The Improv

by Budd Friedman

  Though I still liked and would continue to use singers for many years to come, even as my growing fondness for comedians morphed into a love affair, I never wanted to earn the reputation of “playing favorites.” But while the way I structured things pretty much remained the same, looking back now I realize that this still created some degree of unintended antipathy—especially since nobody was getting paid.

  ANN ANELLO, singer and songwriter:

  Let’s put it this way. If you were a singer, you just knew you had to be damned good if you were going up against these comics, even if the material you were doing wasn’t necessarily tried and true. The bar was always higher and there was a much smaller margin for error if you were a singer, especially if you weren’t one of Budd’s favorites.

  JAMIE DEROY:

  Even if a singer was funny, they couldn’t be funnier than a comic. Case closed—and if they were, there might be trouble.

  STEWIE STONE, comedian:

  There’s no question that Budd created an ingenious system. However, for somebody like me who was already accustomed to getting paid in places like the Playboy Club and the Living Room, I also kind of resented the fact that the Improv and a lot of these other clubs only gave you a free sandwich and a soda for performing. Budd didn’t even do that at first.

  I never wanted the Improv to have the reputation of being a “pickup joint,” so I didn’t encourage it, particularly among the performers. But like drugs, of course, it still happened right under my nose.

  RICHARD LEWIS, comedian, actor, and writer:

  Sadly, I was a womanizer back then—even though it was always consensual. Also, I was a budding alcoholic. What happened was, I was just focusing on my set and then leaving, hanging out and trying to meet women. And I did. I did it as long as I was doing these clubs. That was my reason for living. My father was dead and I didn’t get along with my mother. I didn’t really see much of her, and my sister was living in Pennsylvania with four children. So it was just the microphone, women, and booze—not unlike a lot of comedians, to be honest.

  BETTE MIDLER:

  I have to say that I was on the outside, because there was no way you could deal with some of these guys. There was no point in trying. First of all, they were mainly men. And mostly they weren’t interested in women as anything other than what they could fuck. If you didn’t want to fuck them, then there was no way in. They weren’t going to ask you, “How did I do?”

  SHELLEY ACKERMAN:

  No question about it, there was a lot of extracurricular activity going on—and when I say that the waitresses were kept quite busy servicing the comedians, obviously I’m not just talking about bringing them food. But there were also some liaisons that became real relationships and even marriages. Richard Belzer and I lived together in my walk-up studio apartment on East 52nd Street. We were a joined-at-the-hip couple for over a year and almost married. A year was a long time back then.

  Once the comedians began to dominate the lineup, Silver used to complain that the singers were landfill for comics, although I used to do both so I could hold my own. I was a strong singer, but because I was there and I was funny anyway, I started to develop a lot of comedic patter.

  If a comic had a car, they’d often end up driving me home after closing. When I lived on the Upper East Side, Andy Kaufman would drive me home regularly. David Brenner would often drop me off in a cab, and Robert Klein did that also when we both lived on the Upper West Side. Naturally, I would have these long 5 AM conversations with these guys, and believe me, there’s a lot of bonding that goes on at that hour.

  More often than not, though, the conversations weren’t sexual at all. Instead, they would be about life, careers, show business, the Improv, who was trustworthy, why this person was going to make it. There was just so much drama with each move everybody made that you’d eventually end up talking about everything. At times, some of these conversations escalated into heated emotional exchanges that weren’t conducive to a good night’s—or morning’s—sleep afterwards. But all in all there was a camaraderie that couldn’t be denied and experiences that couldn’t have happened anywhere else.

  THIRTEEN

  Stiller and Meara

  While the collective popularity of comedy teams would ebb and flow, they were always a major draw on West 44th Street. Chief among them early on were husband-and-wife duo Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, whose act focused on domestic material with a twist: Jerry was Jewish and Anne was Catholic. Though far more common today, back then this was considered a rarity and so were Stiller and Meara.

  As the story goes, they’d met during an audition in 1953 when Jerry heard a woman screaming and saw Anne running out of an agent’s office in tears. When he asked what happened, Anne said that the agent had literally chased her around the room, whereupon Jerry immediately went in and confronted him, and the agent began chasing him also. Afterwards, Jerry and Anne went out for coffee to commiserate about the hard-luck lives of struggling New York actors and soon began dating. Their relationship quickly blossomed and they were married a year later, although it would be some time before they started working together as a comedy team—in large part because Anne not only didn’t think of herself as a comedian, she loathed them.

  JERRY STILLER:

  Anne didn’t like slapstick at all and she couldn’t stand things like The Three Stooges, but ironically she was as funny as anybody who was considered a giant in comedy back then. This was unusual because there were very few women, and the ones who were funny like Totie Fields, Phyllis Diller, and Joan Rivers mostly made fun of themselves and their looks or the fact that they didn’t get dates. We filled a gap in some ways because we dealt with two people in terms of relationships and what was going on in our minds.

