Lois Dengrove

Lois Dengrove was breaking in and working during the earliest days of the 1970's NY Comedy scene. In this schmooze, she shares her personal experience as one of the few women auditioning and passing at Catch, The Improv and The Strip in the mid to later 1970's.

As this schmooze will reveal, Lois experienced and endured a lot in those days, much of which kept her from diving in and hanging out extensively after her sets. Still, she worked all the Jersey gigs, east coast road gigs, southern road gigs, Canadian road gigs. You name it. She was signed by ICM. Headlined everywhere. Auditioned for and got some great gigs and then started finding other ways, in particular voice over work.

She got into voiceover by calling agencies, in the voice of Kate Hepburn telling some phony story to get them interested. Most did not find it amusing. Young and Rubicam gave her a job. Her mother, an Emmy winner for her courtroom sketches of the Son of Sam case, amused David Letterman so much during an appearance that he kept her longer, which ended up bumping that night's comic. After that, comics teased her relentlessly that they were the one bumped by her mom on Letterman.

Her Edith Bunker impression was so good, a guy once put a rifle at her head and demanded she do it again. In Calgary, a guy punched her when she refused to do it for his amusement.. She even wound up with an audience member in the hotel room next to hers yelling requests for impressions of Edith Bunker, Barbra Streisand, Jane Fonda, Diane Keaton.

And here are the rest of the names dropped in the Lois Dengrove Schmooze:

Bob Wachs

Richie Tienken

Lucien Hold

Carol Leifer

Shelly Altman

Lucy Webb

Abby Stein

Nancy Parker

Channel J

Midnight Blue

John Lennon