Unknown--and Making It Work

Having to prove oneself over and over to skeptical new audiences seems like the last thing a comedian would want. But Fullerton-based funny-man Dick Hardwick thrives on the challenge.

Each year, Hardwick performs 120 to 150 shows across the country. Private corporate events account for about 80% of his appearances, and the rest of the time he warms up audiences for such entertainers as Johnny Mathis, who goes on after Hardwick this weekend at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts.

In both scenarios, Hardwick is usually an unknown act.

“Sometimes it’s an asset,” he argued by phone from a Dallas airport, where he was about to hop a plane to yet another corporate soiree. “If people have seen you perform before, then they start judging--’Oh, he sure looks older’ or ‘Boy, he was funnier last time.’ If they don’t know you, then it’s a fresh slate.”

Hardwick has built up a very profitable, if relatively low-profile, career since he got on the corporate track in the mid-’80s. The Indiana native’s profanity-free humor is a throwback to the days of witty one-liners and rapid-fire shtick, making him a good, noncontroversial hire.

During a performance, Hardwick, 45, might also moonwalk across the stage, a la Michael Jackson, or spew out a comical hip-hop rhyme. He likes to incorporate instruments as well.

“In my corporate act, I do a comedy drum solo and I do a thing on the guitar,” he said. “But most of the act draws from my Midwestern background and the things that people do there and say, as opposed to people who are more Hollywood hip.”

Hardwick has been performing since age 8, playing drums in rock and country bands back in Greencastle, Ind. As a sixth-grader, he made $30 a night. After graduating from high school, he moved to New Orleans and landed a drumming job in the French Quarter. His transformation into a comic began when he worked as a bandleader on a Mississippi riverboat called the Delta Queen.

“That’s when I kind of had to talk and do shtick in between songs,” he recalled. “We entertained a [diverse] audience. So I had to develop a broad sense of what entertainment was to people of all ages.”

*

In 1978, Hardwick worked his way west, eventually to Disneyland, where he played Dixieland and bluegrass in the park’s stage bands. He continued to polish his stand-up act in clubs and became understudy to Wally Boag, the longtime comedian at Disneyland’s Golden Horseshoe Revue.

“It was probably the biggest break I ever received in my life because when Wally retired I took his place,” Hardwick said. “I stepped out on the stage making $40,000 a year with full benefits. I had my own dressing room and I had only about two minutes of material to do!”

By the time Disneyland finally pulled the plug on the show in 1986, the comedian had been working some corporate events. He could make in one night what it took three weeks to clear at the “Happiest Place on Earth.”

He probably isn’t edgy enough to get an invite to “The Tonight Show” or “The Late Show With David Letterman.” But he has done numerous shows on the Nashville Network. This Saturday, he will appear on “The Statler Brothers Show” on TNN.

Last year, Hardwick played the owner of a truck stop in a sitcom pilot called “The Old Country Store.”’ He’s also developing other sitcom ideas, including “Wombmates,” about twins who were separated at birth and reunited as adults on “Oprah.”

He laments that today’s TV and film executives aren’t always concerned with how funny a comedian is.

“Hollywood is looking for a good look or angle to hook a movie or TV script around.” Hardwick said. [Today’s comedy club circuit] is not like the vaudeville days when you came into a town and you had to look into new faces every night like I do. The audience didn’t know who you were. So you had to be funny.”

* Dick Hardwick appears Friday-Sunday with Johnny Mathis at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts, 12700 Center Court Drive, Cerritos. 8 p.m. $45, $55, $60 and $65. (714) 916-8500.