Al Kelly

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Al Kelly
Born
Abraham Kalish

December 18, 1896
Kreva, Russian Empire (now Belarus)
DiedSeptember 7, 1966 (aged 69)
New York City, U.S.
OccupationComedian
Known forDouble-talk routines

Al Kelly (December 18, 1896,[nb 1][1] – September 7, 1966) was an American vaudeville comedian specializing in double-talk.[1] From the 1930s he was working as a stooge (comic foil) for Broadway headliner Willie Howard.

When raconteur Joey Adams broke Willie Howard's record as the longest-running entertainer at Lou Walters's Latin Quarter nightclub, Howard's old friend Al Kelly congratulated Adams in double-talk: "I want to thank Joey Adams for the many plyds he grand since the days of Willie Howard and to Lou Walters for the cravinating many tribnitz like Flo Ziegfeld all of which have been draimen, and I mean it."[2]

Biography

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Kelly was born Abraham Kalish in Kreva, Russian Empire (now Belarus), the eldest of six children of Max and Gelle (Mary) Kalish. The family immigrated to the United States in 1906. His younger siblings were Benjamin, Isidore, Israel, Fannie, and Annie. His parents both worked in the garment industry.[3]

Kelly began his show-business career in 1914, in an act called Nine Crazy Kids, then started performing comic monologues.[1] Early in his career, he performed largely in the Borscht Belt.[4] When he was performing this stand-up comedy in the 1930s, he fluffed a joke so that it came out as nonsense: this scrambled dialogue got a good laugh so he made it the focus of his act.[1]

When Willie Howard was signed by Educational Pictures to film a series of two-reel comedies, Al Kelly appeared in one of them (Playboy Number One, 1937). In 1941 Howard was filming comedy routines for the Soundies movie jukeboxes, and Kelly worked opposite Howard there as well (Comes the Revolution, 1941).[5]

Kelly was well known among show-business professionals as a double-talk artist,[1] and they employed Kelly to do his fractured-English specialty on their TV programs, including Milton Berle's Texaco Star Theater, The Ed Sullivan Show, The Steve Allen Show, The Ernie Kovacs Show, The Jackie Gleason Show, The Dinah Shore Chevy Show, The Eddie Fisher Show, The Jack Paar Program, Candid Camera, The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson, and The Soupy Sales Show. He was also an actor in supporting roles, as in the children's TV series Mack & Myer for Hire.

Kelly died at age 69[nb 1] in the early hours of September 7, 1966, of a heart attack[4] while sitting in the audience in the dining room at one of his favorite venues, The Friars' Club, in New York City, during a roast. On September 8, 1966, a crowded memorial service was conducted at Riverside Memorial Chapel (Amsterdam Avenue and 76th Street), New York City.

Legacy

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  • Al Kelly was referenced by Ben Katchor in a Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer strip as "Noel Kapish, the famous double-talk artist of the 1950s and 1960s"[6] (a play on both "Kalish" and "capeesh?").
  • Al Kelly was featured by Drew Friedman in his book Old Jewish Comedians (2006), "a collection of portraits of famous and forgotten Jewish comics of film and TV in their old age".
  • Al Kelly was described by Marx Brothers screenwriter Irving Brecher in 2006: "Al did double talk. That was his style. He spoke gibberish in vaudeville sketches [...] most comedians couldn't do it like Al Kelly could. He was unique."[7]

Further reading

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Books

  • Al Kelly's Double Life, "Unscrambled by" Alexander Rose (biographer[nb 2]), Frederick Fell Publishers, Inc., 1966. (OCLC 1523679) (GBOOK KTGbGQAACAAJ)

Notices

  • "Al Kelly", in Billy H. Doyle (ed. Anthony Slide), The Ultimate Directory of Silent and Sound Era Performers: A Necrology of Actors and Actresses, Scarecrow Press, 1999, p. 296.
  • "Kelly, Al V.", in Eugene Michael Vazzana, Silent Film Necrology (2nd ed.), McFarland, 2001, p. 280.
  • "Al Kelly", in Frank Cullen, Vaudeville, Old & New: An Encyclopedia of Variety Performers in America, Vol. 1, Routledge, 2007, p. 621.

Articles

  • "Al Kelly Is Dead; Famed Comedian; Double-Talk Expert Was in Show Business 52 Years", in The New York Times, September 7, 1966.
  • "Al Kelly Funeral Today", in The New York Times, September 8, 1966.
  • "Show Business Figures Hear Al Kelly Eulogized", in The New York Times, September 9, 1966.
  • "Al Kelly, Double-Talking Comic Dies in N.Y. at 67;[nb 1] Overflow Crowd at Rites", in Variety, September 14, 1966.

Notes

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  1. ^ a b c Kelly's birthdate was eventually found to be in 1896; before that, he was believed to be born in 1899 (it is common in the show-biz to bill oneself younger), hence the "1899" found in older reference books, and titles such as "Dies in N.Y. at 67" in newspapers (he actually died at 69).
  2. ^ Alexander Rose doesn't seem to be a pen name for Kelly: this person has many other books in the 1940s-1960s listed at WorldCat.

References

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  1. ^ a b c d e Vaudeville, Old & New: An Encyclopedia of Variety Performers in America, vol. 1, Routledge, 2007, p. 621, ISBN 978-0-415-93853-2, ... Al Kelly was synonymous with double-talk.
  2. ^ Variety, August 24, 1955, p. 61.
  3. ^ New York, U.S., State and Federal Naturalization Records, 1794–1943
  4. ^ a b "Al Kelly Is Dead; Famed Comedian; Double-Talk Expert Was in Show Business 52 Years", in The New York Times, September 7, 1966, first paragraph of pay article: "Al Kelly, double-talking comedian, died early this morning after suffering a heart attack at the Friars Club. He was pronounced dead on arrival at Roosevelt Hospital."
  5. ^ Scott MacGillivray and Ted Okuda, The Soundies Book, iUniverse, 2007, p. 127. ISBN 978-0-595-42060-5
  6. ^ Ben Katchor, "The Double-Talk Artist", collected in Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer: Stories, 1996, ISBN 0-316-48294-3, panel 1, p. 62.
  7. ^ "Books: Shmegegis of old, shmegegis of gold", by Hank Rosenfeld (interviewing Irving Brecher about Drew Friedman's book Old Jewish Comedians), in The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, December 14, 2006:
    "
    [Hank Rosenfeld:] -- Abraham Kalish?
    [Irving Brecher:] "Al Kelly. Al did double talk. That was his style. He spoke gibberish in vaudeville sketches and all the people would try to be polite.
    [Hank Rosenfeld:] -- While he mocked them?
    [Irving Brecher:] "No, not mocking them. The audience would laugh. But people in the real world he dealt with would be taken in."
    [Hank Rosenfeld:] -- Sounds like what Borat does!
    [Irving Brecher:] "Haven't seen it. But most comedians couldn't do it like Al Kelly could. He was unique."
    "
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