Getting Its Act Together

Ten years ago the Comedy Act Theatre was the hottest ticket in town, so raucously funny that comic Louis Dix swears that “the walls used to laugh.” The Leimert Park club boasted headliner Robin Harris--the best insult-meister this side of Don Rickles--and a legion of then-little-known hopefuls, including Dix, Robert Townsend, Sinbad, Keenen Ivory Wayans, Jamie Foxx, Martin Lawrence and Rusty Cundieff.

They all vied for a chance to regale the packed houses with salty, distinctly black-flavored humor. The club drew not only black crowds but also scores of Hollywood talent agents who discovered that the country’s first all-black comedy spot was a gold mine of talent, and not the novelty that some predicted it would be. Comedy Act alumni were briskly going on to TV and movie careers--beginning, naturally, with Harris--and club proprietor MichaelWilliams was at the top of a game he had virtually created.

But the ‘90s proved to be nothing to laugh about. Harris died of a heart attack in 1990 at 36, and the crowds and Hollywood cachet seemed to die with him. The riots erupted in ’92 and stigmatized the Crenshaw neighborhood enough to keep non-local patrons away. The recession took hold and Williams was forced to close the new locations he had opened with high hopes in Chicago and Atlanta. And then the bomb dropped: In 1993, Williams developed lymphoma and was told by doctors that he had only months to live. Life, it seemed, was playing the worst joke of all on him.

Against the odds, Williams recovered from his illness, and last year he returned full time to the helm of the Comedy Act, which had been kept afloat by his family. And though he has facilitated a slow but steady comeback for his club, he faces a new breed of problems. Most of the club’s successful proteges never came back to lend their old stamping ground the visibility it sorely needed through the worst of times. (Repeated calls from The Times to several of the comedians who started their careers there were not returned.)

The rampantly raunchy black humor spawned in the last decade by HBO’s ‘Def Comedy Jam” and its ilk poses some sticky quality-control problems for Williams as he attempts to lure back the club’s original, and now slightly older, crowd. After surviving the unsurvivable, however, the 43-year-old Williams declares that he is more than up to the challenge.

“When I went back to the club in late ‘94, it was on the verge of closing,” says Williams, a tall, robust man dressed in African garb who betrays not a trace of his former illness. “I was discouraged because it seemed all the work I had done was for naught. I decided, ‘This is my business. I made something people believed in.’ And I decided to rebuild the club and its image.”

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It still hasn’t wholly regained the luster of yore, but the Comedy Act’s cavernous digs at the Regency West Ballroom are full again Thursday through Saturday nights. The normally empty parking lot across the street fills up, and a line consisting mainly of couples forms well before the show. The dozen or so comics who strut their stuff for two hours range from novices navigating awkward pauses to seasoned performers like Maestro Clark, now star of his own television series (Fox’s “The Show”), who had the audience roaring with withering I-hate-when-that-happens observations made at breakneck speed.

Host Speedy affably evokes the ghost of Robin Harris as he trains the spotlight on late-arriving guests who are unlucky enough to become running jokes for the rest of the evening. (“You say you’re a machine technician?” he asks a business-suited man seated near the stage. “Oh, yeah, we all know what you do--vacuum the carpets in those office buildings after hours. Vrooooom, vrooooom.”)

For Speedy--his real name is Donald Ray Caldwell Jr.--and other regular performers, the Comedy Act Theatre still holds a certain magic that is absent from other rooms in town.

“I’m a paid regular at the Comedy Store, but it’s a small room, and it’s not the same thing,” says Caldwell, who like several other comics was mentored by Harris. “The opportunity to emcee in front of a black audience is rare. As a comic in L.A., you don’t usually get much stage time or chances to stretch out.”

Since the Comedy Act opened a decade ago, black comedy nights have cropped up at existing clubs around town--the Comedy Store, the Ice House, the L.A. Cabaret--but no other exclusively black clubs have come on the scene except the Fun House at the Mavericks Flat club, on Crenshaw around the corner from the Comedy Act. As popular as it has become, Mavericks only offers comedy on Saturday nights. With three full evenings of shows per week, the Comedy Act still offers the greatest volume of entertainment.

But in terms of material, there is often little difference between the two venues. Comics at both clubs tend to lead with “blue” humor--lowest-common-denominator jokes that are heavy on sex and profanity. While such elements have always had a place in black comedy, they have clearly moved up front as gangsta rap, its filmic incarnations such as “Menace II Society” and hard-core comedy shows like “Def Comedy Jam” have all secured places in American pop culture.

Williams says the resulting comedic shift from merely bawdy to mean-spirited has been responsible, in part, for chasing the Comedy Act crowds away.

“During my absence, that dirtiness had taken over and run away my audience,” he says. “I’ve had to sit down with comics and tell them I wanted performers who want a career. You can’t build a career on sex jokes. There is a career for those with imagination and creativity.”

In an attempt to curb raunchy excesses, Williams has enacted practices such as pulling the microphone plug on comics he deems too offensive; he also instituted a performance dress code of no sweatsuits or sneakers. Despite this, onstage patter at the Comedy Act remains liberally laced with four-letter words.

Mavericks Flat, which serves no alcohol and has grown enormously popular with the younger set, tends even more to the lowdown and dirty.

