Robert Orben

Readersvoice.com aims to give people a few good reading tips. You might want to check out previous issues for some more interviews and reading suggestions. For this issue (August, 2004) I phoned humorist Robert Orben, who has written 47 books of humor, most recently the Speaker's Handbook of Humor (Merriam-Webster).
Robert Orben used to write the monologue for the Red Skelton Show, wrote gags for comedians like Dick Gregory, and flew around in Air Force One with President Gerald R. Ford when he was writing the U.S. president's speeches.
Robert Orben's mind is like a bubble gum machine that has churned out thousands of gags since his first book in 1946.

When Steve Martin wrote a column about his favorite 100 books, number five was a book by gag writer Robert Orben."Steve Martin was kind enough in a magazine called the New Yorker, oh, a couple of years ago," Mr Orben said."He had 'The 100 Best Books I've read'. And 19 were gag titles of one sort or another. But one was Patter for Standard Tricks by Robert Orben, because he started as a kid as a magician and used my books and I was always very grateful he was kind enough to put it in."
Robert Orben published his first gag book at the age of 18 in 1946, when he was working in a New York magic store. Professional magicians bought gag books to add humor to their acts.And comedians would go to magic stores to buy props for their stand-up acts, so they'd pick up gag books, too.
When Robert Orben wrote his first gag book, Encyclopedia of Patter, it proved very popular, and he started publishing more books of gags, complete with sketches, ad libs, bits of business and routines. Titles included Patter Parade, Laugh Package, Sight Bits, and Screamline Comedy. By the 1950s Orben gag books were ubiquitous in the comedy profession and were probably overused by stand-up comedians.
In addition to his gag and humor books he started publishing a regular newsletter of topical humor. Also he started writing custom-made gags for comedian Dick Gregory for six years, and wrote for the Jack Paar Show in New York (1962-63), and the Red Skelton Show in Hollywood (1964-70). Late he moved into politics, and in 1974 he became a speech consultant to Vice- President Gerald R. Ford. In August, 1974, he became a speechwriter for President Ford and in January 1976 he was appointed Special Assistant to President Ford and Director of the White House Speechwriting Department. These days he gives speeches on humor for corporate events.

READERSVOICE.COM: I've got these old books of yours. I've been collecting them.

ROBERT ORBEN: Oh, really? Hold on to them because the first 40, maybe ten years ago an antiquarian book seller got a thousand dollars for 40 of them. Now I have a feeling they would go for far more.

RV: I've got Boff Bundle. Crack Comedy.

RO: Oh, yeah, that all goes back to the 1950s, probably.

RV: Yeah that's right. Ad Libs.

RO: Uh-huh.

RV: And the Joke Tellers Handbook for 1999 Belly Laughs...This one's '76.

RO: That's right. I've been around a long time (laughs).

RV: I was wondering how old you were when you started writing comedy.

RO: Well, err, I was 18 when the first book was published. It had the grandiose title of The Encyclopedia of Patter. And that came out in 1946. And I just kept going.
Actually the books gave me sort of a calling card into every other good thing that ever happened to me so err I've been very grateful to them. In fact in the early days the books sold as well if not better in the UK and perhaps in Australia as they did in the United States.

RV: And what would be your five favorite books of all time?

RO: Well, you know, it's an interesting thing. I had a discussion with my wife after that (initial phone enquiry-ed). I was an omniverous reader in my teens and as soon as I got involved in writing I switched almost entirely to periodicals. I used to get five or six different newspapers each day and the news magazines and other magazines because I was writing topical kind humor and I had to keep up on things. There was no time...at one time... I marvel to this day at people who have time to read books. I'm all for books but at one time in 1962...Is that right..1964 maybe, I was a writer on the Red Skelton Show, a tv show, and was writing the monologue on the show. I was churning out a humor service that came out twice a month that consisted of a few hundred topical jokes; I was doing material for a black activist very popular comedian by the name of Dick Gregory sending him a page of material a day; and I was sending a page of material a day to Senator Barry Goldwater who was then running for president of the United States. So how I ever found time to even bathe and shave much less read books I don't know. But in thinking about it, my favorite books, beyond Winnie the Pooh, were fantasy books of one sort or another. Jules Verne, H.G.Wells. And I certainly read all of the Sherlock Holmes stories from front to back.
And something you may not be familiar with. As a teenager I used to love a series called Tom Swift. To give you an idea how antiquated this is it was probably written in the twenties. Tom Swift and his Electric Runabout. (laughs) But there may have been 35 or 40 of them. Books for young people and Tom Swift was a young inventor always doing creative things.

