INSIDE COMEDY

A half-century survey of the comedic landscape.

Steinberg has a gift not only for stand-up and improvisational comedy, but also for the rhythms and mores of show business more generally. Born in Winnipeg, the author left pre-rabbinical studies during his teens. While in college in Chicago, watching Lenny Bruce inspired him to invent his own brand of socially conscious stand-up, and he joined the famed Second City troupe alongside Joan Rivers, Alan Arkin, Mike Nichols, and Elaine May. Steinberg went on to a hugely successful comedy career that included 30 years of stand-up, 140 appearances on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show, directing successful sitcoms (Seinfeld, Mad About You, etc.), and producing and hosting Inside Comedy, his series of one-on-one conversations with more than 75 comedians. Along the way, he got to know just about everybody of importance in the comedy world, many of whom appear in these pages. The author charts a throughline of comics from the Borscht Belt to the Ed Sullivan Show to the Tonight Show, highlighting the work of Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Don Rickles, and countless others. As a writer on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour in the late 1960s, Steinberg saw how CBS censors tried to shut down political humor. Now, as an elder statesman of entertainment, he reflects on "more than a good life, a dream built on laughter." Because the author interviewed his roll call of comedians for the Inside Comedy series, parts of the book read like transcripts, but beyond all the name-dropping and off-color anecdotes is a real love for the craft and its giants. Via dozens of memories from the leading lights of comedy over the past 50-plus years, Steinberg effectively expresses his “reverence for and experiences with Groucho Marx and George Burns and their world, for stand-up comedy, comedians in clubs and on television, and those who excel at being both actors and comedians."

A lifelong story of comedy and its brilliant careers, told by a consummate insider.