The 100 Jokes That Shaped Modern Comedy
From the Marx Brothers to The Simpsons, Richard Pryor to Amy Schumer: 100 bits, sketches, and one-liners that changed humor forever.
Illustration by Giacomo Gambineri
Illustration by Giacomo Gambineri
The oldest joke on record, a Sumerian proverb, was first told all the way back in 1900 B.C. Yes, it was a fart joke: “Something which has never occurred since time immemorial; a young woman did not fart in her husband's lap.” Don’t feel bad if you don’t get it — something was definitely lost in time and translation (you have to imagine it was the Mesopotamian equivalent of “Women be shopping”), but not before the joke helped pave the way for almost 4,000 years of toilet humor. It’s just a shame we’ll never know the name of the Sumerian genius to whom we owe Blazing Saddles. But with the rise of comedy as a commercial art form in the 20th century, and with advances in modern bookkeeping, it’s now much easier to assign credit for innovations in joke-telling, which is exactly what Vulture set out to do with this list of the 100 Jokes That Shaped Modern ComedyFor clarity’s sake, we’ve established certain ground rules for inclusion. First, we decided early on that these jokes needed to be performed and recorded at some point. Second, with apologies to Monty Python, whose influence on contemporary comedy is tremendous and undeniable, we focused only on American humor. Third, we only included one joke per comedian. And fourth, the list doesn't include comedy that we ultimately felt was bad, harmful, or retrograde.
The list was put together by Vulture senior editor Jesse David Fox; New York senior editor Christopher Bonanos; comedians Wayne Federman, Phoebe Robinson, Halle Kiefer, and Rebecca O'Neal; comedy historians Yael Kohen (author of We Killed) and Kliph Nesteroff (author of The Comedians); and journalists Elise Czajkowski, Matthew Love, Katla McGlynn, Ramsey Ess, Dan Reilly, Jenny Jaffe, Lucas Kavner, and The Guardian’s Dave Schilling. (Fox, Bonanos, Keifer, O'Neal, Czajkowski, Love, McGlynn, Ess, Reilly, Jaffe, Kavner, and Schilling wrote the blurbs.)
Without further ado, here are the 100 Jokes That Shaped Modern Comedy. They are listed below in chronological order, complete with video or audio. Use the timeline slider to jump to different eras or specific comedians.
1906 NobodyBert Williams, Alex Rogers “I ain’t never done nothin’ to nobody /
I ain’t never got nothin’ from nobody, no time /
And until I get somethin’ from somebody, sometime /
I’ll never do nothin’ for nobody, no time” Bert Williams was the most popular black comedic performer in America at the turn of the 20th century. But his celebrity grew tremendously when he put the songs from his stage show Abyssinia to disc and cylinder. That record included the piece he was best known for, “Nobody.” It’s an upbeat tune whose buoyant arrangement runs perpendicular to its melancholy message of isolation and disappointment, a device that’s since become ubiquitous. The idea at the center of “Nobody” — laughing at the self-deprecation of an unfortunate schlemiel — was what fueled its tremendous success. And having a black man as the song’s tragic protagonist added to its novelty and ultimate comedic longevity, spawning a comic genre where vulnerability and ennui weren’t taboo, but welcome subjects. Released at a time when cylinder recordings were at their apex, Williams became widely known for the song, and he was forced to sing it at essentially every appearance he made, for the rest of his life.
I ain’t never got nothin’ from nobody, no time /
And until I get somethin’ from somebody, sometime /
I’ll never do nothin’ for nobody, no time” Bert Williams was the most popular black comedic performer in America at the turn of the 20th century. But his celebrity grew tremendously when he put the songs from his stage show Abyssinia to disc and cylinder. That record included the piece he was best known for, “Nobody.” It’s an upbeat tune whose buoyant arrangement runs perpendicular to its melancholy message of isolation and disappointment, a device that’s since become ubiquitous. The idea at the center of “Nobody” — laughing at the self-deprecation of an unfortunate schlemiel — was what fueled its tremendous success. And having a black man as the song’s tragic protagonist added to its novelty and ultimate comedic longevity, spawning a comic genre where vulnerability and ennui weren’t taboo, but welcome subjects. Released at a time when cylinder recordings were at their apex, Williams became widely known for the song, and he was forced to sing it at essentially every appearance he made, for the rest of his life.
