Labor Day comedy

[Editor’s Note: Looking around this week for some Labor Day weekend “content,” we stumbled upon this column, which we first published in June 2021. Really, this is the perfect joke for Labor Day, and the forgotten Myron Cohen should be remembered more often. So here it is again.]

Who has heard of this once-celebrated comic? No one, that’s who. But he had some funny jokes, this Myron Cohen, back in the days of black and white television, and here is one of them, which I suggest you repeat next Labor Day:

Since truth is so much stranger than fiction: imagine a man who found it possible for 25 years of his life to arrive for work every morning at 9 o’clock. Just as the good Lord made the day, he walked in for his work at 9:00 in the morning, you could set your watch by his appearance.

And suddenly one morning after all these 25 years of punctual 9 o’clock appearances, he walked in at 10, big lump on his head, two black eyes. bloody nose, hanging ear, lip torn, clothes ripped and disheveled.

Boss says: “What happened to you?”

He says, “Ohhh. I fell down a whole flight of stairs, I almost got killed.”

The boss says, “So this took an hour?”

Thanks for the laugh, Mr. Cohen, wherever you are.

^^^

Oblivioni is a blog about “Obscure or Overlooked Books, Movies, People, Television, Artwork and Whatever.” Read more here.