Klein makes me laugh inordinately—I mean, unmeasurably. It’s like when he starts, I just start laughing. You can be badly fooled that way in show business sometimes, but I knew from the moment I first saw him that he was somebody I would probably like. And I’ve felt that way about him ever since. He’s never disappointed me.
LIZ TORRES:
No doubt about it—and I think rightfully so—Robert was Budd’s fair-haired child and he always had the main spot. Whenever he came in, you knew that the show was on. He was still a teacher even though he’d left that world professionally, and he used to bring me to The Tonight Show with him because he liked the way I laughed.
FRED WILLARD:
Bob Klein and I probably go back more than fifty years. The first time we met was at the William Morris office in New York when were both up for Second City. Flash-forward a couple of years: We were no longer at Second City by this point. He was back in New York and I was living in LA, but I had gone to see him in The Apple Tree. After the show, I went backstage and I asked him if he was doing stand-up again, which I knew he wanted to. He looked at me and said, “It’s funny you asked that. I just got signed by Jack Rollins [the same manager who eventually represented me], and I’ve been working out at the Improv.” Then he said, “Why don’t you come down and watch me tonight?”
And so in an odd serendipitous twist—the same kind of six degrees of separation scenario that Bob had had with David Steinberg just weeks earlier—I wound up going there because of Bob. About a year or so later, I also began performing at the Improv after I’d joined The Ace Trucking Company improv troupe.
SHELLEY ACKERMAN:
The best way to describe it is to say the waters parted when Robert came in. But he was an acquired taste, too, because he could do so many things and there was such an incredible level of intelligence. With guys like Andy Kaufman and Robin Williams, it’s like you accepted their zaniness at face value, and then you could just follow along and get stoned. But with Klein, it was a different trip. First off, he’s funny, he’s New York, and he’s Jewish. Then he’s political and then he becomes musical. He morphs into all these different things, so it’s a different kind of journey that requires an appreciation of history and cultural context. With Klein, it’s kind of like watching Jeopardy!. Both have been around for a long time, but not everybody gets them without a certain level of refinement.
JIMMIE WALKER:
The waters parting is an accurate description. And the clouds, the moon, and the sun, too, for that matter, because Robert was the guy and he pretty much got to do whatever he wanted whenever he wanted. It’s like you’d be standing there and Budd would say, “Okay, Walker, you’re next.” But then, Robert would come in unannounced and you knew what was going to happen next because Budd would always say, “Okay, let’s push you back.”
It really didn’t matter who else was there or how long you’d been waiting to go on either. There were definitely some periods where that caused some friction and resentment among the other comics, because at first you thought he was only going to do ten or fifteen minutes and then he’d wind up being onstage for an hour and a half. But there was never any doubt that he was the Improv’s anchor—or that he would kill every time.
JOHN DEBELLIS:
Robert was another comic who was a generation before me, but whenever he came in to do a guest spot, you wanted to watch whether you were on that evening’s lineup or not. My writing is totally different from his, but for some reason he took a shine to it and he tried to get me on a television show once. It didn’t happen for whatever reason, but then another time he was doing The Tonight Show and he recommended me to Johnny Carson during one of the commercial breaks. I mean, how many guys would do that? But Robert did. Every time I see him to this day, he is always a class act.
RICHARD LEWIS:
It’s understandable why Budd loved Robert so much, because he ruled the roost and he should have. Robert was just phenomenal. I’m sure all of us who were Budd’s favorites aggravated the other comics who weren’t. I guess I was one of the lucky ones and it later dawned on me what a powerful gig Budd had.
JUDY ORBACH:
Budd had Robert’s album Child of the 50’s hanging on the front wall of the New York club right by the door so you saw it as soon as you walked in. I had this massive crush on him at the time because he was so sexy, not to mention brilliantly funny and smart. One night in the late seventies or early eighties, we had this birthday party for him and I still have pictures of them bringing up the cake while he was onstage performing.
Robert loved me because he’s got the musician side of him with the harmonica and I’m a singer, too. A lot of times, he would wander in after we’d already closed when the chairs were going up on the tables and we’d get up and perform together. Most of the time, it was just us. He’d play the harmonica and I’d play the piano and sing.
He used to call me “singer girl.” We were always friendly, but we don’t talk all that often because he’s still in New York and I live in LA now. But one day about ten or fifteen years ago, I happened to be at a taping of Hollywood Squares and Robert was one of the panelists. He might not remember this, but either before or after the taping, we ran into one another backstage. As soon as he saw me, he came up to me and said, “Singer girl, you haven’t changed a bit.” Of course I had, but I’ll never forget that day. It was like déjà vu.
TOM DREESEN:
I’ve always thought he was a very interesting character by equal measure as much as he has material out the yin yang. He was a major influence on me comedically even though we’re around the same age and our humor is completely different as far as styles go. Early in my career, I remember sneaking into this little club in Chicago called the Quiet Knight and just being completely blown away by how conversational and off the cuff he was.
