The Comedy Store Strike of 1979

• Introduction
• Chapter 1 The Sunset Strip Playground
• Chapter 2 Mitzi's Kingdom: The Making of The Comedy Store
• Chapter 3 The College of Comedy: Working for Free
• Chapter 4 The Star-Maker Machine
• Chapter 5 Living on Leftovers: The Economics of Being Funny
• Chapter 6 Seeds of Discontent: Tom Dreesen and the Early Grumbles
• Chapter 7 A Dangerous Idea: Whispers of a Union
• Chapter 8 Secret Meetings at the Westwood Deli
• Chapter 9 Drawing the Line: The Demand for Twenty-Five Dollars
• Chapter 10 Mitzi Says No: Art Versus Commerce
• Chapter 11 March 1979: Pickets on

In the spring of 1979, the neon glow of the Sunset Strip illuminated an unprecedented and deeply surreal spectacle. Outside 8433 Sunset Boulevard, a venue revered across the entertainment world as the beating heart of modern stand-up comedy, a group of men and women were marching in circles. They carried wooden signs with hand-lettered slogans, shouting through the smoggy evening air at oncoming traffic and prospective patrons. These were not factory workers protesting unsafe assembly lines, nor teamsters demanding a fair haulage rate. They were stand-up comedians—some of the most brilliant, neurotic, and famously individualistic minds in show business—walking a picket line outside The Comedy Store.

For seven years, The Comedy Store had operated under a seductive, unwritten covenant masterminded by its autocratic matriarch, Mitzi Shore. Mitzi had transformed a former Ciro’s nightclub into a cultural powerhouse, an alchemical workshop where raw talent was refined into gold under the watchful gaze of network talent scouts, late-night bookers, and Hollywood executives. Yet beneath the glittering mystique of the "Star-Maker Machine" lay an exploitative economic paradox: Mitzi firmly believed that the club was a workshop, a graduate school where performers were paid in invaluable stage time, exposure, and artistic freedom. The bartenders took home cash; the waitresses left with pockets full of tips; the club took in fortunes at the door and across the counter. The comedians on the Mainroom and Original Room marquees, whose names drew the crowds, were paid precisely nothing.

The walkout of March 1979 shattered that illusion forever. What began as quiet grumblings over unpaid bar tabs and couch-surfing indignities metastasized into a full-scale labor rebellion. When a core coalition of working comics banded together to demand a modest wage of twenty-five dollars a set, Mitzi did not merely reject their petition; she treated it as an unforgivable personal betrayal. Stand-up comedy, she maintained, was high art that would be corrupted by the tawdry mechanics of a union hall. What followed was a bitter, six-week war of attrition that divided the comedy community down the middle, turning mentor against protegee, brother against brother, and culminating in blacklists, midnight shouting matches, and genuine human tragedy.

This book is the definitive, inside account of that forgotten revolution. Drawing on the accounts of those who carried picket signs and those who crossed them, The Comedy Store Strike of 1979 reconstructs the intoxicating atmosphere of 1970s Los Angeles, where comedy replaced rock and roll as the counterculture's sharpest edge. It tracks the collision between the burgeoning commodification of stand-up and an ancient carny tradition that viewed performers as interchangeable grifters lucky to have a roof over their heads. Beyond the personal drama, it unearths the complex legal, social, and psychological shifts that forced an entire industry to acknowledge that making people laugh is not merely a calling or a hobby, but labor that demands dignity and compensation.

The strike permanently altered the landscape of American entertainment. It dismantled the patriarchal and matriarchal fiefdoms of the early club era, paved the way for the comedy boom of the 1980s, and established the precedent that stage time alone cannot pay the rent. Yet the scars it left behind never fully healed. In telling the story of the six weeks when the laughter stopped on the Sunset Strip, this book reveals how a ragtag collection of outcasts and jesters banded together to challenge an empire—and, in doing so, finally grew up to become professionals.

To understand the comedy revolution of 1979, one must first understand the bizarre, decadent, and uniquely pressurized ecosystem of the Sunset Strip in the 1970s. This single, winding stretch of asphalt, cutting through the heart of West Hollywood, was a sun-drenched playground by day and a neon-lit asylum by night. It was a place where fortunes were made on the strength of a single three-minute audition, where the air smelled of exhaust fumes, cheap cologne, and high-grade marijuana, and where the line between overnight success and devastating ruin was as thin as a cocktail napkin. By the middle of the decade, the Strip had undergone a profound cultural mutation. The era of the classic crooner and the big-band orchestra was long dead, and the roaring rock-and-roll decadence of the late sixties was beginning to curdle into something colder, sleeker, and far more desperate.

