Joe Frisco
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Joe Frisco was an American vaudeville performer who first made his name on stage as a jazz dancer, but later incorporated his stuttering voice to his act and became a popular comedian.
Born Louis Wilson Joseph (Milan, Illinois, November 4, 1889), Frisco was a mainstay on the vaudeville circuit in the 1920s and 1930s. He made his Broadway debut in the Florenz Ziegfeld Follies in 1918.
His popular jazz dance act (called by some the “Jewish Charleston”) was a choreographed series of shuffles, camel walks and turns. It was usually performed to “Darktown Strutters’ Ball.” He typically wore a derby hat, and had a king-sized cigar in his mouth as he danced. He often performed in front of a backing danceline of beautiful women wearing leotards, short jackets and bowler hats -- and “puffing” on big prop cigars.
Frisco was a compulsive gambler, and when he began to incorporate stand-up comedy into his act, his humor revolved on tales about his bad luck gambling, speakeasies, and his constant state of debt. Frisco stuttered, which he used to comic effect in his act. A typical joke: “After they made that guy, th-th-they threw away the sh-sh-shovel!”
In the 1940s, he moved to Hollywood, made appearances in several low-budget and otherwise forgettable movies. According to the American Vaudeville Museum, later in Frisco’s career, bookies and IRS agents lined up outside the paymaster’s door at theaters where Frisco was performing in order to collect on their debts.
Joe Frisco died of cancer, virtually penniless, on February 12, 1958, in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California.
[edit] Filmography
- Sweet Smell of Success (1957)
- Riding High (1950)
- That's My Man (1947)
- Shady Lady (1945)
- Atlantic City (1944)
- Ride, Tenderfoot, Ride (1940)
- Western Jamboree (1938)
- The Gorilla (1930)
- The Benefit (1930)
- The Border Patrol (1930)
- The Happy Hottentots (1930)
- The Song Plugger (1930)
[edit] Trivia
- He was so well known for his jazz dance that writer F. Scott Fitzgerald makes reference to him in “The Great Gatsby.”
- He was friends with Bing Crosby, who constantly gave him money
- He was illiterate.
[edit] See also
Joe Frisco: Comic, Jazz Dancer, and Railbird, by Ed Lowry, Charlie Foy, Paul M. Levitt (1999), (ISBN 978-0-8093-2241-1)
