A House of Cards : Hollywood Building Home to 12 Comics

Edie Mathews baked a chocolate cake with whipped cream and a fat cherry on top and carried it gingerly up the single flight of stairs to Mark Wilks’ apartment, where Rushion MacDonald had already laid out a neat setting of Cajun chicken dinner with Creole beans and corn bread for the gang.

Anita Wise showed up early, as did Mike Rapaport and Marvin Bell, who sat peering in baleful silence at a baseball game flickering inaudibly on Wilks’ TV set. James Stephens III arrived late, wearing a black fedora, purple Bermuda shorts, white socks and black sports shoes that set off his thin Michael Jordan legs. Jennifer Christie showed up later still, moments before everyone had to get going.

The occasion was Allan Murray’s 27th birthday, though a day late. It was also to celebrate what had to be some kind of show-biz precedent: Most of the group was about to pile into two cars and drive over to Igby’s comedy club in West Los Angeles to perform eight consecutive stand-up spots. While it’s not uncommon for comics to hang out together, these comics live together, in the same Hollywood building, prompting emcee Simon Rakoff’s line, “They’re not just comedians, they’re experts in car-pooling.”

“The building was cracked up into three pieces and reassembled,” said Mathews. “Kinda natural for comics, huh?”

What began as an accidental choice for comedian Rick Corso in the mid-’80s has become, for the current group of 12, an appreciable design for living. Life for the struggling comedian is lived largely on the road these days, which means that the normal uncertainty accompanying a nascent career is aggravated by rootlessness and chronic fatigue. “Before I moved in here it had gotten to the point where I didn’t feel I was living anywhere ,” said Wise.

The three-story sandstone-colored building, built in 1925, bears the improbably lofty designation “Van Carlton Arms” on its oak and glass front door. It’s situated on the kind of grubby, dispirited street--a strip of Carlton Way that stretches east off Bronson and curves south into Harold Way--where partially dismembered automobiles rot on withered lawns and in carports. The center of the block is dominated by another vintage apartment building the color of a bad bruise, fronted by a spiky fence that looks like it could’ve held off the Visigoths. “There was so much gang and drug activity in that building that the police made the owner put the fence up,” said Mathews.

The 36-unit Van Carlton Arms, unofficially subtitled “The Ho Ho House,” sits in immaculate serenity on the corner. “It was built by my father, who was an architect and contractor,” said 71-year-old Frank Rasche, the building’s current owner.

“It was located right in the center of what was to become the Hollywood Freeway. When the freeway came through, the building was cut up into three pieces and moved 150 feet west. The manager’s apartment was once a sitting room. In those days, the ladies had to come downstairs to meet their gentlemen callers. To me, it’s not just an apartment building. It’s a home. We screen who we let in, not by race, but by who we think are good people. There are a lot of retirees and nurses as well as the comedians living there. We don’t try to gouge anybody with the rent, and we try to keep up the place as best we can.”

Rasche discounts the rumor that Valentino once lived there, but says his mother worked as a stand-in for Pola Negri, and the building’s proximity to Gower Gulch and the old Hollywood Line made it a natural for show-biz hopefuls. The current crop is only the latest example of a group of young people who hang together and look out for each other.

Mathews, a married mother of four who spends weekends with her family in Santa Clara, frequently updates her neighbors’ resumes on her computer. If someone is on the road, someone else will take in his or her mail. MacDonald can usually be counted on to cook up a good spread if enough people are home, and everyone is free to drop in on everyone else for impromptu bull sessions or to tag along for an audition or a set.

“People think comedians are always happy, always laughing,” MacDonald said. “It isn’t like that.”

With dinner plates perched precariously on knees, the group sat on sofas, chairs, and the edges of Wilks’ double bed. The conversation focused on the good week several had had. Wilks was up for a role in “Matlock.” Rapaport had been cast in the next Oliver Stone film. MacDonald, who wants to write for television, had signed with an agent. Wise was working out new material for her next “Tonight Show” appearance--she’s the only one who’s worked on what is still the ultimate of talk-show spots, which prompted someone to remark, “After her, to get in this building, you’ll have to show a tape.”

Bell reported that the new Catch a Rising Star venue in Universal City was an excellent room, but look out for the slippery floor.

“Like the Comedy Store?” Murray asked.

“If I wanna go to the zoo, I’ll go to Griffith Park,” Bell said contemptuously.

