Maynard Sloate booked Berman for his first Los Angeles engagement in 1957. “Shelley was impossible and not easy to get along with. He was extremely temperamental. From the stage he’d yell, ‘Maynard! Maynard! What’s that noise?’ This goes on for his entire act. ‘Maynard! There it is again! Maynard! It’s the refrigerator in the kitchen!’ He was stopping his act to complain about the refrigerator. Putting up with him was difficult, and that temperament cost him his career.”
Berman was riding high in 1963. Time said he was “the wealthiest of the new comics.” He was one of the biggest stars in show business and a logical subject for a news profile. Comedian Backstage was inspired by the stunning black-and-white “direct cinema” that put documentarians Richard Leacock, Albert Maysles and D. A. Pennebaker on the map. (Primary and Crisis are among the best examples of the genre.) Working under director Robert Drew, they revolutionized the look of television news.
Cinematographer Doug Downs emulated the vérité style, following Berman around the Diplomat Hotel in Hollywood, Florida. The film opens with Berman in his hotel room, sitting in a silk robe, discussing performance specifications with his manager:
No service on the floor in the front. Not because I don’t want the people to be served, but I don’t want any part of the show to be hurt. They can serve delicately, cleanly, but I don’t want to hear waiters in the back shouting their orders. I don’t want them to hurt the show. You tell the maître d’ down here . . . worry him. Please, Marty. Tell him I am the most temperamental human being you ever saw. Tell him this afternoon that I am a monster. Tell him that I walked off the stage at the Waldorf Astoria four times in the middle of the show. Tell him they had to refund money. Tell him that I am being sued! Tell him that I am terrible.
Berman saunters through the lobby, signing autographs, greeting the press, pensively worrying about the show. The camera closes in on his eyes as Comedian Backstage builds up to his nighttime performance. In the final minutes we see Berman onstage. He performs a monologue in which an elderly father addresses his son. It is constructed as a poignant moment, and Berman accentuates dramatics rather than laughs. And then in a moment that has since been mentioned many times in comedy lore—the loud ringing of a telephone offstage interrupts the flow of his routine. It rings and rings. The distraction is obvious to everyone, and the climax of Berman’s performance has been ruined.
The frustration can be seen in Berman’s brow. He rushes to the end of his piece and bows. The applause is sustained, but Berman is livid. He rushes backstage, screaming. He grabs the phone, jettisoning it from the wall, as he shouts at those around him. The camera freezes on Berman’s angry face. The credits start to roll.
The next morning it was all rave reviews. The Los Angeles Times wrote, “Portrait of Shelley Berman really digs deeply. It was a brilliant piece of work.” The Washington Post said, “Finest show biz biography ever to reach the TV screen. It was the most revealing, most realistic and most satisfying program of its kind ever produced.” There was talk of a sequel. The Hollywood Reporter wrote, “So tremendous has the nationwide reaction been to the unvarnished profile, producer Fred Freed is already negotiating with Berman—whom he says ‘has more guts and integrity than any performer I’ve ever met’—for a second documentary next season.”
There were no complaints. But as Berman’s career eroded in the coming years, he said Comedian Backstage was to blame. His career dipped substantially, and by the late 1960s he was making a fraction of the money he’d been enjoying in 1963. On the other hand, most of the coffeehouse comedians experienced a similar dip, as the coffeehouse style gave way to longhair psychedelia and live entertainment was replaced by discotheque dance floors. So the changing tides were partially to blame for Berman’s career erosion. But the rest of the blame, according to fellow comedians, belongs to Berman’s own arrogance. Phyllis Diller said, “If it happens too fast it goes to your head. He had a bodyguard, but nobody ever bothered him.” His agent said, “He was temperamental and went out of his way, unknowingly, to make himself a bad guy. He destroyed himself.”
Berman saw his bookings at major hotels vanish, but he could always play the Playboy Club. Any comic falling on hard times had a savior in the Hugh Hefner chain. The Playboy Club franchise was the most significant circuit for stand-up comics in the 1960s. It is best remembered for waitresses wearing bunny outfits, but the role it played in the history of stand-up should stand as its primary significance.
