Looking Back at Second City’s Impact of the First Order

Second City will mark its 41st anniversary today--an observance ofmore than regional significance. From cabarets and nightclubs to “The National Lampoon Radio Hour,” from “Saturday Night Live” to “Groundhog Day,” there is hardly a facet of American entertainment this modest theater has not touched.

Second City (which took its name from A.J. Liebling’s condescending profile of Chicago in the New Yorker) and its predecessor, the Compass, changed the face and the voice of American comedy. As Sheldon Patinkin’s affectionate new book “The Second City: Backstage at the World’s Greatest Comedy Theater” (Sourcebooks) notes: “No other theatrical institution in the world can claim to have nurtured such an impressive number of successful and influential comic performers over such a long period of time.”

Indeed, the alumni roster is a veritable Who’s Who of comedy: Alan Arkin, Dan Aykroyd, John and James Belushi, Shelley Berman, Peter Boyle, John Candy, Dan Castellaneta, Chris Farley, Bonnie Hunt, Richard Kind, Robert Klein, Andrea Martin, Elaine May, Bill Murray, Mike Myers, Mike Nichols, Gilda Radner, Harold Ramis, Joan Rivers, Avery Schreiber, Martin Short, David Steinberg, Betty Thomas and George Wendt.

Patinkin, who now serves as Second City’s artistic consultant and heads the theater department at Columbia College Chicago, had better than a front-row seat for the comedy revolution: He had a backstage pass. His association dates to the early 1950s and the University of Chicago theater groups that would evolve into the Second City. When the book project celebrating the troupe’s history was proposed, Patinkin was tapped to write it. “I’d been around the longest, and I don’t hold any grudges,” he joked in an interview.

From the beginning, Patinkin said, he preferred working behind the scenes, first as assistant to founding director Paul Sills, and then as a director himself, when, during one volatile rehearsal, Sills turned to him and said, “See what you can do with them, Sheldon,” and walked out.

“I was never interested in a career that would make my name as famous as a lot of the names here,” he said. “I’m more a teacher than anything else. I prefer being in at the beginnings. I like to help nurture talent.”

The Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game has nothing on Second City with its vast network of connections. It’s more like one degree. “A Child in His 50s,” an HBO comedy special being shown this month, stars Robert Klein, who joined Second City’s main stage in 1965. Christopher Guest’s “Best in Show” features a blue-ribbon performance by Fred Willard, one of Klein’s fellow ensemble members, as well as “SCTV” icons Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara. In 1999, “Saturday Night Live” anointed Tina Fey, Second City class of ‘96, as its first female head writer.

Klein narrates two CDs included with the book that contain Second City sketches past and present. These range from Barbara Harris singing “Everybody’s in the Know but Me,” which launched the very first revue, to “Wicked,” featuring Rachel Dratch’s signature character, Denise, whom she just transplanted to “Saturday Night Live.”

“Second City” also pays homage to the troupe’s founding fathers, including David Shepherd, whose original dream it was to open a political cabaret theater; Sills, whose mother, Viola Spolin, literally wrote the book on theatrical improvisation; and Bernie Sahlins, one of Second City’s original owners, who served as producer for the first 26 years and was later a director.

Time magazine once hailed the Second City as “a temple of satire.” But it was perhaps not until the mid-1970s, with “Saturday Night Live,” and later “Animal House” and “SCTV,” that Second City enjoyed mainstream recognition. “We became a magnet for people who wanted to do Second City,” Patinkin recalled. ‘And who can blame them?”

In addition to Second City’s most famous alums, Patinkin spotlights such towering figures as Severn Darden, whom Patinkin calls “one of the smartest people ever at Second City. He was able, in the character of his German professor, to ask for a college subject, and he would do a 10- or 15-minute lecture followed by an audience Q&A.;”

Another pivotal figure was Del Close, who invented his own long-form brand of improvisation, which he called the Harold. “Del was about improv for itself,” Patinkin said. “Bernie Sahlins was about improv as one method for achieving material. Del [who died in 1999, willing his skull to Chicago’s Goodman Theatre to be used in the role of Yorick in any production of “Hamlet” with the understanding that he would be listed in the credits] liked the ephemeralness of ‘This is the only time this will ever happen.’ ”

Spolin’s games remain at the heart of Second City, where sketches, scenes and blackouts are improvised by cast members from audience suggestions.

“When you’re doing an improv, the scene lies in what’s there now, what’s being said now,” Robert Klein said in a phone interview. “And if you get stuck, you can open up an imaginary closet, take out an imaginary [prop] and let fly from there.”

Bonnie Hunt, who attended her first Second City revue with her family at age 13, was instantly captivated with the process. “It was the most amazing thing I ever saw,” she said in an interview. “It was the ultimate game of pretend. People from the audience were yelling out suggestions, and [the actors] were creating characters and stories and scenes right before our eyes. From that time on, I dreamed that if I could ever just work there, it would be incredible.”

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Richard Kind recalled seeing his first revue as a college student. “I remember them doing the first hour and a half and thinking, ‘I can do this,’ ” he said in an interview. “Then they came out and took suggestions, and I couldn’t believe how funny they were. They started improvising, and I wanted to crawl under the table because I put myself in their position, and I saw myself failing. I was so nervous for these people. I said I could never in a million years be able to do this.

“The first time I went out on the main stage and did a two-person scene with [ensemble member] Meagan Faye. She said, ‘If you feel lost, just look at my eyes. Just connect.’ ”

Second City today boasts companies in Chicago, Toronto and Detroit, in addition to several touring and training companies. In Los Angeles, Second City is located on Melrose Avenue adjacent to the Hollywood Improv. The training center, which has about 350 students, opened in February of this year and is operated in conjunction with the Improv. According to Frances Callier, a producer at the center, the group plans to start doing classic scenes as well as improv this coming February and will offer weekly “alumni nights” hosted by Jeff Garland.

Its legacy is manifold, primarily the talent it has unleashed upon the world. As Klein notes in his introduction, the Second City recordings are a time-capsule listen to “talent in its earliest and most exciting form. Almost all the performers were at the beginnings of their careers. They could have no idea they would become household names.”

That would include himself. “It was truly the greatest, greatest thing that ever happened to me.” he said. “My Second City experience polished me as a performer. It was like night and day. I learned so much there going on six nights a week and doing set pieces. And then there was the additional facet of devising new material by improvising. That’s how I have written my material all these years.”