Andy Kaufman Revealed!

by Bob Zmuda

  As usual, Tony Clifton’s billing made no mention of Andy. Before the show, as the place was filling, Bill Graham, impresario extraordinaire and owner of the Fillmore, stopped by to say hello. Though Graham had helped launch the careers of Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and the Grateful Dead, Andy as Tony couldn’t have cared less, and when Graham approached Tony he was soundly rebuffed by the brazen lounge indigene. Later, a spiteful Bill Graham would proclaim Tony Clifton the worst act he ever saw, worse even than the Sex Pistols, who pissed on his stage. Bill Graham may have been viewing Tony through the filter of negative emotions, because I’m surprised a guy so apparently hip could miss the point of Tony Clifton.

  Finally it was show time. As the house lights dimmed I picked up a microphone offstage and announced, “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, the Fillmore is proud to present Rodney Dangerfield!” The place exploded in applause. “But first,” I continued, “before we bring out Rodney, I want to bring out our opening act!”

  Now boos replaced the clapping. This was great — Tony hadn’t even stepped out on stage and they were ready to kill the opening act, any opening act. Tony usually had to do a lot of work to get a crowd this hostile, and here he was, starting with blind hatred. It was perfect.

  As I stood in the wings next to Tony and George Shapiro and watched the seething mass, Rodney stepped up in his shirt and boxers (Rodney never puts on his pants until he goes onstage). He was beaming. “Go get ‘em, Tone!” he yelled. Rodney’s comment stemmed from feelings from all those years he himself wanted to squash the audience, tell them he was no loser but a real ladies’ man, a suave, sophisticated man of the world. That night, Rodney thrilled to the possibility that Tony was there to even the score for both of them.

  I held the microphone close to my mouth to overwhelm the noise. “Ladies and gentlemen, please, our opening act, Tony Clifton, will not come out until all of you are silent.” The crowd answered with a chorus of boos and scattered “fuck yous” and began to chant, “Rodney! Rodney! Rodney!” Tony took the microphone from my hand and stepped out on the edge of the stage. “You may want Rodney,” he rasped, “but you’re gettin’ Tony.” The boos and hisses notched up a few levels. “Rodney’s not coming out until I perform for you first.” He waited a second, then assumed a relaxed stance. “Believe me, people, I got all night.”

  The audience went insane as fights broke out between people arguing with one another about keeping quiet so they could get rid of this opening act. Tony, Rodney, George, and I thought it was hilarious — if any crowd was a Clifton crowd, this was it. Tony decided the people were “warmed up” and ready, so he hit the stage singing “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.” No other song could have riled them more, particularly the way he sang it.

  Tony occasionally stopped singing long enough to scream “Shut up!” After each interruption he would go back to the beginning of the song. If the audience members had been insanely mad before Tony sang, they were now much worse. A hail of bottles — beer, liquor, and soda — poured down on the stage and Tony had to bob and weave to avoid a beaning. “I want RESPECT!” he screamed, in a tribute to his headliner. Rodney was next to me, doubled over with laughter.

  Suddenly an old man climbed onto the stage and went after Tony with a pocket knife. Security hauled him away before he could puncture Clifton. George turned to me, smiling with glee. “Great idea. When did you hire that plant?”

  I looked over at George. “Never seen him before. He was for real.” George blanched. Though the knife-wielding assassin failed, the crowd still posed a threat to Tony’s well-being with the continuous storm of glass containers. Bill Graham finally ordered the curtain down fearing a direct hit might kill Tony. He ran over to Tony and apologized profusely, offering to pay in full despite Tony’s having done only three minutes of his act. George and I and Rodney laughed our heads off, and Graham walked over, completely perplexed.

  “What’s so funny?” he asked. “The guy could get hurt. They hate him.”

  “Bill,” I said, “that’s the point. They’re supposed to hate him, that’s his act!”

  Graham looked at us like we were nuts and walked away.

  The next day we heeded Graham’s concerns and went down to Fisherman’s Wharf and rented a fishing net large enough to cover the stage. It was a little insurance for Tony against the night’s bottles. By then, radio stations had gotten into the act and spread the word, so on the way to the show, many people stopped off at fruit and vegetable stands and stocked up on ammo.

