OCTOBER 2017 • LONGISLANDPRESS.COM 85
REAR VIEW
Because he spent so many hours a
day alone and staring out the window,
or in his room working on his
productions, his concerned parents
sought psychiatric help for their son.
As he got older, Kaufman continued
to soak up material. At
Saddle Rock Elementary School, a
visit from Nigerian percussionist
Babatunde Olatunji provided the
impetus for Kaufman to learn to
play the conga drums. His grandmother
took him to Times Square,
where he was captivated by the
freak show at Hubert’s Museum
and Flea Circus, and to Madison
Square Garden professional wrestling
matches, which inspired him
to stage his own in his parents’
basement.
He completed his first novel, The
Hollering Mangoo, when he was 16.
At Great Neck North, he was a poor
student but a prolific writer of poetry
and stories who carried around
a copy of Jack Kerouac’s On the
Road and hung out in Greenwich
Village. After graduating from high
school in 1967, he drove delivery
trucks and drank heavily for a
year. In 1968, he went to Boston to
major in TV and radio production
at Grahm Junior College, where
he created and starred in Uncle
Andy’s Funhouse on a closed-circuit
campus TV station and performed
at coffee houses. After graduating
from college in 1971, he landed
gigs at local New York clubs and
restaurants, where he was spotted
by Budd Friedman, owner of the
Improvisation Comedy Club, the
famed Improv.
“I am not a comic”
The irreverent comedians of the
early 1970s – Robin Williams, Billy
Crystal, Larry David, Richard Lewis,
Jerry Seinfeld – startled audiences
with bold, often manic routines.
But Kaufman was the antithesis of
the joke-tellers who delivered the
punch line then waited a beat for
the laughter.
Affecting an English accent, he
read aloud from The Great Gatsby
until the audience booed and left,
or simply napped in a sleeping
bag. Creating material he would
later become famous for, Kaufman
played a phonograph record of the
Mighty Mouse theme song, staring
silently with bulging eyes until
the chorus, when he would raise
his hand and confidently lip-sync,
“Here I Come to Save the Day.”
And then there was the gibberish
speaking “Foreign Man,” who
would babble indecipherably in an
excited, high-pitched voice that he
was from the imaginary island of
Caspiar, and then do impersonations.
That bit got Kaufman onstage at the
Improv and on the 1975 Saturday
Night Live debut. Executive Producer
Lorne Michaels described
Kaufman’s act as “midway between
stand-up comedy in the Ed Sullivan
Show sense, and performance art,
which was just beginning to emerge
in the world below Houston Street.”
Legendary writer-comedian Carl
Reiner likened Kaufman to “Christo
wrapping a mountain” – a character
doing the worst possible act
ever. Reiner told Rolling Stone that
Kaufman was thinking, “The game
we’re playing is to see how long you
can take it before you bomb me.”
Kaufman, of course, enjoyed the
game more than anyone. And if
the audience didn’t get it, well, no
matter. He wasn’t in it to make
people laugh.
Testing reality
His perfect idea for television: A
talk show in which the guests argue
and start fighting, with one getting
sent to a hospital and dying. No
one would really get hurt, Kaufman
said, but “people would always
wonder, ‘What’s real? What’s not?’
“That’s what I do in my act, test
how other people deal with reality.”
They didn’t always deal with it well.
As Kaufman baited the crowds,
some turned hostile, with the comic
eventually hiring off-duty cops to
break up the fights during shows.
Kaufman’s boorish new character,
the chauvinistic, swaggering,
washed-up lounge singer Tony
Clifton, especially enraged crowds,
who pelted him with eggs and fruit,
leading the comic to don riot gear
and used a protective net.
He created a furor after challenging
women to wrestle with him
or “go back to the kitchen where
you belong,” offering $1,000 to
any woman who beat him. He was
booted from Saturday Night Live
after thousands of angry letters.
This was Kaufman at his peak, with
appearances on major networks and
series, even a live show at Carnegie
Hall, after which he hired buses to
take the audience – nearly 3,000
Kaufman wrestled women for a
$1,000 prize, including celebrities
like Blondie’s Debra Harry.
people – out for milk and cookies.
The cast: Foreign Man, a crazed
conga drummer, his scarily dead-on
Elvis, Tony Clifton, a professional
wrestler and a clean-cut, born-again
Christian engaged to a gospel singer.
When Taxi ended its five-year
run in June 1983, Kaufman was
still very much a star, performing
for David Letterman, in specials
and in films. But by Thanksgiving
he was coughing frequently and,
shortly thereafter, diagnosed with
advanced-stage lung cancer. He
died in May 1984. After the funeral
in Great Neck, he was buried at
Elmont’s Beth David Cemetery.
It is a tribute to Kaufman’s performance
art that many people continue
to insist he faked his death and
that he’s out there, somewhere,
alive and well.
That would, indeed, be the ultimate
Kaufman act.
The real Andy Kaufman. Maybe.
The comic’s Foreign Man character
became the basis for Latka
Gravas on the long-running
comedy Taxi.
Jim Carrey doing Andy Kaufman
doing Tony Clifton, the over-thehill
lounge singer, in 1999’s Man
on the Moon.