I'm Dying Up Here: Heartbreak and High Times in Stand-Up Comedy's Golden Era

by William Knoedelseder

  A few nights after the CFC vote, Friedman took a rare night off from the Improv and went on a double date with Dottie and Tom Archibald to see Bobby Short at a club in Century City. His plan was to be back at the club before midnight to close up.

  Around 11:00 p.m., a young singer named Barbara McGraw was on stage at Melrose, bantering with the midweek audience of about forty people. As she was introducing her next song, the piano player, Cliff Grisham, whispered to her, “Barb, I think I smell smoke.” She went ahead with the song, but two verses into it she smelled the smoke, too. It was coming through the back wall right behind them. The audience hadn’t noticed yet.

  “Excuse me, everyone, but we’re smelling smoke up here,” McGraw said, “so we think it might be wise if we all got up and left the room until we can check this out.”

  The patrons picked up their drinks and calmly filed out of the room, down the short hallway and into the bar area. McGraw and Grisham were the last ones out, and by the time they got into the bar, the smoke was billowing out of the back room. They suddenly remembered that Budd had installed a new sound system a few 1586483173 text_rev.qxd:Layout 1 5/19/09 1:55 PM Page 177

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  days earlier. “We should go back and see if we can at least get the sound board,” McGraw said. They went back in, but there was too much smoke to see. By the time they made their way back out to the bar, it was filled with smoke, too. The bartender had called the fire department, and people were hurrying out the front door to the street.

  Several blocks away, Budd was sitting with his date in the back seat of the Archibalds’ car as it inched along in oddly heavy traffic. “What the hell is this? ” he asked, seconds before the smell of smoke wafted through the car windows with the answer. “Oh, my God,” he shouted, “it’s the club!” He jumped out of the car while it was still moving and ran down the sidewalk.

  Driving down Melrose Avenue from the opposite direction, Robert Schimmel and his wife encountered the same acrid smoke and traffic snarl. Schimmel, a stereo salesman turned stand-up comic from Scottsdale, Arizona, was excited to show his wife the club where he was going to be working. He’d performed there several months before on an open mike night, prompted by a dare from his sister. It was his first time on stage. Afterwards, Budd Friedman had come up to him and invited him to “come back and play the club anytime.” An ecstatic Schimmel went home to Scotts dale, quit his job at Jerry’s Audio, and convinced his wife that they should sell their house and move to Los Angeles. They were just now arriving in town. He’d pulled off the Hollywood freeway to give her a peek at their bright future.

  “Oh, great,” she said when they got close enough to read the sign on the front of the burning building.

  “It’ll be okay,” he said, as much to reassure himself as her.

  “They have to be insured.”

  Around the perimeter set up by firefighters, the club’s performers and denizens huddled together in heartbroken disbelief as the flames at the back of the building licked the sky. Many were crying.

  This was the center of their lives, their family room. Their home was burning down.

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  Robert Schimmel parked his car a few blocks away and jogged back to the scene, where he found Budd Friedman pacing back and forth in the street, running his hands through his hair, his eyes brimming with tears.

  “Jesus, Budd, I can’t believe this,” he said.

  Friedman looked at him and asked, “Who are you? ”

  Schimmel reintroduced himself, explaining, “You told me that I was funny and to sign up for spots.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m trying to deal with this right now,” Friedman said as he turned away.

  By the time the firemen extinguished the blaze, the back room, more than half the structure, was gone. Few who were inside when the fire started had left the scene, as if by staying they could somehow make everything come out alright. Friedman picked through the blackened ruins, a picture of despair. He knew that his fire insurance policy wouldn’t begin to cover the loss. “I’m out of business,” he kept saying, “I’m out of business.”

  News of the fire hit the comedy community like a thunderclap.

  The phone lines lit up over night, and even though the blaze didn’t make the morning paper, by midmorning the next day, it was hard to find a comic who hadn’t heard that the fire department had ruled it arson. The fire had started outside in the rear of the building, where an alley provided easy access and quick escape for someone with an incendiary device. The question was asked over and over again in the conversations among comics: “You think Mitzi had anything to do with it?” The answer was usually,

  “Nah.” Mitzi might be volatile and vindictive, the reasoning went, but she wasn’t evil or insane. People were less sure about some of her supporters, however. Based on what Robin the waitress had told him a few nights before, Tom Dreesen would have put money on either Biff Maynard or Ollie Joe Prater as the cul-prit. Both had well-known substance-abuse problems and were just crazy enough to toss a Molotov cocktail onto the roof of Mitzi’s main competitor in some fucked-up act of loyalty. Word 1586483173 text_rev.qxd:Layout 1 5/19/09 1:55 PM Page 179

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  from inside the Comedy Store was that Mitzi was elated about the fire, figuring it solved her problem: The comics would never strike now. With the Improv shut down, she was once again the only game in town.

