I pondered my fate and the question of how cold a city should be. I walked down Wells Street, past a cigar store, past Zanies comedy club, with head shots of someone named Jay Leno, a standup comic with a prank oversized chin for yuks. I’m not ‘gifted’ or ‘special’ or ‘worthy.’ ” After all, I’d been sitting in her office for an hour already, and no one had said, “You get up on that stage right now, Mister!” I thanked Joyce and tried to keep my chin up as I walked out into the February day that had somehow got even colder, grayer, more Chicago-y than it already was. “Wow,” I sputtered, as our time wrapped up. “Billy Murray? He was here with his brother Brian, and he was making everyone laugh, and we said, ‘ Get on that stage right now, you!’ and he went up there, and we all said, ‘Yay!’ ” “John Belushi? He showed up to the theatre one day and said, ‘Put me on that stage right now!’ and I said, ‘You get up there, Mister!’ and he was absolutely a riot and just tore the house down!”
Success on this renowned Chicago stage seemed to have been a three-step process, at most: He came right to the theatre and walked in and said, ‘Give me a chance,’ and we did, and he was wonderful!”Īll the stories she told involved the performers’ innate self-confidence and undeniable talent. “Joe Flaherty? Joe was in Pennsylvania, and he packed himself a sack lunch and got on the bus to Chicago. I wanted to hear a story that sounded like something I might duplicate. I sat in her office and peppered her with names, asking her to tell me about their paths to greatness: John Belushi, Joe Flaherty, Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Gilda Radner. . . . Back in 1983, she gave me an hour of her time. Joyce would one day give me my big break. She shepherded lives and creative choices at that legendary comedy venue for decades, and she did it with a personal touch-like if your mom ran a theatre, but also if your mom liked theatre and if she merely rolled her eyes at the smell of pot. Joyce was the den mother of Second City theatre, in Chicago. So what was I doing on Wells Street? I’d used my college-radio credentials to get an interview with the great Joyce Sloane. There’s no white to be seen-it’s all gray, all foreboding. Nasty gray slush and potholes abound in fact, forget what I said about white snow blanketing streets. It all seems so impossible, knowing what to aim for, what to commit to, where to step next. It’s all such a blind guess at this point. Seriously, what have you? I’ll take anything. A career making television, movies, what have you.
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