Word: stores
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...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...
...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...
...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 he saw, and Lubetkin's guest spot was canceled...
...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...
...Comedy Store strike, with its tragic coda, was a turning point for stand-up comedy in the 1970s. In later years, the L.A. comics romanticized it as the end to an age of 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...