For my birthday recently, my wife Pam and our son Brian, accompanied me on a tour of the National Comedy Center in Jamestown, NY. This small city is a two-and-a-half-hour drive from our home in Stow, OH, a suburb of Akron.
The NCC is in downtown Jamestown and is a couple blocks from the companion Lucy Desi Museum dedicated to Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz who had one of TV’s earliest and most successful situation comedies. Lucille Ball was born and grew up in Jamestown and her gravesite in Lakeview Cemetery attracts many visitors each year.
We spent about three hours at the NCC and could have spent more, but my aching back and feet said that was enough. One of the outstanding aspects was its multiple high-tech displays that allow you to access the work of hundreds of comedians and comic actors.
When you enter the museum, you create a personalized comic profile at a large touch-screen monitor. You are given a wrist band to touch and “log-in” and then you are asked to select your favorite stand-up comics, comic actors, favorite TV comedies and favorite comedy movies.
Throughout the museum, you tap your wristband to the different displays, and you receive videos and information about the comics in your profile. But our first stop was at the George and Jolene Brand Schlatter Theater where we saw an impressive tribute to Johnny Carson the Tonight Show hosted by a hologram of Jimmy Fallon.
Because of time constraints, we decided to skip the tribute to Laugh In that was created by Schlatter. We did see numerous clips from that show throughout the museum and that theater presentation will definitely be part of our next visit.
There are dozens of interactive exhibits, but two of my favorites were the prop tables and the exhibit about talk show hosts where you could see clips of their best comedy skits, monologues and funny interviews. I watched clips from Johnny Carson, Dave Letterman, Conan O’Brien, Jimmy Kimmel and even Steve Allen. There was an awesome clip where Allen was hoisted 75 feet in the air to host the Tonight Show from a perch attached to a flagpole!
The prop table allowed you to select a prop from a shelf and move it around on a large interactive table. I picked up a cast iron skillet prop and used it to see where it was used as a prop in a Three Stooges movie and several cartoons including Road Runner and Bugs Bunny.
There were several displays about writing comedy including one where you could display a portion of a script and then see the actual script on screen. I selected scenes from Cheers, M*A*S*H and others. There also was an interesting segment about that scene from the movie “When Harry Met Sally” that takes place in a deli restaurant.
In a promo video for the NCC, one visitor observed it’s, “…not a hall of dead guys,” and it certainly isn’t as it pays tribute both present and past comic actors and comedians.
Toward the end of the tour, there is a stage with a prompter and microphone where you can do Comedy Karaoke. I picked two bits: a Jim Gaffigan bit about Hot Pockets and another called Dad Jokes by Fozzy Bear of the Muppets. It’s a good thing Statler and Waldorf weren’t there to see that one!
We still had a lot to see, but it was getting close to closing time, and we hadn’t seen even half of the exhibits. The final exhibit was a series of interactive screens where you tapped your wrist band and received information about your comedy profile. Unfortunately, we didn’t have enough time to finish that.
The next day, the NCC sent me an email with my comedy profile. It said I like Satirical/Topical humor, Observational humor about the ridiculousness of “normal” things and Absurd illogical or other worldly humor.
It was a great day full of laughs and happy memories.
