MILTON BERLE attended many funerals at Hillside Cemetery here in Los Angeles over the years for his brethren. This is “brethren” in two senses. Hillside is a Jewish cemetery and, in case you didn’t know or couldn’t guess, Berle was a Jew. Also, though, most of these funerals were for a subset of his other brothers, comics. They’re all there at Hillside: Benny, Burns, Cantor, Jolson, Jessel, Youngman, and so many others–dozens of the greatest entertainers of the greatest era in the greatest country, craftsmen who operated at a level of honed ability no society will ever see again.

And at all the funerals of these brightest of stars, Milton was always asked to speak, and he always accepted, and he always opened with the same bit. Let’s say it was Jack Benny’s funeral. Milton would get up at the podium in the chapel, look around solemnly, nod to the family, compose himself, and say, “I never liked Jack Benny.” Then, after the laughter settled, he would softly add, “I loved him.”