<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0At the end of Part 1, we found Steve Martin winding down a three year job at Knott\u2019s Berry Farm where he performed in melodramas with a small troupe at the Bird Cage Theatre.\u00a0 He also worked on his magic\/comedy act during the olio intermission segments.\u00a0 In his book, <\/span>Steve Martin – Born Standing Up – A Comic\u2019s Life <\/span><\/i>(Scribner Books – 2007), Martin says he was doing well in his college classes, but the Bird Cage performances made him want to put more time into his solo act.\u00a0 Passing a Monday night \u2018perform for free\u2019 audition at a music club called The Prison of Socrates in Balboa, CA landed him his first real gig outside of Knott\u2019s Berry Farm.\u00a0 Steve had to furiously search for more material to expand his five to ten minute Bird Cage routine.\u00a0 He was not used to performing that long.\u00a0 His job was to keep the paying customers happy for twenty minutes before the main star of the night, folk singer Tim Morgan, took the stage.\u00a0 He admits his act was certainly no show stopper at this stage, but most opening acts in the small clubs were equally second rate.\u00a0 Truly a trial by fire, he survived his first gig and thereafter took to writing copious notes after each performance to help him refine and improve his act.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The next venue on his list of intermittent jobs was at the Ice House in Pasadena followed by more free Monday auditions and call back gigs.\u00a0 Martin recalls he was trying to put together a showbiz career without a clue:\u00a0 \u201cHaving no agent or any hopes of finding one, I could not audition for movies or television or even learn where auditions were held.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t know about trade papers – V<\/span>ariety <\/span><\/i>or <\/span>The Hollywood Reporter<\/span><\/i> – from which I might have gathered some information.\u00a0 I lived in suburbia at a time when a one-hour drive to Los Angeles in my first great car – a white 1957 Chevy Bel Air, which despite its beauty, guzzled quarts of oil, then spewed it back into the air in the form of white smoke – seemed like a trip across the continent in a Conestoga wagon.\u00a0 But local folk clubs thrived on single acts, and, as usual, their Monday nights were reserved for budding talent.\u00a0 Stand-up comedy felt more like an open door than chasing auditions.\u00a0 It was possible to assemble a few minutes of material and be onstage <\/span>that week<\/span><\/i>, as opposed to standing in line in some mysterious world in Hollywood, getting no response, no phone calls returned, and no opportunity to perform.\u201d\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t a great plan, but at least it was a plan – a way for him to not become a truck driver or have to wait on customers in a shop like he did at Disneyland.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0As he researched new materials, Steve began dissecting comedy albums by Tom Lehrer, Lenny Bruce, and whoever else\u2019s work he could lay hands on.\u00a0 Martin had read a book called <\/span>Showmanship for Magicians<\/span><\/i> and was horrified when he realized one of the keys to stand-up comedy was \u2018originality\u2019- he had to get away from the habit of recycling material and jokes that made the audience feel like they weren\u2019t seeing something utterly new.\u00a0 Steve said, \u201cThis realization mortified me.\u00a0 I did not know how to write comedy – at all.\u00a0 But I did know I would have to drop some of my best one-liners, all pilfered from gag books and other people\u2019s routines, and consequently lose ten minutes from my already strained act.\u00a0 The thought of losing all this material was depressing.\u00a0 After several years of working up my weak twenty minutes, I was now stating from almost zero.\u201d\u00a0 He began to assemble bits from real life, things that happened to Steve Martin and not just, \u2018a guy walks into a bar\u2019 stuff.\u00a0 Abstract ideas like a dramatic reading of the Periodic Table came and went – some worked and some didn\u2019t.\u00a0 Again, it was all trial by fire and Steve eventually gave himself until age thirty to either have a show business career or find some other calling.\u00a0 The thought of returning to the world of \u2018real\u2019 work was not the preferred option.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0With more and more of his stand-up work happening in Westwood, he decided to transfer to UCLA.\u00a0 The change in college found him scrambling to catch up and continue his studies in philosophy so he changed his major to theater.\u00a0 It was clear that he was now investing his entire future to show business.