I'm Dying Up Here: Heartbreak and High Times in Stand-Up Comedy's Golden Era by William Knoedelseder (28 page)

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Not surprisingly, the black performers seemed the most angered over her refusal to pay. “This is sharecropping,” said Marsha War -

field, “and I just don’t understand how so many smart people can fail to see the extent to which they are being exploited.”

Like Brad Sanders and Jimmy Cook, Warfield regularly worked the rough-and-tumble black clubs in South Central Los Angeles—

Mr. Woodley’s, the Twenty Grand at Imperial and Crenshaw Boulevard—so she had little patience for the namby-pambies who were afraid of Shore’s power. “There was a show business before there was a Comedy Store, and there will be a show business after the Comedy Store is gone,” she said. “Mitzi Shore did not make me a comic. She did not come get me from Chicago, and she is not going to send me home.” When Dave Tyree, a
brother
, spoke up in Mitzi’s defense, Warfield shouted, “If you don’t shut your mouth, I’m going to throw you through that window.” She then made a move to make good on her threat, but other comics intervened.

Likening Shore’s reasoning to “a pimp game,” Brad Sanders riffed à la Richard Pryor: “Don’t you tell me you’re doing me a favor by selling my pussy for me. I can sell my own pussy, thank you very much.” He offered a story of a club owner back in Chicago

“who once put a .45 revolver on the table and told me, ‘You are
not
going to get paid.’ And I said to him, ‘Then who’s gonna clean up all the blood?’ He laughed and said, ‘You’re a funny little nig-ger,’ and he paid me.” As for going out on strike, Sanders said, “It’s a no-brainer for me. What have I got to lose? I’m broke already.”

And so it went. For every person who spoke in favor of Shore and her vision of the Comedy Store as a workshop, two or three others attacked her, at times so viciously that it seemed almost as if they were more interested in punishment than fair compensation.

After several hours, a vote was taken, and it wasn’t close. The comics approved a walkout at the Sunset Strip club if Mitzi did not agree to begin paying for performances in all Comedy Store showrooms. Here and there around the room, you could see angry Shore supporters, some with tears in their eyes. But mostly, there 1586483173 text_rev.qxd:Layout 1 5/19/09 1:55 PM Page 187

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was cheering and high fives. Amid the celebration, Tom Dreesen and Jo Anne Astrow watched in astonishment as Mr. Compassion himself ran from the back of the room, down the center aisle to the front, where he raised his hands in the air and began chanting, “Kill the cunt. Kill the cunt. Kill the cunt.”

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All on the Line

For the CFC leadership, the next few days were like preparing for the D-day invasion. Tom Dreesen, Jo Anne Astrow, Dottie Archibald, Elayne Boosler, Jay Leno, Paul Mooney, Steve Blue -

stein, and a dozen others formed the troops into committees and subcommittees responsible for everything from publicity to painting picket signs. Meetings bled into one another, and the phone calls from worried comics came in a torrent.

Mark Lonow coached the neophytes in the art of effective picketing. They would need show-of-force numbers on the line in front of the Sunset club every night from the time of the early evening newscasts until closing. On top of that, they had to have a skeleton crew of pickets present overnight and during the day so that the Teamsters who delivered liquor and other supplies would be forced to leave their loads at the curb rather than cross the line.

Keeping the line manned twenty-four hours a day would require enormous effort and careful coordination. Some of the pickets would need transportation; all would require food and drink.

This was not going to be fun and games, Lonow cautioned. They were about to lay siege to a high-profile, multimillion-dollar business located on a world-famous thoroughfare. Their aim was to 189

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make it so difficult and unprofitable for Mitzi Shore to continue operating that she would accede to their demands. That could take weeks or months. Passions were likely to flare. People could get hurt. At the very least, the whole of Hollywood would be watching.

Ken Browning laid out the legalities. Officially, it would be a walkout or a boycott, not a strike, because they were considered independent contractors rather than employees of the Comedy Store. Pickets could not interfere with traffic or block the entrance to the parking lot or club, and they could not threaten, intimidate, verbally abuse, or touch customers. They could, however, be a loud, large pain in the ass. And who was better equipped to do that than a bunch of comics?

