Shelley Berman, comedian, dies at 92
Berman's entertainment career was slow to emerge, beginning his career as a part-time actor and writer before, at the age of 32, getting his break as a comic in Chicago, where he crafted the persona of a beleaguered observer of the eccentricities of life. His most famous routine was that of the one-sided conversation, in which he would carry on with someone on an imaginary phone and leave the unseen character's answer implied. When Bob Newhart went on to great success with the same routine not long after, Berman accused him of plagiarism; Newhart noted that Berman was just one of many influences, some of whom included comedians whom Berman had encountered in his early years.
Berman, while he never emerged as a headlining star, enjoyed a healthy and long-running acting career with roles in film, television and stage spanning six decades. He only ended his acting career after a diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease in 2014, which ultimately led to his death.
Obituary from the New York Times
Wikipedia
Shown slightly out of context in a 1963 television documentary, an incident in which Berman hit the ceiling over
a ringing telephone backstage while he performed at a Miami hotel---a telephone problem he thought had been
fixed earlier in the engagement---made him look
so temperamental that within a couple of years his
career as a comedian dried up. (He admitted once to being "a perfectionistic son of a bitch," at least until his
young son died at 12 of a brain tumour.)
But until that, Berman was a comic genius:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wbqwpqzc_dY&t=21shttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOLuzkzJg3Y
