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Won the first Grammy ever given for a spoken comedy recording in 1959, part of a run that brought him four gold records for stand-up albums built on the observational, one-sided phone-call routines he helped pioneer. Decades later, television audiences knew him differently — as Larry David's cranky father on Curb Your Enthusiasm, a role that brought him an Emmy nomination in 2008. Berman also spent more than twenty years teaching humor writing at the University of Southern California, turning his craft into a subject other comedians could study.