“Can I call you and find out?” he said. I said yes, and then I gave him the number to the backstage phone at the theater we used in case of emergencies.
I don’t remember Silver telling me the tickets weren’t free or even asking. I guess I just naturally assumed they were because she was in the cast. So when I got to the box office the following afternoon and the clerk informed me they cost $6.50 a piece, I was shocked. Even though I could barely afford one ticket, I still wound up buying two with the idea that I could sell the extra and make some money. When it occurred to me that I would still be out six bucks, I couldn’t believe what I’d just done.
Then, noticing there was a middle-aged woman standing in line behind me, and with the clerk now in the middle of another transaction, I offered to sell her one of my tickets. I’ll never forget the exchange of words we had as long as I live. Embarrassed, but with nothing to lose, I said, “Would you like a ticket to see the show?”
“Yeah,” she replied. “That’s why I’m here. Is it a good seat?”
I was relieved someone would take the extra ticket, but what began innocently enough as an attempt on my part to inject some levity by delivering a clever comeback quickly deteriorated and put an end to any chance I might have had of closing the deal. I said, “Sure, it’s a good seat. I’m going to be sitting next to you.”
As soon as I said this, it became clear that she wasn’t amused, as the look on her face turned to disgust and she snapped her purse shut. “I’ll get my own ticket,” she said.
I could hardly believe what was happening. I was also completely oblivious to the fact that what I was doing was illegal or that I could be arrested if a cop showed up, because I spotted another couple who immediately bought both of my tickets. As a result, I didn’t see Fiorello! until right before it closed nearly a year later, although I still managed to get up enough courage to ask Silver out before I went back to Boston—only to have her say no. Her reason was that she was already seeing someone and didn’t want to jeopardize it by being in a long-distance relationship.
But she also invited me to call her if I ever moved back to New York. By the time I did, some eight months after that, Silver was in the chorus of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, which was the biggest hit on Broadway. Co-starring Robert Morse and Michele Lee, it also featured another young singer-dancer named Donna McKechnie, who in the mid-1970s would go on to achieve major fame playing aging dancer Cassie Ferguson as the lead character in choreographer Michael Bennett’s critically acclaimed musical A Chorus Line.
DONNA MCKECHNIE, singer, dancer, choreographer, and actor:
Silver and I sat next to one another in the dressing room, and I liked her a lot. She had a great sense of humor and a great laugh, but there was also a tough exterior when you first met her.
She kind of became like a big-sister figure to me after a while. When it came to men, I was the girl who could never say no, so I’d have all these boyfriends, and Silver would try to educate me. I don’t mean going all the way [sexually], but when somebody asked me out, I’d say, “Okay, sure.” I also never kept an appointment book, which meant there’d often be two guys waiting for me outside the theater because I couldn’t keep track of my schedule. It used to absolutely drive Silver nuts.
While we were doing the show, she and Budd were dating. I remember him being this funny guy who wanted you to think there was an aura about him. Silver didn’t just want Budd to be an entrepreneur in his mind. After all, he had these great ideas.
Even during this period when I was at loose ends, and it was becoming increasingly evident that becoming a Broadway producer wasn’t going to be in the cards—at least anytime soon—I would always come back to the fact that I didn’t want to go back into advertising. Not only did the idea of three-martini expense-account lunches and hawking products for some Madison Avenue agency hold little appeal to me, I knew it would have meant working eighty-hour weeks and having to prove myself all over again.
While I also had no particular interest in going into the nightclub or restaurant business either, the early 1960s seemed ripe for the picking if you had the right concept. Back then, you could literally choose from hundreds of clubs in New York that presented the top music acts seven nights a week. You could also catch up-and-coming acts at a lot of places down in Greenwich Village for practically nothing. At that time, though, there really weren’t any affordable bars or restaurants in the theater district where young performers who weren’t already stars could go and unwind after their shows.
This dawned on me very early on in my relationship with Silver when we’d go out with the cast of How to Succeed after the show, and I’d hear them talk about this place or that place in Chicago and Philadelphia where the food was cheap and they could get up and sing. They also lamented the fact that there was nowhere in New York where they could do that, which I could relate to because I was on a very limited budget myself. So the more I thought about it, the more I began kicking around the idea of opening up something myself.
THREE
Building the House That Built Hilarity
I can’t help but think that a part of me must have been insane when I look back now at why I decided to start the Improv. I also wasn’t thinking in any specific terms about how it might evolve other than as a temporary, part-time venture to help me expand my contacts in the theater, which were nearly zilch at that point.
And that was basically it, although I, at least, had enough sense to realize I needed an existing restaurant so I wouldn’t have to start from scratch. I also knew that it had to be between West 43rd and West 49th Streets and in between Eighth and Ninth Avenues. This was my target location, and my original plan was to open a coffeehouse that served food because I couldn’t afford a liquor license. I also knew that even if I could serve liquor, I’d run the risk of the Mafia finding out, and I’d have to pay them off. At any rate, I must have started looking for places towards the end of the summer of ’62, and I searched practically every day for almost five months.
