The Funny Men: Make Them Laugh!

 

                                    Come all you merry gentlemen,
                                        And smiling pretty lasses,
                                            Attention give unto my song,
                                                And push about the glasses.

                                    I wrote this song this very day,
                                        Your merriment consulting,
                                            And if you do not laugh at what I sing,
                                                I shall think it quite insulting.

                                            (Bob Smith's Clown Song and Joke Book, 1865)

His smile invites you to smile back, to chuckle, to laugh. It's a jolly face of friendly mirth. You don't know what to expect but he's bound to be fun. It's the face of Julius Werner, Humourist crudely printed on a postcard. It was sent from Kiel, Germany, a port city on the northern Baltic coast below Denmark, on 27 December 1899. No doubt the writer composed his short message while enjoying Herr Werner's jokes at a cabaret near the docks. He and his recipient, who also lived in Kiel, likely anticipated celebrating a new year and a new century in a few days as the card was delivered on 30 December. 

In my collection I have only a few early picture postcards, printed before 1900, and most are from Germany or Austria-Hungary, the two nations where this simple medium of communication first became popular. The earliest Austrian picture postcards, mostly lithographs prints, date from the 1870s. The first printing methods for photographs are later and were not widely produced until the late 1890s. 

My particular interest in cards like this is because I want to show examples of how entertainers first began using postcards for promotion of their act. One of the more common types were humorists and comedians who banked on audiences remembering their face from a postcard. The name you might forget, but that hilarious mug you'd never forget.

* * *

Sometimes a smile becomes a welcoming shout. Hallo! Good to see you again! (Even if we've never met.) Join the party, let me sing you a song. That was the appeal in this postcard portrait of J. Kopfmüller, Gesangshumorist ~ Singing humorist, who claimed "Weil i an Spass versteh'! " ~ "Because I understand fun!"

Herr Kopfmüller's postcard was sent from Ulm on 22 June 1902. Ulm is a city on the upper course of the River Danube, at the confluence with the small Blau Stream in the southwestern German state of Baden-Württemberg.

* * *

At other times the smile makes you laugh even before the punchline. You may think you've heard it before but the longer and more improbable the story, the more funnier it gets. That might have been the style of Oscar Freyer, Mitglied von Emil Winter-Tymian's berühmtesten alles humoristen un Quartett-Sänger ~  Member of Emil Winter-Tymian's most famous everything humorist and quartet singer. Many traditional German songs are ballads that tell a tale. I imagine Oscar knew hundreds of them. He performed in a Dresden male vocal group that at various times numbered five to ten men. It was led by Emil Winter-Tymian (1860–1926), a Saxon folk singer, salon-humorist and theater director. In their skits the group sometimes dressed in women's clothing for comic effect.

Oscar's postcard was sent from Dresden on 2 June 1903. 

* * *

However with many comics sometimes their smile dissolves into a grin where you don't know if the joke might actually be on you. That's in the face of Otto Mücke, Gesangskomiker ~ singing comedian. His smug smirk challenges us as to who knows better; the fooler or the fooled. Up to the end of World War One, comical singers were very popular in Germany. I imagine that Otto sang original material and was likely accompanied on piano or guitar, but his twisted sneer suggests he had a barbed style like what we now call an "insult comic".

Otto's postcard was sent from Charlottenburg, Germany, a section of Berlin, on 2 August 1912. 

                                        Life's the biggest joke of all. 

                                Shakespeare said that all the world's a stage; 

                                    And well he knew in that far distant age. 

                                A stage it is, whereon Comedian Fate 

                                    Don't crack his jokes his whims to satiate. 

                                And after all the struggle, talk and fuss, 

                                    The curtain falls—and life has one on us. 

                                        (One Thousand Laughs from Vaudeville, 1908)

As I have often pointed out in my other stories of comics and clowns, humor is the most ephemeral of all arts. The gags, jokes, and songs that these comedians once told are lost forever. The people they lampooned and teased are forgotten. The social and political issues they mocked and satirized have disappeared into the cracks of history. All that is left is a picture of a smiling comical face.

I wanted to include examples of old jokes from their era (in both German and English) but I could not find anything that really fit. Mainly because the great majority of humor from the beginning of the 20th century is stale and unamusing like a forgotten candy bar left behind in the back of a kitchen drawer. Edible? Maybe. But appetizing? No way. And aging it for another few decades won't improve it either.  

My initial interest in collecting postcards of German/Austrian humorists was because they resembled the stout funny men of my generation. In Germany, humor is a serious business, so it's fascinating to see in these old postcards subtle elements of comic schtick that became part of American comic arts. A good clown can be appealing in any language when they reinterpret a gag.   

For more laughs
check out:
The Funny Men, part 1
High Class Jokers
Four Musical Jokers
Two Wise Guys
Pulling a Face
Stupefaction!

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday

where no one ever checks your fishing license.