SHELLEY BERMAN moments of embarrassment

The late great Shelley Berman mellowed from those darkly comic phone calls that mirrored the "Age of Anxiety" in the late 50's and early 60's. Instead of being in a room with no windows or door, or the "morning after" a cat-throwing drunk scene at a party, in his 70's and 80's TV appearances he often enumerated life's little moments of agony. The Mount Rushmore of Comedy, the game-changers of that era, were Lenny Bruce, Mort Sahl, Jonathan Winters and Shelley Berman.