Life and Laughs At the Oasis
When Irving Brecher did his stand-up act for a room of retired physicians at Beverly Hills’s Cedars-Sinai Medical Center it didn’t go so well.
“They smiled,” 91-year-old Brecher recalled, “but didn’t want to use up their energy laughing.”
But like anyone with a vaudevillian’s instincts, Brecher was able to use the debacle to his advantage. His next performance was held at a Los Angeles branch of the Oasis Institute, an educational organization designed to enhance the quality of life for so-called “mature adults.” There he regaled the assembled with tales of his previous torment.
“I never should never have accepted the invitation,” he announced, recalling the crowd of unamused doctors. “Those are people who have practiced medicine and, by retiring, have saved thousands of lives.”
It killed.
In the showbiz sense, of course. Brecher — who, hair askew, looks like a combination of Harpo Marx and Albert Einstein and walks with the help of his Invacare walker, Old Rolls — once wrote two movies for Harpo and his brothers. Now, although nearly blind from glaucoma, he still speaks with the warm, edgy timbre of Groucho as he tells stories of his old pals Benny, Berle and Burns. He punched up — “spiked” was the word back then — the script for “The Wizard of Oz” in 1938 and, in 1943, convinced Judy Garland to act in “Meet Me in St. Louis,” for which he penned the screenplay. While creating television’s very first sitcom, he discovered Jackie Gleason.
Who knew? Very few, but all this makes Brecher more than your normal club comic. He’s a treasure from the 20th century — “one of the three fastest” quipsters, according to Groucho and humorist S.J. Perelman (the others were George S. Kaufman and Oscar Levant). After vaudeville gag-writing, radio, theater, and television and screenplay writing/directing, Brecher is now pursuing a new career: stand up comedy. He’s on the circuit: playing the Friars Club and Hillcrest Country Club, birthday benefits and funerals. And he’s now a part of the entertainment program at Oasis, a program of Jewish Family Service — a 150-year-old L.A.-based social service agency. This Oasis branch holds its sessions in a West L.A. mall above a Robinsons-May store. The walls are decorated with posters designed to inspire. (“Expand your world,” one reads.) For three bucks a session, students can engage in “Intermediate Computer,” “Pilates” and even “Chocolate — A Healthy Vegetable.”
The audience may seem a little gray and the subject-matter a bit dark, but macabre humor has, in fact, been Brecher’s stock-in-trade for some time.
In the early 1940s, he wrote “The Life of Riley,” a radio comedy starring William Bendix, and added a “friendly undertaker” character named Digby “Digger” O’Dell. “I’d better be shoveling off,” was one of Digby’s sepulchral catch phrases. The show’s sponsor, the American Meat Institute, flipped its bun.
But within two weeks, mail began to pour in from elderly people: They were thanking Brecher for taking the grimness out of death. Digger and one of Riley’s expressions — “What a revoltin’ development this is!” — caught on nationwide. AMI caved.
Eventually Brecher created versions of “Riley” for screen and television, but its star, Bendix, said that television never would last. Brecher needed a replacement and remembered a comedian he’d seen at the Hollywood nightclub Slapsy Maxie’s: a thin, hungry fellow named Jackie who owed everybody money and was reportedly unreliable. Brecher hired him — his last name was Gleason — welcoming him to the new medium with a set of golf clubs, which, he learned, were promptly sold to the prop man. When Gleason’s bad teeth kept whistling on the soundtrack, Brecher paid half the dental bills. “Jackie got tears in his eyes,” Brecher recalled. “He picked me up and said, ‘You’re the nicest Jew I ever met!’”
Eventually the show was canceled, just as Brecher earned an Emmy for it.
“Mr. Brecher’s a sweetheart,” said Oasis student Miriam Baron, 80, in pink hat and shawl, after seeing his presentation. “He’s been there, done that, with everything! Let him stay well. That’s the main thing.”
“Why, Irv, you’re just a kid!” added her classmate, Fred Hofeld, 97.
So what’s the difference between the Cedars-Sinai doctors and the Oasis students?
“These people are alive,” Brecher told the Forward over half a pastrami sandwich and a cup of soup at Junior’s Deli, across Pico Boulevard.
Hank Rosenfeld tells stories on public radio’s “Weekend America” and is publishing a book with Irving Brecher.
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
2X match on all Passover gifts!
Most Popular
- 1
News A Jewish Republican and Muslim Democrat are suddenly in a tight race for a special seat in Congress
- 2
Film & TV What Gal Gadot has said about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
- 3
Fast Forward The NCAA men’s Final Four has 3 Jewish coaches
- 4
Culture How two Jewish names — Kohen and Mira — are dividing red and blue states
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward ‘Another Jewish warrior’: Fine wins special election for U.S. House seat
-
Fast Forward A Chicagoan wanted to protest Elon Musk — and put a swastika sticker on a Jewish man’s Tesla
-
Fast Forward NY attorney general orders car wash to stop ripping off Jews with antisemitic ‘Passover special’
-
Fast Forward Cory Booker proclaims, ‘Hineni’ — I am here — 19 hours into anti-Trump Senate speech
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
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 comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag 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.