Comedy & Magic Club celebrates 33rd birthday with ’20 Comics’

Four minutes will get you many things — a drive-through car wash, a Madonna YouTube video, a mini-massage at the mall or even six-pack abs, according to some personal trainers. At the Comedy & Magic Club in Hermosa Beach, four minutes gets you a high-energy stand-up set — 20 times over.

In celebration of its 33rd birthday, the well-established club is hosting a recurring event called “20 Comics” throughout the month of July. For $20, audiences see a lineup of 20 vastly different but equally accomplished comedians take the stage for four minutes each, competing to win the crowd’s attention. The result is a frenzied, funny and somewhat dizzying version of comedy speed dating. The relentless rotation of varying faces and performing styles seems to propel the audience into an especially raucous state — though it could be due to the explosions of balloons and streamers or the sheets of free birthday cake.

Owner Mike Lacey, inspired by time spent at Hollywood’s the Comedy Store in the mid ‘70s, built the Hermosa club in 1977 when he was just 24. He had so little money at the time, he says, that the club debuted in ’78 with bare walls, a rented piano and rented plants. “I didn’t have enough cash to buy them — I’d spent it all on chairs and tables,” he says.

The club quickly developed a reputation not just for quality acts, but as a place for comics to work out and develop their material. Think: a very young Dana Carvey, Dennis Miller and Jon Lovitz all onstage at once in a sort of improv induction. “It was so funny to see them giving each other a super hard time,” Lacey says. “One night, about 25 to 28 years ago, Garry Shandling was onstage and Leno rode his motorcycle into the showroom and started heckling him.”

Over the years, Gallagher, Pat Paulsen, Elayne Boosler, Rodney Dangerfield and Paul Reiser have been regular performers at the club; Lily Tomlin, Steve Allen, Robin Williams, David Letterman and Billy Crystal cycled through, as well. Dirk Arthur was the first magician to take the stage with a dove act, and illusionist Lance Burton performed magic there in the ‘80s.

Rocco Urbisci — who directed “The Richard Pryor Show,” as well as comedy specials for George Carlin, Jamie Foxx and Whoopi Goldberg — says the club was a great place to perfect jokes prior to TV tapings. “We used to work out here with George [Carlin] when he was doing HBO specials,” Urbisci says. “Mike allows a lot of freedom. It’s a nurturing place to experiment.”

Lacey says the club was the first to headline Jerry Seinfeld and “Night Court’s” Harry Anderson, who was also an accomplished magician; and that Chris Rock warmed up there for the 2005 Oscars. These days, Jay Leno still keeps limber there every Sunday night.

Behind the scenes, the club continues to be a sort of fraternity for comics, both new and established. That sense of camaraderie is clearly evident backstage at the “20 comics” event, where many of the night’s performers are reunited for the first time after years of having seen one another only on TV.

“We see each other early in our careers, at open mikes and stuff,” comedian Dwayne Perkins says. “But we don’t see each other now. So this [event] is like a reunion of professional guys who are making it.”

Lacey puts it simply: “It’s a club that everyone belongs to.”

deborah.vankin@latimes.com