Shelley Berman

Early career

Berman began as a straight actor, receiving his training at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago, honing his acting skills in stock companies in and around Chicago and New York City.^[9]

In the mid-1950s, he became a member of Chicago's Compass Players, which later evolved into The Second City.^[10] While performing improvised sketches with Compass, Berman began to develop solo pieces, often employing an imaginary telephone to take the place of an onstage partner.^[10]

Nightclubs and live performances

In 1957, Berman was hired as a comedian at Mister Kelly's in Chicago, which led to other nightclub bookings, and a recording contract with Verve Records.^[11] His comedy albums earned him three gold records and he won the first Grammy Award for a spoken comedy recording.^[2] Berman appeared on numerous television specials and all of the major variety shows of the day.^[2]

He starred on Broadway in A Family Affair and continued with stage work in The Odd Couple, Damn Yankees, Where's Charley?, Fiddler on the Roof, Two by Two, I'm Not Rappaport, La Cage aux Folles, The Prisoner of Second Avenue and Guys & Dolls.^[11]

Berman's voice was used as the inspiration for the voice of the Hanna-Barbera cartoon character Fibber Fox, performed by Daws Butler.^[12]

Television career

Berman portrayed the role of Mendel Sorkin in an episode of CBS's Rawhide ("The Peddler", 1962).^[13]

Berman performed both comedic and dramatic roles on television, including appearances on episodes of The Twilight Zone (both radio and TV versions), Bewitched, Peter Gunn, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Adam-12, Emergency!, Brothers, Night Court, MacGyver, L.A. Law, Friends, Walker, Texas Ranger, The King of Queens, Grey's Anatomy, Boston Legal, '’Lizzie McGuire’'Hannah Montana, CSI: NY and the revived Hawaii Five-0.^[14][15] He also had a recurring role on the short-lived sitcom Walter & Emily.^[16]

From 2002 to 2009, Berman appeared as Larry David's aged father on Curb Your Enthusiasm, a role for which he received a 2008 Emmy Award nomination.^[3]

Film career

Among Berman's film credits are Dementia (1955, with Shorty Rogers), The Best Man (1964, with Henry Fonda and Cliff Robertson), Divorce American Style (1967, with Dick Van Dyke and Debbie Reynolds), Every Home Should Have One (1970, with Marty Feldman), Beware! The Blob (1972, with Robert Walker Jr.), Rented Lips (1988, with Martin Mull and Robert Downey Jr.), Teen Witch (1989, with Robyn Lively and Zelda Rubinstein), The Last Producer (2000, with Burt Reynolds), Meet the Fockers (2004, with Robert De Niro and Ben Stiller), The Holiday (2006, with Cameron Diaz), and You Don't Mess with the Zohan (2008, with Adam Sandler).^{[17][9][11][15][16]}

Writing and teaching

Berman wrote three books, Cleans and Dirtys (1966), A Hotel Is a Place ... (1972) and Up in the Air With Shelley Berman (1986),^[18] two plays, several television pilot scripts, and numerous poems.^[4] In 2013, he released his collection of poetry, To Laughter With Questions.^[19] For over 20 years, Berman was a lecturer (later lecturer emeritus) in humor writing in the Master of Professional Writing program at the University of Southern California. He was also a teacher for the Improv Olympics program.^[4]

Accusation of plagiarism

In a 2012 podcast interview with Marc Maron, 87-year-old Berman accused comedian Bob Newhart of plagiarizing his improvisational telephone routine style, describing its genesis and saying it was a "very special technique that couldn't really be imitated.^[22] It could be stolen. And it was." He continued, "I was coming to work at night and a guy stopped his car, passed me by, and said 'Hey, Shelley! There's a guy [who] stole your act!'"^[22] When asked by Maron if it was done maliciously, Berman replied, "Maliciously? He wouldn't do it maliciously. Nobody does that. But he did it to make a living. And he became a star."^[23]

Berman later added, "I thought it was a rotten thing to do. I thought the agents who sold him — I thought they were just as guilty as everybody else. But, my God, to go into a town and do my show, and the critics saying that I borrowed some stuff from Newhart..."^[22]

When asked in interviews about the telephone issue, Bob Newhart noted that:

Shelley Berman did it before I did it. Mike (Nichols) and Elaine (May) did a version of it. There was a thing called 'Cohen on the Telephone,' which was a very, very early recording by Edison [Records] of a guy on the phone.^[24]...George Jessel had a radio show...At the end, he would call up his mother and tell her how the show had gone. As a kid growing up, I remember listening to him and he would call his mother up and say, 'Mama, this is Georgie'" – he paused, skillfully – "'from the money.'"^[23]

On his website, comedy writer Mark Rothman discussed the history of comic "telephone" monologists:

As far back as the 1920s, George Jessel was doing phone conversations with his mother in vaudeville, with the opening line "Hello Mama? This is Georgie." In the 30s and 40s there was this radio comedienne named Arlene Harris, often referred to as Arlene "Chatterbox" Harris, who did telephone monologues to one of her "friends." The only reason I know about this is that she was featured doing one of them on an episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show that featured many old radio entertainers. And she performed one of them. Brilliantly. Then, in the 50s, a great comedienne, Betty Walker, made about a zillion appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show, doing essentially the same kind of act as Arlene Harris, talking to her friend Ceil. Only it was intensively Yiddishified. They talked about marriage and children, and how impossible it was to maintain both. Whereas Arlene Harris was white bread, Betty Walker was challah. Betty Walker's catchphrase was "Ceil....Ceil....Ceeeee—ullll!!!! Really, really funny. Also brilliant. All of this pre-dated Shelley Berman. Even Mike Nichols and Elaine May, who were contemporaries of Berman's at Second City, engaged in telephone dialogues, with very similar styled material. And who's more brilliant than them?^[25]