David Letterman, Howie Mandel and More Comics Share Comedy Store’s Impact on Their Careers
variety.comTodd Gilchrist After almost 50 years as an interviewer, comedian and talk show host, David Letterman’s pedigree on stage feels so firmly established that it’s hard to imagine a situation where he’d be intimidated.
But the first time that he performed during open mic night at The Comedy Store back in May of 1975, the Indianapolis native admits that he was deeply afraid to squander what he saw as an opportunity to break into the entertainment industry’s major leagues. “It was like being at the ophthalmologist,” Letterman tells Variety about his debut in the Store’s Original Room.Mitzi Shore, who passed in 2018 at age 87, had established herself as the Hollywood tastemaker to impress when won the Store from her ex-husband Sammy a year earlier than Letterman’s debut.
But within months of its 1972 opening, the storied institution had already begun cultivating its reputation as a pathway to advance comedy careers thanks to Johnny Carson’s regular recruitment of stand-ups from its ranks after moving “The Tonight Show” from New York to Los Angeles at approximately the same time.
Letterman actually never made it on stage the first time that he signed up for the Store’s open mic night (“Regular comics kept showing up and bumping us beginners, so they never got around to the Ls.”) But even if watching more seasoned comedians gave him the opportunity to enjoy the experience of performing without getting hurt himself, he says that being in the spotlight felt no less harsh the following week when he finally got up there. “My first vision of it was this white light,” he remembers. “And that’s all I could see, like I’m having my retina check now on stage.
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