Jackie Mason, the quintessential Borscht Belt Comedian passed Saturday at 93.
Few know Mason was an ordained Rabbi and single handedly rescued the New York annual ball-dropping ceremony.
Back in 1990 when the annual ball-dropping ceremony in Times Square was threatened with cancellation because a sponsor backed out, Jackie Mason chipped in.
`It’s symbolic of New York, tradition it’s symbolic of what makes New York the tourist mecca of the world, the attraction of the world,’ Mason said Wednesday of the ceremony that is televised nationally.
The ball – in recent years a big apple – drops from 1 Times Square. The building’s owner, Steve Israel, said this year’s sponsor backed out at the last minute because of the economy. He did not identify the sponsor.
The event normally costs $50,000 to $100,000, and Mason is guaranteeing $10,000, said Israel.
The following written content from Kathianne Boniello
Mason died at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan Saturday, with his wife Jyll and a few friends by his side, longtime pal and lawyer Raoul Felder told The Post.
There will be a small, private funeral service Sunday in New York, said Felder, who declined to name the location. A larger, public memorial service is expected at a later date, the lawyer noted.
“We shall never see his like again. This was a mold that was broken,” an emotional Felder said. “We’re going to miss him.”
Mason was born in Sheboygan, Wis., to immigrant parents from Belarus. The family moved to Manhattan when little Yacov Moshe Maza, as he was then known, was just 5-years old, according to The New York Times, which first reported his death.
An ordained rabbi, Mason was frequently stopped on the street wherever he went, and always took the time to listen, Felder said.
“He spoke to everybody and listened to their troubles,” recalled Felder, who wrote a series of books with Mason. “He used to listen to all the waiters’ complaints.”
He was even the favorite comedian of the Queen Mother and Prince Charles, and performed frequently for the royals.
Mason caused a stir after one performance for the Queen Mother, when he refused to wait afterward and bow to her, recalled Felder, who described Mason as “very smart and very opinionated.”
“At the end the whole cast lined up and waited and bowed when a member of royalty came over. Jackie was having none of this,” Felder remembered. “He just left. It became a big story — he’d walked out on the Queen Mum. So he invented a story that he couldn’t stay there anymore because he was sick.”
His famed one-man show, “The World According to Me!” made him a triumph of Broadway in the 1980s, and in 1968, he was banned from “The Ed Sullivan Show” after the host mistakenly believed Mason gave him the middle finger during an interruption.
Known for his “Borscht Belt” style of comedy, often seen in the era of Catskill summer resort entertainment, Mason’s trademark was continuing that kind of performance style long after the resorts were mere memories.
The doctors and nurses attending to Mason, who had been hospitalized for two weeks and three days, wept when he died, Felder said.
“They were all fans of his. They were all crying,” he said. “He was like a shooting star that comes every 100 years.” Read more from NYPost
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