RV: It rings a bell.

RO: Oh, well, it was very popular. And in fact now I think they've resurrected it and they have more up-to-date things to invent other than an electric runabout. There was a also a series by the author William Seabrook who was involved with all manner of interesting psychical research, unusual things. And I read all of those books.
I never read classics. Jane Austen and such. I never had the time, and, until recently, the interest.

READERSVOICE.COM: Have you read many biographies of comedians?

ROBERT ORBEN: Oh yes. I have. Many of those. Groucho Marx. I wrote for Red Skelton for six years and Arthur Marx wrote a book about Red and I certainly.. (read that) and other books on comedians, yes. The Woody Allen books...I'm looking here at some of the things I've got on my shelf that I know I've read. Uh.. books about Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd and Lenny Bruce.

-There were many other performers Robert Orben had liked over the years:

RO: ..But of current performers I like Ellen Degeneres very much, and obviously Robin Williams. And there's so many others. There's so many wonderful performers.
But it's changed. What I don't like about modern humor: One, I don't like the off color aspect of it. It has gone too far. Too far. There's nothing I haven't heard but I don't want to hear it in a theatre or a nightclub so I don't go to comedy clubs anymore.And most of the writers my age have the same feeling.
But what changed substantially from when I was very active 30 years ago before I got involved with politics and things of that sort was the fact that in those days an act had a beginning, middle and end. There was almost a story line and now the comedians have no storyline at all. In fact some of them don't even have a beginning. They come out and say "Where are you from?" When I hear "Where are you from?" I realise they don't have an act. And they don't have a finish. They sometimes finish on a strong joke, sometimes on a weak joke and then they just walk off.

RV: It's funny you should mention that because the same thing happens in movies and novels. The whole skill of plotting seems like a craft that's being lost.

RO: That's very true. Very true...

RV: Did you ever perform magic and comedy?

RO: No, I demonstrated magic in a magic shop, a professional magic shop. Stuart Robson's (stage manager for Florenz "Flo" Ziegfeld) conjuror's shop in New York.
But I was never a very good magician and only in the last 25 years have I been doing humor and that in the form of speeches. I give workshops and speeches on how to use humor in communication. That's been a very successful thing with corporations.Teaching their executives, teaching their salesmen. And then for recognition events, just arr, rather than have somebody give a corporate speech to the best salesman or for people who've done well for the corporation, they would have me as the after dinner speaker, and ostensibly teach them how to use humor but essentially to do a half hour, three quarters of an hour of jokes.

RV: How old were you when you started working in Stuart Robson's magic shop?

RO: I was, err, well, I can tell you precisely I was 17, 18 years old. That's how I got involved in writing humor. When I went to work in Stuart's shop, I was 17 years old at that point, a very successful book in magic was something called Smart Talk For Magicians by George McAthy and I looked at that book and I thought well I can do that. When you're 17 years old you think you can do everything.
So I went to work and I put out Encyclopedia of Patter and that was essentially the start of the writing.

RV: How did you get that book published?

RO: I err...When you're 18 years old nobody's going to pay attention to an 18 year old kid. So I borrowed money from my mother and I printed it and published it myself and that was kind of interesting.(I) went out on a limb to do this, and we printed 2000 copies, and sent out a circular to the various magic shops at that time because that would have been the market.
And for about two or three weeks we'd get an order for three copies or one copy or six copies and I've got 2000 copies sitting there, and I'm thinking "This is a disaster". And then after about three weeks we started to get copies..or rather orders for three dozen, four dozen or a gross, and the 2000 went within the month and that went through something like 20 reprintings, so, uh that started me on the way.RV: Did you do any other jobs after the magic shop?

