Frank Jacobs is an American author of satires, known primarily for his work in Mad, to which he has contributed since 1957. Jacobs has written a wide variety of lampoons and spoof, but he is best known as a versifier who contributes parodies of famous song lyrics and poems. In 2009, Jacobs told a Burbank newspaper, "I’m the least-known writer of hysterical light verse in the United States."
Jacobs appeared in the sixth chapter of PBS' comedy documentary, Make 'em Laugh: The Funny Business of America singing "Blue Cross," his own 1961 parody of Irving Berlin's "Blue Skies". That lyric was one of 25 which comprised Irving Berlin et al. v. E.C. Publications, Inc., a precedent-setting case that was appealed to the Supreme Court and helped to define the boundaries of parody in American law.
Read more about Frank Jacobs: Mad Contributions, Books and Writings
Famous quotes containing the words frank and/or jacobs:
“Lizzie Borden took an axe
And gave her mother forty whacks;
When she saw what she had done,
She gave her father forty-one.”
—Anonymous. Late 19th century ballad.
The quatrain refers to the famous case of Lizzie Borden, tried for the murder of her father and stepmother on Aug. 4, 1892, in Fall River, Massachusetts. Though she was found innocent, there were many who contested the verdict, occasioning a prodigious output of articles and books, including, most recently, Frank Spiering’s Lizzie (1985)
“To approach a city ... as if it were [an] ... architectural problem ... is to make the mistake of attempting to substitute art for life.... The results ... are neither life nor art. They are taxidermy.”
—Jane Jacobs (b. 1916)