When Dreesen had time to think at all, he questioned his own sanity. What am I about to do? Lead a bunch of performers in a labor action against a nightclub owner. And who is it that hands me the big checks that pay for the house and car and food and clothes for my family? Nightclub owners. So, why would I risk all that for this? The answer always came back the same: Because these are my friends, and they need my help. It’s the right thing to do.

After much discussion, members of the executive committee decided to give Mitzi a few more days to think things over, and then, if she didn’t agree to begin paying for all performances in all her showrooms, they would throw up a picket line at the Sunset Store on Tuesday evening, March 27.

They didn’t announce the date, but it was no secret that the members had voted to back a strike, and when a lot of headliners and regulars failed to call in on Monday with their availability for the coming week, it was clear to everyone that something was about to happen.

The potluck auditions at Sunset went on without incident on Monday night, and on Tuesday morning, the
Hollywood Reporter
ran an unattributed, two-sentence item saying the strike would begin at 6:00 p.m. that day. Early Tuesday afternoon, comics began gather-1586483173 text_rev.qxd:Layout 1 5/19/09 1:55 PM Page 191

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ing at Dreesen’s house, eventually numbering between twenty-five and thirty, the committed, working core of the CFC. They went down the checklist: Pickets were scheduled in round-the-clock shifts; the signs were ready to be handed out; arrangements had been made for feeding and watering the line; megaphones and um-brellas had been donated. Everything was set. The foot soldiers were just waiting for the word.

They all crowded into Dreesen’s den as he picked up the phone and called Shore to give her one last shot at avoiding the strike.

“Mitzi, it’s Tom Dreesen, and I’m here in a meeting with the CFC membership.”

She said nothing, just listened.

“They’ve voted to call a strike starting this evening if you don’t agree to pay in all the rooms.”

There was a brief silence, and then she said flatly, coldly, “Not

. . . one . . . red . . . fucking . . . cent.”

He wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, but it wasn’t that, a statement so sure to inflame.

“Mitzi,” he said, “they are all here with me, and I have to tell them what you say. Do you really want me to repeat that to them?”

She said it again, in the same cadence and tone: “Not . . . one

. . . red . . . fucking . . . cent.”

He sighed, shrugged, and addressed the group. “She says, and I quote, ‘Not one red fucking cent.’” He watched as it registered on their faces—surprise at first, then anger—and held the phone out so that she could hear as they started to chant, “Strike . . . strike . . .

strike!”

“I’m sorry, Mitzi,” he said into the receiver. “We never wanted it to come to this.” He couldn’t tell if she was still on the line because the chanting was louder now and accompanied by foot stomping and pounding on tabletops and seat cushions.

“Strike . . . strike . . . strike!”

When the frenzy died down, the realization hit them like a bucket of cold water in the face: This was really going to happen.

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They were about to shut down the institution that had served as their primary, if not only, connection to show business. There was nothing else they could do. Now it was, as Elayne Boosler put it, a “fight to the death.” The prospect was both terrifying and exhilarating.

Within minutes Dreesen’s house had emptied as all hands searched for phones to make the necessary calls to the membership. Steve Bluestein alerted the media: the
Los Angeles Times
and
Los Angeles Herald Examiner
, the AP and UPI news services, the
Hollywood Reporter
and
Variety
, and the local TV stations, where prime coverage was all but guaranteed by the weirdness factor of comedians walking a picket line. Who wouldn’t want to see that? It was bound to be entertaining, and the possibilities for bad headline writing were endless: “No Laughing Matter,” “Unfunny Business,” “Laugh Riot, “Punch Line.”

Dreesen made a point of calling Johnny Dark because he knew his pal was wavering in his support for the CFC. “We’re striking tonight, Johnny, and we need you to be with us on this,” he said.

Dark immediately equivocated. “But this is a woman who has done more for me than my managers,” he said. “Merv Griffin saw me at the Comedy Store.”

