Col. Budd and His Joke Machine : ‘The San Fernando Valley is ripe. They love to laugh.’

A hotel in the San Fernando Valley is an unlikely place for anything funny to happen unless you are amused by an Iowa chicken salesman trying to sound Hollywood-cool in a Sherman Oaks bar.

Safe sex and unsafe buses are on everyone’s mind these days from Chatsworth to Arleta, and neither subject offers much to smile about.

Then why, I hear you ask, is Budd Friedman happy?

I’ll tell you why. Budd Friedman is happy because he is doing for humor what Colonel Sanders did for fried chicken. He’s franchising it.

I met with Col. Budd the other night at the Improvisation Theater he opened a few weeks ago in the Valley Hilton, that hotel in which nothing funny is ever likely to happen.

I arrived early to look the place over and ended up in a bar off the lobby where the aforementioned Iowa chicken salesman was trying to seduce a cocktail waitress who remained impressively undazzled throughout the entire ordeal.

The situation intrigued me because it was like Willy Loman trying to hustle Madonna. He used terms I thought had been outlawed. Slick chick and great gams and whatcha doin’ later, Toots?

Whatever Toots was doing later, as it turned out, did not include Willy-boy, but he hung in there like a pit bull on a mailman’s behind.

Col. Budd, the Joke King, strolled in just as the waitress was being asked if she enjoyed sailing (wink) on water beds. I never heard her answer.

It is possible, I suppose, that she found the guy charming and they are off raising chickens together just outside Cedar Falls, but more than likely she just kept smiling and pouring until Willy staggered up to his room alone and fell asleep on the floor with his clothes on.

But that’s not what today’s column is about.

Today’s column is about Col. Budd and the Improv, which is a place for comedians to perform against a fake brick backdrop.

The Colonel opened the first Improv in New York 24 years ago, and then in 1975 opened another Improv in West L.A.

They proved so successful that he went into the franchise biz with partner Mark Lonow and opened clubs in San Diego, Dallas, Las Vegas and finally right here in kooky, fun-lovin’ Sherman Oaks.

“And now,” he says with a puckish grin, “if you’d like an Improv in your neighborhood . . . “

Well, OK. Friedman’s a smart cookie and there’s no question that he’s on to something here, although I am skeptical.

I mean, I can see an Improv in Dallas and certainly in Vegas and maybe even San Diego, but Sherman Oaks?

How will a guy who spends his days repairing air conditioners react to an embittered, hostile, sexually disoriented street comic from the South Bronx?

Col. Budd shrugged. “The San Fernando Valley is ripe,” he said evasively. “They love to laugh.”

It was a Friday night and the first show was about to begin.

There were 18 people in the room, not counting the manager, two waitresses, one newspaper columnist and a Kiwanian looking for a prayer meeting.

The first comic was a haunted, Woody Allen look-alike named Bob Nickman who probably could have won a Nobel Prize for Hip Humor if half the audience was equally hip and the other half was stoned.

Unfortunately, however, neither element applied to the folks in this brave but tiny crowd who were raised to believe that American humor ended when Red Skelton got too old to play Clem Kaddiddlehopper.

How could they ever understand a guy on stage talking about Kool-Aid speed balls and stunted genitalia?

I leaned over to Budd and said “Nickman didn’t do too well.”

Budd replied hopefully, “People really dress nice in the Valley.”

Right.

The next act was television weatherman Fritz Coleman who, as a stand-up comic, falls somewhere between Wally Cox and Peewee Herman. The audience understood him all right, but still preferred Kaddiddlehopper.

John DeBellis did better (“In Malibu, if you don’t have blond hair, blue eyes and a tan, you qualify for handicapped parking”) and John Kassir overwhelmed everyone with sound and motion and almost blinding talent, but it was still a painful evening.

I empathize with people trying to be funny when hardly anyone is listening and when those who are listening aren’t buying. It’s like turning water into wine at an AA meeting. A nice effort, but no takers.

The second-show audience, I am told, was larger and more sophisticated, and the next night was a sellout to the kinds of people who always know exactly what Woody Allen is talking about.

So maybe Sherman Oaks is just a tough first-act town and life gets sweeter as the evening progresses.

Col. Budd knows his markets, and his shows will no doubt be refined to appeal to air-conditioner repairmen right along with theoretical biochemists and holistic psychics.

They used to say up north in the vaudeville era, “When you think you’re good, play Oakland.” Maybe they’ll say that for Sherman Oaks too, but with better luck.

Vaudeville died in Oakland.