Seven Dirty Words_ The Life and Crimes of George Carlin - James Sullivan [28]
On the show that night, Carlin slipped his fingers in and out of his suit pockets, setting his jaw and hunching his shoulders, emulating the stiff posture of the president with the chronically bad back. He led with a joke about the Kennedy clan’s well-known nepotism: “On behalf of the attorney general, the joint chiefs of staff, the members of the Supreme Court, and the rest of my family. . . .” Sahl attests that Carlin did well on the appearance, though no one at NBC would admit as much. “They’d lose their position of aggression if they did that!” he sputters.
Despite Sahl’s endorsement and an appearance on CBS’s long-running Talent Scouts program, Carlin was unable to muster much career traction over the next two years. Still represented by Becker and GAC, his gigs were typically unexceptional and sometimes downright pathetic. He played the Exodus in Denver, the Colony in Omaha, the Living Room in New York, and four Playboy Clubs that had unfulfilled contracts with Burns and Carlin. A run at the Copa Club in Cleveland was canceled midweek, his first true flop. In Indianapolis he landed a prime booking at the Embers, but his subversive attitude did not go over well with the well-heeled audience. “I can remember doing the supper show,” Carlin said. “That means there are still dishes on the table. Stone silence,” for an excruciating half an hour.
At one point he managed to finagle an audition as a writer for Steve Allen’s syndicated Westinghouse show, but he squandered the opportunity. “It wasn’t a case of the staff missing out on something. I simply wasn’t ready,” Carlin years later told the host, who hadn’t been at the playhouse on Hollywood’s North Vine Street for the tryout. Allen, too, felt he’d missed an opportunity: “Since I have always been able to detect true funniness at a range of at least a thousand yards,” he wrote, “George’s career might have been accelerated, without the year-and-a-half delay, if only I had been present when he came to our theater.” Later, when Carlin began appearing on Allen’s programs, the admiration was mutual. “Steve was an instant fan of his because he was so bright, and so well organized,” says veteran comic Bill Dana, who was a writer and talent scout for Allen before striking out on his own with a deadpan alter ego named Jose Jimenez. “George was an expert at getting a complete knowledge of what he wanted to say, and then backing it up in so many delightful ways.”
In December 1962, while he was playing the Chicago Playboy Club, Carlin, Brenda, and a folk-music friend, a member of the Tarriers, attended one of Lenny Bruce’s performances at the Gate of Horn. Up in the balcony the beer was flowing as Carlin watched his idol’s set. Just as the comic launched into a bit about a marijuana bust, two undercover Chicago police officers stood up. “Show’s over, ladies and gentlemen,” one of the cops announced. The club’s piano player and saxophonist kept playing, archly providing a cool-jazz soundtrack to the bust. Alan Ribback, who had opened the club with music impresario Albert Grossman (best known as Bob Dylan’s mercurial manager), was escorted outside, along with a Swank magazine writer and, eventually, an underage female. Arriving officers began the tedious process of checking all IDs before the patrons were allowed to leave. Carlin and his companion kept drinking. “I was good and juiced by the time they got to us,” Carlin recalled, “and we purposely waited to be almost the last people, just to watch all this going on.”
When it was Carlin’s turn to produce identification, he wise-cracked, “I don’t believe in IDs.” That was enough to get him pinched for disorderly conduct. The arresting officer “sorta grabbed me by the collar of [my] suit and the baggy pant of my ass and bum-rushed me down