It’s a brutal, Darwinian form of entertainment, the peril implied by the jargon: you kill when you do well, you bomb when you don’t.
We didn’t invent comedy, but we did invent the comedy club: the stripped-down, intimate space devoted exclusively to stand-up. Its roots stretch back to 19th-century music halls, Borscht Belt resorts, nightclubs like the Copacabana and the Apollo, Beatnik coffee houses, and Las Vegas casinos.1 But at those places, comedy was in the mix of dancers and musical acts, often warming up the audience before the real entertainment came on.
When he opened his dingy, brick-walled space The Improvisation in 1963, Budd Friedman was planning to host a variety of acts. The singers never caught on (other than Bette Midler and Barry Manilow)—but the comics did. Lenny Bruce performed; Richard Pryor and Robert Klein became regulars. The lore is that Rodney Dangerfield wandered in drunk and bombed, returned sober the next night and killed, and was hired as emcee. The Improv fostered the dark humor of the times, becoming a laboratory for the emerging style of profane observations on previously taboo subjects.
It transformed American humor, ruthlessly culling the nightclub comics who told mother-in-law jokes. Audiences loved the high-wire experimentation, themselves embracing heckling as blood sport. For comics, submitting to their raw reactions was the only way to get good. When Richard Lewis killed in 1971, Friedman told him he could come any night and work for free. Lewis said, “Wow, I can work for free!”
Links:
Good essay on heckling: The Comic’s Quandary – Lary Wallace, Aeon, June 16, 2015
“The tiniest hellhole in Hell’s Kitchen” History of The Improv (official website)
Who invented stand-up? The origins of a peculiarly American form of comedy - Peter McGraw and Joel Warner, Slate, April 01, 2014
The godfather of comedy looks back on a lifetime of laughs – John Rogers, AP, December 2, 2017
Make ‘Em Laugh: Clubs, Camps, and Catskills - PBS, December 2, 2008
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This post is part of The American 250, a series featuring 250 words on 250 objects made by Americans, located in America, in honor of the country’s 250th anniversary. Through December 31, 2026.
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Dick Smothers, on seeing George Burns backstage at Caesar’s Palace when the comedian was still being trotted out in front of the high rollers in his late 90s: “He’d be ready to go on, he’d have a martini straight up in one hand and a cigar in the other one. ‘Show business is great, Dick,’ he says ‘Great. Sing a few songs. Tell a few jokes. Fifty thousand dollars. I love it.’ They’d applaud him for being alive.” - PBS
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