Frank Kidder: The Godfather of Comedy

The Creator of the San Francisco International Stand Up Comedy Competition 

or 

How an Oak Tree Died to Give Birth to Part of the Comedy 

Renaissance of the 70s
  
(A brief biography of Frank Kidder from the program for the First Annual Comedy Fest at U.C. Berkeley in 2006. The event was a benefit for The Daily Californian student newspaper. Frank Kidder performed that night with several other comics including his longtime comedy partner Bob Berry, musician-comedian Jim Giovanni and my daughter, Shyama Sachi)

Frank Kidder touched the careers of these comedians on their road to stardom: Robin Williams, Dana Carvey, Ellen DeGeneres, Jerry Seinfeld, Eddie Murphy, Don Novello (Father Guido Sarducci), Kevin Pollak, Sinbad, Michael Pritchard, Marsha Warfield, Roseanne Barr, Steven Wright, to name a few.

It all started in a blizzard on an icy road in Massachusetts on December 16, 1962. Home on leave from the Air Force where Frank was studying to be a radio engineer, he came to a stop sign. Frank had been up for 72 hours. Putting his head down on the steering wheel, he started to doze. His foot slipped onto the gas pedal and the car took off hitting the curb on the other side, spinning around on the ice, it hit another curb and bounced, still spinning. It hit an oak tree 8 feet up at 125 m.p.h., as estimated by police. The car wrapped around the tree with Frank between the tree and the car. The oak tree died.

Frank was clinically dead for 17 minutes. Even after the ambulance crashed on the way to the hospital, Frank survived.

However, his direction in life took a different turn forever. After six major surgeries and much therapy, Frank struggled to get his life back on track. He started back to college but the stress was too much. He was inspired by Norman Cousins’ use of laughter to heal himself and Frank got into comedy for his own therapy. His exposure to comedy was at a comedy workshop at the San Francisco Public Library. It was tough along the way. Frank was a heroin addict for six months. He was a chronic user of pot and booze. He began doing comedy on both the East Coast and the West Coast in San Francisco. He worked the strip clubs and he was a barker in North Beach.

In December 1969, he met Hilda Kidder and eventually they were married in Reno. Frank took her last name. Hilda is a very talented and well-known painter. She was born in Yorkshire, England and studied at the Hull College of Art, Leeds College of Art and the Edinburgh College of Art. By the time she was 25, she was living in London and exhibiting at the Royal Society of Portrait Painters, The Women’s International Art Club, The Royal Society of British Artists, and other exhibitions.  Since 1963, San Francisco has been her home where she has taught painting classes and is known for watercolors of houses and San Francisco streets.  Additionally, she has exhibited at the DeYoung Museum, The Royal Scottish Academy and has a portrait in the permanent collection of the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento. Also, she had exhibited in Tokyo and with the Austrian Women Artists in Vienna, Austria.

Realizing that there were virtually no venues for stand up comedy, Frank started producing comedy shows at the Coffee Gallery in North Beach, the Hells Angels hang out, where the audiences were so tough that as comedian Lou Felder noted, “If your act was not going over, they whipped the mic out of your hand with a bicycle chain.” Don Novello (Father Guido Sarducci) began performing there, as did A. Whitney Brown (of later Saturday Night Live fame).

A comedian by the name of Freaky Ralph found The Intersection Coffee House on Union Street and Frank moved from The Coffee Gallery to The Intersection and started doing comedy workshops. It was here that a comedian by the name of Jose Simon (the godson of Cantinflas, Mexico’s comedy legend) brought in a young actor by the name of Robin Williams. Robin took the workshop and started doing stand up comedy. Frank had such exercises as comedy wrestling and 20 comedians onstage at once doing their act. Others in the class were Dana Carvey, Bob Sarlatte (present field announcer for the 49ers), A. Whitney Brown, The High Wire Radio Choir with Doug Ferrari and Frank’s longtime partner Bob Berry.

It was here that Frank created the San Francisco International Stand Up Comedy Competition, that much like an ice skating competition, took different areas of a performance and gave points in areas such as stage presence, technique, audience rapport, audience response, material, presentation, etc. The first competition was in April, 1976 and comedian Bill Farley won. Robin came in second. Through the years the comedians mentioned at the beginning used the competition as a step in their rise to fame. The movie “Punchline” starring Tom Hanks and Sally Fields used the competition as an important part of the plot.

For many years, Showtime aired San Francisco International Comedy Competition as the “Big Laugh Off”. The NBC show, “Last Comic Standing” is an outgrowth of Frank’s creation.

Frank has been clean for 18 years. No illegal drugs, no pot, no booze. He credits comedian Michael Pritchard with inspiring him to do this. He is retired now with his wife Hilda and lives on upper Sutter Street in San Francisco, but he is coming out for one more fling to kick off the First Annual Comedy Fest for the Daily Californian (at UC Berkeley, this was written in 2006).

The oak tree was laid to rest in a wood-burning stove somewhere in Massachusetts. Rumor has it although, we’re not really sure of it, that the wood-burning stove was in the house of a young actor who was keeping warm writing a movie script about solving a math problem. Someone we all know got an Oscar in a supporting role because it was such a hot story. The actor was Robin Williams and the film was Good Will Hunting.