Jackie Mason, the stand-up comic whose career spanned several decades and became a template and poster child of sorts for Jewish self-deprecation, died Saturday at the age of 93. His friend, lawyer Raoul Felder, confirmed Mason’s death to the New York Times.
“My humor — it’s a man in a conversation, pointing things out to you,” he told the Times in 1988. “He’s not better than you, he’s just another guy. I see life with love — I’m your brother up there — but if I see you make a fool out of yourself, I owe it to you to point that out to you.”
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Mason built his career out of political incorrectness, with his unique innuendo-laden style earning him a spot on Comedy Central’s 100 Greatest Stand-Ups of All Time. Mason had originally become a rabbi in a career that appeared preordained: his father, grandfather, great-grandfather and great-great-grandfathers had all become rabbis alongside Mason’s three older brothers. Despite completing his rabbinical studies and heading congregations, Mason knew early his true calling was in comedy. (“Somebody in the family had to make a living,” he once said.)
“My parents never knew I was a comedian; my father was an orthodox rabbi who felt that all his sons should also become rabbis,” he said in 2015. “Being a comedian would be tantamount to being a murderer so to protect him I never told him.” His style unabashedly drew from his Jewish upbringing. “I find it hard to be told (as I often used to be) that I was ‘too Jewish,’ he said in 2015. “This is like saying to a bear, ‘You have too much fur.’”
Mason began his comedic career in the mid-1950s appearing throughout New York nightclubs and resorts in the Catskills, the then-bustling area of upstate New York that produced scores of famous comics. He expanded his audience via national appearances on The Tonight Show and The Ed Sullivan Show and through two albums: 1962’s I Am the Greatest Comedian in the World Only Nobody Knows It Yet and 1963’s I Want to Leave You With the Words of a Great Comedian.
Mason’s career spiked in the 1980s thanks to the popular Broadway show The World According to Me and his appearance as the obnoxious Jack Hartounian in Caddyshack II. He returned to Broadway in 1990 with his new show Brand New and performed in six different Broadway shows in total, including 1994’s Politically Incorrect and 1996’s Love Thy Neighbor.
In 1992, Mason won an Emmy for his role of Hyman Krustofsky, the disappointed father of Herschel Shmoikel Pinchas Yerucham Krustofsky, aka Krusty the Clown, on The Simpsons. (Mason would return to the role in three subsequent episodes.)
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