Kaufman is most
remembered for playing the inalienable
Latka on the 1980s sitcom "Taxi." But he also did one of the first
Elvis
impersonations, spent too many years as an "intergender wrestler," and
lipsynched the theme song to "Mighty Mouse" on the first "Saturday
Night
Live." Long before there was a Jerry Springer, Kaufman provoked fights
on TV shows, including "Fridays" and "David Letterman."
Kaufman may be the only dead comedian in
production,
but he's hardly the only one on the Web. The archetypal comedic genius
is Lenny Bruce, and one of the better archives of Lenny materials
online
is at "Lenny
Bruce"
<member.aol.com/dcspohr/lenny/lenny1.htm>.
In addition to sound clips and links to Lenny Bruce books, records and
tapes, the site has collected some great essays and thoughts on Bruce
by
the likes of Ralph J. Gleason, Paul Krassner, Bob Dylan, Mort Sahl,
Steve
Allen, George Carlin, Dick Gregory, Eric Bogosain and Frank Zappa.
There's also a section on "The Trials of Lenny Bruce" about his arrests for alleged obscenity in his nightclub act that came to obsess him at the end of his truncated life. In 1966, Bruce died at age 42 in his home in the Hollywood Hills, from, as Phil Spector put it, "an overdose of police."
The poster boy for comic overdosing is John Belushi, and the "Ultimate John Belushi Tribute" is at <www.belushi.com>. The site is heavy on toga pictures from "Animal House" and audio and video of Belushi's "SNL" appearances and other movies, especially the "Blues Brothers," and pictures of Belushi's grave at Martha's Vineyard, where he was buried in 1982 at age 33, after a heroin overdose in Hollywood.
Belushi
fits into a sub-genre of dead comedians, that being dead fat comedians.
Web sites for these include "John
Candy's Sound Gallery" <journey.simplenet.com/candy>;
"Chris Farley Memorial
Page"
<www.employees.org/~blevine>;
and "Official Sam Kinison Site"
<www.samkinison.org>.
Kaufman, Belushi and most of the aforementioned comedians also belong to another sub-genre of dead comedians, which is dead "Saturday Night Live" alums. "The Dead Comedians Society" <www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Studio/2487> has tribute pages to many of them, including Gilda Radner, who died of ovarian cancer in 1989, and Phil Hartman, shot to death last year by his wife, who then killed herself.
Of course, not all comedians die young, and while some comedic geniuses break the mold, others make them. Take Henny Youngman. The Friar's Club borscht belter died last year at age 91. He was the undisputed King of the One-Liner, and a bunch of his lines are online at "Henny Youngman Jokes" <members.home.net/daughters/henny.htm>.
Categorized into such subjects as airline jokes, doctor jokes, drunk jokes, Jewish jokes and of course Polish jokes, the dated gags point up another comic irony: Comedy once considered offensive and vulgar is now accepted, while comedy that was once accepted is now considered offensive and vulgar. Take this Henny Youngman joke: "A bomb fell on Italy. It slid off."
Please.