100 Years of Laughter: American Comedy in the Twentieth Century Garry Berman 9798216200697

A comprehensive look at how comedy evolved across mediums throughout the twentieth century.

Americans in the past century have laughed in good times and bad, throughout social, economic, and political upheaval, Prohibition, the Great Depression, two World Wars, the Cold War, and all that has followed. Comedians have always been present to help us find relief through laughter as the uncertainty of world events threatens to disrupt our collective state of well-being.

100 Years of Laughter is a celebration of American comedy throughout the entire 20th century, revisiting how audiences enjoyed comedy by its greatest practitioners in vaudeville, radio, film (silent and sound), television, and other outlets. Berman follows the history and evolution from vaudeville to the dawn of the 21st century and new millennium, looking at popular comedians from Charlie Chaplin to Lucille Ball to Jerry Seinfeld and more. The narrative is enhanced with contemporaneous accounts, reviews, and comments by critics and observers, as well as with numerous insights by the comedians themselves, from each era of comedy starting with the 1900s.

Readers will discover many of comedy's most brilliant artists of the 20th century's earlier decades, as well as recall those who may have faded from public attention only a generation or two ago. Berman also covers often-overlooked aspects of comedy history from how comedians needed to adapt their skills to advances in technology, such as silent films to "talkies" and radio comedy to the demands of television, to how the comedy world responded to major tragedies such as the Pearl Harbor attack, the JFK assassination, and 9/11, and eventually rebounded over time. Finally, the book explores topics within comedy such as the most popular gags, comedy couples, the rise of sitcoms and the staying power of Saturday Night Live.