In cities across America, a struggling comedian could sign a Playboy contract and get a year’s salary, accommodations, travel expenses and a steady crowd. It was the first such entity since vaudeville. Comedians like George Carlin, Jackie Vernon and Slappy White were under contract to Playboy during its height. Semi-names like Irwin Corey, Jackie Gayle and Sonny Mars were essentially kept alive by the work. Lifelines were handed to unknowns like Stu Allen, Albert T. Berry and Mart Rickey. “The notion originally was just to open a club where we could hang out,” said Hugh Hefner. “There wasn’t really a notion that it would become something beyond Chicago at the time.” Initially Hefner wanted to sponsor a room within the established Black Orchid nightclub. “I actually suggested that they might turn the theme of the junior room into a Playboy Club. The director said, ‘Well, how much would you give me for that notion?’ Of course, my notion was exactly the opposite.”
Hefner decided to invest in a flagship Chicago club of his own. It was so successful that he soon branched out across America. The Playboy Clubs would feature anywhere from two to six shows a night, with simultaneous events happening on different floors. “They had two rooms—the Penthouse and the Playroom,” says comedian Tom Dreesen. “A singer would do her act and then you’d do yours. Halfway through your act she went upstairs and started doing a show up there. So, when you finished, you’d walk upstairs and she’d be in her last song. Then they’d clear the room downstairs while you were upstairs. They would do that all night long.”
Pat Morita was a Playboy Club comic, still a couple decades away from Karate Kid infamy. He was managed by Sally Marr, Lenny Bruce’s mother, and billed himself as The Hip Nip. Booker Jackie Curtiss says, “Pat Morita was one of the comedians Sally pushed on the Playboy circuit. He was high all the time. He would come onstage smoking a joint.”
Young comedians starting out relied on the Playboy Club. “At that time there were less than a hundred comics in the entire country getting paid,” says comic Murray Langston. “There were very few [young] comics getting paid other than Playboy comics.” Comedian Kelly Monteith says, “For me it was the first steady work I ever had. You’d go to New Orleans, Atlanta, Miami, Denver, Chicago, Kansas City—even Jamaica. They were all over the place. You’d get ten weeks in a row—or longer—and you’d work them all year long.”
Dick Gregory’s career was made at the Playboy Club, and he credited Hefner with opening the field for African American comics. “Never before until Hefner brought me in had a black comedian been committed to work white nightclubs. You could sing and you could dance, but you couldn’t stand flat-footed and talk. So when Hefner brought me in, that broke the whole barrier.”
Dick Gregory was jeered, cheered and jailed more than any other stand-up comedian in history. He was spat at, beaten up and shot in the leg. He was the first comedian to address the civil rights struggle directly. He managed to joke about segregation and its violent implementation. He was an antidote to liberal fear and a megaphone for black grievance. He hipped the white droves to the daily problems of African Americans, and because of him life was easier for every black comedian who followed.
Gregory started at a Chicago nightclub called the Esquire Show Lounge. It was lit with red lightbulbs, and rhythm and blues was the club’s main attraction. Guitar Red was a mainstay at the Esquire in the late 1950s. According to Gregory, he was “an albino Negro who gets more out of an electric guitar than any man has a right to. He even plays with his feet. People c
ome from all over Chicago to hear Guitar Red and on Saturday nights there were lines around the block.”
Gregory said he “hit them hard and fast with jokes on processed hair and outer space and marijuana and integration and the numbers racket and long white Cadillacs and The Man downtown.” He played the Esquire for two years until he got a big break.
Comedian Irwin Corey was working the Playboy Club in Chicago when he got into a dispute about working on a Sunday. He promised Hefner he’d find a suitable replacement if he was allowed to take Sundays off. A patron of black nightclubs, Corey was probably the only white comic aware of Gregory’s existence. He pulled him from the Esquire and placed him in the Playboy Club on January 13, 1961. Gregory said, “They called my agent. He said, ‘It pays fifty dollars for one night.’ I couldn’t believe there was that much money in the world. I had never been in downtown Chicago and I didn’t have but a quarter. I got on the bus. I got off at the wrong stop. There was a blizzard that night. I’m supposed to be onstage at eight o’clock. I’m running and I’m slipping and I don’t know where I’m going. The blizzard was so heavy you couldn’t see—and I saw Playboy and that was like seeing heaven.”
