NBC Television · Public domain

A Canadian-born American comedian who invented a new kind of stand-up in the 1950s: instead of one-liners, he improvised topical monologues holding only a newspaper, turning current events and politics into live comedy for the first time. Steve Allen called him "the only real political philosopher we have in modern comedy," and he became, in 1960, the first comedian featured on the cover of Time. His style directly inspired the generation of comics who followed, including Lenny Bruce, George Carlin, and Woody Allen; John F. Kennedy once hired him to write campaign jokes, though Sahl later turned his satire on Kennedy himself.