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LIVING on LAUGHS
By
Joe E, Brown
Joe, the old laughmaker, regards comedy as a prettyserious business. Right, with Marjo r ie White in "Broadminded."
THIS funny business, this living on the laughs you get out of audiences — well, it's a very serious proposition with me, and I'm not smiling when I say it, either ! There's fun in being funny, of course, and it isn't exactly my purpose to play Pagliacci and tell you that behind all my smiles there lurks a tear. You'd stop me because you've heard that one. But I do mean that what apparently is the most extemporaneous form of entertainment — in other words, comedy — is as a matter of fact apt to be the most studied and most carefully worked out. And in no form of amusement is this truer than it is in the talkies.
\\ hen you laugh, as I hope you do, at things I do and say, don't remember what I am about to tell you. It might spoil your fun, and my job in the world is anything but fun-spoiling. What I am about to tell you is the reason or reasons why funnybone tickling is, with me, such a serious business.
In the first place, I regard comedy as seriously important in itself, and not alone because it is a difficult form of expression and entertainment. A little story explains this firm conviction of mine. A couple of years ago I broke my leg for the second or third time. Ten days after I broke that leg I opened with a show in New York. My leg was encased in a cast, but even so, I danced a little. My doctor threatened to put me in a straitjacket. He said I was insane.
Without arguing the merits or demerits of that accusation, let me explain that I finally convinced the doctor that all his threats meant nothing to me. It was the trite philosophy of the trouper: "The show must go on."
The doctor looked at me and shook his head and smiled. "Well, I give up, Joe." Then he told me something that may or may not {Continued on page 113)
Joe lives on the laughs he gets out of you — and he tells here how he earns his living
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