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Welcome back, Kaplan
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Mr. Kotter returns to the world of stand-up
by MARK SLUTSKY
"When people see me now, they don't say, 'Are you Gabe Kaplan?' or, 'Are you Mr. Kotter?' They say 'Are you Welcome Back Kotter?' I say yeah, I'm an Indian. I have three names: Welcome Back Kotter." So says funnyman Gabe Kaplan, who enjoyed massive success in the '70s with his hit sitcom creation. He went on, after Kotter, to play a variety of roles--like his Groucho Marx in the TV movie Groucho, or his killer comedian in an episode of Murder, She Wrote. Kaplan then dropped out of the business to, strangely enough, enter the world of "financial markets."
Now, after some 15 years, Kaplan has returned to comedy, appearing with some all-new material. "There are a lot of inventive, creative young comics," he says, "but most guys stay in a pattern of what they've always done. I would say over the past 15 years, once or twice a year, I'd do a stand-up thing just to keep my foot in the water. And I would revert to the material, revamp the material I did before--I think that's what most older comics do. But now I've really branched out and come up with 25 to 30 minutes of new material. When I first started everything was original, but mostly based on being funny. If something was funny, I did it. Now there's a different feeling that comes from a different age, I think."
Kaplan's playing Just for Laughs' Bar Mitzvah Show, alongside other yuk-friendly Yids like Avi Liberman and Johnny Lampert. Jews and comedy have never been strangers, but Jewish comedians certainly don't have the same cultural prominence as they once did. Of their place in American culture, Kaplan says, "It was one of the things that Jews were permitted to do, entertain. And now it's changed to where comedians are not primarily Jewish, you know, they're from all ethnic backgrounds, like all the black comedians there are today. It's almost like fighters. At one point fighters were Jewish and Irish and then it changed. I think every profession goes through a stage where an ethnic group sort of latches on to it. I think another reason there were so many Jews was because there was no place to work. The Improv opened in New York in 1964 and before that there was no place to work except in the Catskill Mountains."
While some resent being associated with earlier hits, Kaplan seems to have no reservations about being recognized for his most famous role. He wouldn't mind reviving it, either, but has no illusions about what might result: "Maybe they'd do it like The Brady Bunch, a take-off on it, with delinquents who aren't really delinquents, who don't do anything wrong! Which is what it became, really. It was supposed to be a funny Blackboard Jungle, and they watered it down so much that it was delinquents who never did anything wrong." Kaplan isn't bitter about the network's interference, though, saying, "I think the whole thing was the inter-personal relationships between the teacher and the kids, and how they affected each other's lives, and that was the main part of the show for me in the first place. So, I think everybody related to it because everybody knew a Horshack, or a Barbarino, or an Epstein." :
At Club Soda on Sunday, July 22, 3pm and 7pm, $24.73
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