- Morey Amsterdam
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Morey Amsterdam 
Morey Amsterdam in 1970Born December 14, 1908
Chicago, Illinois, U.S.Died October 28, 1996 (aged 87)
Los Angeles, California, U.S.Occupation Actor/Comedian Years active 1922–1996 Spouse Kay Patrick (m. 1942–1996) Morey Amsterdam (December 14, 1908 – October 28, 1996) was an American television actor and comedian, best known for the role of Buddy Sorrell on The Dick Van Dyke Show in the early 1960s.
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Early life
Amsterdam was born Moritz Amsterdam in Chicago, Illinois, the youngest of the three sons of Max and Jennie (Finder) Amsterdam, Jewish immigrants from Austria-Hungary. He began working in vaudeville in 1922 as the straight man for his older brother's jokes. He was also a cellist, a skill he used throughout his career. By 1924, he was working in a speakeasy operated by Al Capone. After being caught in the middle of a gunfight, Amsterdam moved to California and worked writing jokes[citation needed]. His enormous repertoire and ability to come up with a joke on any subject earned him the nickname The Human Joke Machine. He sometimes performed with a mock machine on his chest, hanging by a strap. He turned a hand crank and paper rolled out; he would then read the machine's joke, although actually the paper was blank[citation needed].
Amsterdam's reputation for humor preceded him. Hal Block tells of Amsterdam walking up Sixth Avenue in New York and meeting an old friend. "Where have you been?" the friend asked. "Sick," Amsterdam replied, "I've been in bed with a cold." His friend looked at him and asked, "What's so funny about that?"[1]
Radio, songwriting, and screenwriting
During the 1930s, Amsterdam was a regular on The Al Pearce Show radio program, and by 1937 was the master of ceremonies on The Night Club of the Air.
Amsterdam also had a notable career as a songwriter, with his first popular success being "Why Oh Why Did I Ever Leave Wyoming." Amsterdam's most famous achievement as a songwriter was as the credited lyricist on the 1945 Andrews Sisters hit "Rum and Coca-Cola". However, the original version of the song (which Amsterdam did not write) was performed by a Trinidadian calypso singer named Lord Invader, and Amsterdam was subsequently involved in a copyright suit over the song, which dragged on until 1948. In the end, Lord Invader was given a substantial royalty payment for having written the original lyric to the piece, while Amsterdam retained the credit (and the publishing rights) for his revised version of the lyric.
In the early 1940s, he was a screenwriter, contributing dialogue for two East Side Kids films.
By 1947, he was performing on three daily radio shows. Beginning in 1948, he appeared on the radio show Stop Me If You've Heard This One. The Morey Amsterdam Show aired on CBS radio from July 10, 1948 to February 15, 1949. For three months, it was on both radio and TV, using different scripts with the same premise and cast.
Television
Bookmark promotion for Amsterdam's late night NBC show.
The Morey Amsterdam Show ran on CBS television from December 1948 to March 1949 and on DuMont from April 1949 to October 1950. Among Morey's regular guests was a song-and-dance man named Art Carney[citation needed]. The cigarette girl was future author Jacqueline Susann, wife of the producer of the show, Irving Mansfield[citation needed]. Jazz musician Johnny Guarneri led the band[citation needed].
In 1950, he briefly hosted the comedy-variety show, Broadway Open House, television's first late-night entertainment show, on NBC. One of the pioneering TV creations of NBC president Pat Weaver, it demonstrated the potential for late-night programming and led to the later development of The Tonight Show.[2] The show was originally to be hosted by comic Don "Creesh" Hornsby (so named because he yelled "Creesh" often), but he died of polio two weeks before the premiere broadcast. Hornsby's replacements, hosting different nights each week, were Amsterdam (Monday and Wednesday) and the raucous Jerry Lester (Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays), the brother of character actor Buddy Lester. However, Amsterdam soon exited the show, leaving Lester the sole host.
In February 1952 he made his dramatic television debut on an episode of the DuMont Television Network series Not for Publication.[3] In 1957, he appeared as Jack Connors in the third episode entitled "The Pretenders" of the syndicated television sitcom, How to Marry a Millionaire, with Barbara Eden and Merry Anders[citation needed].
