St. Paul recorder. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1934-2000, 1961-09-29

Ruark, spends an entire column
on an actor but the piece printed
below about comedian Dick
Gregory is an interesting excep-
ton.
BY Robert Ruark
In a season Of international dis
content and bad temper, not to
mention outright malice for all,
would not have thought it possible
for a gentle humorist to be born in
the best classic pattern of the late
Will Rogers. Certainly, I would
not have expected this humorist to
be a Negro, and least Of all would
I have imagined that a black man
could kid his own color and get
away with it.
But there is such a man. His
name is Dick Gregory, and he is
about the hottest thing. in show
business, if the crowds at New
York's Blue Angel, his present
stand, are an indication. They don't
seem to be beating the doors down
any place else this week.
Gregory, from hearing him pub
Hcly and then talking privately
with him, seems to me to be as
important a man for the welfare
of our country today as anybody
working for it. His humor is not
sick, in a sick year; it is not bitter,
in a sneering year, and it is neither
dirty nor leering. He kids every
thing numerically, but manages
to give the whole racial struggle
a gouge from equal sides of the
fence. For a Negro to take a light
and level view of such a passion
ate subject as segregation is quite
a feat these days. To get away
with it is even a heater trick.
But again the likeness to Rogers
comes up. Nothing was safe or
sacred from Wills wry tongue,
and even the victims generally
managed to applaud the justice of
the stabs. Gregory is as topical
as Rogers ever was, and he takes
the mickey out of everything from
possible death by atomic fallout to
the local and international political
scene.
His humor is difficult to des-
cribe, because it is all dependent
on the setting of a scene and then
the deliberate twist at the end,
such as: THE Armys already in
tegrated. That means I got to
sleep with Puerto Ricans." Or: II
went into a restaurant down in
Mississippi - that's Jackie Ken
nedy's Cuba and asked fol
something to eat. The man said;
We don't serve Negroes here and
said, That's fine, because
don't eat en-"
His explanation for the presence
of black troops in the United Ma
tons forces in the Congo is very
simple. WAR brides. How'd it be
if whole shiploads Of Congolese
war brides got sent over here, and
five years later a husband comes
home tired from the office to find
out that his wife done eat up the
whole block"
Dick believes that Americas
decision to conduct our next atomic
tests underground is dangerous.
People gonna get killed by fall
up" he says.
Gregory's talent which got its
first real start in Chicago against
an audience of white Southerners
on a convention - which, he says,
for a man of his color, was break
ing in the hard way - is based
on an obvious gentleness. Like so
much good art and music, it was
born in pain - of being the prod
uct of a combination of color pre-
JUDGE and poverty. His childhood
was spent with the family on re-
lief, and his recall is DiCkensian
in its pathos.
But out of the man shines a toll
| erance that communicates to the
audience, and causes almost a con-
slant searching of conscience. He
says that the heart is seen in the
mouth and eyes and nobody can
take look at my face and say I'm
standing up here preaching hate"
But there is a gentle reproof
from time to time when he says of
the segregation battle down South:
when I got to wait so long to find
out what they got on the menu,
how do I know I'm gonna like 1t
when I get it?"
If I were Mr.. Kennedy I would
find a cabinet post for Dick Greg
DRY. He'd make a dandy secretary
of state.