Jackie Mason, the former rabbi from a family of rabbis whose Borscht Belt style and issue-oriented comedy made him a popular and at times controversial performer, has died. He was 93.
Mason died Saturday at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan, his longtime friend, lawyer Raoul Felder, told The Hollywood Reporter. Mason had trouble breathing and passed away in his sleep, he said.
Mason’s first of his many one-man shows, The World According to Me!, was a hit on Broadway in the late 1980s — selling every seat at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre for more than a year — and he was given a special Tony Award for his efforts. He also received an Emmy and a Grammy nomination after the show was adapted as Jackie Mason on Broadway.
On the big screen, Mason starred in the disappointing Caddyshack II (1988) after Rodney Dangerfield decided not to do the sequel and appeared in Steve Martin’s The Jerk (1979) and Mel Brooks’ History of the World: Part I(1981).
Earlier, Mason produced and starred as a New Jersey snitch who steals money from the cops and hightails it to Miami in The Stoolie (1971), firing young director John G. Avildsen during production.
He also provided the voice of Rabbi Hyman Krustofsky on eight episodes of The Simpsons, the first time in 1991 and the last in 2016 (he won his second career Emmy for one such turn in 1992).
More recently, Mason did a series of video commentaries for Breitbart News in which he regularly roasted Hollywood.