\u00a0 His former girlfriend, dancer Nina Goldblat (now known as Nina Lawrence), called about the time Martin\u2019s finances were reaching \u2018crisis\u2019 levels.\u00a0 He was sharing a small apartment with deadpan musician\/comedian Gary Muledeer in the Palms area located between Santa Monica and Culver City.\u00a0 I know the area as the WOAS-FM West Coast Bureau was located in Palms for eight years between stays in UCLA grad student housing and later relocation to Eugene, Oregon.\u00a0 Nina was a dancer on the surprise CBS hit series <\/span>The Smothers Brothers Show<\/span><\/i> and dating their head writer, Mason Williams.\u00a0 She told Steve that Williams and the Brothers wanted to, \u201cExercise the slogan of the day, \u2018Never Trust Anyone over Thirty,\u2019 with an experiment.\u00a0 They planned to hire some new young writers and Nina had suggested Martin.\u00a0 Having no experience writing for television, Steve none-the-less dropped out of college without realizing the material he had submitted to the Smothers Brothers show had been rejected.\u00a0 Williams saw something in Martin that perhaps Steve himself didn\u2019t and in an act of artistic generosity, hired him anyway.\u00a0 Williams\u00a0 paid Steve\u2019s salary out of his own pocket to keep him working on the show.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0In typical Martin style, he was now going to learn another showbiz skill the hard way.\u00a0 \u201cIf I was asked to write an intro for the folk singer Judy Collins,\u201d Steve recalls, \u201cI would write, \u2018And now, ladies and gentlemen, here\u2019s folk singer Judy Collins!\u2019\u201d\u00a0 Tommy Smothers challenged him to write an intro to a bit about television.\u00a0 Martin panicked and his mind went totally blank.\u00a0 He finally remembered a line his roommate Gary Muledeer had written, so he called to ask if he could borrow it.\u00a0 Gary said, \u201cSure,\u201d and when the Brothers asked Steve if he had written the joke, Steve simply said, \u201cYes.\u201d\u00a0 The joke (\u201cIt has been proven that more Americans watch television than any other appliance\u201d) saved Martin\u2019s neck in the short term (\u201cIf I had been hooked up to a lie detector at that moment, it would have spewed smoke\u201d), and in the long term.\u00a0 Steve later said, \u201cThe event must have been cathartic, because afterward, I relaxed and was able to contribute fully to the show.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0During this hectic period, Martin experienced what he later learned was an acute anxiety attack.\u00a0 He was not sure what triggered the event, but the anxiety attacks continued as he tried to piece together what was causing them.\u00a0 He found ways to work around them fearing if he took time off from the show, he would lose his job.\u00a0 It took a year for these episodes to fade and in his book he states, \u201cI suppose I was too practical to have such an inconvenient phobia.\u201d\u00a0 Looking back at the \u2018I\u2019m a wild and crazy guy\u2019 part of Martin\u2019s career, one sees none of the anxiety he endured to get to the top.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0In addition to the long hours he spent writing for the Smothers Brothers show, Martin continued to work his stand-up gigs.\u00a0 If he was bombing, he remembered the advice of an old time stand-up guy:\u00a0 \u201cIf the audience wasn\u2019t laughing, he would listen to hear if the waitresses were laughing – after all, they saw the show night after night.\u201d\u00a0 What Steve noticed at his shows kept him going – the waitresses were laughing.\u00a0 During his time working on the Smothers Brothers show, LA was a hotbed of flower power.\u00a0 Laurel Canyon was populated by the likes of Joni Mitchel, Carole King, Kenny Loggins, Frank Zappa, and a host of others.\u00a0 Steve met none of these people, but he did reconnect with his banjo playing buddy John McEuen\u2019s older brother Bill.\u00a0 Bill would be to Martin what Colonel Parker was to Elvis.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0When the Smothers Brothers were finally fired by CBS for constantly pushing the envelope to see what they could get by the censors (see FTV:\u00a0 The Smothers Brothers – Parts 1 & 2 {2-24-21 & 3-3-21}), he heard news of their sacking on the radio driving to work.\u00a0 CBS cited the late delivery of one show but Martin knew the inside story better than most:\u00a0 trickle down anger from President Nixon about the show\u2019s anti-war content put political pressure on CBS and eventually it wore the network down.\u00a0 The Smothers Brothers were deemed \u2018expendable\u2019 in the fray.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Political content found a home with the likes of George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Robert Klein, and Steve Martin who found even the mention of Nixon\u2019s name got laughs with college audiences.