Robert Klein
Robert Klein
Robert Kleinis an American stand-up comedian, singer and actor. He had several popular and influential comedy albums in the 1970s, was nominated for a Best Actor in a Musical Tony Award for 1979's They're Playing Our Song, and has made a variety of TV and movie appearances, including hosting Saturday Night Live twice...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionComedian
Date of Birth8 February 1942
CityBronx, NY
CountryUnited States of America
I did the first HBO special ever in 1975 at Haverford College. Cable was new then: HBO was a Time-Life entity, with maybe 400,000 or 500,000 subscribers and maybe 50 employees.
But to do it professionally is a quantum leap difference and my father had to be persuaded by these kind of Ivy League professors that I should go to the Yale Drama School, another one of the stories in there.
When I started, there was no comedy community, no comedy industry; there were comedians.
The '50s were terrifying with nuclear bomb stuff but boring in a social way, and then the '60s were happening, and remember, there was no AIDS.
Regis and I were inducted into the original Bronx Walk of Fame.
My 1974 album 'Mind Over Matter' was a detailed thing about Watergate. I always had some righteous indignation.
In some articles written about me, writers have said I'm a link between the old and the new, and I think, in a certain sense, that's legitimate.
I have what we call a 'symphony act.' I'm the only comedian, I think, in the country that does it.
I was a class clown. My father was a class clown. My son has been a class clown, and it sort of ran in the family.
One of my greatest inspirations for stand-up was Jonathan Winters. He was a genius. One thing about him, and also Lenny Bruce, is that they were in the tradition of the one-man show. That's why Richard Pryor was so great, and George Carlin, too. They prowled the stage, they used voices, they were really talents.
So it took me five years because in the interim I have been doing a lot of personal appearances and movies and some television series that went into the plumbing and I stopped writing for a while.
There is a cliche that probably has some anecdotal evidence on the side that comedians are very depressed people, but that's because no one is ever going to seem as funny in a normal conversation as compared to when they're up there onstage in the spotlight making a huge audience keel over with laughter.
I guess I'm pleased and proud of the respect of my peers, and that when I disappear from the scene or from this earth, I will have left a mark. They'll say, 'He did it well.' I like being funny; it opens people up.
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