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By Root 1344 0

George and Bob and Linda Mitchell and others doled out the cookies and milk and Andy worked the room and received platitudes and promises of greater career opportunity and veiled movie offers and female entreaties galore. “Of all the times in Andy’s life,” said Ebersol, “that night was the happiest I ever saw him, wandering from table to table with a big smile on his face. You could tell that he felt that he had put one over on the world. It was a night that he didn’t want to end. When we got on the buses to go back to the theater, you could tell that he didn’t want us to leave.” And Janice told George that she was simply kvelling over her son—Janice Kaufman is just a lovely lady. Everybody that meets her says, “But you’re so normal!” When they meet Andy’s mother and father, they say the same thing, “They are regular people—what happened?” His parents are so proud of him and feel wonderful about what he’s accomplished. Janice said one thing that is really interesting and important. I mentioned that Andy had such a good time onstage tonight and she said, “One thing about that boy—he seems to always do what’s fun for him. He enjoys himself in whatever he’s been doing in show business and that’s a wonderful blessing for him.”

He awoke the next morning feeling deathly, his brain aflame with a 105-degree fever, and he could not move—but he would not cancel the show that night and somehow got himself to the theater and George found him slumped in his dressing room wearing Clifton’s face and clothes and George helped him button the ruffled turquoise shirt and he wearily told George, “I can’t even keep my eyes open. How am I going to do it?” And George said, “I have the feeling that when you get out onstage and the spotlight hits you and you pick up the mike, you’re going to get an extra charge of energy, like an outside force coming in and giving you strength. I truly believe this. Go out there and have fun and it’s going to be okay.” And, by the time it was over, he had gotten his second standing ovation in two nights and Robin Williams had helped serve milk and cookies afterward and he had lost nearly twenty thousand dollars mounting this two-night extravaganza but George said it was worth it and he would earn it all back a hundredfold and, for days to come, George’s phone did not stop ringing with congratulations and new offers and John Landis said that he wanted to make a documentary about Tony Clifton.

“Take this from someone who was not formerly a fan of Andy Kaufman—he’s got the hottest act going this side of the Himalayas,” wrote critic Susan Birnbaum in the lead of her Hollywood Reporter review. “An evening with Kaufman is the looniest, funniest, most wonderful way to enjoy yourself.” And this would be the only glowing published assessment of the Huntington Hartford program, because other critics were now beginning to display concern and doubt. The critic “Kirk.” began his Variety review by soberly pointing out that repeated television appearances tend to destroy the potency of otherwise foolproof comedic material—“What may have taken months or even years to perfect can be made obsolete in three minutes of airtime. Which is exactly what has happened to Andy Kaufman. In many ways, in fact, Kaufman may suffer more from TV’s appetite … [since he] creates a series of characters which depend, at least in part, on audience unfamiliarity with Kaufman as Kaufman to succeed. When the audience knows the character is only a character, and also knows the payoff, the laughter takes on a different form. It becomes participatory and anticipatory, rather than reactionary.” Which was to say, so much for Foreign Man and Elveece and Conga Man and Andy himselves and, Kirk. continued, “If TV has hurt Kaufman’s portion of the show, the print media, especially locally, has simply destroyed the effectiveness of the opening segment, when Kaufman assumes the character of obnoxious Vegas-type lounge singer Tony Clifton…. It’s time for Kaufman to come up with a new Clifton.” Lawrence Christon, in the Los Angeles Times, was a bit kinder and described