In the meantime, I had a backup plan. My cousin Len, who’s a year older than me and also wanted to go into show business, was running a pet store on Christopher Street down in the Village. He was very eager to sell it and I was all set to make a deal with him because by then I was feeling desperate.
And then, lo and behold—on the very same day I was supposed to sign the papers—I happened to pass a Vietnamese restaurant on West 44th Street near the southeast corner of Ninth Avenue that had just closed, and I saw the For Rent sign in the window literally two hours after it had gone up. This was in November, and the Improv opened a little over three and a half months later.
LOU ALEXANDER, former comedian and agent:
It wasn’t a classy joint and the neighborhood was terrible, but Budd was able to make a deal and get a low rent. That’s how it all started.
Even before I set foot inside, I was in love with it. Not only was it a block west of the famed Broadway watering hole Sardi’s, it had once been the cafeteria for the Actors Studio, which was one block east. I also loved the fact that Marilyn Monroe reputedly used to eat lunch here.
However, there weren’t any special deals. Not only did I have to borrow money from my mother, I eventually had to sell shares to be able to afford the $250 monthly rent. But the landlord, Emil Lublin, and his son were very nice to me. They owned the liquor store next door, which we later took over.
DONNA MCKECHNIE:
Budd was really excited about it and so was Silver, and they enlisted everybody’s help because they had a deadline. I remember the brown paint, and lacquering some of the newspapers they used for wallpaper. Other things I remember are the tables coming in and the little upright piano they had over in the corner.
I still don’t think I was really aware of what Budd was creating at that point, but whatever it was, it seemed exciting. After it opened, the Improv became like a haven to me because I knew everybody and I could go alone.
So
me of the people from How to Succeed and a few friends pitched in, which was a great help. But I was a pretty decent carpenter, so I did most of the renovations myself. I was also able to do them without a permit from the New York City Department of Buildings because I didn’t make any structural changes, nor did I need a certificate of occupancy, which back then was only required if you had more than ninety-nine seats and we had seventy-four.
As an extra level of insurance to avoid prying eyes, I sealed off the windows with newspapers and did most of the work late at night. In terms of renovations, the first thing that had to be done was removing the huge counter in the middle, which the Vietnamese restaurant left behind and would have severely restricted our seating capacity. Then, although I knew nothing about plumbing, I started tearing out the pipes and nearly flooded the place because I used a hacksaw to cut the pipes without shutting off the water first. I also accidentally turned off the water supply to the entire building when there was a professional card game going on upstairs on the second floor. The next thing I knew, I was standing there completely drenched and up to my knees in water when this massive guy named Walter who was built like a football player suddenly appeared from out of nowhere. Staring me up and down for about a minute before he finally spoke, he said, “Hey, you shut off the water.”
Although I replied, “I’m really sorry, but I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing,” I was suddenly really scared, too, because I thought he might try to beat me up.
But instead, he said, “Let me help you.” Better still, it turned out that he was a fairly skilled carpenter-electrician-plumber, who then proceeded to help me out with everything for the next two months without pay. I’m not sure why, but he just did it, no questions asked, and I never found out his last name. I never saw him again after that either, except once when he came by the club about three years after we’d been open and reluctantly accepted a bottle of scotch.
Walter really saved me because once we got the plumbing done and then the floor, which was this beautiful terrazzo that only needed to be buffed, we were able to build our booths and cover them with fabric. We also put up curtains in the window.
Then I began tearing out the red lacquered paneling and mirrors, which is how I discovered the brick wall that has become a staple of stand-up comedy ever since. Like practically everything else I was doing then, this was pure happenstance. Once again, it was there just staring me in the face, and the reason why we didn’t cover over the brick was because I couldn’t afford drywall. So we simply cleaned the brick with muriatic acid and sealed it instead. Then my friend Aaron Heller, who was an artist, built a wooden fire escape on the wall, which looked real. But the brick wall didn’t really become a focal point until years later when we expanded and I had to put in an emergency exit, which was behind the wall. In front of it, we had our stage and that’s how the brick wall was used. It was a perfect buffer space.
FOUR
Flying by the Seat of My Pants
That was how it pretty much all started. Exhilarating, exonerating, terrifying. From the moment I began making preparations to open the Improv towards the end of 1962, I never had any second thoughts about whether I’d made the right decision. And with the renovations coming along well enough by early January 1963, I started to believe I might actually make a go of things.
Slowly sprouting up almost like top seed, I would do this, and out of this came that, but I still didn’t have any formal plans. In other words, it was all pretty much an improv. This was also how I came up with the name “the Improvisation,” which we later shortened. Officially opening on a frigid, snowy night in mid-February, here’s what transpired from day one.
DONNA MCKECHNIE:
Everybody from How to Succeed came over after the show and we all got up and sang. The way it worked was that you’d come in and they’d ask if you wanted to sing. You’d be like, “Let me eat something and see how I feel.” But you never felt any pressure to do it, which was part of the appeal.