Historically, this stretch of road had always been a sanctuary for the glamorous and the illicit. Because West Hollywood fell outside the jurisdiction of the Los Angeles Police Department, staying under the more permissive eye of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, the Strip had flourished during Prohibition as a haven for speakeasies and gambling dens. In the 1940s and 1950s, legendary nightclubs like the Mocambo, the Trocadero, and Ciro’s hosted the world's biggest movie stars, who drank champagne alongside mobsters like Mickey Cohen. By the late 1960s, the tuxedo-clad elite had been pushed out by long-haired counterculture youth flocking to the Whisky a Go Go and the Pandora’s Box, sparking the famous Sunset Strip curfew riots. But as the seventies dawned, the electric guitars began to lose their monopoly on the Strip’s nightlife. A new breed of performer was rising to take center stage, armed not with Gibson Les Pauls, but with handheld microphones, high-concept neuroses, and an insatiable desire for validation.

The Sunset Strip of this era was a sensory overload. Billboards towering over the boulevard did not advertise household appliances or insurance policies; instead, they featured hand-painted, larger-than-life portraits of rock gods and movie stars, looming like pagan deities over the bumper-to-bumper traffic below. Young people from across the country walked the pavements, their eyes scanning the passing sports cars for a glimpse of Warren Beatty, Jack Nicholson, or Cher. It was a transient, gold-rush town where everyone seemed to be waiting for their big break, working as parking valets, bartenders, or desk clerks while rehearsing their monologues in the mirror. The energy was electric, but it was also deeply exhausting. The cost of living was rising, the competition was fierce, and the sheer volume of raw ambition concentrated in a few square miles created a highly volatile atmosphere.

At the center of this cultural shift was a fundamental change in how Americans consumed humor. For decades, comedy had been dominated by the old-school Borscht Belt tummlers—men in sharp suits who delivered rapid-fire, setup-punchline jokes about their wives, their mothers-in-law, and the miseries of suburban life. These performers, while incredibly skilled, represented an older generation’s sensibilities. They performed in cavernous Las Vegas showrooms or upscale supper clubs, maintaining a professional distance from their audience. But the generation that grew up with the Vietnam War, the Watergate scandal, and the civil rights movement found this style of comedy increasingly irrelevant. They did not want slick, sanitized gags; they wanted raw truth, vulnerability, and political edge. They wanted comedians who looked, talked, and thought like them.

This generational handoff found its physical home on the Strip. As the grand old nightclubs of the mid-century struggled to survive, they were carved up and repurposed for this new artistic movement. The transition was not always smooth, but it was incredibly rapid. Almost overnight, the focus of Los Angeles nightlife shifted from dancing and live music to the intimate, high-wire act of stand-up comedy. It was a highly democratic medium in terms of entry requirements; you did not need an expensive instrument, a band, or a recording contract to participate. All you needed was a notebook, a microphone, and the courage to stand in front of a room full of strangers who were actively daring you to make them laugh.

The geography of the Strip played a crucial role in fostering this community. Within a short walk, a performer could visit legendary hangouts like Barney’s Beanery, the Rainbow Bar and Grill, and the Roxy Theatre. This proximity created a continuous, twenty-four-hour loop of social interaction and professional networking. Comedians, actors, musicians, and writers drifted from one venue to another, swapping industry gossip, sharing drug connections, and debating the merits of various performance styles. It was a highly insular world, a village of self-described misfits who felt alienated by mainstream society but found a strange, comforting solidarity in their shared pursuit of the spotlight.

This environment bred a very specific type of artistic obsession. To these young performers, stand-up was not just a job or a stepping stone to a sitcom; it was a sacred calling. They studied the albums of Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor the way theological students studied scripture. They analyzed every pause, every inflection, and every shift in microphone technique, looking for the secret formula that could turn a room of cynical, half-drunk patrons into a unified, laughing collective. The pursuit of this high was addictive, and it drove many of them to extreme lengths. They slept in their cars, shared run-down apartments with half a dozen other struggling artists, and skipped meals just to save enough money for gas to get to their next open-mic slot.

Yet, despite the romanticism that would later cloud this era, the reality of the 1970s Sunset Strip was often incredibly grim. Beneath the neon glamour lay a dark underbelly of exploitation, drug addiction, and mental illness. The ease with which cocaine flowed through the entertainment industry during this period is difficult to overstate. It was everywhere—in the pockets of club owners, on the mirrors of dressing rooms, and on the tables of VIP booths. The drug provided a temporary burst of artificial confidence, a vital commodity for performers who had to face the terrifying prospect of rejection night after night, but it also amplified their paranoia, skewed their judgment, and drained their already meager finances.

Furthermore, the business practices of the era were notoriously primitive. The clubs that lined the Strip were often run by colorful, larger-than-life characters who operated on handshake agreements, cash-only transactions, and a general disdain for formal contracts. To these old-school venue owners, performers were a dime a dozen, resources to be utilized and discarded as necessary. The idea that a performer had rights, or that they were entitled to a share of the massive profits generated by the sale of high-priced drinks and cover charges, was considered laughable. The prevailing wisdom was that the club was doing the performer a favor by allowing them onto the stage in the first place.

