Spartan Profiles: Jackie Martling
THE JOKE MAN COMETH
His mere starring opposite Florence Henderson, TV’s Brady Bunch mom, might stump his fans. In an ironic pairing, the upcoming movie Venus and Vegas (2005) teams up America’s cleancut TV mom with America’s raunchiest comic. Indeed, Jackie “The Joke Man” Martling, ’71, lead writer for the Howard Stern radio show for 15 years, is a one-man industry of adult jokes. “We’re a hot item,” jokes Martling about himself and Henderson. “Wait till you see our hot dog scene.”
A native of Oyster Bay, Long Island, Jackie chose MSU for its 40,000 students. “I knew 20,000 of them were girls, so I sent in an application,” he recalls from his Manhattan home. “Honest, that precise calculation brought me to MSU.” Obviously a good math student, he majored in engineering and also played rhythm guitar for the Pillowcayse. “I often told jokes between songs, which made the guys nuts,” he recalls. “We were supposed to be musicians.”
After a brief stint with a New York band, he took his “songs and zillions of jokes” throughout the East, performing solo and actually helping to launch the 1980s comedy boom. In 1982, with three comedy LPs out, and a notable career as “The Jokeman”—he knew the punch-line of any joke you could throw at him—Jackie teamed up with Stern to produce arguably the most successful radio show ever. He has since performed from Las Vegas to Atlantic City along with stars like Tim Allen, Rodney Dangerfield, James Taylor, Willie Nelson and James Brown. He starred as himself in Private Parts (1997).
He is known in his industry simply as "the guy who knows them all . . ." Jackie sells all kinds of adult comedy gadgets, including the prized “I Stumped The Joke Man” T-shirt, in his website, www.jokeland.com. He has been in two dozen films and is planning a new joke CD. “Life has just been so, so great,” he says. “I've worked very hard, but I also realize I've been very lucky.” Not all of it was luck, though. He correctly divided 40,000 by two.