“What’d Mitzi do to you?” asked MacDonald, referring to Comedy Store owner Mitzi Shore.

“She said, ‘I already got a bald comic,’ ” Bell replied.

“I heard there was a drive-by shooting,” MacDonald said.

“I heard there was a drive-by heckler,” Murray said. Spontaneously, he and Bell yelled “YOU SUCK!!! VROOOOM!!!”

“Synchronicity,” Murray said, beaming.

Everyone sang “Happy Birthday.” “It was yesterday, but that’s OK,” Murray said. “When Edie was making the cake, she said, ‘Allan, you wanna lick the beaters?’ I did, and I totally regressed, like to when I was 12.”

“I was scheduled to do ‘Into the Night’ next Wednesday, but they canceled the whole week,” MacDonald said. “There’s peaks and valleys in this business. You get your hopes up. They said, ‘Hey, we canceled everybody,’ like that’s a consolation. You work to do a certain show a certain way. Now it’s back to square one.”

“Not always,” Wise said. “You can make a new plateau.”

“You’ve got to believe in the magic of positivity,” Wilks said.

“Ah-h-h,” said MacDonald, ironically, “last month it was the attitude of negativity. When you’re young, this town is yours. If you’re young and talented, they’ll go with you. Youth is everything. When you’re older, it’s . . . it’s . . . “ he struggled for a definition.

“Point of view,” Mathews said.

Soon everyone scurried off to dress for their spot. Wise put her makeup on in front of Wilks’ mirror. “In New York I did this in taxis,” she said. “I got spoiled.”

“This look OK, guys?” Wilks asked about his silk pants and burgundy shirt. His nerves were already beginning to show. “I gotta get my black jacket cleaned, my white one has balls and my green’s for winter.”

“Relax, we’re only doin’ five minutes,” Mathews said.

Bell had left early for another gig at a place called Whiskey Creek in Redlands, Murray had to go to a class, Rapaport begged off. The crowd at Igby’s had already been primed by the time the rest of the group arrived, and it was warm and appreciative.

“Great house tonight,” Wilks said.

Jennifer Christie went on first. Offstage, she’s a woman gripped with an almost fierce tension. Onstage, she seemed graceful and flowing. She told jokes about being single, and what it felt like to play the victim on “Unsolved Mysteries.” She ended by describing the travails of wearing women’s undergarments and threw out a challenge to the men in the audience, “How would you guys like to wear a jock that lifts and separates?”

Wilks, who was born and reared in Little Rock, followed with an Arkansas Goober-jokes routine. “I got a good job when I came out here. Jury duty. Six bucks a day !” Mathews followed with a routine somewhat reminiscent of Phyllis Diller, only less deprecating: “My mom and my daughter are on the same wave-length. They both wear blue hair.”

Marty Rudoy, who hadn’t been at the party, introduced himself as the skier on the opening credits of “Wide World of Sports” and told the audience he once went to bed with a female eye doctor who kept saying, “Is it better now, or now?”

In a richly crafted routine, Wise touched on a number of disparate topics, including human dust, her big-as-a-diner ’78 Mercury Marquis, and Scissorhands, her cat: “She’s in a bad mood. The exterminator killed all her toys.”

MacDonald followed with a routine that dealt in part with the horror of living with someone who snores.

James Stephens III ended the Carlton bloc’s appearance by doing impressions to the accompaniment of a portable keyboard. When he was through, Rakoff, the emcee, said, “Let’s have a hand for James Stephens III, who’s much better than James Stephens II.”

Afterward, the group checked out the Improv and shared a round of drinks with owner Budd Friedman, who picked up the check. “He picked up,” moaned Mathews incredulously, “and I didn’t order.”

Then they all went back to Mathews’ apartment to scrutinize the comedy lineup on “Into the Night,” which they discussed at length. It was 1:30 in the morning before the group broke up, and still later the voices of MacDonald and Wilks could be heard talking and laughing in the soft night air.

Earlier, everyone had stood outside Igby’s for a group snapshot while it was still light. In 10 or 20 years or more, each would be able to reflect on this night. By then, some will have made successful careers, some will still be scuffling at the periphery, and some will have given up altogether and gone home to various parts of the country. But all could look back on the summer of ’91 and remember when they hung out together through good times and bum times, and no one had yet tasted the bitterness of lasting defeat.