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     As a young man, Theodore Gottlieb was in an enviable position. Born not with a silver but golden spoon in his mouth, the heir apparent to a German publishing empire spent the 1920s and 30s living out his rakish destiny. He frequented the cabarets of Berlin, Paris, the Continent. He romanced women - allegedly a great many - 
found himself with too little time for both a career and carousing, he never pursued the former, planning to live out his days on the vast wealth he was to eventually inherit. ‘I was a playboy,’ the late Gottlieb states in To My Great Chagrin, a new documentary by Jeff Sumerel. ‘I intended to be a playboy,’ but a 1938 arrest by the Nazis laid waste to those plans, ushering in an era of tragedy that would last till his 2001 death at the age of 94. There was a turning point, however, where Theodore would pick up Thalia, the mask of comedy, and place it over his own brooding brow to become one of the funniest men of the twentieth century.

     That Theodore isn’t known for being one of the funniest men of the twentieth century is in itself the tragedy that followed Gottlieb to his grave. ‘I passed from comparative obscurity to total oblivion,’ he was fond of saying, though the statement is not entirely true. Blossom of Evil, his first show of comedic material, opened in 1945 and it instantly garnered critical praise and packed houses. The press called him mesmerizing, his humor, grotesque and disconcerting. Long before the morose Richard Lewis, Theodore was the original comic in black, weaving tales of macabre humor mixed with alternate doses of self-loathing and unmitigated narcissism. ‘The only thing that keeps me alive is the hope of dying young,’ he would relate in his act and not ten minutes later he would make the claim of being ‘a somebody in a century of nobodies.’ He was a ranter when comedians didn’t rant, and a provoker of thought when quick one-liners were the norm. As a contemporary of Lenny Bruce, the two would push the boundaries of comedy in entirely different directions, Bruce becoming the father of comic issues and obscenity, Theodore, the father of comedic metaphysics. ‘The best thing is not to be born,’ he’d lament, ‘but who is as lucky as that? To whom does it happen? Not to one among millions and millions of people.’

     The mask that Gottlieb wore to take the stage as Theodore the dark humorist would have critics and fans guessing as to who he really was for fifty years. He preferred to be called a monologist rather than a comic, but was that ‘he’ the hysterically sinister Brother Theodore or Theodore Gottlieb, the gentle man known to friends? And was the realm of ‘stand-up tragedy,’ as he called it, inhabited by one man or two? The line blurry, perhaps it can be said that Brother Theodore was created not only as source of income but that he was also Gottlieb’s self-prescribed palliative, a way to cope with his suffering that began with internment.

     ‘I spent seven months at Dachau with no great enjoyment,’ he would deadpan in interviews. He had seen Nazis laugh as dogs ate a man alive; his family was exterminated, and it was only through his nascent humor that his own life was spared. Laboring in the yard one day, he had found a pistol leveled to his head. ‘What did you do for a living?’ he was asked, it being the same question put to the two dead men before him. Theodore, however, was able to escape execution by actually reprimanding his captors. ‘I have no time for this,' he barked. ' Can’t you see I’m busy working for the Fuhrer?’ Did the Nazis even crack a smile? Probably not, for they immediately moved on and shot the next man.

     The seven-month internment ended when he agreed to sign the family fortune over to the German government in exchange for all of one Reichsmark. Alone and penniless, he first made his way to Switzerland where he hustled chess for a living, but the Swiss authorities, taking a dim view of his chosen profession, had him deported to a German-ruled Austria. Could life be any more difficult? Knowing he had to get out of Vienna and get out fast, Theodore immigrated to America with the aide of family friend Albert Einstein (his mother’s long-time lover, he claimed), but with no skills to offer, the former playboy of  

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Europe had to earn his pay by mop and bucket, cleaning the halls of Stanford University. With a wife and son to support, Gottlieb, now pushing forty, wondered what he was going to do with his life. Theatre had always held his interest, and it seemed be one of his few options.

     He had started out by reciting tales of Poe but soon moved on to writing his own material. Early shows were to small audiences, as to be expected, but within a few months, success and laudatory reviews began to follow him - from San Francisco to Los Angeles and then permanently to New York. Not following him to New York, however, was that elusive state called happiness, for the wife he adored had left him for his best friend, taking their only son with them. 

