Transgressive Comedy
Jean Carroll, trailblazing Jewish comedienne, was born Celine Zeigman in Paris on Jan. 7, 1911, into a struggling Jewish family making its way across Europe to the golden land of America. Recollecting her less-than-happy childhood, she later said that a memory of her father flinging his dinner at her mother made her decide never to be beholden to a man. Celine, spunky and determined, snagged several $5 prizes as a child dancer in amateur nights at theaters in New York and then moved into vaudeville, where her pretty face and figure were definite assets. She married fellow performer Buddy Howe, and they partnered in a dance act. When he went into the Army during World War II, she was forced to go solo. She began addressing comments to audiences and “just got better and better” at it, her daughter, Helen Tunick, told the Washington Post. Thus Jean Carroll, trailblazing Jewish comedienne, was born.
Carroll was known for her rapid-fire delivery, and for trespassing into the tough, traditionally male-dominated world of stand-up comedy. According to numerous comedy/entertainment websites, wearing her trademark cocktail dress and mink coat, she regaled audiences with stories of her husband, kids and her everyday life.
“People are never satisfied,” she would say. Lawyers wanted to be doctors. “Single men wish they were married. Married men wish they were dead.” Or she would riff on her own married life: “Tonight, you are really going to enjoy yourself,” she quoted her husband as saying. “Why?” she shot back. “You leaving me?”
Sixty years ago, this was pretty transgressive stuff. Funny women either sacrificed any claim to being sexually attractive (think Phyllis Diller and Totie Fields) or they undermined their own power and authority by acting like total flakes (think Lucille Ball). Or else they just played straight to the funny guys, like Gracie Allen. But Carroll sidestepped both the scatterbrained and the homely shtick, and instead forged her own path with a persona that was funny, sexy, sassy and smart.
Working on what daughter Tunick called “a dinky, almostimpossible- to-use portable typewriter” in the family apartment, Carroll went into semi-seclusion to write her own new material whenever she needed it. And Tunick recalls the matter-of-fact way her mother approached her professional life: “She would finish cleaning the house, and then take her gown and shopping bag with her shoes and makeup and go to work.” In the 1950s, Carroll made more than 20 appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show; Sullivan had signed her for the unprecedented fee of $10,000 per show. In 1953 and 1954 she was the star of “Take It From Me,” also called “The Jean Carroll Show.” And Carroll’s legacy still resonates today. In her recent Off- Broadway production “The J.A.P. Show: The Jewish American Princesses of Comedy,” stand-up comic Cory Kahaney channeled her predecessors from the 1940s and 1950s; Jean Carroll was in the line-up.
Jean Carroll died on January 1, 2010, five days shy of her 99th birthday. Even near the end of her life, her sharp wit didn’t desert her. Watching political campaign spots on television, she would look at the screen and say, “I’m Jean Carroll, and I approve this message.”
