Jackie Mason and Me

The year was 1963. I was ten years old and my sister, Jody, was eight. We would visit my grandmother’s apartment, which she gratefully shared with my Auntie Raye, my Auntie Gertie and her husband, Uncle Jack. So it was my parents and the occasional neighbor or Auntie Raye’s best friend, Marianne, that made a captive audience of six or seven people for the performance that my sister and I would present, a condensed version of “The Ed Sullivan Show.” I of course played Ed, introducing the acts that became stranger and stranger as the night went on. My sister played all the female parts, from Connie Francis and Leslie Gore to Russian Ballerinas and Hungarian acrobats. But my favorite part of the show was the stand-up comedian, and I always chose Jackie Mason as the one to imitate. I didn’t really understand all the jokes back then, but Jackie’s accent and expressions made him unique as a performer, and, besides, my whole family loved him. I could do the accent pretty well, but the jokes—well, let’s just say they didn’t go over as fine as the originals.

After pissing off Ed Sullivan with an alleged middle finger salute, Mason was relegated to doing nightclub work, and in the late 1970s I saw him perform at a local Montréal nightspot called La Dilligence (AKA The Stagecoach). Up close and personal, Mason came across as an everyday Jew, commenting and complaining about everything that caught his eye.

Up close and personal, Mason came across as an everyday Jew, commenting and complaining about everything that caught his eye.

In another famous Montréal eatery, The Brown Derby (no relation to the Los Angeles original), you could see all of Mason’s characters as they cajoled to be first in line to get the next available table, stuffed Sweet’n’Low packets into their purses and pockets, complained about the air conditioning or heating, and made contorted changes to the menu items (“I’ll have the House Salad, but take out the tomatoes and cucumbers, change the bacon bits for extra croutons, give me two containers of dressing on the side, add some slices of cheddar cheese, but not that orange artificial stuff, and I want it on a plate not a bowl with a side order of kishka.”). I remember an older Jewish lady asking for more dinner rolls for the table. “Why don’t you finish the ones in your purse first?” asked the veteran waiter.

I didn’t think much about Mason until he re-emerged from showbiz mediocrity with his famous one-man Broadway show, “The World According to Me!” I was able to get a copy of his tape from my friend Morty. As Mason once said, “There are two things no Jew ever buys, my tapes and Sweet’n’Low.”  I listened to it over and over again until I knew most of the routines by heart. It prepared me for life as an unspeaking and un-opinionated Jewish husband whose primary job was to take out the garbage.

Mason kept showing up everywhere. I recognized him as a shackled, singing rabbi in “The Inquisition” scene of Mel Brooks “History of the World – Part 1”; complementing Rodney Dangerfield in the film “Caddy Shack II”; in over ten episodes of “The Simpsons” as the voice of Rabbi Hyman Krustofsky; and in countless appearances on late night talk shows. The next time I saw him perform live was at the 2004 Just for Laughs Comedy Festival in Montréal. His act had become much more sophisticated and polished, yet his manner and accent remained true to his roots. He really hated high-end coffee shops like Starbucks, calling anyone who would pay nine bucks for a café latté a “dumb shmuck.”

During the last decade I became less infatuated with Mason. I found his right-wing political views a little too extreme. His constant use of the word “schvartze” in his routines was starting to get him in trouble with some long-time fans and he didn’t attempt to customise his act to make it more PC. I get it—he told it like it is, with no filters and no regrets. It takes a brave and courageous individual to get up in front of an audience and speak his mind. Mason will forever be remembered as one of the great comedians alongside Lenny Bruce, Robin Williams and George Carlin, who also were not embarrassed to say it like it is.

Thank you, Jackie Mason, for all the wonderful memories and the great punch lines. Rest in peace.

Paul Starr is a recently retired systems analyst who has lived his entire life in Montréal, Canada. On Sunday mornings he is “living the dream,” hosting a two-hour Internet radio show featuring music from the 50s and 60s called “Judy’s Diner.”