Чарли Кейс: Америкалық комедияның алғашқы шебері

American comedian (1858–1916)
the baseball player

Charley Case (August 27, 1858 – November 26, 1916) was an American vaudeville performance artist who delivered the first known example of stand up comedy in the late 1880s, delivering humorous monologues directly to the audience while standing in one spot without props or costumes. He is credited with creating the term "punchline" as he often used his arms in a punch line motion during his stories. Case also wrote and sang vaudeville parodies of the 19th century ballad style. He influenced F. Gregory Hartswick, who wrote similar songs. Case is thought to have been mulatto. He started his career as a blackface comedian in America, but switched to a monologue format without props. Little official documentation of his personal history is available, but there are reports that he was mixed and sought to "pass". It was not uncommon at the time for African Americans to perform in blackface as a loophole into the entertainment business. In 1910, after recovering from a nervous breakdown, he went on tour in England, where for the first time he performed the song "There was once a poor young man who left his country home." The 1933 film The Fatal Glass of Beer is based on this song, and comedian W. C. Fields performs it at the onset. Critic Harold Bloom remarked several years later that Fields, "croaking his ghastly dirge to the uncertain sound of his dulcimer, is a parodic version of the Bard of Sensibility, a figure out of the primitivism of Thomas Gray or William Blake."

According to Sigmund Spaeth, in his 1926 book, Read 'Em and Weep: The Songs You Forgot to Remember, the interpreter of a Case song would sing in a "very matter of fact voice, with little or no expression, letting the words speak for themselves." Case is also sometimes credited with being one of the first to employ the stand up style when, in the 1880s and 90s, he began to do comedic monologues without props or costumes, something that had never been done before. In 1906, The Indianapolis Star wrote that, "He is of a quiet and retiring disposition when off the stage, and to see him on the street or at his hotel one would never take him for a comedian who makes thousands laugh every season." That year the Toledo Blade called him "one of the funniest monologue comedians in the business."

He died on November 26, 1916, at the Palace Hotel on 45th Street in New York. Another vaudevillian reported that Case shot himself and that his dying words were "Pardon me." The police were told that a bottle of oil and a cleaning cloth were on the floor, evidence that he had accidentally killed himself while cleaning his gun. However, Spaeth wrote that, "Case's untimely death was supposedly due to the accidental explosion of a gun that he was cleaning, but it is generally recognized in the theatrical profession that he shot himself. Mixed blood was the chief reason." He was known for a quiet, shy, and brooding nature. His wife Charlotte is said to have died from a heart attack upon hearing the news.