December 11, 1998
JANET SILVER GHENT
Bulletin Staff
The leap from shoe business to show business may only involve a single letter. But for Catskills comic Freddie Roman the journey took many baby steps, a lurch backward and a giant burst of luck in the form of the late Totie Fields, sitting in the audience at the Concord Hotel.
The next thing he knew, he was taking his show beyond the Borscht Belt and into the national arena. Today Roman is the dean of the New York Friar's Club, where he recently roasted Drew Carey on a televised program, and he performs at resorts and benefits throughout the country.
"Totie was my godmother," he says during a phone interview from Florida. "She opened up that wonderful Jewish yenta mouth and got me all these jobs. From 1971, I became a regular in Reno and Vegas and Tahoe and, of course, Atlantic City."
Roman went on to greater fame in "Catskills on Broadway," a show he created and performed in for three years in New York and on tour.
"The one regret I had -- and those were the three greatest years of my life -- was that we couldn't get a theater at the time we needed it in San Francisco," says Roman, whose show was booked for two weeks in Los Angeles and played for 11.
This holiday season, Roman jokes, his "career has come full circle." Not only is he going to be a headliner in San Francisco for the first time, but he's going to be playing at a Chinese restaurant. He headlines the sixth annual "Evening of Kung Pao Kosher Comedy." Also featured on the bill are New York lesbian comic Sara Cytron, San Francisco's Dan Lewis and "Kung Pao" creator Lisa Geduldig.
Part of the proceeds benefit WORLD (Women Organized to Respond to Life-Threatening Diseases) and Bay Area Council for Jewish Rescue and Renewal.
"I took the job only for one reason -- it sounded like so much fun," says Roman, who will perform Thursday, Dec. 24 through Sunday, Dec. 27 at the New Asia Restaurant.
He guarantees that he'll throw in a bit of local shtik, calling one San Francisco restaurant "the only deli in the history of Jewish delis [whose] potato pancakes can lead you to cardiac arrest. They are also used as hockey pucks for the San Jose Sharks."
Like many Catskills comedians, Roman, 61, makes it his business to remember where he came from. Born Freddie Kirschenbaum, he grew up in a nondescript neighborhood in Jamaica, N.Y. Summers were spent at Crystal Spring, a small, haimish resort owned by his uncle and grandfather and located at the edge of the Catskills. One summer, the orchestra quit after a week, and family members and guests took over the entertainment. Freddie at 15 years old became the emcee.
His inspiration came from his late father, Harry Kirschenbaum, a natural comic who owned a shoe store on Long Island.
"He was terrific. His greatest frustration was that he never became a comedian. When I started to get hot in 1974 and was the opening act for Tom Jones, every night I'd send [parents Harry and Belle] to another show and they would come to my late show. Shecky Green took them in his dressing room. That was the greatest week of my life, just to watch [my father's] face."
After the family sold Crystal Spring, Roman played other Catskills hotels, becoming social director at the well-known Nevele in 1957.
But marriage and having two children close together changed all that. Unable to support his family in show business, he returned to shoe business, opening a store in Queens.
"I had two children and was making a nice living and I hated every day," he said. "I hated getting up, I hated selling shoes and I hated the fact that I was successful."
He still jokes about the women who came in with a white card and a tiny thread of red around it, asking him to dye shoes to match. In his shows, he says he handed them a pair of white shoes and told them, "I matched the card."
After selling the shoe business, he became a salesman for mutual funds and life insurance. Fortuitously, his territory was Ulster and Sullivan counties, the heart of the Borscht Belt. He'd go up every Tuesday.
"One night on my way home, I stopped at Homowack Lodge, where the owner was an old friend. He said, `Come on, get up on stage.' I hadn't done jokes in 12 years. But it was just a wonderful night and I began coming up every Tuesday."
Suddenly Roman was playing the Catskills Tuesdays through Thursdays, and then "I started working all the hotels. Totie Fields took it to another level."
So did "Catskills on Broadway," a show that not only rode on the Catskills nostalgia kick but helped create a revival for Jewish comedy.
But while Roman maintains that "there is nowhere better in my heart than the Catskills," he adds, "The mountains is over."
"With the advent of jet travel, the mountains declined. The small hotels fell by the wayside. The big
ones lasted, but the clientele got older and moved to Florida and that was the end of it."
Roman, who once played 96 shows in nine weeks, holding the record among Catskills comics, says this year, he'll only do four or five Catskills hotels.
Some time ago, he took his children to see the now decaying Crystal Spring. They thought it was ugly. But in Roman's eyes, "it was fabulous."
"Evening of Kung Pao Kosher Comedy" plays Thursday, Dec. 24 to Sunday, Dec. 27 at the New Asia Restaurant, 772 Pacific Ave., S.F. 6 p.m. dinner shows, $46. 9:30 p.m. cocktail shows, $32. Information: (415) 522-3737 or www.igc.org/koshercomed
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