Okay, we're live. Hi, this is William Ramsey. Welcome to William Ramsey Investigates on today's show. I have a very special guest. His name is James Curtis. And he published a book about somebody who I just found out recently passed away, late 2021. I think it was October. His name is Mort Saul, who's a comedian who I remember seeing and have watched some of his bits on YouTube, which are around there.

But the book he wrote is titled Last Man Standing, Mortzal, and the Birth of Comedy.

And James Curtis has also written other books.

His other titles are William Cameron Menzies, The Shape of Films to Come, Spencer Tracy,

a biography, W.C. Fields of biography, James Whale, a new world of gods and monsters, between

flops, a biography of Preston Sturges, and then he's edited a couple books. One is the creative

producer and also featured player. But again, this is, uh is uh morzal had a very long career

and was around and knew a lot of people really i think the the title of the book is very apt

the birth of modern comedy is something that mortzal was at uh right after world war two so

james curtis welcome to the show and thanks for agreeing to the interview. Thank you, William. So for people, great, awesome. For people who have not heard of your name or

maybe your books, can you talk about your background and your other kind of books and what you've

read and what led you to writing about Mort's all? Well, the subjects I've dealt with for the most part are people whom I became familiar

with initially when I was a kid. And I revisited their work as an adult in later years and became

more curious about them if there weren't good books about them. And so that's basically what happened.

I was exposed

to older work back when I was consuming television at a frightening rate, which would be back

around late 50s, early 60s, especially. And Mort was just one of those figures. He had a talk

show on local television here in Los Angeles. and so I think that's where I first

discovered him and then later I was able to see him live in jazz clubs out

here principally jazz clubs that usually was his venue before we had comedy

clubs and I was always quite fascinated by him.

And so I wondered why there wasn't a biography of him.

...