History of Moms Mabley

Harmon and Scott dive into the history of Moms Mabley, who was the first successful female standup comedian and had a career that spanned over 50 years. Moms bridged the gap between vaudeville and modern stand up comedy. She was also the first woman comic to play the Apollo theater and Carnegie Hall in 1962.

Moms Mabley was born Loretta Mary Aiken March 19, 1894 in Brevard, North Carolina. Moms was the original Queen of Comedy who had a lot of comedic firsts.

Check out this impressive  list of creds:

-First successful female standup comedian.

-Had a career that span over 50 years.

-First woman comic to play the Apollo in 1930.

-First women comedian to head Line Carnegie Hall in 1962.

-Moms recorded 20 comedy albums in her career; though not a lot of recordings exist of the first 40 years of your career.

-She was the oldest person to have a Top 40 Hit with Abraham, Martin And John which peaked at #35 on 7.19.1969 - when she was 75 years old

-First openly gay comedian - who wore men’s suits Xmas cards. Her friends called her "Mr. Moms" and back in the Apollo days she'd often dress like Cab Calloway.

-Moms influenced the style of comedy legends Richard Pryor, Redd Foxx,Whoopie Goldberg (who produced the 2013 doc: Moms Mabley: I Got Somethin' to Tell You), and Eddie Murphy - how modeled the grandma character in Nutty Professor after her.

Moms modeled her stage character after her great-grandma,who was a former slave. Her style was clever, wise, and filled with raunchy humor. She wore frumpy mismatched dresses and would often take her teeth out..

Her old lady persona allowed her to joke about edgy topics; sex, race, politics while her gravley voice could make any line funny.

Moms ran away from home and moved to Cleveland when she was 14-years old. She was taken under the wing of: vaudeville act: Butterbeans & Susie - who had the song “i want your hot dog in my roll”

Moms started performing on the Chitlin' Circuit, which, during Jim Crow, provided venues for black performers. In 1930, she start performing at the Apollo theater, doing  5 shows a day alongside such comedy greats as. Pigmeat Markem.

In 1933, she appeared with Paul Robeson in the movie Emperor Jones

At the height of her career, she was earning $10,000 a week in 1940’s money. Her early style was storytelling and revolved on how she liked young men over old men.

Her signature line: ''Ain't nothin' an old man can do for me but bring me a message from a young man.''

Moms didn't make her TV debut until 1967 on ABC’s Stage 67. She played a maid in A Time for Laughter: A Look at Negro Humor in America - which starred Godfrey Cambridge.

She went on to make appearances on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, Ed Sullivan, and the Merv Griffin Show. 

Her final role was starring in the movie Amazing Grace. The movie was filmed in 1974; a year before she died at the age of 81.

Let's hear for Moms Mabley - a true comedy original!

HISTORY OF BEAVIS AND BUTT-HEAD'S FROG BASEBALL

Harmon and Scott discuss the making of the Mike Judge animated short, Frog Baseball, which launched the MTV series: Beavis and Butt-head. We also dive into some of Judge's early animation work, such as Inbred Jed and Office Space.

If you haven't lived under a rock for the past few decades, then you know that Beavis and Butt-head, is an animated show that ran on MTV from 1993 to 1997 - and was renewed for an eighth season which aired in 2011. In 1996, the series was made into the animated feature film Beavis and Butt-Head Do America.

But how did Beavis and Butt-head get it's start. What's the origin story?

The series originated from the animated short: Frog Baseball - which originally appeared in the Spike and Mike’s Sick and Twisted Film Festival in 1992 Midnight show.

After seeing the short, MTV signed Judge to develop the concept into a series. The animated short first aired in 1992 on MTV's Liquid Television. (Mark Mothersbaugh' from DEVO composed the end credits theme.)

In the short, Beavis and Butt-Head are shown switching TV channels and laughing at a Suzanne Somers Thighmaster commercial. That concept was changed to laughing at MTV music videos in the animated series.

A little backstory on Mike Judge. He graduated in 1986 from UCSD with a bachelor of science in physics. His first job was as a programmer for the F-18 fighter at Support Systems Associates, Inc. In 1987 he moved to Silicon Valley to join Parallax Graphics, a startup video card company based in Santa Clara.

Disliking the Silicon Valley tech culture - he quit that company and toured for a while as a bass player for a blues band. In 1989, Judge purchased a Bolex 16 mm film camera and began creating his own animated shorts.

In 1991, his animated short, Office Space, (also known as the Milton series of shorts) was acquired by Comedy Central, following an animation festival in Dallas.

Office Space would later be turned into a feature film - which uncannily had bits of the same dialogue.

Inbred Jed was also a 1991 short Judge created and was funded by Spike and Mike’s Sick and Twisted Film Festival. One character yells, "Play some Skynyrd man!" - later made a few appearances in early Beavis and Butt-head episodes as the character "Dave," most notably the episode "Way Down Mexico Way".

How this ties together? Inbred Jed made an appearance in the opening titles of Frog Baseball. When the short starts, an "Inbred Jed's Homemade Cartoons" title card appears like the MGM logo with country-western music playing and Inbred Jed giving a somewhat evil hillbilly cackle.