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Monterey County
Weekly Review
of Larry's One-Man Show
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"... a comedic troubadour ..."
Going on Ed Sullivan
Details a Dynamic Life Dedicated to Comedy
By Adam Joseph
Larry Wilde recalls an instance early on in his prolific career
as an entertainer when he was the opening act for the Girlies
Galore Strip Club in Eugene, Ore.
"To get in [the club] you had to be a horny lumberjack with
bad breath, a beard and at least one hickey from a bull moose,"
Wilde says to a packed house at Carmel's intimate Carl Cherry
Center. "I knew I was in trouble when they started booing
me before I even opened my mouth."
To give the audience a true taste of that Oregon fiasco, Wilde
instructs half the audience to yell, "Bring on the broads"
and the other half to yell, "Get that bum off the stage,"
intermittently as chainsaw sound effects blare from the surrounding
speakers.
There are three layers to Wilde's one-man-show, Going on
Ed Sullivan. The first stars an ambidextrous entertainer
performing Al Jolson song-and-dance numbers and Jack Benny-brand
comedy. The second features a storyteller sharing anecdotes
that straddle the line between legend and fact. The third
spotlights a reflective man completing a personal and sentimental
journey through memories that are beautiful and painful. The
New York Times best-selling humor author - one of the
last remaining vaudevillians - performs this autobiographical
comedic hodge-podge every Friday, Saturday and Sunday through
Dec. 9. It's not a short show, approaching two hours in length.
Wilde's epic tale is a reflection on his life and his search
for the answer to the philosophical question: "What does it
take to be a comedian?" For Wilde, it took everything from
appearances on Sanford and Son and Rhoda to
a Lucky Strike cigarette commercial featuring laughing Bassetts
hounds.
The answer to Wilde's question remains open-ended, but an
unquenchable thirst, endurance and a threshold for pain are
deemed some of the important qualities for a comedian to have,
according to Wilde's peers and mentors, who include Milton
Berle, Groucho Marx and Phyllis Diller.
Wilde says one of his most imperative comedic epiphanies came
as a young man working at the Carlton Hotel in Miami. "You
can't beat real life when it comes to comedy," Wilde exclaims.
Wilde noticed that Miami's population was predominately made
up of seniors, which gave him a barrage of humorous material
with which to work. "The average age [in Miami] was deceased,"
he says. "An 84-year-old married an 89-year-old; their entire
honeymoon was spent getting out of the car."
Wilde spent hours listening to the broken-English conversations
of Jewish immigrant housewives lounging at the hotel pool.
" 'What do you think of sex?' said a woman with a thick accent
to another woman lying beside her. 'It's the finest department
store in New York,' the woman responded."
As Wilde continues his autobiographical romp through his struggles
and achievements as a comedic troubadour, he intertwines personal
memories of his mother, Gertrude, who always told him that
an appearance on "The Ed Sullivan Show" was all he would need
to gain great fame.
"Why don't you go on The Ed 'Solomon' Show?" Wilde's mom would
ask him, matter-of-factly, as if it were his choice.
Wilde's mother was clearly a significant part of his entire
comedic journey. He reads from a letter she wrote him three
days before her passing: "You didn't need Ed Sullivan after
all."
Reprinted from Monterey
County Weekly
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Director
Carmel Institute of Humor
25470 Cañada Drive
Carmel, CA 93923-8926
Phone: 831-624-3058
Fax: 831-624-4265
E-mail: larry@larrywilde.com
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Copyright © 2008 Larry Wilde
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