Judy Toll, 44; L.A. Comedian, Writer

Judy Toll, a comedian and writer whose life was an open book onstage, making her a fixture at the popular and long-running Los Angeles alternative comedy show Uncabaret, has died. She was 44.

Toll died Thursday at St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica of complications from melanoma.

As both a writer on such shows as the HBO comedy “Sex and the City” and a comedian, Toll mined her personal life--the misbegotten attempts at self-help revelation, the dating experiences that invariably let her down--to create a running commentary on life as a contemporary urban woman.

In this, she embodied the attitude of Uncabaret, a comedy show created in 1991 as a looser, more confessional alternative to the mainstream (and male-dominated) stand-up clubs in Los Angeles.

The show ran for years at Luna Park, a nightclub in West Hollywood where regulars included Kathy Griffin, Julia Sweeney and “Sex and the City” executive producer Michael Patrick King.

Onstage, Toll told much, if not all, about her search for love (“My problem with men is that I have this deadly combination of being desperate but picky,” she joked). Her self-absorbed but self-deprecating approach to comedy could be found in the title of the television pilot she wrote last year for ABC, called “Me and My Needs.”

After all the joking about the dating services, from It’s Just Lunch to J-Date, a Jewish Internet dating service, Toll last year married Rick Trank, a documentary filmmaker.

Toll also lampooned her failed attempts at self-actualization, including a disastrous stint as a Scientologist. Toll would later demand her money back from the Church of Scientology. When she got it, she took her check to a Kinko’s and blew it up to poster size, then brought it onstage with her.

“She just felt so free to be completely emotionally available,” said Beth Lapides, who founded the Uncabaret, which is still running around Los Angeles.

Toll, who was born in Philadelphia, got her start in comedy after college in Massachusetts. As a member of the Los Angeles improvisation and sketch comedy troupe the Groundlings, Toll and fellow Groundling Wendy Goldman wrote the musical comedy “Casual Sex,” about two women at a Club Med-type resort, which was later turned into a feature film.

Toll’s other credits as a performer include “Judy Toll: The Dice Woman--Lips Only,” a spoof of the raunchy, macho comedy of Andrew Dice Clay, and the HBO comedy “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” starring Larry David. In recent years, she also wrote for numerous network sitcoms, as well as the popular “Sex and the City.”

In addition to her husband, Toll is survived by her mother, Sandy; a sister, Joanne; a brother, Gary; and two stepchildren, Josh and Emma. Funeral services are private.