Happy Birthday: Milton Berle (1908–2002)

Date of Birth 12 July 1908, New York City, New York, USA
Date of Death 27 March 2002, Los Angeles, California, USA (colon cancer)
Birth Name Milton Berlinger
Nicknames Uncle Miltie
Mr. Television
The Boy Wonder
The Thief of Bad Gags
Height 5′ 10″ (1.78 m)

Don’t burn, just singe.

You show the emotion so you get the audience going the other way.

[on his beginning as a comic] I had copied my style from a great comic, Ted Healy. I patterned myself after Healy, with the hat turned up in front and the collegiate look. I was the brash, flippant wise guy, smart-ass type.
I have a file of four million jokes . . . I have them cross-indexed. Whatever subject you want, I have a joke on it.

[on his early television show] The first year I was on, ’48 or ’49, I didn’t even have a writer…