The Funny Men

It has somewhere been pointed out that the number of people in the United States who have a sense of humor is roughly the same as the number who play the piano. Now, no one who can’t play the piano ever steps up to one at a party and tries to ripple off a sonata. But people utterly without a sense of humor seem to have no hesitation about trying to be funny. This is a rather roundabout way of saying that most books about humor have been written by people who don't have it. This one is a noble exception. It is one comedian's-eye view of comedy. Here for the first time is a survey of the field from someone who truly knows television comedy from the inside. There are probably sixty million people who will testify that Steve Allen has a pretty good idea of what is funny and what isn’t. (Leo Guild, TV-radio critic for ‘The Hollywood Reporter’, calls Mr. Allen “the funniest man in TV for 1955.”) That Allen happens as well to be something of a philosopher of humor may not come as too much of a surprise to that portion of his audience interested in such technical points 1) What is the relation of a particular comedian to his audience? 2) What is he best at? 3) Where does he fall flat on his face? 4) Why do people laugh at him? Mr. Allen, a connoisseur of laughter, answers these questions and a lot more about the sixteen famous comedians he analyzes in ‘The Funny Men’.