The Improv Page 2

  MARC PRICE, actor and comedian:

  When I first became a regular at the Hollywood Improv around 1983, I was about fifteen years old. One of the things that stands out most was having access to guys like Jerry Seinfeld, Bill Maher, and Jay Leno, who were already well respected in the comedy world even though they hadn’t become famous yet. What made this such an interesting dynamic was that they all wanted to do sitcoms, and I was already a regular on Family Ties, which was one of the biggest hits on television at the time. So there they were, wanting to be able to experience what I was experiencing. And here I was, wanting to be able to do stand-up as well as they did, which I couldn’t do at that point and probably still can’t.

  JUDD APATOW, producer, director, actor, writer, comedian, and former Improv emcee:

  For me and the other comics I came up with, what made our days at the Improv such carefree, magical times was that we basically had zero responsibilities—except trying to figure out how we were going to be funny that night.

  JEFF DUNHAM, ventriloquist, comedian, and producer:

  The Hollywood Improv to me was always a mystical place because I knew how many legendary names had gone across that stage. It was almost like the lyrics from Frank Sinatra’s song “New York, New York”—if you could get onstage and kill there, you could probably do it anywhere. What I didn’t understand was the Improv was a completely different room from the entire rest of the country. You either learned to play that crowd or you didn’t, and even if you did, it didn’t mean you could play Kansas City.

  DAVID SPADE, actor, comedian, writer, and television personality:

  I first heard about it when Johnny Carson was introducing comedians and he’d say they were appearing at the Improv. When I got into stand-up around 1984 or ’85, the only two places that were really worthwhile in LA were the Improv and the Comedy Store. You had to get on at either one of these clubs to get a foothold and both seemed so far out of my reach. I was around nineteen at that time, and I’d go to the Improv and just watch so I could catch a glimpse of these guys. It was more people watching and being starstruck. I remember looking at the chalkboard they had out front and seeing names like Bill Maher, Jerry Seinfeld, Richard Belzer, and Dennis Miller. They were all in one spot and it was like being at Disneyland. After that, Budd became my first Lorne Michaels, and he held the keys to the kingdom because he basically takes the best people in comedy and splays them out on the table for the rest of the world to see.

  JOE PISCOPO, actor, singer, radio host, comedian, and former New York Improv doorman and emcee:

  Once you did the Improv, you knew you could do anything in the entertainment business because it was live, flying by the seat of your pants with no safety net. Everything I ever learned at the Improv, I still take with me to this day.

  HOWIE MANDEL, comedian, actor, TV host, and voice-over artist:

  There wasn’t a night that went by when somebody wasn’t working on something huge or being discovered for something huge. Because somebody always got something or was getting something, you weren’t only a part of the excitement that was going on at the moment, you were also a part of the landscape of what America was going to be watching and laughing at for decades to come.

  LEWIS BLACK, comedian, actor, social critic, author, and playwright:

  One of the things I’ll always give Budd credit for is that he never tried to censor me onstage, although he did tell me once that I used the word “fuck” too much. I told him go fuck himself.

  Introduction

  Although the Improv certainly can’t claim credit for inventing stand-up comedy, to say that comedians were seldom the main attraction prior to our opening on a frigid mid-February night on West 44th Street in New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen in 1963 isn’t an exaggeration.

  Up until then, only a handful of established comics, and even fewer headliners, performed regularly in America’s nightclubs and predominantly Jewish resorts in the Catskill Mountains, many of which were already on the decline and where the emphasis was mostly on music. And practically all of them who did worked in between the singers when they weren’t scrounging for stage time in strip joints.

  Which isn’t to say that putting comedians front and center—and, in the process, becoming what would be billed as America’s first “showcase” comedy club—was ever my original intention either.

  It’s important to understand also that even though I’d enjoyed listening to comedians since my days as a teenager growing up in the Bronx, I didn’t know the first thing about the comedy business, much less running a restaurant. Instead, my sole reason for opening the Improv to begin with—which began as an after-hours coffeehouse for Broadway performers—was because my goal after a brief and unsatisfying career in advertising was to become a theatrical producer, a career for which I was no more qualified.

  The Improv was simply a means to an end, one that, if all went according to plan, I naively hoped would give me enough clout to help me find my first show to produce—and on Broadway no less. I certainly had no idea that the comedians would quickly come to dominate our stage or that helping to discover and develop them was to be my destiny, making it possible for me to go places, meet people, and experience things that I could have never imagined.

  Of course, the how of how I did it might make for a lot more interesting reading if I could say that my decision to use comedians in favor of singers was part of an elaborate, years-in-the-making vision on my part to fulfill some unmet need in the marketplace (like Thomas Edison and the light bulb), or to modernize an existing product and make it more accessible to the masses (Bill Gates and the computer, McDonald’s founder Ray Kroc and the hamburger, etc.). The truth is that it was all a complete fluke.

