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Writer's pictureDan Spencer

The Peculiar Truth about the Comedian Panhandler


  • From the late 1990s to 2016, daily automobile commuters who emerged from the Queens tunnel into midtown Manhattan would often see an old man on the corner at East 35th Street.

  • The tiny, frail, white-haired fellow - usually in a white baseball cap bearing a slur against big government - would beg for spare change.

  • Each afternoon, he collected money from strangers who had no idea who the old man was.

  • They didn’t know that in 2014 he turned 100 years old and still kept begging for spare change.

  • Or that he lived nearby in a multi-million-dollar Manhattan home.

  • Or that he never kept the money for himself but gave it to his favorite charity, the plight of children in Cuba.

  • But the man’s neighbors knew all about him and his life as a famous comedian.

  • They knew him as Professor Irwin Corey.

  • He was born Irwin Cohen in Brooklyn, NY in 1914. When his father abandoned the family, Irwin’s mother sent him to an orphanage where he lived until he was a teenager. While there, he told jokes to cheer the other kids.

  • Young Irwin then rode the rails as a hobo across the US to Los Angeles and received a high school diploma.

  • In adulthood during the Great Depression, he had varied careers, including as a featherweight boxer.

  • During WWII, he received a discharge after convincing the military brass that he was homosexual (which he was not).

  • After the war in the late 40s, he developed a stage character that would launch him to fame - Professor Irwin Corey, the World’s Foremost Authority.

  • He always wore a baggy black suit, rumpled white shirt, string tie, and sneakers. His hair was a disheveled mess ala Einstein.

  • The scatterbrained “professor” claimed expertise on any and every topic, and always began his monologues with the word “However…”

  • Corey would ramble on and on in improvisational style. But he never made any sense. That was the gag - a so-called expert who was really just a long-winded lunatic.

  • By the 1950s, the Professor was a regular performer at Enrico Banducci’s Hungy I nightclub in San Francisco. His contemporaries were Mort Sahl, Jonathan Winters, Woody Allen, and Joan Rivers.

  • Corey acted in television shows during the 50s and, beginning in 1969, he appeared in over a dozen films, mostly as himself or some variation of his character.

  • He was also a recurring guest on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson and appeared once on David Letterman’s NBC show.

  • Corey claimed that biases against his far left-wing politics short-circuited his showbiz success.

  • He was an avowed socialist, and he even traveled to Cuba to personally donate to children’s charities. A framed photo of Corey meeting Fidel Castro hung in a prominent place in his home for decades.

  • Although he still occasionally performed live in his very old age, he spent most afternoons in Manhattan begging for change.

  • His wife, to whom he was married for 70 years, passed away in 2011. Even after that, he kept standing on the street corner for handouts.

  • In 2017, Professor Irwin Corey died quietly at his home. He lived to age 102.

Professor Irwin Corey's Classic Quotes:

  • Without this great land of ours, we would all drown.

  • If we don't change direction soon, we'll end up where we're going.

  • Marriage is like a bank account. You put it in, you take it out, you lose interest.


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