“The test of a real comedian is whether you laugh at him before he opens his mouth.”
Source: "Test of a Comedian", The American Mercury (September 1929)
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George Jean Nathan 12
American drama critic and magazine editor 1882–1958Related quotes
Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee (2012 — Present), Season 3 (2014)
“To be generous is to say yes before the man even opens his mouth.”
Henry Miller on Writing (1964)
“A comedian is not a man who opens a funny door. He opens a door funny.”
Hedda Hooper, November 1 1960, “Comic Ed Wynn, Winning Still, Discusses Craft”, Buffalo (NY) Courier-Express, pg. 6, col. 1. Wynn was paraphrasing Fred Allen. “A comic says funny things; a comedian says things funny”, Barry Popik, November 10, 2015, January 7, 2017 http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/a_comic_says_funny_things/,
“A comedian is not a person who opens a funny door — he's the person who opens a door funny.”
John Lewell, "The Art of Chuck Jones: John Lewell Interviews the Veteran Hollywood Animator [1982]," in Animation - Art and Industry, ed. Maureen Furniss (John Libby Publishing Ltd., 2009), 134. Jones was paraphrasing Ed Wynn who was in turn paraphrasing Fred Allen.
Source: “A comic says funny things; a comedian says things funny”, Barry Popik, November 10, 2015, January 7, 2017 http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/a_comic_says_funny_things/,
On War (1832), Book 3
Quote from Les Maitres d'Autrefois / The Old Masters, 1876; 1948, p. 115; as cited in 'Dutch Painting of the Golden Age', http://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/dutch-painting-the-golden-age/content-section-2 OpenLearn
“Creator — A comedian whose audience is afraid to laugh.”
1940s–present, A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)