Volume 42, Number 19 · November 30, 1995
Milking an Elk
By Robert Mazzocco
A master of both insult and befuddlement, he was agreeably both a scamp and a dupe. And he rose to the fore of his eminence as an entertainer at a time in the history of popular culture, during the Twenties and Thirties in America, when it was still possible for quite ordinary folk—the small-town businessman, the churchgoing housewife—to accept that deep down they were—as he so frequently kept telling them—nothing but mean, dumb, and irredeemable. He spoke haughtily of Charlie Chaplin as 'that ballet dancer,' testily of Walter Winchell as a 'little schmuck,' and impolitically of Mae West as a 'plumber's idea of Cleopatra.' And on the subject of love, he was no less determinedly emphatic. 'There was a woman who drove me to drink,' he conceded, 'and I never had the sense to thank her.'
Feature, 3614 words
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