Rabbi's Son Makes Good

By Stefan Kanfer

"Nobuddy understends dis." The man in the Honda commercial is talking about a parking gear, but he might just as well be analyzing his own career. After two decades of anonymity, Comedian Jackie Mason is lighting up Broadway. Next month he will celebrate a year as the stand-up soloist of The World According to Me!

One-man shows usually offer a variety of delights: Lily Tomlin and Whoopi Goldberg impersonated scores of different women; Victor Borge played the piano between monologues. Jackie Mason is only Jackie Mason, a hunched and tuneless figure towering some 5 ft. 4 in. above sea level and speaking with the Yiddish locutions of an immigrant who just completed a course in English. By mail. His targets are ecumenical. On Jews and Christians: "You show a gentile carrots and peas, he eats carrots and peas. You show a Jew carrots and peas: 'Wait a minute. Why are there so many carrots compared to the peas?' " Television weather persons: "You're dying to know if it's hot or cold, and instead they give you percentages. Eighty percent chance of rain, 30% chance of a cloud . . . What, are you going to buy 80% of an umbrella?" Ronald Reagan: "This is the happiest President we ever had, and I found out why he's so happy. He can't believe he got the job! . . . I'm proud of him because, since then, Grenada has never attacked this country." R-rated films: "The truth is that children have no idea that it's sex. To children it looks like a fight. They see two people sweating, jumping, screaming . . . all of a sudden he's knocked out, and she's dancing. The kid is wondering, 'I never even saw the punch. How did this happen?' " And putting down a heckler: "All great men were rejected. You'll never have this problem."

Mason did. Despite his unlimited stock of foreign shrugs and intonations, the rabbi's son was born Jacob Maza in Sheboygan, Wis. He and his three brothers followed their father's profession, but, he confesses, "I didn't feel it. I wasn't dedicated." Assigned to a Weldon, N.C., synagogue, Mason gained a reputation for injecting humor into sermons. "Congregations would say to me, 'Rabbi, you should be a comedian.' I began to take their advice."

In the Catskill resorts he tried a series of personae. Sometimes he was a road-company Henny Youngman: "I grew up in a tough neighborhood. We played hopscotch with real Scotch." On other occasions he was a Xerox of Woody Allen: "I was so self-conscious, every time football players went into a huddle, I thought they were talking about me."

Between notches in the Borscht Belt, he sold shoes at Gimbel's, pajamas at Saks and menswear at Macy's. The only item he had trouble merchandising was Jackie Mason. It was not until 1962 that he found his own reproachful voice. Steve Allen caught the act and booked him on his TV show. Later that year, Ed Sullivan granted Jackie spots on what was then the nation's most popular variety program.

Then came the dark night of Oct. 18, 1964. Sullivan was running late. He flashed the two-minute sign offscreen. Sixty seconds later he held up one finger. Mason, on a roll, furiously responded, "Here's a finger for you!" Next morning the stone-faced master of ceremonies informed the press that he was "sick to my stomach" about Mason's on-camera crudities and canceled the comedian's $45,000 contract. An out-of-court settlement got Jackie back on the show but could not restore his reputation. Says Mason: "All of a sudden people started to think I was some kind of sick maniac. It took 20 years to overcome what happened in one minute."

He started to make repairs by appearing "in Atlantic City a hundred times, Vegas 200 times, Miami Beach a million times." Then came ventures in theater and film. A comedy, A Teaspoon Every Four Hours, featuring Jackie Mason and $100,000 of his money, lasted one night on Broadway. He produced and acted in the celluloid bomb The Stoolie, "another effort in my series of efforts to get somewhere." Through all those trials and travels on the road, Mason, 56, never married "because I didn't want to be intensely involved with someone I knew I wouldn't see a week later."

Too many years of obscurity made him desperate for stability and recognition. In a final theatrical gesture, Mason allowed his manager to talk him into doing a solo shot on Broadway. To the astonishment of everyone, including the star, it was an immediate smash. New York Times Critic Frank Rich wrote, "So sue me . . . Mason was very, very funny." The professionals closed ranks behind the comedian: Writer-Producer Larry Gelbart (M*A*S*H) returned eight times, and Mel Brooks announced that "nobody makes me laugh harder." Joe Papp, producer of the New York Shakespeare Festival, went further. When Donald Moffat appeared as Falstaff in Henry IV, Papp instructed him to "do it the Jackie Mason way."

In show business contagious laughter breeds continual loot; the man who could not get arrested in Hollywood last year is now a well-paid pitchman for Honda and is in constant demand for TV specials and sitcoms. There are a book and a record based on his show, and in January he will begin filming Caddyshack II, a big-budget film about a self-made millionaire who joins a snobbish country club -- only to run afoul of the members when he develops a low-income housing project nearby. In 1987 the comedian will gross well over $1 million.

Fans have tried to find reasons for the turnaround. Gelbart attributes the Masonic cult to nostalgia: "Jackie is one of the few practitioners left of a style that appeals to an older audience. It's like listening to the Glenn Miller Band." Steve Allen compares Mason with Lenny Bruce: "He is more than a joke-joke comic; he is a philosopher." Mason seems to be the only one who admits that he is a "sensation for the same Jewish jokes that made me a failure." Perhaps, he thinks, it is the setting: "In the theater they see ; you as an artist instead of a bum telling jokes in a toilet." Then again, the Honda commercial may have it right: "Nobuddy understends dis." Or needs to. "As long as they laugh," Mason figures with rabbinical wisdom, "who cares why?"