\u00a0 He and fellow Smothers Brothers alum, Bob Einstein (Officer Judy on that show and faux stuntman Super Dave Osbourne later in his career) formed a solid writing team on <\/span>Sonny and Cher<\/span><\/i> as Martin continued to criss-cross the country doing stand-up gigs.\u00a0 He killed time between gigs by visiting art museums, antique stores, and libraries.\u00a0 Martin notes his art collecting bug stems from this period although the first piece of \u2018great art\u2019 he bought, a John Everett Millais painting from the nineteenth-century, turned out to be a fake.\u00a0 Afternoon talk shows hosted by the likes of Della Reese, Merv Griffin, Dinah Shore, and Steve Allen were becoming vogue and Steve was able to land his first TV appearance as a stand-up on Allen\u2019s show.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Allen had a his own quirky sense of humor and his introduction of Martin shows Allen did indeed \u2018get\u2019 Steve\u2019s comedy:\u00a0 \u201cThis next young man is a comedian, and . . . (Allen tended to stammer between sentences like he was searching for the right words) . . . at first you might not get it – but then you think about it for a while, and you still don\u2019t get it – then you might want to come up onstage and talk to him about it.\u201d\u00a0 After Martin thought he had \u2018killed it\u2019 as they say, another comedian on the show that day slammed Martin with back-handed compliments.\u00a0 Morey Amsterdam, a veteran of <\/span>The Dick Van Dyke Show<\/span><\/i> and himself an old school comic, did not get Steve\u2019s offbeat comedy.\u00a0 Of the encounter, Martin said, \u201cI bore no grudge;\u00a0 I was so naive I didn\u2019t even know I had been insulted.\u00a0 The Steve Allen credit opened a few doors, and I bounced around all of the afternoon shows, juggling material, trying not to repeat myself.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The TV appearances spawned even more work, including an invitation to do a five week engagement opening for Ann-Margret at the International Hotel in Vegas.\u00a0 Relaxing in his dressing room with Bill McEuen after the show one night, he noticed Priscilla Presley pass his open door.\u00a0 A moment later, Elvis himself popped in and made the \u2018Son, you have an ob-leek sense of humor\u2019 comment mentioned in Part 1 of this article.\u00a0 After he and Priscilla had visited with Ann-Margaret, Elvis popped in again to tell them that he, too, had an oblique sense of humor that his audience didn\u2019t get.\u00a0 Then Elvis added, \u201cDo you want to see my guns?\u201d as he emptied the bullets into his hand and passed them his two pistols and a derringer.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The plum of all TV appearances for comedians in the late 1960s was <\/span>The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0 If one managed to get Johnny to laugh, it was considered a career enhancing golden moment.\u00a0 Steve did not realize it took multiple appearances on Johnny\u2019s show to gain traction in the public\u2019s eye.\u00a0 Carson\u2019s people eventually let Martin know Johnny was not thrilled with some of the more offbeat stuff he did.\u00a0 Even though he kept getting slots on <\/span>The Tonight Show<\/span><\/i>, he was booked when there was a guest host in Johnny\u2019s chair.\u00a0 After much road work as an opening act at clubs like The Troubadour in LA, Martin talked to frequent <\/span>Tonight Show<\/span><\/i> guest host David Brenner.\u00a0 Brenner gave him the advice he needed to hear:\u00a0 \u201cTell the club owners you will take the door (in other words, get paid whatever people paid to get in to see him) and they can have the bar take.\u201d\u00a0 It sounded like a winning formula to Martin and at that point, he had nothing to lose.\u00a0 No more opening slots.\u00a0 He will be the headliner from then on.\u00a0 Back when he played frequently in LA\u2019s Westwood Village, he asked nattily attired folk singer Fats Johnson about his wardrobe to which Johnson replied, \u201cAlways look better than they do.\u201d\u00a0 The long hair, beard and hippie stage outfits were soon replaced with a more professional, almost banker-like outfit.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0His first appearance with his new battle plan was at Bubbas in Coconut Grove, Florida.\u00a0 It was a slow night as openers sometimes are, so at the end of his show, he walked through the audience making wisecracks and they followed him out into the street.\u00a0 Martin ended the evening by getting into a taxi and leaving.\u00a0 A review in the local paper the next day mentioned this \u2018parade of hilarity right out into the street\u2019 and ended with, \u201cSteve Martin is the brightest, cleverest, wackiest new comedian around.