A Visit with Tony Belmont of the National Comedy Hall of Fame

This past week Gary Firstenberg sent me photos from his visit to the National Comedy Hall of Fame Museum in Holiday, Florida just outside Tampa. The stories that have been captured there are quite remarkable. Museums provide a great service to the public, preserving history and providing inspiration to future generations. They cover all manner of human experience from archeology and anthropology to crime, politics and nature. The longer you live the more you run into fascinating niche museums, such as the Spy Museum around the corner from Ford Theater in Washington D.C. 

The National Comedy Hall of Fame Museum addresses another fascinating niche of human experience: Comedy. The president of this enterprise, Tony Belmont, seems to be a walking archive of memories, stories and history and because of his occupation as a rock and roll promoter, his life very early on intersected with the world of comedy and its many legendary performers. 

EN: What prompted you to create a Comedy Hall of Fame? 

Tony Belmont: Here's a little background. In the early days of Rock n' Roll when many acts were on the bill to perform a comedian provided an excellent segway.  (See Attached), It worked well to have a comedian out there long enough to make the transition to the next act. This worked because all the comedian needed was a microphone so you could get him on and off quickly. Also, he could work in front of the curtain which allowed the bands to change over easily behind the curtain.  Most drummers wanted their own cymbals and foot pedal, guitar players wanted their own amp, etc. This created too much dead time during the changeover. 

To avoid the dead time and to keep the energy going I found using the comedian would keep the audience amused while the change-over took place out of view. I used this system effectively for many years. This allowed for concerts to move fluently through the evening and made for a great show! This also moved Rock n' Roll concerts to the next level, production rock. 

Tony Belmont. Photo Gary Firstenberg

It was with this background and exposure that in 1969 I was contacted by the Smithsonian Institute the most prestigious museum in the U.S. They were concerned because many of the great comedians especially the vaudevillians in the 19 century, were coming to the twilight of their lives and there was very little documentation about these people. They felt someone needed to document their stories before it was too late. Once they passed on, the wonderful stories about their lives and acts would be lost except for hearsay.  That part of history for accuracy would be lost forever. So ~~ they contacted me! I thought they were making a mistake and told them I was a rock n' roller but they convinced me I was the one for the mission. ( Let me amend that statement! They doubled the money and I was suddenly very interested in preserving history. I spent the next 4 years traveling the country in-between my Rock n' Roll shows interviewing at their homes over 400 of the greatest comedians of the century!

EN: Impressive!

Tony Belmont: Fast Forward to 1989. By that time I had become friends with many of the great comedians, and I was at the LA Friars Club in a conversation with a few of the members: Jan Murray, Morey Amsterdam, Milton Berle, Steve Allen, and a few others when the topic came up about my past comedy interviews. Morey said, except for those interviews you did no one will remember any of us at this table. There needs to be a place that people can go and read about us in the future. A-----a building---like maybe a museum! That's it!  A national museum about comedy.

I said that's great as I burped on my ginger ale. Are you guys going to do it? At that moment they all looked at me together and like a fifty's singing group in Acapella harmony said, "No-n0-NO, you are!" (The official start date was July 25, 1991.)

So the answer to your question is: I didn't create the National Comedy Hall of Fame Museum, I was sucked in and drafted.

EN: There are so many great eras of comedy. What are some of the different kinds of comedy?

Tony Belmont: There are six major areas of comedy: although in the museum we break that down even further. Musical Comedian (e.g. Victor Borge), Dialect Comedian (e.g. Yakov Smirnoff), Impressionist (e.g. Rich Little), Dialogue (eg. Comedian Norm Crosby/Professor Irwin Corey/.Etc. etc.)

EN: How has comedy changed under the influence of changes in media?

Tony Belmont: Vaudeville, Radio, Television, Stand-up, Theater, Film.  

Example: I interviewed Art Carney at his home years ago. I told him I thought he was a great comedian. He politely corrected me and said, "I'm sorry young man but I'm not a comedian. I'm a comedic Actor. I don't stand in front of a mic and tell jokes. I need a script and then I will make it funny."

Different kinds of comedy are related to the act that the individual puts together. 

