Acquisitions: Letters from Mamma

That guy there on the right is a direct line to Cougar Town: although he performed as the character Charley Weaver, musician and entertainer Cliff Arquette begat Lewis Arquette, father of David Arquette, who is married to TV and film star Courtney Cox-Arquette. Four degrees of separation from 1950s pun-laden humor to shows based on 21st century pop-culture slang terms, eh?

Charley Weaver's Letters from Mamma is a collection of jokes by Arquette, from his Tonight Show skits. They're unanimously groaners, both now and back then, but Jack Paar sure thought he was funny, and Weaver's audiences sure thought so, too. Arquette appeared as Weaver on the Tonight Show, and later on the Jack Paar Show, and towards the end of his life he was a regular on Hollywood Squares. This 1959 book was his first of two, and the one directly related to his Letter segments. I don't know that I'm going to read it — just flipping through, the jokes verge on terrible — so I'm guessing that they were better seen than read, and off to YouTube I go!