The handprints of Morey Amsterdam in front of Hollywood Hills Amphitheater at Walt Disney World's Disney's Hollywood Studios theme parkIn 1958, he appeared as saloon manager Lucien Bellingham in the 15th episode of the second season of the Western Have Gun, Will Travel entitled "The Moor's Revenge".
His best-known role was as comedy writer Buddy Sorrell on The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961–66), a role suggested for him by his friend Rose Marie, who also appeared on the show.[4] Amsterdam wrote lyrics for the show's theme song, which were never heard on the air, but have been performed by Dick Van Dyke in concert.[5] Van Dyke sang those lyrics on the October 23, 2010 edition of the NPR show Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!.[6]
Amsterdam was an occasional panelist on Match Game and the short-lived Can You Top This? during the 1970s. He appeared as a small-time criminal in several episodes of the soap opera The Young and the Restless in the 1990s. Amsterdam and Rose Marie later appeared as panelists on The Hollywood Squares and guest-starred together in a February 1996 episode of the NBC sitcom Caroline in the City (his final television appearance).
Films
He played Cappy, owner of the local nightclub, in the Beach Party movies of the 1960s, which were produced by American International Pictures, of which he was a part-owner. Amsterdam and Rose Marie also co-starred in the 1966 film, Don't Worry, We'll Think of a Title, a comedy co-written and co-produced by Amsterdam. The film features Richard Deacon, their co-star on The Dick Van Dyke Show, with a cameo by the show's co-producer Danny Thomas. In 1958 Morey appeared in the low-budget film Machine-Gun Kelly with Charles Bronson and did a notable dramatic turn in the 1960 noir classic Murder, Inc. as Catskill nightclub owner Walter Sage, the first victim (according to the film) of the newly minted Murder, Incorporated.
Death
Amsterdam died of a heart attack in Los Angeles, California on October 28, 1996 at age 87,[7][8] and was survived by his wife Kay Patrick and their children, Gregory and Cathy. He was entombed at Forest Lawn - Hollywood Hills Cemetery in Los Angeles.
Further reading
- Keep Laughing. Citadel Press, 1959. ASIN B0007E665M
- Morey Amsterdam's Benny Cooker Crock Book for Drinkers. Regnery, 1977. ISBN 0-8092-8138-4
References
- ^ Block, Hal (October 18, 1950). "A Comic's Life Isn't Funny". The Milwaukee Journal (republished from Collier's): p. M24.
- ^ McNeil, Alex. Total Television: a Comprehensive Guide to Programming from 1948 to the Present. Penguin, 1985.
- ^ The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows, 1946-Present. Ballantine Books. 2003. pp. 866. ISBN 0-345-45542-8.
- ^ Waldron, Vince (2011). The Official Dick Van Dyke Show Book (3 ed.). Chicago: Chicago Review Press. pp. 51-2. ISBN 9781569768396.
- ^ Waldron, Vince (2011). The Official Dick Van Dyke Show Book (3 ed.). Chicago: Chicago Review Press. pp. 379. ISBN 9781569768396.
- ^ Available as transcript and audio WWDTM 10-23-10
- ^ Stout, David "Morey Amsterdam, Comedian and Joke Encyclopedia, Dies", The New York Times, October 29, 1996. Retrieved October 6, 2010
- ^ Vallance, Tom, "Obituary: Morey Amsterdam ", The Independent (London), November 4, 1996. Retrieved October 6, 2010
External links
- Morey Amsterdam at the Internet Movie Database
- Morey Amsterdam at Find a Grave
- Filmography of Morey Amsterdam at The New York Times
- Video of The Morey Amsterdam Show
Categories:- American comedians
- American radio personalities
- American television actors
- People from Chicago, Illinois
- Jewish comedians
- Jewish American writers
- Jewish actors
- Jewish American musicians
- Deaths from myocardial infarction
- American cellists
- 1908 births
- 1996 deaths
- Vaudeville performers
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