'50 Years of Funny'

Second City, In Old Town

A political job is notorious for the certain privileges it provides, but many privileges are relinquished in today’s entertainment society. Not only are politicians critiqued on their policies, but now their ability to handle satire and laugh at their own mistakes is also being monitored. There is an undeniable connection between politics and Chicago that has been growing since the formation of the city itself and has reached a peak with a true Chicagoan sitting in the Oval Office. Beginning in 1975 the original SNL “Not Ready for Prime Time Players” consisted of mainly Second City Alumni, a tradition carried on through the years, cementing Chicago as a permanent ‘player’ during the evolution of satire as a means of political communication to the rest of the country.

Bernard Sahlins, Howard Alk and Paul Sills, three University of Chicago graduates, set out in 1959 to create an atmosphere where casual interaction met politics and comedy. What conspired instead was the beginning of a revolution in political satire that changed the way America’s voting class responded to candidates from that point forth. At the beginning “cheap tickets, flowing booze and beefy burgers” attracted University of Chicago students who “chortled and laughed themselves silly at scenes that referenced Kierkegaard, Eisenhower, and Greek mythology” (Thomas 5). The ‘smart humor’ was brought out by actors who “played at the top of their intelligence (an edict ever since), skewering people, politics, people in politics, and, as one cast member put it, ‘almost all the foibles of everyday living from suburbia to fall out shelters” (Thomas 5). After an interview with Sarah Akers, a student at The Second City, she says “Second City’s brand of comedy is just sort of creating an atmosphere and a world for people to move around in, and inside of for a few minutes and a glimpse into that as an audience” (Akers). The sheer relatability of the acts gained The Second City, a named derived from an insulting New York City article, instant reputability. “Only three months after it began, in March 1960, none other than Time magazine praised the fledgling theater as a place ‘the declining skill of satire is kept alive with brilliance and flourish’” (Thomas 5); The Second City was set apart from other satire acts because of the company’s courage to address the social, sexual, and political changes of the time away from the conservative 1950’s.

In the early days of The Second City, television had yet to take hold on the realm of political satire. In 1960 the first televised presidential debate was held in Chicago, between candidates John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon. But although political television was in the city, Paul Sand, a cast member at Second City, talks about being on the cusp of the explosion of television that would come in the 1960’s: “for about two years it was just completely isolated and wonderful. TV hadn’t started tempting all of us at the time” (Thomas 21). “Only a day after JFK’s assassination, the show went on,” (Thomas 26) which set forth a precedent of handling national mourning in a way that was mirrored fifty years later following the tragedy of September 11, 2001: “just as it was right after 9/11, they were wanting to laugh, not wanting to think about what happened” (Thomas 26). Second City made the horrible circumstances manageable. When people cannot fathom emotions, a laugh can bring them together.

Connecting to the audience of the time was difficult as the original cast became older, and naturally distant from the primary college base. In the late sixties, Second City expanded and began a touring company “and so it was that seven educated, liberated actor-improvisors were summoned for duty during the most turbulent period in modern American history. Dubbed the Next Generation, they eventually lived up to their prophetic name” (Thomas 34). Bernard Sahlins was frustrated with the older casts who were not reflecting what was going on in the times and seemed already old-fashioned, but with a newer cast he saw what they “choose to do is a clue to what’s happening” (Thomas 42). For example, Judy Morgan, a new cast member says “we were well-read and kind of had fingers on the pulse of what was going on. And we were, in a way, fortunate--1968, Chicago, the convention, the women’s movement, civil rights. We had a lot to play with, and we had opinions about all of it because it concerned us offstage” (Thomas 42). The crucial aspect to this new generation was that they were concerned about the issues and using their stage presence to make a difference outside the walls of the Wells Street theater.

Early Second City Players, Including John Belushi

The nation wanted to hear about the issues, Vietnam in particular and the war’s omnipresence in society called for a firm stance from the troupe. Second City was never one to shy from political assertiveness: “there was a lot of Anti-Vietnam rhetoric. Second City was very much anti-Vietnam War” (Thomas 38). At this time, The Second City ran a show called “A Plague on Both Your Houses” which was a very politically angry show. At the time, Second City struggled with the intense feeling of compulsion to act on issues, but as Sheldon Patinkin, the manager and director, says, “if you are doing satire and comedy, you have to figure out how to do it so that the audience will laugh at what you hate, rather than just get angry at it. If you can laugh at it, you can fix it.” With “A Plague on Both Your Houses”, the cast politics was almost alienating. With the Next Generation, during the Vietnam War

“there was a tremendous amount of youthful energy poured into the protest movement. Then when the Vietnam War ended, there was still that incredible energy, that need to express one’s self...It’s not only true of Second City, but of theater in general in Chicago. You get that feeling that in the early and mid-seventies there was just this tremendous flush of new groups and new people establishing themselves” (Thomas 45).

This energy was translated from war commentary into satire of political figures, specifically the embarrassing Watergate scandal for the Republican party, and these new groups’ influence began to stretch beyond the borders of Chicago and beyond the Midwest.