I'm Dying Up Here: Heartbreak and High Times in Stand-Up Comedy's Golden Era by William Knoedelseder (38 page)

As TV, movie, and nightclub performers in the latter part of the twentieth century, they have traveled the world performing in front of untold millions of people and lived, by most accounts, colorful, eventful lives. And yet, an odd little woman who ran a dark little nightclub on Sunset Strip when they were young re-1586483173 text_rev.qxd:Layout 1 5/19/09 1:55 PM Page 265

I’m Dying Up Here

265

mains perhaps the most indelible character in their collective memory bank.

Why? The answer may be buried deep in the sixty-page National Labor Relations Board ruling that sounded the death knell for the comedian’s union. Noting the Comedy Store’s “dominant position as the best-known purveyor of comedic talent” at the time and Shore’s personal control over “the greatest number of performance opportunities” in the marketplace, the administra-tive law judge in the case cited as “persuasively descriptive” the testimony of hearing witness Mark Lonow:

When you are beginning a career in which every fiber of your ego, your self-esteem, your entire fantasy life of who you are and who you are going to become is involved, and there is only one path—one way—to make it, in your mind, and that is through the Comedy Store, then the person who owns the Comedy Store becomes an all-encompassing dictator. Whether or not it is true is almost irrelevant to a person trying to become a regular at the Comedy Store to fulfill their fantasy of being a great star. What Mitzi Shore says is the law. It isn’t that she requests or indicates.

The mere fact that the thought passes through her mind, in ninety-nine percent of the cases, becomes the law in your life. It is very hard to explain what an entertainer goes through; what an artist whose emotional life is totally involved with the need for success, what goes through their being when someone who they believe controls their destiny says something to them.

Apparently, once you are placed at the mercy of that level of personal power, it is difficult, if not impossible, to forget it.

If it’s any comfort to comics who labored in her service those many years ago, Mitzi Shore is the prisoner of her own memories.

Several months after George Miller’s memorial, she sat in the dining room of the storied house on Doheny Boulevard where 1586483173 text_rev.qxd:Layout 1 5/19/09 1:55 PM Page 266

266

William Knoedelseder

she’d hosted coke-snorting sessions with Richard Pryor and Robin Williams nearly three decades before. She was now in her midseventies, and the years had not been particularly kind. She moved slowly, and her hands were palsied. A 2003 article in the
Los Angeles Times
had portrayed her as “the Norma Desmond of Comedy,” living like the faded silent screen star in the film
Sunset
Boulevard
, alone in her rundown mansion and lost in reverie about her glorious past.*

“She’s in declining health and full of hope,” said Argus Hamilton, who had smoothed the way for the interview. “She survived an aneurism ten years ago, and she has increasing tremors, but they are non-Parkinson’s, according to her doctors at UCLA.” In the
Los Angeles Times
metaphor, Hamilton would be cast in the role of Norma Desmond’s loyal butler, Max, who was also her ex-husband.

Shore continues to employ Hamilton as the permanent emcee and comic emeritus at Sunset, and his admiration, loyalty, and faith appear to know no bounds. “She’s definitely not finished with Hollywood,” he said. “She is a true artistic genius, and a cash cow that the networks have not finished milking yet if they are smart.”

Despite her physical infirmities, Shore seemed in full control of her mental faculties as she spoke about the past. Photographs, press clippings, and mementos of those times were arrayed on the table for her reference. Chief among them was a limited-edition, self-published, hardcover book commemorating the club’s fifteenth-year “class reunion” TV special. Basically a professionally produced scrap book, it contains an idealized history of the Comedy Store from 1972 to 1987, along with yearbook-type photos of what appears to be every performer who ever took the stage at any of the clubs—more than three hundred of them, including such obscure practitioners as Fred Asparagus and Glenn Super—but not Tom

*“Echo of Laughter,”
Los Angeles Times
, June 22, 2003.

1586483173 text_rev.qxd:Layout 1 5/19/09 1:55 PM Page 267

I’m Dying Up Here

267

Dreesen, whose name is nowhere in the text. Jay Leno is not mentioned either. In contrast, Letterman is among the few—Richard Pryor, Andy Kaufman, Robin Williams, Garry Shandling, and Sam Kinison—who merit a two-page spread. The story about his Comedy Store emcee duties paving the way for his subsequent talk show success appears twice in the book, and Shore repeated it again to the interviewer, relating how at one point “David was ready to give up and go back to Indiana, but I talked him out of it.”

