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My Brother Was An Only Child
My Brother Was An Only Child
My Brother Was An Only Child
Ebook85 pages46 minutes

My Brother Was An Only Child

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

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About this ebook

“My Brother Was an Only Child” was Jack Douglas’ very first humour book, having written for famous radio and television celebrities such as Jack Paar, Bob Hope, Bing Crosby and Jimmy Durante, as well as TV shows such as “Adventures of Harriet and Ozzie”, “The George Gobel Show”, and “Laugh-In”. It perfectly captures the sense of humour prevalent in this era and is as refreshing and side-splittingly funny now as it was then.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateJan 18, 2016
ISBN9781786257888
My Brother Was An Only Child
Author

Jack Douglas

Jack Douglas (1908-1989) was an American author and humorist. He was born in New York City and attended the City College of New York before pursuing a career in writing. Douglas wrote a variety of books and articles, ranging from humor to non-fiction. He is perhaps best known for his humorous works, including "My Brother Was an Only Child," "Never Trust a Naked Bus Driver," and "The Meaning of Yiddish." In addition to his writing, Douglas was also involved in television and film. He wrote for several television shows in the 1950s and 1960s, including The Jack Benny Show and The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. He also wrote the screenplay for the 1964 film "Good Neighbor Sam," starring Jack Lemmon and Romy Schneider. Douglas was a frequent guest on television talk shows, where he often performed his humorous monologues. He was also a regular contributor to magazines such as Esquire and Playboy. Throughout his career, Douglas received several awards for his writing, including the Thurber Prize for American Humor in 1975. He passed away in 1989 at the age of 80.

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Rating: 3.4375 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

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  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Once upon a time (1959 to be exact) this collection of random jokes and mini-stories was best-seller, and the author, a writer for Jack Paar and others, a frequent guest on talk shows. But like all those other short humor books that hit the best seller lists from time to time, it's hard to see now what the fuss was all about.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Terribly dated, a product of the 50s. I doubt anyone under the age of 50 will enjoy this book. Sorry, there's just not much to recommend.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is a reprint of a 1959 joke book. It's full of language and logic jokes (puns, incorrect antecedents, code switching, internally inconsistent statements, and false histories based on wordplay), alongside humor based on presenting ridiculous claims seriously or on being inappropriate and shocking. The shock humor isn't entirely PC--although I can't think of any comedians who are--and he's pretty egalitarian about who he makes a joke of.

    I will admit that I didn't get some of the jokes, and some of them I got, but I didn't think they were funny. However, I love puns and ridiculousness, so I laughed a lot too. Be careful to read it exactly as written, or you might unintentionally correct the meaning and lose the joke. There's a lot of one-liners embedded in the stories that are easy to miss.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Jack Douglas was a writer of jokes and monologues for Jack Paar. This is a sort of memoir, but is heavy on the punch lines. Apparently it keep over 2,000,000 Americans amused for long enough to buy the book. It wasn't bad, but not Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett, or Spike Milligan.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    It’s surreal and satirical and hilarious even if you don’t get all the dated references (which I definitely did not). Anyway, here’s a peanut; step on Mother.

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My Brother Was An Only Child - Jack Douglas

This edition is published by PICKLE PARTNERS PUBLISHING—www.pp-publishing.com

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Text originally published in 1959 under the same title.

© Pickle Partners Publishing 2015, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

Publisher’s Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

MY BROTHER WAS AN ONLY CHILD

BY

JACK DOUGLAS

Introduction by Jack Paar

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 5

DEDICATION 6

INTRODUCTION 7

CHAPTER ONE—Mother 9

CHAPTER TWO—Dad 10

CHAPTER THREE—La Goulue and Valentin 11

CHAPTER FOUR—Valentin and La Goulue 12

CHAPTER FIVE—Valentin, La Goulue and Ocean-View 13

CHAPTER SIX—1863 Was My Big Year 14

CHAPTER SEVEN—A Tim Snopes Story 15

CHAPTER EIGHT—Sunday Morning in Arizona 16

CHAPTER NINE—Poughkeepsie Under the Czar 17

CHAPTER TEN—Vodka! Or Under the Tables Down at Mory’s 18

CHAPTER ELEVEN—The Year the Locusts Came 19

CHAPTER TWELVE—The Age of Unchivalry or Chastity Belt Keys Made While You Wait 20

CHAPTER THIRTEEN—Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 21

CHAPTER FOURTEEN—The Year the Locusts Came 22

CHAPTER FIFTEEN—The Private Mitty of Walter Thurber 23

CHAPTER SIXTEEN—Famous Bastards 24

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN—The Story of Wine or Brown Feet Why Are You Blue? 25

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN—The Boy Who Cried Dinosaur 27

CHAPTER NINETEEN 30

CHAPTER TWENTY—India or Put the Cobra Back in the Basket, Mother—There’ll Be No Show Tonight 31

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE—Famous Bastards No. 2 32

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO 33

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE 34

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR 35

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE 36

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX 37

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN—Clemmys Guttata 38

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT—For Men Only 40

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE—What Every Young Girl Should Know 41

CHAPTER THIRTY—Lentils 43

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE 45

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO—How to Train an Aardvark 46

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE—I Never Knew Roosevelt 47

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR—Doctor Murgeon, The Virgin Surgeon 48

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE 50

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX—On One’s Hand It Is Much Better To Have Fingers Than Toes 51

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN—The Feud 52

CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT—What the Hell’s Going On In Them Bushes? 54

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE 56

CHAPTER FORTY—Six G Strings In Search of an Old Violin Named Charlie 57

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE—A Good Word to Know 59

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO—Joe’s Bar and Grill and Bar 60

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE—Songs I Learned at My Mother’s Knee and Other Locations 61

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR—It Is Better to Be a Poor Cat Than a Rich Dog 62

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE—Personal 63

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX—This Side of the Disenchanted Infidel Revisited or There’s Nothing Quite So Popular As a Dead Writer 64

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN—Lord Chesterfield’s Last Letter to His Son 66

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 67

DEDICATION

To Gladys, beloved third harpist with the New York Philharmonic, in memory of those happy hours we spent together inside your empty harp trunk.

INTRODUCTION

by JACK PAAR

(Mr. Paar is the famous ad libber.)

JACK DOUGLAS is the most

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