Portrait of a Man Who Would Do Anything for a Laugh

On May 16, 1949, 40-year-old Milton Berle appeared on the covers of two national magazines: Time and Newsweek, the first time a comedian had graced both titles in the same week. Newsweek ran a photo of Berle sporting a yellow dress, hundreds of colorful beads and a headdress with more fruit than a produce section. Time went a different route, using a lively gouache portrait by magazine illustrator Boris Artzybasheff. Both were perfect in their way. As Time noted in its profile, Berle was just eight months into his run as host of Texaco Star Theater, the nascent medium’s top performer and “a jack-of-all-turns vaudeville comic who has gone into television and won a bright new feather for his very old hat.” There was some grousing about how he was loud, brash and “often tasteless.” But the stodgy Time had to acknowledge he was a genius, too – a man who “uses not only his brash, strongbow-shaped mouth to get off his loud, fast, uneven volley of one-line gags; with expert timing and tireless bounce, he also hurls his whole 6 feet and 191 dieted pounds into every act of his show.” Uncle Miltie, as he called himself, was all-in on television. Anything for a laugh, he said. No, really. Anything.