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Showing posts with label Humor. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Humor. Show all posts

Is Seth Meyers Jewish?

Seth Meyers is not Jewish. The former Saturday Night Live cast member and current late night television host is not a Jew. Seth Meyers' father's father (his paternal grandfather) was Jewish and that is where the Jewish surname Meyers comes from.

Meyers was born in Evanston, Illinois, and was raised in Bedford, New Hampshire. His mother, Hilary Claire (née Olson), is a middle school French teacher, and his father, Laurence Meyers, Jr., works in finance. His younger brother is actor Josh Meyers. His paternal grandfather was Jewish; Seth has performed at several Jewish Community Centers, although he does not consider himself Jewish. His other ancestry is Czech-Austrian (from his paternal grandmother), Swedish, English, and German. Meyers graduated from Northwestern University in Evanston, where he became a member of the fraternity Phi Gamma Delta.

Meyers is married to a Jewish woman, Alexi, and the couple was married under a chuppah in a Jewish ceremony. The comedian has acknowledged that many people think he's Jewish because "of my last name, my looks and basically everything about me."

In an April 24, 2014 episode of Late Night with Seth Meyers, the host explained that he is not Jewish after a recent guest presented him with a Montreal Expos yarmulke (kippah).


Is Billy Eichner Jewish?

Billy Eichner is Jewish. Billy Eichner is a comedian, actor, writer, and television personality. He is the star, executive producer and creator of Funny Or Die's Billy on the Street, a comedy game show that airs on Fuse TV. Eichner was nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award for "Outstanding Game Show Host" in 2013.

He first gained attention as the host and writer of "Creation Nation: A Live Talk Show," a critically acclaimed stage show in New York. Eichner has also appeared on Conan as a special correspondent in original video shorts and as himself on Bravo's Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen, Last Call with Carson Daly, The Wendy Williams Show, and Fashion Police with Joan Rivers, among others.

Eichner is also openly gay. In a 2013 article in the Jewish Daily Forward, Eitan Kensky writes, Billy Eichner is tall, gay, Jewish, from Queens, with a hairline somewhere between receding and disappearing. All of these qualities fuel his comedy. They also make the act of watching him run around the streets of New York, offering ordinary people $1 to answer questions like, “Who’s better, Meryl Streep or Glenn Close?” (and then erupting into a heated and irrational fury when the answer is Glenn Close “by far,” to which he yells back, neck veins bulging cartoonishly, “No, that is not the truth!”) one of the most exhilarating comic experiences there is. These moments, when Billy turns on his “contestant,” almost make you believe that the game show was invented just so Billy could savage it. You at least want to believe it.

Is Mickey Rooney Jewish?

Mickey Rooney was not Jewish. Mickey Rooney was born Joseph Yule, Jr. in Brooklyn on September 23, 1920. He was an American film actor and entertainer whose film, television, and stage appearances spanned nearly his entire lifetime. Some people thought that Mickey Rooney was a Jew because of his brand of humor including vaudeville.

His father, Joe Yule (born Ninnian Joseph Ewell), was from Glasgow, Scotland, and his mother, Nellie W. (née Carter), was from Kansas City, Missouri. Both of his parents were in vaudeville, appearing in a Brooklyn production of A Gaiety Girl when Joseph, Jr. was born. He began performing at the age of 17 months as part of his parents' routine, wearing a specially tailored tuxedo.

He received multiple awards, including a Juvenile Academy Award, an Honorary Academy Award, two Golden Globes and an Emmy Award. Working as a performer since he was a child, he was a superstar as a teenager for the films in which he played Andy Hardy, and he has had one of the longest careers of any actor, spanning 92 years actively making films in ten decades, from the 1920s to the 2010s. For a younger generation of fans, he gained international fame for his leading role as Henry Dailey in The Family Channel's The Adventures of the Black Stallion.

Rooney died on April 6, 2014 and was one of the last surviving stars who worked in the silent film era. He was also the last surviving cast member of several films in which he appeared during the 1930s and 1940s.

Is Sid Caesar Jewish?

Sid Caesar was a Jew. The comedian Sid Caesar was Jewish.  Born September 8, 1922, Sid Caesar was an American comic actor and writer best known for the television series Your Show of Shows and Caesar's Hour. He was also a saxophonist and author of several books, including two autobiographies. Sid Caesar died February 12, 2014.

Caesar was the youngest of three sons born to Jewish immigrants living in Yonkers, New York. His father, Max, had emigrated from Poland; his mother, Ida (née Raphael), from the Russian Empire. The surname "Caesar" was supposedly given to Max, as a child, by an immigration official at Ellis Island.

Max and Ida Caesar ran a restaurant, a 24-hour luncheonette. By waiting on tables, their son learned to mimic the patois, rhythm and accents of the diverse clientele, a technique he termed "double-talk," which he would famously use throughout his career. He first tried his "double-talk" with a group of Italians, his head barely reaching above the table. They enjoyed it so much that they sent him over to a group of Poles to repeat his native-sounding patter in Polish, and so on with Russians, Hungarians, Frenchmen, Spaniards, Lithuanians and Bulgarians. Despite his apparent fluency in many languages, Caesar could actually speak only English and Yiddish. Sid's older brother, David, was his comic mentor and "one-man cheering section." They created their earliest family sketches from movies of the day like "Test Pilot" and the 1927 silent film "Wings".
At fourteen, Caesar went to the Catskills Mountains as a saxophonist in Mike Cifichello's Swingtime Six band, and occasionally performed in sketches in the Borscht Belt.