The mention of Steve Lubetkin’s name drew a misty-eyed smile. “A soft sell,” she said of his performing style. “He didn’t come at you hard. He sort of snuck up on you, softly. He was a good writer,” she said, adding wistfully, as if savoring a distant memory from the table where she now sat. “His favorite meal was roasted leg of lamb.”

Lubetkin is pictured in the commemorative book, along with an oddly truncated entry in the historical chronology: “June 1979. An uneasy peace prevails. Steve Lubetkin dies tragically, separate services are held by differing comics.” There is no further explanation.

Shore said she thought Steve committed suicide because the CFC had put him in a difficult leadership position for which he was emotionally unprepared. “The job was too much for him, and they should have known that.” So, despite all evidence to the contrary, including his suicide note, in her mind the striking comics were to blame.

In 2003, Shore told the
Los Angeles Times
, “I won the strike, but I made it that they won. That movie should be done because I was like Ruth, being stoned to death. I didn’t deserve what they did to me.”*

*“Did You Hear the One About Budd and Mitzi?
Los Angeles Times
, October 31, 1982.

1586483173 text_rev.qxd:Layout 1 5/19/09 1:55 PM Page 268

268

William Knoedelseder

Asked more recently if, looking back, there was anything she wished she had done differently during the dispute, Shore said no, there was nothing. “The Store worked,” she said. “The Store was the light. And if they couldn’t see that the Store was the light, well, then fuck ’em.”

