She was what people called a "real trouper" able to deliver under the toughest circumstances, a consummate professional. Here's an example from May 1948. She was at Madison Square Garden attending a benefit for the United Jewish Appeal. This was a very emotional gathering. Some of the biggest names in the Jewish community were there. Holocaust survivors were in abundance. People who had lost their whole family to the Holocaust were in attendance. To top it off, Israel had been declared a state earlier that month. After hearing impassioned speeches and the playing of "Hatikvah," most of the audience was in tears. Then came Jean Carroll's turn to address the crowd.
Next time you find yourself in front of an audience and feeling uncomfortable, remind yourself it could always be worse. You could be delivering a comedy routine with the Holocaust as your warm-up act.
It was a delicate spot for a comic to be in, as Mr. Howe recounted in interviews afterward. Unfazed, Ms. Carroll leaned into the microphone. "I've always been proud of the Jews, but never so proud as tonight," she said. "Tonight I wish I had my old nose back."
Jean Carroll wrote all her own stuff and constantly kept coming up with new material for forty years until she retired. One of her best known routines was about buying a dress. The other was about buying a mink "wholesale" from a guy in the fur trade. It starts like this:
Honey, I've never really asked you for anything, but I want a mink coat. I'm not issuing an ultimatum, but mink coat or twin beds. He's a very practical man, so he said, "You'd look silly wearing a bed..."
I'd do the rest of the routine, but I'd just screw it up, so I won't. You can listen to it here.
The mink coat was a true story. So was the one about buying the dress. She built all her routines around real situations. That's how she connected with her audiences. It didn't matter whether she was playing a big venue in New York or a club in a small town. Her fans felt like they could relate to her, and often did. Some of her best material came from encounters with fans.
I used to do that routine about my daughter being a hippy with the dirty sneakers and the dirty blue jeans, but why the beard? And you know people would actually come up to me and say, "Does your daughter really have a beard?" I'd say, "No, I made her shave it, but I let her keep the moustache."
In an age when women weren't supposed to be funny, and certainly weren't supposed to be smart, Jean Carroll was both. The world we live in today is a better place because of it, and that's no joke.
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