  That night Tony Clifton took the stage, but to the surprise of many of his hecklers he was clad head to toe in full SFPD riot gear, with a helmet protecting his noggin and his microphone attached to the full face shield. As he began to sing, produce and bottles cascaded down, so we lowered the net. That kept most projectiles from reaching Tony, although a few got through, to the delight of the audience.

  When it was all over, the stage was littered with broken glass and the muck of smashed fruit and vegetables. It was a triumph for Tony Clifton. The audience had been assigned an interactive role, and they’d accepted it with zeal. Tony had come away more hated and reviled than any act either of us had ever seen — it was a stunning success. Our out-of-town opening had worked, and now we went back to Hollywood to continue our campaign to make Tony a household word, albeit a four-letter one. Rolling Stone helped when they ran a photo of Clifton dressed in full SFPD riot gear, singing his heart out while being pelted with debris. Taking that as a cue, I worked the Fillmore show into the Tony Clifton script for Universal.

  The question most asked of me regarding Andy has been, Was he really as weird as he seemed? It sounds odd, but my knee-jerk reaction is always, “No, he was a regular guy.” At times when I’d be falling apart at the seams from one problem or another, Andy’s sound and sage advice would instantly straighten me out. But every so often, after I had concluded he was crazy like a fox, he’d do something so bizarre I would temporarily drop the fox qualification. After I had worked hard in Hollywood for a few years, and had had some good breaks, I’d accumulated enough savings to consider an investment, something to fall back on in my old age. I approached Andy, my best buddy, to see if he wanted to go in on it with me.

  “I’ve found a great piece of property up in Santa Barbara. I’m thinking it’s perfect for a restaurant. I’m just thinking ahead, since I probably can’t be in this business forever.”

  That statement hit Andy like a two-by-four across the face. “My god, Bob, I just realized I don’t know anything about any other business than show business.”

  “Well, that’s not true,” I said, surprised at how stunned he seemed. “You’re a very smart guy, you could do anything.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t know anything but performing. I’ve got no other trade.”

  I felt this was a very odd thing to say, particularly for a man making a decent yearly salary every week in his current trade, but I humored him. “Okay, so be a restaurateur with me. We’ll have fun.”

  “But I don’t know anything about the restaurant business,” he said.

  “So start from the bottom up,” I countered. Then I added jokingly, “Get a job somewhere as a busboy.”

  He looked at me, eyes wild and intense. “Hey, that’s not a bad idea!”

  The next morning I got an excited call from him, and in the background I heard the clinking of dishes and glasses and silver-ware. I figured he was at a restaurant drinking in the vibes, pondering our foray into the business.

  “I’m at the Posh Bagel,” he said. It was a place we frequented, and my girlfriend, Shelly (we got back together), worked there. Okay, I thought, it’s not the type of place I had in mind for Santa Barbara, but at least he’s thinking about the investment. Wrong.

  “I’m doing what you said. I started this morning. I’m a bus-boy.”

  I paused, then deadpanned, “Sure, Kaufman, that’s great. Something to fall back on, right?”

  “Exactly. Listen, I gotta go, it’s m
y first day, and I want to make a good impression on my boss. Call you later.”

  The phone went dead. I shook my head and laughed — typical Kaufman put-on. A little later Shelly called from work. “Did you know Andy was working here?”

  Disbelieving it, I jumped in the stalwart Rambler Rebel — I hadn’t put a drop of oil in it in two years and it still ran like a Swiss watch — and showed up at the restaurant. Sure enough, there was Andy, cap pulled low, in glasses and an apron … busing tables. No one recognized him, and why would they? A major star cleaning up your slop? Unheard of. He spotted me and ran over, as excited as a little kid. “Thanks for the idea! I love this job!”

  Though he couldn’t work a full-time schedule because of his Taxi duties, he did work a regular schedule of six-hour shifts. And he loved it. After Andy became established, the owner told me not only was he one of the best busboys he’d ever had, but also the rest of the staff was so pumped by his incredible work ethic that their demeanor and productivity had risen noticeably.

