Biography
Ish Kabibble (January 19, 1908 – June 5, 1994) was a comedian and cornet player. Born Merwyn Bogue in North East, Pennsylvania, he returned to Erie, Pennsylvania with his family a few months after his birth.
He studied law at West Virginia University, but his comedy antics soon found an audience. He performed with Kay Kyser on the television quiz show Kay Kyser's Kollege of Musical Knowledge in 1949 and 1950. He also appeared in ten movies between 1939 and 1950. In Thousands Cheer (1943), he is the band member who tells Kyser the joke about his friend receiving $250,000 and he sings "I Dug a Ditch" in that film. He's also a vocalist in That's Right You're Wrong (1939), You'll Find Out (1940), and Playmates (1941).
In his 1989 autobiography Bogue explained his stage name, which he took from the lyrics of one of his comedic songs, "Isch ga-bibble."
The song derived from a mock-Yiddish expression, "Ische ga bibble?", which was purported to mean "I should worry?", prompting a curious (and perhaps not coincidental) association of the comedian with the "What, me worry?" motto of Mad's mascot, Alfred E. Neuman. While this derivation has been widely quoted on the Internet and elsewhere, the expression "ische ga bibble" is not Yiddish and contains no Yiddish words at all. However, there is a Yiddish expression, "nisht gefidlt," meaning "it doesn't matter to me," from which the term "ish kabibble" may derive.
Although Bogue's stage persona was that of a dimwitted person, he was a notable cornet player and was also business manager for the Kay Kyser Orchestra from 1931 to 1951. With the decline of the big bands, Bogue found a new career in real estate.
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