Word: stores
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...comedians may not have bought into this, but for most of the '70s they tolerated it. They worked for no pay at the Comedy Store because that's how they got seen by the agents and bookers and producers who could be their ticket to the real paying jobs - a TV guest shot, a club gig out of town, maybe even a part in a sitcom or movie. Landing good time slots at the Comedy Store was too important to risk alienating the club owner who put together the nightly lineups...
...growing restive. For one thing, Mitzi Shore's little artists' colony was the center of a growing comedy empire. Along with her two clubs in the L.A. area and another one down the coast in La Jolla, she had started a college concert tour featuring comics from the Comedy Store and signed a creative-consultant deal with ABC to develop TV projects. She had expanded her original club as well, opening a second showroom, dubbed the Main Room, where she intended to feature (and pay for) top comics from Vegas...
...generation, who were ruling the roost in Vegas at the time. They refused to play the Main Room because they thought it would hurt their Las Vegas draw." Hamilton and another comic, Biff Maynard, suggested that Mitzi instead try to fill the room with a bill of her Comedy Store regulars. So she put together a squad of her best acts - among them David Letterman, Jay Leno, and Robin Williams - and crowds packed the place. Even better, at least for Mitzi, because they were her very own "showcase" comics, who worked for free in the Original Room, she didn...
...labor movement was born. Tom Dreesen, who had been in the Teamsters Union when he worked on the loading docks in Chicago, became the comedians' chief organizer and spokesman. A former G.I. who was a few years older than most of the youngsters at the Comedy Store, Dreesen had little affection for the college kids who had protested the Vietnam War, but he provided an articulate voice for their working stiffs' complaints. He tried to appeal to Mitzi's sense of fair play. "I told Mitzi, you pay the waiters, you pay the waitresses, you pay the guy who cleans...
...late March of 1979, with the talks at an impasse, the comedians went on strike. A picket line was assembled in front of the Comedy Store on Sunset Boulevard, the strikers carrying placards with slogans like no money, no funny and the yuk stops here. The spectacle of stand-up comedians, many of them well known from television, recasting themselves as extras in F.I.S.T., was an irresistible national story. Johnny Carson made jokes about it on The Tonight Show. Some of the more established comics were scornful ("This strike is the biggest joke I've ever heard come...