A few days later, Tom and Dave took George for a drive. “We need to talk to you,” Dreesen said. “We’re really concerned about your drug use. It seems to be getting out of hand.”
“Oh, come on,” George protested. “It’s just recreational. I’m fine; don’t worry about it.” He was adamant that he would not go to rehab and said if they took him there, he would not get out of the car.
Letterman looked at Dreesen and shrugged, “Well, we tried.”
In the late 1970s, Hollywood was having a honeymoon with cocaine. The drug seemed tailor-made for the show business lifestyle—perfect for production crews working fourteen-hour shifts and six-day weeks on movie sets, just the thing for actors suddenly called to action after hours of sitting around waiting, a godsend for musicians dragging their tired asses off the tour bus for yet another two-hour show in yet another two-horse town.
Coke made its way into the comedy community, not surprisingly, around the time more and more people started getting paying gigs. Someone would come in off the road and walk into the 1586483173 text_rev.qxd:Layout 1 5/19/09 1:55 PM Page 129
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Westwood or Sunset club with a little extra swagger, and you could tell he was carrying. Having a little blow meant you could stay up drinking and partying a few hours longer. But coke was not like pot, a communal drug that could be passed around openly.
You couldn’t share your coke with a group because you couldn’t afford to. The best you could do was pick a friend or two to do
“bumps” with in the bathroom. Either that or hang with others who likewise were gainfully enough employed to have their own.
In that way, coke was a separator, a barrier between the haves and have-nots. In a line that always got a big laugh, particularly at the Sunset Store, Robin Williams observed, “Cocaine is God’s way of telling you that you’re making too much money.”
He would know. In the months since he had become a household name, Williams had turned into a party animal nonpareil.
Despite the rigors of a weekly TV show that was built around him, he was out on the town nearly every night, making the scene at Westwood and Sunset, at the Improv, at the Off the Wall studio in Hollywood. If there was a stage, he got on it. “Live performing, that’s my drug,” he told one interviewer. “I really do feel like a junky, not just for the laughs but the energy.”
Some of Williams’s fellow comics knew that his energy was fueled increasingly by cocaine. He was part of a group that regularly ended up back at Mitzi Shore’s house after the clubs closed on the weekend, drinking and snorting coke until near dawn. In addition to Williams, the gathering usually included Argus Hamilton, Biff Maynard, Ollie Joe Prater, Mike Binder, Richard Pryor, and Shore herself.
Pryor was the main attraction to the young comics. For them, to sit at the feet of the master while he told hilarious, wildly animated stories about his life in comedy was a near-religious experience.
The blow just made it last longer.
Word of the after-hours get-togethers quickly got around and created bad feelings toward Mitzi’s “pets.” The uninvited resented the special access to Shore, to Pryor, and to the coke.
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Straight-arrow Leno was upset for another reason. He thought the drugs and drinking were taking a toll on his two pals, Binder and Williams. He felt personally responsible for Mike because he’d told Burt Binder that his son was doing great out in Hollywood and promised to look out for him.
“You’re going over to Mitzi’s tonight, aren’t you,” Leno would say whenever Binder declined his invitation to come to his house after the show. “What are you doing that for? Why are you hanging out with those guys doing drugs? Don’t you see that you are wasting your talent. You should stay home and work on your act.”
But neither Binder nor any of the others heeded Leno’s warning, and the results eventually proved disastrous for all of them.
Williams was causing concern among his fellow comics for another reason in early 1979. Of the group that emigrated to Los Angeles in the mid-1970s, he was the first to hit it big. And no one had ever hit it bigger, not Freddie Prinze, not even Steve Martin. With Mork & Mindy atop the TV ratings, Williams’s fame was such that he wasn’t merely recognized in public—he was mobbed. Even at the usually too-hip Comedy Store, newcomer fans began hollering out Mork’s Orkan greeting, “Na-noo, na-noo,” when he took the stage. Williams was embarrassed by such outbursts and uncomfortable being treated like a celebrity.
But he didn’t exactly hide from the spotlight. He seemed to turn up on every talk show and at every celebrity event; camera crews and reporters trailed him wherever he went. His face was un-avoidable. Time magazine was about to put him on its cover, accompanied by the headline, “Chaos in Television, and What It Takes to Be No. 1.”
In Williams’s case, it took a lot of material. Much of what came out of Mork’s mouth came straight from Williams’s brain.
The show’s writers left him plenty of room to improvise by salting the script with stage directions like “Robin goes off here” in place of written dialog. The combination of Mork & Mindy, his club performances, extracurricular TV appearances, and constant me-1586483173 text_rev.qxd:Layout 1 5/19/09 1:55 PM Page 131
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dia interviews put extreme pressure on Williams to be “on” during every waking moment. And it was that pressure, some of his pals said, that led him to commit the cardinal sin of comedy: borrowing other comics’ material.
