He Sure As Herk Was a Comedian

His first big TV break came in 1949 as the star of a musical comedy series called “The Adventures of Homer Herk.”

You know him better as a stand-up comic. He’s Shelley Berman.

Berman passed away today from complications of Alzheimer’s at age 92.

He was from Chicago, the home of WGN-TV, which signed him for the ambitious local show we just mentioned. Maybe it was a little too ambitious. Critics weren’t kind.

The Billboard’s Cy Wagner wrote on April 23, 1949 (the half-hour show debuted March 31 at 7:30 p.m.)

Inaugural program of Chicago’s first musical comedy TV series indicates a bright future for the programs providing the script is improved, direction becomes more exact and the acting loses some of its awkwardness. The original songs and musical background by Gordon Pace showed the greatest promise. Sets and costumes did much to strengthen the dramatic impact.
Program’s basic idea, altho not new, is effective and constitutes a good TV vehicle. Each week, Homer Herk, a dreamer, whose surname should obviously begin with a “J,” projects himself via day dreams into historical situations in which he plays a major role. Initial program was woven around his supposed transition into the character of Marc Antony and featured love scenes with Cleopatra, fights with the real Antony and intrigues with Cleopatra’s adviser, Olympus. Show was hurt by hammy, amateur acting which made situations that were supposed to be comedy just low burlesque. Doras Smith as Cleopatra, Everett Clarke as Antony, Dick Bull as Olympus and Shelley Berman as Herk were all guilty of overplaying their lines.
All of Pace’s music was good, with the toppers being Whatever I Do a solo by Miss Smith and So Compelling, a duet by Miss Smith and Berman.
With the suggested improvements listed, above program could be definite network material.

Variety’s “Mart” was more dismissive, saying “ ‘Adventures’ is apparently beamed at family circle, but misses by a mile. Script and situations are childish for adults, and too oversexed for children...It seems a shame to waste production money on such trivia.”

Berman obviously recovered from the experience. Here’s a feature story outlining his post-Heck career, published in the Bristol Daily Courier on August 12, 1962. He may have been at the peak of his stand-up (or “sit-down”) career at this point, leavened by several comedy records that had done very, very well. Of course, he reached a new generation years later as an actor, playing Larry David’s father on Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Life Writes Shelley Berman’s Acts
Ten Hard Years Aided ‘Overnight Success’
By EDGAR PENTON
Hollywood
Shelley Berman is an honest man.
Really. Ask Shelley.
The famed comedian, he of the anguished, one-sided conversation and the imaginary telephone, says so.
Berman will star — for the first time to an American television audience — in his own one-man, hour-long special, “The Shelley Berman Show” (of course), Tuesday, Aug. 14, on ABC-TV (10-11 p.m., EDT).
“Of course I’m honest,” said Berman. “But in the sense of comedy, truthful would be a better word choice.
“I deal in the common, the truthful experiences—the anguish, the embarrassing moments, the television commercials — the usual.”
Take his famed routine of the slightly gruff father trying to give his 15-year-old daughter a bit of long-overdue advice as she prepares for her first date. You can feel the embarrassment, the agony he goes through, you feel for him, you laugh, but the laughter is a thing borne out of memory. It is something recalled.
“There,” says the only sit down comedian in the world, “is the basis for my performance.”
♦ ♦ ♦
Shelley’s manager and the executive producer of his upcoming special, Harry C. Bell, puts it in this way: “His routines are definitely in the realm of probability and possibility.
“They are made up of things, of bits, of those incidents which have happened to all of us — or at least we’ve heard about it happening to someone else.
“On occasion he’ll toss in his own satirical touches, but mainly it’s truth which makes Berman’s entire act a believable, understandable and very acceptable comic commodity.”
♦ ♦ ♦
The public which came to know Shelley Berman through his many night club appearances and on television shows (including 12 appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show), has always been sure of the overnight success of this master of the monologue.
But others, like Geraldine Page, Betsy Palmer and Tom Bosley, know of the 10 long and hard years he spent working for his overnight success, trying to get a foothold in the theater — all this before he turned to comedy.
♦ ♦ ♦
In 1945, after a Navy discharge, Berman enrolled as a student in Chicago’s Goodman Theatre. He was intent on a dramatic career.
Four years later, after studying his chosen craft and being partially supported by his wife (he married Sarah Herman, an aspiring actress in 1947), actor Berman set out on a cross-country hitch-hiking jaunt in search of theatre work.
“Those were the ‘jinx years’,” recalls Shelley.
There were, among other things, a stint as social director of a Florida resort hotel. But the hotel manager had no liking for the Berman brand of humor and the stay was a short one.
“After Daytona Beach,” said Shelley, “Sarah and I once more made use of our thumbs and headed for Hollywood.”
♦ ♦ ♦

