First Lady of Laughs

The Forgotten Story of Jean Carroll, America's First Jewish Woman Stand-Up Comedian

Grace Kessler Overbeke

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 2024
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9781479818167
• Subtopic: Jewish History
• Index: History

Before Hacks and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, there was the comedienne who started it all

First Lady of Laughs tells the story of Jean Carroll, the first Jewish woman to become a star in the field we now call stand-up comedy. Though rarely mentioned among the pantheon of early stand-up comics such as Henny Youngman and Lenny Bruce, Jean Carroll rivaled or even outshone the male counterparts of her heyday, playing more major theaters than any other comedian of her period. In addition to releasing a hit comedy album, Girl in a Hot Steam Bath, and briefly starring in her own sitcom on ABC, she also made twenty-nine appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show.

Carroll made enduring changes to the genre of stand-up comedy, carving space for women and modeling a new form of Jewish femininity with her glamorous, acculturated, but still recognizably Jewish persona. She innovated a newly conversational, intimate style of stand-up, which is now recognized in comics like Joan Rivers, Sarah Silverman, and Tiffany Haddish. When Carroll was ninety-five she was honored at the Friars Club in New York City, where celebrities like Joy Behar and Lily Tomlin praised her influence on their craft. But her celebrated career began as an impoverished immigrant child, scrounging for talent show prize money to support her family.

Drawing on archival footage, press clippings, and Jean Carroll's personal scrapbook, First Lady of Laughs restores Jean Carroll's remarkable story to its rightful place in the lineage of comedy history and Jewish American performance.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Timeline of Jean Carroll’s Life and Career
• Introduction: “The Mother of Us All”: The Unwritten Legacy of Jean Carroll
• 1. “You’re Jean Carroll”: From Immigrant Daughter to American Vaudevillian
• 2. A Woman in the Stand-Up “Fraternity”: Jean Carroll and Stand-Up Comedy in the Post-Vaudeville Era
• 3. “The First Lady of Laughs”: Jean Carroll on the Nightclub Comedy Scene
• 4. “Take It from Me” (and They Did): Carroll’s Battle for a Television Sitcom
• 5. Sullivan Spots and Party Records: Playing Jewish without Saying “Jewish”
• 6. Not without My “Rotten Kid”: Caretaker versus Comedian
• Conclusion
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Author