Funny Women S Ready for Fall
The Funny Thing Is That They Are Still Feminine
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January 14, 1970
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TIME was when a woman comedian had to make herself ugly, cross her eyes, or fall down in order to get laughs. Her hair stuck straight up in the air— or else it resembled a ragmop. And it didn't hurt any if she was a few dozen pounds overweight.
Today, however, there is a new breed of funny girl emerging—one who be lieves that a woman can be both funny and feminine at the same time.
For the most part, she is young (under 35), attractive, slender, and fashion‐con scious. And—most surprisingly—she is almost painfully shy offstage.
One of the ranking members is Joan Rivers, a petite, blond Barnard graduate who recently got up the nerve to wear glittery dresses and fashionable Gibson Girl hairdos on television shows. Before, she tended to play down her appearance.
"You've got to get the women to like you," she said recently, while she was in the process of preparing to move from a Park Avenue apartment to one on Fifth Avenue, "and I thought the best way was to wear plain, simple dresses with high necks, and no jewelry. That way you're less of a threat to women.
Shunned Latest Fashions
"For a long time I didn't wear the lat est shoes or pants suits," she added, "because I didn't want the women to get uptight because they were wearing spike heels or didn't approve of pants suits."
The 33‐year‐old Brooklyn‐born co median said the most masculine part of her work came when she played night clubs such as Downstairs at the Upstairs in Manhattan, or Mr. Kelly's in Chicago.
"You go on stage, and you've got to be in command," she said in her soft, off stage voice. "You have to put down drunks and control the conversation, and that's very masculine. When I think back to the places I've played, I'm amazed I didn't turn out to be Dora Dyke."
When Miss Rivers is at home, she a wife and mother instead of a comic. Her husband is Edgar Rosenberg, "a quiet, very formal" producer, and they have a daughter, Melissa, 2.
"When Joan is at home," Mr. Rosen berg said, "she's a very serious, shy and intelligent person. She doesn't put on lampshade or anything."
Miss Rivers does admit to one fault in the homemaking department. She hates to cook.
"We order out," she said, grinning. "We call Sun Luck East, Chicken De light or Rocky Lee's Chu‐Cho Bianco."
Madeline Kahn is curvaceous and red haired, and looks as though she should be entering beauty contests instead of making people laugh. She is perhaps best known for her frequent appearances on TV talk shows.
"I think the fact that I'm funny scares a lot of men," said Miss Kahn, who is 27, single and lives with her mother in Queens. "I guess they think that I can't be serious at the right time.
"I'm always afraid or being overbear ing," she added before a recent rehearsal session of the Mery Griffin Show. "I try to be quiet and suppress my comic urges when I'm out with a man—but just can't do it. I don't do it to hog the spotlight or anything. I think that most healthy men would enjoy it, but some don't."
Might Consider Marriage
A graduate of Hofstra University, Miss Kahn's other talents include acting, opera singing and belly dancing. She said she might consider marriage if she met a man with a sense of humor.
"It would be like being in jail other wise," she added.
Lily Tomlin, one of the newest mem bers of television's "Laugh‐In," said that most of the up‐and‐coming women com ics that she knew were, like her, in the "feminine mold." She also pointed out one disadvantage of this development:
"The women are cooler to you when you are pretty and feminine," the come dian, who is in her late twenties, said in a telephone interview from beautiful downtown Burbank. "You can feel it. The men, on the other hand, like femi nine comedians. They don't appreciate the grotesque in a woman."
The 5‐foot‐7‐inch brunette, who was once named Miss Waitress of the Week at Howard Johnson's at 49th Street and Broadway, said that in the past directors were always telling her to be more rowdy in her routines.
"Bigger, you've got to do it bigger!" what they'd yell at her. She didn't listen, and now she's a star on television's hot test comedy show.
Fannie Flagg, who was once a runner up to Miss Alabama in that state's Miss America pageant, believes "the loud mouth comedians" have hurt women in comedy more than they've helped them.
"To me, the most brilliant comedy comes out of one's attitude," the blue eyed redhead said in her penthouse apartment on West 58th Street. "Any body can get a laugh by crossing her eyes or falling down."
The 25‐year‐old comedian dislikes playing nightclub dates because she doesn't like hecklers. She became dis traught one night when a woman in the audience kept yelling, "You made fun of Lady Bird!" at her after she had done an imitation of former President John son's wife.
Miss Flagg was once engaged to hometown boy, but he married someone else while he was serving in the. Army in Germany. Her ideal man, she said, would be "rich and quiet."
"I would like to marry a psychiatrist," she added, stroking her white, altered tomcat, Bruce. "That way I could be analyzed free—and I'd know he would be telling me the truth."
One of the more boisterous of the new crop of feminine funny girls is Jo Anne Worley, a former Indiana farm girl who has horse‐laughed her way to fame on "Laugh‐In."
Chiffon and Feathers
"When I'm out with a man, I do make an effort to cool it," said Miss Worley, who is currently dating an actor named Roger Perry. "But men should know I'm not really the way I am on the show. If I were, I'd be in a nuthouse. Besides, the only guys who really adore that kind of behavior offstage are the gay boys."
In private life, the 5‐foot‐9‐inch bru nette, who limits her description of her age to saying she's "a young woman," likes to swath her ample (40‐29‐40) fig ure in chiffon and feathers. She rarely wears pants suits because her boyfriend disapproves of them.
Usually she is the funny member of the team. But at midnight on New Year's Eve, when she expected to be kissed tenderly, he fell on the floor and did gag routine.
"I was disappointed," she said plain tively.
Miss Worley said she got her philoso phy of comedy from Jerry Lewis, the comedian, when she attended a humor workshop he conducted in 1960.
"He told me a female comedian should never be unattractive," she said, "and that a man should always want to take her in the next room and give her big hug."
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/1970/01/14/archives/the-funny-thing-is-that-they-are-still-feminine.html
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