Jon Stewart

Jon Stewart

Birth name Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz

Born         November 28, 1962 (age 58)

New York City, U.S.

Medium

Stand-uptelevisionfilmbooks

Education Lawrence High School

Alma mater College of William & Mary

Years active 1987–present

Jon Stewart was born Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz on November 28, 1962, in New York City, to Marian (née Laskin), a teacher and later educational consultant, and Donald Leibowitz, an energy coordinator for the New Jersey Department of the Treasury. Stewart's family members are Jewish immigrants to America from Poland, Ukraine, and Belarus. One of his grandfathers was born in Manzhouli (now part of Inner Mongolia).[9] He is the second of four sons, with older brother Lawrence and younger brothers Dan and Matthew

Stewart's parents divorced when he was eleven years old, and Stewart was largely estranged from his father.[5] Because of his strained relationship with his father, which in 2015 he described as "still 'complicated'", he dropped his surname and began using his middle name, Stuart. Stewart stated, "There was a thought of using my mother's maiden name, but I thought that would be just too big a fuck you to my dad... Did I have some problems with my father? Yes. Yet people always view [changing my surname] through the prism of ethnic identity."[11] He had his surname changed legally to Stewart in 2001.[11][12] Stewart and his brother Lawrence, who was previously the Chief Operating Officer of NYSE Euronext (parent company of the New York Stock Exchange),[10][13] grew up in Lawrenceville, New Jersey, where they attended Lawrence High School.[5] According to Stewart, he was subjected to anti-Semitic bullying as a child.[14] He describes himself in high school as "very into Eugene Debs and a bit of a leftist."[15]

Stewart grew up in the era of the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal, which inspired in him "a healthy skepticism towards official reports". His first job was working with his brother at a Woolworth's store, and jokingly says being fired by Lawrence was one of the "scarring events" of his youth.[11]

Stewart graduated in 1984 from The College of William & Mary in Virginia, where he played on the soccer team and initially majored in chemistry before switching to psychology.[5][16] While at William & Mary, Stewart became a member of the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity,[17] but later disassociated himself from the fraternity and left after six months.[18] "My college career was waking up late, memorizing someone else's notes, doing bong hits, and going to soccer practice", he later said.[19] His soccer coach would later describe him as a "good player" with "high energy".[20] After college, Stewart held numerous jobs: a contingency planner for the New Jersey Department of Human Services, a contract administrator for the City University of New York, a puppeteer for children with disabilities, a soccer coach at Gloucester High School in Virginia, a caterer, a busboy, a shelf stocker at Woolworth's, a bartender at the Franklin Corner Tavern (a local blue-collar bar), and a bartender at the legendary City Gardens in Trenton, New Jersey.[5][21][22] He has said that working at City Gardens was a pivotal moment for him: "finding this place City Gardens was like, 'Oh, maybe I'm not a giant weirdo. Maybe there are other people who have a similar sense of yearning for something other than what they have now.' I think it inspired a lot of people, man. It was a very creative environment. It was a place of great possibility."[23]

Career

Early work

With a reputation for being a funny man in school,[5][21] Jon Stewart returned to New York City in 1986 to try his hand at the comedy club circuit, but he could not muster the courage to get on stage until the following year.[24] He made his stand-up debut at The Bitter End, where his comedic idol, Woody Allen, also began.[25] He began using the stage name "Jon Stewart" by dropping his last name and changing the spelling of his middle name "Stuart" to "Stewart". He often jokes this is because people had difficulty with the pronunciation of Leibowitz or it "sounded too Hollywood" (a reference to Lenny Bruce's joke on the same theme).[26] He has implied that the name change was due to a strained relationship with his father, with whom Stewart no longer had any contact.[22]

Stewart became a regular at the Comedy Cellar, where he was the last performer every night. For two years, he would perform at 2 a.m. while developing his comedic style.[27] In 1989, Stewart landed his first television job as a writer for Caroline's Comedy Hour. In 1990, he began co-hosting Comedy Central's Short Attention Span Theater, with Patty Rosborough.[28] In 1992, Stewart hosted the short-lived You Wrote It, You Watch It on MTV, which invited viewers to send in their stories to be acted out by the comedy troupe, The State.[29]

Stewart relates that his career did not take off until his March 6, 1992, appearance on NBC's Late Night with David Letterman.[19][30] He was considered a finalist to take over Letterman's position upon his departure from the program, but instead, it was given to relatively unknown Conan O'Brien.[26]

The Jon Stewart Show

Later in 1993, Stewart developed The Jon Stewart Show, a talk show on MTV, which was later dropped by the network and was syndicated for its last two years. The Jon Stewart Show was the first talk show on that network and was an instant hit, becoming the second-highest rated MTV show, behind Beavis and Butt-Head.[31] In 1994, Paramount canceled The Arsenio Hall Show and, with new corporate sibling MTV (through MTV parent Viacom's acquisition of the studio), launched an hour-long syndicated late-night version of The Jon Stewart Show. Many local affiliates had moved Hall's show to 2 a.m. during its decline and Stewart's show inherited such early morning time slots in many cities. Ratings were dismal and the show was canceled in June 1995.[32]

Among the fans of the show was David Letterman, who was the final guest of The Jon Stewart Show. Letterman signed Stewart with his production company, Worldwide Pants.[33] Stewart then became a frequent guest host for Tom Snyder on The Late Late Show with Tom Snyder, which was produced by Letterman and aired after the Late Show on CBS. This led to much speculation that Stewart would soon replace Snyder permanently,[34] but instead, Stewart was offered the time slot after Snyder's, which he turned down.[35]

In 1996 Stewart hosted a short-lived talk show entitled, Where's Elvis This Week?, that was a half-hour, weekly comedy television program. It aired on Sunday nights in the United Kingdom on BBC Two. It was filmed at the CBS Broadcast Center in New York City and featured a set of panelists, two from the UK and two from the United States, who discussed news items and cultural issues. The show premiered in the UK on October 6, 1996; five episodes aired in total. Notable panelists included Dave Chappelle, Eddie Izzard, Phill Jupitus, Nora Ephron, Craig Kilborn, Christopher Hitchens, Armando Iannucci, Norm Macdonald, and Helen Gurley Brown. In 1997, Stewart was chosen as the host and interviewer for George Carlin's tenth HBO special, 40 Years of Comedy