Word: mitzi
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...Sunset Boulevard that housed the Comedy Store was a nightly practice field for up-and-coming comics who would troop onstage to hone their material, try out new jokes?and hope to get seen by the agents, managers and talent scouts who were regular clubgoers. The club's owner, Mitzi Shore?a pretty, petite brunet with a whiny, Roseanne-like voice who had inherited the Comedy Store in a divorce from comedian Sammy Shore?viewed the place not as a traditional nightclub but as a "college" of comedy where newcomers could learn their craft and grow as artists...
...Another two weeks went by, and Lubetkin still heard nothing from Mitzi. On a Friday afternoon in early June, a distraught Lubetkin walked into the Continental Hyatt House next door to the Comedy Store, climbed to the roof of the fourteen-story building, and leaped to his death. His suicide note read: "My name is Steve Lubetkin. I used to work at the Comedy Store...
...tragic punch line to a story that had turned darker than anyone had bargained for, and it added to the bitterness against Mitzi. When she walked into her office the day after the suicide, Mitzi found a poster of Lubetkin propped up on her couch, and the words "Got the Message" scrawled in Magic Marker on her wall. Lubetkin's girlfriend had left...
...Lubetkin's troubles clearly went beyond Mitzi Shore and the strike. "He obviously had some deep-rooted psychological problems," says Richard Lewis, a friend since their days together at the Improv in New York. "Also an unbearably bad run of luck." Lubetkin had missed out on several TV opportunities, including a heartbreaking mishap with The Tonight Show. After he had been booked to make his first appearance on Carson's show, Lubetkin was cutting up onstage late one night at the Comedy Store when a Tonight producer happened to be in the audience. The producer didn't like what...
...strike worsened his relations with Mitzi. While it was underway, Lubetkin was scheduled to work a five-night engagement at the La Jolla Comedy Store (which was not affected by the strike), but he showed up late on opening night and Mitzi canceled the gig. Lubetkin said his car broke down; Mitzi was upset because he had stopped off first at the Sunset club to walk the picket line. But after his death, she angrily denied any implication that she bore some responsibility. "I was very close with Steve Lubetkin," she says. "I loved him. He was my best friend...