Posted on 04/12/2013 6:00:41 PM PDT by fhayek
In a recent thread about the death of Jonathan Winters, it was stated that he was one of the funniest men who ever lived. He WAS funny, but he wouldn't be on my list of the funniest who have ever lived. And by "ever", I mean since the dawn of recorded media. My list of the funniest people who have ever lived would be as follows:
Groucho Marx
John Cleese
Mike Myers
Bill Cosby
Peter Cook
Rowan Atkinson
Charlie Chaplin
George Carlin
Mel Brooks
Woody Allen
Douglas Adams.
The sole criterion is that they make me laugh. Hard. Everybody is different. What makes you laugh might make me cringe. And verse visa. So list away...
I can't take the way he sings, but I love to hear him talk.
Forgot Lisa Lampaneli.
Buster Keaton
No, I’m not THAT old, but he was good.
Fred Allen - old time radio
Abe Vigoda - Fish on Barney Miller
Flip Wilson - esp. as Geraldine
Mel Brooks
Foster Brooks
Tim Conway
Conspicuously absent, Lucille Ball, and
Carl
Hiaason.
Did you just call Bob Hope unfunny?
I guess everyone has their own ideas but that one is so far off as to by weird.
Yes, Bob Hope as a standup comedian reading off cue cards jokes he had purchased for a few dollars. He certainly wasn’t Henny Youngman.
Myron Cohen, probably the best of the “Borscht Belt” comedians.
Peter Sellers
Mel Brooks
Martin Short
Mitch Hedberg
Rodney Danger+ield
Tim Conway (the single best piece o+ comedy I have
EVER seen was a skit where he played a Nazi
interrogating Lyle Wagoner, with a thick German
accent. Not getting anywhere, he reaches into his
jacket and pulls out a tiny Hitler handpuppet
and starts striking Wagoner with a tiny pencil
or baton with every question. I almost choked
as the skit went on. I think it’s on Youtube
but it’s a bad print.
A comedian named Geo++ Bolt -—he did only ONE
great bit, also on youtube, I think it was one
o’ those “Young Comedians” things, hosted by John
LaRoquette, which also involved his handpuppet
“Danny”. Bolt never made it into the Big Leagues
o+ Comedy, but this skit remains one o+ the best pieces o comedy I’ve ever seen.
Steven Wright.
Just to name a +ew, o++ the top o’ my head.
——Gotta get this +riggin’ letter +ixed!
How do you know how much Bob Hope paid for his jokes, How do you know if Henny Youngman didn’t do the same thing.
I guess we have different tastes but Bob Hope certainly was far more popular.
Flip Wilson
Joey Bishop
Rodney Dangerfield
Red Skelton
Kathleen Madigan, (funny but a democrat)
Mr Bean
Red Green
It doesn’t matter to me how much who paid for his jokes. I know that Hope did buy his jokes. I also know that “more popular” never ever means better, and in fact more popular among comedians means to me appealed to the lowest common denominator. Scatology, etc. (I don’t mean Hope, whose jokes were just square and lame.) But Bob Hope the standup never made me laugh, and never made laugh the guys that sat next to me in various taverns.
Jack's most classic masterclass in comedy was when he got an increasingly hysterical laugh from simple silence.
"YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE!!"
Silence. The laughter grew and grew.
Cheech ain't here, man...
Made me think of one of the first lectures I attended as a university freshman. The professor, a Cambridge-educated Brit, decided to provide us with a critique of our (American) campus architecture. That might not sound promising, but he was a brilliant guy, and once he got rolling -- well, you had to be there. I laughed so hard that I actually fell off my chair.
Dave? Dave's not here.
Bailiff, whack his pee pee.
He stopped on a dime. Unfortunately, the dime was in Mr. Rococo’s pocket.
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