Community Chat

[golding76]

Jackie Mason has been a favorite of mine since I was a young woman.  That means that I've adored him and his Borscht-Belt style delivery of jokes for over 50 years.

I've missed him for a while now, but I heard his voice one evening years ago when my sons were watching "The Simpsons."   I paused and asked myself, "Is that Jackie Mason?"  It certainly was.  He was Krusty the Clown's rabbi father in that cartoon show.

I will miss him.

May he rest in peace.  

Ed Sullivan and the young Jackie Mason.

[moonandthestars]

So sad to hear.  I'll miss him too.

[Pearlee]

I didn't much care for his Borscht Belt humor, but my father absolutely loved him. Mason was a TV staple back in the 1960s.  

May he rest in peace. If there is a heaven, I hope my dad, who passed away in 1977, finds Jackie up there.

[golding76]

[Jackie Mason was a rabbi before becoming a comedian.]

On July 24, 2021, Jackie Mason died at age 93. According to The Hollywood Reporter, friend and laywer Raoul Felder said the comedian died at Mount Sinai hospital in Manhattan. No official cause of death has been provided, but Felder said he was experiencing trouble breathing prior to passing away in his sleep on Saturday. 

Often considered to be one of the greatest comedians of all time, Jackie Mason was well known for his quick wit, fast-paced standup, self-deprecating humor, and an inability to shy away from controversial jokes. Over the course of his career, Mason won two Emmy Awards: one for Outstanding Writing in a Variety or Music Program for his show "Jackie Mason on Broadway," and another for an Outstanding Voice-Over Performance in "The Simpsons," via The Emmys. In 1986, Mason received a Special Tony Award for his one-man show, "The World According to Me," as noted by The Jerusalem Post.

Jackie Mason, born Yacov Moshe Maza in 1931, spent his early years in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, as noted by the Jewish Virtual Library. When he was 5 years old, he and his family moved to New York City, where his father and three of his brothers worked as rabbis. When Mason turned 25, he was ordained as a rabbi as well. "I came from a religious family," he once said in an interview with Tablet Magazine. "I was so absorbed with religion that I didn't think about material things. We weren't involved with Jewish contests, with status. There was no status among the Orthodox Jews."

At 25 years old, Mason worked in Latrobe, Pennsylvania as a rabbi for three years, via The Famous People. During that time, he started to become interested in comedy. "I became attracted to it because I was a rabbi," he told Tablet Magazine. "And I started to tell jokes in my sermons. As everybody told me how funny I was, I said to myself, 'I'll try it.' And I also didn't want to get up at eight o'clock in the morning." That summer, Mason went to the Catskills and took up a job as a busboy at a hotel. He wasn't very good, but his boss liked him and offered him a job as a lifeguard instead, even though he couldn't swim. Mason started telling jokes about his job at amateur nights, and became a hit.

As Jackie Mason noted in his interview with Tablet Magazine, he started earning money to perform standup at hotels in the Catskills. "Very quickly I started to move up from the small hotels to the middle hotels to the very top hotels. By the time the season was over I was playing Grossinger's and the Concord. In one season, I went from $25 a show to $135 a show," he said. Mason therefore came back to New York after the summer with a good amount of comedy experience and a solid reputation under his belt. In 1960, he appeared on Steve Allen's "The Tonight Show" and started performing in top nightclubs, via the Jewish Virtual Library.

Mason then began appearing on "The Ed Sullivan Show" and earned himself a contract for a number of performances.  Mason made a comeback with "The Jerk," a comedic film that became commercially successful. In 1986, he performed in his own one-man show on Broadway, which earned him critical acclaim and a status as one of America's best comedians.

[twinsister]

I remember seeing him on the Ed Sullivan show.  R.I.P.

[Pantsonfire2]

@Pearlee ...  my Dad too !!  He also loved Jackie Gleason, Buddy Hackett was a favorite.  He loved the stories they would tell!  

[kivah]

I've been watching Jackie Mason from the beginning of his career - he was so quick and funny. Years ago, a friend loaned me the tape of his play "One-Man Show" -- it was the funniest - and truest material.

I've always loved comics -- I loved to laugh. 

Today - there's nothing to laugh about.

Thanks, Jackie, for making us laugh for over 50 years.

He's the male version of Joan Rivers

[Pearlee]

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@Pantsonfire2 wrote:

@Pearlee ...  my Dad too !!  He also loved Jackie Gleason, Buddy Hackett was a favorite.  He loved the stories they would tell!  

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@Pantsonfire2  Mu dad loved Buddy Hackett too. (I didn't).  

[Flatbush]

Saw two of his live shows. Altho I don't know a lot of Yiddish, I knew enough to laugh like a lunatic.

Even thinking of some of his acts, sets me to laugh. There are videos on you tube when I'll want to see him again.

Thanks Jackie for all the fun you brought us.

Just a shiksa

[Judaline]

He had some great one liners-

“Eighty percent of married men cheat in America. The rest cheat in Europe,” he once joked. 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.”