I’m paraphrasing here, but he went on and did this ten- or fifteen-minute bit about cars. The setup went something like, “I was on my way over here and I’m standing in between two parked cars and this guy blows his horn.” I forgot what the punch line was, but the crowd went wild, although at first I kept thinking his act was all ad-lib. A couple of hours later, he did his second show, which I’d stuck around for, and I heard him do the bit again, which was basically exactly the same. That’s the essence of Robert Klein’s brilliance—and something I always told comedians from then on—that it’s a conversation and not a presentation. I mean, of course it’s your act, but it’s your job not to make it look like it is.
It was such a fundamental lesson in comedy and I’ve never forgotten it. There’s also a certain dichotomy about Robert and his humor. I don’t mean this in a bad way, but it’s just a fact and I’ll give you an example. Robert always used to score well on The Tonight Show—I mean, I don’t think he ever had a bad set in his life. But he’s never done well in places like Las Vegas, Reno, Tahoe, or Atlantic City. I didn’t realize just how true it was at the time, but one night I was working at Harrah’s in Lake Tahoe when this guy came up to me afterwards and said, “I just saw Robert Klein across the street and he didn’t get any laughs.”
I was like, “You’ve got to be kidding me. He’s one of the best comedians in the country.”
The following night I went across the street, and as it turned out, this guy was right—Klein didn’t score. As a fellow comic, it was very painful to watch. This is when it occurred to me that he’s a former schoolteacher who sometimes uses words that most people don’t in their everyday conversation. At first, I was thinking to myself that maybe Robert was just too intelligent for his own good. But then I saw him on The Tonight Show a few weeks later and he absolutely fractured the audience. That’s another important lesson I think he taught me and a lot of other comics: the importance of finding the right audience and playing up to them.
JOE PISCOPO:
Robert’s influence really didn’t come to bear on me until I began doing stand-up in the midseventies and I went to the Improv. The funny
thing about being a comic when you’re just starting out is that you sometimes don’t feel like you can be as funny if you went to college. I know that sounds like an odd statement, but it’s true—especially since some of the best guys in this business barely made it out of high school. It’s not like having a formal education gives you an edge, which in some ways it does. But I went to college and so did Robert, who went to the Yale School of Drama, even though he didn’t graduate. The point is, he went to an Ivy League school and was at the top of his game. Watching Klein at the Improv was like seeing the first “educated” comic and that was a huge influence on all of us—especially somebody like me.
SEVENTEEN
Locking Horns with David Brenner
As much as I loved Robert Klein I can’t say the same about David Brenner, who was also starting to break out around the same time.
In fact, he’s the one comedian whom I never got and still don’t get to this day. Do I ever look back now and think, “Maybe I missed something about David?” Never, but I will say that he was probably one of the most generous comics who ever lived. He was largely responsible for Freddie Prinze and Jimmie Walker getting their own sitcoms, and I think you’d be hard-pressed to find many people in the business who have something bad to say about him. I’m not trying to take anything away from that or diminish what he did either. For me, though—and admittedly, a lot of it has to do with my own personal taste—I just didn’t get him.
Not only did he never strike me as being funny at all, in many ways I always felt David was almost too intelligent for his own good. One of the things that used to bug me the most was this obsession he always had about taping his act. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I mean, Robert Klein did it and that was fine. But David always made this big fucking issue out of taping his act. He used to say, “Robert Klein tapes his act. I’m going to tape mine.” And boy, did he tape it. I also used to say, “I bet David has all of his tapes in order.”
Though we never got along, what cinched things was one night in the early seventies when he stormed into the club demanding to be treated like Robert Klein. I was absolutely livid and it was all I could do to keep a civil tongue.
Still, I calmly tried to explain to him that Robert always called to ask if he could go on before he even came in, which was true. But David wouldn’t hear anything of it and he’d already been filling in regularly for Johnny Carson, so he just looked at me and said, “Fine, I’ll go someplace else.” Then he stormed out of the club. After that, he went uptown to Catch A Rising Star, which had just opened, and literally made that place.
I will get back to Catch, and I don’t hold any animosity towards the owner Rick Newman either, although at the time I thought David was doing it just to get back at me. At any rate, about three or four weeks after I’d opened the LA club in 1975, David came in just as Freddie Prinze was about to go on and asked that I put him on first. Not only was Freddie starring in Chico and the Man, which was one of the top-rated sitcoms at the time, he was also an investor in my new club. But that was beside the point. I wasn’t about to kowtow to David, especially after what had gone down in New York.
Nevertheless, it was a very polite exchange, probably the most courteous we had ever had. In fact, David seemed like an entirely different person. He said, “Let’s let bygones be bygones.” I was all for that, and I was completely open to giving him a second chance. But then when I tried explaining to him that Freddie was there and we also had another improv group called The Credibility Gap auditioning, it was the same David all over again. He just looked at me and said, “Never mind.” Then he walked out and that was basically that, although in the years before his death in 2014 we did see each other a couple of times in New York. Once was at the Plaza Hotel where I was staying with my wife, Alix. The second time was at a Friars Club roast and we were always cordial. But no, David and I never got along and he never came back to the Improv.
