Mort Sahl

Uncommon card · No. 141608

Morton Lyon Sahl (May 11, 1927 – October 26, 2021) was a Canadian-born American comedian, actor, and social satirist. He pioneered a style of social satire that pokes fun at political and current event topics by means of improvised monologues, using only a newspaper as a prop. Sahl spent his early years in Los Angeles and then moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, where he made his professional stage debut at the hungry i nightclub in 1953. His popularity grew quickly, and after a year at the club, he traveled the country doing shows at established nightclubs, theaters, and college campuses. In 1960 he became the first comedian to be featured in a Time cover story. He appeared on various television shows, played a number of film roles, and performed a one-man show on Broadway. The television host Steve Allen said that Sahl was "the only real political philosopher we have in modern comedy". His social satire performances broke new ground in live entertainment, as a stand-up comic talking...

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