A Place Where Everybody Knew His Name

“He loved Elvis. He would never admit that Elvis wasn’t alive.”

That was part of Tom MacDowell’s shtick. Thomas Martin MacDowell--actor, comic, producer, bartender--carried off the act, on stage and off, in a perfectly semi-serious manner.

Bruce Cohen, a tall man with long hair and a bolo tie, is pouring a drink and thinking about Tom. They became fast friends eight months ago, the day Tom walked into the L.A. Cabaret in Encino and applied for a job. Soon he joined Bruce behind the bar, tending to strangers and the regulars like Lew and Ron, who just now walked in.

Ron ordered a Bud. “Hey, sorry to hear about Tom, man.”

Bruce nodded. Just eight months. Over by Chuy the doorman is a sign that says “A Fun Place for Fun People.” And nobody but nobody, Bruce says, was more fun than Tom. Hard to imagine a nicer guy, too. If you were part of the Cabaret crowd and your car broke down, Tom would fix it. He and his fiance, Adrena, would work the kids’ parties on weekends at minimum wage because they enjoyed it. Whether behind the bar or up on stage, Tom was a performer.

“You’d come in here,” Lew agreed, “and if you were down, he’d make you laugh.”

Bruce smiled, remembering how he’d tried to trip Tom up.

“Hey, Tom,” he’d ask out of the blue. “How long has Elvis been dead?”

“Well,” Tom would reply, “ some people think. . . . “

This was a quiet Thursday night in the comedy club on Ventura Boulevard. In the Main Room, a crowd of immigrants from Iran were watching a stage play--a tragic love story--performed in Farsi. Here in the bar--the Joke Room--the mike was open, but Johnny Vegas was reluctant to take the stage.

Like the night before, the mood was restrained. Wednesday was the day that everybody learned that 32-year-old Tom MacDowell had been found shot dead in his ’87 BMW, not far from his fiance’s apartment in North Hollywood. A victim of random violence--that’s what the police figure. He is one of four people to have been killed in the Valley in apparent carjackings over the last two months.

Johnny Vegas and the other comics dedicated their performances Wednesday night to Tom. The show must go on and all that. “You just do it,” Johnny Vegas said. But nobody was really in the mood. They’ll try again tonight, with a benefit performance to raise money for Adrena and her son, the one Tom treated as if he were his own.

Tom had come from a small town in Nevada and scored some modest success, including roles in “The Doors” and “Midnight Run.” He met Adrena four years ago while working in a bar in Santa Clarita.

His dream, professionally, was to make movies.

He registered a script called “Tabloid”--a comedy-suspense-thriller about a reporter for a sleazy supermarket rag with headlines like “Woman Gives Birth to Two-Headed Puppies!” Our hero records the scoop of the century by tracking down--yes--the living, breathing Elvis.

A screenwriter had signed on board to polish it up, and some of the financing was lined up. Bruce knew all of this because, in addition to his night job tending bar and his day job running a printing business, he had become Tom’s manager. Now Bruce finds himself calling lawyers. “Tabloid,” he figures, is part of Tom’s estate.

Julie the cocktail waitress has a day job in a Sherman Oaks bank, not far from where Sherri Foreman, the young mother-to-be, was lethally stabbed in a carjacking March 30. Chuy the doorman remembers when Foreman, an aspiring singer and actress, would perform on open mike nights.

Lew, a sometime stunt man, was feeling low. He remembers when Sam Kinison used to do his primal scream here. He died last year in a car wreck. Comic Skip Stephenson was another stalwart. A few months ago, he died of a heart attack, just 52 years old. But with Tom, it was murder. . . .

And Bruce remembered how Tom would warm up the crowd with his own Elvis routine. He put “The Wonder of You” on the karaoke machine and, during the dramatic interlude in which Elvis addressed the listeners, he offered his own lyrics:

“Every time I walk into a 7-Eleven, a Burger King or eat a cheeseburger, I ask myself, ‘Am I alive or am I dead? Am I skinny or am I fat? . . .’ ”

There was more, but that was all Bruce could remember.

Scott Harris’ column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. Readers may reach Harris by writing to him at the Times Valley Edition, 20000 Prairie St., Chatsworth 91311.