Ad-libs
• Jimmy Durante wanted to confess his sins, so he called Father Bob Perella to come to his apartment, which as usual was filled with Jimmy’s friends. When the priest arrived, Jimmy’s friend, Fatso Marco, asked the priest what he wanted to drink, then Father Bob and Jimmy went into the bedroom so Jimmy could confess his sins. A few minutes later, the door opened and Fatso brought the priest a drink. Jimmy hollered, “What are you doing? Can’t you see I’m making my confession?” Fatso replied, “Just because you got problems, the priest has to go dry?”
• Grantland Rice and humor writer Ring Lardner once shared a hotel suite in Chicago. Mr. Rice was writing articles each day, so he had to work pretty hard. However, Mr. Lardner was writing a weekly column, so he was able to take it easy. For much of the week, Mr. Lardner sat in the hotel suite, drinking and staring at a print on the hotel wall—the print showed a horse-riding competition: the Grand National. At the end of the week, while they were leaving the suite, Mr. Lardner turned to Mr. Rice and said, “Granny, the jock on the second horse isn’t even trying.”
• Who drummer Keith Moon was one of Monty Python member Graham Chapman’s drinking buddies, but he was not always a good friend. Once, Mr. Chapman needed money. As the two were walking, they saw a dustbin filled with garbage. Keith took approximately £2,000 out of his pocket, stuffed it in the bottom of the dustbin, and forced Mr. Chapman to dig through the garbage to get the money.
• When lesbian comedian Judy Carter came out to her mother, she made the mistake of getting drunk first. This meant that she kept stammering and couldn’t find the words to tell her mother that she was gay. After hearing a lot of stammering, her mother asked, “Judy, is it you want to tell me you’re gay?”
• Deanne Stillman, writer and coeditor of Titters: The First Collection of Humor by Women, was once asked where she thought she would be in five years. She replied, “Out to get a beer.”
Animals
• At Cornell, practical joker Hugh Troy pulled a notable stunt with the aid of an accomplice. One morning, after a light snow had fallen on the greens of Cornell, Hugh and a friend took a wastepaper basket that had been made out of the foot of a rhinoceros and tied it to the middle of a clothesline so that they were able to lift the foot, then drop it to make a footprint without leaving their own footprints nearby to reveal the practical joke. The next morning, the footprints were discovered, and the zoology professors of the university identified them as belonging to a rhinoceros. The professors followed the footprints to a lake. The footprints continued on the ice of the lake, but disappeared where a gaping hole was in the ice.
• Bob Denver once appeared in a comic Western. In one scene, several very loud blanks were to be fired from a gun held very close to a horse’s head. Mr. Denver was worried that the horse would rear up at the noise, but the horse didn’t move a muscle. After the scene was over, Mr. Denver asked the wrangler how he had managed to keep the horse so calm. The wrangler motioned to the horse, then said, “Stone deaf.”
• In one of Olsen and Johnson’s stage successes, Harold Ogden (Chic) Johnson walked on stage carrying a gun (loaded with blanks, of course) which he shot at the roof, after which a chicken fell to the stage and John Sigvard (Ole) Olsen told the audience, “It’s a good thing that cows don’t fly.” Mr. Johnson then shot into the rafters again, and this time a cow fell to the stage.
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Copyright by Bruce D. Bruce; All Rights Reserved
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