Word: dreesen
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...labor movement was born. The issue wasn't today's relatively abstruse one of payments for DVDS or Internet downloads; it was simply getting paid. Tom Dreesen, a comedian and former Teamster from Chicago who became a spokesman for the comics, pleaded with Shore to give them at least a token amount. "I told Mitzi, 'You pay the waiters, you pay the waitresses, you pay the guy who cleans the toilets. Why don't you at least pay the comedians?'" says Dreesen. Many of the struggling kids who were helping her club thrive, he pointed out, couldn't even afford...
...Mitzi called me ten minutes later and said, let's settle this thing right now," says Dreesen. On May 4 a settlement was reached, on essentially the same terms that Mitzi had rejected earlier - twenty-five dollars per set for all but a few specified hours during the week reserved for newcomers. After a six-week walkout, the Comedy Store comics went back to work, claiming victory...
...strike left a bitter legacy. Some of the activists, like Leno and Dreesen, never worked in the Comedy Store again. Some who crossed the picket line later regretted it. "There were a lot of personal attacks on Mitzi, and I felt protective of her," says Mike Binder, a protégé of Leno's, who continued to work during the strike. "But it was a mistake. I didn't understand the magnitude of it. She was a bad horse to back." Mitzi, complaining that she could no longer afford to keep all her showrooms open on slow nights, shut...
...against them. One of them was Steve Lubetkin, a New York comic who had moved west and gotten close to Mitzi but wound up joining the picketers. After the comics went back to work, he complained that Mitzi would no longer give him any time slots. He appealed to Dreesen, who was getting ready to go back on the road. "He came up to me and said, Tom, don't leave; she'll retaliate. I said, she can't; it's in the contract. He said, I've called in two weeks in a row and she won't give...
...Jolla at the Comedy Store and when I got the message [of his suicide], I threw glasses around. I had a fit, that he would do a thing like that." She claims Lubetkin was under too much pressure because of the organizing duties he had inherited after Dreesen left town. "He couldn't handle what they were giving him to do," she says. "He had definite problems. But the pressure of getting that responsibility was too much for him." Dreesen says he doesn't know what she's talking about...