The Thief of Bad Gags

How long did Milton Berle have a reputation of stealing everyone else’s material?

Years before he went into television.

Back in the days when Ed Sullivan was a Broadway columnist, he wrote about it. Here’s a chunk of his New York Daily News column of August 19, 1932.

Berlesque
HE swears it's true, and I have ever found young Milton Berle to be an honorable and truthful man, so we will run it here and let you be the judge.
"At 3 o'clock, yesterday morning," says Milt, "I was passing the Palace. Right ahead of me a drunk was staggering along. At 46th St. he stopped at a letter box, and he stopped so suddenly that I bumped into him. 'Give me a penny, buddy,' he mumbled.
"I'd just been paid at the Capitol, so I gave him a penny. Deliberately he dropped it into the letter box. As the penny dropped out of sight, he looked at the hands of the Paramount clock, bleary-eyed, and squawked: 'How d'you like that? I lost twelve pounds since I weighed myself here last night.'"
About Mister Berle
ADVERTISING experts might be interested in studying the strange case of Milton Berle. His experience on Broadway, since he made his debut not long ago as a vaudeville comedian, apparently proves that there is no such thing as bad advertising. The old gag, "Say any thing at all about me so long as you spell my name right, is proved to be a fact.
As a matter of record, Berle owes his success, like the first Ford car, to the ridicule which other comedians have directed at him. They've panned him so much and kept his name so persistently in the limelight, that the youngster can thank his attackers for making him. Chief complaint against Berle has been that he has "stolen" material from other comedians. He has been described as a composite picture of Jackie Osterman, Ted Healy, Ken Murray, Bert Lahr and Jack Benny.
The witty Osterman expressed this best when the promoter of a certain benefit asked Osterman to bring along a lot of acts. "I could bring five comedians," cracked Osterman, "but Berle is playing at the Capitol."
Every comedian in town has coined gags about Berle, none of them complimentary, but all serving the one definite purpose of keeping his name alive. As a result, the youngster is going along great. His ingratiating personality appeals to the audiences and, right now, he's sitting pretty with an Earl Carroll contract for the next "Vanities."
Broadway, which is violent in its likes and dislikes, has been torn asunder in attempting to determine whether this kid is a great comedian or a flash in the pan. In the meantime, and because of all the excitement, the youngster is working every week while the layoffs stand in front of the Palace and coin jokes about him.

Sullivan’s story was hardly a revelation. In 1948, columnist Jack O’Brian wrote about an ad placed by Irving Brecher in Variety during the Depression when the future screenwriter was still an usher: “Berle-proof gags for sale—so bad, even Milton Berle won’t steal them.” Berle ended up not stealing them. Instead, he hired Brecher to write for him.

It seems odd there would be any debate today about whether Berle would be a flash-in-the-pan. But who was to know in 1932 that the alignment of the stars in the entertainment universe in 1948 would shoot Berle to huge popularity. He had been signed by Texaco for a radio show that it moved over to television. Networks were finally operating in prime time Monday through Friday, though the majority of the few TV stations then were in the eastern US. Berle’s video brashness captured the growing audience.

Let’s jump almost another 50 years. It’s November 6, 1996.

‘There's Only One Milton Berle’
So say his admirers in a gag-filled tribute to the TV pioneer
By Frazier Moore
Of the Associated Press
NEW YORK—MILTON Berle faces a room full of people in tuxes and gowns. He thanks them for coming and for bestowing on him this, his zillionth honor. Then he recalls that he was in this very Manhattan banquet room a year ago.
"But not to entertain," he says, teeth bared in his rabbity grin. "It was for a seminar. A seminar on premature ejaculation. I left early."
At age 88, Milton Berle just won't quit. In his astringent, blaring voice, he goes on to recount an exchange between "two guys over 90," one of whom is recently remarried. No, the man admits, his bride is hardly a looker, she can't cook and she's none too great in the bedroom.
"So why did you marry her?"
"Because she drives at night!"
With some 20 minutes of such gags and shtick did Berle return the favor, as the New York chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences recently gave "Mr. Television" its first Lifetime Achievement Award.
Attendees, each of whom had paid several hundred dollars to pay homage, heard Berle lionized by New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, former "Golden Girl" Bea Arthur, even-older-than-Berle funnyman Henny Youngman and who-knew-he-was-funny Hugh Downs, who made special mention of Berle's generosity.
"Earlier this year, I had surgery for double-knee replacements," Downs said. "Milton Berle was my donor."
Then veteran comic Joey Adams weighed in.
"There's only one Milton Berle," he declared. "I found that out by looking in the telephone directory."
But dust from ancient jokes like that had no time to settle. There was too much to unearth from Berle's long career.
He played an infant in silent films and modeled as the Buster Brown Shoes kid. He headlined in nightclubs, made a few films and had several radio series.

But the real reason for this Emmy gala, the real reason for Berle's unshakeable status as a legend and a pioneer, came down to a pivotal phase of his hamsmanship that began long ago, when Harry Truman was president, but which barely lasted into Dwight Eisenhower's second term.
These days, "Mad About You" and "Something So Right" occupy NBC's 7-to-8-p.m. Tuesday slot, just as lots of shows have lighted there in seasons past. But no one has outright owned that TV hour, or any other, like Berle, who on Sept. 21, 1948, became host of the "Texaco Star Theater." And an instant sensation. Berle brought with him the boisterous, anything-for-a-laugh tradition his vaudeville years had taught him. Then he delivered it to the public en masse, as if by magic, on their television screens.
Maybe vaudeville was dead, but "vaudeo" was born.
Successful? Early on, about three-quarters of all TVs were tuned to Uncle Miltie on Tuesday nights. By comparison, last week's top-rated series, "E.R.," won about 16 percent.
Granted, the total number of TVs was minuscule in those days. There were only a half-million when Berle went on the air; today, the number of homes with at least one TV totals 97 million.
But if Berle's reach seems picayune by today's standards, his impact helps account for why TV is everywhere today. It was Berle who lit the fuse. Back then, he guaranteed viewers something irresistible to watch, and gave everyone who didn't own a TV a powerful incentive to buy one (by 1951, when his show's popularity crested, almost one in every four homes had acquired a set).
Meanwhile, his riotous acceptance demonstrated to other, more chary entertainers that TV was the Promised Land after all.
"From Burns to Benny to Gleason, they asked me at first, 'What are you doing this for?' " Berle tells a reporter.
"I said, 'Well, we gotta go with the progress.' I'm proud of having the guts, or whatya call chutzpah, to be the first one to jump into TV and take a shot." But it's more than that and always will be, which is why Milton Berle is worth remembering (as if he would ever let us forget).
It's why he's Mr. Television. Berle does nothing less than help explain TV for all of us who watch it.
He helps explain the viewer in us to ourselves.

Milton Berle may have been adept at stealing gags, but he didn’t steal fame. He created it on his own.