YouSaid · the spoken record

Jackie Mason

lines on the record: 51
first: 2012-03-11
most recent: 2012-03-11
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“that moves back and forth so that I could lie back and sit front because the most important thing to me in my ambitions now is to be comfortable is my main ambition alike right now. Just to get the best chair I could find”
2012-03-11 · Desert Island Discs · Jackie Mason · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would take the works of Shalomaleka. was the great comedy writer of all time. He was like the Mark Twain of Jewish literature.”
2012-03-11 · Desert Island Discs · Jackie Mason · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I know the Bible very well, I've studied it all my life, and you should never leave it, but I was never impressed with Shakespeare. I read it more what everybody thinks is brilliant to me sounds a little ridiculous, like he says to be or not to be this is the question. If somebody said to you to be or not to be, this is the question you know what you would say? What kind of a question is this? Voice find out what to be, so you can at least finish the sentence.”
2012-03-11 · Desert Island Discs · Jackie Mason · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh my God, she sings from the heart in a way that Transfixed the whole country, a whole world that has such power and such emotion and overwhelmed everybody who ever heard it fell apart and in ten seconds she was a sensation.”
2012-03-11 · Desert Island Discs · Jackie Mason · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think so. I think if I was stopping because I had nothing to eat, the chances I would just pass away because I would know where to go to find it.”
2012-03-11 · Desert Island Discs · Jackie Mason · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, she's got her own life. She's a businesswoman. and she's brilliant at it. I'm just the opposite. I don't know how to do business at all. If I had to sign a contract, I wouldn't know where to put a pencil and paper. I never walked into a supermarket. I don't go to buy anything, I don't package anything, any practical thing if I even have to mail a letter, I can't figure out how to do it. If I had to make a living from actually accomplishing something practical or deal in the real world, it's not for me.”
2012-03-11 · Desert Island Discs · Jackie Mason · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I never wrote as a The guy tells me Zorida, I tell him he could keep moving. I don't even want him to say he spoke to me about being a writer. If they talked to me for two minutes, I'll claim they're my writer. He's might have said what time is it and I answered him. He said, Yeah. How worked with Jackie Mason, I was just with him five minutes ago.”
2012-03-11 · Desert Island Discs · Jackie Mason · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Every time somebody said hello to me, I started to wonder if I could make a joke out of it every time I sat down I wondered if I could make a comedy out of the chair or out of the guy that gave it to me. I had to find a comedy and everything I was doing to keep up with enough new jokes all the time for my new shows because every time I come to Broadway or right here I want to come with as much of a new world as possible. And then I say to myself, Do I really need this right now? Isn't it easy to sit on a chair, go for a walk? Hang around and enjoy yourself.”
2012-03-11 · Desert Island Discs · Jackie Mason · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's not a physical property of getting on the stage, it's just that it's very hard work to constantly challenge yourself to be as fresh and new about every joke you tell, and it takes a lot of intensive labour to work out the jokes, because like right now when I'm in the Wyndham's theatre here, I'm just as knowledgeable about what's happening all around me, and every incident that takes place in the news every day. But to make a joke out of anything requires hard work, Jack Benny once told me that if he could predict thirty percent of the jokes that'll be effective for all the jokes they write, he would consider that sensational because usually it's a lot less than even thirty percent.”
2012-03-11 · Desert Island Discs · Jackie Mason · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would charge at least. eighty thousand dollars a joke. This way I know I'm safe, because I don't think too many people are going to ask me.”
2012-03-11 · Desert Island Discs · Jackie Mason · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would say I would say that I'll still tell jokes at a private party even at a dinner table if somebody gives me the right price I'll tell them a joke.”
2012-03-11 · Desert Island Discs · Jackie Mason · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“She was a white girl singing like a black jazz musician. She sounded like she claimed from the ghettos and of Harlem. You would never know that this was a white girl singing.”
2012-03-11 · Desert Island Discs · Jackie Mason · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know if they literally tried to kill me or just to threaten me, because one day I was sitting in my room in Las Vegas and all of a sudden bullets went through the other side of my room and it cracked all the windows. I didn't realize it was bullets. I thought something was an earthquake or something. But when the cups came and they started investigating, they wouldn't do anything about it. They start to ask me questions like I was the guy who shot the bullets through the window.”
