Archive Highlights
The National Comedy Center exhibit experience in Jamestown, NY is annotated with dozens of props, costumes, and archival objects that put visitors in the presence of some of comedy’s most legendary DNA. The Center’s growing archive - which serves researchers, educators, and students – is dedicated to preserving and providing access to artifacts and records that illuminate the comedic process and chronicle the history of the artform. Archives and Exhibitions partners include artists like Carl Reiner, Carol Burnett, and The Smothers Brothers, the estates of artists like Lenny Bruce, Andy Kaufman, and the Marx Brothers, and partner institutions like the Smithsonian, NBCUniversal Archives, and Paramount Pictures – among many others.
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The Smothers Brothers
The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour debuted in 1967 and quickly became a counter-cultural lightning rod. Tom and Dick Smothers satirized politics and combated racism, while pushing the boundaries of what was considered permissible on network television. After harshly decrying the government’s handl...
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Carlin & Language
From an early age, George Carlin was attentive to the rhythms and meanings of words. This lifelong fascination with language became a cornerstone of his work, which assumed a cadenced, melodious form that was not unlike spoken word poetry. To achieve this effect, Carlin meticulously took notes; g...
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Ghostbusters
In 1984 Ghostbusters broke all box-office records to become the highest-grossing comedy of all time to that point, and the most successful comedy film of the 1980s. The film featured an ensemble of Saturday Night Live and Second City comedians who were vaulted to international superstardom as Gho...
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Carlin's 7 Dirty Words
George Carlin’s landmark 1972 album Class Clown contained a controversial routine about censorship called “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television.” While performing the routine live before an audience of 35,000 on July 21, 1972, at Summerfest in Milwaukee, Carlin was surrounded by police and...
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Rodney Dangerfield
Across decades, Rodney Dangerfield copiously handwrote thousands of pages of original jokes with multi-colored felt pens. He carried them everywhere he went in a leather monogrammed bag, which accompanied him to countless late-night talk show appearances and live performances at venues like Radio...
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Joan Rivers
Comedy legend Joan Rivers archived her own body of work, charting the development of her remarkable career from the 1960s - when she got her start in comedy clubs like The Bitter End, to the 2010s - when she helmed the TV series Fashion Police. As Rivers deftly navigated the male-dominated world ...
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Johnny Carson
Johnny Carson reigned as “The King of Late-Night” for thirty years – from 1962, when he inherited The Tonight Show from Jack Paar, to 1992, when he passed it on to Jay Leno. Carson perfected the late-night formula: His topical monologues skewered politicians across seven Presidential administrati...
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Bob Hope
For more than fifty years, perennial entertainer Bob Hope crisscrossed the globe performing comedy for deployed military troops, in partnership with the United Service Organizations. His first USO show was at March Field in Riverside, California in 1941, and his final tour was in 1990 in Bahrain ...
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Airplane!
Airplane! has come to be considered one of the great parody films of all time, renowned for its dense co-mingling of slapstick, sight gags, wordplay, innuendo, satire, and an overarching tone of deadpan mock seriousness. Created by writer-producers Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, and Jerry Zucker on ...
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Shelley Berman
