Mod­ern audi­ences may not be famil­iar with Jean Car­roll, America’s first Jew­ish female stand-up come­di­an. Thank­ful­ly, Grace Overbeke’s new biog­ra­phy traces the arc of Carroll’s career, offer­ing insight into the dis­tinc­tive char­ac­ter of her humor.

Born Celine (Sadie) Zeigman in 1911, Car­roll was bare­ly a teenag­er when she start­ed per­form­ing in musical/​comedy acts on Brook­lyn stages. She man­aged to fin­ish high school even though she was basi­cal­ly the bread­win­ner of her house­hold, hav­ing pushed out her abu­sive father. From vaude­ville, she moved on to USO work dur­ing World War II and then to the Borscht Belt, radio com­e­dy, ​“pre­sen­ta­tion hous­es” (pre-movie enter­tain­ment at big movie hous­es), and, final­ly, tele­vi­sion. When TV com­e­dy segued from vari­ety shows (she was big on Ed Sul­li­van) to the sit­com, Car­roll had too many fam­i­ly oblig­a­tions to han­dle her own show and bowed out. 

Carroll’s deci­sions about her stage per­sona and mate­r­i­al were tru­ly unprece­dent­ed. Tra­di­tion­al­ly, female comics pre­sent­ed them­selves as unat­trac­tive or goofy; for women, ​“fun­ny or pret­ty” was the rule (think Car­ol Bur­nett and Moms Mab­ley). Car­roll spent a small for­tune on gowns and acces­sories in order curate a sleek, sophis­ti­cat­ed stage look. Her mate­r­i­al was nev­er buf­foon­ish or vul­gar. When she’d tell a sto­ry, the oth­er char­ac­ter would be the butt of the joke, not her. Her stage style was well served by the inven­tion of the micro­phone, which allowed her to devel­op con­ver­sa­tion­al mono­logues rather than the shouty, rapid-fire jokes that were com­mon to tra­di­tion­al vaude­ville. She pre­sent­ed her Jew­ish iden­ti­ty with nuance — she ​“play[ed] Jew­ish with­out say­ing Jew­ish,” as Ove­beke puts it. She cod­ed her Jew­ish ref­er­ences (the over­feed­ing moth­er, the mama’s boy, the meek hus­band) so that her Jew­ish audi­ence knew exact­ly what she was talk­ing about, while every­one else just thought she was being fun­ny. Like­wise, when it came time to do the oblig­a­tory Christ­mas rou­tine, she — like oth­er Jew­ish artists — made her set about San­ta and gifts rather than the Nativity. 

After learn­ing about Jean Carroll’s career, read­ers may won­der if TV’s Mrs. Maisel (who is also a Jew­ish female stand-up com­ic) is based on her. Accord­ing to Over­beke, Mrs. Maisel is more a millennial’s idea of a fifties com­ic. But the anachro­nisms are instruc­tive: when Mrs. Maisel’s career takes off, she doesn’t let her fam­i­ly stand in her way; she leaves her kids and hus­band to get the next gig. Jean Car­roll, on the oth­er hand, strug­gled her whole career to bal­ance her per­for­mance sched­ule with her domes­tic duties, and she even­tu­al­ly left show busi­ness for her fam­i­ly. Anoth­er dif­fer­ence is that when Mrs. Maisel per­forms, she’s obvi­ous­ly Jew­ish; she’s not hid­ing or cod­ing any­thing. But actu­al Jew­ish enter­tain­ers, both yesterday’s and today’s, know that a rep­u­ta­tion for being ​“too Jew­ish” can kill a career.

While any­one inter­est­ed in women’s his­to­ry will find this biog­ra­phy eye-open­ing, it also has a lot to say about how com­e­dy — espe­cial­ly eth­nic com­e­dy — works.