A comedian named Jackie Mason has died. He started doing comedy when he was a rabbi. He did comedy in Catskills nightclubs, on talk shows and on Broadway.
Mason died at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan on Saturday. He had been there for over two weeks and was a celebrity lawyer.
The man who was called irascible often wrote about being Jewish and men and women. His style was to use humour to show how people are not good enough.
“Eighty percent of married men cheat in America,” he once joked. “The rest cheat in Europe.” Another Mason line was: “Politics doesn’t make strange bedfellows, marriage does.” About himself, he once said: “I was so self-conscious, every time football players went into a huddle, I thought they were talking about me.”
Many people who knew Mason mourned when he died. One person said he was “one of the best.” Another said he was funny.
Mason was born Jacob Maza. His three brothers became rabbis too. Mason became a rabbi, but then he did not like it anymore. He liked comedy and so he did that instead of being a rabbi.
A person needs to feel like they have nothing in order to be a comedian. They are looking for attention and will do anything to get it.
Mason started his work in show business as a social director at a resort in the Catskills. He was the guy who got everybody up to play games like quiz games or shuffleboard. He also told jokes.
In 1961, a small comic got a big break. He appeared on Steve Allen’s weekly television variety show. His success brought him to “The Ed Sullivan Show” and other programs. However, he was banned for two years from the “Ed Sullivan Show” when he allegedly gave the host the finger when Sullivan signalled to him to wrap up his act during an appearance on October 18, 1964.
Mason was on TV. He voiced Rabbi Hyman Krustofski in 11 episodes of the long-running animated comedy “The Simpsons.”
