Did Donald Trump Steal His Act from Brother Theodore?

New Yorkers of a certain age will remember Brother Theodore, the acerbic, ofttimes brilliant, and always meandering monologist who performed his “stand-up tragedy” in local venues for decades.

His tales could wander, but Theodore Gottlieb (born in 1906, in Dusseldorf) had covered much ground in his life, having survived Dachau (he lost eight relatives in the Holocaust, including his parents) before going on to hustle chess (he once simultaneously defeated 30 Stanford professors), work as a janitor in San Francisco, and eventually bring his peripatetic tales to New York City, including, appropriately, many gigs at Café Bizarre, in the Village.

Brother Theodore would free-associate about the darker realms of humanity (his once describing seeing dogs eating people alive in Dachau gives a clue to his mordant humor) and early on read poems by Edgar Allen Poe as part of his act. He also provided the voice of the sad and conflicted Gollum in Rankin-Bass’s animated versions of The Hobbit (1977) and Return of the King (1980). This newspaper once called him “a rabble-rouser without a cause — unless his cause is to promote the power of negative thinking and the glorification of anguish and despair.’’

Ah, but perhaps that reviewer missed that the good Brother was simply ahead of his time, his classic downcast glare having just last week been resurrected by former president Donald Trump for his mugshot in Georgia. (Maybe the Queens native saw the sardonic monk’s bleak act in some downtown dive back in the day — utterly missing the satire yet never forgetting the glowering scowl.)

But Brother Theodore had the Donald’s number all along. Decades ago he spoke for all of us who have endured these last eight years: ”I’ve gazed into the abyss and the abyss gazed into me, and neither of us liked what we saw.” ❖