“The Cuckoo School” Humor and Metropolitan Culture in 1920S America
1 “The Cuckoo School” Humor and Metropolitan Culture in 1920s America April Fool’s Day, 1923: The Palace Theatre at 47th and Broadway is hosting National Vaudeville Artists’ Week, a fundraiser for the Keith-Albee Organization performers’ union. On the bill are such luminaries as singer Sophie Tucker, Ben Bernie and His Orchestra, musical comedy two-act Herb Williams and Hilda Wolfus, contortionists the Luster Brothers, “nut” comedians Sam Dody and Sam Lewis, and others.1 It is Dody and Lewis, we will imagine, who will make a particular impression on one member of the audience that night. No description of Lewis and Dody’s performance that night has been located. But we know from extant reports and phonograph recordings that their act from this period typically consisted of a single song—“Hello, Hello, Hello!”— extrapolated to include a variable number of stanzas, each one ending with the triple salutation and interrupted with absurdist asides. They come onto the stage, lifelessly grunt a gibberish refrain, introduce themselves with deadpan affect— “I’m Mike,” says one, “I’m Ike,” the other—and launch into a verse, delivered less as a song than as a matter of fact. Just the other night Right near from here, We saw a funny sight: A couple they were dispossessed; The wife stood there in tears. That’s the first time they’d been out together in twenty years. Hello, Hello, Hello! Hello, Hello, Hello! You can’t milk a herring. Hello, Hello, Hello! 21 22 Chapter 1 Sticking to their toneless voices, they reintroduce themselves “(“I’m Mike,” “I’m Ike”) and commence another verse: We filed our income tax.
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