#comedys

Paul Mooney, Comedy’s Maestro of White America

Paul Mooney died on Wednesday, of a heart attack, at the age of seventy-nine.Photograph from Michael Ochs Archives / Getty “White” is an unsensual word. Where other terms that begin with the same consonants sound whimsical—“whiff” or “whiskers” or, well, “whimsical”—“white” coldly whistles. Even without the distinctly regional pronunciation that makes the “h” known, the word’s imperious…

Betty Mack: Co-Starred with Charley Chase and 3 Stooges

Some brief notes on the brief career of Betty Mack (Idalene Thurber, 1901-1980).

A rural Illinois girl, Mack started out as a Broadway chorus girl at the age of 18. She was in the shows Red Dawn (1919), Little Miss Charity (1920), Tip Top (1920), The Half Moon (1920), and Love Birds (1921). Nearly a decade passes before Mack turns up as a French coquette in the Trem Carr production God’s…