Fate of the Myna Bird

Among all the young comedians who tried to make a nickel by imitating the voice of President Kennedy, Boston's Vaughn Meader did the best. His album The First Family sold over 3,500,000 copies. But after the President's death, record stores withdrew the records; nightclubs where Meader had been booked canceled his engagements.

Meader's act at the time actually had very little Kennedy material in it--only five minutes out of 45--because he was trying to shed his identification with the President and shape a career as a general comedian. Nonetheless, Meader had so thoroughly established himself as the myna bird who sounded like a President that he risked never being accepted as anything else.

Last week the 27-year-old comedian returned to work for the first time since the assassination, opening an act with all-new material at Manhattan's Blue Angel--the nightclub where his Kennedy routines first left the ground. Standing there with a solemn face and looking for all the world like a Kennedy, he went through an incredible variety of material, test-piloting everything from topical one-liners to complicated parables, seeking something that would click.

He talked about cigarette smoking and lung cancer, saying there was a new sign over Forest Lawn cemetery: THIS IS MARLBORO COUNTRY. He said that jealous religious types were trying to cash in like the singing nun, but no one was interested in a whistling rabbi. Trying folksiness, he told about the little town in Maine where he once lived: "The place was so small that Howard Johnson carried only one flavor."

For nearly half an hour, he seemed finished indeed. Then, casually, he picked up a guitar and began to sing parody songs that tore open the evening. Ol' Man River came out like this:

I don't plant cotton,

I don't plant taters,

But I get paid by the legislators

For plantin' nuttin . . .

And On Top of Old Smokey had new lyrics:

I'm walking behind him

And I'm feeling fine.

I'm behind Richard Burton

And I'm next in line.

In the end, he had scored on about 35% of his shots--not at all bad for a second beginning. He is a better-than-average comedian, and his best laugh really split the walls. "Fluoridation?" he said. "If I ever catch my son doing it I'll kill him."

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