In the 1920s, the telephone spawned a good deal of dialogue humor that sold as gramophone records. But radio and the talking pictures were not kind to the monologue, even when it was made by W. C. Fields or Will Rogers. These hot media pushed aside the cooler forms that TV has now brought back on a large scale. The new race of night-club entertainers (Newhart, Nichols and May) have a curious early-telephone flavor that is very welcome, indeed. We can thank TV , with its call for such high participation, that mime and dialogue are back. Our Mort Sahls and Shelley Bermans and Jack Paars are almost a variety of " living newspaper," such as was provided for the Chinese revolutionary masses b y dramatic teams in the 1930s and 1940s.