2012-03-11 · Desert Island Discs · Jackie Mason · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I started to literally abuse him. I said the million abuse of things to him because I couldn't stop him from interfering with my ex. And finally he and his old group walked out.”
2012-03-11 · Desert Island Discs · Jackie Mason · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I said Nobody is paying you but you're performing for nothing now Can't you make a living from your own act you have to become my partner now to make a living? What's wrong with you If you need that much attention you should see a doctor you shouldn't see my show.”
2012-03-11 · Desert Island Discs · Jackie Mason · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I used to see Sinatra in Las Vegas, and every time he was playing in a hotel all the other comics and performers or everybody would like pay homage to him like he was the pope. I never particularly paid attention to him, and I said to myself I'm not the subservient type and I'm not going to get involved in that scene so I used to just look at it and keep walking. And somehow it bothered him that I'm the only guy in the Las Vegas crowd of stars, but that was ignoring him. So he would lost me up to people. What does he think he's a big shot? He would invent all kinds of reasons to hate me that had nothing to do with me. So one day when I was performing I was telling my jokes he came in and they started heckling my act. So when he started heckling my act I started to call him names.”
2012-03-11 · Desert Island Discs · Jackie Mason · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I remember everybody was screaming about the Beatles, I don't know what they were screaming about, to me it looked like four kids would need a haircut. Then they sang a song that I wasn't impressed with, but he had sounded to me like four people got together. There's still not one person with a real voice. To me, it was just four people in search of a voice.”
2012-03-11 · Desert Island Discs · Jackie Mason · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Crystal Gale is a touching kind of a lilton and the sound of a voice where she hits the notes with a kind of a special emotion that you don't hear of many singers.”
2012-03-11 · Desert Island Discs · Jackie Mason · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It might but not very often most people especially in England their main idea is not to be in any way invasive of somebody else's privacy and the great prizes in minding their own business, especially in London. In London a guy could be facing another guy on the same bus every day for a year and they'll never even say hello. They feel it's an invasion of your privacy.”
2012-03-11 · Desert Island Discs · Jackie Mason · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The life that your father lived. Would that be fair? Because I can't pretend that I live a religious life. I grow into learning and studying people in general because I find the only study that interests me is studying people. That fascinates me.”
2012-03-11 · Desert Island Discs · Jackie Mason · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, they were very happy together. But my father was always devoted to his religious work and he was always thinking of a scholarship and learning. Rabbis are usually scholars. My father never saw a movie he never went to a concert he never watched a baseball game. He just wanted to know exactly where was the Talmud and where was the synagogue and how fast could I get there? That was the only thing on his mind.”
2012-03-11 · Desert Island Discs · Jackie Mason · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“She was a very, very caring, loving person until her whole life was just her children. She didn't even know that she needed or wanted anything on the soil. If he gave her nothing she would say thank you.”
2012-03-11 · Desert Island Discs · Jackie Mason · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because my mother felt that I needed special attention because my three brothers were older than me were always together, and I was like left out I was always felt like an outsider. Kids are basically selfish. I was the one I always felt left out. So my mother always noticed it and she always would pay more attention to me.”
2012-03-11 · Desert Island Discs · Jackie Mason · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If we can hear now was Petsy Klein, Patsy Klein, in my opinion, is the greatest female singer that ever lived. There was a certain overwhelming power in Patsy Clion that as far as I'm concerned, made her the superstar of all time.”
2012-03-11 · Desert Island Discs · Jackie Mason · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I had to pretend the hobby because I think compassion is more important than truth. If I told him the truth it would be devastating to him. And as I made more and more money and nights, I started to support more and more of the family. They forgot that it's important to be a rabbi and thought they were hoping I would just tell more jokes.”
2012-03-11 · Desert Island Discs · Jackie Mason · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“At the beginning I felt very bad about doing it, but then as I started to make a lot of money I said well Let's be honest about it. It's a very poor family I'm with nobody's making much money and having a difficult time, and I know I could help out the whole family. I said it's a fantastic difference in the pay scale.”
