Jackie Mason

On August 14, 1991 he got married to Jyll Rosenfeld.

In 1991, during the first Persian Gulf crisis, he travelled to Israel to show solidarity, for which he was later honoured by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Born as Yacov Moshe Maza in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, to a Jewish family. He grew up in a family surrounded by ‘rabbis’, including his father and brothers.

His family moved to New York City when he was five years old and he grew up in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. He spent most part of formative years training to be a ‘rabbi’.

At the age of 25, following his holy ordainment, he spent three years in Latrobe, Pennsylvania as a ‘rabbi’, after which he resigned to become a comedian.

During the summer of 1955, he started working as a comedian at the Fieldston Hotel in Swan Lake, New York for a brief period of time. However, soon he was fired because the audience could not connect to his sense of humour.

In the 1960’s he appeared on and off on the ‘The Ed Sullivan Show’, an American TV ‘variety show’ that was broadcast on the CBS network.

His career took a set back after 1962 as he was accused of showing Ed Sullivan ‘The Finger’ on his show. This tarnished his image and it took him over a decade to revive his career.

In 1979, he appeared in the commercially successful hit film ‘The Jerk’, an American comedy directed by Carl Reiner and written by Steve Martin and Carl Reiner.

In the 1980’s, he started his own one-man comedy show called ‘The World According To Me’ in Hollywood and at Beverly Hills. The show was an immense success and did wonders for his career.

In the 1960’s he appeared on the ‘The Ed Sullivan Show’, which in 2002 featured at number 15 on TV Guides list of ‘50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time’ and the show ran for 22 years.

In 1979, he appeared in the film ‘The Jerk’ that earned a whopping $73 million at the box office, which made it the 9th highest grossing film that year. The film was appeared at the 89th spot on the American Film Institute’s list of ‘100 Years 100 Laughs’.

Written by him in the 1980’s, the one-man comedy show called ‘The World According To Me’ is one of his best works that ran on Broadway for two and a half years and in the Brooks Atkinson Theatre for 206 performances. It has been recreated in as a film of the same title for television audiences.