Andy Kaufman: The Comedian Who Refused to Tell You the Joke

Andy Kaufman (1949–1984) never wanted you to be sure you were watching comedy. He played a shy foreigner who turned into Elvis, a lounge singer he swore was a different man, and a wrestling villain who taunted the entire city of Memphis. Long before anyone used the phrase anti-comedy, Kaufman built a career on withholding the joke, and alternative comedy has been arguing with his ghost ever since.

This is the full story: where he came from, the characters and stunts that made him famous, the wrestling feud that nearly swallowed his career, his death at 35, and the long line of performers who work in his shadow.

Early life and the clubs

Kaufman was born in New York City on January 17, 1949, and grew up in Great Neck on Long Island. As a child he staged imaginary television shows in his bedroom and later performed at children's parties, which is less a cute biographical detail than a key to his work: much of his adult act was built for the logic of a kid's party, where the fun is in the ritual and the surprise rather than in the punchline.

He studied at Grahm Junior College in Boston, a small school focused on broadcasting, and by the early 1970s was performing in New York clubs, including the Improv. There he developed the act that made his name. He would come out as "Foreign Man", a nervous, heavily accented figure from an unnamed island, and deliver hopeless impressions to an audience that didn't know whether to laugh or feel sorry for him. Then, with no warning, he would launch into a precise, swaggering Elvis Presley impression. The pity turned to delight in seconds. The joke was the audience's own discomfort.

Saturday Night Live and the Mighty Mouse bit

On October 11, 1975, Kaufman appeared on the very first episode of NBC's Saturday Night Live. His piece is still one of the purest things ever broadcast on the show. He stood beside a record player looking anxious while the theme from the Mighty Mouse cartoon played, did nothing at all, and then burst into an exuberant lip-sync for a single line of the chorus before retreating into stillness again.

There is no joke in it in the conventional sense. The laugh comes from timing, anticipation and the sheer nerve of doing so little. It made him one of the most talked-about guests of the show's early years, and he appeared on SNL repeatedly over the next several seasons.

Taxi and Latka Gravas

In 1978 Kaufman joined the cast of the ABC sitcom Taxi as Latka Gravas, a gentle immigrant mechanic built directly on Foreign Man. He was ambivalent about sitcom work from the start, and the producers made allowances to keep him: he appeared in fewer episodes than the rest of the ensemble, and his deal reportedly included guest spots for Tony Clifton.

Latka made Kaufman a household name, and the show ran until 1983 (moving from ABC to NBC for its final season). But the role also boxed him in. Many viewers knew him only as the lovable foreigner, which made his stranger work feel even more like an attack when they encountered it. Kaufman seemed to enjoy that gap.

Tony Clifton

Tony Clifton was a lounge singer with a bad tuxedo, worse manners and total confidence in his own talent. He insulted audiences, sang badly and treated everyone around him with contempt. Kaufman always claimed Clifton was a real, separate person, and he stuck to that story in interviews.

The bit went further than any character work of its era. Clifton opened shows for Kaufman, was booked for appearances in his own right, and at one point was given a guest role on Taxi, where his behaviour on set led to him being removed from the studio. To add to the confusion, Kaufman's friend and writing partner Bob Zmuda sometimes played Clifton himself, so even audiences who knew the secret couldn't be sure who they were watching. Zmuda has continued to perform Clifton since Kaufman's death.

Carnegie Hall, Gatsby and other experiments

Kaufman's live shows were closer to happenings than to stand-up sets. A few well-documented examples:

• The Great Gatsby reading. At college shows he would announce that he was going to read F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel aloud, and then actually start doing it, carrying on as the audience grew restless and demanded the act they had come for.
• Carnegie Hall, 1979. His famous concert there mixed old-fashioned variety turns with deliberate oddities and ended with Kaufman taking the audience out for milk and cookies. It is the clearest example of his love for the trappings of old show business, played completely straight.
• Andy's Funhouse. An ABC special taped in 1977 and aired in 1979, it parodied the conventions of a TV variety show, including fake technical problems, years before that kind of meta-television became common.
• Fridays, 1981. During a live sketch on ABC's Fridays, Kaufman appeared to refuse to perform his lines, provoking an on-air scuffle with cast members. It looked like a genuine breakdown. It was planned.

Wrestling and the Jerry Lawler feud

From the late 1970s Kaufman developed his most divisive persona: a smug, sexist wrestling villain who declared himself the "Inter-Gender Wrestling Champion of the World" and challenged women from the audience to pin him. He played the heel, the bad guy, with total commitment, insulting crowds and goading them to boo him. Many of his fans hated it, which was the point.

In 1982 the act moved to Memphis and a real wrestling ring, where he entered a feud with local star Jerry "The King" Lawler. In their match, Lawler hit Kaufman with a piledriver, and Kaufman spent weeks in a neck brace complaining about his injuries. That July both men appeared on NBC's Late Night with David Letterman, where Lawler slapped Kaufman out of his chair and Kaufman responded with a profane tirade that the network had to bleep.