  When they first arrived at the Improv in 1966, Stiller and Meara were hot as a pistol. They were already regulars on The Ed Sullivan Show, where they eventually made thirty-five appearances—most notably as an interreligious couple named Hershey Horowitz and Mary Elizabeth Doyle. Jack Rollins, who was Stiller and Meara’s manager, introduced us and we became very fast friends.

  JERRY STILLER:

  Aside from being this little dive where you could go in, get a cheap hamburger, and then get up onstage if you were a comedian or a singer, the thing I loved most about the Improv was that almost anything you did was acceptable as long as it was funny. It was that simple. This is the best-case scenario in an environment like that. With Budd, you always pretty much knew you had a free hand.

  Jerry and Anne often brought their kids, Amy and Ben, in with them, several years before we added a children’s variety show on Sunday afternoons. They were both also always a joy to be around.

  AMY STILLER, actor, and Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara’s daughter:

  I remember Budd had this big collage on the wall where you’d go in and see all the performers, and my parents were on that. I also met my first boyfriend at the Improv. At the time, he was still in high school and he’d do his homework in between sets. I was kind of living through him because I loved watching stand-up, plus I was very shy and so it was always exciting to be there.

  JUDY ORBACH:

  Anne Meara taught me how to put blush on my face. Anne and Jerry used to come in and work out their sets for The Tonight Show and they would bring the kids. Amy was twelve and Ben was about ten. Everybody just adored the Stillers. I’m still really good friends with Amy.

  SILVER SAUNDORS FRIEDMAN:

  Anne and Jerry were luscious. That’s the word. You would watch them and listen to their wonderful culturally mixed ideas and you would just think you were eating apple pie and cheese—which was one of the things on our menu. You never had to worry about them hurting a customer or causing a scene. They were very down-to-earth people.

  FREDDIE ROMAN, comedian and Dean Emeritus of the New York Friars Club:

  And smart, too. They weren’t your typical comedy team.

  SHELLEY ACKERMAN:

  When Stiller and Me
ara came into the Improv, it was a big event, plus they were funny and they were always very supportive of anyone who they liked and deemed talented and worthy. Whenever I sang anywhere, if they didn’t show up they’d send flowers. If they didn’t send flowers, they would send a telegram. If they didn’t send a telegram, they would send balloons. They did this their entire lives. At the Improv, Anne always ordered a Vodka Gibson and I can still remember the putrid smell of those onions. I also remember Jerry giving advice to this young comedian once, and Anne saying, “Who is he, the Albert Schweitzer of comedy?” It was priceless.

  DANNY AIELLO:

  Besides my own family, there wasn’t a man closer in life to me than Jerry Stiller. When we were doing Hurlyburly together on Broadway, we loved each other so much that half the shit we did was unscripted. It was unprofessional and we weren’t supposed to do it, but we’d wrestle onstage—especially if he broke me up and I started laughing. People didn’t know what the fuck we were doing and we’d be completely out of character, but if something funny happened, we’d go behind the couch and wrestle each other to the floor because we couldn’t control ourselves. We’d just be screaming like hell.

  One night during intermission, we were backstage with our co-star Christine Baranski and her husband who was also an actor. They’d just had a newborn daughter, who he was holding, and as I came out of my dressing room to do the second act, I looked at her and said, “Hey, Christine, how would you like your daughter to make her Broadway debut?”

  She just grinned at me without saying a word, which I took to mean yes, and I lifted the baby in my arms and went back onstage. And she was totally fine with that even though the character I played was a drug addict and I had a big monologue coming up. Well, as soon as I came out from the wings and the lights went up, the baby started screaming at the top of her lungs. The audience went nuts, and trying to get back into character, I handed the baby to Jerry, who then handed her to Frank Langella. We were literally passing this poor kid around like a football.

  But Jerry and I used to do crazy shit like that together all the time. Anne was also an absolute sweetheart, even though she had a bawdy sense of humor and could curse like a drunken sailor. At the Improv, they did spoofs on the wine commercials together. They were both wonderful and so were their two kids.

  AL FRANKEN, US Senator from Minnesota and former comedian, writer, and actor:

  Me and my writing partner, Tom Davis—who I first met when we were in high school in Minnesota and later collaborated with on Saturday Night Live—were also a comedy team. And, of course, so were Stiller and Meara. Back when we were performing at the Improv and I was still a student at Harvard, we had this thing where we’d drive down to New York from Boston on the weekends and hang out at the bar before our sets and talk to the other comics. One of the biggest thrills for us was getting to spend time with Stiller and Meara, who were always very encouraging. Tom and I were both still in our teens—and a team who’d followed them for a long time—so getting Stiller and Meara’s approval was a very big deal. We got nothing but encouragement from them.

  JOE PISCOPO:

  They always had a great story, and they gave me the best piece of advice that anyone in show business ever has. Back when I was doing stand-up at the Improv, I was using the stage as a means to an end to get where I wanted to go, which was doing movies and television. Commercials weren’t part of that equation. In fact, I hadn’t even thought about doing them until an agent saw me one night at the club and told me he wanted to represent me for commercials.

