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

by William Knoedelseder

  To make matters worse, a club that the CFC had touted as one of its saving alternatives to the Comedy Store, Jerry Van Dyke’s, 1586483173 text_rev.qxd:Layout 1 5/19/09 1:55 PM Page 238

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  closed due to financial difficulties. Humperdinck’s, too, was struggling. The comics had won their battle to be paid, but apparently it was a pyrrhic victory.

  The deteriorating situation coincided with a downward spiral in Lubetkin’s mental state. As he saw it, his worst fear had been realized: He was broke, blackballed from the Comedy Store, and effectively banished from the business of comedy. Over and over he told Susan and his CFC brethren that his career was finished, that Mitzi was going to make sure he never worked in LA again. It didn’t help his frame of mind when, on May 20, the Los Angeles Times’ Sunday Calendar section ran a big spread headlined “The Diary of Four Young Comics” that profiled Richard Lewis along with Jay Leno, David Letterman, and Elayne Boosler as the

  “hottest stand-up comics to recently emerge from the comedy club system.” He was happy for Richard but sad for himself. He sounded listless and despondent when he called his brother, Barry, that week. “Something’s not right. He wasn’t making much sense; he was not himself,” Barry told his wife, Ginny, as he packed for a flight to Los Angeles the next day.

  In LA, Susan told Barry about the faces and confirmed that Steve had gone into an emotional tailspin since the strike ended. A practicing psychologist, Barry spent the next few days hanging out with Steve and casually probing for clues to what was going on with him psychically. Steve wasn’t hallucinating, hearing voices, or using drugs (other than his usual pot), but he was clearly depressed, enveloped in sadness, particularly about his sundered relationship with Mitzi Shore. He talked constantly about losing the gig in La Jolla and how unfair it was. He talked about how much he loved Susan and his fellow comics. For the most part, he was rational, but at times his conversation consisted of a flight of ideas that would suddenly shift to something entirely unconnected. At one point, Steve broke down sobbing, hugging Barry closely and saying that he

  “would give anything if I could just talk to Mom one more time.”

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  Barry arranged an appointment for Steve with a psychiatrist he knew who practiced out of Veteran’s Hospital in West Los Angeles. He drove Steve to the appointment and nervously read magazines in the waiting room while Steve talked to the doctor. During the drive home, Steve said the doctor thought he was depressed for all the obvious reasons, and he’d set up another appointment for the following week on May 31, but he had prescribed no anti-depressant drugs. Over the next few days, Steve’s outlook seemed to improve, and Barry flew back to New York cautiously hopeful that a crisis had been averted.

  On Friday morning, June 1, Steve and several other CFC executive committee members met with AGVA’s business agents at the union’s Hollywood headquarters. They didn’t like AGVA, but it appeared to them that Mitzi had no intention of living up to the agreement, so they wanted to see if the union had any ideas for helping them. They came away after an hour convinced that an affiliation with AGVA was not a solution to their problems.

  Late that afternoon, Jo Anne Astrow convened a meeting at her house . Lubetkin attended, along with Astrow’s husband Mark Lonow, Dottie Archibald, George Miller, Elayne Boosler, and CFC

  secretary Susan Sweetzer. The situation was worse than ever, with a rash of complaints coming in from members freaked out about the dearth of time slots. The brand-new brotherhood of stand-up comedians appeared to be bombing, with comics bickering among themselves and threatening to break ranks. Some wanted to return to working for free at Westwood if Shore would reopen the club.

  In the battle for stage time, it was beginning to look like every comic for him- or herself. The committee tried to reach Shore by phone but was told that she was out of town. They wished that Tom Dreesen and Jay Leno were there with them—Tom for his cool in the midst of crisis and Jay for his leavening sense of silly.

  Lubetkin remained uncharacteristically calm during the sometimes chaotic meeting. At one point, he seemed to be filling in for 1586483173 text_rev.qxd:Layout 1 5/19/09 1:55 PM Page 240

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  Jay when he executed a series of pratfalls off the couch, doing goofy shoulder rolls onto the floor.

  The committee members were commiserating about the fact that for the third week in a row none of them had been given any time slots when Steve suddenly stood up and announced that he

  “had an appointment.” On his way out the door, he stopped and turned to them. “I want you all not to worry anymore,” he said.

  “Everything is going to be fine. I’m going to take care of it.” When he was gone, the others exchanged looks and shrugged. Whatever.

  Lubetkin drove to the Sunset Strip and parked his Buick on Queens Road, around the corner from the Comedy Store. Leaving the keys in the ignition, he walked east on Sunset and passed right in front of the club, where he ran into comic Mitch Walters, who greeted him warmly and wanted to chat. Lubetkin said he needed to take a walk up the street but would be right back.

  “You look terrible,” Walters said as Steve walked away. “Is everything alright? ”

  A few minutes later, at approximately 6:40 p.m., Kent January looked out the window of his apartment at 8440 Sunset, across the street from the Comedy Store, and noticed a man on the roof of the Continental Hyatt House. Then, as January watched in horror, the man suddenly leaped off the building.