Yet much of its popularity is due to host J. Anthony Brown, a veteran of stand-up who easily draws laughs without resorting to the blue humor that characterizes many of the acts he introduces. Brown, like Dix and others, started out at the Comedy Act and encourages a continuing cross-fertilization between the two clubs by allowing Comedy Act regulars to walk on as guests at the Fun House. Other high-profile folks have also been known to drop in and perform or simply watch, including Dick Gregory, Malcolm-Jamal Warner and pop superstar Janet Jackson.

Brown says the general popularity of black comedy is a positive phenomenon overall, especially in the local Crenshaw community.

“I’d much rather see kids lined up for comedy down the block than out in the streets, getting into trouble,” he says.

And he maintains that the future of black comedy is still bright: “It hasn’t topped out yet, no way. The hot comics now are black--not many white comics can fill an arena the way they can.” As for “the sex stuff,” he says, “it’s all part of the mix, part of the territory, but it’s not all that’s out there.”

Many Comedy Act alumni have prospered without the raunch at all, comics who became as noted for their clean brand of humor as for their talent: Dix, Sinbad, Townsend. But they are exceptions to what has become the rule.

“I didn’t do blue--I always stuck to observational stuff, the news. Dirty is too easy,” says Dix, who tours regularly and has recurring roles on “Hangin’ With Mr. Cooper” and other television shows. “Robin [Harris] schooled me. He told me never to degrade myself. He said you have to have an act. Robin cared about the audience. Now, comics don’t care what the audience thinks.”

Another problem, says comic Dannon Green, is a lack of experience and good writing among black comics who are looking to become one-joke successes.

“There’s a push to be ‘ghetto’ because of an acceptance of hard-core black material in Hollywood,” says Green, who, with his Cosby-ish emphasis on storytelling and downplaying of four-letter words, is among the cleanest Comedy Act regulars.

On a recent night, he entertained the audience with his nervous, beset-upon stage persona, whose wailed refrain--”I don’t want no trouble!”--punctuated a series of woeful urban tales. “You ever be driving in a car and a cop follow you for so long you forget where you going?” he asked, to a roomful of laughter. “Or you change direction to try and lose him and really get messed up? Your friend in the front seat says, ‘Man, where you going?’ You say, “Man, I don’t know! I don’t want no trouble!’ So you drive into McDonald’s for a cheeseburger.”

Offstage, Green laments that “a lot of comics haven’t lived their material--they’re just repeating what they heard someone else say. I’m looking for longevity. I’m looking to be an entertainer who can play to all audiences.”

Yet the comics who do become crossover successes--and the Comedy Act has had many--tend to disappear into the ranks of Hollywood and never return home. One Hollywood veteran says black comics mistakenly think that mainstream success dictates severing ties with a black club, which they suddenly regard as small and limiting.

“This policy of no return is [black people’s] bane,” says Ehrich Von Lowe, an African American writer and television producer. “Michael [Williams] opened doors for them. He’s a guy who didn’t leave. He opened a black comedy club at a time when comedy clubs weren’t even that popular. ‘Def Comedy Jam’ wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for Michael.”

The trend may be reversing. Williams recently instituted Thursdays as “Black Hollywood Night,” in which folks like Martin Lawrence are scheduled to make appearances.

Some observers, however, say that Williams himself fueled the talent exodus. In creating a host-driven club, they say, Williams also created the perception that the Comedy Act is only as good as its emcee--a perception that became painfully evident after Harris’ death. One former talent agent who represented Comedy Act performers said the host emphasis bred ill will among increasingly competitive comics and built steady resentment toward Williams and what they saw as his attempts to be a star maker.

“He went about things wrong from the beginning,” says the agent, who asked that his name not be used. “Usually, comedy clubs have the weakest comic [as the] host and showcase everyone in the lineup equally. But at the Comedy Act, which was the only black game in town, it was the reverse, and the competition was particularly fierce.”

Williams still believes in anchoring the lineup with a strong host, a tradition he says started with “the pact I made with Robin--I brought in the crowds, he told jokes.” And post-Harris emcees like Dix, Jamie Foxx and D.L. Hughley have continued that tradition of the Comedy Act host getting the biggest career boost.

Caldwell says that while he is grateful to follow in such footsteps, he acknowledges that comics feel too pressured to grab the audience’s attention in the five to 10 minutes they are typically allotted onstage. In addition to encouraging shock-value material, he says, such pressure also stifles any real growth of a stage persona.

“One comic has to be the star--an Eddie Murphy or Bill Cosby,” he says. “The business doesn’t allow for separate and distinct black comic personalities. And that encourages a crabs-in-the-barrel mentality--’I’m going to do what the next guy does: steal the stuff and take it on the road.’ I wish there was a training spot specifically for black comics.”

For the time being, the Comedy Act Theatre is doing its best to fill that bill, and Williams is apparently serious about not only getting his club back to top form but also making it a standard-bearer for black comics who he thinks have been morally adrift too long.

“I want my role to be one of a mentor, a nurturer,” he says. “This is a cold business. I say to comics, ‘Use me as an example. I was up, then I was way down. I came back.’ Ego-based black comedy is on its way out, and I’m going to force a change.”

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Comedy Act Theatre, Regency West Ballroom, 3339 W. 43rd St. Thursdays and Fridays, 8:30 p.m.; Saturdays, 9 p.m. (310) 677-4101.