Mort Sahl, who redefined standup comedy by tackling political and social issues, dies at 94

The New York Times

Sahl, who died Tuesday, revolutionized comedy in the 1950s by confronting "Eisenhower-era cultural complacency with acid stage monologues, delivering biting social commentary in the guise of a stand-up comedian and thus changing the nature of both stand-up comedy and social commentary," writes Bruce Weber in Sahl's New York Times obituary. Sahl paved the way for comedians including Dick Gregory, Lenny Bruce, Woody Allen, George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Jonathan Winters and Joan Rivers. He also influenced everybody from Bill Maher to Rush Limbaugh to Jon Stewart, Dick Cavett and Don Imus. "In December 1953, when Mr. Sahl first took the stage at the hungry i   — the hip nightclub in San Francisco that he helped make hip, where he would routinely be introduced as 'the next president of the United States' — American comedy was largely defined by an unadventurous joke-book mentality," says Weber. "Bob Hope, Milton Berle and Henny Youngman may have been indisputably funny, but the rimshot gag was the prevailing form, the punch line was king, and mother-in-law insults were legion. It was humor for a self-satisfied postwar society. “Nobody saw Mort Sahl coming,” Gerald Nachman wrote in Seriously Funny, his 2003 book on comedy in the 1950s and 1960s. “When he arrived, the revolution had not yet begun. Sahl was the revolution.” Sahl was a regular on TV throughout the 1950s and 1960s, appearing on The Tonight Show, The Ed Sullivan Show, The Joey Bishop Show, The Dick Cavett Show and even The Hollywood Squares. Sahl briefly guest-hosted The Tonight Show in 1962 in the months before Johnny Carson took over as host. ALSO: Laraine Newman, Harry Shearer, Richard Lewis and more pay tribute to Mort Sahl.