Shawn Levy - In On the Joke : The Original Queens of Standup Comedy

For years, the most important women in my lifemy daughter, Paula, and my partner, Shannonhave reminded me that the books Ive written have been a manly lot, and theyve cajoled me, in their ways, to write about a woman. And for some time, Ive tried to make that happen, without ever quite hitting on the right idea at the right time. The concept for this book was, finally, both, and I am so grateful to have an opportunity to show the women who matter most to me that I hear and see them.

There are already several worthy histories of comedy and of women in comedy that deal, at least in part, with some of the figures and some of the era Ive written about. (I especially recommend We Killed by Yael Kohen, Seriously Funny by Gerald Nachman, and The Comedians by Kliph Nesteroff.) But none hits exactly the target at which Ive aimed: the rise of women as stand-up comedy stars during the period between, say, World War II and 1970. As valuable and instructive as I found these and several other books on similar subjects, I recognized a gap in the bookshelf, in the historical record, that I could fill.

But, still: Why, in this age of #MeToo and #TimesUp, should a man take on the task of writing about a group of women at all? I asked myself that question often as I was starting out and continually as I was working.

Well, perhaps because one remembers best the thunder one heard in ones youth, Ive got a real feel for and obsessive interest in the popular culture of the years between Pearl Harbor and Watergate. This subject sits right in the middle of my wheelhouse.

And imagine getting the chance to research, analyze, and write about Moms Mabley, Minnie Pearl, Elaine May, Phyllis Diller, and Joan Rivers, to visit Harlem and Greenwich Village and North Beach and Las Vegas in their heydays, to track a show-biz story that was sitting right out there in all its details but hadnt yet been gathered up and nailed down. Of course I wanted this gig.

The women in these pages are heroes. Each had the notion to enter a career in which there were virtually no female role models, mentors, or colleagues to emulate or be taught byor at least none whom she knew of. Each created her own path, unaware, in the main, that other, similarly driven women were doing more or less the same thing, more or less at the same time. Each persisted despite social, professional, and even familial doubt, discouragement, resistance, and hostility. And each attained moments, if not decades, of success, sometimes only among insiders, but in several cases in the larger societyand, in a few, with truly iconic impact.

Ive tried to present their lives and their work with accuracy, empathy, and appreciation, to see them as ordinary women as well as popular entertainers, to understand them in the contexts from which they emerged and indicate their deserved places in the history of comedy, of women in entertainment, of American popular culture.

I am in awe of every single one of them.