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JACKIE MASON GOES LEGIT

felt lying to make him happy was more important than to tell him the truth. Truth, when can destroy somebody, is very sick."

Accordingly, he tiptoed out of the rabbinate and into show business very gingerly, starting out as a social director. But his lightning with quickly got the best of him, and he was soon a comic headliner across the nation – from the Borscht Belt To New York's Blue Angel to Vegas and just about every key club in between. TV increased his following even more, up to a point – the point being 1964 when Ed Sullivan called him on the carpet for what Sullivan misconstrued as an obscene gesture on camera. A year later Sullivan apologized and invited him back on the show. "So I dropped my lawsuit, and I went on the air with him," says Mason. "Nobody remembers I came back. He made a whole speech apologizing to me, and nobody remembers it."

Such is the fickle finger of fate. For the 23 years since, Mason toiled profitably on the fringe of the Big Time, but without much soul-stirring success. "My career was on a precipice of nothingness. It was going nowhere. I was still on the same general level of semi-stardom." But he was never without a celebrity cheering section – Mel Brooks, Neil Simon, Milton Berle, Carl Reiner, Steve Allen, Larry Gelbart, et al – rah-rahing from ringside. "They were always telling me, 'You should have been the biggest.' Every time I heard 'You should have been,' I thought I must be doing something wrong. I couldn't figure out how to translate this cult thing I had within the industry into popular terms."

Finally, when he saw Dick Shawn's one-man show in L.A., a light bulb went on in his head. Jyll Rosenfeld, produced The World According to Me! The West Coast critics led the opening round of hosannas, followed by more print-praise from selected Caesars (Trumpeted George Burns: "my father was a mason too, but he wasn't

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funny. Jackie is hilarious."). The acclaim did the trick, and the crowds kept coming to Mason's World for a full six months.

Then came (from Emmy-winning producer Nick Vanoff) the invitation to Broadway. Instantly, Mason's palms started sweating. "I cautioned him against it because I didn't think I could duplicate the L.A. success on Broadway. Here, critics are much harsher and the anti-Borscht Circuit attitude is very well-established. Critics never idolize guys like Buddy Hackett or Red Buttons. They idolize Woody Allen or Dick Cavett. They only see a guy with a Jewish accent telling dirty jokes. Even though I don't tell dirty jokes, they convince themselves that my accent is about to tell dirty jokes.

"People are still surprised to find I've a clean act. That's the impression they have of me from the Sullivan days. I never told a dirty joke in my life – and when people tell me one, either I don't understand it or I have nothing but contempt for it. I've never even seen a porno film. Not that I am such a clean person personally, but that's none of your business. Who are you to tell me how I should behave? I hear you don't leave such a clean life...."

Jackie Mason, who speaks softly but carries a big shtick, is off on another hilarious tangent....[[image: square marking end of article]]
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