Morton Lyon Sahl (May 11, 1927 – October 26, 2021) was a Canadian-born American comedian, actor, and social satirist. His popularity grew quickly, and after a year at the club, he traveled the country doing shows at established nightclubs, theaters, and college campuses. In 1960 he became the first comedian to be featured in a Time cover story. He appeared on various television shows, played a number of film roles, and performed a one-man show on Broadway.
The television host Steve Allen said that Sahl was "the only real political philosopher we have in modern comedy". His social satire performances broke new ground in live entertainment, as a stand-up comic talking about the real world of politics at that time was considered "revolutionary". His act inspired many later comics to become stage comedians, including Lenny Bruce, Jonathan Winters, George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Lewis Black and Woody Allen. Allen credits Sahl's new style of humor with "opening up vistas for people like me". A biography of Sahl, Last Man Standing, by James Curtis, was released in 2017.
Early life and education
Sahl was born on May 11, 1927, in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, His father, Harry Sahl, came from an immigrant family on New York City's Lower East Side, and hoped to become a Broadway playwright. Harry had met his wife, Dorothy (Schwartz), when she responded to an advertisement he placed in a poetry magazine. Unable to break into the writing field, they moved to Canada where he owned a tobacco store in Montreal.
Sahl's family later relocated to Los Angeles, where his father, unable to become a Hollywood writer, worked as a clerk and court reporter for the FBI. Sahl notes, "My dad was disappointed in his dreams and he distrusted that world for me." Sahl went to Belmont High School in Los Angeles, where he wrote for the school's newspaper. Actor Richard Crenna was a classmate.
Sahl was discharged in 1947 and enrolled in Compton College, followed by the University of Southern California. He received a B.S. degree in 1950 with majors in traffic engineering and city management. He felt at home in the San Francisco Bay Area, commenting, "I was 'born' in San Francisco." He stated that the three years he lived in Berkeley were a valuable experience. Some of the clubs had never had a stand-up comedian; Sahl had to break in as a new kind of act. "I had to build up my own network of places to play," he said.
Celebrities saw his shows after they heard about the "new phenomenon," referring to Sahl's unique style of comedy. Woody Allen, who saw his show at the Blue Angel in 1954, commented that "he was suddenly this great genius that appeared who revolutionized the medium." He was one of the interim hosts on The Tonight Show following Jack Paar's departure as the network waited for Johnny Carson to become available.
His audience had also widened to include not only students and a "hip" public, but now even noted politicians sought out his shows. Some became friends, such as presidential candidate John F. Kennedy, who asked him to prepare a bank of political jokes he could use at public functions.
They valued the fact that he stayed current and took material from major newspapers and magazines. He kept his material fresh, wrote few notes, and entertained his audiences by presenting otherwise serious news with his brand of humor.
Declining career in 1960s
Once Kennedy was in office, Sahl returned to his policy of making jokes about the incumbent with Sahl saying, “If you were the only person left on the planet, I would have to attack you". JFK's father Joseph Kennedy made a few calls, Sahl’s club bookings began to dry up. One morning, Banducci went to the Hungry i which was still booking Sahl and found the doors chained and padlocked by the IRS in demand of back taxes.
“My so-called liberal supporters have all moved in with the establishment,” he said from the stage at one preview. “The same people who like jokes about John Foster Dulles and Goldwater suddenly freeze when they hear satirical humor about Vietnam or the war on poverty. That’s my job”.|
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Following Kennedy's assassination in 1963, Sahl's interest in who was responsible was so great that he became a deputized member of District Attorney of New Orleans Jim Garrison's team to investigate the assassination. and also arranged for him to be interviewed by Playboy. Garrison, in his 1988 book On the Trail of the Assassins, thanked him for his "constant and crucial advice and support". Warren Commission critic, Mark Lane, was invited on Sahl's talk show multiple times.
