The comic arts II; Chuck McCann

Ladies and Gentlemen this is Alan Grier presenting another comic artist close up. I'm in no hurry. I think you have a warden in the. Michigan State University radio presents the comic arts and essay and sound on the humor of our times featuring the comic the humorist the joke writer the clown the Dauntless individuals who work in the world of comedy. It is proverbial that practice makes perfect and most comedians hold the firm conviction This is especially true in the realm of comedy not only practice but long and thorough exposure and experimentation are fundamental requirements. Chuck McCann a television comic well-known in the New York City area has been working his way steadily along towards the national spotlight

and would like to do a TV series eventually but only when he is sure that he has absorbed enough of the seasoning and experience which the art of comedy demands. The one thing that I'm in no hurry. A lot of people a lot of young comedians are going to have to make it overnight it's a long road and I think the fun of anything in life that you love to do is doing it and I did it to be an open eyed blast from the past and I'd much rather take the long road and join and say to my guard and develop properly and then when I ran I had to stay there. I think going Jabot is the most important thing in this business. Overnight Success is no. A promising comedy performers have scored a hit with one record one particular

only to discover they did not have the depth and breadth of experience to maintain their success. Chuck McCann has a comment on how this occurrence may affect ambitious young comedians. Oh I think maybe he dries them into maybe learning a lesson and maybe take the slow road back which I think is the most important one I think. You must first learn to trade in anything you do want to be in auto mechanics or or comedy you first must learn a trade and and develop and you see have a fellow by the name of Jack Benny. I mean Jack Benny him today and Jack Benny 30 years ago you know he's mellowed. It's beautiful to see Jack Benny and George Burns work because after all of these years they've mellowed to a point where they just they're just perfect now and I think that's true with any comedian or any performer or any car mechanic. I think after the years

of you know working you would naturally become you know you're on top of it more you know. Going into the war and the fact that the people that do make it overnight they don't have the firepower behind them to back up what little success they had with one piece of business. In other words years ago you could go into broad evolve and you could tour 365 days a year and not even get Christmas off. You know when just me up solid doing the same five or six minutes you know and that would be almost your whole life. SMITH And then how was the great vaudeville team they could do that. Dr Cronkite routine their whole live television and you go out every week or every day out of their material. So that's why it's important for a young comic not to not to try and make it home tonight because you have got to have that material behind him to back him self up rather than just be a

flash in the pan. Don't look for that Ed Sullivan break or the or Johnny Carson show or whatever just to make it on one piece of business you've got a lot of comics make that big mistake and I think I can impress on my my buddies who were trying to make additions for the Carson show and get on it. I can't impress upon them. And that it's important that they have a backlog of material to problem through it's like a dump it in the burrow you've you know you've got a problem with other material even stronger because you have to build to a point. It's very important that you have this backlog of stuff you know ready to go. And for many years the nightclub field provided a major training ground for young comics. But with the growth of television changing entertainment patterns reduced the number of breaking opportunities and even generated different basic approaches to comedy clubs are disappearing there.

I think one of the reasons why I would you know a comedian out there tends to go to visual I would I would almost encourage you know I definitely encourage him. The spoken comedian the Bob Hopes and all of ours be around the cause. You know Johnny Carson there's definitely room for it but I think there's room today for a lot of fight comedy and not slapstick. That term slapstick goes kind of annoyed me so much the term derived from the motion pictures were my everything. When the film was first thought of they would take these clapboards and they would slap them together they give us you know to the denote the starting of the scene. And then the sound would be picked up on the microphone so they could sync it up that that that term is not. I have I there's so many variations on the term slapstick denotes many many different types of Psychometry

done well anything really done well and that is funny. Yeah whether it be a mugger take a robot in front of his day as a band if it's done well and done tastefully and done properly. It's funny comedy. You can do the same not going to take it the wrong time or in a bad time and it can be bad taste and not be funny. And as I did very important all hinges on timing the performer must follow the trends in the business. Learn to adapt to whatever outlets offer him work even if this means pulling up stakes to move with the tide of the times. Just like a man contemplates the likely future directions in his profession with clubs the club started to full night clubs closed down and the before Weeks started to die out and you've got mostly split weeks and weekend and then Saturday night and a