1586483173 text_rev.qxd:Layout 1 5/19/09 1:55 PM Page 269

Index

Abarzu, Julie, 240

American Guild of Variety Artists

Academy Awards ceremony (1979),

(AGVA), 198, 199, 212–213, 226,

207–208

233–234, 239, 254

Ackerman, Floyd, 212–213, 233–234

American Indian Movement, 205

Actors Equity Association, 212

Anderson, Louis, 258

Addotta, Kip, 60, 157, 213

Animal House
(movie), 102–103

AFC.
See
American Federation of

Annie Hall
(movie), 101

Comedians

Apple Pie
(TV show), 106

AFL-CIO, 234

April Wine band, 204

AFTRA.
See
American Federation of

Archibald, Dottie

Television and Radio Artists

after strike, 255, 256

AGVA.
See
American Guild of

Comedy Store, 74–76, 77, 117

Variety Artists

Friedman and, 176

Aiello, Danny, 23–24

labor dispute, 117, 120, 158, 189,

Albertson, Jack, 83

204, 237, 239

Albrecht, Chris, 123

Lubetkin and, 253

Aleck, Jimmy, 60, 206–207, 255

Archibald, Tom, 176, 179

Allen, Joan, 262

Arngrim, Alison, 112, 113–115, 138, 194

Allen, Steve, 10, 50

Asparagus, Fred, 266

Allen, Woody, 11, 12, 101, 125

Aspen Film Society, 101

Al’s The Corner Club (bar), 28

Associated Actors and Artists of

Altman, Jeff, 60, 157

America (4A) unions, 212, 226

Altman, Robert, 94

Astrow, Jo Anne

American Bandstand
(TV show), 92

after strike, 255, 256

American Federation of Comedians

background, 77–78

(AFC), 253–254

labor dispute, 158, 184, 187, 189,

American Federation of Musicians Local

226–228, 229, 235, 237, 239

47, 212

Atlantic Records, 102

American Federation of Television

Aykroyd, Dan, 59, 102–103

and Radio Artists (AFTRA),

184, 212, 226, 227–228, 231,

Ball, Lucille, 67

234, 254

Barr, Leonard, 84

269

1586483173 text_rev.qxd:Layout 1 5/19/09 1:55 PM Page 270

270

Index

Barr, Roseanne, 258

Improv/Friedman and, 22–23,

Basketball charity game, 201–202

71–72

Battle of the Network Stars V

Kaufman and, 22–23, 71, 73

(TV show), 107

labor dispute, 120–121, 122–123, 157,

Bauman & Estin, 65, 66

158, 165, 189, 196–197, 203–204,

Belushi, John, 59, 102–103, 259

205, 214, 223, 229, 237, 239

Belzer, Richard, 23

Los Angeles Times
article, 238

Bennett, Tony, 33

Miller and, 54, 214, 261

Berger, Phil, 125

Miller’s memorial, 2, 5–6, 7

Berle, Milton, 9

The Tonight Show
, 78, 90

Berman, Shelley, 10, 115

Bradley, Tom, 250

Bernhard, Sandra, 60, 78, 91, 136–137

Braver, Billy, 40

Bicentennial Nigger
(Pryor), 87

Brenner, David, 12, 16–17, 23, 34, 75

Binder, Burt, 126, 130

Briefcase Full of Blues
(Belushi and Binder, Mike

Aykroyd), 102

after strike, 2, 258, 261, 262

Brillstein, Bernie, 103

Apple Pie
(TV show), 106

Brokaw, Tom, 144–145

background, 125

Bromfield, Lois, 78, 137, 206

Can You Hear the Laughter? The

Brooks, James L., 103

Freddie Prinze Story
(movie), 219

Brooks, Mel, 10, 42, 101

Comedy Store, 60, 85, 89, 105–106,

Browning, Ken

111, 125–126, 258

background, 154

drugs, 128, 129, 130, 135, 259

labor dispute, 154–155, 158, 184, 190,

labor dispute, 197, 219–221, 223, 261

195, 200–201, 217–218, 234

Leno and, 7, 89, 125–126, 130, 219,

Bruce, Lenny, 10, 77, 88, 125, 144

220–221, 261

Burnett, Carol, 35, 36

Miller’s memorial, 2, 7

Burning Spear club, 27

on Shore, 258, 262

Bursky, Alan, 40, 82, 195, 219

Taxi
(TV show) and, 127

Bursky, Fort, 40–41, 86

The Detroit Comedy Jam
(movie), 258

Bursky, Herman/Helen, 40

The Mind of the Married Man

Bushkin, Henry, 154–155

(HBO series), 2

The Upside of Anger
(movie), 262

Caesar, Sid, 9, 11

Blackman, Wayne, 217

Caesar’s Palace, 108–109

Blake, Robert, 67

Café Wha, 14

Blazing Saddles
, 42

Caine, Michael, 106

Blondell, Joan, 35–36

Callie, Michael, 169, 216–217

Blues Brothers (Belushi and Aykroyd), 102

Can You Hear the Laughter? The Freddie

Blues Brothers Movie, The
, 103

Prinze Story
(movie), 219

Bluestein, Steve

Canter’s Deli, 52, 72, 75, 76, 117, 118,

Comedy Store, 40, 52

119, 126, 145

labor dispute, 158, 163, 189, 214

Carlin, George, 19, 59, 88, 125

Bluestone, Ed, 23

Carol Burnett Show, The
, 35

Bono, Sonny, 62–63, 94, 95, 96

Carozzo, Jim, 73

Boosler, Elayne

Carrey, Jim, 258

after strike, 255, 256, 261

Carson, Johnny

Belly Room and, 113, 136

Academy Awards ceremony

Comedy Store, 72–74, 75, 77, 78, 113,

(1979), 208

118, 137

Comedy Store and, 106

flings, 73–74

labor dispute, 198–199, 201

gender barriers and, 2, 22, 23, 72, 74,

lawyer, 154–155

75, 77, 78, 113, 137

power/influence of, 24, 31–32, 88

1586483173 text_rev.qxd:Layout 1 5/19/09 1:55 PM Page 271

Index

271

style, 50, 66–67

Westwood club beginnings, 61

women comedians, 78–79, 90

See also
Labor dispute; Shore, Mitzi;
See also Tonight Show, The

specific individuals

Carter, Jimmy, 81, 82

“Comedy Store Day” proclamation,

Carter, Judy, 136

249–250

Carter Country
(TV show), 168

Comic Strip, New York, 112, 254

Cassidy, Jack, 56

Coming Home
(movie), 207–208

Catch a Rising Star club, 60, 254

Company of Angels, 63

Cavett, Dick, 11

Conaway, Jeff, 127

Champagne Gallery, 15–17

Continental Hyatt House, 61, 75, 171,

Chase, Chevy, 59, 101

184, 215, 240–241, 243

Cheech and Chong, 101

Conway, Tim, 90

Cher, 62–63, 94, 95

Cook, Jimmy, 119, 186

Chico and the Man
(TV show), 35,

Cosell, Howard, 71

44, 83

Costner, Kevin, 262

Child of the Fifties
(Klein), 20

Counseling services/center for

C.H.I.P.S
(TV show), 202

comedians, 247

Chung, Connie, 194

Crosby, Bing, 86

Cimino, Michael, 208

Crosby, Norm, 33

Class Clown
(Carlin), 59

Crystal, Billy, 60, 65, 66, 111

Clay, Andrew “Dice,” 258

Curb Your Enthusiasm
(HBO series), 2

Club Harlem, 27