"Show Business Changed In The Sixties"

Other stuff did too, but I am choosing my targets, and what’s more important than show biz?

(Note  Before I Go “Trivial”:  Easy Rider – the truckers, blasting the hippies – and “Archie Bunker”, the once “Roosevelt Democrat” who conspicuously “changed sides” – symptoms of the Sixties, and its continuing (to this day) cultural backlash.  Now, back where I light-weightedly belong.)

There was a big change in show business during the Sixties, and I am not talking about nudity in American movies, though that was interesting as well. 

Let’s start with music, before progressing to stuff I know something about.

Bing Crosby in the Thirties.  Frank Sinatra in the Forties.  Elvis Presley in the Fifties.

Superstar singers.

None of them ever wrote anything.

Come the Sixties…

Bob Dylan.  The Beatles.  (After some “cover” efforts to help them get started.)  Everyone else.  You gettin’ the picture?  Even erstwhile songwriters stepped up to the microphone.   See:  Carole King – Tapestry.  (Which I played in my car for thirty-five years.)

Sure, James Taylor – early Seventies, no era ending exactly on time – sang Carole’s “You’ve Got A Friend”, but that was one singer-songwriter singing another singer-songwriter’s song.  Unlike earlier eras, no unknown “tunesmith” sat in the Brill Building, crankin’ ‘em out.  True, there were The Supremes and other Motown sensations, but for the most part, the cultural zeitgeist was moving towards:

“I write my own songs.”  (Though Manilow’s “I Write The Songs” was written by somebody else.)

From then on – with some noteworthy exceptions – music involved maximum self-expression, not just distinguishing, albeit brilliant distinguishing, musical “styling.”  (See:  Crosby, Sinatra, Nat “King” Cole, Doris Day.)

Okay, enough about music.

Starting with Lenny Bruce in the late Fifties – the seminal Sixties spilling forwards and backwards – stand-up comedy contained challenging insights, rather than “Just for laughs.”

That’s how it once entirely was:

“Make ‘em laugh!  Make ‘em laugh!  Make ‘em laugh!”

Or, as the songwriter self-plagiarized, “doubling up” on the same idea:

“Be a clown!  Be a clown!  Be a clown!”

Back then, all comedians purchased material, generally, we do not know from whom.  Sadly, credit for the genius “Who’s on First?” routine goes to Abbott and Costello, rather than some talented “No-name” (or talented “No-names”, working as a team), tickled by the odd nicknames of ballplayers.

Neither comedians of yore nor their enthralled audiences required “authenticity in the content.”  One-time “King of Comedy” Ed Wynn was branded “The Perfect Fool”, though he was unlikely a fool in actual life.  Jack Benny’s “persona” was cheap, but not Jack Benny himself.  Dummy “Charlie McCarthy” could not actually speak. 

People accepted those glaring dichotomies, including the performers, who may have proclaimed (because it was true).

“I’m ‘me’ on my own time.  Onstage, I’m ‘Whatever gets laughs’.”

(Note Again:  The previous concept was not totally dismissed.  Satirist Lewis Black learned he got his biggest laughs when “fuming”, making him somewhat of a “hybrid”, offering serious perspectives, wrapped in a fulminating torpedo.)

The self-written material was not always… wait.  Yes, it was.

What I started to say is that not all self-written material was of the bomb-throwing  (Lenny Bruce, Dick Gregory, Mort Saul) variety.  Which is true.  However, it inevitably spoke to the “evolving culture” and how it affected the performer. 

Shelley Berman, telling his Dad he was trading “conformity” for a career as an actor.  “Buttoned Down” Bob Newhart, the frustrated “Company Man.”  “Nichols and May”, and the uncertain mores of dating.

Everything reflected the turbulent times.  It was not just what they were talking about.  But the fact that they were talking about it at all. 

Today’s comedy, demanding “pushing the envelope”, well…

Some of it’s too painful for me, some, lurid confessions I was not desperate to hear.

What can I tell you?

Changing times – changing content.

Fueled by the approach, pioneered in the Sixties:

You tell people the truth.

And you hope that they laugh.