IOPList.Org

Jackie Mason
Veteran Comic and Broadway Star
Dead at 93




Stand-up who built his career out of political
incorrectness found multiple generations of fans


Jackie Mason, the stand-up comic whose career spanned several decades
and became a template and poster child of sorts for Jewish self-deprecation,
died Saturday at New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital the age of 93. His friend,
lawyer Raoul Felder, confirmed Mason’s death to the New York Times.

“He died peacefully with several close friends and family at his side,”
Felder told CNN, adding that he had been hospitalized for two weeks
with breathing difficulties.

“My humor — it’s a man in a conversation, pointing things out to you,”
he told the Times in 1988. “He’s not better than you, he’s just another guy.
I see life with love — I’m your brother up there — but if I see you make a
fool out of yourself, I owe it to you to point that out to you.”

“One of the best,” tweeted Gilbert Gottfried.

Mason built his career out of political incorrectness, with his Jewish-themed
humor, social commentary and pseudo-angry persona earning him a spot on
Comedy Central’s 100 Greatest Stand-Ups of All Time. Mason had originally
become a rabbi in a career that appeared preordained: his father, grandfather,
great-grandfather and great-great-grandfathers had all become rabbis alongside
Mason’s three older brothers. Despite completing his rabbinical studies and
heading congregations, Mason knew early his true calling was in comedy.
“Somebody in the family had to make a living,” he told Jewish News in 2015.
“Every night on stage I feel like I am standing up and giving a sermon to my
people so it’s quite similar.”

“My parents never knew I was a comedian; my father was an orthodox rabbi
who felt that all his sons should also become rabbis,” he said in 2015. “Being
a comedian would be tantamount to being a murderer so to protect him I never
told him.” His style unabashedly drew from his Jewish upbringing. “I find it
hard to be told (as I often used to be) that I was ‘too Jewish,’ he said in 2015.
“This is like saying to a bear, ‘You have too much fur.'”

Mason began his comedic career in the mid-1950s appearing throughout
New York nightclubs and resorts in the Catskills, the then-bustling area of
upstate New York that produced scores of famous comics. He expanded his
audience via national appearances on The Tonight Show and The Ed Sullivan Show
and through two albums: 1962’s I Am the Greatest Comedian in the World
Only Nobody Knows It Yet and 1963’s I Want to Leave You With the Words of
a Great Comedian.

It was The Ed Sullivan Show that brought Mason both fame and infamy:
During an October 1964 episode, Mason — who was in the midst of a multi-episode
contract that paid him $7,500 per monologue — was signaled off-camera by
Sullivan to speed up his routine, as the show was about to be preempted by a
live speech from then-President Lyndon B. Johnson. Mason, in turn, mentioned
the signaling during his routine.

“The studio audience laughed and I started making jokes about fingers,” Mason
told the New York Times in 1964. The comedian then, allegedly, pulled out his
middle finger. Pointing in different directions, Mason said, “Here’s a finger for
you and a finger for you and a finger for you.”

Sullivan immediately banned Mason from the show for the “obscene gesture
onstage,” as well as “insubordination and gross deviation from material agreed
upon.” Mason’s contract with the Ed Sullivan Show was also terminated, resulting
in a lengthy lawsuit between the host and the comedian. While the two later
made amends, Mason cited the incident as near-career killing, with the comedian
then considered, for the time, an obscene comic. “I had no obscene thoughts
in my mind,” Mason said following the episode.

Mason’s career spiked in the 1980s thanks to the popular Broadway show The
World According to Me (earning Mason both a Tony and Emmy) and his appearance
as the obnoxious Jack Hartounian in Caddyshack II. He returned to Broadway in
1990 with his new show Brand New and performed in six different Broadway
shows in total, including 1994’s Politically Incorrect and 1996’s Love Thy Neighbor.

