Elayne Boosler says her show is going to the dogs – and she couldn’t be happier. That’s because, if you’ll excuse the expression, her pet project is aiding animal rescue groups throughout the nation.
Boosler, who headlines at the Cleveland Improv through Sunday, says she’ll have animal rescue group representatives providing information on how Ohio has some of the weakest animal cruelty laws in the nation. “That’s one of the reasons I made one of my first stops here. One of my friends who works in an animal rescue has a great quote: ‘We criticize the Chinese for killing dogs for food, but in America, we kill them for nothing.”
Boosler would be a full-time lobbyist for animal rights if not a comic. “But I realize being a celebrity gives me access that I might not otherwise have.”
Her rise to that celebrity had an unlikely start. Boosler was serving food as a “singing waitress” when Andy Kaufman convinced her to try comedy. Her bio jokes that Kaufman started her comedy career by saying, “You really shouldn’t ever, ever sing publicly again.” Kaufman and Boosler dated for three years, then remained friends.
As the first young, unmarried dressed-up-for-a-date female comic, Boosler, now 49, considered no women in the business as a role model. She learned the ropes from comic peers: Jay Leno, Richard Lewis, Robert and Richard Pryor, “still the king.”
After a dozen years on the comedy circuit, Boosler ended up financing her own comedy special for Showtime because TV executives did not feel a woman could carry off a show. Boosler felt validated when “Party of One” earned an “A” rating from People and HBO immediately announced a new series of comedy specials, “Women of the Night.”
Besides comedy and animal rescue, a passion for Boosler is baseball. She has sung the national anthem or thrown out the first pitch at a number of games. She recalls one trip to Cleveland during Albert Belle’s stormy tenure.
“I threw out the first pitch and they asked if there was anything they could do for me,” she recalls. “I asked, ‘Can you get me an autographed ball from Albert Belle?’ They said, ‘You really are a comedian.’”
When asked about the fateful day when she told her parents about becoming a comedian, Boosler says it never happened. “I think that they think I’m still a waitress.” Count on her to serve up laughs this week.
© Sun Newspapers 2002