Though he isn't held in the same high regard as some of his contemporaries, especially those with the great fortune to die young and lead wildly self-destructive lives, Robert Klein was a hugely popular figure in the seventies, a comedian's comedian with a professorial air and an appealingly avuncular presence.
Klein had more in common with the intellectual likes of Mort Sahl, Woody Allen and Nichols & May than the raucous, high-energy stoners of Saturday Night Live, which helps explain why he only hosted twice. In Richard Zoglin's Comedy At The Edge: How Stand-Up in the 1970s Changed America the author suggests that Klein and Richard Belzer never reached superstar levels in part because Saturday Night Live didn't embrace them the way it did Steve Martin and Richard Pryor.
Incidentally how many fucking books have comically hyperbolic titles conveying that their subject (Jews, Stand-up Comics, Renegade Notary Publics) changed or invented America? Perhaps my upcoming memoir should have been subtitled The Big Rewind: How The Wholly Inconsequential Life of One Fucked-Up Depressive Changed The World and Invented America.
There was more than just a generation gap separating the middle-aged Klein and the hungry kids in the Not Ready For Prime Time Players but the popular comedian kills here without altering his persona or talking down to the audience. Klein takes the stage during his opening monologue looking like an amiable TA in a tie and conservative suit. Smart without being pretentious, Klein then launches into a routine that explores such SNL friendly topics as anti-Semitism at small Liberal Arts colleges, The Merchant Of Venice and the narcotized smiles and suspicious pep exhibited by the undergraduate pod people in college brochures. It was most atypical monologue fare yet it went over like gangbusters.
Klein's smart set combined wry verbal humor with loose-limbed physical comedy that took great advantage of his tall, lanky frame. But before Klein elevated the level of discourse over at 30 Rock we were treated to one of the most exhilaratingly bizarre cold opens in Saturday Night Live history, a stunningly odd duet between Mr. Mike and the Tina Turner review. In a bit more funny-strange than funny-ha-ha, Mr. Mike recited a least loved bedtime story and pulled rabbits from his guitar while Garrett Morris' Tina Turner performed a blistering, go-for-broke, incendiary take on "Proud Mary".
Morris, who always seemed more comfortable singing than stumbling his way through dialogue, threw himself into the sweaty physicality of Tina Turner with delirious abandon. He seemed borderline possessed. Morris might have been the weak link among the cast but he was in ridiculously good shape and made a disconcertingly attractive woman. As established elsewhere, he's also got a hell of a voice. He's definitely the best singer in the cast.
Klein's terrific monologue is followed by the very first Olympia Café sketch, perhaps the greatest one-note bit in SNL history. Inspired by Chicago's own Billy Goat Tavern, the sketch takes place in a Greek-run greasy spoon where the only things on the menu are cheeseborgas and Pepsi. The sketch has a musical, almost jazz-like rhythm built on repetition and the virtuoso playing of the cast. There's also a pleasing cultural specificity to it. Having grown up in Chicago and been to my share of Greek diners, it certainly captures that cultural milieu with affection and wit.