For years most of the public believed it was real. It wasn't. The feud was a worked angle that Kaufman and Lawler planned together, and the two were friendly behind the scenes. Lawler confirmed this after Kaufman's death, and the 1999 film Man on the Moon dramatised the reveal. In wrestling terms it was a superb piece of storytelling; in comedy terms it was a performance that never once let the audience out of the frame.

The SNL ban and the final years

By late 1982 the wrestling persona had soured much of the audience on Kaufman. Saturday Night Live staged a viewer phone vote on whether he should be banned from the show. Viewers voted him off by a narrow margin, and he did not appear on SNL again. Whether he engineered the outcome or was genuinely hurt by it is still debated; as with most of his career, both readings fit.

He kept working. He made the film My Breakfast with Blassie (1983) with wrestling manager Freddie Blassie, a deadpan parody of My Dinner with Andre, and continued to perform live. In late 1983 he was diagnosed with a rare form of lung cancer, despite being a non-smoker. He died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles on May 16, 1984. He was 35.

Because he had joked about faking his own death and had spent years blurring reality, rumours that he was still alive started almost immediately. They have never had any substance, but the fact that people wanted to believe them says something about how completely he had trained his audience to doubt him.

1. 1949

   Born in New York City

   Grows up in Great Neck, Long Island.

2. 1975

   First episode of SNL

   The Mighty Mouse lip-sync introduces him to a national audience.

3. 1978

   Joins Taxi

   Latka Gravas, adapted from Foreign Man, runs until the show ends in 1983.

4. 1979

   Carnegie Hall and Andy's Funhouse

   The concert ends with milk and cookies; the ABC special finally airs.

5. 1982

   Lawler feud and SNL vote

   The Memphis piledriver, the Letterman slap, and the phone vote that ends his SNL run.

6. 1984

   Dies aged 35

   Lung cancer, May 16, Los Angeles.

Why Kaufman matters to alternative comedy

Kaufman sits at the root of several strands of modern alt comedy. He did not invent all of them, but he showed how far each could go.

The withheld punchline

The Mighty Mouse bit, the Gatsby reading and Foreign Man's dead impressions all make the audience wait for a payoff that arrives late, sideways or not at all. That is the basic grammar of anti-comedy, from Neil Hamburger to the long silences of modern alt stand-up.

Character as a closed world

Kaufman's refusal to admit that Tony Clifton was him is the ancestor of every comedian who stays in character in interviews. Sacha Baron Cohen, Gregg Turkington and Nathan Fielder all work in territory he opened up.

The audience as material

Kaufman treated the crowd's reaction, including its anger, as part of the piece. Tim and Eric, Eric Andre and much of the "cringe" comedy of the 2000s and 2010s play with the same idea: discomfort is a legitimate response, and the comedian doesn't owe you relief from it.

He also shows the cost. The wrestling years alienated a large part of his audience, and the line between a brilliant put-on and simply being unpleasant is one his descendants still have to walk. For the earlier, very different pioneer who fought for comedy's right to say anything, see our profile of Lenny Bruce; for the broader lineage, see who counts as the father of alt comedy.

Kaufman on screen after his death

• R.E.M., "Man on the Moon" (1992). The band's tribute name-checks Kaufman and helped introduce him to a generation who never saw him live.
• Man on the Moon (1999). Milos Forman's biopic, with Jim Carrey as Kaufman and Paul Giamatti as Zmuda. It compresses and rearranges events, so treat it as an interpretation rather than a documentary.
• Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond (2017). A Netflix documentary built from behind-the-scenes footage of Carrey staying in character as Kaufman throughout the shoot. It is as much about Kaufman's influence as about the man himself.

Frequently asked questions

Who was Tony Clifton?

Tony Clifton was a rude, talentless lounge singer that Andy Kaufman played, and always insisted was a separate person. Kaufman's friend and writing partner Bob Zmuda sometimes performed as Clifton too, which made it impossible for audiences to be sure who was under the make-up.

Was the Andy Kaufman and Jerry Lawler feud real?

No. The feud, including the 1982 slap on Late Night with David Letterman, was a worked angle that Kaufman and Lawler planned together. Both kept it secret for years; Lawler confirmed it after Kaufman's death.

How did Andy Kaufman die?

He died of lung cancer, a rare large-cell carcinoma, at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles on May 16, 1984. He was 35 and a non-smoker.

Did Andy Kaufman fake his death?

There is no evidence he did. Because he loved hoaxes and had joked about faking his own death, rumours have circulated since 1984, but his death is documented and his family and collaborators have confirmed it.

Was Andy Kaufman an anti-comedian?

He is the most cited ancestor of anti-comedy, though he never used the term and said he was not a comedian at all. His work refused punchlines and played with audience expectations, which is exactly what later anti-comedy does.