Skip to main content

Laugh Tracks

March 2023
1min read

The American Comedy Box, 1915-1994

Rhino R2 71617 (four CDs); R4 71617 (four cassettes)

The vast bulk of this very generous collection of American funny business comes from the last forty years or so, but some of it is positively creaky. Thomas Edison’s favorite comedian, Cal Stewart, plays a rube who describes getting a haircut in New York, recorded in 1915; Barney Bernard does “Cohen at the Telephone” a year later, a relentless carnival of mishearing and misunderstanding; Moran & Mack show where the creators of “Amos ’n’ Andy” got their idea; Smith & Dale do a “Dr. Kronkite and His Only Living Patient” routine that they first performed in 1908. Comedy that old is mysteriously fascinating to hear, if only for its confirmation of the amazing perishability of humor. The newer stuff that takes up most of these sides comes from a panorama of familiar names like Abbott and Costello, W. C. Fields, Bob and Ray, Tom Lehrer, Bob Hope, Lenny Bruce, Mort Sahl, Dick Gregory, Henny Youngman, Phyllis Diller, Bill Cosby, Cheech and Chong, Steve Martin, Richard Pryor… . Go ahead. Laugh.

We hope you enjoy our work.

Please support this 72-year tradition of trusted historical writing and the volunteers that sustain it with a donation to American Heritage.

Donate

Stories published from "September 1995"

Authored by: The Editors

The American Album
Works by Leonard Bernstein, Samuel Barber, and Lukas Foss

Authored by: The Editors

The American Comedy Box, 1915-1994

Authored by: David Lehman

World War I made the city the financial capital of the world. Then after World War II a very few audacious painters and passionate critics made it the cultural capital as well. Here is how they seized the torch from Europe.

Authored by: David Neal Keller

The Thirteenth Amendment outlawed slavery in 1865, but right on into this century sailors were routinely drugged, beaten, and kidnapped to man America’s mighty merchant marine

Authored by: Mark C. Carnes

The author sent dozens of historians to the movies to find out how much—and how well—films could teach us about the past

Authored by: The Editors

Wyatt Earp in the movies, adapted from John Mack Faragher’s essay in Past Imperfect

Authored by: Oliver Conant

A distinguished scholar of American literature discusses why, after a career of study and reflection, he believes that Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman are bad for you

Authored by: The Editors

Part Two: American Journalism 1944-1946

Authored by: The Editors

The Preacher King: Martin Luther King and the Word That Moved America

Authored by: The Editors

Where Bigfoot Walks: Crossing the Dark Divide

Featured Articles

Rarely has the full story been told how a famed botanist, a pioneering female journalist, and First Lady Helen Taft battled reluctant bureaucrats to bring Japanese cherry trees to Washington. 

Often thought to have been a weak president, Carter was strong-willed in doing what he thought was right, regardless of expediency or the political fallout.

Why have thousands of U.S. banks failed over the years? The answers are in our history and politics.

In his Second Inaugural Address, Abraham Lincoln embodied leading in a time of polarization, political disagreement, and differing understandings of reality.

Native American peoples and the lands they possessed loomed large for Washington, from his first trips westward as a surveyor to his years as President.

A hundred years ago, America was rocked by riots, repression, and racial violence.

During Pres. Washington’s first term, an epidemic killed one tenth of all the inhabitants of Philadelphia, then the capital of the young United States.

Now a popular state park, the unassuming geological feature along the Illinois River has served as the site of centuries of human habitation and discovery.  

The recent discovery of the hull of the battleship Nevada recalls her dramatic action at Pearl Harbor and ultimate revenge on D-Day as the first ship to fire on the Nazis.

Our research reveals that 19 artworks in the U.S. Capitol honor men who were Confederate officers or officials. What many of them said, and did, is truly despicable.

Here is probably the most wide-ranging look at Presidential misbehavior ever published in a magazine.

When Germany unleashed its blitzkreig in 1939, the U.S. Army was only the 17th largest in the world. FDR and Marshall had to build a fighting force able to take on the Nazis, against the wishes of many in Congress.