43 Facts About Jackie Mason

Jackie Mason wrote and performed six one-man shows on Broadway.

Jackie Mason was born Yacov Moshe Maza on June 9,1928, in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, the fourth and last son in a family of six children of strict Orthodox Jews.

Jackie Mason came from a long line of rabbis, which included his father, his grandfather, his great-grandfather, and his great-great grandfather.

Jackie Mason's father Eli Maza and his mother, Belle, were born in Minsk, and immigrated to the US in the 1920s with the rest of Mason's family; his father died in 1959.

When Jackie Mason was five years old, his family moved to the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City, largely so that he and his siblings could pursue a yeshiva education, where he grew up on Henry Street, Rutgers Street, and Norfolk Street.

In 1953 Jackie Mason graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in his double major of English and sociology from the City College of New York.

Jackie Mason led congregations in Weldon, North Carolina, and at Beth Israel Congregation in Latrobe, Pennsylvania.

Jackie Mason was a comedian at the Fieldston Hotel in Swan Lake, New York, in the summer of 1955.

Jackie Mason was let go because his act was considered too far ahead of its time.

Jackie Mason adopted his stage name after appearing on the Barry Gray radio show.

Jackie Mason performed at New York City nightclubs, and on The Steve Allen Show, his first national TV appearance, in 1962, and the Tonight Show with Steve Allen, as well as on The Perry Como Show, The Dean Martin Show, and The Garry Moore Show.

Jackie Mason made several appearances as a guest on The Ed Sullivan Show during the 1960s.

Jackie Mason claimed to have been on the episode which featured the American television debut of the Beatles, although research does not bear this fact out.

Jackie Mason revealed during his appearance on the BBC show Desert Island Discs, in March 2012, that at the time he did not think much of the group, referring to them as "four kids in search of a voice who needed haircuts".

Jackie Mason made uncomplimentary comments to Sinatra until he "and his whole group" left.

On October 18,1964, in an appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, Jackie Mason allegedly gave host Ed Sullivan the finger on air.

Sullivan was reportedly letting Mason know that he had only two minutes left, and to cut his act short, as the program was about to cut away due to having been partly pre-empted by an impromptu speech by President Lyndon B Johnson that the show carried.

Jackie Mason began working his own fingers into his act to make fun of the situation and pointed toward Sullivan with an index finger, a thumb, but not, as Sullivan mistakenly believed, his middle finger.

Jackie Mason denied knowingly giving Sullivan the middle finger; he later said that he had not heard of the middle finger gesture at that time.

Jackie Mason was nevertheless banned from the show for a period of time.

Sullivan asserted that Jackie Mason was unpredictable and could not be trusted.

Jackie Mason was given a single comeback appearance on Sullivan's television program two years later, and Sullivan publicly apologized to him, but the damage was done.

Jackie Mason later said: "It took twenty years to overcome what happened in one minute".

In 1969, Jackie Mason made his Broadway theater debut as Jewish widower Nat Weiss in the comedy play A Teaspoon Every Four Hours, which he wrote with Mike Mortman.

Jackie Mason starred in the movie Caddyshack II, where his character had the same surname, Hartounian, as his character in The Jerk.

In 1990 and 1991, Jackie Mason again was on Broadway, this time with his successful two-act show Brand New, which ran for 216 performances at the Neil Simon Theatre, and won him his second Outer Critics Circle Award.

Critic Mel Gussow of The New York Times remarked on the "exact meeting" between performance and material in which Jackie Mason engaged in a comic attack on everyone, including himself, cutting them all down to size.

In 1992, Jackie Mason won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Voice-Over Performance for his voice-over of Rabbi Hyman Krustofski in The Simpsons episode "Like Father, Like Clown", making him the first guest star to win an Emmy for his role.

Jackie Mason's irony is a spotlight illuminating our absurdities; his zingers are scalpels laying bare the sickness under the skin.

Jackie Mason was able to use this show title, and it is one of his most successful road productions.

Between these shows, Jackie Mason played the lead in a short-lived television interfaith sitcom called Chicken Soup alongside Lynn Redgrave.

Jackie Mason holds the record for the longest-running one-man show in Broadway history and the longest-running stand-up show in the history of London's West End.

Jackie Mason had spoken out in defense of Donald Trump.

Jackie Mason openly endorsed Kahane's plan to pay Israeli Arabs unwilling to accept Israeli sovereignty to emigrate.

Jackie Mason served as the honored speaker at a fundraising event for a yeshiva founded by Kahane.

In January 2001, Jackie Mason co-founded the organization One Jerusalem in response to the Oslo peace agreement.

In 1991, Jackie Mason was criticized by African-American organizations including the NAACP, when he called New York City mayor David Dinkins "a fancy shvartze with a moustache"; Jackie Mason later apologized.

In 2009, Jackie Mason referred to Barack Obama as a shvartze during one of his stand-up routines, which prompted members of the audience to walk out.

In 2003, Jackie Mason co-wrote an article that advised Israeli leaders to threaten the expulsion of Palestinians from Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza Strip.

On 2006, Jackie Mason filed a lawsuit against the group Jews for Jesus for using his likeness in a pamphlet.

In 2012, Jackie Mason said that a friend at the time, Kaoru Suzuki-McMullen, attacked him while leaving his apartment on West 57th Street in Manhattan.

Jackie Mason appeared in over 200 self-written video blog entries on YouTube, in which he gave his opinions on current events and politics.

Jackie Mason won a 1992 Emmy Award for Outstanding Voice-Over Performance for his role as Rabbi Krustofsky on The Simpsons, shared with five of the show's regular cast members.