Lost in the Funhouse_ The Life and Mind of Andy Kaufman - Bill Zehme [75]
Meanwhile, he had begun cross-breeding Laughing Man with Bliss Ninny (adding a dash of Clifton) to create Nathan Richards, perhaps the happiest and most unctuous entertainer ever to tread boards. Dennis Raimondi, a TM follower who had become a close friend through Kathy Utman, observed Richards in early club development—“He was the kind of guy who bounced onto the stage and just gushed: ‘Hey, ho ho ho how ya doin’ it’s great to be here you’re such a beautiful audience you are beautiful people and I’d like to sing for you because you’re just so special to me….’ He would just be, you know, a little bit too blissful. And he’d wander through the audience and sing to them —‘I have often walked down this street beforrre thank you thank you’—and kiss the women, most of whom just pushed him away. And he’d say, ‘Come on, you love it and you know it, baby!’ Then after the song he’d say, ‘Gosh, I’d love to stay and sing for you all night, but I have another gig.’ Then he’d run offstage to no actual applause, then come back and say, ‘All right, I’ll do another song just because—’ He would do that like ten times. Some people were ready to throw dynamite at him. Then again, other people actually believed he was for real and enjoyed him. Once, we were out in front of Catch a Rising Star afterward and a lady came up to tell him, ‘Nathan, you really have a beautiful voice!’ And Andy looked at me after she left and said, ‘Sometimes I think they’ll never understand what I’m doing.’”
There were those who did and some of them would provide new avenues of pursuit. A New York businessman named Jim Walsh, who had launched various entrepreneurial ventures with football star Joe Namath, took a particular shine to him one night at Catch—“I thought what he was doing was creative genius and told him so”—then informally offered himself up as a quasi-manager. They had brainstormed frequently since early winter (usually in macrobiotic restaurants as dictated by Andy) and Walsh placed calls that eventually led to little bookings at little events around town and thereabouts, including a quick stint refereeing a hamburger-eating contest at a midtown Burger King, all of which meant a couple hundred dollars here and there—plus Eppie Epstein always found ways to throw him small change at My Father’s Place. So he was amassing some meager proof for his family that he was making headway. Then, as the airing of his Dean Martin shots approached (for which he received two five-hundred-dollar checks), he met the comedy team of Albrecht and Zmuda, who were Chris Albrecht and Bob Zmuda, a pair of young out-of-work actors fresh from Carnegie-Mellon in Pittsburgh who had come to the big city to starve. They had been scraping by on the fringes of outer Off-Off-Broadway before hooking up with the owner of a failing mid-town dinner-theater called the Little Hippodrome, where they initially hired on to do carpenter labor and waiter work. As business grew more dire, Albrecht was made a floor manager and Zmuda became a chef and, as their paychecks bounced regularly, they were given license to live on the premises and, whenever opportune, pass themselves off as co-owners of the place. And so, that May, when Zmuda quite accidentally stumbled into the Improv—and experienced the epiphany of stand-up comedy, which he instantly saw as the future—he let it be known that he and his partner were not only theatrical impresarios but also budding comedians (neglecting to mention that they had no act). “I figured this was our only shot at becoming real operators, if you know what I mean,” he would recall. So