While he was scrambling in the snow, Gregory’s phone was ringing at home. The Playboy Club was packed with a convention of white businessmen from the Deep South. Playboy decided to cancel the African American comic and pay him off rather than inflame a racial situation. Gregory never received the message and instead performed three consecutive shows—and killed. “Twelve o’clock I was still talking. Twelve-thirty Hugh Hefner came by. Two o’clock I finished. From that they hired me for two hundred and fifty a week, seven days a week.”
Gregory talked about traveling through the South and the racism he encountered. It hadn’t been particularly groundbreaking at the Esquire, but in front of a white crowd it was revolutionary. It hit the right nerve at the right time in American history. He had a succession of new bookings and soon he was in demand. The media picked up on it, and profiles in Playboy, Time and Newsweek made him the success story of the year. He became so hot so fast that he lost money honoring minor engagements scheduled before the fame. Freddie’s supper club in Minneapolis had booked Gregory ahead of the momentum. When it came around, Gregory honored the gig, at four hundred dollars a week, in lieu of a much better New York offer for six thousand.
A few months earlier, a voice like Gregory’s was considered one to avoid. Steve Allen said, “One reason that there is a shortage of Negro stand-up comedians or humorists is that comedy of this sort usually involves a certain amount of critical observation and our society is probably not civilized enough yet to permit or encourage the Negro comedian to make satirical commentary about . . . our bungled international relations, the Un-American Activities Committee or other things of that sort. Just imagine a Negro comic getting up on a stage and saying some of the things that Lenny Bruce or Mort Sahl are getting away with.”
Imagine no more. “He brought down the house,” reported Playboy magazine. “And with it, the tacit prohibition of race relations as a socially acceptable subject for humor in big-time nightclubs.” In order to make his commentary easier for white consumption, Gregory hired joke book impresario Robert Orben to cloak his act in old jokes. “My wife can’t cook. How do you burn Kool-Aid?” It was a line one would expect from Henny Youngman rather than Dick Gregory, but it was part of a greater strategy. “I needed eighty percent white material—you know, mother-in-law jokes and Khrushchev. I bought white man’s joke books to figure out what whitey was laughing at.” Once the squares were laughing at his mother-in-law, Gregory hit them with jokes about the civil rights struggle.
Gregory’s success was a victory for comedic equality. His next step was to use the power of celebrity to integrate the South. Civil rights leader Medgar Evers asked Gregory to speak at a voter registration rally in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1962. “For the first time, I was involved,” said Gregory. “There was a battle going on, there was a war shaping up, and somehow writing checks and giving speeches didn’t seem enough. Sure I could stay in the nightclubs and say clever things. But if America goes to war tomorrow would I stay at home and satirize it at the Blue Angel? I wanted a piece of the action now.”
Civil rights advocate Clyde Kennard spent years trying to integrate Mississippi Southern College. When racist adversaries framed him for theft, Kennard was sentenced to seven years in prison. Kennard became Gregory’s first banner cause, a metaphor for the greater struggle. Although Kennard was never pardoned, an aggressive campaign by Gregory won him parole.
As Gregory the comedian gave way to Gregory the activist, he canceled nightclub engagements on a whim. If a protest march and a stand-up gig landed on the same date—even if the stand-up gig was scheduled months in advance—Gregory chose the protest. Most of his venues were progressive coffeehouses, and people like Enrico Banducci did not usually hold a grudge. Still, Gregory’s manager, Ralph Mann, said his client’s activity amounted to “one million in travel expenses and canceled bookings, not to mention legal fees.”
