{"id":1003,"date":"2026-07-20T13:07:23","date_gmt":"2026-07-20T13:07:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=1003"},"modified":"2026-07-20T13:07:23","modified_gmt":"2026-07-20T13:07:23","slug":"david-rothenberg-arrives-at-the-punch-line","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=1003","title":{"rendered":"David Rothenberg Arrives at the Punch Line"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Certain New Yorkers manage to create a spinning orbit of other New Yorkers around them, and that is why we call those groupings circles\u2014as in, the Gershwin circle, or the Algonquin circle. Very few New Yorkers get two distinct orbits. David Rothenberg, who, at ninety-two, recently made his d\u00e9but as a standup comic, at 54 Below, is one of those few.<\/p>\n

Read more Eric Bogosian\u2019s Killer Gig<\/a><\/p>\n

One circle that revolves around Rothenberg is made up of show-business veterans, of the kind that he interviews on his Saturday-morning radio program, on WBAI; the other is a circle of formerly incarcerated people who view him as a secular saint. Rothenberg is both a theatrical P.R. man\u2014he worked for Liz and Dick when everyone knew who Liz and Dick were\u2014and the defiantly unpious founder of the Fortune Society, an institution devoted to humanizing life after prison. The latter was the result of an epiphany, in 1967, when Rothenberg produced a play about prison life. Starting as a desk in his office in Times Square, Fortune has grown, with a community residence based in a rehabbed school building known as the Castle, up at 140th and Riverside.<\/p>\n

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Before the recent matin\u00e9e, 54 Below was filled with some stars (Christine Ebersole kicked off the show), and with many members of the Fortune circle. (Stanley Richards, the new head of the Department of Correction and himself a former inmate, is a Fortune alum.)<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat made me want to do it?\u201d Rothenberg asked backstage. \u201cIt was my Walter Mitty moment! Does anyone still know who Walter Mitty is?\u201d (His conversation is sprinkled, as a hyper-alert ninety-two-year-old\u2019s must be, with the question of whether an apropos reference he has just made is apropos to anybody else still breathing.) \u201cI\u2019ve always loved people who made other people laugh,\u201d he went on. \u201cMy aunt Hilda was the person who made me believe in myself, and the first time she took me out at night was to see the movie \u2018Kismet,\u2019 with Ronald Colman and Marlene Dietrich. Afterward, she said to somebody, \u2018We just saw a movie about Baghdad. Ronald Colman was the dad, and Dietrich was the bag.\u2019 I loved that!<\/p>\n

\u201cUsing humor to communicate with people who are angry and hurt and broken is part of the mission of Fortune,\u201d he continued. \u201cI\u2019ve always said that, at Fortune, the first thing is to gain trust, since the people who come home to us have been so misused, abused, wounded, hurt. If they see you as someone who can start them laughing, their truth and pain come out. The first time it happened was with a kid named Abe, who was seventeen. We played Ping-Pong. I was still in show business, so I was dense with one-liners. He threatened to smile a couple of times, and then he laughed. And he started getting better.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more Il Paradiso Italiano di Julian Schnabel<\/a><\/p>\n

Rothenberg had been considering opening his set with a joke that, he knew, was likely to lose the audience. He\u2019d planned to say, \u201cThis is Mr. Norman Maine,\u201d a twist on the last line of the 1954 film \u201cA Star Is Born,\u201d where Judy Garland announces that, although she is Vicki Lester, the movie star, her true allegiance is to her husband, Norman, who has just drowned himself. Rothenberg\u2019s bit would be him declaring that Mr. Norman Maine had faked his own death to get away from Garland.<\/p>\n

Rothenberg nixed that and started his act more directly: \u201cI\u2019m the oldest standup comedian in America\u2014the operative word here is \u2018standing up.\u2019\u00a0\u201d He did some material on the women in his life: \u201cThere was a woman I knew very well. Let\u2019s call her Mother.\u201d He then told a racy story about meeting Charles Laughton, who groped Rothenberg\u2019s innocent and much younger thigh at the Algonquin, and added an anecdote about being thrown out of an upstate prison while trying to visit two inmates. He was told to \u201cgo back to New York and get some Jew liberal lawyer to help you.\u201d He said, \u201cI did. His name was William Kunstler.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Afterward, everyone in the room agreed that the best story had been about a phone conversation with Peggy Lee. \u201cShe called, you see, at midnight!\u201d Rothenberg had said. \u201cBig stars assume that everyone is awake whenever they are. So, she asked me to assemble some sheet music for her, for her next gig in New York, and I said, \u2018Yes, of course, Miss Lee.\u2019 She wanted some tunes by Frank Loesser, and I said that I had never heard her sing \u2018Spring Will Be a Little Late This Year,\u2019 a lesser-known Loesser. So, she began it, right there on the phone, and kept on till she had finished it!<\/p>\n

\u201cThe next morning, my mother called me and said, \u2018I was trying to get through to you on the phone all night! The line was busy. What were you doing?\u2019 I said to her, \u2018Mom, I was in bed with Peggy Lee, and she wouldn\u2019t stop singing.\u2019\u00a0\u201d\u00a0\u2666<\/p>\n

Read more The Man Who Green-Lighted Trump\u2019s Ballroom<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The ninety-two-year-old theatre producer and prison activist stopped by 54 Below to make a career pivot\u2014standup comedy, dishing on Charles Laughton and Peggy Lee. Adam Gopnik reports.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1002,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[115],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1003","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dept-of-new-tricks"],"yoast_head":"\nDavid Rothenberg Arrives at the Punch Line - City Relocation News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=1003\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"David Rothenberg Arrives at the Punch Line - City Relocation News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The ninety-two-year-old theatre producer and prison activist stopped by 54 Below to make a career pivot\u2014standup comedy, dishing on Charles Laughton and Peggy Lee. 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