BROOKLYN — Few people in the entertainment field have had a career as long as that of “Professor� Irwin Corey, who started in show business in the 1937 production of “Pins and Needles,� and, amazingly, is still active today. He is still doing the comedy clubs, still appearing on late night talk shows and still performing at private affairs.

Just this year, a DVD — “Prof. Irwin Corey Live at the Village Vanguard� — was issued featuring his performance in 2004 in New York when, after appearing nightly in the Broadway play “The Sly Fox,� he traveled down to Seventh Ave. for a week’s run at the Village Vanguard to take potshots at the Republican National Convention taking place several blocks up the street.

“I grew up in the Brooklyn Hebrew Orphan Asylum run by the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies,� he said. Fran added that with his father gone, his mother had worked as a seamstress to keep him, his two brothers and three sisters there.

What he remembered most about the orphanage were the shows they gave on holidays like George Washington’s birthday and the prizes they awarded, once a thousand dollars, another time AT&T stock worth 25 cents a share. “Big money in those days.�

He had recited a poem in one of these performances, and to the astonishment of everyone at the table, he started reciting it now without missing a word — just as had first learned it decades ago. The only other thing he mentioned about Brooklyn was that later he had sold newspapers there on the street.

In between the appetizers and the main course, the professor stood up for attention, and started in with one of the standard routines in his act. “All those who are here, raise your hand,�’ he called out loudly — twice.

Somewhat bewildered, most of the diners in the room did just that, obviously wondering what was coming next, but the professor did nothing more and sat down.

More questions. Did he mind that other comics often copied part of his act? Evidently not, although he did mention that many did, including Woody Allen, when starting out in comedy clubs, wear white sneakers like he did. As for Sid Caesar, who appropriated a zany professor persona for one of his “Your Show of Shows� characters, not a word.

Of the dozens upon dozens of quotations attributed to him — many of which can be found on the Internet — the professor was more protective. There didn’t seem to be a problem with “If we don’t change direction soon, we’ll end up where we were going� or “�Suicide is the sincerest form of self-flattery� or “When your temperature reaches 128, sell.�

But another quote — “You can do more with a kind word and a gun than you can with just a kind word� — was different. He had said it first at a Chicago banquet where Mayor Daley, father of the present Chicago mayor, laughed uproariously on hearing it, but somehow it ended up being attributed to Al Capone.

I asked about the time in 1974 when he had accepted the National Book Award for Fiction that Thomas Pynchon received for his novel “Gravity’s Rainbow� when Pynchon, a well-known recluse, declined to attend.

“With Pynchon’s permission, Thomas Guinzberg, head of Viking Books, asked me to take his place at the Alice Tully Hall ceremony to accept the award, figuring that my double-talk was right in line with his prose, which most readers found very obtuse.�

The professor’s acceptance speech went off without a hitch despite a streaker running across the stage during it. Almost no one knew what Pynchon looked like, his only published photo being one from his high-school yearbook.

Another question: To what does the professor attribute the longevity of his career?

He didn’t answer, but did point out his mother had lived until her late nineties and several of his sisters are now in their late nineties.

On the way out Shannon Taylor reminded me about the new DVD, which covered not only the Professor’s 2004 Village Vanguard performance but also his Pynchon impersonation. “Mention his Web site www.irwincorey.org, which tells how you can get it.�

As for Professor Irwin Corey, his parting words to me were “The Eagle! I remember now. It was only five cents when I sold it on the streets.�

© Brooklyn Daily Eagle 2007
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