This power dynamic was further skewed by the role of the talent scout. In the 1970s, the ultimate goal for any aspiring stand-up comedian was an appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. A single, successful five-minute set on Carson’s couch could instantly transform an unknown comic working for tips into a national headliner capable of selling out theaters across the country. Because Carson's talent scouts routinely combed the clubs along the Sunset Strip, looking for fresh faces to book for the show, the clubs held an immense, almost life-or-death leverage over the performers. The comics knew that if they offended a club owner, or if they demanded better treatment, they could easily be banned from the venue, effectively cutting off their access to the industry decision-makers who held the keys to their future.

This created a highly compliant, easily exploited workforce. The comedians were so desperate for exposure, so hungry for that one magical night on television, that they were willing to endure almost any indignity. They accepted poor working conditions, erratic scheduling, and, most importantly, a complete lack of financial compensation. They convinced themselves that this was simply the price of admission, a modern version of the old vaudeville apprenticeship that everyone had to go through before they could claim their place in the sun. It was a beautiful, tragic illusion, and for several years, it worked perfectly for the club owners who raked in fortunes while their marquee attractions struggled to pay for a cup of coffee.

The physical setting of these performances also contributed to the intense, pressure-cooker atmosphere. The rooms were intentionally designed to be cramped, dark, and hot. Low ceilings trapped the smoke from hundreds of cigarettes, creating a thick, blue haze that hung over the audience like a permanent cloud. The tables were packed so closely together that patrons were practically sitting in each other's laps, an acoustic strategy designed to ensure that a laugh from one corner of the room would ripple instantly through the entire crowd. The stage itself was often nothing more than a wooden platform raised a few inches off the floor, putting the performer close enough to the audience to feel the heat of their breath and smell the alcohol on their breath.

For the comedian, this setup was both exhilarating and terrifying. There was no fourth wall, no orchestra pit, and no distance to hide behind. If a joke landed, the reaction was immediate, visceral, and deafening. If a joke failed, the silence was heavy, suffocating, and deeply personal. In this intimate arena, the performer’s raw personality was laid bare. The crowd could instantly sense fear, insincerity, or desperation, and they would react with brutal indifference or outright hostility. To survive in this environment, a comedian had to develop an incredibly thick skin, a razor-sharp wit, and an almost pathological level of resilience.

As the decade progressed, the sheer volume of talent arriving in Los Angeles began to reach a critical mass. Word had spread across the nation that the Sunset Strip was the epicenter of a new cultural phenomenon, the place where the next generation of comedy superstars was being forged. Young men and women packed up their lives, left their hometowns, and headed west, dreaming of seeing their names on the marquees of the Strip. They arrived with high hopes and empty pockets, quickly integrating themselves into the frantic, nocturnal rhythm of the local scene.

This influx of talent created a vibrant, fiercely competitive community. The comedians watched each other’s sets with a mixture of admiration and intense jealousy, constantly measuring their own progress against that of their peers. They debated the structure of a bit, argued about who had stolen whose premise, and analyzed the reactions of the crowd with the precision of forensic scientists. It was a self-sustaining intellectual hothouse where ideas were traded, refined, and discarded at a dizzying pace. The level of innovation was staggering, as performers pushed the boundaries of what could be considered comedy, experimenting with surrealism, performance art, and deeply personal confessional monologues.

Yet, despite the artistic triumphs, the economic reality remained stubbornly unchanged. The crowds kept coming, the cash registers kept ringing, and the clubs continued to expand, adding new rooms and scheduling more shows to accommodate the insatiable demand. But the money generated by this boom remained concentrated at the very top of the food chain. The performers who were drawing the crowds, who were putting their mental health and reputations on the line night after night, remained at the very bottom, living hand-to-mouth in a city that was becoming increasingly expensive.

This economic disconnect was the fatal flaw in the system, a ticking time bomb built into the very foundation of the Sunset Strip comedy boom. The performers were willing to accept the myth of the "apprentice system" as long as they believed that the rewards were just around the corner, and as long as they felt a sense of mutual respect and shared purpose with the venue owners. But as the industry grew more corporate, and as the profits became more visible, that sense of shared purpose began to erode. The comics started to look around and realize that while they were struggling to buy groceries, the clubs were operating as highly profitable enterprises.

The stage was set for a confrontation. The unique atmosphere of the Sunset Strip—with its toxic mix of immense ambition, systemic exploitation, drug-fueled paranoia, and intense peer solidarity—had created a community of performers who were highly sensitive, fiercely protective of their craft, and increasingly aware of their collective power. They were no longer just a collection of eccentric individuals looking for a break; they were becoming a class of workers, a specialized labor force that was beginning to realize its own value. The glittering playground of the Strip, which had nurtured their talents and fueled their dreams, was about to become a battleground.