Being Funny By Steve Martin

From these television appearances, I got a welcome job in 1971 with Ann-Margret, five weeks opening the show for her at the International Hilton in Vegas, a huge, unfunny barn with sculptured pink cherubs hanging from the corners of the proscenium. Laughter in these poorly designed places rose a few feet into the air and dissipated like steam, always giving me the feeling I was bombing. One night, from my dressing room, I saw a vision in white gliding down the hall-a tall, striking woman, moving like an apparition along the backstage corridor. It turned out to be Priscilla Presley, coming to visit Ann-Margret backstage after having seen the show. When she turned the corner, she revealed an even more indelible presence walking behind her. Elvis. Dressed in white. Jet-black hair. A diamond-studded buckle.

When Priscilla revealed Elvis to me, I was also revealed to Elvis. I'm sure he noticed that this 25-year-old stick figure was frozen firmly to the ground. About to pass me by, Elvis stopped, looked at me and said in his beautiful Mississippi drawl: "Son, you have an ob-leek sense of humor." Later, after his visit with Ann-Margret, he stopped by my dressing room and told me that he, too, had an oblique sense of humor-which he did-but that his audience didn't get it. Then he said, "Do you want to see my guns?" After emptying the bullets into his palm, he showed me two pistols and a derringer.

The plum television appearance during the '60s and '70s was "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson." Bob Shayne, who in the late '60s booked "The Steve Allen Show," had moved over to "The Tonight Show" and mentioned me to its producer, Freddy De Cordova. Bob showed Freddy a kinescope of my appearance on "The Steve Allen Show," and Fred replied, "I don't think he's for us." But Bob persisted, and Johnny saw the kinescope and said, "Let's give him a try." I was booked on the show in October 1972.

There was a belief that one appearance on "The Tonight Show" made you a star. But here are the facts. The first time you do the show, nothing. The second time you do the show, nothing. The sixth time you do the show, someone might come up to you and say, "Hi, I think we met at Harry's Christmas party." The tenth time you do the show, you could conceivably be remembered as being seen somewhere on television. The 12th time you do the show, you might hear, "Oh, I know you. You're that guy."

But I didn't know that. Before the show, as I stood in the backstage darkness behind the curtain of "The Tonight Show," hearing the muffled laughter while Johnny spoke and waiting for the tap on the shoulder that would tell me I was on, an italicized sentence ticker-taped through my head: "I am about to do 'The Tonight Show.'" Then I walked out onstage, started my act and thought, "I am doing 'The Tonight Show.'" I finished my act and thought, "I have just done 'The Tonight Show.'" What happened while I was out there was very similar to an alien abduction: I remember very little of it, though I'm convinced it occurred.

I did the show successfully several times. I was doing material from my act, best stuff first, and after two or three appearances, I realized how little best stuff I had. After I'd gone through my stage material, I started doing some nice but oddball bits such as "Comedy Act for Dogs" (first done on "Steve Allen"), in which I said, "A lot of dogs watch TV, but there's really nothing on for them, so call your dog over and let him watch because I think you're going to see him crack up for the first time." Then I brought out four dogs "that I can perform to so I can get the timing down." While I did terrible canine-related jokes, the dogs would walk off one at a time, with the last dog lifting his leg on me. The studio audience saw several trainers out of camera range, making drastic hand signals, but the home TV audience saw only the dogs doing their canine best.

Another time I claimed that I could read from the phone book and make it funny. I opened the book and droned the names to the predictable silence, then I pretended to grow more and more desperate and began to do retro shtick such as cracking eggs on my head. I got word that Johnny was not thrilled, and I was demoted to appearing with guest hosts, which I tried not to admit to myself was a devastating blow.