The Definitive Guide to Comedy
Other MAD magazine illustrators may have been flashy or more memorable for their eccentricities (see Sergio Aragonés and his “Spy vs. Spy” or Al Jaffee for his Fold-In features), but Mort Drucker may have been the most accessible of them all. A New Yorker through and through, Drucker was born …
Michael Clayton McCarthy achieved the comedy dream and proved you could do it going in the opposite direction. McCarthy (no relation) became a staff writer for Saturday Night Live at age 24 in 1983, followed that up with two years writing for Sesame Street, and then went to Chicago, where …
Hal Willner, the longtime musical guru behind Saturday Night Live who also brought musicians together for cross-genre tributes and movie soundtracks, and who won a Grammy for his efforts, died on April 7. Although he was never formally diagnosed with COVID-19, a spokesperson confirmed that Willner died at home suffering …
Eddie Large, the bigger, brasher half of the British comedy duo Little and Large, died on April 2 from coronavirus. He had been in the hospital in Bristol, England, receiving treatment due to heart failure. He was 78. Born Edward Hugh McGinnis in Glasgow on June 25, 1941, his family moved …
Ken Shimura, Japan’s most famous comedian, died on March 29 from a pneumonia brought upon by coronavirus. He had tested positive for COVID-19 on March 24. Shimura was 70. Born Feb. 20, 1950, Shimura was a fixture on Japanese television for decades, known for his mugging and facial expressions. He …
Clint Nohr’s website bio describes stand-up comedy as coming from a “warped and twisted, yet somehow always relatable point of view.” Nohr proved that once more last month. He worked a two-week gig at Jokers Wild, the comedy club inside the Atlantis Bahamas resort, from March 3-15, just as the …
Brian Baron might not have started his comedy career until middle age, but he managed to touch the hearts of many stand-up comedians in New York City over the past decade. The city’s young and up-and-coming comics all knew of Baron, as he hosted open mics, and he also made …
Jimmy Smith, a comedian and musician who hosted the Comedy Connection open mic during the Boston comedy boom of the early 1980s and who himself opened for some of the biggest names in music for 30 years, died on March 11. Smith was 66. In June 2017, when Smith’s diabetes …
In the 1980s, they may have called him Bruce, but comedians still lovingly called him Johnny. Johnny Yune, born Jong-seung in 1936 in the southern half of Korea when it had fallen under Japanese rule, who broke barriers in America as a stand-up comedian in the 1970s and starred in …
There’s a new stand-up showcase series to keep you company during the coronavirus quarantine, thanks to Comedy Central and Refinery29. CC x R29: Taking the Stage, a short-form stand-up showcase, premiered Tuesday on Comedy Central’s Stand-Up YouTube channel. CC x R29: Speak Up, a series featuring intimate one-on-one conversations with stand-up …
