When Jews Were Funny (2013)

You'll see a lot of great old Jewish comics, from back in the day when "Jewish" was almost understood in the word "comic". Also loads of great old Borscht Belt jokes. Zweig's interview style is genius: he presents himself as a schlemiel asking dumb questions, and gets some priceless responses. He gets people who have cultivated a goyisher stage presence to revert to their native culture, and those who have been "Hollywood Jewish" to revert to the real thing, with brilliant results. The great Shelley Berman even sings a whole song in Yiddish, after mentioning his son who died at the age of 12 and finding himself at a loss for (English) words. See it. You'll laugh, you'll cry.

OK-so the filmmaker Alan Zweig's interview skills are terribly annoying, yet despite that I laughed a lot at the jokes, anecdotes, and schtick from the many comedians and writers that appeared in this film. As Zweig probes whether old style Jewish humor is dead, he unfortunately loses focus quite often and even, at times, gets some of the interviewees uncomfortable, confused, and even irritated, which, in my opinion, is not great viewing.The consensus ends up being that as the Jewish people are more and more assimilated into society the type of Jewish humor of the past, kindled by pain, suffering, and frustration, takes a new form today. Aside from the interviews from many of the top Jewish comics and writers today, there are a number of film clips of Jewish comedians, many of whom are no longer with us, performing on television.Overall, despite Zweig's style, I found this documentary to be quite entertaining and, as mentioned I found myself laughing whole heartedly quite often.

While anyone can enjoy this nostalgic look at what it means to be a Jewish comic, the question Zweig keeps returning to is how to get a fix for his Jew Jones. As another babyboomer NYC Jew who grew up watching Jack Carter, Red Buttons, Myron Cohen, London Lee, Jack E. Leonard, Alan King, Joey Bishop, Norm Crosby, Professor Irwin Corey, Sid Caesar, Carl Reiner, Howie Morris, Alan Sherman, Jerry Lewis, The Three Stooges, George Burns, Corbett Monica, Sandy Baron, Stanley Myron Handleman, Buddy Hackett, Shecky Greene, Danny Kaye, Pinky Lee, Eddie Cantor, Groucho Marx...in other words, the funnymen of the late 40s and 50s, it seemed the whole comedy world was Jewish. There's nothing particularly ethnic about any of the above performers, many of whom were cited in the documentary, but that sense of Jewishness in comedy is an historic relic. While the documentary contains many funny lines and examples of Jewish jokes, there's a sadness as an undercurrent that only fellow 60+ Jews can truly understand...the loss of a culture. I'm glad I watched the film, but it left me melancholy.

I am around the age of the director Alan Zweig, 60, and I come from a Jewish New York background, so I got exactly what Zweig was saying. We had very funny Jewish relatives and we watched Jewish comics on television almost every night of the week. We grew up at a very special time and only now are beginning to realize how special it was. Many Jews like myself and Zweig stopped observing all religious practices, married non-Jews and only had one or two child. I had about 15 or aunts and uncles and other funny Jewish relatives. My daughter only has three or four and they certainly aren't as funny. About every third comic/comedian on television was Jewish including many of the top ones like Jerry Lewis, Milton Berle and Jack Benny. Today, only about one out of ten are Jewish. For example, I think Vanessa Bayer is only one of the 15 comedians currently on SNL that is Jewish. Compare that to SNL in its first season where Lorraine Newman, Gilda Rahdna, Al Franken were all Jewish and the first three guest hosts George Carlin, Paul Simon and Rob Reiner were all Jewish, not to mention the show's creator Lorne Michaels and half the writing staff.What I loved about seeing the movie was getting to see some old Jewish comics whom I haven't seen in decades. I was really glad to know that they're still alive and kicking, these include Norm Cosby, Shelley Berman, Jack Carter, David Steinberg ("Boolah, Boolah"), David Brenner, and Bob Einstein (whom I still remember best as Officer Judy on the Smothers Brothers Show). Seeing these and others brought back a flood of memories. It was like seeing childhood friends again. The second great thing is that they all tell great old Jewish jokes in the movie. I had forgotten these wonderful jokes. My only criticism of the movie is that I wish there were more clips of deceased Jewish comedians. Alan King, Rodney Dangerfield and Henny Youngman clips are shown, but there were dozens more that I would have loved to have seen, Irwin Corey, Joe E. Lewis, Molly Pecon, Bert Lahr, Red Buttons, Jan Murray, etc. Still, it was a sweet and funny and beautiful little movie and it made me think about aspects of my life I haven't thought about in many, many years. Thank you from the bottom of my heart, Alan Zweig.