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Borscht Belt

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Borscht Belt
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"Borscht Belt" is a style of Jewish comedy. The actual Borscht Belt is a region in the Catskill Mountains of upstate New York that was a popular resort destination in the 1920s through the 1970s for Jews who were excluded from other resorts. Due to the heavily Ashkenazi ancestry of New York Jews, the area is named for borscht, a type of beet soup popular in Central and Eastern Europe.
It was common for families to stay at such a resort for a month or more in summer, with the men working in the city during the week and driving out on Friday afternoons; this meant that even with performers moving between resorts, there was a constant need to develop fresh material since you'd be performing in front of the same audience every couple weeks. That made it an ideal training ground for radio and TV.
The Jewish comedians who performed at these resorts developed a style of humor that became very popular in the entertainment industry. Borscht Belt humor is characterized by stereotypical Jewish traits, such as Self-Deprecation, insults, complaints, marital bickering, Hypochondria, wordplay and liberal use of Yiddish. The Alter Kocker character type was developed here as well. The sterotypical attire includes a cigar, combover and cheap tuxedo.
Comedians who have worked in the Borscht Belt or have used the style of comedy include:
Jackie Mason
George Burns
Mel Brooks
Rodney Dangerfield
Don Rickles
Woody Allen
Buddy Hackett
Carl Reiner
Sid Caesar
Lenny Bruce
Mel Blanc
Phyllis Diller
Joan Rivers
Milton Berle
Jerry Lewis
Estelle Getty
Lainie Kazan
Joey Bishop
Henny Youngman ("Take my wife...please.")
Zero Mostel
Phil Silvers
Bernard Bresslaw
Mike And Bernie Winters
Compare Vaudeville and Burlesque.
 Borscht Belt
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2023-09-29T18:17:00Z
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2023-09-29T18:17:01Z
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In some iterations of his backstory in The Simpsons, this is where Krusty the Klown's career began.
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In F Troop, the Hekawi tribe is built around Borscht Belt characterizations and played by Jewish actors.
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In A Walk on the Moon, a vast majority of the film is set in a Borscht Belt bungalow colony during the summer of 1969. There is a brief scene where several of the parents are in a ballroom watching a Borscht Belt comic: "Now I want to invite you all up on the floor to dance, because it's my turn to laugh!"
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Jimmy Barrett from Mad Men is an old-school Jewish insult comic. His Jerkass persona gets him in trouble starting with his Establishing Character Moment and he seems pretty unhappy, but he gets to deliver a scathing "The Reason You Suck" Speech to Don for sleeping with his wife.
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Catskill from Heartbeeps is a standup comedian robot modeled after a bad Borscht Belt comedian, complete with a database full of horrible Henny Youngman style jokes.
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King of the Hill: In his pursuit of a comedy career, Bobby Hill adopts a Yiddish accent, and turns "Vat are you talkin' about?" into his catchphrase.
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Parodied in The Muppet Show with Fozzie Bear, whose entire identity is wrapped up in being a Borscht Belt style comedian who is so awful at telling jokes that his failures are hilarious.
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Alan interviewed a Borscht Belt style comedian in the Las Vegas episode of Knowing Me, Knowing You with Alan Partridge. This being Alan, he failed to get most of the comedian's humor and then told an offensive Jewish joke.
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Dirty Dancing is set at a Borscht Belt resort, though Borscht Belt comedy does not play a major role in the movie.
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Buddy on The Dick Van Dyke Show is a former Borscht Belt comedian turned comedy scriptwriter.
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Fallout: New Vegas features Borscht Belt style comedian Billy Knight, complete with an inexplicable New York accent.
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The Nanny often indulges in Borscht Belt comedy, being centered around its Jewish-American protagonist.
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Game Grumps's Danny will invoke this at times and will often tell stories of his Fish out of Water father which can resemble this.
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The blacklisted comedian Hecky Brown is forced to return to working the Borscht Belt in The Front.
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Boris and Minka, Tommy's maternal grandparents in Rugrats.
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Coming to America features Eddie Murphy performing as an old New York Jew who tells a classic Borscht Belt joke: An old Jew asks a waiter to taste his soup, refusing to elaborate further. The waiter finally agrees to taste it and asks where the spoon is. The Jew smiles and says, "Ah ha!"
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Dr. Zoidberg in Futurama is a thinly-veiled Space Jew of a Borscht Belt-style mooch.
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In The Princess Bride, Miracle Max and his wife are borscht belt-style characters, with their shrill bickering, haggling over money, complaining, and Yiddish accents.
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Henny Youngman voiced a caricature of himself as a chicken in an episode of Tiny Toon Adventures, where he comments about his jokes hitting "below the Borscht Belt."
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In Mr. Saturday Night, Buddy Young is a Borscht Belt comedian who made it big.
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In Goodfellas, Henry and Karen watch Henny Youngman after their famous steady-cam walk into the theater. He tells the classic joke, "I take my wife everywhere, but she finds her way home!" Youngman's trouble with his lines was the biggest obstacle to getting the shot.
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On Jellystone!, Lippy and Hardy are now Eastern European Jewish and they are retired comedians. They only had one comedy album, which apparently killed their career.
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The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel: Midge's family goes on vacation in a Jewish resort in the Catskills every summer. During her first summer after starting her stand-up comedy career, she tries to stick to her normal traditions, but is eventually pressed by Susie into doing gigs at the local Borscht Belt resorts. Her first gig ends up being a "naughty" late-night spot at the Concord where she's expected to "work blue," and after its success, she ends up working a few more gigs at other resorts.
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Mel Brooks' History of the World Part I features a lot of Borscht Belt style comedy, including a sequence where Brooks plays a stand-up comedian in ancient Rome. There are cameos by a number of Borscht Belt comedians, including Sid Caesar, Jackie Mason and Henny Youngman.
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In The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries episode "Moscow Side Story", the Borscht Belt turns whoever wears it into a comedian.
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Sabrina the Teenage Witch has a subplot in one episode where Hilda puts on a "Borscht Belt," which is an actual belt that forces her to tell these types of jokes ("I took my ex-wife everywhere. It was easier than having to kiss her goodbye!") and she ends up with a stand-up routine on the Other Realm network.
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The following is a list of statements referring to the current page from other pages.

 Borscht Belt
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A Nice Jewish Index
 Borscht Belt
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Comedy Tropes
 Borscht Belt
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Recorded and Stand-Up Comedy
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Borscht Belt
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Borscht Belt
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Borscht Belt
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