Eddie Lawrence - Early Career

Early Career

Born Lawrence Eisler in Brooklyn, New York, he began performing at the end of the Depression 1930s. Barely out of his teens, he gained a minor reputation as an original comic/raconteur who performed bizarre elocution of whimsical free verse in little clubs in the New York area as well as on the "borscht belt" circuit in the Catskills.

His first confirmed radio appearance was on Major Bowes Amateur Hour in 1943, where he did World War II-themed comic impressions of Charles Boyer, Ronald Colman, Roland Young and Clem McCarthy. A preserved audio transcript of his performance was one of the selections included 16 years later on the 1959 LP Original Amateur Hour 25th Anniversary Album (UA UXL 2). On the recording, Major Bowes is heard inviting "Larry" to come out of the audience and tell us all he knows.

By the early 1950s, now rechristened Eddie Lawrence, he continued to appear in lesser clubs, honing his comic timing, while taking bit parts in the numerous live television productions then prevalent in New York. His first major stage role was in the second revival of The Threepenny Opera which opened at the Off-Broadway Theater deLys on September 30, 1955 (an earlier production, without him, lasted for 96 performances in March–May 1954). A member of the original cast, he sang the role of Macheath's most prominent henchman, Crook-Finger Jack. Among the returning players from the 1954 version were future television stars Beatrice Arthur and John Astin, and its leading lady, Lotte Lenya, the original Jenny from both the August 1928 Berlin premiere under its German title, Die Dreigroschenoper, and G. W. Pabst's 1931 film version. The second deLys incarnation was much more successful, running over six years, for a total of 2611 performances, and finally closing on December 17, 1961, but Eddie Lawrence stayed with it less than a year while working on the monologue which was to make his name.