     All through the 1950s, New York proved to be Gottlieb’s town. There was an eight-year run at the historic Cherry Lane Theatre in Greenwich Village, the local beats having adopted him as one of their own. He gave the now-renown Circle in the Square Theatre its first hit production, and therewere midnight shows at Magic Townhouse and Carnegie Hall. Despite his claim to being eternally obscure, he even sold out the 829-seat Town Hall Theatre for an incredible six nights straight. Records were issued and the talk-show circuit made - Jack Paar, Steve Allen - and over the next two decades he would appear over thirty times on The Merv Griffin Show, Griffin being the man who bestowed him the clerical title, Brother Theodore. Continuing to work into his nineties, Theodore’s sparring with David Letterman on NBC’s Late Night would become legendary television, and till his health deteriorated in the mid-1990s, his weekly live performances at the 13th Street Theatre were a New York staple for seventeen years. Just before he passed away, he agreed to let filmmaker Jeff Sumerel tell his story.

     It is through interviews with luminary admirers such as Penn Gillette, Eric Bogosian, Dick Cavett, Harlan Ellison, and Woody Allen that To My Great Chagrin: The Unbelievable Story of Brother Theodore chronicles the sketchy life of this comedic genius. Sumerel had begun the project in 2001, but with research proving to be difficult, the film wouldn’t be completed till 2007, its premiere coming at the New York Museum of Modern Art’s documentary series in February of 2008.

     ‘I only interviewed Theodore for I think it was five nights,’ said the filmmaker in an interview with The Cad, ‘and then he died about a month later, so I just thought, well, that’s that, and then even when I was interviewing him, it was ‘let’s see what’s going to happen,’ because I didn’t know if he was going to agree to do this or how far he was willing to take it. I had been told, ‘Oh yeah, he’ll sabotage it no matter what.’’

     The multitude of rabbit trails and dead ends that Sumerel followed and met during the making of the film were numerous for the simple reason that Brother Theodore had survived everyone who had known him in his pre-theatrical life. Was his story as he claimed it to be? Was there a fortune? Was Einstein really his mother’s lover?

     ‘It was one of the frustrating things,’ said Sumerel. ‘There was nothing to validate even what he was saying. There was no photograph of him with Albert Einstein. I’m thinking, I want to believe that. And there’s no photograph of him with Orson Welles (Gottlieb claimed a friendship with the man and can be seen in Welles’ The Stranger). Fortunately,’ said Sumerel. ‘the son started digging into the family’s history and hired a lawyer to do research in Austria and Germany, and they did find a library that did have all those fashion magazines and those were like golden nuggets for me when I saw them, ‘Oh good, something to validate this publishing empire I keep hearing about.’

     Yet, doubts to historical validity were further cast when Sumerel spoke to one of Gottlieb’s producers. Having worked with him for eight years in the 1950s, she thought it odd that he never once mentioned his tragic past, and upon reading the 2001 obituary she had even thought everything about Einstein and the fortune was ‘a bunch of hooey.’ Having got a similar

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response from other Gottlieb acquaintances, a surprised Sumerel explored the possibility of a fraudulent past.

     ‘It might have been wishful thinking,’ Sumerel joked. ‘This would be great if he made it all up – if we all bought into it – but there is too much to indicate - his passport and everything - that he was definitely in Dachau and there were the magazines.’ One of the toughest decisions the director had to make about his film is if it was going to be a typical documentary about an incredibly atypical performer. Though he had filmed his interviews with Gillette, Bogosian, and the rest, he began to reconsider the benefit of their appearing on camera.

     ‘My artistic voice was saying wait a minute, this doesn’t serve the subject. This doesn’t serve Theodore appropriately, and, yeah, people are going to get annoyed with it, but they got annoyed with Theodore, so I just got to go for it.’ Sumerel also told his editor that they had to pretend Theodore was the executive producer of the film and that he was going to come in and periodically look at it.  
     ‘Celebrity,’ noted Sumerel. ‘He always had a wrestling match with that, so finally, he’s the star of his own movie. I told some students, ’Hey, I would do a traditional approach if that’s what the subject matter called for. Yeah, this shooting myself in the foot, maybe a little bit, but I don’t think it would have got into MOMA.'

     Thus, there is no narration of the Theodore story, it unfolding only by way of reflection and speculation, and with Theodore, there was always speculation.

     ‘You began to think this might be a madman who might be on the brink,’ reveals Dick Cavett in the film, ‘and something awful might happen in the next minute,’ but it was this volatile persona that was the very genius of Theodore Gottlieb. He never broke character on stage (if it was a character) and he never gave an audience that knowing wink to say, ‘I just made you laugh, and I’m laughing with you.’ In the 1970s and early 80s, Andy Kaufman would follow the same rules that Gottlieb created, and had it not been for Kaufman’s early death, he too might have let this strict adherence send his career into something of a tailspin. Though both men received their due of laughter on Letterman, they would also routinely be jeered for carrying the joke too far - Kaufman, most notably for his wrestling character, and Theodore for his assault on his audiences.

