George Kirby
*George Kirby was born on this date in 1923. He was a Black comedian, singer, and actor.
Born in Chicago, Kirby broke into show business in the 1940s at the Club DeLisa. This South Side establishment employed a variety-show format and preferred to hire local singers, dancers, and comedians. His first recording was as a stand-up blues singer, performing "Ice Man Blues" in 1947 for Aristocrat Records.
He was one of the first black comedians to appeal to white and Black audiences during the height of the 20th-century American Civil Rights era. Between 1963 and 1972, he appeared on Perry Como's Kraft Music Hall, The Ed Sullivan Show, The Dean Martin Show, The Jackie Gleason Show, The Temptations Show, Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, and The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.
As an impressionist, he mimicked provocatively for 1960s performance venues white actors such as John Wayne and Walter Brennan rather than solely Black stars such as Bill Cosby and Pearl Bailey. He also made vocal impressions of such singers as Louis Armstrong, Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald and Joe Williams. In 1970, he produced The George Kirby Show, a television special, to gauge whether he could attract an audience for a weekly series. This led to his hosting Half the George Kirby Comedy Hour, a sketch comedy and variety show, which lasted for 22 episodes in 1972; it was one of the actor-comedian Steve Martin's first credits in front of the camera.
The series was, in many ways, an uneasy compromise between Kirby's natural gifts and what the public would accept of Black actors at the time; a regular feature was a shaggy dog story segment entitled the "Funky Fable." He was also a regular in the ABC series The Kopykats, with other impressionists such as Rich Little, Charlie Callas, Marilyn Michaels, and Frank Gorshin. Following his show's demise, Kirby's career declined, especially as audiences began to look for more cutting-edge comedy. His career never again reached its former heights, but he did register featured television guest appearances on Gimme a Break with Nell Carter, What's Happening Now!!, Crazy Like a Fox, and 227.
Arrested in 1977 for selling cocaine and heroin to an undercover officer, Kirby served three and a half years in prison. After his release, he visited schools to tell students to stay off drugs. In 1983 he did a USO tour with Bob Hope to entertain the troops in Beirut, Lebanon, as part of the multinational peacekeeping force. Diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in his later years, Kirby made his last public appearance at an all-star benefit in May 1995 given by his friends for his mounting medical bills. On September 30, 1995, Kirby died of Parkinson's disease at a nursing home in Las Vegas. He was survived by his wife, Rosemary.
