The Essential Dick Gregory by Dick Gregory

Author:Dick Gregory
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2022-08-26T00:00:00+00:00

Interview with Larry Wilde, Great Comedians Talk About Comedy

While activism took up an increasing amount of his time and resources, in the mid-1960s Dick Gregory remained in high demand as a comedian. He had emerged as a unique voice among a pathbreaking generation of postwar, topical humorists. Larry Wilde, himself an aspiring young comic, sought to document their distinctive perspectives through one-on-one interviews, such as this one with Gregory in 1965.

WILDE: When did you first realize you could make people laugh?

GREGORY: Oh, I’ve been doing that all my life.

WILDE: Even when you were young?

GREGORY: Yeah, until I went into show business, then I found out you couldn’t make people laugh. It’s like you have a baby that plays beautiful piano and you say, “Come by the house and listen to my three-year-old play the piano.” That’s fine, but come to Carnegie Hall and pay $5 to hear her and it’s a different thing. This is when I learned how unfunny I was.

WILDE: Many comedians come from poor families and have had very unhappy childhoods. Do you think this is why they became comedians?

GREGORY: I think it has a lot to do with it. I was born and raised on relief, and I can be the world’s biggest billionaire and I can tell jokes about being poor, whereas if Rockefeller’s son decided to . . . he couldn’t.

WILDE: Does coming from an impoverished environment enable the comedian to see things as funny?

GREGORY: No, I think the funniest humor comes from the guy in the street, who’s not in show business. To be a comic is another form of being a whore. Humor is everyday life, and the funniest thing you’re gonna hear is from the cab driver or the soda jerk or the guy in the factory. But there’s something about the comedian that makes him able to get up and sell it . . . present it in a certain way.

WILDE: What is that?

GREGORY: I can’t explain it. I don’t think there’s too many people who can. . . . I think the guy that would explain it wouldn’t be a comedian; he’d be in the field of psychiatry or a sociologist.

WILDE: Do Blacks have a different sense of humor from the white man?

GREGORY: Oh, yes, because Black people have a different set of values from the white man. The white man lacks humor. We laugh at him; we’ve been laughing at him for years. Everything he seems to do we think is silly. You go to a Black movie house, and you think Blacks are loud, boisterous, ignorant, and uncouth, but they’re not. . . . They’re laughing at white folks. Our biggest form of entertainment has been the American white man . . . the silly things he does.

WILDE: Do people have to read the newspaper and be up on the latest news to appreciate your humor?

GREGORY: Oh, yes, definitely. They have to be well informed.

WILDE: Wouldn’t that tend to limit your audience?

GREGORY: No, because you can always water it down.

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