The Improv

by Budd Friedman

  But again, I had absolutely no idea that I would or could become an actor when Budd and I first formally met. I had recently been fired from Greyhound, where I also worked as their union president. Besides hustling pool and some other activities I’m not proud of, I occasionally got work unloading trucks at the New York Coliseum across from Central Park, now the site of the Time Warner Center.

  When I wasn’t unloading trucks or out looking for other work, I’d go over to the park where I frequently got recruited to play on one of the softball teams even though the use of ringers was against the rules. Through a friend of mine who had connections, the first team I played on was for CBS, alongside football legend Frank Gifford, New York Yankees shortstop and announcer Phil Rizzuto, and a local news anchor named Jim Jensen. For a while, I was also on a team fielded by Sparks Steak House. As much as I lived for those games—and relished the notoriety of being called “Tree City Danny” because of my ability to swing for the tree in left field from 275 feet away—I was literally at the end of my ropes as far as the rest of my life was concerned. God knows why he did it other than the fact that he needed an extra player that day, but Budd Friedman saved me. Years after I left, he also gave my son Ricky a job as a bouncer in New York and later at the club in LA. When I say that my life began at the Improv, I’m not exaggerating.

  The even more amazing part was that Budd let me be the emcee when he wasn’t there, despite the fact that I was terrified and didn’t have any idea what I was doing, especially when I was talking off the top of my head. That’s why I’ve always admired comedians so much, particularly monologists, who can get up there and talk about practically anything. Whenever they were on, I would look at them with admiration and I’d be like, “How the fuck do they do that?” Although there were a lot of them I enjoyed, one of my favorites, like Budd, was Robert Klein.

  ROBERT KLEIN:

  Danny’s Italian and I’m Jewish obviously, but he had that New York way about him so I understood him. Plus, he had gone to my high school, DeWitt Clinton, along with Budd, although we were all there at different times. Nobody knew how talented Danny was or that he’d become who he’d become, although we did sing doo-wop together at the Improv. After that, I didn’t see him for a while and the next thing I knew he was doing a show Off Broadway.

  Danny was always this gentle giant, even though he came off like a tough guy. Everybody liked him, including Rodney Dangerfield, who used to take families out to Sunday dinner and always invited Danny to come along. When it came to being the Improv’s bouncer, Danny was a wonderful one, too. He wasn’t like a lot of these macho guys you see today walking around with earpieces bullying people. The way it sort of went down is that whenever somebody started trouble, there’d be five inches between his fist and the intestines of the guilty party—at which point Danny would show them the door and that would be that.

  MARVIN BRAVERMAN:

  Danny definitely knew how to handle the troublemakers when he had to, but he didn’t always show them the door either. One night in the late sixties or early seventies, I had gotten to the club very late, around 2 AM. I’m sure Budd had left already. By that point, the audience was comedied out and they were laughed out, but I got onstage anyway, and Aiello was working the door.

  It was brutal and I started doing my material, which was bombing. About halfway or maybe two-thirds into my second or third joke, this big German guy in the audience turned to me and said, “What makes you think that you’re funny?”

  As any good comic will tell you, one of the first rules of dealing with a heckler is to simply ignore them. A lot of times, they’re just like a little kid causing a scene in the middle of a store for attention, but if you don’t give them any, they usually stop.

  Well, not this guy. He just kept going on and on, and the next thing I knew he started screaming. He said, “You’re not funny. I’d like to come up there and break your legs.” Now, I normally don’t scare easily, but the combination of this guy’s enormous size and his German accent was really starting to make me afraid, and so I turned to Danny and said into the mic, “Did you hear that, Danny?” But Danny just started laughing and I ran out of the club as fast as I could.

  DANNY AIELLO:

  Both Marvin and Budd were up onstage, but when the heckler started his drunken tirade against Marvin, my initial reaction when he asked me if I was going to do anything was that the guy was talking to him and not me.

  But then, this son of a bitch kept making these terrible remarks about Marvin—I mean, literally calling him every anti-Semitic name in the book—until we finally ended up throwing him out.

  BUDDY MANTIA:

  To this day, Danny is as good a friend as I could ever have. He’s loyal to a fault and he’d give you the shirt off his back, although there was this one incident at the Improv where I saw him have to drag somebody out of there. I’m not sure who the person was, but it was a celebrity of some stature, and someone in the audience was either pestering him for an autograph or getting too close and Danny threw them out, although he wasn’t violent about it. He would never hurt a fly.

  DANNY AIELLO:

  Except for once. Probably the most noteworthy heckler story—and one that did involve violence, which I also wrote about in my memoir—was the night we had this loudmouth in the audience named Doug Ireland, who as it turned out, was none other than the press secretary for Bella Abzug, the most outspoken liberal female politician of the day.

  But this had absolutely nothing to do with politics. For starters, Ireland was drunk as a skunk, on top of which he was this massive guy who could have easily weighed 450 pounds. Making matters worse, he was there with a group of equally inebriated staffers from then New York mayor John Lindsay’s administration.