  With a mixture of self-interest and altruism, performers started showing up at the Improv the morning after the fire, asking if they could do anything to help. Budd Friedman put all comers to work. Things were looking better in the bright light of day, and Budd was talking about reopening. The back room was toast, but the restrooms were okay, as were the bar and restaurant. Tom Archibald, a self-taught electrician, had patched in a line from the alley to restore power to the building. Cliff the piano player was a pretty good carpenter. The comics, singers, waitresses, and bartenders were mostly unskilled, but they made up for it in determination, and by the end of the day, they had pulled off a West Hollywood version of a barn raising. They’d walled off the charred back room with sheets of plywood and fashioned a small makeshift stage on the far side of the dining room. The new con-figuration seated only seventy-four, the exact same number as the New York Improv back when it first opened. Rebuilding the back room was going to take time and a lot of money Budd didn’t have, but he’d already received two heartening phone calls—

  both Robin Williams and Andy Kaufman volunteered to perform benefits for the club.

  Forty-eight hours after the fire, Budd was back in business, but before he put a single comic on his new stage, he placed a call to the comedy world’s newest power broker, Tom Dreesen.

  “Tom, I’m really hoping you guys won’t put me on the front line of this labor thing until I’m fully up and running again from the fire,” he said. “If you strike me now, I’m dead.”

  It was a stunning turnabout: The imperious proprietor of the Improv gone supplicant before a mere comic.

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  wanted to see the Improv go under, except perhaps Mitzi. The CFC needed the Improv to remain open as a counterbalance to the Comedy Store. If the Improv closed, then once again Mitzi would hold all the cards, and the newfound unity among comics would dissolve quickly as individual career concerns chipped away at their collective resolve. It all came down to time slots. The comics needed a stage where they could be seen by the people who hired them. If there were no Improv, if Mitzi owned the only stage, then they were screwed. They had to keep the Improv open if they were to succeed.

  Even so, Dreesen knew he cou
ldn’t make some unilateral deal with Friedman and let him off the hook. He knew from his time with the Teamsters that when management asks for a concession, however reasonable, you don’t grant it without getting a concession in return. He needed something he could take back to the membership for a vote.

  “Will you agree in principle to abide by whatever deal we end up making with Mitzi? ” he asked.

  “Yes,” Friedman replied.

  “Will you put it in writing? ”

  “Yes.”

  “I think the comics will go for that,” Dreesen said. He hung up elated. They had their first victory.

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  The Vote

  Mitzi Shore was not going down that easily. In the dark laby -

  rinth of the Sunset Store, she was hunkered down with lawyers and loyalists, trying to figure out how to beat back the barbarians at her gate. Her enmity for Tom Dreesen knew no bounds. This was all his doing, she was convinced. Jay Leno, David Letterman, and the rest never would have done this on their own initiative.

  Dreesen had put them up to it, she said; he’d whispered in their ears like Shakespeare’s Iago.

  Shore’s lawyer assured her that the comics couldn’t strike because, legally, they weren’t really her employees. They were independent contractors. So they could stage a “walkout,” declare a

  “boycott,” and carry picket signs in front of the club, but they could not “strike.” That was cold comfort to Shore, who didn’t see the difference. In either case, they could parade around on the sidewalk on Sunset, telling her customers and the world that she was unfair. After all she had done for them! She seethed at the ingratitude, ached at the betrayal.

  The Comedy Store’s press agent, Estelle Endler, convinced Shore to sit for an interview with the Los Angeles Times—

  something she’d never done. Shore liked publicity but hated talking 181

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  to the press. She preferred to have the comics speak for her and the Store, encouraging them to plug the club whenever they appeared on TV. The gambit had worked well in the past, but it wasn’t going to get her through the current crisis. As Endler explained, the Times was working on a story about the burgeoning labor dispute, and a lot of comics were talking, telling their side of the story, not hers. She needed to get her truth out there, to explain her vision for the Store.

  So, on a midweek afternoon, a Times reporter was escorted down a narrow passageway and into Shore’s office, where no jour-nalist had gone before. The Comedy Store president sat at her desk with a wall full of framed eight-by-ten photos to her right: Richard Pryor, Robin Williams, Jimmie Walker, David Letterman, Jay Leno, all her favorites. “They were all born here,” she said. “When Letterman came here, he was very inhibited, so I put him on as an emcee for two years because that’s what his need was, to learn how to talk to a room full of people.”

  Over the course of nearly an hour, Shore downplayed the recent dissension over pay and made a passionate case for the purity and high purpose of her creation. “The vibes are here, the love is here, the productivity—it’s just a wonderful environment,” she said. “My God, the stand-up comic is the most courageous person in the whole business because he’s standing out there by himself with no script, with no one to depend on but himself. It’s totally courageous, and that’s why I’ve got my guts in this business.”

  The way she described it, the Comedy Store was a completely altruistic enterprise. “I’m expanding because I need more time slots for comedians to work out. Any money I get goes back into the business, giving it facilities to meet the needs of the comics. I don’t take trips to Europe with it, you know.”

