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“and twice as funny as most. Because there are two of them.” Their style was described as “not sick but definitely ailing humor”; their minds were “more unbuttoned than buttoned-down.” Jack Burns, the copy helpfully noted, “is not George Burns, although this wouldn’t be such a bad idea for an aspiring young comic.” In his formative years, Carlin “learned how to play one-old-cat, teased girls, [and] survived a case of adolescent pimples” before joining the Air Force. In a canny bit of foreshadowing, the team’s brief career at KDAY was noted primarily for the disc jockeys’ good fortune at having “escaped the attention of the Federal Communications Commission long enough to jolly up goodly portions of early-rising Los Angeles, including Murray Becker,” who “concluded that they had a much bigger potential than competing with time signals, freeway reports, and stomach tranquilizers.”

Becker, who had served in the U.S. Navy with Lenny Bruce, invited the comedian and his wife, Honey, to Cosmo Alley to see the act that featured a guy doing a spot-on impression of Bruce himself. Becker was also acquainted with Sahl’s manager, Milt Ebbins, a Rat Pack insider with connections to the Kennedy clan, and he put in calls to get Sahl into the room as well. Both avant-gardists soon made the scene. Sahl was stunned to see that this newcomer, Carlin, had perfected an impression of him, nailing the Canadian-born humorist’s clipped, articulate delivery, his sudden expulsions of laughter, and his habit of segueing to a new idea by saying “Right. Onward.”

“He had a great ear,” says Sahl. “He had the cadence down. Like any good impression, it was revealing. I’m not that conscious of what I’m doing—I was busy doing it. He got it down because he listened to the records.” After catching the act, the established comic pronounced his protégés “a duo of hip wits.”

Though legend has it that Bruce was equally impressed, Sahl is somewhat skeptical. “Lenny was terribly competitive,” he recalls. “He said repeatedly to me, ‘The teacher’s grading on a curve. If there’s one A, I want it. I don’t want to share it with the others.’ I told him the country is starving for laughter and there’s room for plenty of As.” By most accounts, however, Bruce was even more effusive in his praise for Burns and Carlin than his counterpart was. His presence at Cosmo Alley was not lost on his young admirers. “We didn’t know the legendary quality of this encounter at the time,” said Carlin, “but we knew how important he was to us and what he represented. . . . I heard Interviews of Our Time, and I was changed forever.”

The “sickest” comic contacted agent Jack Sobel, who was with General Artists Corporation (GAC), then a chief rival of the William Morris Agency in the world of entertainment bookings. Get these boys signed, Bruce recommended. Sobel responded immediately, sending a telegram to GAC’s West Coast office: “Based on Lenny Bruce’s rave reaction, hereby authorize the West Coast office to sign Burns and Carlin to exclusive representation contract in all fields.”

After just a few months in Hollywood, mere weeks into their showcase at Cosmo Alley, Burns and Carlin had a manager, a performance recording in the can, the imprimatur of the two most highly regarded progressive comedians of the day, and an agency. GAC, which had grown out of the big-band-oriented Rockwell-O’Keefe booking agency, primarily handled pop singers by the early 1960s: Connie Francis, Tony Bennett, Perry Como, Frankie Avalon. Despite an aversion to the newfangled rock ’n’ roll, the agency would soon beat out even more skeptical agents at William Morris to sign a British outfit called the Beatles to their first American performing deal.

When GAC arranged for Burns and Carlin, its newest clients, to open for the cabaret singer Bobby Short in Chicago, the duo eagerly hit the road in the Dodge. In Oklahoma they drove through a driving summer rainstorm. When it passed, the two comics saw a double rainbow over the horizon. “We felt that was an omen,” Carlin said.

After the engagement at a jazz room called