Where have all the funny folks gone?

Whitens Moss said:
I grew up laughing at the Marx Brothers, Abbott & Costello, Sid Caesar, Milton Berle, Jackie Gleason, Red Skelton, Johnny Carson etc.

There are no good comedians now. No one really makes me laugh any more. Leno and Letterman? Forget it. Can't come close to Johnny Carson, who was the king of late night.

Nowadays all the stuff that passes for "comedy" is either smutty or smarmy or just plain unfunny.

These days about the only people who make me laugh are politicians and the media but not in a good way.

Thank God the Three Stooges are still on TV, along with I Love Lucy and the Honeymooners.
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wander over to YouTube
Search the vids for John Pinette.
Your Welcome;)
 
I agree that the old timers were funny and can't be "replaced", but they are dead and gone. Luckily we have plenty of access to old footage of them being funny. I disagree that there are no funny guys today. Louis CK is hilarious. Steve Carrell, Kristin Wigg, Tina Fey come to mind...funny without needing to be vulgar.
 
I too miss the "old" shows...like those that have been already mentioned, as well as Dick Van Dyke, Bob Newhart, Green Acres, and so on. Some were silly, some were funny, but you could watch all of them with your children.

There are a couple of funny comedians around today...one is Jeff Dunham. I love to watch his act, especially Achmed the Dead Terrorist. I also find Ron White very funny, and the Blue Collar Comedy Tour is great.
 
Some of what Gleason and others did is timeless. But I got to say a lot of what I enjoyed as great comedy decades ago now seems sometimes corny and a bit amateurish.
 
carpriver said:
I always liked watching Carol burnet, with Harvey Korman and Tim Conway. They were fun to watch as so much of what they did was improve. I miss that.
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Watching Harvey Korman trying not to lose it while Tim Conway ad-libs was always the icing on the cake.

The all time classic of those is the "Elephant" dialogue from "Mama" segment, but Vicky Lawrence got the last laugh... literally... do a search on Youtube for it.

Bill Cosby is a classic and one of the few remaining "clean" comedians.

For contemporary comedians, I like Bill Engvall and Jeff Foxworthy.

I really love the old radio shows, there's a number of websites devoted to them and allow free downloading. I put them on a USB flash drive and listen to them while driving.

I'm currently enjoying the "Great Gildersleeve", and a game show called "It pays to be Ignorant".
 
Gunhacker said:
Watching Harvey Korman trying not to lose it while Tim Conway ad-libs was always the icing on the cake.

The all time classic of those is the "Elephant" dialogue from "Mama" segment, but Vicky Lawrence got the last laugh... literally... do a search on Youtube for it.
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An absolute classic.

I agree that comedy is not worth watching these days. The fact that a lot of people like Will Ferrel is a testament to how far our society has fallen.

Check out this interview with Gene Wilder. He is one of the greats in my mind.
Gene Wilder on Willy Wonka Remake, Young Frankenstein, Mel Brooks, And More | 92Y Talks - YouTube
 
Marshwheeling said:
A favorite from the old era is Steve Allen, founder of the Tonight Show: literate, erudite, a true gentleman, and funnier than all get-out. But for my money, it is hard to top Bob and Ray. Slow Talkers of America is a lesson in comic timing.

These days, it's Letterman. Nobody else can do what he does. As a bonus, he has made monkeys out of some people who really had it coming.
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Two out of three ain't bad. I do not like Letterman, though he's certainly better than Leno.

Allen was brilliant. I need to see if I can find his "building a banana" bit. Or the Prickly Heat Telethon. He was also a fine musician and wrote excellent short stories. "The Public Hating" is a tale that will turn your blood to sorbet.

My brother and I started doing Bob & Ray-style routines as teenagers, and still write a lot of stuff inspired by their fine weirdness. Remember Natalie Attired? Smelly Dave, the giant dead whale that toured the country on a railroad flat car? Marcia Van Alshott as Linda Lovely, Girl Intern?

