By Andrew Poretz***Comedian and emcee, Sheba Mason, is the “love child” of the late comic Jackie Mason and Ginger Reiter. Sheba, who has run a “speakeasy” comedy club at the Three Monkeys—a bi-level bar/restaurant on Manhattan’s West Side— since 2020, costars in the latest iteration of Jackie Mason, The Musical, playing her mother. The show, written by Ginger in 1983 (originally playing herself), runs for three Sunday afternoons in November at Carolines comedy club on Broadway.
I spoke at length with Sheba, Ginger, and actor Ian Wehrle, who plays Jackie Mason in the show. Highlights of the interview are below. The entire conversation can be watched HERE
Ian Wehrle saw a casting notice on Actor’s Access back in 2012. “It was The Jackie Mason Musical and I said, really? This is with his daughter? She’s so much younger than him, that’s really interesting.” He knew he was born for this job. “I’ve been practicing this shtick my whole life, and there’s no way this can’t work.” This was his first significant part. He was 29, playing a 45-year-old Jackie.
Ginger Reiter wrote the book and most of the songs for The Jackie Mason Musical. “I dated Jackie for 10 years off and on, and I wrote the musical comedy based on my affair with Jackie Mason, which resulted in the birth of our love child, Sheba Mason.”
Before I could ask if the infamous “finger” episode would be mentioned, Ginger beat me to it. “Ian wrote one of the songs, called “The Finger,” which explains, you know, Jackie Mason’s mishap on The Ed Sullivan Show,” where Sullivan accused Mason of giving him “the finger” on live television. She explained, “He told me what happened when we were dating, and I told Ian, and he just put a really cute song together about it.”
Ginger met the comedian when she was in her twenties. “I was sitting with my mother at the Rascal House. It’s a famous deli in Miami Beach. A woman came over to the table and said, ‘You wanna meet Jackie Mason’? My mother said, ‘Of course she does, certainly! Here’s her number.’ Jackie said, ‘What do you do for a living?’ My mother jumped in and said, ‘My daughter is a teacher for the hearing impaired who belly dances on the side.’ Jackie said, ‘She must also be a ventriloquist. I ask HER a question and the answer comes out of your mouth!’ So my mother kind of pushed me into a relationship with this much older man, at the time. And it took about an hour, on the first date, and I fell madly in love with him. One hour. Because he was just so brilliant. So, this is just the story of what happened.”
Mason was initially supportive of the show, booking it himself in Miami Beach hotels. Sheba added, “There’s even a video of him talking about the show. He said, ‘I can’t believe some yenta would be so excited about me that she would wanna write a show about me!’ It was really cute. This was before the paternity lawsuit.”
The story covers Ginger’s relationship from before Sheba existed until her birth, which occurs at the end of the show. However, Sheba opens the show as herself performing at a comedy club. The show serves as a musical flashback response to an audience question, in a “How My Mother Met My Father” fashion.
I probed Sheba about her relationship with her father. Sadly, there really wasn’t one, as he denied paternity. “I had a joke in my act where I said our relationship was getting a lot better, we’re getting a lot closer. Like last week I saw him in the street and he actually recognized me. And the minute he saw me, he ran the other way!” She added, “There’s a song called ‘I Never Met This Yenta,’ where the Jackie character is
in court, and he’s using his hands, swearing on the Bible, and he’s denying it. And the song gets faster and faster, and then he’s forced to admit it.” At Ian’s urging, Sheba told of approaching her father when he was doing one of his one-man Broadway shows. The excitement of finally meeting her famous father ended the next day with a shattering lawyer’s letter waiting for her. The stuff of musical comedy!
We went deeper at this point regarding Sheba’s attitude towards her father. Ultimately, she credits her mother with helping her frame her father in a positive light. “She always kind of made me see the fact that he’s brilliant, he’s a genius, and this is what he is.” She continued, “And instead of making me resent him, I appreciate the fact that I share that gene pool, that he’s so charming, and so effervescent, and so likable.” Ginger shifted the conversation to Jackie Mason’s penchant for “early bird specials” in Miami. The show has a song about this in the musical. Sheba is a “special early bird” herself!
Follow Sheba Mason on Instagram @sheba_mason. The Jackie Mason Musical will take place on November 6, 13 and 20 at at Carolines on Broadway , 1626 Broadway between 49th and 50th Streets). www.thejackiemasonthemusical.com.
