Elayne Boosler, stand-up comedy's "first female star," hasn't gotten her due

The New York Times

The 66-year-old standup comic is releasing a new box set of her old TV specials. A regular on David Letterman's Late Night and on HBO and Showtime specials in the 1980s and early 1990s, Boosler was unlike Joan Rivers and Phyllis Diller, says comedy critic Jason Zinoman. "Her act — hard-hitting, topical and dense with punch lines — anticipated the future of comedy better than most if not all of her peers," he says. But, Zinoman adds, Boosler "never got her big break in the form of her own network sitcom or talk show and had very limited success getting booked on the Tonight Show, where Johnny Carson preferred female comics who were not aggressive. When Larry King asked Ms. Boosler on CNN, 'Why is comedy considered not for women?,' the question answered itself. Ms. Boosler’s career clearly suffered from systemic sexism, the impossible bind that demanded women command the stage without being too, well, commanding. You see this perhaps most clearly in her positive reviews, which maintained that she was not abrasive or feminist, as if that would scare away audiences. (She actually could be both, but that was part of her charismatic power.)"