The Funniest People in Comedy: 250 Anecdotes

This is a short, quick, and easy read.

Some Sample Anecdotes:

- While studying theater at UCLA, Carol Burnett took a course in acting, where she prepared to recite a speech in front of her class. Unfortunately, she didn't recite it very well. For one thing, she didn't bother to read the rest of the play to find out the context of the speech. In addition, she spoke the speech in a low monotone while pantomiming a waitress wiping a table. Her classmates didn't understand the speech and thought that she was pantomiming ironing a shirt. Carol's grade? D minus. Fortunately, a short time afterward, she was given some funny words to say. Her classmates laughed, Carol stuck to funny roles, and she earned an A-minus in the course.

- Jack Benny used to pretend that his car wouldn't start without a kiss. Of course, after his little daughter gave him a kiss, the car started right up.

- As a teenager growing up in Indianapolis, Indiana, David Letterman worked in a grocery store. One day, he was ordered to stack up cans in a display. He did stack the cans--all the way to the ceiling, using an arrangement in which if a customer removed one can, the entire stack of cans would fall down. On another occasion, he got on the intercom and announced a fire drill. The customers left the store, and not all the customers laughed when they discovered that the fire drill was a hoax.

- A cigarette company once wanted to advertise on a radio series that would star humorist Robert Benchley. They wired him: "What do you smoke?" Mr. Benchley didn't want to do the radio series, so he wired back: "Marijuana."

- Lou Costello preferred playing cards to making movies. Often, he would sit in his dressing room playing cards instead of coming out to perform his scenes. Sometimes, assistant director Howard Christie, who had played football at the University of California, would pick up Mr. Costello and carry him from the card game to the movie set.