Four filing cabinets filled with index cards holding the late Milton Berle’s jokes are going up for auction next week. Each cabinet contains jokes typewritten onto 3×5 index cards then divided into subjects (kind of like what Joan Rivers showed off in A Piece Of Work). According to the auction house, Berle “meticulously maintained” the joke file over his whole career, and he considered it “to be the most valuable resource in his office.”
Some of the cards, for example, feature potential monologue bits from The Milton Berle Show’s 1966-67 run on ABC. Those cards have little notes on the back about whether the gag had been approved and whether it had been used on the show. The two cabinets are valued at between $10,000 and $15,000, though they certainly could go for more. [via Slate]