  What prompted Andy Kaufman, television star, to take a minimum-wage schlepp job? First, Andy wasn’t joking when he told me he didn’t know what he’d do if he wasn’t in show business. And on learning there was something he could do, aside from entertain, he became almost giddy. Busing tables liberated him and yet at the same time secured his feet to the ground, for it was an experience completely antithetical to being a star. Here, on the lowest echelon of the Hollywood food chain, he could observe his world through the same eyes as when he had been delivering meat to Alan King and admiring his beer tap — yet now his view was tempered by considerable experience. By now, Andy didn’t care about beer taps; he was far past that, spiritually and politically.

  Which brings me to the next reason he liked working at the Posh Bagel: Andy was a socialist. A staunch supporter of a class less society, he never looked down his nose at anyone, be they fellow busboy, street vendor, or prostitute. If the state would have subsidized his “art,” as they do in some socialist countries, he would have been completely happy. Though Andy was an exceptional intellect and no doubt had his contracts — and subsequently his earnings — explained by Shapiro/West, I really believe he didn’t have any idea how much money he had. Stanley Kaufman handled his son’s finances, essentially giving Andy an “allowance” and managing the rest. When Andy upgraded his life — a new place, a new car for Tony — Stanley released the dough to him.

  Andy’s spare lifestyle could have made Gandhi look like Aristotle Onassis. His home, which he rented, was a modest, furnished two-bedroom. The place was isolated in the hills, but nothing special to look at. There weren’t many personal items in evidence, except for props from his stage show and numerous pictures of Guru Dev and the Maharishi, always with incense burning beneath them. One notable feature of his living quarters was the temperature. It was always freezing. He kept the temperature very cool, just like a TV studio … or maybe a meat locker.

  Most of the times anyone visited Andy he’d be in his underwear. Of course, you always removed your shoes before entering Andy’s humble domain. You got the feeling that it wasn’t so much his home as a shrine to the Maharishi, almost as if he was trying to re-create the setting of one of his TM retreats. Occasionally, he would have a roommate, Kathy Uttman, living with him, a fellow TMer. Their relationship was nonsexual, and she contributed to the ambience of the place as a tribute to TM. Had you known nothing about Andy you might have surmised the place was the domicile of a monk, or an indoctrination center for some cosmic cult. And if you looked around you’d be further confused by the ever-present Kaufman paraphernalia: congas, wrestling mats, and, of course, Howdy Doody.

  Andy owned only a few shirts, a couple pairs of pants, basic socks and underwear, a dress jacket, and a heavy coat for colder climes. Until he rented the house several years after “making it,” he had no washer and dryer and slogged down to the local Laundromat to wash his meager wardrobe. We certainly enjoyed limos and first-class seats and accommodations, but there were no personal drivers or butlers or cooks or security personnel for Andy Kaufman.

  In many ways, he was an ascetic, a man who had simplified his surroundings just as he had complicated his position in the world, as well as the perceptions of most who knew his name. He feared co-option by Hollywood and in many ways went out of his way to prove he wasn’t part of it: he became a busboy, was ardently nonmaterialistic, and dated trailer trash — all designed to say, I’m not part of Hollywood, I have not been sucked into that world!

  Though I loathed the ungenuineness that pervaded the West Coast entertainment industry, Andy was even less sanguine about it. New York by comparison seemed much more egalitarian, a great metropolis where people of all walks of life mingled on the sidewalks and your class distinction was “New Yorker,” not “struggling actor,” “hack writer,” “superstar,” or “über-agent.” Hell, in L.A. nobody even walked, unless it was to nowhere on a treadmill, and people oozed stock little snippets of insincerity like “Let’s do lunch,” or “I didn’t love it,” or “My people will call your people, darling.” Yes, sports fans, “showbiz” people really do say stuff like that in “Hell Lay,” and Andy reacted by fleeing to the kitchen of the Posh Bagel. Sometimes I wondered whether Andy had dropped in from another world or perhaps another galaxy and erroneously been branded a comedian. Many say he was twenty years ahead of his time; I think he was from twenty light-years distant.