     ‘Pigs. Nosepickers. Unfit mothers,’ he’d call the crowd, and sometimes there’d be ‘a voice from the sewer.’ At the slightest hint of any disapproval, it was with trilled r’s and a weighty pause that he’d announce, ‘This is what I get for trying to sell roses in a fishmarket.’

     Those who got the joke laughed. Those who didn’t continued to fan his wrath, and for such insolence, the entire audience would suffer punishment. Rising from his chair, he’d hit them with,

     ‘Because of your boorish behavior. Because of your rudeness. Because of your tactlessness. Because of your obvious lack of understanding, the German anthem will be omitted tonight. And that’s final!'

     'Bogosian had a pretty interesting observation,’ said Sumerel. ‘He said Don Rickles had the same venom that Theodore had, and what happened is that he [Rickles] started diluting it more and more when he was on t.v., so became more popular and successful, but Theodore didn’t dilute it.’'

     Theodore also didn’t change his act much in fifty years, he appearing on Letterman in the 1980s with the same material from his recordings of the 1950s, but it may just be this perceived lack of prolificacy that is the one clue needed to solve the mystery as to exactly who or what was Brother Theodore.

     ‘He just kept honing that material,’ said Sumerel, ‘and I would say there was probably a total of maybe an hour of forty-five minutes, two  hours, and then he would trade out five minute segments here and there. They were somewhat interchangeable, but he pretty much had the same beginning and ending. I don’t know how many segments there would be in particular – maybe twelve or fifteen.’

     Wanting to know what Theodore’s take on the world was today, Sumerel had encouraged the comedian to stay active by writing new material for the documentary, even if it were a two-minute routine. 'But,' Sumerel related,' like Len Belzer [host of syndicated radio show The Comedy Hour] said, ‘This is today.’ He’s says that’s what it is. It’s timeless material and it applies even today, and even seventeen and eighteen year olds stood in awe of it and wanted to know more about it. ‘Who is this guy? He’s saying what we’re thinking right now. Question authority.’

     Twelve or fifteen segments repeated for a half-century, no matter how timeless, would certainly be a death warrant for any comic’s career, but not for Theodore’s, because, as he always claimed, he wasn’t a comic but a monologist. Yet, perhaps he was even more than that. Perhaps Theodore Gottlieb was also a one-shot playwright akin to Harper Lee being a one-shot novelist. Lee had written To Kill a Mockingbird and didn’t feel the need to write another novel; Gottlieb had his hit with Theodore, and was never compelled to write another script. Over the years, he might have tweaked Theodore here and there, and he certainly changed the title to Brother Theodore, but don’t producers and directors also take liberties with Shakespeare by cutting lines and re-examining characters? Perhaps all his interviews on Griffin and Letterman were nothing but excerpts from from that play, in the same manner that any film actor would bring along his latest clip - only Gottlieb’s case, the Brother Theodore clip was live and lasted the entire segment.

     In 2007, actor Rober Trebor staged a Los Angeles production titled The Return of Brother Theodore and though Gottlieb fans might have recoiled from a perceived audacity, that Brother Theodore is now being seen as a role rather than a man

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eventually may keep Gottlieb from falling into the total obscurity that he feared. And who knows? Perhaps fifty years hence, Gottlieb’s single opus, Brother Theodore, will be considered a brilliant theatrical oddity of the twentieth century, with future actors struggling to capture the essence of this character created by the mad genius of a playwright named Theodore Gottlieb.

     Then again, it could be that Brother Theodore and Theodore Gottlieb were two men swapping the masks of Thalia and Melpomene, each needing each the other for survival. Did Gottlieb really want to marry ‘a rich widow of thirteen - ninety-five pounds of quivering submissive flesh’ as Brother Theodore often stated? Did he believe in ‘quadrupedism,’ the theory that man should return to walking on all fours? The answer to the Theodore mystery comes from comedian, magician, and noted celebrant of outré culture, Penn Gillette, who probably put it best.

‘What you have there,’ he says in the film, ‘is a proud freak.' _________________________________________________________________________________

Currently, Jeff Sumerel is screening To My Great Chagrin: The Unbelievable Story of Brother Theodore at film festivals around the U.S. View the trailer here and check Spontaneous Productions to learn if it will be brought to your area. Readers can also call their local art theatres to promote interest in the film. Sumerel reports that a dvd that will include three Brother Theodore shorts is in the works, but as of yet, a release date is unavailable.

    As for archival footage and sound recordings, You Tube has a few clips of the Letterman interviews, such as this classic bit from 1985, and Spontaneous does have plans to re-release Theodore's rare e.p.s and l.p.s. A search for a popular file downloading format will yield results, but please note that the procurement of these rare recordings may be subject to copyright violation.