  Despite his lofty position, Ireland wouldn’t shut up. In fact, I think it was his power that made him think he had the right to be an asshole. He just became louder and louder with each act we brought up until finally I walked over to him and calmly warned him to settle down or else. He was having none of it, though, so I went back over to his table and sternly said, “All right, out you go”—and he just looked at me arrogantly and replied, “Do you know who I am?”

  By this point, I was absolutely livid and impulse took over, because I said, “Yeah, you’re the loudmouth prick who’s leaving this club.”

  That’s when all hell began to break loose because the next thing he said to me was, “Does your fucking mother know you talk like that?”

  I tried to remain calm even though it took everything I had to restrain myself. “What did you say to me?” I said.

  “I said your mama—” That was when I grabbed him by the neck and punched him in the head before he could finish his sentence. I did it with such force that when I hit him, he fell forward and split the concrete tabletop in two.

  I’m not sure where Budd was at first, but when he found out what had happened his face turned bright red and he came running over screaming, “What the fuck did you just do?” Then he said, “Those are Mayor Lindsay’s people. They’ll close my fucking place.”

  I think there must have been about ten of them there, and let me tell you, after I hit this cocksucker you never saw a group of drunks sober up so fucking fast in your life. They were all just speechless. Nobody said anything—except for Budd who shoved me outside and ordered me to take two weeks off. But then when I explained what happened and how this guy Ireland had been insulting this one female performer in particular, Budd suspended me with two-weeks’ pay. I learned an incredible lesson in crowd control and employee fairness that night.

  MARTY NADLER:

  I’m not sure if it was the same group, but I also had issues with members of the Lindsay administration. One of the performers I wrote for was an actress and singer named Lynne Lipton, and we’d often go over to the club to test things out. We happened to be there one night when, just as Budd was about to put Lynne on, one of the other comics came up to me and said, “Be careful about that table
in the back. They’re a bunch of assholes and it’s so hard to perform with them around. We just wanted to give you a heads-up.”

  I was like, “Thanks, but what am I going to do about it?”

  Anyway, Lynne went up, and sure enough, the moment she did, this table started talking. They weren’t even heckling her. Basically, they were just talking among themselves, but it was still rude, so I told them to shut up. Well, when Budd heard me from wherever he was standing, he went absolutely ape shit.

  The next thing I knew, he had me by the collar and he was dragging me out of the club going, “Do you know what you’re doing?” I didn’t really care, though, because the bottom line was these people were in the wrong no matter who they were, plus they were talking while Lynne was doing my material. So I said to him, “Do you know what you’re doing? Do you know how to run a nightclub with people talking while the show is going on?”

  When I said this, that’s when Budd really got his nose bent out of joint, because it was Lindsay’s people and apparently these people here were the ones who issued the licenses and permits, so I guess he had reason to be concerned. He wouldn’t put me on for six whole months after that. He essentially ignored me every time I came in. So Danny wasn’t the only guy who had problems at the Improv because of Mayor Lindsay’s people. Danny was great. He taught me a lot about humanity.

  JERRY STILLER:

  Even though he wasn’t a comedian, Danny was very funny and he was always very connected to his background. He was also extremely protective of the other comics when it came to hecklers trying to disrupt our acts while we were onstage. He was literally like the Godfather in the sense that he would rear his presence. He would rarely ever do anything violent, but the minute they saw him, they’d usually shut up and so he was good to have around for that reason.

  BETTE MIDLER:

  He was this big, burly Italian guy and he welcomed basically everybody. Everyone felt comfortable around Danny and you never got the feeling he was going to hurt anybody or throw anyone out—at least I never saw him do it. He also never came out and said, “I’m an actor,” even though he obviously became one, and he’d take Budd’s place at the mic from time to time. Later on, after he made it big in the movies, I was always so proud whenever I’d see him on-screen.

  BUDDY MANTIA:

  Danny also loved Bette and I think they had a mutual appreciation for one another’s talent from the start. He was the first one I heard say, “She’s going to make it big.” When I asked him why, he said, “Because she’s smart, she knows where her audiences are, and she gets them.”

  JOE PISCOPO:

  Danny’s one of my dearest friends now, but we didn’t work at the Improv at the same time. Later on when I was there, though, he’d come back in as a customer and I was always in awe. It was the same thing with Robert Klein. I’d be like, “Wow, these guys both came out of the Improv and look where they are now.” It was New York show business at its finest.

  TWENTY-ONE

  The Improv and The Tonight Show

  Just as I knew I could always count on Danny to look after everybody’s best interests inside the Improv, I was also very fortunate to have another strong ally by the name of Craig Tennis on the outside. Born in New York and raised in the Midwest, Craig was a former public relations executive who had joined The Tonight Show in 1968, where he quickly rose to become Johnny Carson’s talent coordinator for the next eight years.

