Funny men

Jerry Lewis and Dick Gregory died today, advanced in age.  They represented two distinctive styles of comedy.  Lewis, especially in partnership with Dean Martin, was in the anything-for-a-laugh tradition of silent movies and slapstick, making faces, emitting bizarre sounds and climbing on furniture until audiences literally soiled themselves.  (Plenty of examples on YouTube.)  As he aged and eventually became a solo performer, Lewis developed a sense of Significance often mixed with sentimentality that served him no better than it had Chaplin.  His movies were still funny, but once the French (in particular) proclaimed him a genius he made sure everyone knew it.  He even attempted a Holocaust comedy but wisely shelved it; probably The Day the Clown Cried will never be seen.  He raised a ton of money for medical research, and latterly used interviews to settle scores, as old people do.  He was capable of fine dramatic performances when under control.  He will doubtless get the lion's share of media attention today. 

Dick Gregory was one of the first comedians to function as Hamlet described actors:  abstract and brief chronicles of our time.  As an African American he had no choice, as he saw it, but to offer caustic commentary on the issues of the 1960s in the style of Lenny Bruce and the tradition of Redd Foxx.  All too soon he saw that Mel Brooks was wrong, that you can't destroy evil by laughing at it.  Gregory abandoned performing for writing and political activism, hunger strikes and speeches, "pickets lines and picket signs," as Marvin Gaye would put it.  His comedy career was relatively brief, but without his example there probably would have been no George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Bill Hicks, Dave Chappelle, Chris Rock, Louis CK, Whoopi Goldberg, Patton Oswalt, or Jon Stewart.  If we rely on comedians to pull our rage and despair into focus and keep us a little sane, a little hopeful, we should thank Dick Gregory.