‘The Dick Van Dyke Show’s Morey Amsterdam Moonlighted As Presidential Joke Writer

Before Morey Amsterdam found national fame on The Dick Van Dyke Show as Buddy Sorrell, the show-within-a-show gag writer for The Alan Brady Show, he was known to comedy insiders as the Human Joke Machine. 

Amsterdam earned the nickname during his days hosting a daily, four-hour radio show called the Gloom Dodgers. “Morey was on for four hours — everything off the top of his head,” explained comic Bobby Ramsen in The Comedians: Drunks, Thieves, Scoundrels and the History of American Comedy. “Morey would ask the audience for subjects, and he would tell a joke on any: carpenters, maids, landlords — he had a joke for every one of them.”

That ability to instantly supply a punchline got him a job writing jokes for no fewer than four Presidents, he told the Tampa Bay Times in 1983, via MeTV. “FDR. Not Truman — I met him once, though. LBJ. John F. Kennedy. Ronnie Reagan,” Amsterdam recalled. 

Amsterdam must have been a member of the Punchline Party, as he crossed the aisle to write for politicians from both the Democratic (Kennedy) and Republican (Reagan) parties. He even scribbled down gags while filming The Dick Van Dyke Show. 

While rehearsing one episode, a crew member approached Amsterdam and asked him to take an important call. President Lyndon B. Johnson’s secretary was on the line, who patched him through to the Oval Office and LBJ himself. Johnson had just seen Amsterdam give a killer acceptance speech on an awards show and needed some of that Buddy Sorrell magic. The president sent over a draft of his own terrible speech to the Dick Van Dyke Show set.

"I punched it up for him," Amsterdam boasted.

Reagan was someone Amsterdam knew from the former thespian’s Hollywood days. Amsterdam was happy to help the “terrific actor” with a few choice one-liners for his State of the Unions. 

As for Kennedy? Amsterdam and the young senator became unlikely friends when the comic visited a Massachusetts golf course. Kennedy arrived for a round, took one look at Amsterdam and said, “What are you doing here? I saw you get killed in a movie last night.” The comedian needed one more guy to complete his foursome, so he invited Kennedy in, according to a 1972 interview with Skip E. Lowe.  

The two became such good pals that Kennedy, dissatisfied with his performance on news reels, asked Amsterdam for speaking advice. The comedian gave it to the politician straight: “It takes you 20 minutes to come up with an answer.” 

Amsterdam taught Kennedy some techniques from his Human Joke Machine bit, where he delivered a joke as soon as someone threw out a suggestion. With some generic responses in his pocket to get him started — “That’s at the top of my agenda,” or “I’ve got men on committees working on a solution” — Kennedy sounded more decisive and knowledgeable. 

The positive results were inarguable. “Did you happen to see his debate with Nixon?” Amsterdam asked Lowe. “He was marvelous.”

Two days after the historic TV debate, Amsterdam got a personal note that he later donated to the Kennedy Museum. The handwritten memo only contained a few words: “How do you like your pupil? Love, Jack.”