Budd Friedman, Improv founder who constructed a comedy empire, dies at 90

His daughter Zoe Friedman confirmed the demise however didn’t cite a selected trigger. Mr. Friedman had coronary heart and kidney points, she stated.

Typically described as “the godfather of comedy,” Mr. Friedman helped pioneer the fashionable comedy membership and fostered the careers of Andy Kaufman, Robert Klein, Jay Leno, Richard Lewis, Richard Pryor, Adam Sandler, Jerry Seinfeld, Lily Tomlin and Robin Williams, amongst many others. He turned the Improv right into a nationwide chain, opening two-dozen comedy golf equipment throughout the nation and introduced stand-up into thousands and thousands of Individuals’ residing rooms, internet hosting the long-running A&E cable collection “An Night on the Improv” starting in 1981.

“He was the primary particular person to raise stand-up to an artwork type by giving comedians a stage they might name their very own in entrance of a prepared viewers,” Leno wrote within the foreword to “The Improv,” a 2017 oral historical past guide by Mr. Friedman and Tripp Whetsell. “In that sense, he’s the daddy of the comedy membership.”

As Mr. Friedman readily acknowledged, he received into comedy solely by chance. When he began the Improv in 1963, borrowing cash from his mom to lease a storefront within the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan, he was making an attempt to grow to be a Broadway producer. He had no cash and “little or no style,” as he informed it, however determined to open a type of low-budget Sardi’s, the place Broadway actors may sip espresso, eat and hang around after exhibits, singing or enjoying piano to go the time.

Initially referred to as the Improvisation, after the spontaneous manner it got here collectively, the membership was meant “as a short lived, part-time enterprise to assist me increase my contacts within the theater, which had been almost zilch,” Mr. Friedman stated. His girlfriend and soon-to-be spouse, Silver Saundors, was a refrain member in “The best way to Achieve Enterprise With out Actually Attempting” and helped launch the membership, bringing her castmates to sing on opening night time. Just a few months later, Liza Minnelli took the stage, singing together with her mom, Judy Garland.

However Mr. Friedman turned from music to comedy after stand-up Dave Astor started performing on the membership in 1964. Finally, he embraced an all-comics invoice and demonstrated the viability of a pure comedy membership after years during which stand-ups carried out primarily at coffeehouses and summer time resorts, sharing a invoice with dancers and musicians.

“It’s onerous for us to think about now that this was daring, however it was — to think about a venue the place it was completely comedy and stand-up comedy, with out comedians having to be openers or followers of an unimaginable singer,” stated Journey Gunderson, the chief director of the Nationwide Comedy Middle museum in Jamestown, N.Y.

A Brooklyn membership referred to as Pips, owned by comic George Schultz, had opened in 1962 and hosted stand-up exhibits. However the Improv’s late-night performances and Manhattan location helped it grow to be New York’s high comedy venue, stated Wayne Federman, a comic book and comedy historian who teaches on the College of Southern California.

Mr. Friedman paid comics little greater than “cab fare,” he added in a cellphone interview, however the membership acquired a fame as a spot the place comedians may get common stage time to sharpen their materials. “As soon as the phrase received out, comedians began flocking there only for the power to work on their set,” he stated. “And oh, guess who else is right here: the booker for ‘The Merv Griffin Present’ or ‘The Tonight Present’ or ‘The Ed Sullivan Present,’ ” in search of new comics.

Pryor recorded his first stand-up movie, “Dwell & Smokin’,” on the Improv in 1971. As a struggling comedian residing in Boston, Leno drove three nights per week, round-trip, to go onstage on the membership. Bette Midler carried out there often (Mr. Friedman grew to become her supervisor), and Rodney Dangerfield labored because the unofficial home emcee. Actor Danny Aiello was a bouncer, Barry Manilow was the home pianist and an aspiring actor named Dustin Hoffman typically sat in on the keys.

After Johnny Carson moved “The Tonight Present” from New York to Burbank, Calif., in 1972, Mr. Friedman moved west himself, opening a Hollywood department of the Improv that went on to make use of comic Judd Apatow as an emcee, actress Debra Winger as a server and future CBS chairman Les Moonves as a bartender.

By the point the venue opened on Melrose Avenue, Mr. Friedman’s comedy-club mannequin had been replicated by venues together with Catch a Rising Star in Manhattan and the Comedy Membership in West Hollywood, the place proprietor Mitzi Shore grew to become his greatest West Coast rival. Lots of of comedy golf equipment finally opened across the nation, which Mr. Friedman blamed partly for diluting the standard of stand-up exhibits and contributing to a enterprise downturn within the late Eighties.

Nonetheless, he and his firm weathered the bust, benefiting from the publicity of “An Night on the Improv,” which was filmed at his Hollywood membership and spotlighted comics together with Drew Carey, Ellen DeGeneres, Ray Romano and Sarah Silverman. Mr. Friedman additionally appeared in entrance of the digicam — “I’ve at all times been a ham,” he stated — and often wore a rakish monocle, which he started utilizing on the authentic, dimly lit Improv whereas struggling to learn the menu.

By the point he and his enterprise accomplice Mark Lonow offered their firm to Levity Leisure Group in 2018, there have been greater than 20 Improvs throughout the nation, together with in D.C. There are actually 25, with lots of the golf equipment that includes a naked brick wall behind the stage in homage to a signature crimson brick wall that stood on the authentic Improv.

The brick wall has grow to be a staple of comedy venues basically, though Mr. Friedman stated that like a lot else he included it into his membership by happenstance, discovering the brick wall whereas taking down mirrors and crimson paneling that had been left by the previous tenant, a Vietnamese restaurant. He determined to go away the wall naked, he defined, just because he couldn’t afford drywall.

Gerson Friedman — his center identify is variously given as Leonard and Merton — was born in Norwich, Conn., on June 6, 1932. The youngest of three kids, he was nicknamed Buddy as a boy and shortly adopted the identify Budd.

His father ran an auto components enterprise along with his older brothers and died when Mr. Friedman was 4. His mom supported the household by promoting plus-size ladies’s clothes from their residence. She finally moved the household to New York, the place they lived within the Bronx after which in Manhattan, hopping between resorts the place she labored as a bookkeeper.

After graduating from highschool within the Bronx, Mr. Friedman served within the Military in Korea, the place he was wounded by an enemy grenade through the Battle of Pork Chop Hill. He studied at New York College on the GI Invoice, graduating in 1957 with a bachelor’s diploma in advertising, and labored at an promoting company in Boston earlier than returning to New York in 1962 with goals of working in present enterprise.

Shortly after he began the Improv, he married Saundors, whom he credited with serving to to generate the thought for the membership. Once they divorced within the late Nineteen Seventies, she grew to become the proprietor of the unique Improv, which closed in 1992. He married Alix Mark in 1981.

Along with his spouse, survivors embrace two kids from his first marriage, Zoe and Beth Friedman; two stepsons, Dax and Ross Mark; a sister; and 5 grandchildren.

Lots of Mr. Friedman’s comics described him as friendly and protective, a sympathetic father determine who provided encouragement in addition to recommendations. Nonetheless, he famous that he ran his golf equipment with a agency hand, calling himself a “benign dictator” in a 1994 interview with the Los Angeles Occasions.

“Richard Pryor as soon as stated I had taken benefit of him as a result of he was Black, and I used to be completely heartbroken,” Mr. Friedman stated. “Once I received residence my spouse stated, ‘It is best to have informed him you reap the benefits of all performers, no matter race, creed or colour.’

“I informed Richard that line and he beloved it. We had no bother being mates once more.”