May 20, 1993
Story by Dick Richmond
Of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch Staff
Comedian Kathleen Madigan sat on the couch at her home in Des Peres and listened as her father, Jack Madigan, rhapsodized about her achievements. Among the many: On Friday night she will make her debut on the "Tonight" show.
Of course, this latest television appearance only caps an already impressive list including Bob Hope's NBC Thanksgiving special "Ladies of Laughter" and HBO's "Women of the Night." And she was once again nominated Best Female Club Comic at the annual American Comedy Awards this year.
But the particular accomplishment her lawyer father was glorifying at the moment happened in 1979, when Kathleen was 14 and working as a bus girl at a lodge at the Lake of the Ozarks. Apparently, the bus boys and bus girls at the lodge weren't cleaning up after themselves, so the general manager told them, "If you're going to act like pigs, you're going to eat like pigs.'"
"She told me that they had to eat off the floor," Jack said, his eyes flashing a bit with the fire of memory. "I said, 'Kathleen, you're in a non-union area of Missouri, but you don't have to tolerate that.'"
So she didn't. After seeking her father's advice on procedure, she organized her fellow workers and picked her moment, which happened to coincide with the busiest time of the day.
"She walked up to the general manager and said to him very nicely, 'Sir, we're not eating off the floor anymore.'"
When the boss disagreed, she and the other workers walked out.
"We were all fired," Kathleen said, her eyes rolling skyward as they often do when she's delivering a punch line.
"But they were all rehired," Jack remembered, glowing over the victory. "And they never had to eat off the floor again."
Vicki Madigan, Kathleen's mother, who had been quietly listening to the recitation, chimed in: "Jack didn't want her to have that job in the first place. I had my own seven children, plus two nieces and a nephew. Ten children altogether. I took them all out and got them jobs."
Coming from such a large family has its advantages, not the least of which is being able to use it as fodder for comic material. Kathleen has found much in hers.
"Mom and I gang up on Dad," Kathleen admitted, grinning.
"Jack is always complaining about her jokes about him," Vicki said. "He says if I didn't laugh at her, she'd quit doing it."
"Actually," Jack said, "in a family as big as this one, you have to have a sense of humor to survive. And Kathleen was always funny."
"And she has always wanted to be an entertainer," Vicki said. "She wanted to be a rock 'n' roll singer."
Or at least that was one possible career. She graduated from Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville with a degree in journalism in 1987.
Explained Kathleen: "I'm the middle child -- three older brothers and one younger, and two younger sisters."
"My brothers are so smart, I could never compete with them. So I picked journalism by process of elimination. I was lousy at math and hated science. When I finally narrowed my career possibilities down, it was either bowling or journalism."
She never mentioned whether she was a good bowler. But she did work for the North County Journal and edited the "Cherry Diamond," an in-house newsletter, for the Missouri Athletic Club.
She quit the job at MAC to become a full-time comic.
"I can write well enough, and I wasn't bad at the job. But I never really wanted to be a journalist."
"There were kids at SIU who volunteered to investigate toxic waste dumping in Southern Illinois. I looked at them as if they were out of their minds. First of all, I wouldn't know toxic waste if I stepped in it. More than that, I really had no interest. So I would do a salad bar feature or something like that."
"I thought the MAC job was fine, figuring I would work there until I found something that paid better. But I kept thinking, 'This is so boring.'"
Despite being the punch line of some of her jokes, it was Jack Madigan who first encouraged his daughter to try an open-mike night at a comedy club. He knew he had a funny girl on his hands.
In 1989, she took his advice and the following week was offered $50 for five minutes of making the audience laugh. It was the easiest money she had ever made in her life.
It didn't take long for her to start performing regularly at the Funny Bone in St. Louis, where she quickly graduated to featured act -- the one that opens for the headliner.
"After that, I went out on the road, playing a lot of B clubs," Kathleen said, "making maybe $200 a week."
Jack said that by then he was in a position to help. "I told her to go for it. I'd back her."
To call her rise in comedy meteoric would be to understate the situation. Lots of entertainers have been working twice as long as she has and not accomplished half as much.
"That's because there are comparatively few female comics out there," she said, modestly. "I'm not surprised that I get work, because Al Canal [manager of the West Port Funny Bone] will make phone calls for me all over the country."
"Then, too, since there is a shortage of female comics, I think if they find a woman who doesn't spend an hour male bashing or talking about her boyfriend or woman things, they think she has something to say. It is that particular element that makes me stand out."
"I'd like to think that most of the things that pop into my brain would not be over anyone's head. In fact, if you can't follow my act, you have a serious attention problem," she said, laughing again.
To book Kathleen Madigan for your event, contact: Richard De La Font Agency, Inc.
Professional booking inquiries only. Thank you.
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