As a result of this interest, Sahl's comedy would often reflect his politics and included readings and commentary about the Warren Commission Report, of which he consistently disputed the accuracy. He alienated much of his audience, was effectively blacklisted, and more of his planned shows were cancelled. His income dropped from $1 million to $13,000 by 1964. According to Nachman, the extensive focus on the Kennedy assassination details was Sahl's undoing and wrecked his career. Sahl later admitted that "there's never been anything that had a stronger impact on my life than this issue," but added that he nonetheless "thought it was a wonderful quest."
In 1988 Sahl was back in New York City and performed a one-man Off-Broadway show, Mort Sahl's America, which, despite getting good reviews from critics, was not a box office success. The New York Times stated, "History has returned Mort Sahl to the spotlight when he is most needed. His style has an intuitive spontaneity. His presence is tonic."
Sahl found his previous level of success increasingly difficult to recapture.. One Los Angeles Times critic wrote, "Sahl is a man with a country but not a stage."<!--Note: these are fair use videos uploaded by their producer, Bob Burns-->
From the 1990s on he performed, but less often and mostly in theaters and college auditoriums. When Woody Allen saw him perform in 2001 at one of his rare New York club appearances, Allen told him, "this is crazyyou should be working all the time." Allen then called his manager Jack Rollins: "Listen, this guy is hilarious. We gotta bring him to New York."
Sahl was ranked #40 on Comedy Central's list of the 100 greatest stand-up comedians of all time, ranked between Billy Crystal and Jon Stewart. In 2003 he received the Fifth Annual Alan King Award in American Jewish Humor from the National Foundation for Jewish Culture. In 2011, the Library of Congress placed his 1955 recording, At Sunset, on the National Recording Registry.
Satire comedy style
Sahl's humor was based on current events, especially politics, which led Milton Berle to describe him as "one of the greatest political satirists of all time." He was dubbed "Will Rogers with fangs" by Time magazine in 1960.
Sahl would discuss people or events almost as if he were reporting them for the first time, and would digress into related stories or his own experiences. TV executive Roger Ailes said he saw him read the paper one day and after a few hours Sahl got up onstage with an entire evening's worth of new material. "With no writers, he just did what he had seen in the afternoon paper. He was a genius."
thumb|Sahl performing in 2016
Combined with his improvisational skill, Sahl's naturalness was also considered unique for a stage performer. Woody Allen notes that other comics were jealous of Sahl's stage persona and did not understand how he could perform by simply talking to the audience.
Personal life
Sahl was married three times. He wedded Sue Babior in 1955; the marriage ended in divorce less than three years later. In the early 1960s his steady girlfriend was Tippi Hedren. Sahl also dated Dyan Cannon and Julie Newmar. They had one son, Mort Sahl Jr., who died in 1996, aged 19, from an unknown drug-related reaction.
In 1997, he married Kenslea Ann Motter; they divorced around 2009. He regretted the end of their marriage and said "I'm sorry I divorced Kenslea; I'm still in love with my wife. If you love a woman it'll make her a better woman."
In June 2007, a number of star comedians, including George Carlin and Jonathan Winters, gave Sahl an 80th birthday tribute.
In 2008, Sahl moved from Los Angeles to Mill Valley, California, a suburb of San Francisco, where he became friends with comedian Robin Williams, who lived nearby.
Until the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Sahl worked every Thursday night at the Throckmorton Theater in Mill Valley, California taking questions from a live audience and from Periscope/Twitter.
Sahl died of natural causes at his home in Mill Valley on October 26, 2021, at age 94.
- Jonathan Winters: On the Ledge (1987) as Himself, TV special
- Mort Sahl: The Loyal Opposition (1989) as Himself, American Masters documentary
- The World of Jewish Humor (1990) as Himself, documentary
- Looking for Lenny (2011) as Himself, documentary
- When Comedy Went to School (2013) as Himself, documentary
- Max Rose (2013) as Jack