put it at a point 10 miles up the bay -- the widest part of the bay, which is a real challenge, you know. It wasn't a suspension bridge -- it didn't have any supports -- I didn't want any supports, because from an esthetic standpoint, I didn't want it to be too busy. It was wild -- they'd never had a bridge like that before -- it would kind of float with the Japanese currents (continued on page 54)free-form guy(continued from page 51) -- kind of like Kon-Tiki. And the Dean said, 'You"re outa your mind!' And he asked me where I wanted to put it, so I told him in the middle of the bay, so he says, 'No one needs a bridge up there. You're causing trouble.' You know, that kind of thing. Sort of, If God had wanted a bridge there, there'd be one."

Sahl recalls some difficulties with a college roommate, too:

"He was a big wheel on campus -- very popular. Never found out what he was majoring in, but he was my roommate and we shared this apartment together. It soon became apparent that his taste in, uh, friends was much different than mine, so we made up a kind of restrictive covenant whereby when he was having a party, we had a blue light there by the door -- this old merchant mariner lamp we'd picked up at a war surplus -- and he would leave this light on and if I came home and if I saw this light I'd know that he was having a party and I wouldn't come in and then I'd leave the light on if I was having a party -- like that -- just for parties. Anyway, I believe in this, you know -- privacy is the end -- I dig it. So, uh -- and he dug it. Wonderful. So, the first time he had a party it lasted about three hours -- so I just fell out and had some coffee and studied some -- he kind of forced me into bad habits there. So -- I did that. But the second time he had a party, it lasted all night and I had to sleep in an MG which I owned at the time. Which is not the answer, you know -- pretty awful -- listening to all-night record shows and being awakened by representatives of sports car clubs trying to sign you up. And then toward the end of the semester, he was having a party almost every night and it became kind of a drag. I couldn't get into the apartment and my back was beginning to hurt from sleeping in the MG, because of the hand brake and gear shift and so forth -- and, I mean, I like to help a guy along when he's trying to build something, but -- anyway, that was the end of our cooperative housing project, because finally I couldn't cut it anymore, you know, I was keeping my clothes in the trunk of the MG -- you know, the worst. I thought, well, I ought to at least go in and get my toothbrush, so I went inside and, uh, that was a mistake. Now I don't mind sacrificing for a guy, you know, when something's happening. But when he's boasting and trying to build a reputation on it, it's unforgivable. That's right: he was alone -- reading."

Sahl served a hitch in the Army ("I was so close to MacArthur I got radiation burns") and his recollections of such dear-to-the-heart GI phenomena as pro stations swell the ventricles of ex-servicemen. "So we would go into town and, uh, I've got to hand the Army this -- I won't hand them much, but this I've got to hand them--they are well organized. The doctors were everywhere and the military police had gone in as pioneer troops eight hours ahead of us and nailed up green arrows on the walls of buildings which said, First Aid, you know -- or words to that effect -- I'm abridging this for the mixed audience -- and, uh, then you follow these arrows and walk along circuitous routes, down strange alleys, in strange surroundings, to find a friendly face there. The medic would talk to you and he would keep score of what guys from what outfit were sick, see? And if your outfit got a percentage of 65 or above, you would receive a unit citation. That's what it stands for. Did you know that? Sure. So, onward!

"The men reacted in three different ways to the Army's protection. First of all, there were the conformists. No imagination. I hate those guys. The worst, you know. The Good Soldier. The Organization Man. They simply did as they were told -- got sick -- followed the arrows in. First aid. Thanks. And that was that.

"The second group was a little sharper. They weren't actually sick, but they reported in anyway, you know. In an attempt to build reputation.

"The last were the real sophisticates. They were the perceptive people. They figured that the best way -- uh, what they did was to follow the arrows in reverse direction and find the action."

