Last Man Standing

Mort Sahl and the Birth of Modern Comedy

By: James Curtis

Narrated by: Mark Milroy

On December 22, 1953, Mort Sahl took the stage at San Francisco's hungry i and changed comedy forever. Before him, standup was about everything but hard news and politics. In his wake, a new generation of smart comics emerged - Shelley Berman, Mike Nichols, and Elaine May, Lenny Bruce, Bob Newhart, Dick Gregory, Woody Allen, and the Smothers Brothers, among others. He opened up jazz-inflected satire to a loose network of clubs, cut the first modern comedy album, and appeared on the cover of Time surrounded by caricatures of some of his frequent targets such as Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Adlai Stevenson, and John F. Kennedy. Through the extraordinary details of Sahl's life, author James Curtis deftly illustrates why Sahl was dubbed by Steve Allen as "the only real political philosopher we have in modern comedy."

Here, for the first time, is the whole story of Mort Sahl, America's iconoclastic father of modern standup comedy. Written with Sahl's full cooperation and the participation of many of his friends and contemporaries, it delves deeply into the influences that shaped him, the heady times in which he soared, and the depths to which he fell during the turbulent 60s when he took on the Warren Commission and nearly paid for it with his career.

©2017 James Curtis (P)2019 Redwood Audiobooks

Excellent Book

Funny, moving, dramatic...what a fantastic guy Mort Sahl was. Overall, Mr. Sahl, with all of the ups and downs, you did your best to be human, the best way you knew how to do that. So, you won the big game of life. Super cool from start to finish...the book and the man.

Story is good, writing average, but the voice talent is awful.

This could and should have been done so much better. Mort Sahl changed comedy, but you wouldn’t know that from this book. Writing is a bit antiseptic, more reporting than storytelling. The listener isn’t drawn into the story because the writing lacks an emotional connection with its subject. In that light, the voice actor fits right in—a thoroughly disconnected, boring, performance. Sahl must be either laughing or spinning in his grave at how bad the reading of this book is.

Vintage Mort Saul. One of a kind.

Talk about nostalgia. I lived in the bay area during the 50s 60s 70s and 80s. So many great memories.

A mass of mostly useless detail

An extensive audit, turned into a narrative, with many brief quotations. Short on ideas and philosophy.