Examples:

(a) Prop Comedy:  Carrot Top a relatively new comedian in the past 15 years uses a box full of props next to him and pulls them out one by one. Gallager does a similar act but ends by smashing a watermelon all over the audience.

(b) Professor Backwards murdered words; this was later done by Norm Crosby and others.

(c) Ventriloquists: Jeff Dunham who is very popular now,. But I managed the man who started it all the "Great Senor Wences," the father of ventriloquists. 
(d)  Magician Comedians: Elliott Smith. His magic is first class but it's used as a prop for his comedy. Or Penn & Teller

Comedy has evolved along with media. In radio, there were many sound effects to help create the humor: Jack Benny-Fibber McGee & Molly etc. With television, it was now more visual and required film-type acting skills. Sadly today we are too politically correct and that is difficult in comedy, as comedians like to talk about anything and everything. But now they are handicapped. Don Rickles told me a few years back he could not do the humor he started with years ago, he would get into a lot of trouble if he did. He wasn't talking about Blue Comedy, he was talking about the restrictions that prevent comedians from making fun of people or even themselves?

EN: Over the course of your career you’ve personally gotten to know many of the comedians we’ve become familiar with through television and film. Who were some of these and what were they like when not in the spotlight?

Tony Belmont. Photo Gary Firstenberg.

Tony Belmont: I met everyone that was at the top and still alive in 1970 and on. So I had many favorites. With me as opposed to being on the Johnny Carson Show or Larry King where they need to be entertaining they could relax and be themselves. George Carlin was laid back and a nice guy. Not the crazy guy you saw on stage. Red Skelton was exactly what you expected. He was just like the comedian he portrayed on TV. Henny Youngman Told one-liners every couple of minutes. George Burns was a wealth of knowledge. I said to George. "You've been around a long time George! You must know everything there is to know about show business." He smiled --took a puff on his cigar and said, "Yes -I do. The problem is at my age I can't remember any of it anymore." 

I asked Milton Berle a question and expected a different answer. I told him that I had interviewed his good friend Henny Youngman a year back and Henny told me that you (Milt) stole all of his jokes. I thought he would object to that, but instead, to my amazement he said, "Yes--I did!  But I told them better."

* * * 

National Comedy Hall of Fame

Address: 2435 US-19 Holiday, FL 34691

Email: comedyhall@aol.com

Related Links

National Comedy Hall of Fame Inductees

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12 Commencement Speakers Offer Wisdom to Grads, Plus Sage Advice from Johnny Carson

Photo by Alexander Schimmeck on Unsplash

Commencement addresses are one of the grand traditions of academic life. I have no idea who spoke at our Ohio University graduation in 1974, though I surprisingly do recall something he said. (For the record, President Gerald Ford spoke at Ohio State's commencement that year.)

Our O.U. commencement speaker began by teaching us the French word for backside, behind, bottom, breech, bum, buns, butt, buttocks or rear end.  That word was derrière.  He then explained that it is customary for speakers at gatherings and events such as this to forewarn their audience, about five minutes before they reach it, that they are approaching the end of their speech, and that he would do accordingly. This provides the audience with a measure of relief, knowing that the speech will not go on indefinitely.

After explaining this, he indicate that the end--or derrière--was in sight.

It was a cute way to produce a short speech, and in hind-sight I see now that the end he was referring to was not his speech, but rather the four years of our college experience.

THIS RECOLLECTION came to mind when I saw a book on the new books shelf at our library titled Way More Than Luck. The subtitle says it all. Commencement Speeches on Living with Bravery, Empathy, and Other Existential Skills.

The zippy title and cover design prompted me to pick it up, if for no other reason than to see who the speakers were. Noting that speeches by Tom Wolfe and David Foster Wallace were interred here, I checked it out to see who else was included. What follows are quotes from each of the 12 speakers, with three from Madeleine L'Engle, whose A Wrinkle In Time made an impression on me when I was young.

