The Aristocrats

:For the 1970 Disney animated film, see The Aristocats.

Early references

The Aristocrats appears on p.987 of Gershon Legman's "Rationale of the Dirty Joke, Vol. 2", published in 1975 http://www.jokeland.com/legman.html. Legman retells the joke, and it does have a Vaudeville component, but he does not attribute the joke to Vaudeville roots. Instead, Legman learned the joke from a young man who grew up in a broken home.

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In a 2005 interview, U.K. comic Barry Cryer claims to have heard the joke "fifty years ago... but the punchline wasn't 'The Aristocrats,' it was 'The Debonairs' or 'The Sophisticates'".

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