In a People magazine profile, Williams was depicted in full improvisational mode, suddenly interrupting the interview to answer a pretend telephone: “Suicide hotline. Hold please.” It was a funny bit, but, as Williams’s colleagues knew, it belonged to Gary Muledeer. He’d delivered the line many times at the Comedy Store with Williams in the crowd. In another instance, Williams uttered the vaguely druggie line “Reality, what a concept” so often that it became synonymous with him (and later the title of his first comedy album) instead of comedian Charles Fleisher, who had been saying it for years.
Williams attended a Gallagher show at the Ice House in Pasa -
dena one night when the watermelon-smashing comic joked from the stage, “You know, I think marijuana is great for old people because it slows down time. I gave my grandmother a kilo of Co -
lumbian and a ton of yarn, and I got back an Afghan big enough to cover a garage.”
A few nights later, Gallagher saw Williams on a talk show riff-ing about marijuana being good for old folks “because it makes time go so slow.”
“That little fuckhead sucked up the essence of my joke,” Gallagher was still complaining decades later.
Bill Kirchenbauer had a routine about playing Superman as a kid. He’d pull a towel out of his prop bag, tie it around his neck like a cape, run in a semicircle around the stage, then leap and land on a stool balanced on his stomach with his legs straight out in Superman flying position. It always got a great reaction from the crowd, in part because it was such an unexpectedly agile move for a man of Kirchenbauer’s ample size.
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his back, imitating the Man of Steel flying upside down. “Superman on drugs,” he said.
Everybody laughed except Kirchenbauer, who confronted Wil -
liams afterwards and lit into him. “I’m sorry, man, it just popped into my head right then,” Williams said by way of explanation,
“my mind gets going so fast.”
Tom Dreesen had a talk with Williams after he heard a line of his come out of Mork’s mouth in the show’s closing voice-over, when the lovable alien always reported his earthly observations back
to his home planet. Williams was so apologetic and seemed so genuinely distraught over the “mistake,” that Dreesen believed it truly had been inadvertent. He knew that Robin absorbed influences like a sponge, and given his wild performing style, it seemed entirely plausible that when he got on a roll and was literally spinning onstage, he really didn’t know what he was going to say next. Richard Lewis, who had a similarly frantic, off-the-top-of-his-head style, had stopped watching other comics perform for fear of unconsciously doing the same thing.
Bill Kirchenbauer and others didn’t buy it. These were no accidents, they argued. A comic knew when he was treading on another comic’s idea. They’d all seen one another’s act so many times that they knew every bit by heart. And everyone knew the rules: Whoever said it or did it first, owned it.
Before long, others were exaggerating the Dreesen-Williams conversation as an angry confrontation in which Dreesen had thrown Williams against the wall and threatened to punch him.
“Why do you think they call him Rob in,” was one joke going around. “Did you hear that Canter’s now has a Robin Williams sandwich? ” went another. “Yeah, they give you the bun, but you have to steal the meat.”
There was a measure of envy in the meanness. Williams had everything, all the talent, success, and money the others dreamed of. So, the idea that he would stoop to steal material on top of all that made people’s blood boil. It wasn’t like he was Ollie Joe 1586483173 text_rev.qxd:Layout 1 5/19/09 1:55 PM Page 133
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Prater, who stole material all the time but wasn’t very good, so nobody gave a shit. Ollie Joe didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of getting on The Tonight Show. But what if Robin blurted out one of your bits while yukking it up on Johnny’s couch? Accident or not, that material would be gone forever: You could never use it again or audiences would think you stole it from him. That’s why Kirchenbauer, Gallagher, and a few others decided they would no longer perform in front of Williams. If he was in the room, they wouldn’t go on.
The unpleasantness marked the first tear in the tightly knit fabric of the LA comedy community. Soon there would be others.
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Richard Lewis with New York pals at a
going-away party thrown for him the week
he moved to Los Angeles to appear as a
regular in an ill-fated Sonny and Cher TV
variety series. From left to right: Louis Hall, Larry David (of Curb Your Enthusiasm
fame), Lewis, and Mickey Appleman.
Portrait of a young comic: Richard
Lewis on the author’s back porch
in Westwood, CA, May 1979.
Photo by William Knoedelseder.
Richard Lewis is visited by his
mentor David Brenner on the
set of The 416th, a TV pilot
shot in the spring of 1979.
From Richard Lewis’s collection.
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Steve Lubetkin. Courtesy of Barry Lubetkin.
