Comedy : THE GOLD STANDARD : The Comic Is Determined to Keep Stand-Up Career Sharp During Sitcom

One of the funnier lines stand-up comics deliver when they’ve landed a film or TV deal is: “Of course I’ll keep doing stand-up. I can’t imagine ever giving it up.”

Ooooo. That’s goooood.

What they really mean is: “Are you kidding? I’d be an idiot to keep doing stand-up. I’m making 10 times what I ever made in the clubs; I’m off the road, and I’m sleeping in my own bed.”

Comedian-actress Judy Gold, however, breaks from fellow comedians who have gone big time. Even though she is committed to five days a week reading, rehearsing and taping her role as Gloria, sidekick to Margaret Cho on ABC’s “All-American Girl,” the comic spends her nights performing in L.A. clubs. And it’s the same story when she’s in her New York City home, where she spends about half the year.

“I get home at 4 or 5, go to the gym, eat dinner and go out and do stand-up. I do it every night . . . the Improv, the Comedy Store. I work as many sets as I can,” she said last week in her trailer outside Stage A at Disney Studios in Burbank, where orange, blue, red or black one-speed bikes with chrome fenders shuttled workers around the lot, under the watchful eye of Mickey, painted on the Disney water tower.

“I just love doing stand-up. Stand-up is like a muscle. You have to keep using it. A lot of people take time off, and they go back and they’re like, ‘Oh, I feel rusty, and I forgot my material.’ I don’t want that to happen. I want to nurse that muscle. I can get in five or six sets a night (in New York) on a weekend. I can go from one club to another. It is kind of an addiction.” And that addiction brings her to the Irvine Improv through Saturday.

For Gold, the big difference between the show and stand-up is playing a character, being given lines and rehearsing all week without an audience, until the show is taped live on Fridays. In a club or at a college concert, Gold is free to interact with the audience and feed off the energy, which leads to much of her material.

“It took (the series) to help me appreciate how much I love stand-up. I love both of them, but they’re so different,” she said in the trailer, just a crescent wrench away from where another stand-up-comedian-made-good, Tim Allen, tapes “Home Improvement.”

“In stand-up, it’s me and the audience; there’s no fourth wall. I can say whatever I want. It’s more therapeutic. I really love it.”

Another thing the show and her appearances on MTV’s “Half-Hour Comedy Hour,” Comedy Central’s “Comics Only” and the now-defunct “Arsenio” have done is give her added recognition across the country. Now when she takes the stage, the audience is primed.

“They’re excited, and it’s fun to have that. And for them to know you as a character and then to see you as yourself is really a lot of fun.”

But having a ready-made audience isn’t always a big plus for a comic who wants to have a crowd react to the material rather than the reputation.

“It can go either way,” she explained. “They can either be ‘Oh, she better be funny,’ or they can just laugh and be so overzealous and like anything you say. But I feel confident in my stand-up because I do it so often that I know it stands on its own.”

The New Jersey native has been honing her act for about nine years, but the seeds were planted in the early ‘80s as a sophomore at Rutgers University, when a secret Santa made her do a stand-up show for her dorm floor. That night would pay off later.

“I really wanted to get my degree, so I didn’t start doing stand-up until after I graduated,” said Gold, who earned a bachelor’s in music. “I worked at a magazine and was an advertising assistant. I realized there was no way I’m sitting in an office all day. It was good I’d had that experience of doing stand-up in college so that I knew that’s what I wanted to do.”

When Gold isn’t doing stand-up or working on the series, she likes to read nonfiction (and “well-written” fiction), listen to music or attend live performances.

“I love going to the theater. I love plays; I love musicals. I’m a huge musicals fan.”

Talk turned to the current touring show starring Marie Osmond in “The Sound of Music,” which recently played at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa and which Gold said she wants to see.

