Lessons from Uncle Miltie

Many of the obituaries and tributes to Milton Berle published in the days following his death on March 27, 2002, emphasized the ways in which the comic’s Jewishness either informed his comedy or was central to his stardom. In the Wall Street Journal, Joseph Epstein argued that “everyone had to know that Berle was Jewish,” whereas the Baltimore Sun’s television critic detailed the ways that Berle’s Jewishness was central to the rise and decline of his program Texaco Star Theatre and, more generally, the future representation of Jews on television. ¹ Franklin Foer put it bluntly in his Salon.com article by simply (and rather lovingly) calling the comic a “very Jewy Jew.” ² Although it may be easy for contemporary critics to speak so frankly about Berle’s ethnicity and its impact on his popularity, this type of commentary was not present in the mainstream coverage of the star during the years in which he was first dubbed “Mr. Television” and America’s “Uncle Miltie.” Rather, the signs of his Jewishness were read through his historical connections to things such as vaudeville, New York, and a particular type of ethnic masculinity.