1913 Cohen on the TelephoneGeorge L. Thompson, Monroe Silver, Joe Hayman “Are you dere? Last night de vind came unt blew down de shutter outside mine house, and I vant you to send a car-pen-ter — a carp. Oh, never mind, I'll have it fixed myself.”Though it began as a stage routine, "Cohen on the Telephone" is noteworthy for embracing two emerging technologies: the telephone and the phonograph. Developed in England by Joe Hayman, the definitive Jewish vaudeville monologue became bigger than any one comedian as it grew into a sensation stateside when American comedians like Barney Bernard, George L. Thompson, and most notably Monroe Silver took on the character of Cohen and recorded covers of the routine. Built on a classic misunderstanding-an-accent premise, it popularized the comedic device of hearing one half of a phone conversation. It was an undeniable influence on comedy legends Shelley Berman and Bob Newhart.
1925 Dinner Roll DanceCharlie Chaplin, The Gold RushWhen The Gold Rush debuted in theaters, Charlie Chaplin was already the biggest star in pictures, but this film, which Variety called “the greatest and most elaborate comedy ever filmed,” cemented his place in the industry. Legend has it that this sequence, in which Chaplin’s character dreams about entertaining Georgia, the dance-hall girl, with a couple of forks and dinner rolls charmed audiences so much that in some cases they shut down the screening and made the projectionist respool the film so they could watch it again. This bit was something different for comedy at the time. It wasn’t just another cheap laugh; it showed that you could create a hilarious sequence that also propelled the plot forward. Because this scene was so joyful, it makes reality all the more depressing when the Tramp gets stood up for his dinner date. By being among the first on the silver screen to add a little tragedy to his comedy, Chaplin raised the bar for the art of jokes.
1927 Buster Keaton and the TrainBuster Keaton, The General [As he sits on the front of a train, Johnnie Gray spots a railroad tie on the tracks in front of him; he grabs another railroad tie and, with perfect timing, clonks one into the other, causing one to flip out of the way and the other to fall aside.]Athletic is one of those words that gets thrown around a lot when talking about silent films, but Keaton’s really deserve it: He was highly agile, performing all his physical stunts — many of them genuinely dangerous — without cuts, often in one take. The resultant films are true action comedies, precursors to The Blues Brothers or the movies of Jackie Chan. They are also, partly because of his filmmaking ambition and partly because he was successful enough to justify decent budgets, simply bigger and better-looking than most silent films. Whereas Chaplin made intimate poetic miniatures that are admirable but can sometimes cloy, Keaton made broad, bright murals that do not require much adjustment of your mind-set. The General still works as a movie comedy, and it’s going on 90 years old.
1929 LambchopsBurns and Allen Burns: Do you like to love? Allen: No.Burns: Like to kiss?Allen: No.Burns: What do you like?Allen: Lamb chops.Burns: Lamb chops. Could you eat two big lamb chops alone?Allen: Alone? Oh, no, not alone. With potatoes I could.Many early-20th-century vaudeville stars left the stage to help power the burgeoning media of radio and TV, but few were bigger or brighter than George Burns and Gracie Allen. Their signature routine, “Lampchops,” carries with it the true vaudevillian spirit in that it joyfully delivers a little bit of everything: Wit, wordplay, bits of physical business, and a diverting ditty about love, complete with soft shoe. In this eight-minute version recorded as a Vitaphone short, the savvy and dryly sarcastic Burns sidles up to the guileless Allen, who floats on her own cloud while defending her smarts and the reason why she’s more than one woman (“My mother has a picture of me when I was 2”). In addition to encapsulating the duo’s deceptively easy chemistry, “Lambchops” makes abundantly clear why the plucky Allen was a yardstick by which future “dizzy” dames — e.g. Chrissy from Three’s Company or Phoebe from Friends — would be measured.
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to be continued on part two and then some...
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