Jackie Mason

Was there a time when people tried to persuade you to park [your Jewishness]?

Oh yes, there was a time as late as a week ago that people told me, Why do you have to sound so Jewish? A lot of Jews are embarrassed by Jewishness because it reminds them of their parents, their grandparents who were refugees, were poverty stricken, struggling for attention, struggling to be accepted, because society in general never really accepted Jews as equals or partners. They were always like an alienated minority.

What are your earliest memories of life at home?

Growing up doesn't know if he's poverty stricken or not. If he has enough to eat, then he has love, has attention. He doesn't know that this is a cheap chair, or you have to sleep in a bed. As long as you could sleep, I was sleeping more often on a chair than a bed. or or some kind of a cushion on the floor, and uh I had b th three brothers and sisters, or s there were six people in the family, so we were all next to each other or close to each other, and taking care of each other.

What is your relationship with money like now?

My relationship with money is just the opposite of Kanalia. I don't value money any any special way because of the effect it had when I was poverty stricken. I realized uh the older I am that money means nothing. That past a certain amount of money, the waste rest of your money that you're saving, you're saving just to feel rich.

How old were you when you knew that your father expected you to become a rabbi?

I knew all my life that my father expected me to be a rabbi, and I had no no complaint or disturbance about it. And it was a great idea to me to become a rabbi. Then I became a rabbi. And when I became a rabbi I started to see and learn more about life in general, in the directions that are not necessarily religious. And I said to myself, I don't think this is what I really want for the rest of my life. I wanted to please my father, so I didn't want to hurt his feelings by telling him I'd become a comedian.

When did you start making people laugh and start thinking that actually that might be the job for you?

Because as soon as I started talking to audiences when I was doing when I was delivering my sermons in the temple, as I was delivering my sermons I noticed that it feels easy for me to to infuse some comedy into my speeches. And I noticed that the more comedy I used, the speeches and the sermons became more successful.

Tell me a little bit of what happened [with Frank Sinatra].

I used to see Sinacho in Las Vegas, and every time he was playing in a hotel, all the other comics and performers, all the everybody would like pay homage to him like he was the Pope. I never particularly paid attention to him. And I said to myself, I'm I'm not the subservian type and I'm not going to get involved in that scene, so I used to just look at it and uh and keep walking. And somehow it bothered him that I'm the only guy in the Las Vegas crowd of stars that that was ignoring him. So he would louse me up to people. What does he think? He's a big shot? He would invent all kinds of reasons to hate me that had nothing to do with me. So one day when I was performing, I was telling my jokes, he came in and they started heckling my act. So when he started heckling my act, I started to call him names.