Services Planned for Comic Actor-Director Del Close

A memorial program for improvisational comedic actor, director and coach Del Close is scheduled for 7:30 tonight at Fais-Do-Do, 5257 W. Adams St. In addition to former students discussing Close’s impact on their careers, the program will include a videotape, shown at an earlier memorial service in Chicago, of Close offering his own eulogy.

Close, who died March 4 in Chicago of emphysema at 64, was a member of the original cast of Chicago’s Second City. He later directed that improv group and coached cast members of television’s “Saturday Night Live,” including John Belushi, Gilda Radner and Bill Murray.

The actor and director later co-founded ImprovOlympic in Santa Monica, where he worked and taught for 16 years. James Grace of ImprovOlympic said Close, who had acted in Shakespeare’s “Merchant of Venice” at Chicago’s Goodman Theater, willed his skull to the Goodman to portray Yorick in the Shakespearean drama “Hamlet.”