Madison County Democrat

HOW TO BE A COMIC
By Hal Boyle
NEW YORK-(P)-How would you like your little boy to grow up and be a famous comedian and earn $50,000 to $500,000 a year?
Many a fond mother today does. And after watching television for a while, she thinks she knows how.
"Here, Junior," she might say. "Learn how to hold these two billiard balls in your mouth, and everytime one of the neighbor kids say hello to you, I want you to kick his feet out from under him. Then when you are a big boy you can be a comic and earn a lot of pin money for your dear old mother."
But Herb Shriner, the youngest and latest of Indiana's notable Hoosier humorists, says it isn't that easy. It takes more than funny faces and prat falls.
"The most important thing to a comic is a good memory," he said, and added wryly. "whether for your own jokes--or somebody else's."
He didn't mean just the average parrot memory, however. If that were all a comedian required, lots of henpecked husbands would be laughing at their wives all day long--and trying to get them into show business.
"I could sit down and reel off 500 to 1,000 jokes probably," said Shriner. "But anyone can memorize joke books. I don't like to clutter up my mind with formula gags about fat girls or long underwear."
Some professional comics keep thousands of these weary wise-cracks at tongue tip, ready for any situation. Shriner's stock in trade is some 250 carefully written monologues, centering largely around odd characters or incidents he has observed. This is where he feels a "seeing eye" memory is important.
"Almost everything that has ever happened to me in my life has turned out to be useful for me in my work," he said. "I like the kind of humor that makes people laugh at themselves--or people they recognize--because it rings a bell of nostalgia."
To do this he has gone back to the small town, because he feels most Americans, whether they live in city or town or on the farm, really dwell in a small community made up of the people they know.
Some dreamers "live in a world all their own." Shriner has become successful by creating a world of his own in which anyone can share a laugh.
"It is a mythical small town," he said, "where people looking for excitement on Saturday go over to the barber shop to watch a few haircuts.
"There isn't any banker there, because of lack of business. Anybody who saves up money uses it to leave town.
"It's the kind of town in which one fellow who found a nickel in a potato became a local celebrity. Everybody knew one politician who was elected sheriff was an honest man, because the first thing he did was to arrest the previous sheriff. Later he became postmaster, but the pay was small. He would have starved except for what he got by shaking the parcel post packages."
This native, fun-poking brand of humor has led critics to call Shriner The Indiana Will Rogers.
He admires Will Rogers but doesn't care for the nickname, feeling any performer has to make it on his own. Rogers went from rope tricks to monologues. Herb started with a harmonica, and still uses it.
At 33, tall, wavy-haired and shy as Ernie Pyle in manner, Shriner is getting homesick for the small town in his own mind, the small town that has made him a top bracket chuckle-Smith.
"Living in a big city is like hanging from a cliff," he said seriously.
Now he is searching for an ideal small town where the Shriners can live and laugh at their neighbors--and at themselves.