  Segio Sais and Julie Abarzu were walking together about fifty feet from the Hyatt when they heard a scream, turned, and saw a body hurtling down from the roof, head first with arms spread out, toward the concrete parking lot.

  The body hit with such impact from the 105-foot drop that it sounded like a small explosion to Robert Delagran, who was staying in Room 926 at the Hyatt. He heard someone screaming, looked out the window, and saw a woman pointing to where a body was lying on the pavement. He called the lobby and said, “I think somebody just jumped off your building.”

  Donald Hicks, the hotel’s chief maintenance engineer, bolted out the front door of the hotel and around the side to where a man 1586483173 text_rev.qxd:Layout 1 5/19/09 1:55 PM Page 241

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  was lying about twenty feet from the building on the ramp leading to the Comedy Store parking lot. Blood was flowing from the man’s nose and ears, and he had a gaping wound in his forehead.

  Hicks felt the man’s left wrist for a pulse but couldn’t find one.

  Paramedics arrived within few minutes but were unable to revive the victim. They were followed an hour later by four police investigators, one of whom pulled a handwritten note from the left hip pocket of the dead man’s faded blue jeans.

  My name is Steve Lubetkin. Call Susan Evans at 403-7861.

  I used to work at the Comedy Store. Maybe this will help to bring about fairness.

  To Barry—I love you. You’ve been generous and good to me always.

  To Dad—I love you for raising me and giving me my sense of humor.

  To Susan—I love you but it would have been hell for us to continue.

  To Mom—I’ll be joining you soon. I love you.

  To Ginny—I love you, beautiful sister-in-law. You’re terrific.

  To Rich Lewis—You’re the best blood brother a man can have. I love you.

  To the CFC—I guess nice guys do finish last.

  To the world—Fairness, fairness, fairness, please, before it’s too late.

  To all comedians—Unite, it’s in your best interest.

  Suze—Play my “dum dum dum last set in Westwood” cassette at the funeral in LA. Bury me next to Mom in New York.

  No revenge, please, only love.

  Lubetkin’s body lay on the concrete covered by a pol
ice tarpau-lin for more than two hours before an investigator from the coroner’s office arrived to examine it. He noted “multiple crushing wounds to chest, face and head.” A hundred feet away, the show 1586483173 text_rev.qxd:Layout 1 5/19/09 1:55 PM Page 242

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  was going on at the Comedy Store, where the comics and staff were buzzing with macabre jokes about “the jumper” next door.

  No one thought to connect the grim scene outside to their world until a police detective walked up to the front entrance of the club and asked if the owner was present. Lue Deck, who was working as the night manager, told him that Mitzi was in La Jolla. The officer wrote down her name and telephone number and then told Deck it appeared the “decedent” may have been a Comedy Store employee. He handed Deck a plastic baggie containing Lubetkin’s driver’s license.

  “Did you know him? ” the detective asked.

  Deck recoiled. The license was smeared with blood. He confirmed that Lubetkin had worked at the club on and off for the past several years, but he refused the detective’s request that he walk over and identify the body.

  “I can’t,” he said. “I don’t think I could handle it.”

  As the word of the jumper’s identity ricocheted around the club, Susan Evans arrived home from work to find two policemen waiting by her door. “We need to talk to you,” one of them said.

  She listened to what they said but could not speak a word in response. Neither could she cry. She was numb, in shock.

  When the police left, she called Barry in New York. “Steve’s dead,” she told him. “He jumped off a building next to the Comedy Store.” She couldn’t bear to stay in the apartment, didn’t even want to look around. She walked out in a daze and sometime later found herself wandering the second-floor back hallways of the Comedy Store. In an empty room, she came upon a framed poster from Dante Shocko leaning against a desk. She and Steve had one hanging on the wall in the hallway outside their apartment, but she was surprised to find one in the Comedy Store. She could hear muffled laughter from a show downstairs, but it was all very strange and quiet around her. She picked up the poster and took it into Mitzi’s office, propped it up on a sofa opposite the desk, and wrote on the wall above it in Magic Marker, “Got the message.”

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  Lue Deck walked into the office at that point and thought at first that he was interrupting a burglary. But he realized who and what he was dealing with when the apparently disoriented woman said softly, “Mitzi killed Steve.” He led her gently by the arm out the back door of the club and turned her over to a group of comics who seemed to know her.

  Richard Lewis arrived at the Improv that night already distraught because he had broken up with Nina the day before. She was now on a plane back to Copenhagen, and he was feeling more alone than he had in his entire life. He hoped a couple of drinks and a good set would help fill the void. But as he crossed the room by the bar, a comic he barely knew called out to him,

  “Hey, Lewis, did you hear about Lubetkin? He jumped off the Hyatt House and killed himself.” In an explosion of rage at what he thought was some sort of sick joke, Lewis grabbed the guy by his shirt front, slammed him up against the wall, and screamed,

  “If you’re fucking with me, I will fucking kill you.”