  And yet, from these improbable beginnings came all this and more—all because I needed a way to support myself. And fortuitously when comedians started coming in to perform within weeks after the Improv first opened, New York in particular was riper than ever for smart satire. Though not yet the cultural phenomenon it would become in the decades that followed, the basic rules and subject matter were changing—thanks largely to the progressive, often controversial, routines of Lenny Bruce, Dick Gregory, David Frye, George Carlin, the Smothers Brothers, David Astor, and Richard Pryor—with Dave and Ritchie, in a symbolic twist of fate, being among our first comedians.

  So while the basic art form of stand-up comedy was hardly new, the sensibilities were. And with the Improv’s birth paralleling this revolution and providing a forum—presenting as many as twenty different comedians on the lineup on any given night with no headliners and no top billing—so were we.

  The Improvisation, as it was originally called—and so named, because improvising in the sense of “anything can happen” is how it happened—was the first of its kind, not only streamlining the way stand-up is presented by featuring multiple comics on one stage in the same show, but also by osmosis, becoming the exact template for almost every other comedy club that followed.

  Most importantly, we made people laugh, along with—I’m enormously proud to say—having had a hand, or at least a finger, in helping to launch the careers of most of the biggest names in comedy over the last fifty-plus years. There were also uncountable others who never made it, and though there was no way to predict when, if, or how somebody ever would, they were all there for the same reason: It was their calling.

  When the Improv began, the number of professional stand-up comedians in the United States was fewer than 200. Today, the total number of full-time comedy clubs in practically every major and midsized American city far exceeds 500, while the number of professional comics worldwide is easily more than 100,000, with the vast majority performing in the US, and all of them fighting to appeal to the same youthful audience we helped delineate. This is on top of dozens of cable channels in addition to YouTube and Netflix, where many of these same comedians can be seen for free.

  Yet despite this, and perhaps even because if it, the Improv remains one o
f the most dominant global brands in humor. Though the original New York club closed in 1992, our flagship club on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles continues to thrive, while the Improv franchise now includes more than twenty-two locations nationwide. Even though the comedians may have changed, our mission has remained the same.

  At the time I founded the Improv more than five decades ago, I obviously had no way of predicting what was to come. Needless to say, it’s been a phenomenal journey, and this book chronicles the Improv story in the exact words of the people who’ve been along for the ride set against the backdrop of my own. As you can no doubt already tell, it’s quite a lengthy list and each and every one of them holds a special place in my heart. Aside from asking for their participation, I had no input, nor did I place any restrictions whatsoever on what they had to say. I wouldn’t have it any other way, even if it isn’t always flattering.

  My aim was to get a representative sampling of past and present performers—most of them comedians—but also singers, actors, writers, producers, managers, fellow club owners, friends, family, and current and former staff—thereby creating as comprehensive and chronological an oral history of the Improv from our inception to the present day as possible.

  So here it is without further ado: the Improv story from the start. My own story begins less remarkably in Norwich, Connecticut.

  PART ONE

  ONE

  Growing Up Fatherless and Struggling to Find My Way

  Norwich, Connecticut, where I was born Gerson Friedman on June 6, 1932, could have easily passed for a scene straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting. It wasn’t that small a town, but whoever first called it “The Rose of New England” had it right.

  As the youngest child of three and the only male, I was doted on by my parents and two older sisters, Helene and Kala. My mother, Edith, and my father, Benjamin, nicknamed me Budd, and as a little boy I was often called Buddy, which in the English language means “friend.” Since I’ve spent most of my life in the entertainment business nurturing comedians and singers, I would like to think this was prophetic, though I’m sure there are some who might disagree.

  In 1925, my father’s two older brothers, Irving and Joe, decided to leave New York and open an auto parts business in Norwich, and my dad joined them, which is how we wound up there, even though nobody knows for sure why they chose Norwich. Nevertheless, it was the height of the roaring twenties, and their new storefront enterprise on Thames Street flourished from practically day one.

  We also felt extremely accepted, despite being one of the only Jewish families in a hotbed of anti-Semitism. Our house, situated on a hilly incline at 39 Wilmont Avenue, was small but comfortable. Some of my most vivid early childhood memories are of sledding with my two sisters during the frigid Connecticut winters and watching deer run across the yard from our living room window.

  Helene, my eldest sister was an absolute knockout who became a World War II pinup model pictured in such prominent New York newspapers as the Herald Tribune, the Journal-American, and the Daily News. When she walked into a room, everybody took notice, and she had many male suitors. So did Kala, who always made up in personality what she may have lacked in beauty, although she also became quite attractive after our Aunt Gert paid for a nose job the year Kala turned eighteen.

  Both are widowed and the three of us have remained extremely close. Sadly, Helene, now ninety, suffers from dementia and is in a nursing home in Hollywood, Florida. Kala, an amateur singer and mother of four who is eighty-eight, still has more energy than most people half her age. She also lives in Florida, and her selfless devotion as Helene’s primary caregiver is truly remarkable.

