There wasn't much to laugh about on March 12, 1942, when the annual Legislative Correspondents Show was held at Albany's Ten Eyck Hotel.
The four months since the attack on Pearl Harbor had brought grim accounts of the ongoing Japanese onslaught in the Pacific — Java and Rangoon had just fallen, and Allied merchant marine vessels were being lost.
Even so, New York state's leaders and unelected notables gathered that March as they had annually for the four previous decades to get blitzed on cocktails, enjoy a luxe meal and watch a troupe of Capitol reporters poke fun at state politics in satiric songs delivered in voices ranging from dulcet to droning.
There are virtually no references to the war in the program for "Lehman Unlimited," its cover cartoon depicting Gov. Herbert Lehman as the brakeman on a locomotive that's been hijacked by a cowboy gang of political contenders. A black-hatted Thomas Dewey, the former federal prosecutor and Manhattan district attorney who would win Lehman's seat eight months later, has thrown the train onto a siding.
You could argue that the decision to proceed with the LCA Show in the face of global conflagration was insensitive, even profligate. Or you might call it slightly heroic, a demonstration that tradition and normalcy would prevail amid chaos.
I also wonder if the men in the room — and yes, they were all men back then — realized they were watching a revue that, if staged in other parts of the world, would likely have ended with the entire cast being strung up in the public square.
I've taken part in the LCA Show for the past five years, and will be there when the 114th annual edition hits the stage of the Empire State Plaza Convention Center on Tuesday, June 10. (The night before, there will be a free open dress rehearsal — for tickets, zap me or pester another statehouse reporter.)
For its volunteer cast of working journalists and LCA alumni, the show represents a significant commitment of time and effort; the 24-hour news cycle chews up more and more of the day, and many of us have families or other commitments. The show also has external detractors who see it as evidence of excessive coziness between reporters and their subjects. (My only response to that charge is that, while reporter-subject relationships vary in transactional structure and intimacy, you'd be hard-pressed to find many politicians who would describe the Albany press corps as cuddly.)
So why has the LCA Show survived for more than a century?
Some see it as a necessary release valve or coping mechanism, a chance to laugh about things that on any other day would make you grind your teeth. In an increasingly digital world, it's a strictly analog event: If you're not there, you missed it. And it's a tradition that separates Albany — "the capital of the capital of the world," as Mayor Kathy Sheehan put it last week at the state Democratic convention — from almost every other political center.
And in a wildly competitive media fishbowl, the show fosters a sort of professional fellowship.
The show offered me the chance to get to know journalists like Jay Gallagher of Gannett News Service, whose comprehensive understanding of the problems afflicting the state produced his 2005 book "The Politics of Decline."
Gallagher, as tough-minded as any statehouse reporter, was devoted to the LCA Show, and took his performances seriously in the way that only someone with a pretty limited singing voice can. (This year, the LCA voted to name its annual journalism award in his honor.)
He gave his final performance in 2010, just two weeks before succumbing to pancreatic cancer.
Every journalist who takes part in this odd production has to figure out why the LCA Show matters. For me, the answer can be found in the memory of Gallagher, cast as Lt. Gov. Richard Ravitch in a goofy old-time police uniform, sitting quietly in the dressing room conserving his energy, and then taking the stage to perform his final solo.
He gave a performance that I can only describe as death-defying. It was high silliness in the face of mortality, a big finger stuck right in the Reaper's eye.
When he was done, the standing ovation was thunderous.
cseiler@timesunion.com • 518-454-5619