We caught Mort Sahl at Mister Kelly's in Chicago, first paired with Anita O'Day, and then on a return engagement with Billie Holiday, but he got his start out in San Francisco at Enrico Banducci's club, the Hungry i (Playboy After Hours, June 1956). Sahl thinks a great deal of Banducci: "He's not only a very sweet guy, very warm human being and all that, but he has imagination. A real free-form guy. He's not afraid to try things. As a result, they line up on the sidewalks to get in the place." Sahl first appeared before the Hungry i patrons (among them, Budd Schulberg, Alberto Moravia, John Hersey) dressed in the conventional manner -- complete with jacket and necktie. Since the club was rather informal, Banducci suggested he remove the jacket for future performances. Sahl did this. Next, the tie went. Next, because the cave-like walls of the Hungry i are rather drab, it was suggested that Sahl come out in an extremely loud sweater. This is his costume today.

The newspaper prop began at a time when Sahl's format was more rigid and he was deathly afraid of forgetting his lines. He typed them on index cards and stapled them to a rolled-up newspaper. Today, there are no lines stapled to the journal, but it has become a remarkably appropriate trademark for this comical critic of current events.

Sahl works best in the live coziness of a small club. His adventures with TV have been less than satisfactory: "NBC had me under contract, but nothing much happened. They suspected me of being an intellectual. But it's not true. I just know an intellectual. Guilt by association. And I have a library card -- that's enough right there."

In the beginning, Sahl's rapid-fire delivery was not attributable to an abundance of ideas. "It was insecurity," he says, falling back into the headshrinker jargon again. "I was afraid to pause, afraid of silences; so I just kept talking, kept filling up the gaps." Though much more secure these days, Sahl's act is still tuckpointed throughout with "Uh," "Right," "Onward," and the constantly recurring "Wonderful."

Sahl, who creates his own material, says, "I feel this is the only justification for an act -- as an outlet for material." Sahl is a liberal. And this is his big gimmick on stage -- though there is no great difference between the onstage and offstage Sahl. He punctures the pet prejudices of all of us ("Let's see, are there any groups I haven't insulted yet this evening?"). He discourses on a broad spectrum of subjects and no cow is sacred.

On cigarette ads: "They have this rugged, masculine bit going. The ultimate will be an ape, smoking."

On exposé magazines: "Every issue they have this article titled, Adolf Hitler is Alive. You've seen it. And it tells how he's been seen walking with Glenn Miller and Amelia Earhart. It's true. He's living down in Greenwich Village, He's painting now -- right -- with a roller -- and he wants to be judged on his artistic merit rather than on his political affiliations."

On the Junior Senator from Wisconsin: "You've got to place McCarthy in proper perspective in your own life, because eventually you'll have to tell your kids about him -- unless you want them to learn it in the street."

On integration: "Last fall, Eisenhower said that he felt we should approach the problem moderately. But Stevenson said, we should solve the problem gradually. Now if we could just hit a compromise between these two extremes ..."

On religion: "Out on the West Coast they've got this big tent with a neon sign over it that says, 'I AM.' And inside is this guy who says, pretty much, he is. Now I imagine you probably feel the same way about it that I do. I don't really believe he is, but on the other hand, I don't want to say he isn't, either. (continued on page 74)free form guy(continued from page 54) Because later on, if it turns out he is, he might take it out on me."

On the American Medical Association: "The A.M.A. has a big campaign going against faith healers. And that's a good thing. 1 don't think it's fair to say that the A.M.A. is basically against any cure that is rapid."

On "pay later" travel plans: "Well, the problem here is that when a lot of passengers get home, the trip is no longer real to them and they stop making payments. But now some of the travel agencies have worked out ways of repossessing the trip. If you're prestige-ridden, they can take the stickers off your luggage -- see -- which is the end. Or, if you're an incurable romantic, they can brainwash you, so you won't remember Paris."

