It’s Time for Comedians to Clean Up Their Act

When I entertain, I almost invariably spend the first 20 minutes or so responding to questions submitted by members of the audience. In one recent instance, at a business luncheon awards ceremony of a Toastmasters group--in other words, people who are experienced public speakers--three different people brought up the same subject matter.

A Christina Hsiao asked, “What’s your opinion of current-day comedians who mostly shout and insult the audience and have no intellectual or entertaining ideas?”

A Norman Riggs of Thousand Oaks asked, “Has humor gone too far?”

A Mern Reaves of Torrance wrote, “You’ve spoken of certain infamous public personalities who ‘scrawl graffiti on the national dialogue.’ How do we let these people know how far off base they are? How do we get them to cease and desist?”

It’s also relevant that when that same day, in the process of telling a story about a guest on one of my television shows who, back in the 1950s, accidentally used a vulgar term, I said, “Perhaps I should explain to you younger people here today that while television now permits almost any sort of vulgarity, especially on its talk or comedy shows, for most of television’s history nothing of the sort was permitted. We just laughed at Sid Caesar, Jackie Gleason, Red Skelton and those other wonderful comedians because they were funny.”

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And then I added, quite casually, “It might be interesting sometime, just as an experiment, to go back to that system.”

To my surprise, the result was thunderous applause.

Perhaps the time has come to determine, by standard polling methods, what percentage of the American audience actually relishes the incredible daily barrage of vile language that has come to be so characteristic of modern comedy. Note that I am not referring here to the sort of innocent and cutely naughty humor that was common in old burlesque, although never in vaudeville, where it simply was not permitted.

It has been possible for American viewers to see instances of this sort of humor, almost always involving baggy-pants comedians working with pretty young women, because of the availability on our television sets of that delightful production “The Benny Hill Show.” Mr. Hill was in the grand tradition of English music hall, in which there has always been a great deal of comic leering at attractive showgirls, almost invariably by comedians with naturally funny faces, but our burlesque entertainers never used vulgarity of the sort that one hears now even on daytime television, which is to say where children can and do see it.

It is certainly relevant to consider that those regarded as the great comics of the century did not resort to the gutter-language heard today in every comedy club in the land. We simply laughed at Charlie Chaplin, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, Buster Keaton, Fred Allen, Victor Borge and the others. Even the most depraved individuals never appealed to our great comic entertainers to deal in obscenity and language that would shame a drunken sailor.

Show business is, of course, a business, in some respects like any other, and if American taste generally has fallen to such a low estate that millions of dollars can be made by catering to it, then it would be difficult to address the large problem constructively or to hope for much improvement. But the will of the majority is also an important factor in our political and social system. Let us assume that polls and surveys would reveal that most Americans are disgusted by the degree of ugliness in modern comedy. Wouldn’t it be reasonable to demand that the fact--if it were so--would be reflected in that marketplace?

For that minority who apparently could not get enough vile concepts and terms in their popular entertainment, perhaps a sub-market could be established for their convenience; something like “Filth Night: Monday, Wednesday and Friday” could be advertised at comedy clubs. And “Clean Nights” be made available on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturdays.

The various rating systems, of course, are an attempt--though weak--to do something about the otherwise constantly descending level of vulgarity to which we are presently subjected.