“I love Donny and Marie. I had the hugest crush on Donny Osmond when I was growing up. Isn’t that sick? I loved him. I had purple socks on all the time because he used to wear purple socks all the time.”

These days, no longer pining for Donny, Gold has moved on to sports, including running and tennis.

“I’m tall. I can get those big high ones,” she said, referring to her tennis game. “Basketball, forget it. Everyone’s like ‘C’mon, c’mon, be on my basketball team.’ Because I’m 6 foot 3, they all think I’m going to be the greatest basketball player.”

Her basketball career, unfortunately, was nipped in the seventh grade when the coach told her she was too tall and it wouldn’t be fair to the other teams.

“Isn’t that terrible? And I was obviously in my awkward stage,” said Gold, who hit the six-foot mark at age 13. “I’m taller than my teachers. I’m going to my friends’ houses, and I’m taller than their parents. He couldn’t say, ‘I’m going to work with you because right now you are a little uncoordinated’ or something like that. So I never played basketball again. I played for fun, but I bet I could have been a really good player because I’m very athletic and outdoorsy.”

About this time, Maddie Corman, who plays Ruthie, sticks her head into the trailer, looking for a lunch date at the studio commissary. Gold explains that such interruptions are not uncommon in the tight cast.

“We all get along. We all watch the show together on Wednesday night.”

Gold landed the sitcom role when she came down from San Francisco to audition for the role of Ruthie. At first, Gloria and Ruthie were interchangeable, with neither having a defined personality. As the season winds down and the cast awaits word on next season, Gloria has emerged as sort of a sarcastic, crazy and adventurous friend, while the blond Ruthie has been colored with a loserish hue.

“I think I’ve added a lot of myself in there,” Gold said. “They have given us creative freedom. Lots of time we get lines, and it says to ad lib. So we kind of try to put our own little thing in there.”

Though the show generally focuses on Cho’s character’s differences from her traditional Korean family, one episode focused on the three friends moving in together and highlighted Gloria, who spent a good portion of the show walking around nude.

“I think that was our best show,” said Gold, who did the scenes with a tan bodysuit to help maintain a certain dignity on the set. “I loved doing that. I thought it was hilarious. And that’s kind of me, because I always walk around naked in my apartment. A lot of my friends called me after that show and said, ‘How did they know?’ ”

* Who: Judy Gold.

* When: Today, Jan. 26, at 8:30 p.m.; Friday, Jan. 27, at 8:30 and 10:30, and Saturday, Jan. 28, at 8 and 10:30. With Bob Smith and Robert Hawkins. (Club closed Super Bowl Sunday.)

* Where: The Improv, 4255 Campus Drive, Irvine.

* Whereabouts: Take the San Diego (405) Freeway to the Jamboree Road exit and head south. Turn left onto Campus Drive. The Improv is in the Irvine Marketplace shopping center, across from the UC Irvine campus.

* Wherewithal: $8 to $10.

* Where to call: (714) 854-5455.

MORE COMEDY

IN BREA: TOM WILSON

Though more widely known as Biff the Bully in the “Back to the Future” film troika, Wilson is also a top comedic talent. He performs “Cowboy Tommy’s All-American Round-Up” at the Brea Improv through Feb. 5. $7 to $10. (714) 529-7878.

IN ORANGE: BILL WORD AND JERRY MABBOTT

The local comedians perform with Maria Bojorquez at 8 p.m. Friday, Jan. 27, at the Player’s Club, 777 S. Main St. $5. (714) 835-9100. Mabbott and his comedy revue also perform at 7:30 p.m. Thursdays at the Buena Park Hotel, 7675 Crescent St., Buena Park. $6. (714) 995-1111.

IN IRVINE: BOB SOMERBY

Somerby, a former Baltimore schoolteacher who once shared a dorm room with Al Gore at Harvard, brings his thought-provoking topical humor to the Irvine Improv from Tuesday, Jan. 31, through Feb. 12. $8 to $10. (714) 854-5455.