“Ladies and gentlemen, you can’t please everyone,” he said in The World According
to Me. “Take my girlfriend – I think she’s the most remarkable woman in the world…
That’s me… But to my wife…”

In 1992, Mason won an Emmy for his role of Rabbi Hyman Krustofsky, the disappointed
father of Herschel Shmoikel Pinchas Yerucham Krustofsky, aka Krusty the Clown,
on The Simpsons; the role mirrored Mason’s own life, as he – like Krusty – was the
son of a rabbi who turned to comedy instead of the Talmud. (Mason would return
to the role in numerous subsequent episodes.) “I feel like Krusty,” Simpsons writer
Al Jean wrote on Twitter. “We will very much miss Jackie Mason.”

“Doing comedy and finding new material is very easy for me,” he said in 2015.
“I am an avid reader, I get through at least four newspapers a day and I am a
TV news junkie so by the end of the day — with the world in such disarray — it is
very easy to find humor in a dozen situations.”









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Ron Popeil
Infomercial Pioneer and Inventor
Dead at 86




Pitchman created “As Seen on TV” products like the
Showtime Rotisserie, the Chop-O-Matic and
Great Looking Hair Formula #9



Ron Popeil, the infomercial pioneer and inventor who served as the enthusiastic
pitchman for products like Chop-O-Matic and the Showtime Rotisserie,
has died at the age of 86.

Popeil’s rep confirmed his death to the Associated Press, noting that Popeil died
“suddenly and peacefully” Wednesday at Los Angeles’ Cedars Sinai Medical Center.
No cause of death was provided.

According to Popeil’s official website, he was instrumental in the invention of unique
products like “the Chop-O-Matic, Mr. Microphone (the first Karaoke machine),
the Popeil Pocket Fisherman, the Veg-o-Matic, the Buttoneer, the Smokeless Ashtray,
Popeil’s Electric Food Dehydrator, the Inside-the-Egg Scrambler,
GLH-9 (Great Looking Hair Formula #9) Hair in a Can Spray, Rhinestone stud setter
(Later called the Bedazzler), the Cap Snaffler, the Popeil Automatic Pasta Maker,
the Ronco Electric Food Dehydrator, the Ronco 6 Star Plus Knives, and the
Showtime Rotisserie and BBQ.” Sales of his products, according to his website,
grossed in the billions.

But Popeil’s cultural reach extended far past his products, with many of his consumerism
colloquialisms entering the popular lexicon: “Set it and forget it!” “Call now!” and
“But wait, there’s more!” Popeil had a natural marketing gift, inventing the practice of
tacking on free extras as incentive to purchase the product, like including a recipe book
and $100 worth of coupons with his Automatic Pasta Maker
(all for just four easy payments of $29.99, plus shipping and handling).

The son of an inventor, Popeil first began hawking products as a teenager in Chicago,
eventually earning his way to a presence in the city’s Woolworth’s department store.
After establishing his company Ronco in the 1950s, Popeil first reached a nationwide
audience with his minute-long ad for the Chop-O-Matic, which he claimed was the first
televised infomercial. The product sold millions of units and launched Popeil’s career
as an “As Seen on TV” pitchman.

It was in the late-1980s — when regulations relaxed on advertising — that Popeil became
a fixture on TV, with the inventor producing lengthy ads for products like a food dehydrator,
Great Looking Hair Formula #9 — essentially spray-on hair — and his Automatic Pasta Maker.

Popeil became such a pop culture icon that he was parodied by Saturday Night Live
(the Bass-O-Matic ’76, a fish blender), name-checked by the Beastie Boys
(“I got more product than Ron Popeil,” they say on “Crawlspace“), and appeared as
himself on The X-Files, The Simpsons and dozens of late-night TV appearances.
(“Weird Al” Yankovic recorded the 1984 song “Mr. Popeil” about Ron’s father, though
many mistakenly attribute the titular character to Ron.)

Popeil remained a staple on home shopping channels like QVC, where he sold over
$1 million worth of his Showtime Rotisseries in just one hour in 2000.

As Syracuse University television professor Robert Thompson told the Associated Press
in a 1997 profile on the pitchman, “This is the ultimate late 20th-century guy.
What Henry Ford was to industrial strength and genius, Ron Popeil is to the next generation
of American ingenuity. He’s figured out the very complex negotiations that go on
between what American culture produces and how we consume it. People 100 years
from now are going to be writing dissertations on him.”