  At the beginning of my life, I’d describe the atmosphere of the Friedman household as traditional. Ever popular among the neighbors and with the help of a thriving business, my parents were frequent guests at dinner parties, where my dad often delighted in cracking jokes. My mother also had a great sense of humor, something that I indirectly credit for my own love of the spotlight and being a ham.

  As much as I loved and knew I was loved by both parents, unfortunately nothing much in particular stands out about my father. For one thing, as the Great Depression dominated throughout the 1930s, he spent nearly all his time working in order to keep a roof over our heads. The only thing I really remember about him at all is the one nightly ritual I always looked forward to, which would ultimately cost him his life and leave me fatherless for the rest of mine.

  Because his hands were always filthy from working on cars all day long, he had to use a special industrial-strength soap that came in a yellow tin can he kept in the bathroom. Every evening when he got home, my sisters and I would join him to wash up before dinner while he hoisted me up on the closed toilet seat so that I could reach the sink. But no matter how hard he tried, my father could never get his hands completely clean, which is what caused a small pimple on the inside of his nose to become so irritated when he scratched it that an infection developed and traveled all the way into his bloodstream. Penicillin was still in its infancy, and although the specific details are sketchy, he apparently spent the following year unable to walk and bedridden in a Newington, Connecticut, Veteran’s Administration hospital. There he became so emaciated that he literally wasted away to nothing before finally succumbing in September 1936 at the age of thirty-six.

  Though my father’s sudden illness and horrific death must have seemed especially painful to my sisters, who had grown up with him, I was too young to understand what was happening. I also don’t remember anything about my father’s funeral or, for that matter, how I was even told he’d passed away. Nevertheless, I was always acutely aware of the void he left.

  Aside from the emotional impact, my father’s death raised a host of practical issues. The biggest one was how my mother was going to be able to take care of us, particularly since she was a high school dropout who’d been a housewife for her entire adult life, and my father didn’t have an insurance policy. Instead of panicking, however, she decided that the best solution was to get creative and soon began selling plus-sized women’s clothing out of our home. Though my grandparents and various aunts and uncles often pitched in, too, my mother took great pride in being able to support us, which was no small feat, especially considering that the country was still in the throes of the Great Depression.

  To supplement her modest income from the clothing business, for two summers she also ran a sleepaway camp out of our home with the help of my Aunt Gert. Most of the kids came from New York City and slept on cots my mother managed to get from a local thrift store. The camp also gave me my first exposure to show business when my older cousin Leon decided to put on a talent show in the fall of 1936 and I sang “Little Sir Echo,” the classic children’s standard made famous by Bing Crosby. Though I was supposed to sing it as a duet with Will Sage, my best friend from across the street, at the last minute he got cold feet, so I ended up performing both parts, for which I was paid the princely sum of sixty-five cents. Through it all and no matter what she had to do or sacrifice, Mom continued to be our anchor, and while our lives were never completely the same after my father died, she stoically tried to make them as normal as possible until the Great New England Hurricane of 1938 sent us into another tailspin.

  On the September afternoon it hit, they dismissed us early from school, and I returned home to an empty house where, at first, I tried to remain calm until the winds began picking up speed; then I went outside to hold up the trellis in our backyard. This is when Will Sage’s mother realized I was all alone and immediately ordered me to come over to their house, which wasn’t any safer. Just as I was going inside, a gust of wind came through, causing the swinging door in their kitchen to bang into my head, leaving a bump I still have. While none of us sustained any life-threatening injuries, the structural damage to my family’s home was significant enough that my mother began having serious reservations about whether to remain in Norwich, although it would ultimately take another two years
for her to decide.

  To make the choice easier, in the summer of 1941, my Uncle Sid and Aunt Roz, who separately owned two competing ladies’ undergarment stores, offered to pay a portion of the rent on an apartment in the Bronx, which we would then share with my maternal grandparents. Again, the transition was much harder for my two sisters, who were already teenagers in high school by this point and both had active social lives. But while being the youngest certainly had its advantages when it came to adapting more easily, I was also apprehensive about moving to the big city, even though practically my entire family on both sides had been born and raised there.

  For the first seven years, we lived on the ground floor of a three-story apartment building at 1104 Grant Avenue in the Grand Concourse section of the Bronx, ten blocks from Yankee Stadium. Though I may have been initially apprehensive, these fears soon proved unfounded. Instead, mostly good memories come to mind when I think about my years here, many of them about sports.

  I was always a decent athlete, which is probably the reason why the first thing I recall is watching a group of boys from our neighborhood play a game in which you bounce a rubber ball against the side of a building. I don’t know what it was called or what the object was, but I remember one of the boys’ fathers coming up to me afterwards and inviting me to join him and the other kids for a soda at the local candy store. It was a very touching moment because this was my first entrée into having friends in the Bronx.