Entertainers whose careers had an inflection point, after-the-jump ….
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I love reading about entertainers whose “big break” came less from an important job offering … than from advice from another entertainer, or a gift from another that set them on a career path … or enhanced it. I have three instances; please include in the comments any other examples which you might have.
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Ten years ago, I read an interview with Garry Shandling where he related the story of what truly set him on a path to a career in comedy.
His family moved to Tucson, Arizona so that his older brother would receive specialized treatment for cystic fibrosis, which he said made him wonder about life in a way that other ten year-olds didn’t have to. As a student at the University of Arizona he switched his initial major from engineering to marketing, as it allowed him more time to write comedy routines, when as a nineteen year-old in 1968 his life changed.
He was a fan of George Carlin and saw that he was performing two hours away in Phoenix …. so he wrote about twenty pages of material and drove to catch his nightclub act. On a break, he saw Carlin standing at the bar:
'Hi, Mr. Carlin. My name is Garry Shandling, and I wrote some routines for you.'" Carlin was polite. He wrote all his own stuff but if Shandling would come back tomorrow: he'd look his jokes over and they could talk. Shandling drove home to Tucson, then … the next day came back.
After that night's show, Shandling recalls, "he takes me into the back room, which is like the clubs where I work now, and there's my material on his little table with marks on it." Carlin walked him through the twenty or so pages one at a time, and then he said, "You're very green, but there's something funny on each page." Very earnestly Carlin added: "If you're thinking of pursuing this ... I would."
He began as a writer, working on shows such as Sanford & Son and Welcome Back, Kotter before having a serious car accident at age twenty-seven. This, he felt, was a second omen (to pursue stand-up comedy) — appearing on the Tonight Show, which helped lead him eventually to It’s Garry Shandling’s Show (1986-1990) and the Larry Sanders Show (1992-1998). Two years after his death in 2016, he was the subject of an HBO career retrospective documentary.
Fifteen years earlier in 2001, he was able to present George Carlin with a Lifetime Achievement Award in Comedy (at the 15th Annual American Comedy Awards ceremony) and George Carlin began: “First of all, I’m sorry for encouraging Garry.”
Richard Pryor was the one comic whom I had no idea what to expect each time when I saw him on TV. He had a (sadly!) very short-lived 1977 TV show, with this skit (just The Pips, without a lead singer) as one of my favorites of all time:
Of course, that show was cancelled pronto (many reviewers later said it would have been a success on a cable channel) — and his films with Gene Wilder as his neurotic foil were fabulous (being a train buff, Silver Streak was my favorite).
Yet I was unaware of his early days, until I got the Audio Book for his 1995 autobiography from the library … learning that in the early to mid-60’s, he began as an orthodox stand-up comic: modelling himself after Bill Cosby (with Don Rickles noting how uncanny he was speaking like him) yet not truly himself.
In 1966, his career received a boost when Bobby Darin hired him as his opening act in Las Vegas. He appeared on many TV talk shows and (on one Merv Griffin Show episode) wound up doing something of a slapstick routine with Jerry Lewis.
Some time later, Bobby Darin gave a dinner party in Pryor’s honor, and seated across from him was Groucho Marx, who had been watching that episode (and had also taken note of Pryor’s career overall).
It hadn’t been one of my better moments — Jerry and I had gotten laughs by spitting on each other, and Groucho, it turned out, had a few things to say:
“Young man, you’re a comic?” he asked.
“Yes,” I nodded. “Yes, I am.”
“So how do you want to end up? Have you thought about that? Do you want a career you’re proud of? Or do you want to end up a spitting wad like Jerry Lewis?”
The man was right… I could feel the stirrings of an identity crisis.
This culminated the next year in 1967, at the Aladdin Hotel in Las Vegas:
Pryor would later admit in his autobiography that he was already abusing cocaine during this period and described himself as having a “walking nervous breakdown,” as he struggled to perform material he no longer believed in, in a city and environment that was often still strictly segregated. In September of that year, Pryor walked on-stage before a sold-out crowd, including Rat Pack mainstay Dean Martin. He froze, blurted out, “What the f**k am I doing here?” and promptly walked off the stage.
He lost all of his bookings, yet re-tooled himself (and his act) … and made history.
Finally, an inflection point not from a veteran to a younger artist .. but vice-versa.
The details vary in every single place I read of this ... but apparently at the Quiet Knight nightclub in Chicago in 1971, that evening’s performer (Arlo Guthrie) had finished a set and was approaching the bar. Some accounts state that the club’s owner (Richard Harding) prevailed upon Guthrie to listen to a song written by a local musician, others have it that the local approached Guthrie himself. If it’s the latter story, here is a composite of all the accounts I have read:
“Mr. Guthrie, I know you’re tired … but I have a song for you to hear”.
He was right, I was tired … yet he seemed so earnest I said, “OK, I’m going to have a seat at the bar, and you’re going to buy me a beer. And I’ll listen as long as the beer lasts”.
Looking back, Arlo Guthrie later said, “It was one of the finest beers of my life”.
He had been listening to a young Steve Goodman, who played Guthrie his song about a famous train run from the Windy City to the Crescent City, The City of New Orleans— which he had recorded the previous year, yet had not broken-through commercially (nor had a cover version by John Denver).
The notoriety from the song helped launch his career, with songs such as “You Never Even Called Me by My Name" (co-written with John Prine) that became a country hit for David Allen Coe and the tongue-in-cheek"A Dying Cub Fan's Last Request". Yet one analyst noted,“City” became Steve Goodman’s calling card.
Without it, Goodman once wisecracked, his music career might have been relegated to the bathroom shower. The bookings he secured due to the song let him stay in the music business even during stints when he lacked a major-label recording contract. The tune also let him care for his family, which soon included three daughters, and tend to his uncertain health.
Steve Goodman died in September, 1984 at the age of only thirty-six after a fifteen year battle with leukemia. When recorded that year by Willie Nelson, it won Goodman a posthumous Grammy for Best Country Song.
For Arlo Guthrie, this song became his only Top 40 song (#18 in 1972). And just last autumn, he announced his retirement at age seventy-three for health reasons.
While Arlo made it famous, and Willie Nelson enhanced its fame: let’s close with Steve Goodman’s original version of “The City of New Orleans”.
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