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Growing up in Milwaukee in the 1950s, Jim Abrahams and brothers Jerry Zucker and David Zucker attended the same synagogue, high school and later college, where they enjoyed a reputation as class clowns. Their horseplay paid off: As the filmmaking trio known as ZAZ, they created some of the most iconic comedy films of the 1970s and ’80s, including “Kentucky Fried Movie,” “The Naked Gun” and, most memorably, the blockbuster disaster movie spoof “Airplane!”
Their anything-for-a-laugh approach had roots in vaudeville, the Catskills and MAD magazine, although Abrahams wasn’t convinced it was particularly Jewish. “The heart of our humor is that you’re better off not taking a lot of things seriously,” he told JTA earlier this year. “I don’t think that’s a particularly unique Jewish point-of-view.”
Abrahams also created the Charlie Foundation for Ketogenic Therapies, which supported treatment for a type of epilepsy that had afflicted his son.
