We were a lot less confident when it came to two wannabe comics who were among her biggest supporters, Biff Maynard and Ollie Joe Prater, each of whom had well-known substance abuse problems and were just unstable and impressionable enough to maybe do it. We wouldn’t know for certain until 2014, nearly thirty years after the incident, when Ollie Joe confessed to setting the fire on his deathbed in a Los Angeles hospital.
But, of course, nobody could prove anything definitively at the time. And more pressing during the aftermath of the fire was how I was going to rebuild the club.
By that afternoon, however, things were beginning to slowly look up as I realized that even with my show room in ruins, the restaurant, bar, and the bathrooms were all fine. And so in the grand spirit of Improv tradition—doing something I first did on West 44th Street in 1963 and again when we’d opened on Melrose Avenue four years earlier—I decided to get my friends, staff, and a few of the comics to help me, most of whom volunteered.
Tom Archibald, an amateur electrician, patched a makeshift line from the alley to restore electricity, which his wife Dottie lent me the money for. Cliff Grisham, the piano player, was a fairly decent carpenter, and while the rest were pretty unskilled, we managed to wall off the scorched back room with sheets of plywood and build a makeshift stage in the front.
In some ways, it even felt like the old days when I was first getting ready to open in New York, especially since the new, temporary configuration sat seventy-four people, which was the exact number we originally had on West 44th Street.
Forty-eight hours after the fire, the Hollywood Improv was halfway back in business. And with comedy’s newest powerbroker Tom Dreesen convincing the comedians to work for free until we were fully operational again, we also managed to finagle a few of them to do benefits hosted by Robin Williams and Andy Kaufman that we appropriately called “Up from the Ashes.”
Collectively and individually, it was an amazing achievement that I’m extremely proud of, and the benefits Andy and Robin hosted certainly lived up to their name.
However, it would still take nearly another year before everything could be fully restored. Things were considerably more complicated now than they had been since the days I’d started out as an ambitious young dreamer on West 44th Street sixteen years earlier. Both personally and professionally, the stakes had become much higher. With my divorce from Silver almost final, and my forty-sixth birthday fast approaching, I seriously began to consider getting out of the comedy business.
THIRTY-THREE
Old Enemies and New Beginnings
BRUCE SMIRNOFF:
I moved to Hollywood to become a comic three weeks after Mork and Mindy premiered in September 1978. Unequivocally, it was absolutely one hundred thousand percent the worst thing I could have done at the time because I wasn’t ready and I wasn’t that good. When you get pronounced bad, it’s very hard to get out of.
The comedy scene had exploded by this point: Robin Williams was everywhere; and The Comedy Store, which had three rooms, was the place to be. Mitzi Shore was also the queen, and I remember our first encounter like it was yesterday. I was having coffee one afternoon at the Continental Hyatt House hotel next door with another comic Mitzi knew. She was seated a couple of tables away and when she came over to say hello to him, she took one look at me and said, “Who are you?”
When I told her my name, she said, “That’s one of the best faces I’ve ever seen for comedy. I’ll see you Monday night at my club.” Of course, I was flattered, although knowing I still needed more time to develop, I politely tried to decline and asked her if I could wait. However, Mitzi wouldn’t hear of it. She said, “Never mind. You don’t have to be ready. I know talent.”
I decided to give it a try anyway against my better judgment. So when I nervously showed up at the Store the following Monday night, it was predictably with the results I feared—after which I tried to thank her for giving me the opportunity and she just stared at me and said, “You stink. You have no talent. Don’t ever think about becoming a comedian.”
Suffice it to say, I was crushed by her rejection, but not completely deterred because I also went to the Improv on a Monday night not long after that. Mondays were their audition night where they drew everybody’s name out of a hat during a time when comedy was so hot that if you didn’t give up, you’d eventually go on, which I ultimately did.
