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I owe Jay Leno an apology. For much of my life I’ve thought of him as a complacent old hack on the wrong side of history, with nothing better to do than spent his time telling humorless and mean-spirited jokes to an audience that thinks predictability breeds hilarity. I was making the cardinal sin of youth: assuming that things as I experienced them were things as they had always been.

But then yesterday I saw a clip of Jay on “Late Night with David Letterman” from 1984. Leaving aside the strange fact of Jay and Dave’s old college-buddy chemistry — which gave me a sense of how Harry Potter in Prisoner of Azakaban must have felt learning Sirius Black was best man at his parents’ wedding — the most fascinating thing about the clip is that Jay was funny once. Like, really funny:

It’s like discovering the Beatles after only listening to Paul McCartney’s solo albums.

You can see in 1984-Jay the roots of the things that are so dislikable about modern-day-Jay (the voice, the smugness, the easy targets), but in addition to some crack comic timing he’s also got a sly wit, relaxed charisma and some sheer smarts – things he seemingly shed like a heavy coat the second he got “The Tonight Show.” And in contrast to today’s calculatedly apolitical Leno, whose stuff never stretches beyond “Politicians: they lie and have sex sometimes!” the Leno of old is almost progressive. Faced with the prospect of a David Letterman interview in Playboy, you think this is the joke Jay would go for today?

Rather that being one of an unspectacular man ascending to great heights, Jay’s story becomes something more interesting — and I think, much more tragic: a talent watching his skills get slowly sapped by age and fortune. It turns out that lame comics are made, not born. This, of course is the essential idea behind “Sick Boy Syndrome” as explained the film Trainspotting: that once we get old, we simply cannot hack it anymore. It’s sad but it’s true — and it makes me wonder what other people we laugh at now used to actually be good at what they did.

My extraordinary results can be found in a magical place: after the jump!

For example, did you know that before he starred in films about families with large amounts of children, Steve Martin was a stand-up comic once?

Or that before he was a lecherous old man, Rod Stewart sang rock songs?

Or that Neil LaBute once was able to write (relatively) naturalistic dialogue?

Or that before he was a head bobbling comically from a tank, Michael Dukakis was once a serious politician?

Or that Joey Harrington wasn’t always a piano-playing NFL bust and was once a well-regarded college quarterback?

How about you guys? Do you have any other favorite objects of ridicule who were once respected for their craft?