2012-03-11 · Desert Island Discs · Jackie Mason · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When the people who heard my sermons kept saying to me Rabbi, why aren't you a comedian? I said to myself, maybe I should take the hint. Because they were saying it to me all the time. I said to myself, let me try it. As a matter of fact, my soims are also a big hit. They were such a big hit that after a while I started to attract a lot of Gentiles into the temple”
2012-03-11 · Desert Island Discs · Jackie Mason · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because as soon as I started talking to audiences when I was doing when I was delivering my sermons in the temple, as I was delivering my sermons I noticed that it feels easy for me to infuse some comedy into my speeches, and I noticed that the more comedy I used the speeches and the sermons became more successful”
2012-03-11 · Desert Island Discs · Jackie Mason · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I know about my life that my father expected me to be a rabbi, and I had no complaint or disturbance about it. And it was a great idea to me to become a rabbi. Then I became a rabbi. and when I became a rabbi I started to see and learn more about life in general and the directions that are not necessarily religious, and I said to myself I don't think this is what I really want for the rest of my life. I want that to please my father, so I didn't want to hurt his feelings by telling him I'd become a comedian. So I pretended that this is just an attempt to have some fun, that this is a kind of a minor hobby that's not going to go any place or mean anything. It'll just be a way for me to enjoy myself while I'm being a rabbi.”
2012-03-11 · Desert Island Discs · Jackie Mason · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was tricked about religion, but he wasn't strict as a human being. He was very narrow minded in the sense that he was never involved in the outside world. It was a totally religious life devoid of too much knowledge and information about what else is going on in the world.”
2012-03-11 · Desert Island Discs · Jackie Mason · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There was a beautiful atmosphere. You all got along very well and we were all involved in the same religious pursuit. It was all going through everything in life together.”
2012-03-11 · Desert Island Discs · Jackie Mason · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“because it reminds me of my old days in the synagogue when I was praying and that religious feeling I think was as a beautiful kind of special feeling that does something there.”
2012-03-11 · Desert Island Discs · Jackie Mason · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I say nobody of a draw fish before it was called sushi. If somebody says to you, here's a piece of fish I forgot to cook it. You would think the guy has nuts. I say this in my act was invented by two Jews who were saying to themselves how can we open a restaurant without a kitchen? Or the same thing with Cajun food. Cajun food is boit fish. My mother couldn't cook all her life. She made Cajun food. I never knew it to her.”
2012-03-11 · Desert Island Discs · Jackie Mason · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My relationship with money is just the opposite of Connolly. I don't value money any special way because of the effect it has when I was poverty stricken. I realized the older I am that money means nothing, that passed a certain amount of money the rest of your money that you're saving you're saving just to feel rich. That's why a lot of times very wealthy people are very cheap, because they love the idea of being so wealthy that they don't want to buy anything. They spend their time trying to feel rich and feeling rich is more important to them than enjoying life. I make fun of a personal Bisol Lambini. A three hundred or four hundred thousand dollars car that has no seat. driving the car with you with your knees in your mouth They take some an hour to get in and out of the car. I say this in my act.”
2012-03-11 · Desert Island Discs · Jackie Mason · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My father at that time I looked back and found out and realized that we really had no food, because my father was collecting food all the time. He was buying gauge yesterday's milk or banana from two weeks ago, things that were left over in different places for practically no price. I don't think I saw any kind of meat for the first ten years of my life There was cheese a lot. Whatever the cheaper items was what I saw.”
2012-03-11 · Desert Island Discs · Jackie Mason · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There was enough to eat, but I didn't eat any great steaks, I don't have any fantastic foods. You don't know that you have to have a balanced diet when you're five years old, and you don't know even when you're ten or twelve if you never saw a restaurant you don't know you're missing it.”
2012-03-11 · Desert Island Discs · Jackie Mason · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was enjoying myself. A child growing up doesn't know if he's poverty stricken or not, if he has enough to eat, then he has love, has attention, he doesn't know that this is a cheap chair, or you have to sleep in a bed as long as you can sleep. I was sleeping more often on a chair than a bed or some kind of a cushion on the floor, and I had three brothers and sisters there were six people in the family. So we're all next to each other or close to each other and taking care of each other.”
2012-03-11 · Desert Island Discs · Jackie Mason · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was just thinking of different singers that I love and I'm glad that I picked Dinah Washington. She was a legendary sensation, a voice that lived in their minds forever, for nobody could forget her for the rest of their life. She really reached you very deeply.”
2012-03-11 · Desert Island Discs · Jackie Mason · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's no question about it that that's true. You yourself could say about your own people, but they might find it difficult except from an outsider. Because it always brings back the thought that that anti Semitism or that prejudice still exists.”
