Cabaret Still Struggling for a Stage in L.A. : Even the best-known rooms have had uneven bookings as search for audience-building formula continues

Buck Winston knows cabaret. Or, to be more precise, he knows what cabaret means to him. When he dashes onstage at places such as The Gardenia for one of his occasional performances, he enters a magical world of glamour and romance, a world in which he can spend an enchanted hour strolling through the songs of Gershwin, Porter and Rodgers & Hart.

“Cabaret is my life and my passion,” says the compact, cherub-faced singer. “It’s the reason why I’m here.”

Sounds captivating, doesn’t it? But Winston’s everyday life is far more complex and considerably less magical. Like cabaret itself in Los Angeles, his career has been, at best, a hard sell.

“I’ve had opening nights when there were five people in the audience,” he recalls with a characteristically wistful smile. “Once, at Erika’s in Pacific Palisades, I got canceled because enough humans never showed up. But what I’ve learned through experiences like that is that I just have to pick myself up again and hang in there.”

To support his ambitions, Winston works two part-time day jobs--as a waiter and as a deliveryman--and picks up in-between singing gigs at parties from the Valley to Orange County.

Similarly, such night-life rooms as Santa Monica’s Upstairs at the Improv, Erika’s, West Hollywood’s Gardenia Room, Rose Tattoo and Studio One Backlot, and Hollywood’s Cinegrill have been obliged to provide a variety of programming that frequently ranges far afield from the classic definitions of cabaret.

In its original form, cabaret usually referred to a small venue (the word is derived from the Old French word for room) featuring politically oriented music, dance and comedy. The Brechtian images of Weimar Republic Germany in the ‘20s are its most archetypal representations.

More recently, the term has come to define mini-nightclub entertainment--most often showcasing idiomatic singers who specialize in material from the Berlin-Kern-Porter-Gershwin-Rodgers & Hart era of American popular song.

But the fact is that Los Angeles has never really been a town that enjoys night life on a small scale. As far back as before World War I, the vogue was for large, playfully dramatic restaurant/nightclubs.

The Ship Cafe in Venice-By-The-Sea (as it was then called) was a large, ersatz Spanish galleon with public and private rooms that attracted the likes of Rudolf Valentino and Buster Keaton. Nat Goodwin’s Cafe, built on a private pier in Ocean Park, billed itself as a “high-class cabaret” and was frequented by Charlie Chaplin. In Santa Monica, the Sunset Inn--the “Pride of the Palisades”--held dancing contests and carnival nights attended by Fatty Arbuckle, Harold Lloyd and Colleen Moore.

Much of the action moved to the Culver City area in the ‘20s. In his fascinating description of Hollywood nightlife, “Out With the Stars,” Jim Heimann says Washington Boulevard during Prohibition was “a fertile succession of dance halls, cabarets and speak-easies.”

In the ‘30s and early ‘40s, famous venues such as The Trocadero, The Cocoanut Grove and Ciro’s were places to see and be seen--celebrity hangouts where the presence of stars such as Jimmy Stewart, Clark Gable, Carole Lombard and Joan Crawford made them the favorite hunting grounds for the paparazzi of the period.

These days, comedy rooms, yuppie music bars and restaurants have largely taken over the primary functions of the big, old Los Angeles nightclubs--to provide fast-paced topical entertainment, and to serve as watering holes for whoever happens to be on the celebrity “A” list of the week. Today’s photo-hounds spend most of their time sniffing around Spago and Citrus, while comedy rooms such as The Improv, The Comedy Store and The Laugh Factory are the wellsprings for what little social and political satire remains in the live performance arenas. Major-name music acts stick to such large venues as the Greek Theatre, The Forum and Universal Amphitheatre.

The sort of cabaret entertainment, however, that has existed comfortably in New York perennials such as the Cafe Carlyle and the Algonquin Oak Room, and such newer venues as Rainbow & Stars, continues to struggle for survival in Los Angeles.

“It’s just a different town,” says Alan Eichler, a manager and agent who has been active in cabaret since the Manhattan revival of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. “New York is geared to live entertainment because of the theater, and Los Angeles is geared toward movie screens and VCRs because of the television and film industry. The result is that show business tends to be judged out here by how much money it makes--with movies at the top, and cabaret-style entertainment at the absolute bottom.”

A further problem, perhaps an extension of the entertainment industry’s focus on big numbers and fast results, is the reluctance of young performers to take the time to develop an effective nightclub routine.

“Too often, I find, acts expect things to happen overnight,” says The Gardenia’s owner, Tom Rolla, a former Broadway dancer and choreographer. “Maybe it has something to do with the whole Los Angeles star thing.

“I see far too many performers who spend a great deal of time and money to put an act together, and figure it’ll pay off the first time out. Wiser artists--such as Andrea Marcovicci, who’s had a regular Saturday midnight booking at The Gardenia for years, and B.J. Ward, who created an off-the-wall, but highly successful act called ‘Opera & Omelettes’--work hard at what they do, trying to make it better as time goes on. Cabaret is a long-haul commitment, and attracting an audience is a lot more important than what you’re wearing.”

Even the best-known rooms have had uneven bookings, as they search to find formulas that will build audience interest. The Cinegrill, which has periodically had the look, the feel and--when Michael Feinstein, Julie Wilson and Karen Akers have appeared there--the talent of a Gotham room, has concentrated lately on rhythm and blues and pop acts. “I’m doing what I feel I have to do to keep the room alive,” says manager Jan Walner. “And I feel that diversification is the only real way to go--mix up the styles and bring in a wider range of audiences.”