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I'm Alan Olva, and this is Clear and Vivid, Conversations about Connecting and Communicating.

I think it's a high calling now, and really I remember as a kid seeing a comedian come up

to the small hotel I was working in as a bus boy, he came in his Cadillac, he did 40 minutes,

and people were hysterical after me, and for that time they forgot their disappointment

in their marriage, their health, their children, their life, whatever it was, and I still think

while it too is nothing, directly, therapeutically, it has tremendous value in a release for life.

That's actor, writer, singer, and comedian, Robert Klein.

We met when he was just launching his career in comedy clubs, and this is the first time

we've been able to get together again in a long while. It was good to catch up.

So Robert, this is really fun to be talking with you again. We haven't talked much

in a long time. Long time. I remember when we were both acting in a musical in Broadway,

called The Apple Tree, and I think you were just beginning to do stand up. That was the impression

I had. Was that true? It is. I come back to New York from Second City in Chicago, which was the

greatest thing that ever happened. I auditioned for the first Broadway show I ever auditioned for,

Mike Nichols. I even made Mike laugh, and I idolized him, and I spent seven months in feathers.

Listen to you sing. I'll explain to everyone that it was three, one acts. The first was Adam

and Eve based on Mark Twain, and only you and Barbara Harris and Larry Bliden were in that one.

Second act was The Lady in the Tiger, and the four, or five and five, I guess, women and men in

the chorus. We were in that one, and the third one was Passion Alla based on the Jewel's Fyfer,

and you know, I remember something. We were in Boston, and Peter, I forgot his name. They

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