London Lee is chain-smoking Pall Malls in the green room of a south Florida comedy club. “Fuck them!”, he tells his manager, Peter Wein, who tries to remind the comedy legend, dubbed “The Rich Kid” in the 1960s, that smoking’s not allowed in most clubs any more. I’m attempting to impress Lee, one of my earliest comedy influences, with my “Kim Kardashian-brain tumor in her ass” joke, to which he half-disgustedly replies, “Cute…at best. And what’s funny about cancer?” I say, “Yeah, ‘kiss of death’, right?” We both crack up. He says, “Here, do this one”, and demands that I open with his joke which, of course, winds up getting my biggest laugh.
London follows with some of his trademark lines: I was a lonely kid, so my father bought me a German Shepherd to play with. Not a dog…
Rich kids bored me. I wanted to play with the poor kids. So my father said he’s gonna buy me a ghetto. My mother got really scared. She told him, Just make sure it’s in a good neighborhood.
Born Alan Levine, “London Lee, The Rich Kid” achieved instantaneous worldwide recognition after preceding The Beatles in their historic U.S. debut on The Ed Sullivan Show on February 9, 1964. Although practically nobody heard his set above the screams of the girls in the studio audience, it was likely the most viewed comedy set of its era, seen by an estimated 73 million people. Backstage, London had asked his then-manager who that “skinny kid dressed like a slob” was, and was immediately told to shut up, because “that skinny kid is important.” The skinny kid was Mick Jagger, who was so impressed with London’s appearance that he booked him to tour with the Stones. Lee still beams when he tells people that he’s the only comic in history who’s opened for both the Rolling Stones and the Beatles.
He really was rich. His garmento dad had perfected a fabric which found its way onto everybody’s pants and made the Levines millionaires. London, then 28, incorporated this new-found wealth in what would become a wildly successful act, making him a fixture on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, The Merv Griffin Show, The Mike Douglas Show, four ABC specials, and The Ed Sullivan Show, on which he would appear an astonishing 32 times. He has made over 200 network television appearances, an historic feat.
Lee started out in the Village. “It was me, Bill Cosby next door, Woody Allen, Tiny Tim — who banged everything in sight, and Fred Willard, who was in a comedy team with Vic Grecco. It was a fantastic time. I came home one night and told my mother, ‘This is it. Comedy’s the only thing that makes me happy. I’m never gonna do anything else.’ I’d been going to a psychiatrist five times a week, but I was hooked after hearing the laughs. It didn’t matter that the taxis from the Upper East Side down to the gigs cost more than what they were paying me.”
London appeared in the epic film, The Gambler with James Caan, but still fumes about his scenes that were apparently cut out of Broadway Danny Rose, after he was accused of leaking details of the film “to the papers.” He later bumped into Woody Allen “getting out of his Rolls Royce up in Harlem at that Italian place (“Rao’s?”), yeah, Rao’s, and he promised me that he’d make it up to me, but he never called.”
The 76 year-old funnyman is very generous and after three divorces is still tickled by his profession. He’s constantly offering encouragement, as well as free jokes, to younger comedians. “He’ll learn”, he tells me, as he watches a kid bomb at a family-friendly show that I’m emceeing. I decide it’s time to mercifully flashlight the kid, and I introduce London (after reminding him to please keep it clean). He “yeah, yeahs” me and proceeds to open with a joke about an old woman buying a red vibrator which turns out to be the store’s fire extinguisher, followed by this one about Joan Rivers:
I said to my plastic surgeon, ‘What the hell kind of facelift did you give me? Why do I have those bags under my eyes?’ ‘Those aren’t bags; they’re your tits!
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Neil Berliner is a writer for the syndicated late-night comedy talk show, The John Kerwin Show. He is a practicing M.D. and comedy writer, and has written aired lines for 11 major roasts since 2006 including Matt Lauer, Artie Lange, Mario Batali, Andy Dick, Pat Cooper, William Shatner, and Flavor Flav. Join Neil on Facebook and follow him on Twitter.