RO: No, pretty much the books carried me along and then it dawned on me maybe there was a way to go beyond this and then out of the blue I got an enquiry, essentially. Dick Gregory, who was just beginning to make a huge name for himself as the first black American comedian that paved the way for Cosby and all the rest back in 1962.
He had used the books. He had written to me, oh, maybe in 1955, and said he was a black comedian working on the South side of Chicago, and he feels if he had special material, he had been using my books, he would be able to move ahead very fast. And he had seen a very small amount of money.He had been working in odd jobs in Chicago to keep alive and I wrote back and I said, "Unless you really have a persona, a special approach, all I can do is give you more of the same material that you find in the books so save your money."
And in 1962 I got a telegram at maybe one o'clock in the morning where we were living and he said, "I've found", essentially "my voice, who I am. And Wednesday there's going to be a two page article about me in Time Magazine. And you and me are going places, Bob."
And I still remember the conversation this was like at three o'clock in the morning when I reached him at the Playboy Club, which is where he was working in Chicago, and I said "I'll tell you what, Mr Gregory, I've heard a lot of 'You and me are going places, Bob' ...I'll spring for 35 cents, I'll buy a copy of Time Magazine, and if the two page article is in there I'll call you back" (laughs).
So the two page article was there, Thursday I flew out to Chicago, Friday we flew back to New York and we signed a contract at that point and I wrote for him for a number of years and I must say he was one of the best employers I've ever had.

Robert Orben turned his hand to politics in the 1970s...

ROBERT ORBEN: I don't know whether you're aware of this from whatever you've found but after I migrated to six years on the Red Skelton Show I started to write for political people, politicians, and it eventually brought me to 1973 when I became a consultant to Vice President Gerald R. Ford.
And in 1974 I joined the White House staff and in 1976 I became director of the White House speech writing department. For Gerald R. Ford.

RV: So, what was the procedure when you were writing a speech?

RO: Well the speechwriting is a rather large part of the White House operation. There's usually about six speech writers, Nixon had 14. I don't know how many Bush has, probably seven or eight of them, I'm sort of guessing at that, but we had about six and what would happen is you'd get a schedule of the speeches that had been committed to, and I'd meet with the president, and go over each of the speeches.
He would tell me what areas he wanted to cover and since we were pretty well familiar with the administration policy then we'd sit down and write the speeches. There were six of us. And then what was unusual, and I didn't realise how unusual it was having met with other White House speechwriters, I had enormous access to the president. I would say I spent two to three hours a week in the Oval Office working with the president on speeches and then when we'd fly out to do the speeches, on Air Force One, I would work with him a little more and we'd go over the speech in a sort of rehearsal, and so for most of the domestic speeches I was with him. And that sort of access to the president hasn't been the case since Gerald R. Ford, and I personally don't feel you can do a totally adequate job for anybody whether it's a comedian, a business executive or a president without having one on one access.

RV: What was he like?

RO: He is wonderful. He is a totally down to earth individual and he is to this day. I went to the White House last year at a dinner celebrating his 90th birthday and in another couple of months on August 9th we'll be going to the capital for a dinner and reception honoring Gerald R. Ford for the, arr, it's the 30th anniversary of when he assumed office.
And there's no imperial presidency with Gerald R. Ford. He is just a down-to-earth and an extremely capable person and what's giving me great satisfaction having lived to my mature age is that all of the criticism that he got at the time for pardoning Nixon and the put-downs he got.Those same people are now writing articles and books and appearing on television saying that the Nixon pardon was right. It saved our country from a debacle of arrr...a political debacle, and that Gerald R. Ford was a very capable and good president.

RV: When you were with him did he seem kind of, um, to take the presidency in his stride, like it was just another job?

RO: Well, remember he had been in the Congress for 24 years, where he was minority leader, that's the leader of the party out of (power), the Shadow/ Opposition in England. So he was a very astute politician.
I remember him talking. We were going over a speech when I was the consultant, he was Vice- President, and I remember late at night, one night. There was all the furore about "Is Nixon going to resign? Is Nixon going to be impeached?" And ahh, Vice-President Ford was saying to me, he said, "You know I promised my wife Betty that this would be my last year in Congress, and arr, I don't wish to be president." And, ahh, but when he was asked obviously he had to take the role.

RV: Right. And um, just jumping back to the humor now, again, arr I've got maybe five more questions...