\u201d\u00a0 The schtick worked and the favorable reviews were passed to Johnny via his staff.\u00a0 They booked him on a show with Carson in the chair in September 1974.\u00a0 Sammy Davis, Jr. was a guest that night and both he and Carson were doubled over in fits of laughter at Steve\u2019s rapid fire bit called \u2018Vegas nightclub act in two minutes\u2019.\u00a0 Sammy gave him a hug and there was no one more \u2018Mr. Las Vegas\u2019 in those days than Sammy Davis, Jr.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The combined notoriety from appearing on Carson, an article in <\/span>Rolling Stone, <\/span><\/i>a one man show on a new network, HBO, and word of mouth about Martin\u2019s live performances began growing his fan base.\u00a0 Doubt and anxiety still crept in when he would flop some nights.\u00a0 An extended engagement at The Boarding House in San Francisco seemed to finally put him in front of an audience that \u2018got it\u2019.\u00a0 His catch phrase, \u201cWell, escuuuse me,\u201d can be traced back to that particular gig.\u00a0 When <\/span>Saturday Night Live<\/span><\/i> took to the air in October of 1975, Martin figured he was on to something because so many elements of that show reflected his own offbeat material.\u00a0 All of a sudden, Steve Martin was a hot property.\u00a0 The last time he dared conga-line his audience out of a theater was in Dallas where he realized how dangerous it was to have two thousand people milling about on the street outside the venue.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The concerts were booked into larger and larger digs.\u00a0 A show in Milwaukee before three thousand fans made him rethink his wardrobe.\u00a0 He opted for a three piece white suit for visibility from the back of the house and a vest to help keep his shirt tucked in during his physical bits.\u00a0 It was a practical decision and he hoped no one would remember John Lennon (and others) wearing a similar outfit.\u00a0 In the bigger arenas, Martin would perform his opening trick;\u00a0 \u201cThe magic dime trick – where I would claim to change the date of a dime – then I would ask the back row how much they paid to get in.\u00a0 They would shout it out, and I would laugh hysterically, implying they were getting cheated.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0After hosting <\/span>SNL <\/span><\/i>in October of 1976 (the first of many host and guest appearances), things really got out of control.\u00a0 As the audience sizes increased in the wake of the <\/span>SNL <\/span><\/i>appearance (six thousand in Madison, WI – fifteen thousand in Toronto – twenty-two thousand in St. Louis), two things became apparent.\u00a0 First, major adjustments had to be made for the act to play in such large venues.\u00a0 Second, his massive success was beginning to wear Steve down.\u00a0 Martin wasn\u2019t just physically wearing down as witnessed by his statement, \u201cI was now famous, and the normal rules of social interaction no longer applied.\u201d\u00a0 He was doing shows on autopilot and found being on the road to be a tiring and lonely experience.\u00a0 Fame, it seems, ain\u2019t always what it is cracked up to be.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Before he laid stand-up comedy aside, Martin parlayed his popularity into film work which will have to be a chapter for another day.\u00a0 The last word about his stand-up career surely applies to many celebrities:\u00a0 \u201cTime has helped me achieve peace with celebrity.\u00a0 At first I was not famous enough, then I was too famous, now I am famous just right.\u00a0 Oh yes, I have heard the argument that celebrities want fame when it\u2019s useful and don\u2019t when it\u2019s not.\u00a0 That argument is absolutely true.\u201d\u00a0 Steve Martin is still \u2018that wild and crazy guy,\u2019 just not THAT wild and crazy guy.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Top Piece Video:\u00a0 Steve Martin proves comedy, music, and history can mix!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0At the end of Part 1, we found Steve Martin winding down a three year job at Knott\u2019s Berry Farm where he performed in melodramas with a small troupe at the Bird Cage Theatre.\u00a0 He also worked on his magic\/comedy act during the olio intermission segments.\u00a0 In his book, Steve Martin – Born Standing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,8,12,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bands-musicians","category-from-the-vaults","category-humor","category-woas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2301"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2301\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2304,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2301\/revisions\/2304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}