I used to come in dressed in a jacket and tie, and I carried an attaché case. I took myself so seriously that I looked like an accountant, but I was definitely a cut above everyone else who basically came in looking like slobs. Because I did this on a regular basis, and I had a decent stage presence even if my material wasn’t great, Budd gradually let me emcee during the late show on Sunday nights.
I also became the doorman, where I took on more and more responsibilities, although right around the time I first got to the Improv, which was the year between Freddie Prinze’s death and the strike and the fire, the club wasn’t doing well. I really think it was Freddie who kept the place floating when Budd first opened in LA, but after he committed suicide it went downhill pretty quickly.
As the doorman, I would usually get to the club early in the afternoon, and one of the things I remember about this period was the guy who delivered the liquor coming in and shoving a pink slip under my nose, demanding to be paid. That’s how bad things had gotten and everything was falling apart. Plus, people were stealing from him—not the comics who wanted to go on, but the waiters—because Budd was so mean to everybody. He just didn’t give a shit and people were robbing him blind.
Though we’d survived and were back in business in less than two days, in the immediate weeks and months after the fire, I felt like a piece of my soul had also been singed. Not only that, a part of me felt like a failure even though Robin Williams and Andy Kaufman who’d held fundraisers for me were two of the hottest comics in the country at the time.
Still, I just couldn’t shake the feeling that the fire had somehow indirectly been my fault; that even though it had been ruled arson, I could have done something to prevent it if I’d only been smarter or at the very least been there that night. Nor did I feel any more comforted by the fact that because of Mitzi’s behavior during the strike and Steve Lubetkin’s subsequent suicide, she had essentially been declawed; or that Richard Lewis, Jay Leno, and Tom Dreesen never worked at The Comedy Store again.
Things might have been easier all the way around, of course, had one of us attempted to extend an olive branch and tried to reach some sort of truce. But considering all of the constant problems she’d caused me from the moment I came to Los Angeles, I wasn’t about to swallow my pride and make the first move, and neither did Mitzi.
Thus continued the turf war between the Hollywood Improv and The Comedy Store that for all intents and purposes still lingers to this day, even though Mitzi now suffers from Parkinson’s disease and is no longer at the helm. Though it was never as overt again after the strike and the fire, to say that the damage had already been done and the battle lines were drawn is putting it mildly. And while there were obvious exceptions, even if Mitzi hadn’t forced them to choose, there ultimately came a time when many comics only performed at the Improv.
DREW CAREY:
I had been to The Comedy Store to audition once when I was doing Star Search, which is why I came to LA to begin with. In between the time I won and lost, I went back to the Store to audition for Mitzi. The tryouts were held in a little room, and she had this thing where you could only do two or three minutes. I just remember feeling weird about the whole thing and I didn’t really like it there. The next time I came back to town after being on the road, I went to the Improv exclusively.
HOWIE MANDEL:
I was friends with another comedian named Mike Binder and it was through him that I got on at The Comedy Store. My fiancée and I were out in LA on vacation, and I’d auditioned on a dare, although I’d done stand-up in Canada before. So I went on at the Store and there was a
producer in the audience named George Foster, who had a game show called Make Me Laugh, which he immediately hired me to do for five episodes.
After that, I started getting calls from The Merv Griffin Show and The Mike Douglas Show, and so I briefly commuted back and forth from Canada before moving to LA in June 1979. As soon as I got to town, Mitzi invited me to come back to the Store. But within the first week of my being there, Steve Lubetkin committed suicide and people were still picketing.
I think that because I went on at The Comedy Store, I got caught up in all of this, although I had no idea at the time. The thought really never occurred to me that I was a Comedy Store guy and not an Improv guy. I was a comedy guy and so I used to hang out at the Improv anyway. The first time I went was right after the fire, and the first person I saw was Michael Richards.
It was in the bar area and he was literally leaning against the wall on the makeshift stage they had with his pants down around his ankles and drool coming out of his mouth, screaming “What the hell are you looking at?” to the audience. This went on for a good twenty minutes and it was the funniest thing I had ever seen in comedy. I wanted to be part of it because it was so bizarre, although I had already cemented my ownership to The Comedy Store.
