The current year has been rife with half-century milestones of things that occurred in 1975, but let’s consider one event from that year, whose effects ripple through the culture to this day.
On Dec. 31, 1975, comedian Robert Klein, then 33, stepped on the stage at Haverford College in Pennsylvania. In a live television feed in front of a live audience, he performed the first uncensored stand-up comedy special ever broadcast on an upstart pay-cable network that was then known as Home Box Office.
The special’s success led to the creation of HBO’s “On Location” series and every stand-up comedy special that has followed in the subsequent 50 years. Very quickly, landing an HBO special became a career signifier for comedians across America, particularly after the start of the stand-up renaissance of the early and mid-1980s.
(Editor’s Note: Robert Klein has made at least 89 appearances on The Tonight Show. His most recent, with Jimmy Fallon, was on July 24, 2005.)
Full disclosure: I’m not a disinterested party here. I have been friends with Robert Klein for 25 years. I produced and directed a documentary, “Robert Klein Still Can’t Stop His Leg” (available to rent on Amazon), which examined his influence on a generation of comedians that included Richard Lewis, Jerry Seinfeld and Jay Leno.
There was a point in the early 1970s when Klein was the most popular comedian performing in America, regularly selling out shows on college campuses around the country.
When I was filming interviews for my documentary, Jerry Seinfeld told me Klein was “the Beatles of comedy, to me.” Bill Maher said he’d typed out all the words of Klein’s “Child of the ’50s” album to see how he did what he did. Jon Stewart referred to “Child of the ’50s” as “one of the seminal comedy albums of the ’70s, which means it’s one of the seminal comedy albums.”
Klein was always a restless talent: Beside his own HBO specials (nine, in all), there was his radio talk show (where he once paired The Who with Rodney Dangerfield), a USA Network TV talk show, a pair of Broadway shows, a number of movies, several network TV series, and, of course, his comedy albums and stand-up shows. Now 83, he retired from performing last year.
Interestingly, I’ve learned that the New York Times has no plans to commemorate this half-century milestone. Apparently, it exhausted its nostalgia budget on that recent four-page exegesis on a 50-year-old Patti Smith album.
It’s not the first time Klein has been overlooked. To this day, he has not been honored with the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. That oversight seems criminal when you consider that the award was conferred on Klein acolytes such as Leno and Billy Crystal, and a number of distinctly lesser comedic lights.
While I recognize that I’m not impartial on this subject, I don’t believe it invalidates my opinion that this particular 50th anniversary deserves to be noted. You could say that any stand-up special in the past 50 years, on any network or streaming service from HBO to Netflix to YouTube, can trace its roots to that evening at Haverford College.
Every comedian who has ever stood in front of an audience and a camera and said, “We’re recording my special tonight,” owes a debt to Robert Klein.
Not to be left out: Klein’s runs on Broadway in shows like “They’re Playing Our Song” and “The Sisters Rosenzsweig.” He’s also got long lists of credits on the imdb.com including “Friends,” “Will and Grace,” and “Law and Order.”
Marshall Fine is the author of the new novel, “Hemlock Lane,” due 11/25/25 from Lake Union Publishing. Find his work at www.marshallfine.com.
