Morey Amsterdam (December 14, 1908 – October 27, 1996) was a veteran American television actor and comedian, renowned for his large, ready supply of jokes.

The Morey Amsterdam Show was a television sitcom which ran from 1948 to 1949 on CBS and from 1949 to 1950 on DuMont.

The show began on CBS radio with Morey Amsterdam playing himself as the emcee at a New York City nightclub - the "Golden Goose Cafe". He introduced musical and comedy acts, and performed songs and monologues himself. Art Carney played Charlie the Doorman and Jacqueline Susann was Lola the Cigarette Girl.

After six months on the radio, the show was moved to CBS television with the same characters, actors, and plot. CBS cancelled the show after 13 episodes.

The show was picked up by the DuMont Television Network and began broadcasting on April 21, 1949, with a few minor changes. The name of the nightclub was changed to the "Silver Swan Cafe". Art Carney's character changed to Newton the waiter and Vic Damone joined the cast as a nightclub singer. The DuMont series ran for 58 episodes Thursday evenings at 9:00 pm, until November 12, 1950, when it was replaced by The Adventures of Ellery Queen. Several CBS episodes exist, and most of the DuMont epsodes exist at the UCLA, and a couple DuMont episodes have been released on DVD by small DVD companies. The final episode of the Morey Amsterdam Show can be seen on www.tv4u.com, and one episode can found at the Internet Archive.

The show had two venues. In December 1948 to March 1949, Morey Amsterdam was the emcee at a small fictional nightclub in New York City's Times Square. Charlie the Doorman (later Newton the Waiter) and Lola the cigarette girl were also employed at the club. Between April 1949 and October 1950, the show shifted to a different network and the scene shifted to the Silver Swan Cafe with Newton and Lola still employed. Written by J.E. McKillop

Born in Chicago, Morey Amsterdam started in vaudeville at the age of 14, as a straight man for his piano-playing brother. His father, a concert violinist who worked with the Chicago Opera and the San Francisco Symphony, wanted Morey to pursue a career in classical music but Morey had other plans. By the he was 16 he was working at a Chicago speakeasy owned by Al Brown - better known as Al Capone (I). When he was caught in the middle of a shootout in the club one night, Ansterdam decided to seek safer bookings. He moved to California, where he became a writer and gag man for such stars as Fanny Brice, Jimmy Durante and Will Rogers (I). Morey would become known as the "Human Joke Machine" because he could tell a joke about any subject on request. In the 1930s and 1940s he was on the radio, where his humor brought him fame and notoriety. He was also a songwriter, and some of his best known songs were "Why Oh Why Did I Ever Leave Wyoming?" and "Rum and Coca-Cola". By 1947 he had three different daily radio shows and comedian Fred Allen (I) said, "The only thing I can turn on without getting Amsterdam is the faucet". His first TV show began as a radio program and carried over onto TV, "Stop Me If You've Heard This One" (1948). That same year he hosted his own variety show, "Morey Amsterdam Show, The" (1948), which ran until 1950. Amsterdam was the host of the talk show "Broadway Open House" (1950), the precursor to NBC's "The Tonight Show" in its various forms. His real fame, though, would come after he had spent almost four decades in the business, playing the part of wisecracking comedy writer Buddy Sorrell in the classic "Dick Van Dyke Show, The" (1961) along with Rose Marie (I) and Van Dyke as writers for the fictional TV variety show "The Alan Brady Show". For Morey, who was reportedly able to recall up to 100,000 jokes, it was the role of a lifetime. After the show ended in 1966, he continued to play nightclub dates and make TV guest-star appearances on shows from _"Hollywood Squares, The" (1966)_ to "Caroline in the City" (1995). His film career consisted mainly of of small roles in such films as Beach Party (1963) and Won Ton Ton, the Dog Who Saved Hollywood (1976), although he did produce and star in Don't Worry, We'll Think of a Title (1966) and received good notices for his standout performance as a weaselly, double-crossing gangster who gets his just desserts in the Charles Bronson gangster film Machine-Gun Kelly (1958).