Word: picketers
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...meetings and negotiations continued. But when Shore wouldn't budge, the comedians, in March 1979, walked off the job. Pickets appeared, with placards bearing slogans like NO MONEY NO FUNNY and THE YUK STOPS HERE. All but a few of the regulars refused to work. Even Letterman?though he felt indebted to Shore, who had taken him under her wing when he arrived from Indiana with his wife in 1975, making him an MC?joined the picket line after he finished a stint as guest host on the Tonight Show. "This was the umbilical cord for a lot of guys...
...poverty-stricken comics were far less prepared for a long walkout than the relatively well-heeled writers today. Shore closed down her club, then reopened it, using the few loyalists willing to cross the picket line and some neophytes who saw an opportunity for some stage time. When she made a compromise offer to pay the comics $25 a set only on weekends, some of them, like Garry Shandling, thought it was fair and went back to work?a blow to the comics' shaky solidarity. "I think there was a lot of good that was accomplished by that strike," says...
Tensions between the strikers and the nonstrikers grew. One night, the bad blood got out of hand as one of the antistrike comics tried to drive a car through the picket line, brushing some of the comics and knocking Leno to the pavement with a loud thud. Dreesen ran over to him, panicked that he had been seriously hurt. Leno gave Dreesen a wink; he was only feigning an injury and had thumped the car with his hand. But he got hauled off to the hospital in an ambulance anyway, and the incident seemed to sober up both sides...
...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. I was in La Jolla at the Comedy Store and when I got the message [of his suicide...
...innocence, the dividing line between an era of happy camaraderie and a more complicated one of competing factions and big business. But it had a more important, if less obvious, impact around the country. Pictures on the evening news of stand-up comedians walking the picket line in L.A., and the news of their victory in the strike, raised the profile of a profession that was growing fast in popularity, not just on the two coasts, but in the heartland as well. The strike helped fuel the nationwide comedy club boom of the 1980s...