TOM DREESEN:
I remember being at the LA Improv not long after Budd opened and David coming in when he was guest hosting for Johnny Carson and asking to go on. I’m paraphrasing here, but Budd basically looked at him and said, “I’m filled up tonight.” Well, everybody knows that when a major star walks in, you make room for them. That’s one of the biggest gripes of all comedians—like, “Hey, I was supposed to do a set the other night and this other guy walks in and the fucker does an hour and a half.” Budd actually turned Brenner down, so I can certainly understand him getting upset no matter what their history had been.
MARVIN BRAVERMAN:
I’ll tell you the backstory of the history between David and Budd, because I was part of it. I’m the one who begged Budd to put David on in the first place and David conned me. I know he’s gone now, but whenever I’d do a television show he’d say to me, “How come you only did five minutes? I did ten.” I didn’t like his cocky attitude. Whenever I’d see David at the Improv or wherever, he’d always be writing his material out on a notepad. I don’t know if this was intentional or not, but the script was so tiny you could barely read it.
Years later—several days before Johnny Carson died in 2005—we were both in Cedars-Sinai hospital at the same time. I was there having a procedure done, and one morning around 4 AM, I wheeled myself upstairs to the eighth floor where Johnny was staying. No one was at the nurse’s station, so I rolled myself into Johnny’s suite, which was down at the other end of the hall.
Johnny was fast asleep, but I tried to talk to him anyway. I said, “Johnny, how do you feel? It’s me. Marvin Braverman. Do you remember me? I did The Tonight Show.”
A few seconds later, he opened his eyes and said, “No, I don’t remember you.”
I said, “I have a question for you.”
His voice was barely audible, but he managed to get the words out that he was going to call security if I didn’t leave immediately.
I knew he didn’t have the strength to do it, so I said, “I’ll pull your drip out.”
That’s when he muttered, “Okay.”
“Why did you like Brenner and not me?” I asked.
There was a brief pause and then Johnny said, “Because he wasn’t funny and I could be funnier than him.”
To which I replied, “Thanks, Johnny!” And then I left. True story!
ROBERT KLEIN:
I was never around David and Budd at the same time, so anything I ever heard about their feud was secondhand. I will say that I always respected David even though we only met a handful of times. One occasion that comes to mind was sometime in either the mid or late seventies. I was doing this PBS show where I played a chef of some sort cutting up a pie and David happened to be the associate producer. I think we were filming it at WNET, which is the local PBS affiliate in New York.
Even though we were both established already, David came up to me afterwards and said, “You know, I’d love to be doing what you’re doing.” He was very nice about it and he had a warm smile on his face.
I said, “Really?” That was about it. I just remember that he struck me as this quiet, kind of studious guy.
ED BLUESTONE, screenwriter and former comedian:
I never had a problem with David personally, but I was never crazy about him either. He could talk about himself endlessly—especially if he’d just done a halfway decent set someplace. You’d think his appearance had been the equivalent of the bombing of Nagasaki or something. He’d just go on and on and on about himself and I found it a bit annoying. David wasn’t a bad guy. He was just egotistical.
LIZ TORRES:
I witnessed David and Budd butting heads almost from the first moment he ever came into the Improv. The reason they fought was because Budd wouldn’t put David on during prime time for whatever reason, and David resented that. I was privy to his anger, and whenever he came in, he’d just sit over in the corner and brood. David and Budd barely ever spoke to each other.
Maybe it was because I’m a woman, but all the comics felt they could confide in m
e. David was no exception and he would start complaining to me about whatever particular gripe he had with Budd, but then he’d stop because he knew he shouldn’t be discussing this with me. And then the next day or whenever he came in again after that, he’d start complaining to me all over again.
DANNY AIELLO:
Years later, after I became an actor and I was doing Gemini on Broadway, David came to see the show one night and I was fuckin’ stunned. But when I was at the Improv and I’d be filling in for Budd as the emcee, Budd would say to me, without any equivocation, that he didn’t want me putting David on during prime time. Sometimes I’d do it anyway because I felt terrible if David was there when I was substituting and there was an opening. It wasn’t that I was trying to go against Budd’s wishes necessarily. I just thought that if he didn’t know, he wouldn’t mind.
MARTY NADLER:
Not knowing very much about the ins and outs of their personal history at the time, I always thought it was a bit of a mystery why Budd and David didn’t get along. It was a mystery because whenever David did go on, he would do very well, but Budd still wouldn’t put him on during prime time. From our vantage point, though, Budd was like a God—and, of course, he was still the key for the rest of us getting on, so we never questioned it. I mean, we were never going to go up to him and say, “Why aren’t you giving David better spots?” But in the back of our minds, we were always wondering why, and to this day I’m not exactly sure what his reasons were. It very well could have been that Budd simply didn’t think David was funny.
JIMMIE WALKER:
Brenner was the guy who first told me about the Improv. Regardless of whatever happened between him and Budd, I loved Brenner. He was my mentor and I wouldn’t be where I am today without him.
The Improv Page 14