BILL MAHER:
Would I have liked to work at the Store? Yeah, but they just never seemed to have any use for me. At the time, it was a different kind of place and I always felt the Improv was more pure for me at that point in my career because it was steadier. It was a place where you could go and see good comics—and where Budd, unlike Mitzi, nurtured real monologists.
JIMMY FALLON:
I worked the Store a couple of times back in the early nineties, but it was never my home. Even then, it’s like there were two separate families—The Comedy Store or the Improv. I was always an Improv guy.
BYRON ALLEN:
Mitzi favored the ones who only worked for her. For some reason, though, I was able to escape that, largely I think, because of my age, and Budd immediately became like a second father to me. So I was able to go back and forth, but I know Mitzi wasn’t happy about it.
STEVE MITTLEMAN:
Somehow—and I don’t exactly know how—I managed to work at both clubs. But it was definitely a delicate balance and Budd was much more easygoing about it than Mitzi was.
KEVIN NEALON:
Obviously, this wasn’t how it really was, but I’ll tell you that at first—and even though Mitzi never made me a regular because I worked for Budd—my initial impression was that they respected each other because they both owned comedy clubs even though they didn’t communicate much.
To tell you the truth, I never found that odd either, because they both had different styles of running their businesses. I had the impression that Mitzi was more reclusive, whereas Budd was more of a people person who enjoyed mingling with his customers and introducing the acts in the show room as the owner of the Improv. He enjoyed the attention and recognition, but I don’t think Mitzi did.
JERRY SEINFELD:
The Comedy Store was where my manager, George Shapiro, first saw me in the early eighties, but I was never comfortable there, so the Improv was always my home club in LA, and I’ll tell you why. I’m a very independent person and I didn’t think I needed anybody’s help, which in my opinion and from my observation was the antithesis of what Mitzi liked. She was looking for the wounded birds that would flock around her for help. People would do anything to get on at The Comedy Store. I just wasn’t that kind of guy, so I never tried to get on there at all.
BILLY CRYSTAL:
In New York, Catch A Rising Star was my main club and I worked at the Store a few times when I first moved to LA in 1976. But I knew Budd from New York, and when he opened on the West Coast I started going to Melrose. I liked the stage better, plus it felt a little less desperate than the Store, which was always more touristy. Budd was always very grateful to me for that.
RITCH SHYDNER:
Thanks to a few people who championed me, I got to play both clubs, although I sometimes used to think that the people who did the bookings at the Store checked the Improv’s schedule and vice versa. Before they gave you a spot, it wasn’t uncommon for them to arrange to put you on at the exact same times just to throw the other one off.
I remember once going to the Store and this guy blocking me in the entranceway and telling me that I was an Improv act. I was like, “I’m an anywhere-I-want-to-get-on act, you better move out of my way.” I always found the politics of the Store to be strange. Mitzi also had this weird thing she used to do with crystals where she’d sit you down at a table to see how your aura fit in.
CATHY LADMAN:
From a pure fun standpoint, the Improv had it hands down over The Comedy Store, which was a dark and kind of creepy place. Some people even said it was haunted, which I don’t doubt, and it wasn’t wholesome at all whereas the Improv had a much lighter vibe to it.
One thing I’ll say about Mitzi, though, is that she was much more nurturing to female comics than Budd was. I never experienced any overt male chauvinism on Budd’s part, but Mitzi was definitely more welcoming and I’ll give you an example. Not long after I moved to LA in the mideighties, George Schlatter, who created Laugh-In, was producing a new series for NBC called The Shape of Things.