At the end of your days you will be judged by your gallop, not your stumble.
--Bradley Whitford, Emmy Award-winning actor

Always have a Plan B. And if you can, a Plan C.
--Michael Uslan, Exec. Producer of the Batman/Dark Knight movie franchise

You're going to have to make the crucial judgments yourselves.
--Tom Wolfe, Author

No matter what it cost, I was going to stay on the side of truth.
--Madeleine L'Engle Author

I learned to be willing to be who I was, not the plastic model of who I had thought I wanted to be.
--Madeleine L'Engle

Nothing that's easy is really worth very much.
--Madeleine L'Engle

Life's outcomes, while not entirely random, have a huge amount of luck baked into them
--Michael Lewis, Author

Your education is a dress rehearsal for a life that is yours to lead.
--Nora Ephron, Writer, director & screenwriter

It's Normal to feel lost for a little while.
--Ira Glass, Host of This American Life

The world shifts under our feet. The rules change.
--Barbara Kingsolver, Author

I hope there's mystery and poetry in your life.
--Eileen Myles, Poet, essayist, novelist

The more distracted we become, and the more emphasis we place on speed at the expense of depth, the less likely and able we are to care.
--Jonathan Safran Foer

Two hours spent with somebody less fortunate than you can make a world of difference.
Khaled Hosseini, Author

The most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about.
David Foster Wallace, Author

* * * *

As a parting shot, here's Johnny Carson giving a graduation speech to his audience in 1985. I was looking for a specific anecdote, and it must have been in a different grad speech I saw him give on another occasion. If you wish for some pearls of real wisdom, go elsewhere. Otherwise... 

Heeeere's Johnny.

If you ever become famous and get asked to give a commencement speech, Way More Than Luck might be a useful tool for crafting an idea of where to go. 

I Reek, Therefore I Am

I remember a guy on the Johnny Carson show who was a bus boy who cleaned Richard Nixon's spot while he had dinner with Nikita Kruschev during Kruschev's visit in the late 50's. Nixon had only taken one or two bites out of his sandwich (Nixon had been doing all the talking) and the bus boy felt it was so important he simply could not throw it away. He wrapped it and froze it, and it became the cornerstone of his uneaten sandwiches collection. The guy said he had 3,000 sandwiches from all kinds of famous people, I believe, and was hoping Johnny would let him have an unfinished Carson sandwich.

That story reminds me of how my cousin Gary got started with his baseball card business. It began with a lucky find as we were exiting the 1963 All Star Game. I kicked something with my foot, he bent down and retrieved a baseball that had been signed by all of the National League All Stars. Years later, while a fireman in Ponca City, Oklahoma, Gary Reed made this ball the centerpiece of his baseball cards and collectibles business.

In the same vein, Horace Waterman has the world's largest collection of discarded scraps of paper from the wastebaskets of famous writers. His family has been in the business of sifting through mountains of useless notes and discarded scraps for more than six generations. (His great great grandfather made a fortune in the blackmail business before having to flee England in the late 1800's.)

Here are some famous lines that were discarded before the memorable one's came into being. I pulled them from Waterman's eccentric Facebook pages. He even posted photos of some of them, though many were nearly illegible.

"I weep, therefore I am... in need of a tissue." ~ Rene Descartes

"Something's happening here, what it is ain't exactly clear.

There's a man with a pun over there

A-tellin' me that I'm a-kinda square." ~ Stephen Stills

"Dearest Pookie,

I'm pretty sure e = c x c x m.

What do you think?

Love, Albert" ~ Einstein

"I reek, therefore I am." ~ Rene Descartes

"In this world, nothing is sure but death and Texas." ~ W.

"When written in Chinese, the word crisis is composed of two characters. The one is a liberal and the other a conservative." ~ JFK

"Once you say you're going to settle for second, that's what happens to you in life, I find. But when you try to stretch it to a triple, unless you are really fast, or lucky, they can usually peg you. It's best to let the next hitter try to knock you in." ~ JFK

"When I look at our beer bellies, I understand why women don't mistake us for gods." ~ Nietzsche

"What doesn't kill me makes me.... something, something something. FIND a Catchy something here." ~ Nietzsche

For the record, the first two stories are true. But if you believed any of these quotes were real, than P.T. Barnum's famous observation applies to you.

Have a wonderful day.