TV Writer Chancing on a Play

When he was growing up in the Bronx, Jim Geoghan was one of those kids that teachers delicately refer to as “a behavior problem.”

“I couldn’t take anything seriously; I was a compulsive prankster,” he recalled. “I was always being sent to the vice principal’s office.” Then one day, he watched “The Dick Van Dyke Show” on TV. “It blew my mind,” said Geoghan, 44. “I realized there was nothing wrong with me. What was wrong was all these people in authority telling me that what I was doing was disrespectful and bad.”

Such are the beginnings of a TV comedy writer.

“When I was a kid, I wanted to write for TV more than anything in the world,” he said. “But I didn’t have any idea of how you got there.” Instead, after graduating from college with a degree in communications, Geoghan immediately headed for The Improvisation in New York. “Suddenly, it was like I belonged,” he said. “Like I’d come home. We were a very tight group of comedians, and we all took great comfort in each other.”

In time, Geoghan and partner Marc Fine had a modestly successful act, playing small clubs and colleges across the country. Then one night, opening a club in New Jersey, Geoghan noticed that the other half of the bill was an older comedian he had idolized years before on Ed Sullivan. “Now he was playing this toilet for 50 bucks,” he said. “I realized TV had made the career of these kinds of men, then tossed them away.”

That night was a crossroads for Geoghan. Soon after, he gave up his career as a stand-up comedian: “I was over 30, and I knew I wasn’t going to get that brass ring--be on ‘The Tonight Show.’ ” In 1981, he moved to California and promptly got a job as a writer on the TV series “Silver Spoons.” And seven years ago, he began writing “Only Kidding!”--a very personal comedy-drama on the backstage lives of an Irish-Jewish comedy duo.

Developed in the Los Angeles Playwrights Group, “Only Kidding!” originally bowed in New York at the American Jewish Theatre in 1988; it later moved to the Westside Arts Theatre, where it played until 1990 and received two Drama Desk nominations--including one for outstanding new play. The show’s original ensemble (minus Michael Jeter, now of CBS-TV’s “Evening Shade”) and original director have reassembled at the Odyssey Theatre, where the play makes its local debut this weekend.

“It has a lot to say about the lives of stand-up comedians--and about aspirations, the possibilities for change,” said director Larry Arrick, who is also prepping the stage premiere of Leon Uris’ “Trinity” in New York. Arrick, who directed the ‘50s improv group Compass Players--whose members included Elaine May, Mike Nichols and Shelley Berman--also observed the comic’s life as a teen-ager working at Catskills resorts: “I met a lot of guys on their way up, and on their way down.”

Since moving to Los Angeles, Geoghan has built a successful career as a TV writer (he’s currently a writer-producer on ABC-TV’s “Family Matters” and has written an as-yet-unproduced screenplay for Columbia), and believes his stand-up experience has served him well. “Stand-up is a very hard proving ground; it’s given me a thick skin,” he said. “I’m proud to have a reputation as a jokemeister. I think my forte is jokes--and I get that from my time in nightclubs.”

Although the play is loaded with one-liners, the writer emphasizes that it’s not a frivolous exercise. “It’s got a serious message,” he said, “about taking second chances, and who deserves to take them; about paying your dues, about pain and suffering. In a way, it’s a very serious morality play.” It’s also obviously cathartic: “Having moved on to some success, this is a good way to button off that part of my life, deal with it.”

Geoghan, who lives in the Hollywood Hills with his wife, Ann, an actress, and their 2-year-old daughter, Genevieve, can’t help looking back at his stand-up past with mixed feelings. “On one hand, I regret spending so many years in nightclubs because I feel like I wasted so much time; I didn’t come out here till I was in my 30s.” And yet, he figures, struggling for so long has made his middle-aged success a lot sweeter. “Also, when I started doing stand-up I was funny . . . but not nearly as funny as I was when I left.”