Brendan Behan, Borscht Belt Comedian

Abstract

‘New York humour is largely an Irish-Jewish creation’ (Ulick O'Connor, Brendan Behan, 1970). Brendan Behan, of course, was not a professional ‘stand-up comedian’ in the strictest sense of the term, although he possessed the wit and performative skills to succeed as one, as he proved countless times in Dublin pubs and onstage at the Blue Angel in New York to an audience that included Shelley Berman, who in fact was a Borscht Belt comedian. And, unlike Milton Berle, Alan King, Jackie Mason, Henny Youngman, and scores of comedians, he did not appear at venues in the Catskill Mountains some 100 miles north-northwest of New York City known as the ‘Borscht Belt’ because of its predominant clientele of Jews, although he and his wife Beatrice enjoyed a long weekend in Margaretville, New York, in August, 1961. When Behan came to America in 1960, however, he quickly became a star and joined a circle of celebrities that prominently included Jewish intellectuals and comedians responsible for what Ulick O'Connor regards as the Irish-Jewish core of New York humour. Indeed, Behan's affection for New York originates not only in his frequent visits to Irish bars on Third Avenue, as Michael O'Sullivan observes, but also in his interactions with Jewish-American friends and his uncanny familiarity with Jewish culture. The rowdy, even notorious, celebrity Behan shared with such figures as Norman Mailer informs the New York humour to which Behan contributed, making him more than an avatar of the Stage Irishman that some Irish-Americans despised. Rather, he often performed an eccentric Irish Jewishness central to American comedy of the 1960s.