The Chris Moeller Archives

The Einsteins of Comedy

Bob Einstein was a terribly funny man. Right up there with the funniest of them. You loved him on Curb Your Enthusiasm, as the brilliant but unfortunate comic daredevil Super Dave Osborne before that, and as Officer Judy on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour before that.

There’s a pedigree with that Einstein gang. Father Harry was a Vaudevillian dialect comic known professionally as Harry Parke, or Parkyakarkus, who infamously died of a heart attack at the dais of the Friars’ Club during a roast for Lucille Ball and Desi Arnez in 1958. Bob’s brother, Albert Brooks, who changed his surname when he entered show business to avoid cheap laughs, is the equally brilliant writer, director, and star of several hit films, an Academy Award nominee for the film Broadcast News in 1987. A much older brother, Charles, more than two decades senior to both Bob and Albert, was a writer of a popular baseball book during the ‘50s, The Fireside Book of Baseball. 

My favorite Einstein family anecdotes are these…

When Harry died, the comics at the Friars felt they could not continue with the show, but Milton Berle asked singer Tony Martin to perform a song. The crooner’s choice was entitled “There’s No Tomorrow.” At Harry’s funeral, contemporaries Berle and George Jessel, ever the classy gentlemen, both paid tribute to Harry by performing their acts next to the casket.

Albert was pals with Rob Reiner at Beverly Hills High School during the 1960s. Rather infamously, Carl Reiner went on a now-long-ago-erased episode of the Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and told the host that the funniest person he knew was a high school friend of his son, a kid named Albert Einstein. Albert would later become a favorite guest of Johnny’s during the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, and if you have some time tonight, do a YouTube search for “Albert Brooks speak and spell.”

Bob—as Super Dave—told my favorite joke on David Letterman in 1990. I watched it the night it aired when I was 15 and it was the only joke I told for about 20 years. If somebody were to say, tell a joke, or we need a joke, I had this one. It’s a talking dog joke. When Super Dave tells it to Dave, he tells it from a “book” of adorable dog stories he has purportedly written for children. This particular story begins, “Once upon a time a guy walks into a bar…”

 And it goes a little something like this—with the setup starting at about the 2 minute mark.

After the joke, there's a clip from Super Dave's Showtime series, but there was a problem with the tape and the clip is not really ready to be shown. There's a mishap that takes place and an adjustment that's needed for the ending and you won't want to watch the clip but Super Dave will be back later when everything gets ironed out with the tape.

posted by CM @ 9:58 PM