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Thursday, April 03, 2008
On his deathbed, comedy genius Del Close held court at one last party.
Del Close is perhaps the least famous of the great comedy maestros of the latter half of the 20th century. The performers he worked with, directed, or taught at the Compass Players in Saint Louis, the Committee in San Francisco, and Second City and the ImprovOlympic in Chicago constitute a who’s who—Elaine May, Mike Nichols, Shelly Berman, Fred Willard, Joe Flaherty, John Belushi, John Candy, Bill Murray, Mike Myers, Vince Vaughn, Tina Fey, and Stephen Colbert, to name only a handful. But his ultimate legacy might be theoretical: Close led the movement to reinvent improvisation and establish it as an art form.
Self-destructive and occasionally suicidal, Close nevertheless lived almost to the age of 65, when emphysema did him in. As he lay on his deathbed in a Chicago hospital in 1999, his friends flew in from around the country to throw him one last birthday party. One of those friends, Kim “Howard” Johnson, has recently published The Funniest One in the Room: The Lives and Legends of Del Close (Chicago Review Press); this is an excerpt: http://www.chicagoreader.com/features/stories/delclose/
Posted at 08:22 am by Psychomike
 | | | Tony
April 3, 2008 11:51 AM PDT
Hey Mike, I have the book this is excerpted from and you are in it! | |
| | | Trina
April 7, 2008 08:01 AM PDT
Okay, it was Los Angeles. I'm not sure who brought Del over for the first time in 1965, but I think it may have been Hugh Romney (Now Wavy Gravy). It's rather odd, because in those days people would just drop by unannounced and often bring someone with them, and then THAT person would become a friend, and drop by. Today, we have to email each other and make appointments and put it into our calendars. We seem to have had more time ion those days.
But anyway, that's what happened: Del started to come over on his own and just hang out. I, being the good little hippie "old lady," would make tea or coffe and roll a joint.
I remember he was living in some woman's attic, can't remember whose, and he had rigged up this rope netting all over the room that he used as a hammock to sleep in and just to sit in. To me it was like spider webbing, and since Del was kinda lanky and used to fold his legs up -- there was something insect-like about him -- I called him Spiderman.
Wish I could remember some specifics; mostly, he was a thoroughly nice guy. I completely lost touch with him and most of my L.A. friends when I moved to New York in 1966, and was very sad when I read that he had died.
Trina
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