Another great tale from the legendary Moms Mabley.
Other themes of her comedy include black-white relations and political commentating--Moms casts herself as advisor to President Johnson on civil rights issues.
Her physical presence was absurd, and she played off of it. She looked frumpy onstage, yet she belittled old men and boasted of dates with young ones (at least one of which actually took place). As Trudier Harris observes, "On stage, she played out the romantic side of Mom, not the realistic; the adventurous, not the settled" . The disparity between her appearance and the content of her jokes epitomizes Malcolm Muggeridge's definition of humor as "the enormous disparity between human aspirations and human performances."
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