It turned out to be a flop, but it had a unique premise about funny things that happen in everyday life, and one of the segments was about the women from The Comedy Store. At first, Mitzi wasn’t going to use me because I was new, but she wound up putting me on at the last minute, and it was during those rehearsals that she also arranged for The Tonight Show’s talent coordinator Jim McCawley to come see Roseanne Barr, which led to her first appearance on Johnny Carson.
DAVID SPADE:
I never even met Mitzi, but comedian Louie Anderson, who was a friend of a friend of mine, said he could get me an audition, which he did. Afterwards, I waited out front while he went to talk to her and he came back a few minutes later and said, “Sorry, she didn’t like it.”
My response at the time was, “What’s not to like?” although I didn’t have a great set, in all honesty. What happened was that right before, I had a drink at the bar and I took an aspirin that got stuck in my throat, which threw me off. I should have been able to overcome that, but regardless, she just didn’t like my style or she felt I wasn’t ready. And I get that—especially since I thought it was a long shot to begin with.
Budd was a lot easier on me. He liked the fact that I looked fifteen because he had no one like me.
MAX ALEXANDER:
I moved to LA from New York in the winter of 1984 to do a TV pilot. They put me up in the Continental Hyatt House hotel next door to The Comedy Store, and Paul Provenza, George Wallace, and a comedy manager named Rick Messina arranged for me to audition for Mitzi on the night I arrived. I was exhausted from my trip, but I decided to do it anyway because I was scheduled to go on at eight o’clock, which never happened. Instead, she kept me waiting for two hours, and I was starting to get pissed because in the meantime she put this young comic from San Francisco on who was being billed as the next Robin Williams.
He wasn’t, but that was beside the point. The point was that she’d made me wait and when I finally did go on at ten o’clock, I had a good set. It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t mediocre either, and what I mean by that is that all my jokes worked and people laughed even though I didn’t bring the house down. I was feeling pretty confident when I got offstage, but when I went up to Mitzi afterwards and asked if she was going to make me a regular, she just looked at me and said, “All we need is another fat Jew in the business.”
That was when I absolutely lost it and called her a cunt right to her face before storming out of the club. When I arrived back at my hotel room about ten minutes later, I flopped down on the bed without turning on the lights or removing my suitcase, which was lying unopened on top. But then, right as the seriousness of what I’d just said to Mitzi was hitting me like a
ton of bricks, the phone rang. It was Rick Messina calling to tell me he’d arranged an audition with Budd for me for the following night. Before we hung up, the last thing he said to me was, “Do me a favor. Don’t call Budd Friedman a cunt.”
I went to the Improv the next night, and in those days I was a heavyset guy. A good part of my act was about my weight, and I used to wear these colorful boxer shorts with the top hanging out. And for some reason, I either wasn’t wearing a belt or it wasn’t tight enough because I was so nervous and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out what happened next.
As the emcee announced me while I walked towards the stage, my pants dropped down to my ankles and I was standing there in nothing but my shirt and boxer shorts, which either had polka dots or giant hearts on them. It wasn’t pretty, and when I made it to the stage I was so flummoxed that I forgot my entire routine. All I could think of to say was, “That’s all I’ve got,” and I left.
Just as I did, I noticed Budd standing in the back, doubled over. When he finally stopped laughing, he said, “Don’t drop your pants onstage anymore.”
Between 1979 and 1982, one unspoken partiality followed another. The tension got so bad that the Sunday LA Times Calendar section even ran a cover story called “Did You Hear the One about Budd and Mitzi?—Their Feud Isn’t Funny to Hollywood’s Young Comics,” which ran on Halloween 1982 no less.
But as all my well-documented troubles with Mitzi were being rehashed in the pages of the LA Times, in the grand scheme of things, I didn’t really care, especially since my personal life had also recently taken a positive turn in the form of a new marriage following my divorce from Silver, which had become official in the summer of 1979. Though I had been relieved that our troubled marriage was finally over, I paid an emotional price that was far more heartbreaking than relinquishing my New York club when our daughters, Zoe and Beth, who were then nine and ten, went back East to live with her.
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