I was listening to the Dennis Miller show on the car radio tonight. The guest was Orson Bean and he was really good. One of those old-school guys that has a story about everyone. Bean briefly talked working Brother Theodore.
Brother Theodore. I haven’t heard his name in years. He was possibly the most esoteric performer I’ve ever seen. I saw him a lot on the Letterman Show and it was really like nothing I’ve ever seen. Dave would bring him on without warning and just let the guy rip while doing a nervous, wary version of a straight man.
From what I understand, Brother Theodore did a nightclub act for many years that consisted of his monologues that he described as “standup tragedy”.
Here are a couple of clips, the first one is with Letterman, the second a short monologue in which Theodore addresses a fundamental philosophical point.
As always, act like you know what’s going on then click pause on the music player located in the side bar before playing the YouTube.
By the way, I looked up Brother Theodore at wiki and it seems he led quite an interesting life. This part is from the early years…
He was born into a wealthy Jewish family in Düsseldorf, North Rhine-Westphalia, where his father was a magazine publisher. Theodore attended the University of Cologne. At age 32, under Nazi rule, he was imprisoned at the Dachau concentration camp until he signed over his family’s fortune for one Reichsmark. After being deported for chess hustling from Switzerland he went to Austria where Albert Einstein, a family friend and alleged lover of his mother, helped him escape to the United States.
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