His west coast efforts were sadly rewarded. Shelley was first a speech, voice and diction teacher, then a cab driver, a third assistant manager of a drug store and finally, a ballroom dancing instructor.
Each of these experiences has contributed to the success that is today Shelley Berman. The people he met, argued with, was frustrated by, laughed at and with have found a place in his comedy.
“My thanks,” he says, “are for a vibrant memory. Believe me, without it . . . well, you know what I mean. Drawing from life is vital for my performances.”
Before he came upon his unique comedy style, Berman wanted nothing less than to be an actor— and a good one.
He was still trying when old friend Geraldine Page (a Broadway and film success) badgered him until he agreed to leave California and try summer stock work in New York. He got several parts and things started looking up.
Roles in television plays such as “Suspense,” “Goodyear Playhouse,” and “Philco Playhouse” came his way and odd jobs, his unemployment checks, and his wife’s department store earnings kept the Bermans going.
♦ ♦ ♦
It was at this point, with a bit too much free time on his hands, that Shelley took a try at writing and turned out comedy material for Steve Allen.
The opportunities were slim and Shelley returned to Chicago, joined a group doing improvisations and after a year and a half, decided to try solo improvisations.
For the first time, he used his now-famous high stool and imaginary telephone.
♦ ♦ ♦
It was at this point that Shelley Berman started being “an overnight success.”
“Actually,” Shelley points out in his magnificently rhetorical voice, “this was the beginning. Perhaps the comedy style I had come up with was right—at that time. Who knows what would have happened if I’d tried it a few years before?
“Anyway the engagements came in rapid succession.”
New York’s Blue Angel and then 12 Ed Sullivan shows. In 1957, he “did” a Jack Paar show and the reaction was near staggering. As in the cases of many entertainers, people began the routine of having discovered him. Actually, Berman discovered Berman.
♦ ♦ ♦
He toured the night club circuit to uniformly rave reviews. He set attendance records at The Blue Angel, Mister Kelley’s in Chicago, the hungry i and the Venetian Room in San Francisco, and the Empire Room at New York’s Waldorf Astoria. At the Venetian Room and the Waldorf he broke records held jointly by Harry Belafonte and Lena Horne.
“Everything was finally coming Shelley’s way,” Harry Bell recalled, “but the big break came when Shelley cut his album, ‘Inside Shelley Berman.’
It sold enough to become the first non-musical album to get the Gold Record. His next two albums —‘Outside Shelley Berman’ and ‘The Edge of Shelley Berman’ — were also Gold Record best-sellers.
♦ ♦ ♦
“In fact, Shelley’s latest, ‘Shelley Berman—A Personal Appearance,’ looks like it’ll match the sales of the other three.
“Shelley’s record sales” said Bell, “actually opened the record field for almost all comedians and it also opened the concert stage— those one-man shows—to comedy.”
Once Berman was established as a comedy star, that not-too-deeply-hidden desire to act came forth again. He was critically praised for his dramatic efforts in Chicago (in “The Mirror and the Eagle” in which he played 22 different roles, and as the devil in “Damn Yankees”), in Boston and Los Angeles (“Where’s Charley?” and “Guys and Dolls”), and for his first starring Broadway role in the musical play, “A Family Affair.”
Up to the week that Berman presents his ABC-TV special, his famed monologues, hilarious pantomime and anguished mannerisms will be “in work” about the country. In fact, the night after he finishes his first Las Vegas appearance, his first TV show will be on. Not Berman-type magic; just tape.
♦ ♦ ♦

“The Shelley Berman Show” will contain a series of monologues, a couple of sketches utilizing a young boy and, according to Bell, there’ll be some familiar material used but “there’ll also be some striking new material.”
And it is Shelley Berman’s material—never blue and never sick —plus his particular style of presentation which prompted a question which has teen asked of him many times.
What about the difference in the kind of comedy you use in clubs and on television?
“I don’t believe,” said Shelley, relishing the question because his ideas on his comedy profession are indeed strong, “that any humor is designed or actually intended for any particular type of audience. “In my case, I have found that audiences are pretty much the same be they in the intimate surroundings of a Blue Angel-type club, the huge show cases such as the 6,000-seat Purdue University Field House Theatre or the unseen millions who listen and catch on a national television show.
“I have always tried to base my material on the things that happen to the average person. I’m not concerned with sickness, deformity, satire on government and the like.
“Therefore, if I am successful, an audience, whether it is watching me on television or in a small club, will relate to my material.
“All they expect — and rightly— is that the material, the content, the presentation and the surroundings be such that they can enjoy themselves.
♦ ♦ ♦
“And it really makes no difference whether they’re laughing at me, at themselves or with me.
“In my special show, where I will have the luxury of a big stage, I will have the opportunity to do things I have never been able to attempt in clubs or on my recordings, only because of the physical limitations.”

One trivia note: the voice of Fibber Fox on the Yakky Doodle cartoons belonged to the late Daws Butler, who said it was a takeoff on Berman’s. I still can’t hear the resemblance, but I’m not going to disagree with Daws.

You can read more about Shelley Berman on his web site.