While for 49 years Saturday Night Live has had a major impact on pop culture, critics agree that the first five years were by far the funniest and most relevant. The combination of sketch comedy, featured performers, guest hosts, and mock commercials has been a winning formula for creating memorable characters that have become household names. This program will profile the original cast and revisit their most popular characters in action. So come prepared to laugh out loud at the genius of Gilda Radner, John Belushi, Chevy Chase, Jane Curtin, Dan Aykroyd, Garrett Morris, and Laraine Newman.

This program highlights some of the funniest and most beloved nightclub and television skits performed by great comedians, and shares little-known facts and anecdotes about their struggles to succeed. From Jack Benny and George Burns to Sid Caesar, Mel Brooks, Milton Berle, Victor Borge, Danny Kaye, Alan King, Bill Cosby, Jonathan Winters, Robin Williams, and many others, we will trace the evolution of comedy from the days of vaudeville and burlesque to radio, TV, film, nightclubs, comedy clubs and today’s streaming media. We’ll explore their origins, reveal their original names (very few didn’t change their names), follow their careers, and laugh as we watch their skillful presentations of jokes and skits. Their comedy stylings will be analyzed and presented in their original form. Visual images and audio and video will be used throughout the program.

When popular entertainment shifted from burlesque and vaudeville to radio, television, Broadway and Hollywood early in the 20th century, it attracted the attention of many performers, singers, and dancers. Some were experienced on the burlesque and vaudeville stages of America, and others made the move from the small and crowded Yiddish theaters on New York’s Lower East Side. All were determined to reach a broader audience. To do so, many shortened their long names and dropped ethnic references.

This presentation will highlight some of the most beloved excerpts by these performers from TV, Hollywood, and the Broadway stage, and little-known facts and anecdotes about their careers. From Al Jolson, Eddie Cantor, Molly Picon and Fanny Brice to Leonard Cohen, Neil Diamond, Barry Manilow and Barbra Streisand, we will learn of their origins, their original names, and enjoy their artistry. The songs and acting skills of these entertainers and more will be analyzed and presented in their original form. Visual images and audio and video will be used throughout the program.

Most of the words to the songs of the “The Great American Songbook” were written by lyricists we recognize as household names.

Irving Berlin, Ira Gershwin, Lorenz Hart, Oscar Hammerstein, and Johnny Mercer account for 250 of these songs.

But the songbook includes many more songs, and some of the most popular were written by songwriters who wrote only one or a few.

This presentation will look at these great but unsung songwriters’ lives and times, and the audience will listen to some of their best-known songs. “As Time Goes By” by Herman Hupfeld, “I’ll be Seeing You” by Irving Kahal, “Stardust” by Mitchell Parish, and “It Was a Very Good Year” by Ervin Drake are a few of the songs we will explore and enjoy. Visual images, audio, and video clips will be used to enhance the program, including video clips of performances by the singers who made the songs famous.

Since the Middle Ages, people have gathered in large groups in public spaces for street theatre and political demonstrations. But not until 2013 in New York did gatherings proliferate as spontaneous, playful social experiments to temporarily take over commercial and public areas simply to show that they could. These gatherings have spread all over the world and have become known as flash mobs. But the idea caught the attention of professional musical groups, symphony orchestras, and opera companies who saw it as a way to promote their concert hall performances by giving free samples of their work to audiences in town squares, shopping malls, and transportation hubs. This presentation takes an in-depth look at the flash mob phenomenon by tracing its origin and watching well-known classical and popular musical works performed in the streets, town squares, shopping malls, and supermarkets of Europe, Asia, North and South America, and Israel. Visual images, audio and video will be used throughout the program.

From “The Jazz Singer” to “Dirty Dancing,” movies and TV have included some memorable Jewish moments, both funny and serious. But mostly funny, especially all the movies that Mel Brooks had a hand in making. This program will explore some of the best in this genre, including Brooks as an Indian chief in “Blazing Saddles,” Gene Wilder in “The Frisco Kid,” Julie Andrews singing in Yiddish, Archie Bunker celebrating Shabbat, and Ed Ames performing an unintentional Bris on the “Johnny Carson Show.” Visual images and audio and video will be used throughout the program.