Al Kelly was the stage name of Abraham Kalish (18 Dec 1896 – 7 Sep 1966), a vaudeville

Vaudeville

Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...

 comedian who was known for his double-talk

Double-talk

Double-talk is a form of speech in which inappropriate, invented or nonsense words are used to give the appearance of erudition and so confuse or amuse the audience. Comedians who used this as part of their act included Al Kelly, Cliff Nazarro, Danny Kaye, Irwin Corey, Jackie Gleason and Stanley...

 and went on to stooge

Stooge

A stooge is a person who is under the control of another. Being called a stooge is an insult. Stooge can also sometimes be used to mean "idiot".* Stooge , a member of a comedy double act who feeds lines to the other comedian...

 for other comedians such as Willie Howard

Willie Howard

Willie L. Howard is a former American football defensive end in the National Football League. He was drafted by the Minnesota Vikings in the second round of the 2001 NFL Draft and played for them for two seasons before a serious injury ended his career...

 and Ernie Kovacs

Ernie Kovacs

Ernie Kovacs was a Hungarian American comedian and actor.Kovacs' uninhibited, often ad-libbed, and visually experimental comedic style came to influence numerous television comedy programs for years after his death in an automobile accident...

. He started in an act called Nine Crazy Kids, then started performing comic monologues. When he was performing this stand-up comedy

Stand-up comedy

Stand-up comedy is a comedic art form. Usually, a comedian performs in front of a live audience, speaking directly to them. Their performances are sometimes filmed for later release via DVD, the internet, and television...

in the 1930s, he fluffed a joke so that it came out as nonsense. This got a good laugh so he made such double-talk the focus of his act and became especially known for this.