“Since the launch of
Playboy
magazine in 1953, two elements have been remarkably consistent: the first is
the celebration of nubile, female flesh and the second is
Playboy’s involvement
in the music scene. The
Playboy
experience was never just about sex but about lifestyle, and music—particularly
the finest jazz, a personal passion of Hefner’s—has always been an essential
component of that lifestyle.” So states the
biography of author Patty Farmer, acknowledged to be
the expert on the entertainment side (performers, television, etc.)
of the legendary magazine that introduced the phrase “I only read it for the
articles” into the American lexicon.
Farmer chronicled “the rise, history, and cultural impact of the
Playboy
empire, including the magazine, clubs, music festivals, and television shows”
in her book
Playboy Swings—published in
2015 after the success of
The Persian
Room Presents (2013), a history of the Plaza Hotel’s famed nightclub.
|
Lenny Bruce |
Patty’s follow-up to
Swings—which
will be released August 3—is
Playboy
Laughs, a book that concentrates on the comedic side of Hefner’s
empire. (You don’t need to be familiar
with the earlier book to enjoy
Laughs,
because there are some stories repeated here.)
I should be honest—when I requested a review copy (many thanks to my
Facebook compadre Jeff Abraham at Jonas PR, who slipped me the
freebie) of this book I thought it was going to be a little out of my wheelhouse
at
Thrilling Days of Yesteryear. I’m pleased to admit that I was stupendously
wrong, for Farmer’s exhaustive history of the funny men who entertained
appreciative audiences since the first Playboy Club opened in Chicago in
February of 1960 is crammed with wonderful anecdotes about such comedy greats
like Joe E. Lewis and Lenny Bruce, and first-hand accounts from stand-up practitioners
as Professor Irwin Corey, Phyllis Diller, Tom Dreesen, Jackie Gayle, Shecky
Greene, Dick Gregory, Joan Rivers, and Larry Storch.
Laughs
is one of the best books I’ve read on stand-up since devouring my pal Kliph
Nesteroff’s amazing
The Comedians: Drunks,
Thieves, Scoundrels and the History of American Comedy.
|
Milton Berle |
Playboy Laughs is
one of those books where you want to keep a notepad nearby while reading it so
you can jot down anecdotes and relay them back to like-minded friends interested
in the history of laughter. One of the anecdotes
that leapt out at me concerns “The Thief of Bad Gags” himself, Milton Berle—who
had a bit of a reputation of being a putz where his contemporaries were
concerned. Comedian Lou Alexander
relates that when he was just starting out in the business, “Uncle Miltie” took
an interest in him and his act, telling him: “I’m going to come to your show
once a week and I’m going to heckle you, but before the show I’ll go to your
dressing room and tell you what I’m going to say. This way you can think of things to say back
to top me.”
That’s what this great man did for
me. He came in once a week and heckled
me, and I’d have all the toppers—the comebacks—and I’d kill him. He’d put on this act: “Look at this kid, he’s
got me again.” And after a while, maybe
two months, it was all over town that there’s some schmucky kid killing Milton
Berle at the Interlude. I loved him. I loved Berle. We became very good friends. He was a great
guy, a very kind, sweet man.
|
The Vagabonds |
Another memorable passage from the book that has a tenuous
connection to a recent post here at
TDOY
concerns the comedic vocal group known as The Vagabonds, who certainly made
their presence known in the 1946 feature film
People
are Funny. I’m not quite as
enthusiastic as Farmer about the aggregation (she describes their
People antics as “scene-stealing”—we’ll
just have to agree to disagree on this one) but she did provide me with some
information with which I was not aware, in that the quartet were favorites on
the nightclub circuit (they even owned and operated nightspots in Frisco and
Miami) and made quite a few appearances on shows telecast during the medium’s
Golden Age (
The Colgate Comedy Hour, Ed Sullivan, etc.). “With the Vagabonds, even tempo was funny,”
she writes. “Sometimes they’d go so fast
they left the audience breathless; other times, they’d drag out a song at such
a snail’s pace that listeners would sweat with suspense. It was as if they were comic masters, always
carefully calibrating their punch lines. And of course, that is exactly what they were.”
|
Jack Cole's famous comic book creation |
Farmer’s wonderful stories about the people and
personalities that either started their careers at the Playboy Clubs or
benefited from those venues after already establishing themselves comprises a goodly portion of
Playboy
Laughs…but there are also chapters dedicated to those artists who created
the cartoons that dotted the pages of the magazine. One of particular interest to me was a nice
little history on Jack Cole—which I’ll need to set up here. I knew of Cole because I owned a copy of
Jules Feiffer’s
The Great Comic Book
Heroes as a kid (coincidentally, Feiffer also contributed cartoons to the
magazine and has some wonderful stories in
Laughs)
as a kid and knew Jack as the creator of
Plastic
Man.
My father, on the other hand, was more familiar with Cole’s post-
Plastic Man career as—you guessed it—a prolific
contributor to
Playboy. (I admit—my opinion of the old man gained a
few points that day after finding out he used to read the mag.) Other cartoonists discussed in the pages of
Patty’s book include Doug Sneyd, Shel Silverstein, Dean Yeagle, Arnold Roth
(whose work I knew from
TV Guide—his stories
about assisting Harvey Kurtzman and Will Elder on
Little Annie Fanny are priceless), and Al Jaffee (the legendary
MAD artist was a contributor, too).
|
Hugh Hefner and author Patty Farmer |
Farmer does a bit of a sidetracking with histories on
Playboy artists like (Alberto) Vargas
and Olivia (De Berardinis); a little beyond the scope of a book on both humor
and cartoons, in my opinion…but it won’t detract from your enjoyment—and it’s
always nice learning about something you didn’t previously know. As someone who actually did read
Playboy for the articles (I had a
subscription while I was in college—born to be mild, baby) I enjoyed Patty’s concluding
take on Hugh Hefner (an informative history on the man and his pajamas) because
anyone who put as much time, money, and effort to restore the Basil
Rathbone-Nigel Bruce
Sherlock Holmes
films my mother loves to watch is aces in my book. Classic movie fans might get a kick out of
this observation of Hef in
Playboy Laughs:
“At ninety, he carries on the tradition he started decades ago of hosting
weekly dinners followed by movies. One
night a week is set aside for a current film, another for a classic film noir,
and sometimes a third is added for one of his favorite Chaplin movies.” Gooble, gobble, one of us!
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