Leila Navidi

Budd Friedman says the Las Vegas Improv Comedy Club at Harrah’s is the most successful of the 22 franchises. He founded the original in New York City, where he opened a coffeehouse intended to serve singers. Comedy quickly took over and the venture took off. Many comedians, including Jay Leno, got their start at New York’s Improv.

By Jerry Fink

Wed, Jun 18, 2008 (2 a.m.)

Slightly built, with thinning hair, wearing glasses and casually dressed, Budd Friedman looks more like a retired advertising executive than the King of Comedy.

The founder of the Improv Comedy Club has the magic touch. He’s given birth to the careers of countless comedians over 45 years.

But Friedman, who turned 76 on June 6, started out as an advertising exec.

“I always wanted to be a star but I didn’t have the guts to starve so when I was 29 years old I was working in Boston for a small ad agency,” he says, sitting in the empty Harrah’s comedy club, the most profitable of the 22 Improv franchises.

With his mother’s help — thanks to a $5,000 inheritance from an uncle — Friedman quit the ad agency and moved to New York to produce a Broadway show.

“It was a stupid idea. I had no taste and no money.”

He worked as a waiter at a luncheonette and noticed there wasn’t a club in the Theater District where performers could hang out after shows and unwind with impromptu performances.

He decided to open a coffeehouse, serve food and expand his contacts in the theater at the same time. That was 1963.

“When I first opened the Improv it was for singers. That’s how smart I was.”

After about a year, comedian Dave Astor dropped in and performed. He returned the next night with some comedian friends and before long singing was out, comedy was in.

“It just went from there,” Friedman says.

Over the years, almost every major comedian performed at the Improv, from George Burns, Sid Caesar and Milton Berle through today’s comics.

“A kid came up to me and said, ‘Mr. Friedman, this is the third night in a row that I drove down from Boston to get on your stage. How do I get on?’ I said, ‘You drive down to New York from Boston and don’t get on and drive back the same night? You’re on next.’ For the normal human being that’s like a five-hour trip. For this guy it was 2 1/2. It was Jay Leno.”

Friedman managed Leno early in his career and Bette Midler for about a year after she performed in his club.

In addition to Midler, Friedman points to other Las Vegas headliners who started at the Improv — Vinnie Favorito at O’Sheas, Gordie Brown at Planet Hollywood and Rita Rudner at Harrah’s. “And a little bit of Wayne Brady.”

Friedman and his club influenced more than comedians. CBS President Les Moonves tended bar at the Improv in Los Angeles, where the doorman was Jimmy Miller, who later managed comedian Jim Carrey. Chris Albrecht, former HBO president, managed the now defunct Improv in New York where actor Danny Aiello was the doorman.

The Improv changed the world of comedy forever. Until then most comedians — except for the giants in the industry — were opening acts. With the birth of the Improv, they became headliners.

“I was the first person to put on more than one comic a night,” Friedman says. “Sometimes we would have 15 in a row and be there till 6 in the morning.”

He opened a second club in Los Angeles in 1975. His then-wife didn’t like Los Angeles and returned to run the Improv in New York, which closed in 1995.

Friedman opened the Improv at the Riviera in 1988 and moved the club to Harrah’s in 1993.

“This is the most profitable, the most successful,” he says, “but look where we are.”