Brother Theodore - Comeback

Comeback

He was pulled out of retirement and booked by magician Dorothy Dietrich and Dick Brooks in the Magic Towne House on the affluent Upper East Side of Manhattan for special weekend midnight performances. Years earlier, Brooks had remembered seeing Brother Theodore packing them in at small, funky and eclectic clubs all across the Lower East Side i.e. Greenwich and the East Village, and sought him out for his new club. This resulted in a resurgence of interest in Brother Theodore that brought him success in his later years starting with Tom Snyder's Tomorrow Show in 1977 followed by more TV appearances and movies. According to Brooks, it took multiple calls to Theodore to convince him to make a comeback. Theodore's attitude was very bleak, and felt his career was over. Brooks wanted to charge ten or more dollars, but Theodore insisted on four dollars, so as not to scare people away. The show was a success and ran for several seasons. A picture of the Magic Towne House ad that appeared in local New York newspapers such as the Village Voice and The New York post can be found at http://www.shockcinemamagazine.com/brother.html

Talk-show viewers probably remember Theodore for his 16 appearances on NBC's Late Night with David Letterman in the 1980s. In the early 1980s, he was a regular on the Billy Crystal Show. He provided the voice of Gollum in the the film adaptations of The Hobbit (1977) and The Return of the King (1980). In 1989 he appeared in the Joe Dante comedy film The 'Burbs. Up until the late 1990s, he was a guest actor in several episodes of Joe Frank: Work in Progress radio show on NPR. An article on Theodore appeared in RAVE magazine (with color photos) and segments from it are in the book Who's Who in Comedy. Just prior to his death from pneumonia, he taped several monologues for the controversial documentary series, Disinformation. He appeared in Billy Crystal's "Don't Get Me Started" mockumentary, and voiced the character of an ointment expert on NPR's Weekend Edition Saturday audio version of Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer in 1995.