How Funny People Got That Way

George Lopez, Bill Cosby, Ellen DeGeneres and others on turning tears into laughter.

By Jamie Malanowski

From Reader's Digest

Change Text Size

Change Text Size
|
Bookmark

Bookmark

Del.icio.us
Digg
Reddit
Facebook
StumbleUpon
|
Print
|
E-Mail

More On:

Flying

George Lopez is rolling now. There are 3,000 people in front of him, and their laughter fills the auditorium. The audience has turned out because they love his act, love his hit television series "George Lopez" -- love him. He tells jokes about men and women, husbands and wives, ethnic groups and ethnic differences, about names in the news, and about himself. He tells jokes about a time when he wasn't surrounded by 3,000 people who love him, a time when it seemed he couldn't find one person who loved him at all.

To the audience, Lopez recounts once being at Disneyland and asking his grandmother for a Mickey Mouse hat -- an individualized one with ears and his name embroidered across the front. One, you're lucky we brought you. Two, you want a souvenir, save your ticket. Three, your ears stick out more than the hat. Here, I'll just write your name across your forehead.

They roar at the image of such over-the-top meanness. Lopez has conjured up a modern Miss Hannigan whose nastiness to children would be deplorable if it wasn't so funny. Of course, it wasn't so funny when young George was living it.

George Lopez is a unique talent, but he's hardly a unique comedian -- at least in one respect. A surprising number of comics have faced hardships in their youth, yet managed to find their personal salvation -- and provide our entertainment -- by making us laugh.

George Lopez never knew his father. His mother, who was a scam artist, suffered epileptic seizures, and permanently disappeared when George was ten, leaving him in the care of his grandparents. His kindly grandfather worked long and hard but turned to the bottle for escape. And his grandmother was gratuitously cruel. Not only did she show George little love or encouragement, she seemed to take great pleasure in insulting him. "I don't think there was ever a moment in my childhood," Lopez says, "when I felt it was great to be part of a family."

In the few photos that exist of young George, there's no trace of the smiling, deep-dimpled entertainer we know today. Instead, we see a morose boy, turning his eyes away from the camera. "I never smiled," he says, "because no one made me feel like I was alive. Forget about being important, forget about being a contributing person -- no one made me feel like I was alive."

But comedy did. In 1974, when George was 13, he watched the charismatic Freddie Prinze on TV and began to think that maybe he, too, could become a comedian. "My buddy Ernie knew a guy who was a stand-up who was getting all kinds of publicity," George remembers. "Ernie said, 'Man, you're funnier than this dude. Let's go to the clubs and figure out an act.' "

The third time Lopez took the stage, when he was just 18 years old, he cracked up the crowd. "Afterwards, I literally felt like I was flying," he recalls. "That was the first time I ever felt complete acceptance and love."