{{Short description|Double-talk comedian and stooge}} {{Use mdy dates|date=May 2025}} {{Infobox person | name = Al Kelly | image = <!-- just the filename, without the File: or Image: prefix or enclosing brackets --> | alt = | caption = | birth_name = Abraham Kalish | birth_date = December 18, 1896 | birth_place = Kreva, Russian Empire (now Belarus) | death_date = September 7, 1966 | death_place = New York City, U.S. | other_names = | occupation = Comedian | alma_mater = | spouse = | children = | parents = | known_for = Double-talk routines }} '''Al Kelly''' (December 18, 1896<!--1896 sic-->,<ref group=nb name=dob1896/><ref name=VON2007/> – September 7, 1966) was an American vaudeville comedian specializing in double-talk.<ref name=VON2007/> From the 1930s he was working as a stooge (comic foil) for Broadway headliner Willie Howard.
When raconteur Joey Adams broke Willie Howard's record as the longest-running entertainer at Lou Walters's Latin Quarter nightclub, Howard's old friend Al Kelly congratulated Adams in double-talk: "I want to thank Joey Adams for the many plyds he grand since the days of Willie Howard and to Lou Walters for the cravinating many tribnitz like Flo Ziegfeld all of which have been draimen, and I mean it."<ref>''Variety'', August 24, 1955, p. 61.</ref>
==Biography== Kelly was born '''Abraham Kalish''' in Kreva, Russian Empire (now Belarus), the eldest of six children of Max and Gelle (Mary) Kalish. The family immigrated to the United States in 1906. His younger siblings were Benjamin, Isidore, Israel, Fannie, and Annie. His parents both worked in the garment industry.<ref name="nynat">''New York, U.S., State and Federal Naturalization Records, 1794–1943''</ref>
Kelly began his show-business career in 1914, in an act called ''Nine Crazy Kids'', then started performing comic monologues.<ref name=VON2007/> Early in his career, he performed largely in the Borscht Belt.<ref name=NYT1966-09-07/> When he was performing this stand-up comedy in the 1930s, he fluffed a joke so that it came out as nonsense: this scrambled dialogue got a good laugh so he made it the focus of his act.<ref name=VON2007>{{citation |title=Vaudeville, Old & New: An Encyclopedia of Variety Performers in America |page=621 |year=2007 |quote=... Al Kelly was synonymous with double-talk. |isbn=978-0-415-93853-2 |publisher=Routledge |volume=1}}</ref>
When Willie Howard was signed by Educational Pictures to film a series of two-reel comedies, Al Kelly appeared in one of them (''Playboy Number One'', 1937). In 1941 Howard was filming comedy routines for the Soundies movie jukeboxes, and Kelly worked opposite Howard there as well (''Comes the Revolution'', 1941).<ref>Scott MacGillivray and Ted Okuda, ''The Soundies Book'', iUniverse, 2007, p. 127. {{ISBN|978-0-595-42060-5}}</ref>
Kelly was well known among show-business professionals as a double-talk artist,<ref name=VON2007/> and they employed Kelly to do his fractured-English specialty on their TV programs, including Milton Berle's ''Texaco Star Theater'', ''The Ed Sullivan Show'', ''The Steve Allen Show'', ''The Ernie Kovacs Show'', ''The Jackie Gleason Show'', ''The Dinah Shore Chevy Show'', ''The Eddie Fisher Show'', ''The Jack Paar Program'', ''Candid Camera'', ''The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson'', and ''The Soupy Sales Show''. He was also an actor in supporting roles, as in the children's TV series ''Mack & Myer for Hire''.
Kelly died at age 69<ref group=nb name=dob1896/> in the early hours of September 7, 1966, of a heart attack<ref name=NYT1966-09-07>"Al Kelly Is Dead; Famed Comedian; Double-Talk Expert Was in Show Business 52 Years", in ''The New York Times'', September 7, 1966, [https://www.nytimes.com/1966/09/07/archives/al-kelly-is-dead-famed-comedian-doubletalk-expert-was-in-show.html first paragraph of pay article]: "Al Kelly, double-talking comedian, died early this morning after suffering a heart attack at the Friars Club. He was pronounced dead on arrival at Roosevelt Hospital."</ref> while sitting in the audience in the dining room at one of his favorite venues, The Friars' Club, in New York City, during a roast. On September 8, 1966, a crowded memorial service was conducted at Riverside Memorial Chapel (Amsterdam Avenue and 76th Street), New York City.