  The two were quickly separated, and others present said that they, too, had heard that Steve was dead; apparently, the police had confirmed it with the Comedy Store. In a state of shock, Lewis asked a friend to drive him to Steve’s apartment. He knocked and called out, but Susan was not home. He was wracked with guilt because he hadn’t told anyone about Steve’s seeing faces in the rug.

  Maybe if he had, then Steve could have gotten help and would still be alive. So I’m responsible for my best friend’s death, he thought.

  Back at the Improv, he sat down at the bar and started in on a bender that would last fifteen years.

  Shortly before midnight, Tom Dreesen was in his dressing room getting ready to go on stage at Harrah’s in Lake Tahoe when the phone rang. It was Leno, mistakenly thinking he was calling just as Tom was coming off stage.

  “Did you hear? ” Leno asked. “Steve Lubetkin committed suicide by jumping off the Hyatt House.”

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  “Oh fuck, please don’t tell me that,” Dreesen replied, flashing on his last conversation with Steve.

  “He left a note about not being allowed to work at the Comedy Store anymore,” Leno said, his voice quavering.

  Dreesen’s mind reeled. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” was all he could think of to say. Then came the knock at the door.

  “Two minutes, Mr. Dreesen.”

  Later that night, after the most difficult performance of his career, Dreesen sat on the bed in his hotel room blaming himself for what had happened: If I had just left the fucking thing alone and not jumped up to chair that first meeting, then Steve would still be alive. Once again, he thought of the promise he made: I won’t go back until you go back.

  He was going to keep that promise. Since Steve was never going back to the Comedy Store again, neither was he.

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  A Standing Ovation

  Barry and Ginny Lubetkin arrived in Los Angeles the next day, having left New York without even telling Jack Lubetkin that Steve was dead. They weren’t sure the seventy-six-year-old patri-arch was strong enough to hear the news that his youngest son had died in such a manner. They needed time to think, and the circumstances did not allow for that.

  During the flight, Barry could think only about how he had let Steve down. He was a mental health professional, after all. He was supposed to be able to anticipate such things. How could he have missed it? What had blinded him to the fact that his little brother was in danger of taking his own life? If only he’d stayed longer or taken Steve back to New York for treatment. He knew he was going to regret his decision to leave for the rest of his life.

  The trip to LA was supposed to be a private family matter to finalize Steve’s affairs and escort his body back home. The couple wasn’t expecting to land in the middle of a publicized show business controversy. But by the time they reached their hotel room, the wheels were already in motion for a bizarre and unseemly display of competitive mourning.

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  On Saturday, Steve’s name suddenly appeared where it never had before—on the Comedy Store marquee: “In Memoriam, Steve Lubetkin.” Under normal circumstances, it would have seemed only fitting for the club to mark the passing of a performer who had been part of its tight-knit creative community for nearly six years. It stood to reason that Mitzi Shore would be shocked and saddened by the sudden death of a young man whom she had invited into her home and whose career she had promoted. And anyone who knew Steve might imagine that he was smiling down from Comedy Heaven at the sight of his name in lights on Sunset Strip (with single billing to boot). Given the events of the past few months, however, the marquee and Shore’s announced plan to hold a memorial service for Steve at the club the next day drove CFC members into paroxysms of rage. How dare she!

  As the CFC saw it, Lubetkin was theirs. He had worked and died for the cause. Mitzi had blackballed him. He had killed himself because of her unfair system and intransigence. She had no right.

  The CFC began arrangements for its own memorial at Hum -

  perdinck’s in Santa Monica. Barry Lubetkin tried to get the two sides to hold a single service on neutral ground, but Shore refused to cancel her plan. The way she saw it, she had every right.

  So, despite Steve’s hope that his death would bring the two sides together, the dueling memorials went o
ff as planned. No strikebreakers attended the one at Humperdinck’s, and none of the CFC leaders appeared at the Comedy Store. The Lubetkins attended both, but Barry took pains to point out that his presence at Shore’s service was dictated by the fact that, unlike the CFC, she had thought to have a rabbi present. “I went to the Comedy Store simply out of respect because my brother’s body was lying in a funeral home, and no rabbi had prayed,” he said. “I was in no way supporting Mitzi Shore or the Comedy Store. I want that made clear.”

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  At Humperdinck’s, Barry addressed a packed house of Steve’s friends and fellow comics from the stage where he’d watched his brother perform two weeks before. “I’m not a comedian; I’m a psychologist,” he said. “This has hurt me deeply as a brother and as someone who is sworn and trained to prevent this kind of thing from happening. Well, I couldn’t. I didn’t.”

  He told them he planned to initiate a program at his psychology center in New York “to develop free counseling services for comedians, where they can go and share their pain and their hurt and frustrations, so that this never happens again. It’s a lonely plastic town out there. We’re all a little bit fragile, a little bit on the brink. Steve just went over.”

  Susan Evans did not speak at the memorial. She had not returned to the apartment she shared with Steve and had spent two nights sleeping on a friend’s couch with her head between two pil-lows, crying and, at times, screaming. To get through the memorial, she had calmed her grief and rage with a large dose of valium borrowed from Ginny, which left her feeling as if she were wrapped in cotton.