ABSTRACT
In a 1959 episode of Peter Gunn, real-life comedian Shelley Berman stars as Danny Holland, a stand-up comic who hires the detective because he thinks his wife is trying to kill him. Gunn quickly fi nds out, however, that the wife believes Danny is the one with emotional problems-that she fears he is going to kill her. Gunn consults a psychiatrist, who can’t tell him which person is lying, but we quickly discover that Danny is truly a “sick” comic. His paranoid delusions have led him to murder several men that he believed his wife sent to kill him. When Danny walks onstage to perform his routine for the last time, his head is overwhelmed with voices. He accuses the audience of being brainwashed, and tells them that they are laughing because they are told something is funny. Which is exactly what the audience does: Danny’s onstage breakdown meets with uproarious laughter. It’s unclear why the audience shows so much pleasure in Danny’s mental collapse. Is it sadistic enjoyment at the sight of a man who has become sick, who has buckled under life’s pressures? Maybe they truly fi nd the few antisocial quips he aims at them funny. Perhaps they are indeed laughing because they are told he is funny, performing their proper roles as audience members. Whatever the reason, Danny the sick, murderous comic, leaves them in stitches.1