Steve Lubetkin and Susan Evans on
a weekend trip to Las Vegas in 1978,
a gift from Steve’s brother Barry.
Courtesy of Susan Evans.
The comedy team
Lubetkin and Evans, 1978.
Courtesy of Susan Evans.
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“The world’s fastest Caucasian”;
Tom Dreesen as a young father in
Dreesen performs with Tim Reid in the
Harvey, Illinois, in 1968 before he
early 1970s as part of the first and only
became a stand-up comic.
black-and-white stand-up comedy team.
A photo taken from Dreesen’s first
appearance on The Tonight Show,
December 9, 1975. The inscription
is to Jeanne and Willie Franks, the
husband-and-wife owners of the
Junction Lounge in his old
neighborhood in Harvey, where
Dreesen was the only white patron.
Courtesy of the Franks family.
Now a Tonight Show
veteran, Dreesen gets
to sit with Johnny.
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Mitzi Shore in the spring of 1979, just days Shore’s favorite photo of herself—young and
before the strike that changed everything.
sexy in a see-through blouse—which she
Photo by William Knoedelseder.
displayed on her desk and handed out
to young male comics. Courtesy of Lue Deck.
Budd Friedman perched
proudly in front of his
West Hollywood club in
January 1980, after the
comics helped him
rebuild from an arson fire
that almost put him out
of business. Photo by
William Knoedelseder.
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Best friends forever Tom Dreesen, George Miller, and David Letterman hanging out between shows at the Icehouse in Pasadena, circa 1977. From personal collection of Tom Dreesen.
Tom Dreesen with Letterman
on April 9, 1979, the night
Dave made his first guest-host
appearance on The Tonight
Show. Immediately after the
show, Dave made his first
appearance on the picket line,
breaking Mitzi Shore’s heart
in the process.
David Letterman sits for one
of his first major newspaper
interviews dressed in a
YMCA T-shirt, May 1979.
Photo by William Knoedelseder.
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Jay Leno, circa 1976, with his
ever-present pipe and hip 1970s
attire. Courtesy of Budd Friedman.
Jay Leno, with pipe in hand, surveys the
packed front room of the West Hollywood
Improv, circa 1976. In foreground, actor
Peter Riegert.
Jay Leno on the street outside his West
Hollywood apartment in May 1979.
Photo by William Knoedelseder.
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The Comedy Store “Bombers” basketball team, 1979. Courtesy of Lue Deck.
Tim and Tom (Reid and Dreesen) broke up
their historic black-and-white stage act but Dave Letterman, power forward and
remained teammates on the Bombers.
gum chewer. Courtesy of Lue Deck.
Courtesy of Lue Deck.
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Andy Kaufman performs at the West Hollywood Improv as club owner Budd Friedman (far right in rear) looks on. Photo courtesy of Budd Friedman.
Andy Kaufman doing his famous Elvis
impersonation complete with sequined
leather jacket and sneer, November
Andy Kaufman getting ready to wrestle
1978. Photo by William Knoedelseder.
on the author’s patio, November 1978.
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Elayne Boosler, relaxing in her West Hollywood apartment in May 1979.
Photo by William Knoedelseder.
Robin Williams mugs for Budd Friedman
(with his trademark monocle).
Courtesy of Budd Friedman.
Robin Williams, photographed in his
street clothes just prior to the debut of
Mork and Mindy.
Photo by William Knoedelseder.
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&nbs
p; Dottie Archibald, housewife
turned standup comic turned strike
organizer. She served as the model
for Sally Field’s character in the
1988 movie Punchline (with Tom
Hanks), which was written by
David Seltzer, her former neighbor
in Ojai, California.
Little girl on the picket line: Teenage TV star Alison Arngrim ( Little House on the Prairie) joins her fellow strikers outside the Comedy Store. Courtesy of Alison Arngrim.
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Putting it all on the line, April 1979: Jo Anne Astrow (kneeling, second from left); Steve Lubetkin (kneeling far right, holding the “Yuk Stops Here” sign); Mark Lonow (second row, second from left, leaning); Dottie Archibald (second row, in white tunic, holding the
“I said I wanna be a star” sign); Tom Dreesen (third row, far left, wearing Chicago Cubs jacket); and Ollie Joe Prater (back row, far left, in plaid shirt). Photo by Rick Bursky.
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Contact sheet for Steve Lubetkin’s professional head shots, circa 1976.
Courtesy of Barry Lubetkin.
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Order, Please
The late-night coke sessions at Mitzi Shore’s house did more than separate the haves from the have-nots, the pets from the peons. They served to further distance the men from the women since Shore was the only female who attended.
I'm Dying Up Here: Heartbreak and High Times in Stand-Up Comedy's Golden Era Page 14