Growing up on the Southwest Side of Chicago, Shelley Berman’s parents told him “With your mouth, you could be a lawyer.” Instead, Berman studied at the Goodman, became an actor and then a comedian. At 7 p.m. Saturday, Berman will present “A Body of Work” in a rare hometown appearance at the Park West, 959 W. Armitage Ave. $25-35. 312-944-2200.
Q: You grew up on the West Side?
A: Southwest Side. Between Kedzie and Pulaski, between 18th and Roosevelt Road. The interesting thing was to see the synagogues becoming Baptist churches. All you have to do, incidentally, to make a Baptist Church is to find a synagogue, chip off the Star of David, lay on a carefully molded cross, and you’ve got it! (laughs)
Q: One of your famous monologues involves you and your father discussing your wanting to study acting. Were your parents disappointed by your career choice?
A: There was some disappointment, but then they started pulling for me. They greeted that with a certain amount of tolerance and suspicion. They were absolutely sure that I was gay: “What young boy wants to be an actor? He has to be gay.” They didn’t use the term then; at that point, gay meant “happy.” At that time, I think the term was “sissy-boy.”
Q: You started doing stand-up in Chicago around the same time as Mike Nichols and Elaine May, Bob Newhart, Mort Sahl. What kind of support system existed? Were you all terribly competitive or would you turn up at each other’s gigs to offer support?
A: Well, both. The truth is that I began working with Nichols and May with the Compass Players, which eventually would be called Second City. Seeing Mort Sahl work on Rush Street was a revelation, because I now saw a comedian working without jokes. It was commentary. I realized that it is possible to go into a nightclub, where people are drinking booze or eating food, get up and entertain an audience without saying, “My mother-in-law is so fat that …” or “My girlfriend is so ugly that …” I had nothing against that kind of humor, except I knew that I could never do it.
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