==Legacy== * Al Kelly was referenced by Ben Katchor in a ''Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer'' strip as "Noel Kapish, the famous double-talk artist of the 1950s and 1960s"<ref>Ben Katchor, "The Double-Talk Artist", collected in ''Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer: Stories'', 1996, {{ISBN|0-316-48294-3}}, panel 1, p. 62.</ref> (a play on both "Kalish" and "capeesh?"). * Al Kelly was featured by Drew Friedman in his book ''Old Jewish Comedians'' (2006), "a collection of portraits of famous and forgotten Jewish comics of film and TV in their old age". * Al Kelly was described by Marx Brothers screenwriter Irving Brecher in 2006: "Al did double talk. That was his style. He spoke gibberish in vaudeville sketches [...] most comedians couldn't do it like Al Kelly could. He was unique."<ref name=JJ2006-12-14>[https://www.jewishjournal.com/arts/article/books_shmegegis_of_old_shmegegis_of_gold_20061215 "Books: Shmegegis of old, shmegegis of gold"], by Hank Rosenfeld (interviewing Irving Brecher about Drew Friedman's book ''Old Jewish Comedians''), in ''The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles'', December 14, 2006: <br>"<br>[Hank Rosenfeld:] -- Abraham Kalish?<br>[Irving Brecher:] "Al Kelly. Al did double talk. That was his style. He spoke gibberish in vaudeville sketches and all the people would try to be polite.<br>[Hank Rosenfeld:] -- While he mocked them? <br>[Irving Brecher:] "No, not mocking them. The audience would laugh. But people in the real world he dealt with would be taken in."<br>[Hank Rosenfeld:] -- Sounds like what Borat does!<br>[Irving Brecher:] "Haven't seen it. But most comedians couldn't do it like Al Kelly could. He was unique."<br>"</ref>
==Further reading== '''Books''' * ''Al Kelly's Double Life'', "Unscrambled by" Alexander Rose (biographer<ref group=nb>Alexander Rose doesn't seem to be a pen name for Kelly: this person has many other books in the 1940s-1960s [http://www.worldcat.org/identities/lccn-no94-38385 listed] at WorldCat.</ref>), Frederick Fell Publishers, Inc., 1966. ({{OCLC|1523679}}) (GBOOK [https://books.google.com/books?id=KTGbGQAACAAJ KTGbGQAACAAJ])
'''Notices''' * "Al Kelly", in Billy H. Doyle (ed. Anthony Slide), ''The Ultimate Directory of Silent and Sound Era Performers: A Necrology of Actors and Actresses'', Scarecrow Press, 1999, p. 296. * "Kelly, Al V.", in Eugene Michael Vazzana, ''Silent Film Necrology'' (2nd ed.), McFarland, 2001, p. 280. * "Al Kelly", in Frank Cullen, ''Vaudeville, Old & New: An Encyclopedia of Variety Performers in America'', Vol. 1, Routledge, 2007, p. 621.
'''Articles''' * "Al Kelly Is Dead; Famed Comedian; Double-Talk Expert Was in Show Business 52 Years", in ''The New York Times'', September 7, 1966. * "Al Kelly Funeral Today", in ''The New York Times'', September 8, 1966. * "Show Business Figures Hear Al Kelly Eulogized", in ''The New York Times'', September 9, 1966. * "Al Kelly, Double-Talking Comic Dies in N.Y. at 67<!--67 sic-->;<ref group=nb name=dob1896>Kelly's birthdate was eventually found to be in 1896; before that, he was believed to be born in 1899 (it is common in the show-biz to bill oneself younger), hence the "1899" found in older reference books, and titles such as "Dies in N.Y. at 67" in newspapers (he actually died at 69).</ref> Overflow Crowd at Rites", in ''Variety'', September 14, 1966.
==Notes== {{Reflist|group=nb}}
==References== {{Reflist}}
==External links== * {{IMDb name |0446165}}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Kelly, Al}} Category:1896 births Category:1966 deaths Category:American male comedians Category:20th-century American comedians Category:Emigrants from the Russian Empire to the United States Category:People from Smarhon district Category:American people of Belarusian-Jewish descent Category:Belarusian Jews Category:Jews from the Russian Empire