Kup's Chicago - Irv Kupcinet [33]
The brilliant improvisational satire of the Second City Players has inspired similar troupes in New York, Washington, and other cities. This troupe began on an almost nonexistent budget as The Playwrights Theater Club on Chicago’s Near North Side. Paul Sills, comedian-actor Eugene Troobnik, who is still with the group, and theater buff David Shepard were co-producers. After eighteen months, in 1955, the Chicago Fire Department ordered their theater closed. But the group reopened as the Compass Players, farther north, on Broadway near Devon. By that time, the troupe included not only Nichols and May and Berman, but also Theodore Flicker, impresario of New York’s improvisational Premise Players. The Compass folded in 1957. But thanks to Sills and an audience highly receptive to penetrating satire, the troupe bounced back as the Second City Players, when it opened in its present building on North Wells. From there the company of Howard Alk, Severn Darden, Barbara Harris, Paul Sand, Alan Arkin, Andrew Duncan, Mina Kolb, and Eugene Troobnik moved on to Broadway and thence to Greenwich Village, while a second platoon continues to perform nightly in Chicago.
Another new field in which Chicago’s franchise is secure is the sharp, sophisticated social comment and satire known as the New Comedy. Mort Sahl, its originator, got his first break at Enrico Banducci’s hungry i in San Francisco. But it was Chicago that gave him his big send-off. He was first booked into the Black Orchid on Rush Street – then owned by Al Greenfield, husband of Gertrude Niesen – but he was fired after a few performances, because Greenfield insisted that he wear a coat and tie. Mort held out for his traditional sweater and open-neck shirt. Dressed as he pleased, Mort soon found his real home at Mister Kelly’s, another Rush Street club which now is Mecca for the New Comedy.
One night I took Groucho Marx to hear Mort. The king of the quipsters was ecstatic. “The greatest since Will Rogers,” said Groucho. “No comedian today has such courage.” This was seconded later by Adlai Stevenson and Bill Blair, Jr., our Ambassador to Denmark, who both became devoted admirers of Sahl. When Mort broke up Smilin’ Ed Sullivan at a Chicago Press Club Presidents’ Dinner, his future was no longer a thing of the future – we were looking at it. (“Right?” “Right!”)
Since Mort Sahl emerged as a star, every one of the other top talents associated with New Comedy – Shelley Berman, Bob Newhart, and Dick Gregory – has taken one route: onward and upward from Chicago. Here’s how:
Berman, a West Sider who studied serious acting at Chicago’s Goodman Theater, tried his luck elsewhere and found it discouragingly consistent – all bad. During a lean period in Florida, he actually flipped a coin to decide his future: Heads, he and his wife Sarah would hitchhike to Los Angeles; tails, to New York. It was heads. But L.A. offered no acting jobs. Only by selling a few comedy sketches to Steve Allen could Shelley survive until the Compass Players called. I first saw Shelley when he was working as a single at the Gate of Horn in Chicago. His fresh humor brought down the house. George Jessel, with his hilarious telephone calls to his mother, introduced the format used by Berman. But Shelley’s refinements – with philosophy and psychology thrown in – entitle him to credit for a complete new style.
Button-down Bob Newhart, of suburban Oak Park, worked in a number of jobs outside