The greatest living comic in the world is Mort Sahl.
O.K., argue if you like.
Don Rickles is 88 and still doing his distinctive thing.
Bob Newhart is 85 and occasionally performs.
Bill Cosby is 77 … Bill Cosby … anybody?
Sahl will be 88 on Monday and lives in Mill Valley, north of San Francisco. He is in residence at the Throckmorton Theatre there, where he performs Thursday nights when not on the road.
Sahl is not from Chicago. He is Canadian born, but some of his best years were spent here.
From 1956 to the early 1970s, the bygone Mr. Kelly’s (Rush St. and Bellevue Place, where Gibsons now sits) was where he would settle in for weeks at a time, prowling the stage with a newspaper rolled up under his arm and his head full of ideas and observations that made the people who packed the club every night not only laugh but think.
In reviewing one of his Mr. Kelly’s shows in 1971 the late Roger Ebert wrote that Sahl was “the finest, quickest, most intelligent comic mind in America … The fundamental difference in style between Sahl and other comedians is that he doesn’t do a monologue, he does a tapestry … This style cannot be imitated because it’s more of a personal revelation than it is a method. It is probably the most complex verbal style yet produced by an American humorist.”
Sahl is ranked 40th on Comedy Central’s list of the 100 greatest stand-up comedians of all time, compiled in 2005, a list that has him ranked below a number of lesser talents such as Dennis Miller and Ellen DeGeneres.
Such a list does not, certainly, measure Sahl’s immense influence.
When Gerald Nachman wrote 2003’s “Seriously Funny: The Rebel Comedians of the 1950s and 1960s” Sahl was on the cover of the book and Nachman wrote: “Nobody saw Mort Sahl coming. When he arrived, the revolution had not yet begun. Sahl was the revolution …” Nachman points to a 1953 Christmas night Sahl performance at the hungry i, a San Francisco folk music club, writing, “He was unlike any comedian who had ever been.”
Sahl has played here often since the Kelly’s days and made many friends. One of them is Dean Balice, who heads his own financial advisory firm. He says, “Aside from a half a dozen baseball players, Mort was a hero of mine back in the late 1950s when I first saw him on television, so very different from the comedians of the day. He was of the moment, finding the humor then and still in the political and social events of the day.”
Balice remembers well seeing Sahl at the old Ivanhoe Theater in 1976 and at Byfield’s, a club in the former Ambassador East hotel (now the Public), in 1985. He was with friends with Sahl and so had dinner with the comic in the Pump Room after his show. “There I was sitting in Booth One, having a conversation with Mort Sahl. Quite something for a guy from Chesterland, Ohio.”
Sahl was Balice’s guest at his house many times, and Balice watched him perform often here and also in New York and Los Angeles. They talk every now and then on the phone.
“He has become a dear friend,” says Balice. “But he is still a hero of mine.”
A lot of people feel that way. Shortly after he turned 80 in 2007, a number of fellow comics and admirers gathered at the Wadsworth Theatre in Los Angeles.
Who was there? Among the celebrants were George Carlin, Jay Leno, Albert Brooks, Harry Shearer, Shelly Berman, Drew Carey, Jonathan Winters and Richard Lewis, who will be appearing here in conversation next Tuesday with my colleague Howard Reich at City Winery and then doing his own thing at Zanies comedy clubs in Chicago and Rosemont (zanies.com).
Woody Allen sent a message on videotape to that 2007 party, telling of the first time he saw Sahl: “I was 21 … I just thought there was nothing else that could be done in comedy, and he was just the best thing that I had ever seen.”
I have written about and reviewed Sahl many times. There’s a long piece from 2003 here. And in a 1986 Tribune review, I wrote, “Sahl devours the follies and horrors of the daily headlines with a voraciousness and thoughtfulness that few match …. His humor skips past the obvious … into a more complicated area, a deeper and frequently darker place.”
A few examples through the decades:
“The beat generation is a coffeehouse full of people expectantly looking at their watches waiting for the beat generation to come on.”
“A yuppie is someone who believes it’s courageous to eat in a restaurant that hasn’t been reviewed yet.”
“Liberals feel unworthy of their possessions. Conservatives feel they deserve everything they’ve stolen.”
It would be nice to tell you that Sahl will be appearing here soon. Maybe someday.
Monday he turns 88. No big party is planned. His pals and fans are obviously awaiting his 90th. And then? Who knows, but Sahl told me long ago, “I’ve arranged with my executor to be buried in Chicago. When I die, I want to still remain politically active.”
Comedian Richard Lewis and illustrator Carl Nicholas Titolo will join Tribune jazz critic Howard Reich in conversation about Lewis’s new book, “Reflections from Hell: Richard Lewis’ Guide on How Not to Live.” May 12 at City Winery, 1200 W. Randolph St.
rkogan@tribune.com