I'm nearer 80 than 70 and remember all the ones mentioned here, but I guess I had no taste: I never cared much for Skelton or Gleason, and detested Berle. The Marx Brothers movies had their moments but didn't really break me up. I never liked the Stooges, and preferred the silent Laurel & Hardy flicks over the talkies.

Newhart doing standup or sitcoms was great. Shelley Berman did some fine stuff. Ernie Kovacs was brilliant and probably thirty years ahead of his time. All the Burnett crew was wonderful, some of the funniest stuff ever. Sid Caesar, Imogene Coca, Howard Morris and Carl Reiner on "Your Show Of Shows" inspired all kinds of successors. Buddy Hackett told wonderful stories. George Gobel was great and Benny was far greater.

There are some very funny people working today who can do standup clean-to-mildly-risqué. Sinbad, Rita Rudner, Jeff Foxworthy, Steven Wright, lots of others. A comedy magician, Mac King (Louisville boy doing very well in Vegas) does astonishing sleight-of-hand woven into a clean, sidesplitting act. I've seen him twice, laughed till I hurt, and still don't believe some of the tricks he did.
 
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Definitely a George Carlin fan. I find myself listening to Bob & Tom on the radio still, and the only talk show I can watch is Craig Ferguson (he seems to just go with the flow and his interviews are interesting). I used to enjoy Conan O'Brien when he was on AFTER Leno back in the late 90s/early 2000s; he doesn't seem to be as funny anymore for whatever reason. I watch Stewart and Colbert sometimes for a laugh, and RedEye on FoxNews is pretty solid when I'm up at 2AM during the week. There's still a few younger comedians I enjoy, like Bo Burnham.

But I haven't seen a comedy movie on the level of Airplane or Naked Gun in years... An American Carol was pretty good, in a different way, and I did think The Other Guys was pretty funny (with a few overly stupid gags though).
 
I think that most, not all, of them would be politically incorrect today. The humor was based on race, gender or ethnic back groud etc.

The early Johnny Carson was funny, the later Carson I felt was more of an ego that was on late at night.

Rodney Dangerfield's self depreciating humor only pointed barbs at himself. I remember 2 that when they pop in my head I still laugh.

Rodney's jokes;

My Dad would take me hunting, he gave me a 3 second head start.

Other kids got rubber ducks for the tub, I got electric radios, toasters.....
 
Marshwheeling said:
A favorite from the old era is Steve Allen, founder of the Tonight Show: literate, erudite, a true gentleman, and funnier than all get-out.
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I agree, Steve Allen was truly talented. He was also a musician -- played piano, sang, and wrote hundreds of songs. I met him at a bookstore in the World Trade Center in the 90s. He was there to sign copies of his latest book (he wrote many). No one else was around, so we chatted for a good while. Now Steve and the WTC are both gone.
 
GKC said:
I too miss the "old" shows...like those that have been already mentioned, as well as Dick Van Dyke, Bob Newhart, Green Acres, and so on. Some were silly, some were funny, but you could watch all of them with your children.

There are a couple of funny comedians around today...one is Jeff Dunham. I love to watch his act, especially Achmed the Dead Terrorist. I also find Ron White very funny, and the Blue Collar Comedy Tour is great.
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+1 to all that!!

The only thing I laugh out loud at these days is either Jeff Dunham or one of the Blue Collar Comedy Tour guys.
 
shouldazagged said:
There are some very funny people working today who can do standup clean-to-mildly-risqué. Sinbad, Rita Rudner, Jeff Foxworthy, Steven Wright, lots of others.
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I was going to mention Sinbad. He was asked once about why he didn't do raunchy comedy. His reply was his momma would beat him with a stick. He's getting a little long in the tooth but Bill Cosby is still one of the funniest men alive. Merv Griffin asked Cosby once about his ambition to be a musician and Cosby launched into this long story about carrying drumsticks in his pocket. After about 5 minutes, Merv was looking around like "when did I lose control of my show" and Jack Benny was about to fall out of his chair laughing.

CW
 
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