Did you ever hear of burlesque? It was a great style of comedy…very broad and a wee bit naughty. Alas, burlesque died out and so did all the great comics who worked for Minsky's Burlesque and other purveyors of the Art Form.
Well, not quite. There's still Irv Benson.
Benson was one of the best and after burlesque became extinct, he went to Las Vegas and began doing…burlesque. He and the (eventual) last remaining straight man from burley-q, Dexter Maitland, often appeared in revues there and in Reno. I saw them many times in the eighties and got to eat with them a few times and hear anecdotes. Oh, those anecdotes.
Irv also appeared on television a lot, mostly with Johnny Carson and Milton Berle. Carson loved him and would have him on often and play straight man to him. Berle used Irv on many shows, often as an irascible character named Sidney Spritzer. The snide Mr. Spritzer would sit in a box and heckle Berle on stage. We have a clip here of them in one of their many encounters. Watch and you'll see how good Irv was at delivering a line…and how bad Uncle Miltie was at reading cue cards without looking like he was reading cue cards.
And why am I featuring this clip today? Well, today Irv Benson is one hundred years old. He's retired now and still married to his wife, Lillian after 77 years. That's amazing, especially when you consider how much of Irv's material was about how horrible his unnamed wife was.
Here's the main event: Berle vs. Spritzer. My money's on Spritzer…
And I should mention that there's an award-winning documentary about Irv called The Last First Comic. I ordered one and have received my copy but have been too busy to watch it yet. But hey, if it's full of clips of Irv, how could it not be wonderful? Here's the website to order one and here's a preview of it…