#277 The New York Comedy Scene: A Marvelous History

The Bowery Boys: New York City History

Tom Meyers

Places & Travel, History, Documentary, Society & Culture

4.7 • 3.9K Ratings

🗓️ 30 November 2018

⏱️ 66 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

New York City has always cast a melodramatic profile in past Bowery Boys podcasts, but in this episode, we're walking on the funny side of the street to reveal the city's unique relationship with live comedy. The award-winning show The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel depicts the birth of modern stand-up comedy in the late 1950s, forged by revolutionary voices in the small coffeehouses of Greenwich Village. But New Yorkers had been laughing for decades by that point. Most of the early American comedy greats got their starts on the New York vaudeville stage -- like the Marx Brothers, the Three Stooges and Eddie Cantor. By the 1940s, comedy stars came from the New York supper clubs, cementing a particular style of broad, big-joke comedy. The first major stars of television came from a different pool of talent -- young Jewish entertainers, updating the vaudeville feel for TV broadcast. But the counterculture movements in Greenwich Village would help comedians evolve more personal -- and more explicit -- acts as they performed along side beat poets and jazz musicians. In 1963, an enterprising club owner named Budd Friedman would change comedy forever in a tiny room in Hell's Kitchen. The rise of the comedy club and opportunities like Saturday Night Live would create a specific brand of New York City comedy, and the local stages would help create major film and television stars during the 1980s. With Seinfeld, in 1989, Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David would create the perfect fusion of stand-up and New York City attitude. But the following decade brought in new voices and a surprising new direction. boweryboyshistory.com Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/boweryboys

Transcript

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0:00.0	Episode 277 of the Bowry Boys, the New York comedy scene, a marvelous history.
0:07.0	Hey, it's the Bowry Boys.
0:09.0	Hey!
0:10.0	Support for the Bowry Boys is provided by our listeners.
0:13.0	Join us for as little as a dollar a month by visiting patreon.com slash Bowry Boys.
0:21.0	Hi there, welcome to the Bowry Boys. This is Greg Young.
0:24.0	And this is Tom Myers. And before we get started, Greg, I just wanted to mention that we do have a very exciting
0:29.0	live event coming up in January. On, in fact, Friday, January 11th, 2019, we are really proud to be a part of the Brooklyn Podcast Festival,
0:40.0	which will be held at the Bell House in the Guanaas neighborhood of Brooklyn.
0:45.0	We will be taping an upcoming show on the Life and Times of Walt Whitman.
0:51.0	In fact, the show is called Whitmania.
0:54.0	So for tickets for that show, head to cityfarmpresents.com slash events. And we hope to see you there.
1:02.0	Today, we'll be looking at New York's role in shaping the industry of live performance comedy,
1:09.0	or what would become known as stand-up comedy. And the rise of America's first comedy clubs in New York starting in the 1950s and 60s.
1:19.0	Because New York's role in all of this has been different after all from the comedy scenes that developed out in LA,
1:26.0	or in Las Vegas, Chicago, or in any number of other cities.
1:30.0	Because it was here in these theaters and supper clubs and comedy clubs that comedy developed with a distinct New York accent.
1:39.0	Yeah, I would just say this show risks being a rather broad survey of comedy with all different aspects of comedy.
1:47.0	But we're going to point out specifically how New York City itself is embedded into this modern comedy tradition in ways I think that I'll surprise you.
1:57.0	So we'll be talking about places in New York that have been instrumental in the comedy scene,
2:02.0	but we'll also be talking about New York born or based comedians, you know, from Joan Rivers to Jerry Seinfeld, Eddie Cantor to Eddie Murphy.
2:14.0	And of course, the show is slightly inspired by the Amazon show The Marvelous Miss Mazzle,
	...

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