Background and career
Yakov Naumovich Pokhis (Russian: Яков Наумович Похис; born 24 January 1951), better known as Yakov Smirnoff (Russian: Яков Смирнов; ), is an American comedian, actor and writer. He began his career as a stand-up comedian in the Soviet Union, then immigrated to the United States in 1977 in order to pursue an American show business career, not yet knowing any English. He reached his biggest success in the mid-to-late 1980s, appearing in several films which include Moscow on the Hudson with Robin Williams, The Money Pit with Tom Hanks, Heartburn with Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep, and Brewster's Millions with Richard Pryor. He was a star of the television series What a Country! and was a recurring guest star on NBC's hit television series Night Court playing the part of Yakov Korolenko. His comic persona was of a naive immigrant from the Soviet Union who was perpetually confused and delighted by life in the United States. His humor combined a mockery of both life in the Soviet Union and its satellites, and of capitalist consumerism in the United States, as well as word play caused by misunderstanding of American phrases and culture, all punctuated by the catchphrase, "And I thought, 'What a country!'" Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, he continued to perform. In 1993, he began performing year round at his own theater in Branson, Missouri. As of 2024, he occasionally still performs limited dates at his theater in Branson while touring worldwide. Smirnoff earned a master's degree in psychology from the University of Pennsylvania in 2006 and a doctorate in psychology and global leadership from Pepperdine University in 2019. He has also taught a course titled "The Business of Laughter" at Missouri State University and at Drury University.
The son of Naum Pokhis and Klara Pokhis, Smirnoff was born in Odesa in the Ukrainian SSR of the Soviet Union. His family was Jewish, and lived in an apartment with eight other families. Smirnoff eventually became an art teacher in Odesa, and after two years of mandatory military service became a cruise ship comedian on the Black Sea, where he interacted with Americans who described life in the United States, inspiring him to leave the Soviet Union. In the 1970s, when the Soviet Union marginally relaxed emigration policies, he was eligible to apply for an exit visa. After two years attempting to leave, he came to the United States with his parents in 1977, arriving in New York City with $50 in savings. He has jokingly described that his family was allowed to come to America because of "an agreement between the USSR and America to exchange wheat for Soviet citizens who wished to defect". At the time, neither he nor his parents spoke any English. On arrival to the United States, he was almost sent back to the USSR when his interpreter mistranslated his occupation—comedian—as "party organizer", which immigration authorities thought meant that he was an organizer for the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Smirnoff spent a portion of his early days in the United States working as a busboy and bartender at Grossingers Hotel in the Catskill Mountains of New York and living in the employee dormitory.
Smirnoff began performing stand-up comedy in the US in the late 1970s. After trying to think of a stage name that Americans would recognize, he chose the last name "Smirnoff" after a brand of vodka he was familiar with from his bartending days. At this time, he traveled to Los Angeles to perform at an open mic night at the Comedy Store, where he would eventually become a regular. In the early 1980s, he moved to Los Angeles to further pursue his stand-up comedy career. While living there, he was roommates with aspiring comedians Andrew Dice Clay and Thomas F. Wilson.
After achieving some level of fame, Smirnoff received his first break with a small role in the 1984 film Moscow on the Hudson, where he also helped star Robin Williams with his Russian dialogue on the set. He made many appearances on the sitcom Night Court as Russian immigrant Yakov Korolenko. He subsequently appeared in several other motion pictures, including Buckaroo Banzai (1984), Brewster's Millions (1985) and The Money Pit (1986). In November 1985, he made his debut on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and soon became a regular guest on the show. That same year, he appeared in an ad for Miller Lite beer.
In 1986, he garnered a starring role in the television sitcom What a Country!, a show devised specifically for him which lasted for one season. In the late 1980s, Smirnoff was commissioned by ABC to provide educational bumper segments called "Fun Facts" to be aired during Saturday morning cartoons, which would feature a joke about a cultural misunderstanding followed by an obscure fact. He also appeared in commercials for hotel chain Best Western.
In 1987, Smirnoff was invited to a party hosted by Washington Times editor-in-chief Arnaud de Borchgrave, which featured President Ronald Reagan as the guest of honor. Reagan and Smirnoff immediately hit it off due to Reagan's love of jokes about life in the Soviet Union, which he would tell in speeches, and Smirnoff became one of his sources for new material. An example of a joke Reagan later told that originated from Smirnoff was "In Russia, if you say, 'Take my wife—please', you come home and she is gone." Smirnoff was enlisted by Dana Rohrabacher, who was then a speechwriter for Reagan, to help with material for Reagan's speeches, including a speech given in front of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev when Reagan visited the Soviet Union during the Moscow Summit in 1988. Rohrabacher later stated that Smirnoff became "one of the inner circle" of speechwriting advisers during Reagan's final years in office, due to the quality of Smirnoff's suggestions. In 1988, Smirnoff headlined at the annual White House Correspondents' Dinner.
