Pudgy literally lives by her wits. For nearly 20 years she has made a career out of poking fun at the people who flock to her nightclub act. Hairdos, wardrobe, marital status, job, religion, in-laws, accents, hometown and just about every other personal trait that audience members admit to are fair game for the playful skewering, which has earned Pudgy frequent comparisons to Don Rickles.
But if Pudgy flirts with rudeness in her cabaret act on stage (she’s appearing at Arnie’s Wicker Room, 1030 N. State St., Chicago, through March 28), when she’s off stage, the Deerfield mother of three is a stickler for good manners. “Anthony walked in front of someone in the video store yesterday. I said, `You say excuse me when you walk in front of someone.’ I just remind him because kids forget. They’ve got to be brought up that way.”
Indeed, a recent Saturday afternoon found Pudgy in one of her favorite roles: playing Tickle Witch with her kids (by turns, Mom tickles youngster until the `victim’ is forced to squeal a confession that they love their brothers and sister “very, very much”).
There are few career souvenirs in the cozy townhouse Pudgy shares with husband Michael Cardella and their children: Michael Jr., 13, Melissa, 10, and Anthony, 8. A trophy from the American Guild of Variety Artists naming her Rising Comedy Star of the Year (1981), an oversized beer mug bearing the slogan “Party ‘Til You Puke,” and framed reviews from New York newspapers that hint at her show business identity.
But for the most part, domestic life with Pudgy resembles that of any number of suburban families. A cartoon sketch by Michael Jr. is proudly displayed on the refrigerator door. The kitchen smells of a fresh-baked cake that Pudgy is making for Melissa’s upcoming birthday. Midway through a sentence, Pudgy breaks off to reprimand Anthony for taking too many M&Ms from the candy bowl.
Settling onto the living room floor to share a bowl of popcorn with a visitor, Pudgy acknowledges that she generally leaves the funny business at the nightclubs.
Michael Jr. confirms that, saying, “On stage, yeah, she’s got a good sense of humor. Off stage, she tries to be funny but sometimes she’s not.”
“Every once in a while I’ll throw the kids a line, and they’ll laugh out loud-very seldom,” Pudgy says, throwing a look to Michael Jr. “I don’t apply the humor that much. Michael Jr. turns on VH1 to watch comedy. The other day he said to me Rose O’Donnel is his favorite comedian. I said, `After me, who’s your favorite comedian? And he said, `I didn’t say after you.’ `Fine, I said, `Let Cher feed you at birth.’ “
Pudgy, born Beverly Wines, got her nickname and quick wit from her father, a milkman whose dry sense of humor entertained the youngster at the dinner table while she was growing up on Chicago’s Northwest Side with three sisters. In school, Pudgy was always cracking up her friends but never considered comedy as a career. “I always thought if I had gone out at 18 and said, `I’m going to be a comedian,’ it never would have happened.”
Instead, when Pudgy graduated from Steinmetz High School in 1963, she studied to be a mortician and worked as a hairdresser for a brief time before landing the job that would ultimately be her entre into show business. “I worked part time as a waitress at this restaurant near the old Greyhound station, and after work I’d go to these piano bars where I’d tell people stories about the obnoxious customers that came into the restaurant. And I’d get up and do `Hard Hearted Hannah’ the way I thought Betty Grable would sing it and say to the men in the bar, `You want me, I know you want me.’ ” Pudgie drops her voice to a mock-dramatic hush. “And that was when I was huge, and people would laugh. And I’d say, `Okay, I’m doing comedy.’
“I never thought of it as a job because I would always tell stories and make everybody laugh. I always had the loudest voice; I got kicked out of a pizza parlor once for being too loud. And then, all of a sudden, I started getting paid. I thought, `Hey, I’ll go with it.’ “
“Pudgy is a born comedian,” said stand-up comic Phyllis Diller. “Roseanne Arnold got started as a waitress, too, making cracks to the customers. Like her, Pudgy is a natural.”
Diller recalls seeing Pudgy for the first time in 1979, when Diller co-hosted “The Phil Donahue Show,” then based in Chicago: “They had a showcase of up-and-coming comedians. Pudgy was pregnant, so she really did look pudgy, and right away I simply thought she was wonderful. Pudgy is real old-fashioned show biz. When she sings, what pops into my mind is Sophie Tucker, because she really belts it.”
As for Pudgy’s banter with the audience, Diller said, “She has a genius for the people’s names. She can remember so much. You can see her four shows a night and never see the same thing. And the way she uses her eyes, it’s such a putdown. You take all of that, rolled up into one and add her sheer energy: I’m a mad fan.”
Pudgy’s natural comic gifts were noticed by the late pianist Les Tucker, who accompanied her for three years beginning in 1975. He coaxed Pudgy to do more talking and less singing and also taught her a lesson that remains key to her success.
“You have to reach out and bring them in; that’s what Les always used to say,” Pudgy says. “He had this incredible memory. He’d find out a customer’s favorite tune was `As Time Goes By,’ and when they walked back in eight years later, he’d play `As Time Goes By’ when they entered. People loved him. So I started doing that. You have to reach out and make them be interested in what you’re doing.”