He was losing money and risking his life. At a rally in Clarksdale, Mississippi, a bomb came flying through the window of a church where Gregory was speaking. The bomb failed to detonate. “When the meeting was over, a man came in to tell me that I was going to be killed that night,” said Gregory. “A roadblock had been set up for me on the highway back to Greenwood. Outside the church I could hear one of the police officers screaming, almost hysterical, ‘If one of our men threw that bomb you’d better believe it would have gone off, we don’t make mistakes like that, no, sir, we don’t.’” Locals hid Gregory in the floorboards of a churchgoer’s house that night.
Gregory was jailed for the first time in May 1963. He and approximately eight hundred demonstrators were arrested in Birmingham, Alabama, for parading without a permit. While Gregory was inside his cell, the notorious Bull Connor was outside, ordering officers to hose down black people in a famed moment seen around the world.
Bigot hatred was directed squarely at Gregory. “I’m scared, but I will stay as long as there’s anything I can do to help,” he said. The assassination of Dr. King was five years away, but Gregory anticipated such possibilities. While sitting in an Alabama jail cell, the thirty-one-year-old comedian made out his will.
The Crescendo in Los Angeles advertised a Dick Gregory engagement for August 17, 1963. Typically, when the date came around, Gregory was in jail. Such complications slowed his rising star, but Gregory was not concerned. He collaborated with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Activist-historian Howard Zinn remembered Gregory’s appearance at a SNCC rally in Selma, Alabama: “Never in the history of this area had a black man stood like this on a public platform, ridiculing and denouncing white officials to their faces. It was something of a miracle that Gregory was able to leave town alive.”
It wasn’t just the South. He was arrested in his native Chicago on charges of “participation in a racial demonstration.” He refused to sign a paper acknowledging a court date, arguing he hadn’t broken any law. He was thrown in jail. The Crescendo in Los Angeles lamented that it had spent a lot on advertising only to learn he couldn’t make it, and the club used apolitical lounge comics Paul Gilbert, Buddy Lester and Corbett Monica in his place. “Any nightclub engagement I’ve missed, I’ve always made it up to them,” said Gregory. “No nightclub owner has ever lost money on me because either I’ll [perform] free for him or I’ll give him a price he never could have gotten otherwise. My managers know that if a demonstration comes up—I’m gone.”
Playboy magazine wondered about the cost. It asked, “Can you afford to keep up this outlay on the income from your irregular nightclub appearances?” Gregory answered, “Can’t afford not to. If I’m willing to pay the price of dying for a cause, what do I care about a few bucks?”
On August 28, 1963, the legendary March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom featured a crowd of two hun
dred thousand people (among the throng was Woody Allen). Gregory opened his speech, “I never thought I’d be giving out more fingerprints than autographs.” By the summer of 1964, he had been arrested eight times, spending a total of two months in prison. He had marched in Arkansas, Mississippi, Illinois and Massachusetts. Predictably, the press criticized him for abandoning stand-up. Syndicated newspaper columnist Drew Pearson called Gregory “a Negro extremist” and wrote in one column: “Recommended reading for Dick Gregory—The South During Reconstruction by E. M. Coulter.” Coulter was a historian who believed in white supremacy.
Gregory was quick to defend himself. “I’m a Negro before I’m an entertainer. The white man’s getting his due under the Constitution, but they got to give me a civil rights Bill to get mine. The Negro is going for the Constitution, for all the constitutional rights that are already rightfully his as a citizen—and he ain’t going to stop until he gets them . . . The only way we can save America today is this great social revolution.”
Comedians participating in the civil rights struggle were few and far between. Those who did, surprisingly, were not onstage progressives like Mort Sahl, but rather traditional comics like Alan King. Sahl said his politics would be more effective within the context of his act. He was dismissive of Gregory’s choice to march. “It doesn’t seem to be productive. He stood on the street corner, he was ignored, and he was finally jailed. I don’t know. I don’t think that’s good.”
At the invitation of Harry Belafonte, Alan King joined the march from Selma to Montgomery. “A bunch of us flew to Selma and were greeted there by Harry, [boxer] Floyd Patterson, James Baldwin and a bunch of other people,” said King. “As we marched, we were spat on by the National Guard, which was there to protect us, and the only places that would give us shelter at night were Catholic monasteries.”
The Comedians Page 26