Recognition
He was on the cover of Time magazine in 1960.
Mort is listed #40 on Comedy Central's list of the 100 greatest standup comedians of all time.
Sahl, who is Jewish, received the Fifth Annual Alan King Award in American Jewish Humor (2003) from the National Foundation for Jewish Culture.
In April 2011, The Library of Congress named "At Sunset" to the National Recording Registry. Although an unauthorized release, "At Sunset" retains the distinction of being the first recording of modern stand-up comedy. From the Library of Congress press release: "Sahl’s comedy is typified by a conversational style, thoroughly grounded in up-to-the-minute topics and events, and is replete with satiric asides and smart, subtle punch lines... His approach to comedy became a staple on television and at comedy clubs for decades."
Woody Allen has said, "I adored Mort Sahl," and added he would not have become a comedian himself if not for Sahl's example, which proved a comedian could succeed with off-hand intellectual material. He compared Sahl's influence on comedy to the effect Charlie Parker had on jazz. "I still find Mort Sahl funny," Allen said in 2008. "I was with him the other day, in California, and he’s 81 and he’s teaching at Claremont College. And he said they have a course out there that they offered him to teach, on the Holocaust, and he didn’t take it. He said, 'I wanted to see first how history judges the event.'" Allen introduced Sahl's 2002 standup appearance at Joe's Pub in New York City and attended a similar show several years later at "B.B. King's" in Manhattan's Times Square.
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