  I didn’t know what to do—especially since I didn’t want to do them—and so I consulted Anne and Jerry, who had a popular series of ads for Windex and Blue Nun wine that were running at the time. You know what they said? They were like, “Joe, you should always do commercials—always.” When I asked them why, they both looked at me with a completely straight face and said, “Because it’s fuck-you money.” I immediately understood what they were talking about. I never lost sight of it either.

  FOURTEEN

  More Momentum, My Monocle—and Lily Tomlin’s Grand Entrance

  MARTY NADLER:

  One of the craziest nights bar none was the New Year’s Eve show. There’d always be a packed house and about ten minutes or so before midnight, Budd would get up onstage and say, “All right, we’re getting ready for the countdown.” Every year, he’d choose one of the male comics to be the New Year’s baby and Father Time, which meant that underneath your Father Time outfit you’d have to dress up in a makeshift diaper and a sash with the year across your chest. On top of that, you’d put a cloak on with a hood.

  The setup was that while Budd was up onstage, you’d have to go outside and stand next to the window freezing your ass off in subzero temperatures until he called you up. Finally, he’d open up the door and go, “Oh look, here’s Father Time. He’s going to ring in the new year.” Then the lights would go off, you’d throw off the cloak, and you’d be standing there next to Budd in the diaper and sash.

  One year—I guess because I was still a newcomer—I was the guinea pig and I was in this little room upstairs pinning on the sash and a bedsheet to look like a diaper when a couple of other comics who had already performed walked in. One of them turned to me and said, “Maybe we should go over to Times Square.” Perhaps it’s the cynical New Yorker in me—although the particular comedian who said it was also from New York, and from the Bronx no less, where we’d grown up and both attended the same high school as Budd—but I just looked at him and said, “Are you crazy? Are you out of your fucking mind? You’re going to go to Times Square and stand in the middle of seventy million people scrunched together?”

  But he was completely serious about it. And with a totally straight face, he just looked at me and said, “You’re standing there in a diaper about to go outside in eight-degree weather and you’re calling me crazy!” It was priceless and not atypical of some of the things that went down at the Improv.

  JACK KNIGHT:

  We used to have a Saturday night talent show where there’d be three performers and someone from the audience. The prize was a free bottle of champagne, and when I was on, I would sing. Budd had it rigged so that whoever participated from the audience always won and he would come up to the front table, which had an oil tablecloth, salt and pepper shakers, sugar packets, and an ashtray.

  While I was singing, what he’d do is grab the tablecloth like a magician and everything would inevitably come crashing down on the floor, which was part of the act. Well, one night he did it and nothing fell, so none of us knew what to do. In addition to pulling the tablecloth off, part of the bit would be that the person who’d won would come up onstage afterwards—at which point we’d get up there also and Budd would be handing him the champagne and purposely drop it on the floor, where it would smash into a million pieces and splash everywhere. The tension in the room was so thick that you could practically cut it with a knife. But then, Budd would profusely apologize and say, “Gee, I’m so sorry. Why don’t you come back next week and see if you can win again?” Even though the regular customers knew what was going to happen, it was a fun thing we did and it was always a big crowdpleaser. Only once did he pull the tablecloth out when nothing broke.

  As the attention about the Improv continued to increase, it was largely by word of mouth—and also because we had Damon Runyon Jr. who was then an editor at the New York Herald Tribune and often came in and took non-flash black-and-white pictures of the performers, some of which now make up a collage on the wall of the guest bathroom in my Los Angeles home.

  Damon was a wonderful guy, although like his legendary father, he had a terrible drinking problem. Still, he was always welcome at the Improv and it was in part because of some of the pictures he took that I also decided to hire a press agent.

  MICHAEL GOLDSTEIN:

  I’d been a Broadway publicist, and I first found out about the Improv through somebody I knew who was performing there. By this point, I’d a
lready started my own agency where I represented clients like Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix and films such as The Graduate, so I was already making a lot of money when I agreed to do the Improv’s publicity for free, thinking that I might be able to pick up a client or two.

  The first thing I remember about Budd was that he wore a monocle, which I thought was so silly it was just perfect, although he said it was necessary. It was like there was this Jewish-English gentleman holding court at the Improv.

  Even when I’m interviewed today, one of the questions that always comes up is: “What’s with the monocle?” Not only do they want to know why I wear one, they also ask why I decided to wear it in the first place, so let me explain how it all started.

  Like most clubs, the New York Improv was darkly lit and very often during the early days, when one of the waitresses would ask me to approve a check, I couldn’t see it. I’ve often compared it to being like the sheriff in the old western town going blind, although because I was too vain, I’d never admit it. Plus, I only needed glasses to read, which I no longer do since having cataract surgery about ten years ago. Anyway, that’s how I came up with the idea to wear a monocle because I could hang it around my neck.

  Incidentally, I don’t need the monocle anymore either, but I still wear it. It was very effective then, and it’s become a great affectation that has made a distinct impression on practically everyone I’ve met since.