Mort Sahl, Standup Comic With Biting Wit, Dies at 94

, a trailblazing political satirist whose biting wit and uncompromising intellect broadened the world of conventional standup comedy, died Tuesday in Mill Valley, Calif. He was 94.In 1953, when Sahl first appeared at the Hungry i, a San Francisco folk singer’s hangout, he was an unknown with little stage experience. But his rapid-fire monologues about politics, social trends and fads quickly earned him the nickname “Rebel Without a Pause.

Sahl’s fame began to soar when he co-hosted the Academy Awards show in 1959 . In 1960, he appeared on the cover of Time; two months later, the New Yorker published a profile of him called “The Fury.” Sahl wrote jokes for President John F. Kennedy and was a ubiquitous guest on television shows; hosts Steve Allen, Jerry Lewis and Merv Griffin were big fans. He even had small roles in films, including 1963’s “Johnny Cool” and 1967’s Tony Curtis vehicle “Don’t Make Waves.

In the 1970s, Sahl worked, without compensation, for New Orleans district attorney and Kennedy assassination conspiracy theorist Jim Garrison. “If you were the last man on earth,” Sahl told an interviewer, “I’d have to oppose you. That’s my job.” In 1970, he co-starred in the “Love and the Singles Apartment” episode of “Love, American Style.” In the 1982 TV movie “Inside the Third Reich” ,based on Albert Speer’s book, Sahl played Werner Finck, a German comedian whose 1930s cabaret act was critical of the Nazis. He played Uncle Mort in 1984 feature comedy “Nothing Lasts Forever” and an interviewer in the 1987 TV movie “Jonathan Winters: On the Ledge.

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