Today is the birthday of perhaps the greatest comic drunk of all time, Foster Brooks (1912-2001). While he got his start in radio in the 1930s, it wasn’t until he was in his 50s that he started to gain fame on television with his comic drunk act with performances on Steve Allen and Perry Como’s shows. Dean Martin (also famous for his comic drunk) was to be his biggest booster, and thanks to appearances on Martin’s celebrity roasts and variety shows, Brooks was to enjoy his greatest success in the 1970s. By that time, he was in his sixties.
To find out more about the variety arts past and present, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold.
And don’t miss my new book Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube, just released by Bear Manor Media, also available from amazon.com etc etc etc
(Travalanche) 