I'm Dying Up Here: Heartbreak and High Times in Stand-Up Comedy's Golden Era by William Knoedelseder (19 page)

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Richard Lewis with New York pals at a

going-away party thrown for him the week

he moved to Los Angeles to appear as a

regular in an ill-fated Sonny and Cher TV

variety series. From left to right: Louis Hall, Larry David (of
Curb Your Enthusiasm

fame), Lewis, and Mickey Appleman.

Portrait of a young comic: Richard

Lewis on the author’s back porch

in Westwood, CA, May 1979.

Photo by William Knoedelseder.

Richard Lewis is visited by his

mentor David Brenner on the

set of
The 416th
, a TV pilot

shot in the spring of 1979.

From Richard Lewis’s collection.

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Steve Lubetkin. Courtesy of Barry Lubetkin.

Steve Lubetkin and Susan Evans on

a weekend trip to Las Vegas in 1978,

a gift from Steve’s brother Barry.

Courtesy of Susan Evans.

The comedy team

Lubetkin and Evans, 1978.

Courtesy of Susan Evans.

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“The world’s fastest Caucasian”;

Tom Dreesen as a young father in

Dreesen performs with Tim Reid in the

Harvey, Illinois, in 1968 before he

early 1970s as part of the first and only

became a stand-up comic.

black-and-white stand-up comedy team.

A photo taken from Dreesen’s first

appearance on
The Tonight Show
,

December 9, 1975. The inscription

is to Jeanne and Willie Franks, the

husband-and-wife owners of the

Junction Lounge in his old

neighborhood in Harvey, where

Dreesen was the only white patron.

Courtesy of the Franks family.

Now a
Tonight Show

veteran, Dreesen gets

to sit with Johnny.

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Mitzi Shore in the spring of 1979, just days Shore’s favorite photo of herself—young and

before the strike that changed everything.

sexy in a see-through blouse—which she

Photo by William Knoedelseder.

displayed on her desk and handed out

to young male comics. Courtesy of Lue Deck.

Budd Friedman perched

proudly in front of his

West Hollywood club in

January 1980, after the

comics helped him

rebuild from an arson fire

that almost put him out

of business. Photo by

William Knoedelseder.