DuckButter InterGalactic

Mort Sahl - unfunny and unprofessional.

I read that today was Mort Sahl’s birthday. Big whoop. Mortimer appeared at the Cellar Door for one un-stellar week in 1972 memorable only for his utter unprofessionalism and lack of humor.  Monday night he opened to two kids and a dog (an empty house for those of you short on subtlety).  The opening act, a C&W band drew more than he did and most of the audience left after they performed. Mort’s reaction?  He demanded that their contract be terminated and something less “contradictory” be found. The replacement was Fat City (Bill and Taffy Danoff) who later went on to co-author Country Roads with John Denver. Another and more interesting story. Anyhoo, Tuesday night was another empty house, and by Thursday the waiters were in revolt since none of them had made more than $2 for the entire week. Mort of course was oblivious to any of this; he was insisting that the Cellar Door purchase a complete set of the Warren Commission report on the Kennedy assassination as a prop for a bit in his routine.  At the time the price was something like $600 for the set, which was more than the club had sold in cover charges and liquor combined for the entire week. Still, reservations for the weekend were looking decent and there was some hope that the weekend shows might just pull the whole thing out. We didn’t buy the books and he stomped his feet and cried and rolled on the floor for an hour or so and then finally stormed off. He did give us an honorable mention that evening pointing to an empty table on stage and commenting that that was where the Warren Report would be in the Cellar Door wasn’t so cheap. It didn’t get a laugh and he moved on to something else which also didn’t get a laugh. Then Friday night Mortimer out-did himself by getting in an argument with a customer. He made some remark about women being less than politically astute. A woman in the audience began heckling him and his response was that he didn’t come to Washington DC to be heckled by some stupid woman. She stood up, started retorting his comments and in response he walked off stage. This was pretty unprofessional.  Over the course of my three years at the CD I had seen some great comedians perform…David Brenner, Gabe Kaplan, Jimmie Walker, Richard Pryor and others. Any of them would have dealt with a heckler quickly and easily, and in some cases without mercy. Morty couldn’t stand the pressure and stormed off in a hissy fit. When the manager pointed this out to him he went crazy and threatened to break his contract. You can imagine the rest, an apology followed of course and Mort went on to bore five more audiences. The week was a bust, and old Morty showed all of us just want the meaning of the word unprofessional was. No doubt today he was complaining about the candles on his birthday cake not blowing themselves out for him. What an idiot. How did this guy ever make a go of it in show business?