  On April II, 1980, ABC launched its answer to Saturday Night Live, calling it simply Fridays. Also an 11:30 P.M. “live sketch show” with a musical act and a guest host, Fridays came out of the blocks with considerably less momentum than SNL. It tried to survive that traditionally thin Friday-night spot, but saddled with scattered affiliate disaffections brought about by material deemed objectionable in more conservative markets, from the get-go Fridays’ ratings were abysmal and cried out for medical attention. By early 1981, the doctor they called upon to get the patient on its feet was Andy Kaufman. The offer came in for Andy to do the show with no restrictions. The only edict given him: Kick start this dog and get it some attention. There was never a concern that Andy was burning his bridges at SNL by doing Fridays. SNL was so far ahead of the pack that Lorne Michaels’s take on the new show was that since imitation is the sincerest form of flattery Andy could do what he wanted with Fridays. The executive producers, John Moffitt and Pat Tourk Lee, contracted Andy to first appear on February 20, 1981.

  Andy was to act in a sketch centered around two couples who are enjoying dinner together. The other actors were Maryedith Burrell, Michael Richards (of Seinfeld fame), and Melanie Chartoff. Occasionally each person, one by one, would be excused, go to the restroom, and return to the table stoned out of his or her gourd. A few days before the show’s airing, Andy vehemently registered his offense at the drug humor, as he had forsaken drugs some years prior and no longer supported anything related to the drug culture. If the producers wanted to send such a message to the youth of America, they could do it without him. Producer John Moffitt, one of the sweetest, most reasonable guys around, patiently explained to Andy that the drug humor was done only in fun, and though the kids watching the show laughed at it, they understood it was just that, fun.

  During the live cast, moments after the red cue lights on the big cameras winked at the performers to begin, Andy, who was in the middle of the sketch sitting with the three other actors at the dining table, announced he could no longer continue. This was live, on national television. None of the other actors knew what to do. Seconds of dead air seemed like hours as all eyes fixed on Andy, waiting for him to respond. When he reiterated that he wouldn’t continue, Michael Richards walked over, grabbed a stack of the sizable cue cards, and slammed them down in front of Andy, warning, “Read the lines.”

  “You don’t have to do that,” retorted Andy, now offended. To punctuate his feelings he picked up a glass of water and threw it in Richards’s face. Melanie Chartoff then tried to come to Michael’s aid by hurling
a plate of butter pats at Andy. The butter stuck to his face and hair, and he leaped up, ready to fight. As Andy and Michael squared off, producer Jack Burns jumped in from off-camera to mediate the dispute, screaming to the control booth, “Go to commercial! Now!”

  When Jack told Andy to get off the stage and he refused, Jack shoved Andy. Suddenly all hell broke loose. They collided in a rage, and the studio security, along with various cast members, descended to pull the mad dogs off each other. A furious Kaufman and Burns were restrained from killing each other. Cut to commercial.

  Luckily, when the show came back from the spot break it was the end of the program. As the cast gathered to wave good-night, one look at their faces and you could tell they’d been traumatized — and Tony Clifton had been nowhere in sight. The next day news wires shouted the headline across the country — Andy Kaufman was at it again, this time disrupting a live national broadcast.

  ABC was bombarded with letters from irate viewers (some who hadn’t even seen the broadcast) demanding Kaufman be banned from television. One incensed writer claimed that Andy was a “danger to himself and others.” Fridays received so much mail that the producers decided to bring Andy back the next week to “smooth things over.” During that appearance, a chastened Andy sat next to John Moffitt and read a prepared statement that sought forgiveness for his behavior. He performed our classic Viet Cong Confession, eyes blank, voice monotone, and rattled off his “sincere apologies.” The ratings soared and a re-invigorated ABC renewed the show for the next season.

  Six months later, a humbled Andy, his bad-boy ways behind him, appeared again on Fridays. Now a changed man, he sported a Pat Boone haircut and a suit and tie. Filled with joy, Andy had returned to the scene of his embarrassment to announce his new life. On his arm was a lovely young lady, a gospel singer from The Lawrence Welk Show, Cathy Sullivan. Facing the studio assemblage, Andy nervously announced he’d been born again and that he’d found the Lord. Then he dropped the bombshell: he and Cathy had fallen in love and were engaged to be married. It was a poignant moment for Andy as he and Cathy sang a beautiful spiritual and gazed moon-eyed at each other, all to the complete dismay of the studio and national audience.