Category: Morty Gunty

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After starting his stint as a TV kid’s show host in New York, Morty Gunty got his big break. The one that every entertainer once dreamed of getting. The Ed Sullivan Show!

Morty seemed a little nervous at the start, and he probably should have cut his notorious mother-in-law chair joke to have extra time to slow down his delivery, but nothing Morty Gunty did or didn’t do that night mattered, because in the entire history of show business the circumstances couldn’t possibly have been worse. As you will see, Morty was the lead-in to an act that nobody would ever want to appear before, or after.

And then I went and got Morty fired from his day job.

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Morty Gunty was a New York Jewish comedian in the grand, old tradition. Like so many others, he learned his craft by working the clubs in the Catskills.

Morty Gunty was in the original TV pilot for what later became “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” playing a nebbish. The part was reworked into Morey Amsterdam’s character. It was called “Head of the Family,” and the video has a little bit of it with Carl Reiner in the role that he would give to Van Dyke.

Morty Gunty. A name that shall haunt me forever. Why? I’ll get to that later, but first take note of the passage I’ve highlighted below in his obituary from The New York Times.

Published: July 17, 1984

Morty Gunty, the Brooklyn-born nightclub comic who played himself in the recent Woody Allen film, ”Broadway Danny Rose,” died of cancer yesterday in the Interfaith Medical Center in Brooklyn. He was 55 years old and lived in New City.

Mr. Gunty made his Broadway debut in 1967 in ”Love in E Flat.” He had his own local television show for children, ”The Funny Company,” and appeared in numerous benefits.

He is survived by his wife, Marilyn; two daughters, Sheryl Seiferas of Fort Lee, N.J., and Lori Gunty; a brother, Elliott Gunty of Spring Valley, and his parents, Belle and Abraham Gunty of Lauderhill, Fla.

Funeral services are scheduled for 11:30 A.M. today at the Riverside Memorial Chapel, Amsterdam Avenue and 76th Street, in Manhattan.