Callas aforethought: Comedian to perform at Annoyance Theater

By Jae-Ha Kim and Darel Jevens
Chicago Sun-Times
October 19, 1999

The adventurous impresarios at the Annoyance Theatre have put some crazy stuff on their Wrigleyville stage, but no one could have anticipated this week’s radical stunt: They’re bringing a septuagenarian comedian to town.

Charlie Callas, 71, will perform Wednesday and Thursday in the room that each weekend fills with beer-swilling twentysomethings catching the raunchy, long-running musical “Coed Prison Sluts.”

The gig could launch a series of twice-a-year “Golden Age of Comedy” showcases at Annoyance for funnymen whose careers (and, in some cases, jokes) date back decades.

The idea emerged from a conversation among the Annoyance brass about Dean Martin’s celebrity roasts. Taped in the ’60s and ’70s, they were ripe with merciless insults and politically incorrect ethnic gags.

“You can’t do that on TV these days because the climate has changed,” the Annoyance’s Mark Sutton said. Not so at the anything-goes Annoyance, so Sutton and company got on the phone.

Jonathan Winters and Rip Taylor didn’t call back (yet). But Callas did.

“When I heard about the Annoyance Theater, I just knew that I had to perform there,” the seasoned stand-up said. “People tell me all the time, `You’re very annoying.’ So we’re a good fit.”

Also on the Annoyance wish list: Red Buttons, Shecky Greene, Nipsey Russell and Slappy White, all Callas contemporaries.

A former Tommy Dorsey drummer, Callas switched careers in the mid-1960s and had one of his first comic gigs at Chicago’s now-defunct Playboy Club.

Even in conversation, he goes into character every few minutes, conjuring up the voice of Jar Jar Binks, the indecipherable accents of his bewildered neighbors or what he thinks his man-hating cat Sylvester would sound like if he could talk.

“After my fifth appearance on (`The Tonight Show’ with) Johnny Carson, one of the guys came out of the control room,” Callas said. “I thought he was going to tell me how good I was. Instead, he told me that I looked just like a cartoon. And he was right.”

Callas opened for Rat Packers such as Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr., and from 1975 to 1978 co-starred opposite Robert Wagner and Eddie Albert in the CBS series “Switch.” He’s now working on two  books – an autobiography called Callas in Wonderland and a 9-year-old novel-in-the-making called The Ice Cream Tree.

He recently returned to TV to shoot a guest spot on the Showtime series “Beggars and Choosers.”

“Carl Reiner is on it, too, and we do this scene in a diner,” he said. “Did you ever notice that whenever they have a couple of old guys in a scene, they have them in the diner? I asked the director, `How come we can’t be in a park? Why can’t it be any place but a diner?’ ”

Laughing, he added, “Luckily, I didn’t get fired. That’s one thing – when you’re older, you can get away with more.”