Free I'm Dying Up Here: Heartbreak and High Times in Stand-Up Comedy's Golden Era by William Knoedelseder by William Knoedelseder Page A

“Always remember that your fellow comics will get you more work than any agent or manager ever will.” Their routine was to meet up at the Comedy Store before the show started, catch everyone’s set, and then, because the Store didn’t have a bar to hang out in, move to either Theo dore’s, an upscale coffeehouse on Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood, or Canter’s Deli in the Fairfax District, where they’d laugh and swap stories until 3:00 or 4:00 a.m. The group usually included Johnny Dark, George Miller, Jay Leno, Steve Bluestein, Johnny Witherspoon, Jimmie Walker, and whomever else Dreesen could round up. On weekends, they’d sometimes cross over the Hollywood Hills to a San Fernando Valley club called the Show Biz that was owned by Murray Langston, who later gained some fame by putting a paper bag over his head and performing as the Unknown Comic.
    One of the waitresses at the club was a then unknown Debra Winger, a serious comedy groupie who had a crush on George Miller at the time. At the Show Biz, comics would perform impromptu, and when business was good, Langston would throw some money their way. Leo Gallagher was a Show Biz regular in the days before he ditched his first name and began using his
    “sledge-o-matic” to splatter audiences with smashed fruits and vegetables.
    It was a late-shift life guaranteed to wreak havoc with marriages, as Letterman soon learned. With Michelle working during the day as an assistant buyer for the May Company, the couple rarely saw one another. When the inevitable split came and Mi -
    chelle returned to Indiana brokenhearted, Letterman was guilt-ridden and anguished. He soon moved into an apartment just down the hallway from George Miller, and the two quickly became fast friends.
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    Miller was a true eccentric. Born George Dornberger (a “Nazi name,” in his opinion), he was the only child of a single mother, Helen (his father abandoned them when George was a baby), with whom he maintained a lifelong love-hate relationship.
    Miller and his mom adored one another but fought constantly. He thought she was the funniest person he ever knew, and he frequently made merciless fun of her in his act, especially her penchant for worrying about his and everyone else’s well-being.
    “George, it’s been raining, and you know what happens,” she once cautioned. “It gets cold, and then you have ice.” Another time, she supposedly lectured a teenager who was sitting on the bus with his arm hanging out the window, “Young man, that’s a very good way to lose an arm.” In George’s act, the teenager replied sarcasti-cally, “Why, thank you very much, ma’am. Could you suggest a few other ways?”
    If there had been a contest for worst-dressed comic, Miller would have won walking away. As far as anyone could tell, he’d worn the same rumpled brown sport coat and baggy corduroy pants every day for years, and he apparently owned a closet full of hideous shirts. The only wardrobe upgrade he ever invested in was an occasional new pair of deck shoes. Miller spent money on two things: his phone bill, which was often huge because he spent hours each day talking to comedian friends all over the country, invariably asking, “Are you bombing, too?” and food, which was something of an obsession with him. He talked about food all the time, questioning people constantly about where they’d eaten last and what they’d had. He seemed to know the daily special at every chain restaurant in the country: “It’s pea soup Tuesday at Coco’s.” And he only ate one kind of cuisine—American home-style comfort food. His favorite bread was white, and he preferred to have a side of mashed potatoes and gravy with every meal. Basically, Miller ate what a teenager would eat in the 1950s.
    Miller was an accomplished pool hustler and, despite his couch potato ways, not a bad shot on the basketball court, as