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(AKA "MR. MALAPROP)
Marjorie Gottlieb Wolfe
Syosset, New York
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Comedian, Norm Crosby, was born on
Sept. 15, 1927, in Boston, Mass. Shown
below is a Yiddish guide to this Jewish
comedian.
"alergye" (allergy)
Crosby is allergic to horses and dogs.
(a) "bisel freyd, a bisel lakhen" (a little joy,
a little laughter)
Crosby loves to receive a "standing ovulation."
"gelekhter" (laughter)
Crosby, in an attempt to freshed up his act,
induced laughter through the use of
malapropisms.
"gelt" (money)
Crosby raised huge sums of money for the
City of Hope National Medical Center and
Research Institute in Duarte, California.
"floym" (prune)
"You'll never win a World Series in Anaheim. The town flower is a prune. In
Anaheim, cobwebs is a social disease."
(Crosby quote)
"glick" (luck)
Crosby started to talk about the Viking who
was to travel 500,000 million miles to see
if there was life on Mars. Crosby said, "We
have no one in space. They sent a Viking
up last year to find out if there were living
creatures on Mars. There was one living
creature. Just one. The damn spaceship
landed on him!"
"hartsik, shaineh gelechter" (hearty laugh)
Crosby gives his audience a hearty laugh
when he speaks of "human beans,"
"trousers that need an altercation," a sports
idol who is "an insulation to young players,"
and the human body's being "subject to so
any melodies."
"hern" (to hear)
During W.W. II military service, Crosby
suffered a permanent partial hearing loss.
He wears a hearing aid and often jokes
onstage about his inability to hear indistinct speech. He has served as honorary Chairman of the Better Hearing
Institute of Washington, D.C.
Note: "A mentsh heft andere." (a mentsh
helps others.)
"kholemen" (to dream)
"Did you ever dream you'd get up in the
morning and miss Nixon?"
(Crosby quote)
"komiker" (comic)
Crosby perfected his style through years of
polishing it in nightclubs, at Catskills resorts, in "kontsert" (concert) halls,, theaters, and on "televisye" (TV).
"krank" (ill)
"There was no such thing as a 'dark room'
[in Vegas]. If somebody was ill, the people
across the street would come over and fill
in. I did that. I remember when Connie
Stevens had some problem, and I went over. I was working with Tony Bennett at
the Sands. And it was Wayne Newton who
went over and opened the show for Connie.
And then as soon as I finished, I ran over and I closed the show after Wayne. You know the hotels covered each other, and
helped each other. The hotels did that."
(Crosby quote)
"krankayt" (sickness)
Milton Berle had bypass surgery. He returned to the Friars Club. Joe Vitrelli, a Friar who'd been away for several weeks
after his operation and recovery, mentions
that he hadn't seen Berle all week. Berle
explained that he'd had a bypass. Norm
Crosby shrugged. "Okay, that explains
Monday. What about Tuesday and Wednesday?"
"nes" (miracle)
"nisim" (miracles)
"I'll tell you a miracle. Last week at
Cedars-Sinai in the Cardiology Department,
after eight hours of surgery and amnesia,
they put the heart of a turtle into a human
being. Last Monday the patient walked out of the hospital. And Thursday he got to the
parking lot."
(Crosby quote)
"oylem" (audience)
"I don't do the same show twice. I've never
done a show word for word. You get a
feeling for the audience. You're supposed
to be able to get a basic instinct for them
when you walk on the stage. It's a gift. You
have to be able to do that."
(Crosby quote)
"peklfleysh" (corned beef)
Crosby's favorite snacks are licorice and
corned-beef sandwiches.
"por shikh" (a pair of shoes)
Crosby was once the advertising manager for a shoe company that had about
40 stores.
"shtik" (a special bit of acting)
Crosby's routines take the form of lectures
based on "hysterical truths." He explains the wisdom ("chochem") of "Sigmund Frood," who went into a lavatory and friggered out all for himself on the sperm of the moment, that there was equalness between people."
Norm speaks from his "diagram" and drinks "decapitated" coffee.
"farbaytn" (to substitute)
Crosby can substitute similar-sounding
words to create a phrase that ultimately makes little sense. No, he didn't invent the
word "feelawful"--Indigestion from eating
Israeli street food. (Source: "The Complete
Idiot's Guide to Learning Yiddish" by Rabbi
Benjamin Blech.)
"gast" (guest)
Crosby has been a guest on The Merv
Griffin Show, The Ed Sullivan Show, The
Dean Martin Comedy House, and the
Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson. He
has co-hosted and contributed to The Jerry
Lewis MDA telethon.
"televisye" series (TV series)
From 1978 to 1983, Crosby hosted the TV
series, "The Comedy Shop," a showcase for
stand-up comics.
"tsenerlingn" (teenager)
Crosby describes teenagers: "Teenagers
don't know what love is. They go for a
drive, the boy runs out of gas, they smooch
little, and the girl says she loves him. That
isn't love. Love is when you're married
twenty-five years. smooching in your
living room, and he runs out of gas and she
still says she loves him--that's love!"
"tsetumlen" (to bewilder)
To lend greater credence to his malapropisms, Crosby created a stage
persona who seems perpetually bewildered.
"vashtsimer" (bathroom)
Engelbert Humperdinck lives in Beverly
Hills. His palatial home had 13 bathrooms.
[When he was a kid he lived in a dumpy
place with one bathroom for half a dozen
families.] Norm Crosby said, "Same thing
with me. I swore I'd have a house with lots
of bathrooms. Today I have a house with
eleven bathrooms. Today I can't go!"
"voyl" (nice/agreeable)
Z. Z. Zorn said that she met Norm Crosby
many times and there is no nicer guy."
"zhuri" (jury)
"When you go into court you are putting
your fate into the hands of twelve people
who weren't smart enough to get out of
jury duty."
(Crosby quote)
"zinger" (singer)
Crosby toured with Robert Goulet for three
years and with Tom Jones for four years.
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