  The Times sit-down was the first in a series of press interviews that publicist Endler lined up for Shore. Another was with People magazine, which had responded to Endler’s pitch about the general wonderfulness of “LA’s newest comics’ showcase, the Belly Room.”

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  The resultant article was a masterpiece of PR sleight of hand: It said nothing about the pay dispute while repeating the legend that Mitzi had founded the club out of love for comedians and put “all the money back into the business.” It included cameos by Robin Williams (calling Mitzi “the godmother of comedy”) and Jimmie Walker (hailing her as “the patron saint of comedy”). It featured a photo of Mitzi in a group hug with eleven Belly Room comediennes beaming so broadly they looked as if they might be high on nitrous oxide. And it gave no hint that seven of the eleven women—not to mention Williams and Walker—had pledged alle-giance to the dissident CFC. But the biggest howler in the article, from the comics’ point of view, was the photo of Mitzi in her front yard playing with sons Peter, thirteen, and Pauly, eleven. The photo caption read, “Outside her manse, Mitzi rains motherly love on Peter as Pauly wheels up [on his bicycle].” Endler was good, there was no denying it. The People article lacked only a quote from someone calling Mitzi “the Mother Theresa of Sunset Strip.”

  The CFC, meanwhile, was scrambling to counter the Comedy Store’s PR blitz. The group’s first official press release, issued March 12, succinctly defined the organization and the scope of its mission: “‘Comedians for Compensation’ was recently organized by over 120 of the comedians regularly performing at the Sunset Strip and Westwood Comedy Stores for the purpose of receiving fair compensation for their services at those locations and certain other clubs throughout the entertainment industry. The practices at the Comedy Store, however, were considered illustrative.”

  Noting that the club had grown from “a 150-seat local workshop on Sunset Strip to a nationally publicized nightclub with 900

  seats and enforced cover charge and drink minimum policies,” the release said that

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  regardless of his or her industry stature or reputation. This request was rejected by Ms. Shore, who emphasized that only certain performers should be paid and that it was “inappropriate” for all of the comedians to be compensated. The performers’ group described Ms. Shore’s position as grossly unfair.

  The release was terse, to the point, and unemotional, indicating that it had not been written by any of the comics. Indeed, the final paragraph revealed that the CFC had enlisted some heavyweight help and was now “represented by Kenneth L. Browning of the Beverly Hills law firm of Bushkin, Kopelson, Gaims & Gaines.” If Mitzi hadn’t realized it before, she knew it now: The comics had Johnny Carson’s lawyers on their side. Things were about to get bombastic.

  Over the next week, in a fevered effort to turn what had started as an impromptu bitch session among five headliners into a legitimate collective bargaining issue for more than one hundred performers, comics turned labor activists shuttled back and forth between the dual CFC headquarters at the Astrow-Lonow residence on South Spalding in Beverly Hills and Dreesen’s home on Costello Street in Sherman Oaks. They formed an interim board, named committee heads, and established contact with the two major performers’ unions, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) and the Screen Actors Guild (SAG).

  They began initial planning for a possible strike. The learning curve was steep, and their biggest fear was being seen as ridiculous.

  They were comedians, after all, and they knew how they would lampoon what they were doing if they were on the other side. They could already hear the punch line: “the biggest joke ever to come out of the Comedy Store” (ba-dump-bump).

  For the next meeting, Jo Anne Astrow persuaded the Continental Hyat
t House on Sunset to donate its large conference room on the fourteenth floor. All comics on the phone list were contacted and invited to attend, be they CFC members or Mitzi 1586483173 text_rev.qxd:Layout 1 5/19/09 1:55 PM Page 185

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  loyalists. The main issue, they were told, would be whether to authorize the leadership to call a strike. It would be put to a vote.

  The turnout was the largest yet, and the mood was tense.

  Chairman Dreesen wore a suit and tie for the occasion. He knew Leno would mock him mercilessly, but he wanted to bring home the seriousness of what they were about. He was still praying that a solution could be found, a settlement reached short of picket lines and public protests, but he knew they were getting perilously close to the point of no return. He opened the meeting by saying that everyone would be given a chance to speak his or her mind, even if it took all night.

  A few minutes into the meeting, way in the back of the room, Gallagher raised his hand and was recognized by the chair. He was a prickly personality who usually had a sarcastic word to say about everything. But as everyone turned to hear what caustic comment he might offer up, he surprised them all. “Before we take this vote, I want to remind the people in the room that we all got our start because of Mitzi Shore,” he said. “She fed us, and she gave us stage time.” He credited her with encouraging what had become the centerpiece of his act, the “sledge-o-matic.” He’d first performed the bit at the Westwood Store on New Year’s Eve, splattering the unsuspecting patrons with flecks of pulverized apple. Some club owners would have been pissed about the mess, but Mitzi thought it was a scream and urged him to go with even bigger fruit. “And after you hit it, stay in that posture and milk the laugh,” she advised.