Borscht Belt Comedian Myron Cohen Dies at 83

Veteran Borscht Belt comedian and storyteller Myron Cohen, who delivered his yarns in a thick Yiddish accent, has died at a suburban Rockland County hospital. He was 83 and had a history of heart trouble.

The popular comedian, who had lived in New York City for the past 30 years, died at Nyack Hospital at 3:35 p.m. Monday. A nursing supervisor said he was admitted and placed in the hospital’s coronary-care unit earlier in the day.

Born in the Bronx, Cohen performed in the 1950s at top New York nightclubs like the Copacabana and the Latin Quarter, as well as in hotels in Las Vegas and the Catskill Mountains in upstate New York.

“We were buddies for 40 years,” recalled comedian Henny Youngman, who said he and Cohen often exchanged jokes. “He was on the ‘Ed Sullivan’ (show) 26 times, and I was on 20,” Youngman added in a mock air of jealousy.

Cohen credited Lou Walters, father of newswoman Barbara Walters, with helping him get started in show business.

Unlike other Borscht Belt comedians--entertainers who performed at popular Catskills resorts--Cohen prided himself on being a silk salesman for 25 years before turning to comedy.

“They liked my jokes, but they didn’t always buy my material,” he once said of customers.

Cohen began his comedy career with a routine at Leon and Eddie’s nightclub in New York in the 1950s, said Jerry Sager, a family friend and Cohen’s former publicist.

Although Cohen, a native of Poland, had no foreign accent in normal conversation, he developed a facility for reproducing the dialect of his Eastern European colleagues in the garment district. He told his stories mostly in a Yiddish accent, but did Irish and Italian as well.

“Taste is the key,” he once told an interviewer.

Noting that many dialect comedians had fallen out of favor because they were perceived as ridiculing minority groups, he said: “It was never the dialect that offended--it was the stories that were told. The Irishman was always drunk, the Jew was avaricious and the Negro stupid. It became monotonous and tasteless.”

Cohen said all his stories were true, and explained: “Audiences are the same everywhere, whether you’re in Vegas, South Africa or Rockland. They all want to hear about something that happens to human beings.”

Youngman said a favorite joke he gave to Cohen for his act involved a Jewish man who got hit by a car: “A policeman comes over and places a blanket over him and asks: ‘Are you comfortable?’ The man replies: ‘I make a nice living.’ ”

Youngman, who often performed with Cohen, said the comic particulary enjoyed a story about two women in the Bronx hanging clothes out to dry: “One woman asks, ‘Have you seen what’s going on in Poland?’ And the other replies, ‘I live in the back, I don’t see anything.’ ”

One of Cohen’s personal favorites: “Picture a skinny little guy, a shrimp, a nothing. He walks into a lumber camp looking for a job. To impress a skeptical foreman, the shrimp fells a towering oak in 90 seconds. ‘Where’d you learn that?’ says the lumberjack. The little guy says, ‘In the Sahara Forest.’ ‘You mean the Sahara Desert.’ ‘Sure, now.’ ”

Cohen, who retired in 1984, leaves two brothers, Philip of Fort Lee, N.J., and Milton of Queens. His wife, Miriam, whom he married in 1925, died in 1981.