Shelley Berman (Feb. 3, 1925 – Sept. 1, 2017) was born in Chicago to Nathan Berman and his wife Irene Marks. After serving in the Navy during World War II, he enrolled at the Goodman School of Drama and the Art Institute of Chicago as a drama student.
He and fellow student Sarah Herman married in 1947 and he acted first in Woodstock, Illinois, and later in New York, where he supported his family with various jobs including as a dance instructor at Arthur Murray Studios. The Steve Allen Plymouth Show hired him as a sketch writer.
He started doing stand-up comedy during the 1950s, leading to a recording contract with Verve Records. His album “Inside Shelley Berman” won the first Grammy Award for “Best Comedy Performance-Spoken” and his voice was the inspiration for the Hanna-Barbera cartoon character Fibber Fox. He appeared in episodes of numerous television series including Curb Your Enthusiasm in which he played Larry David’s aged father, a role for which he received an Emmy nomination in 2008. He also had many movie credits, and taught humor writing at the University of Southern California.
Berman and his wife Sarah adopted a son Joshua and a daughter Rachel. While Joshua was studying for his bar mitzvah, he died at age 12 of a brain tumor. Berman was a supporter of the Motion Picture and Television Fund in Woodland Hills, and was named honorary mayor of Canoga Park in the 1980s. His death at age 92 was from complications related to Alzheimer’s Disease.
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Tomorrow, February 4: Betty Friedan
SDJW condensation of a Wikipedia article
I grew up listening to – and eventually devouring and memorizing – Shelley Berman’s records. And among the hilarious bits he did, one remains strongest in my memory. It was a telephone conversation with his Yiddish-accented father in Chicago, asking for a hundred dollars because he wants to go to acting school in New York. It is probably autobiographical, and it is funny at the start but warm, almost melancholy as it approaches the end when the father tells his son, “Sheldon, don’t change your name.” If you listen to just one of his routines – It’s on the “Outside Shelley Berman” album – it’s this one.