Mort Sahl Video | Stand-up Comedian

Morton Lyon "Mort" Sahl (born May 11, 1927) is a Canadian-born American comedian and actor. He occasionally wrote jokes for speeches delivered by President John F. Kennedy. He was the first comedian to record a live album and the first to perform on college campuses. He was on the cover of Time magazine in 1960 where they called him "the patriarch of a new school of comedians". He was born on May 11, 1927 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada to Harry Sahl. His father was a court reporter who met his wife when she responded to an advertisement he took out in a poetry magazine. The family moved to... MORE

Morton Lyon "Mort" Sahl (born May 11, 1927) is a Canadian-born American comedian and actor. He occasionally wrote jokes for speeches delivered by President John F. Kennedy. He was the first comedian to record a live album and the first to perform on college campuses. He was on the cover of Time magazine in 1960 where they called him "the patriarch of a new school of comedians". He was born on May 11, 1927 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada to Harry Sahl. His father was a court reporter who met his wife when she responded to an advertisement he took out in a poetry magazine. The family moved to Los Angeles, California and Mort joined the ROTC unit at Belmont High School. He was also on the staff of the school's newspaper, the Belmont Sentinel. Actor Richard Crenna was one of his classmates. After high school, in 1945, Sahl enlisted in the United States Air Force and was stationed in Alaska. In 1950, he graduated from University of Southern California with majors in traffic engineering and city management. In a speech given at Claremont McKenna's Athenaeum in 2008, Sahl claimed to have attended West Point. He then began performing stand up comedy at Enrico Banducci's hungry i nightclub in LESS