Improv and Image

In “No Big Production,” by Lawrence Christon (Jan. 5), Jeannine Frank states, and you print without question, that she hates to go to “clubs like the Improv” because “I hate to be forced to drink. I don’t smoke, and there’s no depth or enrichment to the performers.”

In the 29 years we have been in business, not one of our clubs has ever forced any person to consume alcohol. To state the opposite is very detrimental to our reputation and to the image that we, at the Improvisation, have worked very hard to build.

As for smoking, we believe we were one of the country’s first nightclubs to establish no-smoking sections in its showrooms.

And as for the idea that “there’s no depth or enrichment to the performers,” the Improv has presented or discovered comedians as disparate as Richard Pryor, Freddie Prinze, Steven Wright, Robert Klein, Robin Williams, Billy Crystal, Roseanne Arnold, Jerry Seinfeld, Joan Rivers and on and on and on.

MARK LONOW

BUDD FRIEDMAN

The Improvisation

Los Angeles