Mort Sahl: Cool stand-up comedy at the Black Hawk (1958)

For a brief moment in 1958, comedian Mort Sahl hosted a pilot for a local San Francisco TV jazz show called Jam Session. He wasn't the show's planned host but he agreed to sit in. The group featured live at the Black Hawk was the Dave Brubeck Quartet. For licensing inquiries please contact Historic Films Archive (historicfilms.com / [email protected]) The Black Hawk was a San Francisco nightclub that featured live jazz performances during its period of operation from 1949 to 1963. It was located on the corner of Turk Street and Hyde Street in San Francisco's Tenderloin District. Guido Cacianti owned the club along with Johnny and Helen Noga. Morton Lyon Sahl (May 11, 1927 – October 26, 2021) was a Canadian-born American comedian, actor, and social satirist. He pioneered a style of social satire that pokes fun at political and current event topics by means of improvised monologues, using only a newspaper as a prop. Sahl spent his early years in Los Angeles and then moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, where he made his professional stage debut at the hungry i nightclub in 1953. His popularity grew quickly, and after a year at the club, he traveled the country doing shows at established nightclubs, theaters, and college campuses. In 1960 he became the first comedian to be featured in a Time cover story. He appeared on various television shows, played a number of film roles, and performed a one-man show on Broadway. After a year at the hungry i, Sahl began appearing at other clubs, including the Black Orchid and Mister Kelly's in Chicago, the Crescendo in Los Angeles, and the Village Vanguard and The Blue Angel nightclub in New York City. Some of the clubs had never had a stand-up comedian; Sahl had to break in as a new kind of act. "I had to build up my own network of places to play," he said.