Schtick home Chicago

Chicago is known for its hardball politics, mercurial weather, and iconic sports teams, sure, but it is also arguably the nation’s premier city for comedy.  

And Jews have helped to shape and secure this reputation on and off the stage. Some of the local-born Jewish comedic talent made the leap from stage to screen as well, from Jack Benny to Garry Shandling to Jeff Garlin—all born right here in our Windy City. 

These performers did more than make Chicago audiences laugh. They helped transform the city into a proving ground for modern American comedy, creating rooms where Jewish impresarios, teachers, and performers could experiment, cross boundaries, and shape a national comic voice. 

Let’s start with Oscar and George Marienthal, siblings who opened the legendary nightclub Mister Kelly’s in 1953. The corner of Rush and Bellevue became “the epicenter of American popular culture during its heyday,” according to critic Peter Sobczynski. The Marienthals brought in the nation’s top comedic talents, both Black and white, which was radical for those segregated times. To name a few: Lenny Bruce, Joan Rivers, and Mort Sahl—all Jewish—plus George Carlin, Lily Tomlin, and Dick Gregory. 

Mister Kelly’s was also a launching pad for up-and-coming comedians. An item in the Chicago Tribune’s “Tower Ticker” column reported on Steve Martin’s appearance there, back in 1971. 

Viola Spolin, born to Russian-Jewish immigrants, created the groundbreaking theater games that were the foundation for improvisational comedy. Her son, Paul Sills, further developed and honed these games in co-founding the Playwrights Theatre Club, and then the Compass 

Players, which included Mike Nichols and Elaine May, who would become a celebrated comedy duo before pursuing brilliant solo careers, and Shelley Berman. It was the forerunner of The Second City.  

These Chicago improvisational troupes nurtured generations of brilliant comic actors who went on to legendary careers in films, television, theater, and stand-up—imagine Saturday Night Live without Second City talent, such as John Belushi, Gilda Radner, Bill Murray, Tina Fey, and Vanessa Bayer. 

Rick Uchwat was another Jewish entrepreneur who created a Chicago comedy institution, Zanies comedy club, in the Old Town neighborhood. The son of an Auschwitz survivor and Vietnam vet, Uchwat came to Chicago when he was four years old via refugee camps and Ellis Island. He opened Zanies in 1978. It is the third oldest continuously running comedy club in the country. It supported local comedians such as Emo Phillips, Judy Tenuta, and Patti Vasquez and became a destination for such rising stars as Tim Allen, Hannibal Buress, Dave Chappelle, Jim Gaffigan, Richard Lewis, and Jerry Seinfeld. Jay Leno once called it “the perfect comedy club…. Playing there in the 1970s was like playing the Cavern Club in Liverpool where the Beatles were discovered. 

These visionaries afforded comedians and comic actors a place to fail, find their voice, and launch their careers on a national stage. 

Chicago-based Jewish comedians such as Nichols, May, Berman, and David Steinberg, belonged to a generation that moved stand-up comedy toward more personal, confessional, and confrontational material. This innovation included mining jokes from their Jewish roots. Steinberg, a former rabbinical student, improvised sermons: “G-d, whom I’m sure you’ll remember from last week’s sermon….” 

Nichols and May also created an indelible characterization of the Jewish mother in their classic skit in which a scientist is reduced to infantile babbling during a nagging phone call. “Someday,” she tells him, “You’ll get married and you’ll have children of your own, and honey, when you do, I only pray they make you suffer the way you’re making me suffer…” 

Berman’s masterpiece, “Father and Son,” depicts a phone call between a Chicago deli owner and his son, who wants $100 to go to acting school in New York. “Sheldon,” the father movingly urges his son before giving his blessing, “Don’t change your name.” 

Ike Barinholtz did not change his name. After star-making turns on MadTV and The Mindy Project and a prolific comedy career, Barinholtz is having something of an Ike-assaince with his Emmy-nominated turn on the award-winning series, The Studio. Rachel Dratch is another notable who went the Second City-to-Saturday Night Live route and is one of Hollywood’s most distinctive character actors.  

The tradition continues: Without changing who they are, Chicago’s Jewish comedians changed the way America laughs without changing who they are. 

Donald Liebenson is a Chicago writer who writes for VanityFair.com, The Washington Post, and other outlets.