KING OF COMEDY

To read press reports of the $30-million breach-of-contract lawsuit that Eddie Murphy settled recently with one-time manager King Broder (“ . . . Live from New York, It’s Eddie on Trial!”), you get the impression that Broder’s a small-time Broadway Danny Rose, a la Woody Allen, trying to belatedly cash in on the comic’s huge success.

But Broder’s son Mitch, a columnist for the Rochester Democrat Chronicle, gave his readers another side of the story in a column that drew more responses “than anything else I’ve ever written,” he told us.

Among his claims:

“Murphy (at age 16) came to my father in 1977. My father sent him out on jobs, put him in a comedy group, taught him about the business, helped him with his material.”

King Broder, a former comedian, signed a bona-fide contract (three years with a three-year option) as Murphy’s manager in 1980, calling for 25% of the comedian’s earnings. It was signed when Murphy was 19 and unknown.

Although Murphy was Broder’s first client as a manager, he had spent years as a booker, working with the likes of Rodney Dangerfield, Dionne Warwick, Billy Joel and David Brenner.

Broder sent Murphy to the audition for “Saturday Night Live” that led to his fame--and never heard from him again.

Although Murphy got lots of media attention for the hamming he did in court--”He called my father a liar. He’d taken cheap shots at his appearance. He’d gleefully peppered the proceedings with Jew jokes”--but when it came time to be cross-examined, he offered to settle up.

Young Broder said that many New Yorkers “disgusted with Murphy’s clowning” and one-sided media coverage of the lawsuit, wrote in support of the column: “Some people just don’t like Eddie Murphy. . . . They see him as arrogant.”

The amount of the settlement is secret, but King Broder, 64, is still booking talent at Catskills clubs, said his son. Not that he couldn’t retire: “He was happy with the settlement.”