On statesmanship: "He wanted to retaliate, but he didn't want to go to war because, you know, he's a sensible guy, and on the other hand, he didn't want to let it pass, because that's peace without honor, see, so he formed this kind of middle-of-the-road dynamic conservative progressive moderate kind of militant watchful competitive coexistent attitude."

On jazz LPs: "Some friends of mine cut this jazz LP. You know, you don't make jazz LPs in recording studios anymore -- they're a corrupting influence -- too, uh, contrived. So these guys recorded at the club where they play and they left the switch open all evening and they've got themselves a sort of everplaying record. They're afraid it may not sell, because of its length, so they've decided to put a girl on the liner with a torn blouse -- kind of an abundant girl, who will be tied up on a beam by the wrists, and a private detective will be whipping her. And they have this title which is good, which will sell, which is Jazz James Dean Would Have Liked If He Had Liked Jazz."

On Norman Rockwell: "There's this magazine cover and it shows this kid getting his first haircut, you know, and a dog is licking his hand and his mother is crying and it's Saturday night in the old home town and people are dancing outside in the street and the Liberty Bell is ringing and, uh, did I miss anything?"

On Norman Vincent Peale: "He's a philosopher and he writes books like, uh, Be Glad You're Mediocre and, uh, Be the First in Your Neighborhood to Admit Defeat and like that -- kind of humble kind of books."

On softcover books: "I read this book -- it has a picture of Genghis Khan on the cover and this girl hanging on his horse with a torn blouse. And she's yelling to him about security, you know, and she wants him to get out of the service and settle down. He wants to conquer India, because he's out of his head, you know -- running over -- and, uh, they changed the title to help it sell. It's an old textbook. Has a red cover on it that says -- Here Is My Flesh. And inside it says, 'Formerly published under the title Introduction to Accounting.' "

On hi-fi: "I dig it. Can't get too many crazy sounds. There's this one company, they don't record music, just sounds. Sports cars at Sebring, riveting on the Indiana toll road, mixing the cement, workers eating their lunch, stuff like that. They've got this one record of the New York Central train wreck that a lot of people rejoice over. But unless you're pretty far out on high fidelity, you really won't care too much for that one. It's really a screamer, you know. People falling out of the train, lots of moaning, and crying out stuff like, 'Where's my mother?' and like that. Kind of emotional, but are you really interested in sound or in source material?

"Of course, hi-fi costs. I know a guy who sunk $6000 into a system and still didn't have a speaker. Out in California where I live, a lot of the people don't dig the commercial speakers and prefer to build their own. Some folks tear the guts out of their pianos and use the shells and one guy even moved into his garage and was using the house with the windows open. Wonderful.

"Actually, records are kind of a drag. If you're a purist -- are you a purist? I am -- you're not really interested in records anyway. The big charge is to be able to turn on the pre-amp and watch the tubes come up, watch 'em light up, you know. Put a couple of pre-amps together and split the sound quadrinaurally and like that. With a jack in each ear? You know, 'Hello, Earth!' -- that kind of thing. I dug this, but I had trouble because I lived in an apartment house. If you can, get your own meter with your rig. If' you live in an apartment, the neighbors are always complaining. A lot of people don't understand the purity of sound -- you know, a lot of squares living around you -- and they get sore, you know. I finally got evicted. The landlady got wigged. Not because of the noise -- I didn't own any records -- but because whenever I'd turn up my rig, the street lights would dim."

Of such as these, then -- the manners and mores, the fashions and foibles, the passions and prejudices of our time -- is composed the free-form humor of Mort Sahl.

At a small table at Mr. Kelly's, between acts, we asked Sahl, good humoredly, what he wanted to be when he grew up. Sahl, who is pushing 30 (or, as he puts it, "ready to crash the sound barrier"), rubbed his jaw and said, "I think I'd like to get into show business."

Wonderful.

"I'm very high on hi-fi --"

"Watch the tubes come up."

"The landlady gets wigged --"

"When the street lights dim."