ROBERT MORSE, actor:
I don’t know how close I was to Silver and Budd, but I adored them and they liked me. Silver was the first person who told me about the Improv the night it opened, and once in a while I’d get up onstage and do something terrible. I closed the place most of the time.
MICHELE LEE, actor and singer:
I didn’t help them get ready, although I did come soon after the Improv opened and I was always comfortable there. It was the same kind of atmosphere that Elaine’s, which also opened that same year, had. You knew you were protected from onlookers. Even though there were onlookers, there was a sense of security you got being at the Improv—and of course, you could eat, drink, and do whatever you wanted to. To me, it was the first of that kind of after-show hangout.
Unquestionably, having the entire cast of How to Succeed in Business, including Robert Morse, Rudy Vallee, and Bonnie Scott, show up that first night was a godsend. Another major triumph was that on the evenings that followed, many of them brought their friends, a boomerang effect that would replicate itself and pay huge dividends almost immediately, in large part because many of them were also on Broadway. At the same time, their presence unfortunately didn’t make much difference when it came to our cash register, and to say that we were also living hand-to-mouth in the beginning is putting it mildly.
For one thing, we almost never had any customers until eleven-thirty, after the Broadway shows let out, plus we were only charging a fifty-cent minimum because I didn’t know how to price anything. I also had no idea that there were wholesale restaurant distributors where you could pre-order the food to specification and have it delivered. So instead, I shopped for whatever we needed at the grocery store and invariably almost always paid full retail.
Ditto when it came to buying our meat from a butcher shop over on Ninth Avenue, which also meant that we never had enough. I constantly found myself running across the street to Smilers Delicatessen in the middle of the night to replenish our supplies.
SILVER SAUNDORS FRIEDMAN:
Because we didn’t have a cover charge, we had to try to make whatever profit we had on the coffee and food, so Budd got creative. He’d put cinnamon sticks into the coffee and sometimes he’d just roast them right into the grounds. This became kind of a signature because there weren’t coffeehouses on every block and Starbucks didn’t exist then.
ROBERT MORSE:
I actually used to go there a lot with Rudy Vallee for the food in the beginning, because believe it or not, the Improv had a wonderful menu.
Though food was never the main reason why people came to the Improv—and it was frequently in short supply—we did manage to serve a fairly consistent menu. Besides coffee, some of our most popular items initially were black bread and cheese, matzo ball soup, hamburgers, and peppers and steak.
MICHAEL GOLDSTEIN, the New York Improv’s first publicist:
In the old days, Budd would wander into the kitchen to get a sandwich for himself, but that was about it. I don’t think he was ever that concerned about the food, even though he probably should have been.
SILVER SAUNDORS FRIEDMAN:
To Budd’s credit, he knew enough about food to know if you jazzed it up, people would pay attention. The problem was that we often couldn’t pay the meat bill for our burgers, so Budd got creative there, too. What he’d do is send out a check without signing it, which meant they couldn’t cash it. Then he’d buy us some time by waiting a couple of days until we had the money and send them another one.
For all my constant worries about how I was going to pay for the food and whether we had enough, this was nothing compared to some of the eccentric, if not at times mentally unstable, kitchen staff we had preparing it in a chaotic hiring practice that went on for many years.
First, there was David, a 350-pound French expatriate who was also Jewish. David had been in a German concentration camp during World War II and literally ate everything in sight. Later, we had a Puerto Rican guy named Louie who once threat
ened Silver with a knife that comedian Robert Klein used to do a deadpan impersonation of: “Pick up or I cut your balls off!”
By far, the most memorable staff member, though, was a chef from India who wore an oversized trench coat, and often got picked on by a group of teenagers from the neighborhood in a scene that resembled something straight out of a Charlie Chaplin movie.
CYNTHIA FROST, actor and former New York Improv waitress:
[The Indian chef] used to throw things at you whenever you sent the orders back, so I used to beg the customers not to. He was also very religious, and he’d sit down at a table facing the wall, lay out a napkin, and pray. He was this nebbishy little Hindu guy who couldn’t stand women and wouldn’t let them touch him. So now get this: One day I’m walking along Broadway and I see the chef. He’s coming towards me and he’s got a hooker on his arm that’s about six two. It was surreal.
BOBBY KELTON, writer and comedian:
Once they started giving us food, it was like gold because we were all broke and a lot of times it was the only meal we’d have all day. Sometimes the comics would even wander into the kitchen late at night to tell the waitresses what we wanted to eat. But I’d also heard stories, particularly about the Puerto Rican chef chasing people with a knife, so I made it a point to steer clear of him whenever I did.
CYNTHIA FROST:
There was also a terrible mice problem, so Budd got the idea to put cats down in the basement, hoping this would get rid of them, which it didn’t. One night, there was this huge mouse that somehow scurried up in front of the drum set we had onstage. Budd didn’t even notice until someone from the audience yelled out, “Hey, Budd, there’s a rat.” Then he picked up a baseball bat from behind the bar, smashed the living daylights out of it and blood splattered everywhere. It was a huge mess, but the people still came after that. God did they love it—and they came in mobs every night because of the entertainers who would show up.
The Improv Page 4