By the late ’70s, Pudgy was the talk of Rush Street. One night in 1978, Michael Cardella, a singer, happened to drop by Punchinello’s nightclub, where Pudgy was performing: “I walked in and I listened to her and I went, `This is the funniest woman since Totie Fields.’ Then I got into managing her and putting a beginning and middle and end into the act and gave it some structure.”
But not too much structure. Pudgy is the first to admit that she rebels against any pre-planning that might inhibit her spontaneity. “Boom, I just walk right on and do it,” she says. “It’s the lights, the music, the microphone. I’m unrehearsed. I basically work off the element of the surprise of the people in the audience. If Michael told me ahead of time, `there’s a woman in a purple dress, man in a fedora, guy in a double-breasted suit,’ he’s ruined it. I’m not going to think of a thing to say. I like the element of surprise. If I had a heavily rehearsed show, I’d be dead meat.”
In 1979, a year after meeting, Pudgy married Michael, who by then was serving as her opening act. The two began performing in New York comedy clubs, and soon after, she received a $10,000 bonus for signing with the giant talent agency William Morris.
Appearances on “Hollywood Squares” and the Showtime cable channel followed, but in general, television has been a hard nut to crack. “Television doesn’t want you to just wing it,” Michael Cardella explained. “They need to see set material, but we’re working on that.”
Pudgy’s career was also stymied, according to Cardella, by Joan Rivers. In 1982 Pudgy and her party were asked to leave a Joan Rivers show at the Improv comedy club in Los Angeles, and from that time on Cardella believes that Rivers has put the kibosh on Pudgy’s advancement by unfairly accusing her of stealing material. “That’s ridiculous because Pudgy works off the top of her head,” he said. “She doesn’t need to steal jokes.”
“I have no recollection of any such incident,” said Rivers, referring to Pudgy being kicked out of the comedy club. “I wish her well, but if she continues thinking that anyone can stop anybody’s career in this business, I suggest she see a good psychiatrist. The public makes stars; I really believe that.” Additionally, Rivers denied accusing Pudgy of stealing material.
Whatever the causes, most of Pudgy’s work in recent years has been in nightclubs. Since Chicago’s once-vibrant Rush Street nightlife scene began drying up in the ’80s, Pudgy’s most regular employers have been the casinos of Atlantic City, where she has opened for headliners Tony Bennett, Jerry Lewis and David Copperfield at such major venues as Trump’s Castle, Taj Mahal and Harrah’s. Last year Bally’s Grand was so taken with the comedian that it created a performing space named Pudgy’s Parlor.
“She played there six months, and they would have kept her forever,” said Debbi Fitzpatrick, an Atlantic City-based booking agent. “She’s a repeat show. People go to see her over and over again because each time is different.”
Fitzpatrick said Pudgy goes over with audiences because of the personal attention she lavishes on members of the audience. “She visits the tables and for the rest of the show constantly refers to the customers by name, which thrills them to death. It gets the audiences involved, whereas so much of the big-name entertainment is a look-don’t-touch kind of thing. The others in the crowd are crunching their fists, thinking maybe they’ll be the next ones she picks on. And yet she doesn’t leave anyone angry because she’s really not a mean person.”
Working out of town is perhaps Pudgy’s least favorite aspect of her job: “I wouldn’t complain nearly so much if it weren’t for the traveling. My mother did all the cooking and cleaning and caring when she raised me, and I’d like to do the same for my kids. Fortunately, we have a great (extended) family.” Cardella’s mother and Pudgy’s sister take care of the children when the parents are out of town.
“It’s fun having Pudgy for a mom,” said Michael Jr., “but we really miss her around the house, like when she’s gone for a month traveling. Because then she’s not here to do motherly things like wash clothes and make food.”
Looking on the bright side, Michael added, “I get a lot of responsibility out of it because I have to watch Melissa and Anthony. When she’s gone we all have to pitch in.”
Young Michael prefers it when the whole family gets to accompany Pudgy for her gigs. “I like it better when we go to Atlantic City with her. We all drive out in the van and get to see her 24 hours a day.”
Judy Kuhn, one of Pudgy’s next door neighbors, remembers meeting the comedian shortly after the Cardella family moved to Deerfield in 1983: “She was pregnant with Anthony when I met her on the playground. We were both watching our kids. My oldest, Jessica, is about Michael’s age. Pudgy is a wonderful mother. She cares so much about those kids. Pudgy makes such a big deal for birthdays, and every year, she’s hosted a Christmas party for the neighborood kids with a grab bag of presents.”
Kuhn and her husband, George, have watched Pudgy perform several times. Her friendship with the comedian has spared her from being singled out for good-natured ribbing. “Oh sure, she says `You live on the wrong side of the tracks’ and all of that,” Judy Kuhn said. “It’s so interesting to go see Pudgy in a club. It’s like two different people. I feel awe in a way. She’s very bright, very sensitive. Memory is keen. Her life is less than easy with kids and travel and the entertainment world. The fact that she can pull it off says to me that she’s very special.”
When she is at home, Pudgy is the first to admit that her attention is focused on family rather than work. “Michael will ask me, `Is your gown clean for some show?’ and I’ll go, `I don’t have enough potatoes for the week,’ or, `I don’t know but Anthony outgrew his underwear.’ That’s where my concern is. Don’t ask me about my gown for next week, because I don`t know about that stuff.”
Says Cardella, “All she has to do is go out and perform. My job is to make that possible.”
