I. Second City
Martin De Maat (director of the Second City Training Center): I met and talked to Del when I was a little boy. I was, what, four? I was at a Second City show. I remember my feet were dangling in the chair. And after the show I said to him, “I thought you were very funny in the show tonight.” And Del said, “I hate children.”
Larry Hankin: Me and him did one improv that stayed with me the rest of my life. It was called “Something Just Happened.” What you had to do is stand onstage and something major has happened. And the two of you agree to what has happened. And all you do is stand onstage. No talking. Just stand there and think about what happened. And what the class has to do is guess what happened by your body language. What Del did was just stand there. It was his thing that had happened. And I was a friend of his. He stood and stared, and I just stood and stared, and that was it. And what happened–and this is true–his father invited him into the kitchen to watch something. Del sat at the kitchen table and watched his dad while his father stood at the kitchen sink and drank a glass full of battery acid and committed suicide in front of him. The improv was he had just come over and told me about it. He said he was like six or seven when that happened.
Alan Myerson: I invited Del to join the Committee. Del was a bright guy. Even though we had our differences, I had always had enormous respect for him and his skill. Besides, his best friend, John Brent, was working for the Committee already. You also have to remember this was the 60s. Peace, love, and rock ‘n’ roll. The Committee was more political than Second City.
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Larry Hankin: I had a large apartment in one of those gingerbread houses, a railroad apartment with high ceilings, bare minimum of furniture. This was in North Beach. Del moved into my place while I was moving out. I had a hammock stretched across my bedroom so I could sleep in bed or hang in the hammock. And Del loved swinging there too. So one day I came home, and there’s nobody home, and I notice these black dots across the ceiling. Just way too high to reach. Dots across the ceiling. I didn’t mention it to Del. The next day there were some more. This went on for a week. Little, tiny black dots, like somebody was squirting ink up there. Finally one day I came home and the bathroom door was locked. I pounded on the door and no one answered. “Del, are you in there?” I was worried he’d OD’d, but I couldn’t get in. Finally I just gave up. I didn’t want to break the door down. I went into the living room, and ten minutes later the bathroom door opened, and out comes Del covered in sweat. The first thing I said was, “Del, what the fuck are these dots up here? And what were you doing in the bathroom?” He said, “I thought you were the police and I was hiding under the bathtub,” which was possible because it was one of those ball-and-claw bathtubs. And I said, “What about these dots.” He said, “Oh, I’ve been shooting up. So I’ve been cleaning out my needle with my blood as I swing. I squirt it up.” Those dots were blackened blood.
Howard Hesseman (actor, Committee member): To say that Del was imaginative sort of gives short shrift to the man. You know, Del was really urging you to try anything and just, you know, in a safe space, in a rehearsal space…abandon all of the rules and notions of safety that you had…trying to find something a little deeper, a little spontaneous.
Susan Messing (member of the Annoyance Theatre and Second City): I met a woman in LA, a very strange woman, who said the first time she met Del she walked into a room and a woman was lying down and Del was pushing a lightbulb into her. And he was like, “Hi.” I met Del and said, “Del, I met a woman in LA, and she said you put a lightbulb in someone’s vagina.” And he went, “Oh, ho-ho-ho, electricity.” I’m glad I didn’t meet Del in the 60s, because I probably would have been one of those chicks he was inserting lightbulbs into.
Avery Schreiber: We did a show at a university, and they gave us a very big paycheck. I asked Del, “Why don’t you open for us? Why don’t you come with us?” “I don’t think so,” he said, “I’m not ready.” “Come on, you can split the thousand we are getting.” They opened for us, and after their performance Burns and I had to wait for four standing ovations before we went out.
