COMEDIANS: Will Rogers with Fangs

Of all the seasoned infighters who appeared in Los Angeles last week, probably none was more combative than the man in the cashmere sweater who said: “I like fun, but we don’t have time for jokes. We have to overthrow our Government.”

This was Morton Lyon Sahl. delegate from everywhere and nowhere, just about the only un-TelePrompTed speaker in town, and a sideshow considerably brighter than the main attraction. Busy as a Kennedy, he appeared nightly on local television over station KHJ (the call letters, he said, stand for “Kennedy Hates Johnson”), nibbled petits fours and strawberries while matching attitudes with Senators, Governors, showfolk and intellectuals, including a bewildered Max Lerner. Sahl also did two shows a night at the Crescendo on Sunset Strip and managed to write at least one newspaper column each day, mainly for Hearst. First and still the best of the New Comedians whose specialty is topical humor, Mort Sahl, 33, is emerging as the most successful political satirist in the U.S., a sort of Will Rogers with fangs.

Blitz & Avarice. As usual, Sahl spared neither friend nor foe, but last week he concentrated his intramural rounds on Jack Kennedy. Mort wondered if the nation was searching for a “son-figure.” The Senator, Mort suggested, was a natural for TV’s Father Knows Best, and he noted that Kennedy’s appearance on College News Conference made sense because “kids like to talk over problems with someone their own age.” Smoothing his edges somewhat when he appeared on the dais with Kennedy at Paul Butler’s Beverly-Hilton dinner, Sahl pictured a line-up of war heroes getting their medals from President Truman in 1945. Harry, by Sahl’s account, made the usual claim that he would rather have that medal than be President, and “all the guys agreed, except this thin lieutenant from Massachusetts.” Casting a miscellaneous eye, Sahl thought it not unlikely that, after the playing of The Star-Spangled Banner, Lenny Bernstein would come on-camera to explain it. Introducing “Mom” Walker, chief telephone operator at convention headquarters, Sahl said: “They have good exchanges for a convention—like RUthlessness, BLitz, AVarice and MAchine.” Deadline for Treason. Teeth flashing, head characteristically bobbing, muttering “Onward! Onward!” between jokes, Sahl always managed to seem surprised when people laughed. “I’m for capital punishment,” he declared bitingly. “You’ve got to execute people—how else are they going to learn?” The line rivaled his best on birth control: “I says to my girl, ‘I don’t think birth control is a very important issue,’ and she says, ‘None of you do.’ ” Naturally, some of Sahl’s heaviest fire shot up the Republican Administration.

“These people in Washington must know what they’re doing or they wouldn’t be there,” he declared in tones of grudging admiration; then, turning the worm, he added: “And they’re not there.” On the same theme, Mort announced: “President Eisenhower is in charge of everything—whenever Nixon leaves the country.” Picking off the mighty and famous, Sahl got the surprise of the week when his angriest foe turned out to be his TV sponsor, California Millionaire Bart Lytton (Lytton Savings & Loan Association). A Kennedy backer.* Lytton simmered in the control booth as Sahl and guests enthusiastically reviewed the merits of Adlai Stevenson on the air, finally barged into the studio and woofed into the microphone that the show was not “a Stevenson rally.” Complained Sahl: “I have been accused of being everything except partisan. I have never been part of a group large enough to be called a minority.” The sponsor later apologized, and Sahl merely dubbed the show Bart Lytton Prevents.

Eagerly sharpening knives for the Republican Convention in Chicago and for the campaign after that, Mort knows that he is under pressure. “I have only a few months to tell these jokes,” he points out, “before they become treason.”

*And a man of expensive imagination. Lytton had his swimming pool filled in to make room for more people at a party he gave last week at his Holmby Hills mansion, wove among his guests with a microphone obtrusively pinned to his lapel so that his each and every word could be heard throughout the grounds over 39 loudspeakers strapped to the shrubbery.