  Needless to say, The Tonight Show was, and still is, a very important part of all our lives. It was the peak of the highest mountain that nearly every comedian wanted to climb. The first guy we had who got on was a Catskills comic named Howard Mann. What made it especially meaningful was that Howard had been a struggling comedian for nearly thirty years before he finally got his big break, and it made me feel like a proud father even though I was nearly nine years younger than him.

  As has often happened when one of our comics has made their first appearance on The Tonight Show since then, Howard invited me to the taping. On the appointed evening, I and several others from the club were waiting with him backstage at NBC when this gorgeous woman dressed in a long evening gown came into the green room. Howard, being the archetypical, always-ready-with-a-line comedian he was, sauntered right up to her and said, “Hello, my dear. My name is Howard Mann, the comedian. What do you do?”

  The woman couldn’t have cared less. She just looked at him and said, “I’m Myra Breckenridge and I’m a producer.” Then she turned and walked away. What none of us knew at the time was that this woman was actually Raquel Welch.

  Anyway, Howard had a pretty decent set that night, although I’m not sure if he ever did The Tonight Show again. But regardless, Craig Tennis became our man there. While he handled many aspects of scheduling guests for the show, principally his job was auditioning new comedians and getting them ready for their appearances. He also had the formidable task of anticipating whom Johnny would like. It was never a precise science, although when it came to trying to exact the right formula, no one had a better track record than Craig. This, of course, made him an invaluable asset to us.

  CRAIG TENNIS:

  Johnny Carson was born in Corning, Iowa, and raised in Norfolk, Nebraska. I grew up in Sioux City, Iowa, which was halfway between those two cities. So I knew exactly how to talk to Carson because we grew up with people who had the same sense of morality, values, and economy.

  If I was on the phone explaining a sketch or something before a show, he’d say, “Tell me about it.” Then he’d say yes or no and just hang up. I grew up with people like that, who never wasted words. So I became a surrogate Carson—and I think it’s because I came from the same heritage as he did that I became very good at anticipating the kinds of comedians we should have on the show.

  Never in his life did Johnny say, “Have a good afternoon. I’ll see you on the set for rehearsal.” That never came out of his mouth. What also never came out of his mouth was, “How’s the wife and kids?” He never said that to anybody because he didn’t give a shit. If Johnny didn’t know you, he couldn’t care less.

  Early on, I learned to talk to him on a very abbreviated level, which was just fine with me. There were no wasted words and we got along great, but it wasn’t like he was going to invite me out for cocktails. By the same measure, I think our senses of humor were very parallel, so I would try to anticipate what he would like and that spilled over to my relationship with Budd, which was very symbiotic, because when I went to the Improv, it wasn’t just to catch one act. Usually, I would go in and spend the entire evening to see who was a comer, who I should keep an eye out for, who I should stop and talk to, and whether or not they were receptive to my suggestions—stuff like that.

  I would often see a lot of comics months, and sometimes even years, before they were ready. When I was there, they were aware of it. They were also aware that they were going to see me multiple times a week, or sometimes just once a week. The Improv was the place where I went to watch them get better or disappear, so it wasn’t something where I’d go in specifically to see just one person, although there were definitely instances when I might.

  It was my job to use the club as an educational tool for both me and them. I would know pretty much the twenty minutes they would do so that we could cut them down to six. My rule was you’d better have that second appearance ready and it better be better, because Carson was going to want you back in ten days and you had to score that second time. The third time meant that he was going to start looking at you as a potential threat, and if you could get past a fourth and fifth, that meant you were going to be okay.

  Budd always understood what I was there to do and we made each other laugh. He also understood what I could do for the Improv, and I always made damn sure that the club got mentioned whenever we had a comic on The Tonight Show who was a regular there. We understood that we were helping each other out. Were we ever going to hang out? Probably not, and we never really did, but it was a mutually benefic
ial relationship from the get-go.

  The Improv has happily always had a terrific relationship with The Tonight Show—and perhaps even more so in recent decades for sentimental reasons since both Jay Leno and Jimmy Fallon started with me. Certainly in the beginning, though, one of the biggest advantages we enjoyed was the fact that, like The Ed Sullivan Show, it was taped in New York, just blocks away from the club.

  However, by the spring of 1972—less than a year following CBS’s cancellation of Ed Sullivan after twenty-six seasons—both the Improv and the New York entertainment community were dealt a serious blow when NBC also made the unprecedented announcement that it was relocating The Tonight Show to Burbank, California. Though it would eventually be a major catalyst for my decision to open a second Improv in Los Angles in 1975, which I’ll get into later, at the time—especially given the predominance of comedians on both shows and with both shows now gone from New York—it felt as if the rug had been ripped right out from under me.

  A classic case of not fully appreciating what you have until you no longer have it, what especially worried me about The Tonight Show’s departure was how many comics had been plucked from us directly under Craig Tennis’s watch and that many of my best acts might leave now that the balance of comedic power was shifting to the West Coast. Another thing that puzzled me was why Johnny Carson had chosen to relocate in the first place, although as I later discovered, the decision had not entirely been his.

  CRAIG TENNIS: