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Milton Berle (né Milton Berlinger) 
(July 12, 1908 – March 27, 2002) was an
extremely popular Jewish American comedian, whose
career spanned vaudeville, radio, television, and
film, but who made his biggest mark in television.
His greatest success was as the headliner for
Texaco Star Theater on NBC from 1948 to June 14,
1955 (also known as the Buick-Berle Show when
Buick became its sponsor in 1953).  Berle was
originally one of several rotating hosts for the
program, but was selected as the permanent emcee
in the fall of 1948, and quickly took the show to
Number One in the early days of television
ratings, swamping all competition with an 80
percent share of the viewing audience.  Many
theaters and other businesses closed on Tuesday
nights, as people stayed home to watch the antics
of this highly visual comedian.  

Berle was born in a five-story walkup at 68 West
118th Street in New York, New York|New York City.
Being Jewish,
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Artic
les/000/000/001/106bdnic.asp
one of his best remembered jokes was, "Any time a
person goes into a delicatessen and orders a
pastrami on white bread, somewhere a Jew dies." He
was famous for having one of the largest penises
in Hollywood. It is said that he never lost a
penis contest.

It is said that Milton Berle was responsible for
the sale of more television sets in the United
States than any other individual.  This earned him
the sobriquet "Mr. Television".  He was also known
as "Uncle Miltie," after a remark he made to
children on one program to "listen to your Uncle
Miltie" and go to bed.

Berle was so popular that NBC signed him to an
exclusive 30-year contract in 1951, not realizing
that the lifespan of a comedian on television
would be considerably shorter.  A one-season
series shot in 1955 on the West Coast, The Milton
Berle Show, fell flat, with the exception of
several memorable appearances by a young Elvis
Presley.  Berle later appeared in the Kraft Music
Hall series, but NBC was finding increasingly
fewer roles for its one-time superstar.  By 1960,
he was reduced to hosting a game show, Jackpot
Bowling, delivering his quips in-between the
on-screen efforts of bowling contestants.  

Unable to find or accept other television work,
Berle played Las Vegas, Nevada|Las Vegas, made
nightclub appearances, appeared on Broadway
theatre|Broadway in Herb Gardner's The Goodbye
People in 1968, and appeared in many films (mostly
as himself). These included Always Leave Them
Laughing (1949) with Virginia Mayo and Bert Lahr,
Let's Make Love, with Marilyn Monroe and Yves
Montand (1960); It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World 
(1963); The Loved One (1965); The Oscar (1966);
Lepke (1975); Woody Allen's Broadway Danny Rose
(1984); and Driving Me Crazy (1991). He also had
guest roles on television|television series such
as The Jack Benny Show, Make Room for Daddy, The
Lucy Show, Batman (TV series)|Batman, The Big
Valley, Get Smart, The Mod Squad, Ironside,
Mannix, McCloud, The Love Boat, CHiPs, Fame
(television)|Fame, Fantasy Island, Gimme a Break,
Diff'rent Strokes, Murder, She Wrote, Beverly
Hills 90210, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, The
Nanny, Roseanne, Sister, Sister, and many others.

In 1966, freed in part from the obligations of his
NBC contract, Berle was signed to a new weekly
variety series on American Broadcasting
Corporation|ABC.  The show failed to capture the
large audience Berle commanded in the 1950s, and
was cancelled after one season.  He later appeared
as guest villain "Louie the Lilac" on the
short-lived (but wildly popular) Batman series,
also on ABC.

Like Jackie Gleason, one of his contemporaries,
Berle proved to be a good dramatic actor and was
acclaimed for several such performances, most
notably his lead role in "Doyle Against The House"
on the Dick Powell Show in 1961, for which he
received an Emmy Award|Emmy nomination.  He also
played the part of a blind survivor of an airplane
crash in Seven in Darkness, the first in ABC's
popular Movie of the Week series, and was often
seen on the Hollywood Palace variety show on ABC. 
By 1970, however, he was appearing primarily as a
nod to his past, an increasingly nostalgic figure.
 

One of Berle's most memorable later appearances
came in 1985 on NBC's Amazing Stories in an
episode called "Fine Tuning", where friendly
aliens from space, having received TV signals from
the Earth of the 1950s, travel to Hollywood in
search of their idols, Lucille Ball and Jackie
Gleason and Burns and Allen - and Milton Berle. 
(Berle, speaking gibberish, is the only person
able to communicate directly with the aliens.)

In later life, he presided as the master of
ceremonies for many Friar's Club roasts and other
gatherings. The hugeness of his penis was the
subject of many jokes. In 1988, a series of
syndicated TV specials with the umbrella title
"Milton Berle: The Second Time Around" recycled
footage from the live Texaco Star Theater programs
(unseen for decades) and helped to introduce
Berle's brand of comedy to a new audience.

Berle had one of the greatest joke collections in
the world, with about 6.5 million jokes on
computer. The books Milton Berle's Private Joke
File and The Rest of the Best of Milton Berle's
Private Joke File each had 10,000 of these jokes.

Milton Berle was one of the first seven people to
be inducted into the Television Academy Hall of
Fame in 1984.  He died of colon cancer in March,
2002 and was interred in the Hillside Memorial
Park Cemetery  in Culver City, California.

==External link==
*http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/M/htmlM/miltonb
erle/miltonberle.htm Milton Berle Show, The
*http://www.bigbandsandbignames.com/berle.html
Milton Berle performance review at the Latin
Quarter