RO: Well, I'll tell you, arr, before we..speaking of humor. Ford had a very great appreciation of humor and in the very second speech he did as president...ahh, there was tremendous uncertainty in the country whether our constitution was going to work.
Here was a non-elected vice president and now a non-elected president and there were all manner of rumours about the troops being on alert and whether the system was going to work.And Ford was very much aware of that so for his second speech, it was at the Ohio State University, there were...it was to 15000 people in the Field House, huge audience, and he started out by saying "So much has happened since I accepted your kind invitation to be here today. "At that point I was America's first instant vice president and now I find myself America's first instant president. "The U.S. marine corps band is so confused they don't know whether to play Hail to the Chief or You've Come a Long Way, Baby."
It was an interesting crowd reaction. Nobody knew Gerald R. Ford. There was a split second of silence when I almost died there. And then suddenly the place was up for grabs. A roar of laughter.

RV: That was your gag?

RO: Well, it was the president... the president said it.

RV: What people or styles of humor influenced your style of humor?

RO: Oh, certainly Bob Hope and Groucho Marx.In fact there have been times in the past when people have said I've sounded a little like Groucho Marx. I don't agree with that. But that short one-liner to the point, that's strictly Bob Hope and Groucho Marx.

RV: Are you still doing that newsletter?

RO: No, I did that for about 30 years and I stopped doing that in 1989 when I turned 62. I felt it was time to spend more time doing what I want to do.When you do current material, someone once said, with the next deadline it's out of date. Well, not totally, but I did it twice a month and it was about a hundred jokes an issue and it was all very topical so I had to read and read and read. Unfortunately as we've discussed, not books, but everything else to keep up to date.

RV: What sort of things magazine wise do you read today and newspapers?

RO: Well, the same thing I did then. I got a few newspapers. I get all three news magazines, Time, Newsweek and the U.S. News. And maybe 15 or 20 other magazines that I still get... magic magazines to know what's going on. In fact I just turned down an offer to go out to a magic convention and be interviewed on stage akin to what you're doing now but I had a conflict with a speakers' conference.I still do speeches and workshops.

RV: What's your general daily routine?

RO: What it used to be was getting up at four o'clock in the morning drinking a lot of coffee, reading the newspapers, making notes, and then at six o'clock writing until I had written 25 jokes. And if I did it in three or four hours I'd reward myself and take the day off.
If it took 12 hours to write 25 decent jokes I would keep at it. And that's seven days a week. I was a workaholic.

RV: What about when you were doing the Red Skelton Show, what was your routine there?

RO: Same thing. Only then I would first start off writing Red's material because it was making me the most money...and then, although when you write jokes you really have to think is this joke right for one client or another? I was simultaneously, as I mentioned before, writing for Barry Goldwater, Red Skelton, and Dick Gregory. Well obviously those jokes were not interchangeable. (laughter) So you had to put yourself in the mindset of the person you were writing for.

RV: What years were you writing for the Red Skelton show?

RO: 1964 to 1970.

RV: Ok. And you were liviing in Los Angeles, was it?

RO: Los Angeles, yeah. It was a lovely six years. I enjoyed it tremendously.

RV: And so each day you'd... How often did the show go on?

RO: Once a week. I wrote the monologue on the shows, so this was the six or seven minutes that Red opened the show with.
And it usually came to about 28 jokes but I would write between a hundred and a hundred fifty jokes each week, and pick the best and then the routine could be done.

RV: What was your deadline there?

RO: Well, you always write pretty far in advance. I think we were writing three weeks in advance. Because re-runs also were used for the show so you couldn't get immediately topical.

RV: So the same routine there, getting up at four a.m.?

RO: Absolutely. (laughs)... You couldn't be too topical but...you knew what that audience was concerned with.

RV: Ever considered writing memoirs or a life story?

RO: Well I do have a book Speaker's Handbook of Humor and it's published by Merriam-Webster. And that's probably as much memoirs as anything because I talk about a lot that's happened in my life, and pertains to how to do speeches, how to write speeches, how to use humor.
But a memoir as such, memoirs generally don't sell, and ah, unfortunately, I've never been a note-taker and I would come back from these different events, with television and with business, whatever, with wonderful anecdotes and think I will never forget that, and I have.

-copyright Simon Sandall.

-copyright Simon Sandall.