Dreesen cut him off sternly. “You are either with us, or you’re with Mitzi.”

In agony, Dark made a beeline for Shore’s office, desperately seeking some middle ground.

“What are you going to do, Johnny? ” she asked.

“Mitzi, I can’t work here,” he said, his eyes brimming with tears. “How can I when every one of my best friends is not working here? ”

“But, Johnny, I started you.”

“I know, I know. But I can’t go against them. I can’t work here any more until this is over. But I promise, you won’t see me out there picketing. I can’t cross the line, but I won’t be on it. I want 1586483173 text_rev.qxd:Layout 1 5/19/09 1:55 PM Page 193

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you to know how much I appreciate what you’ve done for me and Suzie.”

“Well, okay then,” she said, waving him away in a manner that suggested she was irritated and disappointed but not banish-ing him forever.

Shore had already decided to close the club for at least the first night of the strike because she didn’t want any comics or customers to have to cross the picket line. She was busy making her own calls, and one of the first was to David Letterman. He’d become her favorite Comedy Store success story since his booking as guest host on
The Tonight Show
, and she didn’t want Dreesen dragging him in front of the cameras to say bad things about the club on the evening news.

“David, I just wanted to call and make sure you are not going on strike,” she said when he picked up the phone.

“Mitzi, I
am
going on strike,” he said.

“Oh, David, I think you are making a terrible mistake.”

“Well, I don’t think so, Mitzi, and I hope you and I will be okay.”

He could tell that she was hurt, but he didn’t try to soften the blow by promising that he wouldn’t walk the line, even though he couldn’t imagine himself parading around in front of the club carrying a sign with some silly slogan on it. The truth was, he didn’t really have his guts in the fight, didn’t feel the same level of emotion that Tom, Elayne, and George Miller did. He still had a little money saved up from Indiana, and he’d managed to get on the Johnny Carson show, so the big issues of the strike really didn’t touch him directly. He supported the strike because it was important to his friends. It was as simple as that, bedrock stuff.

For him, friendship trumped everything.

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working for the past few months. “I’m not a hero; I’m a coward,”

he told Susan the morning of the strike call. “I can’t do this.”

Ironically, the start of picketing at Sunset coincided with the start of his second five-night gig at the Comedy Store in La Jolla, which was not being picketed. He was tempted to just slip down to La Jolla and avoid taking a stand for the time being. But late in the afternoon, he announced to Susan, “For the first time in my life, I’m going to do something really courageous.” His plan was to join the picketing as a show of solidarity with his fellow comics and then head down to La Jolla.

Things were just getting started when he arrived at Sunset shortly after 5:00 p.m. The TV camera crews were setting up for their live shots. Dreesen and some of the other CFC leaders were doing interviews. Tom was dressed in a three-piece glen plaid suit and talking to Connie Chung, the hot young West Coast corres-pondent for CBS News. Comics were arriving in a steady stream, selecting their signs and taking their places on the line. A con-tingent of motorcycle cops kept the traffic moving. The air crack-led with excitement; the scene was heavy with portent. “This is historic, kind of like Woodstock,” Dreesen told a reporter for the
Los Angeles Times
. “Ten years from now, everyone will be saying,

‘Sure I remember. I was
there.
’” Lubetkin was there on the picket line for only half an hour before he set out for La Jolla.

By 6:00 p.m. the sidewalk party was in full swing. The comics carried picket signs emblazoned with slogans as marginally clever as “No Bucks, No Yucks” and “No Money, No Funny.” They sang, danced, and chanted such goofy non sequiturs as “People in India are going to bed funny” and (to the amused police officers) “Use a Pun, Go to Prison.” Alison Arngrim arrived in a limousine, dressed to the nines. Comedienne Roberta Kent had the presence of mind to craft a sign that promoted as well as protested. Fashioned like a theater marquee, it read, “Now Appearing on Strike: Roberta Kent.” Leno worked the line as if it were a club stage, shamelessly 1586483173 text_rev.qxd:Layout 1 5/19/09 1:55 PM Page 195