Crack dealer
Mr. Al Boasberg, of our city, lays claim to being the country's leading gagman. He has a yearly income of between fifty and seventy-five thousand dollars coming in from his wheezes. A large, lumbering man with a serious expression, he has made a business of thinking up jokes and selling them for the past ten years. He sells to stage, vaudeville, movie, and radio comedians. You've probably heard dozens, maybe hundreds, of his gags. Possibly thousands; they're all around you. His customers include Harold Lloyd, Marie Dressler, Buster Keaton, Jack Oakie, Eddie Cantor, Ben Bernie, Phil Baker, Jack Benny, Jimmy Durante, Wheeler and Woolsey, and Burns and Allen. He has never sold to Jimmy Walker.
In the early twenties, Mr. Boasberg, who is not quite forty now, worked in his father's jewelry store in Buffalo. One day he sold an actor a six-hundred-dollar diamond ring for three hundred in cash and the man's promise to pay the rest in weekly installments. The actor paid promptly, a little to Mr. Boasberg's surprise, and so he began cultivating actors as patrons. He had always been somewhat stagestruck and he was flattered when when stage people, who came in to buy, talked with him. He began thinking up and getting off wisecracks for their benefit. He remembers the very first one he pulled on an actor. "Did you hear about the excitement at the hotel?" he asked. Pause. "A paperhanger hung a border." Long pause. "But it was only a rumor." His audience of one was deeply impressed and suggested that Boasberg try to sell some of his work. Boasberg finally approached Phil Baker one day and sold him a clump of gags for a hundred dollars. His first really great one, he says, was in this bunch: "What do you think of a woman who sleeps with cats?" "Who is she?" "Mrs. Katz."
In 1923, Boasberg came to New York to go into the gag business. Right off sold some things to Ben Bernie; then he began writing lines for vaudeville acts. He would sit in a box, unsmiling, and watch an act through; then he would lumber around backstage and suggest lines and business that had occurred to him. He gave up selling gags outright, and began taking a percentage of an actor's salary -- sometimes five, sometimes ten, depending on the salary and also on how many laughs Boasberg put into the act. He makes special arrangements with each customer.
Five years ago, he began writing for movie comedies and lately he added radio skits to his field. He carries a notebook everywhere he goes and jots down ideas. He may get only one or two in a day, or he may go great guns and think up a couple of dozen. He says he is the first gagman to put disease and death over as comedy. One of his big successes in this line was for a movie. Fellow had been told by doctors that he could live only four months. "That shows how much doctors know," cries the man, triumphantly. "Here it is excactly four months tod--" And he drops dead. At the Palace recently there was another Boasberg death-crack. "My brother slapped Al Capone," says one actor. "Gee," says the feeder, "I'd like to meet him and shake his hand." "No," comes back the first, "we wouldn't want to dig him up just for that." Boasberg's most quoted gag of all is one he sold a comedian in 1926: "I will now sing a new song entitled 'You Stole My Wife, You Horse Thief.' " This was brazenly stolen and has been used by hundreds of comedians all over the country. Another big one: Girl says to fellow, "Buy me a couple of lamb chops." Fellow: "What, can a little girl like you eat two lamb chops all alone?" Girl: "No, but with some potatoes I could." Another, philosophic: "There's no amusement tax on alimony." When anything big happens in the news, Mr. Boasberg receives wires from all over the country, asking for topical gags. He sold a lot on the eclipse, including one George Jessel used at the Paramount: "The eclipse is just J.P. Morgan foreclosing on the sun."
Trouble with the wheeze business is that your stuff is stolen right and left. Relatives of comedians playing in Denver or Seattle attend the Palace shows, then step into the Western Union office and wire out the best gags. Sometimes as many as two hundred wires go out after opening night at the Palace, they say. The wife of a comedian called up Boasberg a few weeks ago and asked him how much he charged per gag. He said he didn't do business that way. "That's too bad," she said. "Tomorrow is my husband's birthday and I was thinking of giving him three new gags."
*
The woman was arrested yesterday on
request of Chicago authorities and is held
Probably the only hotel in town.
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Mrs. E----- S-----, said to be a direct
descendant of Betsy Ross, daughter of the
American flag, and of Alexander Hamil-
ton, father of the national currency sys-
tem, who lost his life in a duel with
Aaron Burr in 1804, died at Alton, Ill.,
Sunday at the age of 82. Betsy Ross was
her ancestor on the paternal side and
Alexander Hamilton on the maternal
Death, we assume, was from con-
fusion.
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