Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Life

How Jean Carroll Changed the World of Stand-Up

Legendary comedian Jean Carroll (née Celine Zeigman) passed away on New Year’s Day at the age of 98. A pioneering stand up comedian, Jean Carroll was a regular headliner in nightclubs and theaters in the ’40s and ’50s. She was featured on the Ed Sullivan Show, and she even had her own sitcom on ABC in the 1953-1954 season.

Jean Carroll began her career as a vaudeville performer, but is best known for her achievements as one of the first female performers to do stand up. During this period, nightclubs were not considered “fit” places for “ladies” to inhabit. Female comics usually performed in couple acts with a man alongside them. Jean Carroll originally performed as part of a duo with her husband, Buddy Howe. When Howe was drafted into the Army during the Second World War, Jean Carroll began her solo act. When Howe returned, even he could see that she was better on her own. Rather than rejoin his wife on stage, he became her agent.

Much like Sophie Tucker, Jean Carroll’s routine’s were risqué by the standards of her time. She made jokes about shopping, raising children, and her husband. As the New York Times wrote, “Genteel by today’s standards, Ms. Carroll’s humor was radical in its day — radical, that is, in the hands of a lone woman with a microphone in front of her and an audience at her command. For a female comic to wield that sort of power was unheard of then, especially in the smoke-filled universe of nightclubs.”

Read more

Leah Berkenwald is the online communications specialist at the Jewish Women’s Archive, and a contributor to its Jewesses With Attitude blog, which cross-posts weekly with the Sisterhood.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.