2012-03-11 · Desert Island Discs · Jackie Mason · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think it's controversial at all. I think that I see this with all the Minerva. If a Jew can get a job somewhere, he can't admit himself that he's just inadequate or he just thinks that at that particular kind of job. He'll claim it's anti Semitism. It's more imagination. Everybody imagined that it's impossible for a black person to get elected president of the United States, whether they're Jewish or white or black, they never thought That is possible for a black person to become prisoner. Why? Because people didn't grow up enough to be past what went happen before and they're still imagining it's still there when it's already.”
2012-03-11 · Desert Island Discs · Jackie Mason · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There might be some such people who are racist, but I wouldn't say the Jews or the blacks today are suffering from racism. I don't think it's such a terrible disadvantage to be black or Jewish today, but because they once were, it's their own problem to overcome the past which they can't believe it. They're still not comfortable enough with the new situation they're in, and they still can't accept the fact they're completely accepted everywhere. But it's all in their minds.”
2012-03-11 · Desert Island Discs · Jackie Mason · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's the same thing with black people today. They still talk about being persecuted when white people don't even feel that”
2012-03-11 · Desert Island Discs · Jackie Mason · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Times have changed. I think things have changed a lot and Jews are much more accepted today. Today there's a mixture of racism religions like it doesn't even matter. The younger the people are, the less it matters to them what their identities in terms of their religion or their color. Whites and blacks would never marry in those days, Jews and Gentiles would never marry today, that type of marriage is very common. Jews are being persecuted today or even when I started in the business forty five, fifty years ago. Jews weren't really suffering anywhere, but they were self conscious because they have suffered in the past. It was like they couldn't believe the fact that they're being accepted now, and they were still nervous about something that hasn't happened in the last twenty years.”
2012-03-11 · Desert Island Discs · Jackie Mason · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would say there is such a thing as Jewish humor because Jewish humor has always been very self conscious about their Jewishness. It's always been about a guy who's an underdog and the problems he's facing as an alienated character. So you make fun of your rejection and persecution.”
2012-03-11 · Desert Island Discs · Jackie Mason · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh yes, there was a time as late as a week ago that people told me why do you have to sound so Jewish? A lot of Jews are embarrassed by Jewishness because it reminds them of the parents, their grandparents who were refugees were poverty stricken, struggling for attention, struggling to be accepted because society in general never really accepted Jews as equals or partners. They were always like an alienated minority. People who are raised that way still have a feeling of I don't belong if I'm Jewish so I'd rather you don't mention it or I'd rather you don't remind me. So when a guy like me shows up and sounds so Jewish, a lot of those type of Jews get very embarrassed by it.”
2012-03-11 · Desert Island Discs · Jackie Mason · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would never tell anybody. I know how you like to make an exception in your case. You're a fascinating lady, and I think the show is a wonderful show. But I'd rather not talk about it because once you mention your age people are thinking more about your age than your jokes”
2012-03-11 · Desert Island Discs · Jackie Mason · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I will know if it's my life so devoted to it's my work idea it's a profession I choose because I'm fascinated with making jokes and creating jokes life should mean more than just your work or just your hobby or your lifts I think life should have more significance than death.”
2012-03-11 · Desert Island Discs · Jackie Mason · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would say it's always true you don't like to believe it yourself, you like to rationalize excuses to yourself, but the simple fact is anybody who's on the stage is just dying to be there. Some people say I'd have to bring entertainment to people I enjoy watching people having a good time. They always like to pretend it's an altruistic, compassionate thing. It's not compassionate, not altruism ego mania, that's all it really is.”
2012-03-11 · Desert Island Discs · Jackie Mason · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What didn't work on the set? I'm always developing a booking and thinking about new things, new ways to get new lifts, and more lifts out of every situation. I don't want to give them time to think because once you're thinking you're not laughing, I just want them to identify with what I'm talking about and then the laughter has to come immediately without immediate laughs to me it's dead weight.”
2012-03-11 · Desert Island Discs · Jackie Mason · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's exactly what I aim at. That to me is the ultimate goal to keep the light bouncing continuously. If I tell a joke that doesn't quite get a laugh, or there's a transition twice a little too long between laughs, I try to get rid of it as fast as possible.”
2012-03-11 · Desert Island Discs · Jackie Mason · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source