lot of comics picked up and went out to California friend right. And it's just amazing now the writing is on the wall you can see where the business is going it's mostly in motion pictures. Good motion pictures for television or motion or motion pictures for the theater and television and even TV and New York City is working its way slowly but surely out of the codes. There probably will be the television capital of the world. I think one day and so this is where we're all kind of aimed for and you're good. It would have been it was for visual comedy have been opened by television and the medium has also presented some new problems. Chuck got his comedy teeth in TV that reflects non want to aspect of the job. The problem of timing and audience response. Well I think the media needs some sort of went out into even a bit of doctor's own

group and it's important to hear those laps at home. They're very hard to work in a vacuum although we do say we don't have an audience every day and we rely on the maps that we get from the crew more or less the kind of doesn't pay for ourselves and very hard to make brownies at a big steel square machine with the lenses on it you know. After a while I think you you kind of feel it you know when about to pour hours and when you don't you develop the timing for that. In fact so much so that it's rather hard for me to go out and work in front of an audience now I'm very nervous I get very very nervous and I stomach turns flip flops when I was doing the movement. Still I did a Gunga Din piece in The Orphan Annie and Jackie Gleason and I would stand backstage and there would be no end. There would be about the coolest guy in the world you know. Nothing phases there were. And he's just a great guy and we become very close friends

and need to back down and go into that Eric's looking at me basin up and down climbing ladders and everything I'll just drive you know to kind of calm myself down. I think once the light goes on you know everything else is forgotten but I am the original nervous cat when it comes. I've never felt even my local shows come the clock reaching you know five minutes prior to the show now I'm on one foot and then the other. Like everyone else the comic must work in his contemporary environment. Does the tension and trouble of our times affect the performers who work for laughs. I think sometimes women help help a comedian when the times are tense I think we laugh the most. We have a great country and we have a tendency to laugh at our own foibles and our own mistakes and that's a great a healthy attitude.

And I'll just give you one example. I did a record album One evening a comedy album and we walked into the recording studio and President Kennedy was to make a very important speech on the missiles in Cuba and the orbital formation in the album went out to the bar in the in the hotel in the recording studio was that you waited and we were all stood around the TVs that we got the shock of our lives it looked like this was the beginning of a you know a third world war and Russia didn't back down and pull the missiles out of Cuba. Well this was a kind of a. Pretty terrifying No. To go into a studio and do a comedy show in front of 300 400 people. But we did that and I don't know it was nervous tension a lot but the audience laughed so hard

that we had to really take the first question of the the album over again and then the record turned out to be the largest selling record album in the history of records and I was born made its first family album. I played because I want to try to I think that's a pretty good example. You know comedy is going to be here as long as somebody to do it. And as long as there's somebody you know laugh at it immediately and as long as comedians get together the talk will revolve around the ever fascinating and ageless art of the clown which is something like the fountain of youth. You never quite managed to pin it down and want a comedian Jackie Mason and Bobby Darin and a horrible crop of us. The number on all those people came up along the Broadway route you know walking around of the different agencies making the rounds. Ragland and Bob and Mervyn had I mean you know just sitting around talking comedy and talking you know working our way up and everybody getting to congregate at this.

There's one particular drug stores call hansoms and they would talk comedy and. It wasn't until I met Stan Laurel that I think he brought up the whole thing in one bag when he said to me he would talk you could you talk comedy when you're blue in the face. And I would imitate them about my ability right now to kind of take you back to that I'm sure you know you should you can sit back and talk about comedy and bad he said but believe me he said comedy is like a fine watch if you're tempted to pop big cap and you may never be able to put it back together yet. And it's so true. It's an intangible thing you can't touch if you can't lay your hands on it you can say this is a positive. Funny thing you do I do this you never know. And that's what makes it so much. So I like

explored territory. John McCann typifies the coming generation of comedians who journey in this unexplored realm is aware of his heritage and humor. From the Laurel and Hardy era down to the present day he has learned his lessons well and has adaptability to the demands of this dynamic and difficult. And he clearly understands that the comic who works well through his formative years may become tomorrow's top banana. Portions of this program were pre recorded for that commie guard. The commie guard series with our live wire is produced by Michigan State University Radio in cooperation with the humor societies of America. Program consultant George Q. Lewis the music by Jerry Tillman. Your announcer can be chartered. For.

This program was distributed by the national educational radio network.