Joe Talbot, 87, comedian and pantomimist

ANYBODY CAN MAKE funny faces, but to do it and get paid for it is an art.

It was an art mastered by Joe Talbot, who made audiences laugh with his comic antics at some of the best-known venues in the Philadelphia area and South Jersey for four decades.

And after a stroke interrupted his professional career, Joe continued to perform for smaller audiences, at retirement homes and parties. The seniors loved him.

He didn't want to quit; getting laughs was the tonic that made Joe's life worth living. But ultimately, in the '90s, he had to. He was left thumbing his scrapbooks in his Northeast home, the long-ago laughter still echoing in his mind.

He died Sept. 10 at age 87.

Joe Talbot was born Samuel Joseph Trachtenberg in Philadelphia to Reba and Harry Trachtenberg. He attended Bok Vocational High School but didn't graduate. He later changed his name legally.

Joe's specialty was pantomime, although he started out as a singer. In fact, he and Eddie Fisher sang together in a trio in junior high school. Joe was billed as "Minnie the Moocher."

But when Joe decided to turn pro, singing gigs were hard to come by. He once told an interviewer that a neighbor woman who was a professional tap dancer advised him to try pantomime, that pantomime performers, lip-synching songs to records, could make good money.

He recalled asking the neighbor, "Do you mean a fellow gets paid for going through the motions?"

She assured him that was true, so he worked up an act and took it to some theatrical agents. They liked it and he started to get gigs as a pantomimist.

Along with the pantomime, Joe told jokes. In 1989, he told the Daily News' Dan Geringer, "At one time, I probably had the largest repertoire of off-color jokes in the world."

When he started playing senior-citizen venues, Joe had to temper the salacious material.

Geringer described Joe's act for a senior-citizen audience at the JCC Klein Branch on Jamison Avenue and Red Lion Road in the Far Northeast:

"He straps on mammoth falsies, pulls a tight red sweater over them and pantomimes a recording of 'C'est si bon,' adjusting the frontal appendages frequently and extravagantly.

"After the applause dies down, he bares his chest, puts on a shower cap, scrubs himself under the arms with a toilet brush, and pantomimes four opera singers performing Mozart's 'Figaro.' "

Well, you had to be there.

"I hate being semiretired," he told Geringer. "It's like being half-dead."

Joe was in the Army after World War II, stationed in the occupation of Japan. Afterward, he performed for troops in Japan and Europe with the USO.

Back in Philadelphia after his discharge, he graduated from the Granoff School of Music.

Over the years, Joe performed with some of the best-known names in show business. His son Robert Talbot remembers when Mickey Shaughnessy, the Philadelphia comic and actor, was a guest in their home.

He also performed with Gypsy Rose Lee, Redd Foxx, Lenny Bruce and others. He performed at the old Palumbo's restaurant in South Philadelphia, Orsatti's and the legendary 500 Club in Atlantic City, and many others, all names from the past.

One of his most popular acts was pantomiming Spike Jones' "My Old Flame." The first part seems to be a serious rendition, then Spike Jones takes off in his wild and crazy way, with Joe keeping pace through it all. He had the easy part.

For a theatrical agent, he once did Peter Lorre singing. "I mussed my hair, put on a crazy hat, and made a crazy face," he told an interviewer. "The agent was quite impressed."

An aneurysm in the early '80s forced Joe to retire from show business. "They had to take the top of my head off to save me," he told Geringer. "Eight hours later, I had a brain hemorrhage. And I survived that, too. The doctors can't believe I'm still here."

"He played to smaller venues, but never missed a beat or a punch line," his daughter Jacqueline said. "His love of comedy and making people laugh was stronger than his stroke."

Besides his son and daughter, Joe is survived by two other sons, David and Kenneth; two brothers, Martin and Jerry; a sister, Fay, and five grandchildren. He was predeceased by another daughter, Rebecca.

Services: The family plans to gather for a remembrance at a future date.