Capitol Hill Blue Forums Misc. Topics History Roundtable The Passing Parade: Obituaries: 2017

Shelley Berman, whose brittle persona and anxiety-ridden observations helped redefine stand-up comedy in the late 1950s and early ’60s, died early Friday morning at his home in Bell Canyon, Calif. He was 92.

His publicist, Glenn Schwartz, said the cause was complications of Alzheimer’s disease.

Mr. Berman, one of the first comedians to have as much success on records as in person or on television, was in the vanguard of a movement that transformed the comedy monologue from a rapid-fire string of gags to something more subtle, more thoughtful and more personal.

The comedians of the preceding generation, Gerald Nachman wrote in “Seriously Funny: The Rebel Comedians of the 1950s and 1960s” (2003), were “one-liner salesmen” for whom “a joke was a cheap and reusable commodity, easily bought and sold, not a worldview or a political stance.” Comedians like Mr. Berman, Mort Sahl and Lenny Bruce had a different approach.

In 1959, Time magazine referred to this new breed as “sick” comics, and the term (which Mr. Berman hated) caught on. But they had little in common with one another besides a determination to remake stand-up comedy in their own image. Mr. Sahl was a wry political commentator; Mr. Bruce was a profane social satirist; Mr. Berman was a beleaguered observer of life’s frustrations and embarrassments.