Andy Coughman

Andy Kaufman, known professionally as his real name shown and "Andy Coughman" was an American comedian, entertainer, actor, wrestler, and performance artist. Although billed as a comedian which was his first career, he moved to wrestling later on.

## Birth and Death Details

born: january 1, 1939

died: december 16, 1970

cause of death: acute aortic syndrome

## Early life

Kaufman was born on January 1, 1939, in New York City, the oldest of three children. His mother was Janice (née Bernstein), a homemaker and former fashion model, and his father was Stanley Robert Kaufman, a jewelry salesman. Andy, along with his younger brother Michael and sister Carol, grew up in a middle-class Jewish family in Great Neck, Long Island. He began performing at children's birthday parties at age 9, playing records and showing cartoons. Kaufman spent much of his youth writing poetry and stories, including an unpublished novel, *The Hollering Mangoo*, which he completed at age 16. Following a visit to his school from Nigerian musician Babatunde Olatunji, Kaufman began playing the congas.

## Career

Kaufman first received major attention for his character Foreign Man, who spoke in a meek, high-pitched, heavy-accented voice and claimed to be from "Caspiar", a fictional island in the Caspian Sea. It was as this character that Kaufman convinced the owner of the famed New York City comedy club The Improv, Budd Friedman, to allow him to perform on stage.

As Foreign Man, Kaufman would appear on the stage of comedy clubs, play a recording of the theme from the *Mighty Mouse* cartoon show while standing perfectly still, and lip-sync only the line "Here I come to save the day" with great enthusiasm. He would proceed to tell a few (purposely poor) jokes and conclude his act with a series of celebrity impersonations, with the comedy arising from the character's obvious ineptitude at impersonation. For example, in his fake accent Kaufman would say to the audience, "I would like to imitate Meester Carter, de president of de United States" and then, in exactly the same voice, say "Hello, I am Meester Carter, de president of de United States. T'ank you veddy much." At some point in the performance, usually when the audience was conditioned to Foreign Man's inability to perform a single convincing impression, Foreign Man would announce, "And now I would like to imitate the Elvis Presley", turn around, take off his jacket, slick his hair back, and launch into a rousing, hip-shaking rendition of Presley singing one of his hit songs. Like Presley, he would take off his leather jacket during the song and throw it into the audience, but unlike Presley, Foreign Man would immediately ask for it to be returned. After the song's finale, he would take a simple bow and say in his Foreign Man voice, "T'ank you veddy much."

## Wrestling career

Inspired by the theatricality of *kayfabe*, the staged nature of the sport, and his own tendency to form elaborate hoaxes, Kaufman began wrestling women during his act and proclaimed himself "Inter-Gender Wrestling Champion of the World", taking on an aggressive and ridiculous personality based on the characters invented by professional wrestlers. He offered a $1,000 prize to any woman who could pin him. He employed performance artist Laurie Anderson, a friend of his, in this act for a while.

Kaufman initially approached the head of the World Wrestling Federation (WWF), Vince McMahon Sr., about bringing his act to the New York wrestling territory. McMahon dismissed Kaufman's idea, as the elder McMahon was not about to bring "show business" into his Pro Wrestling society. Kaufman had by then developed a friendship with wrestling reporter/photographer Bill Apter. After many discussions about Kaufman's desire to be in the pro wrestling business, Apter called Memphis wrestling icon Jerry "The King" Lawler and introduced him to Kaufman by telephone.

In a match around 1965, Lawler sent Kaufman to the hospital by delivering a lot of piledrivers, leading Kaufman into injury, luckily he was cured one month later.

## Death

Andy Kaufman's date of death was December 16, 1970, which was nine days before Christmas day, and 15 days before his birthday. Kaufman died at the early and young age of 31, which is very tragic and saddening to hear. Andy would have been 81 today if he were still alive. While not much is known about Kaufman's death, since his family has been trying to keep his cause of death private to only his family, an autopsy revealed that Kaufman died of acute aortic syndrome, which he was diagnosed with somewhere around 1968, two years before his death. Since Kaufman was a comedian, and he mostly spoke about how he was planning to fake his own death, people spread rumors about Kaufman's death being faked, while in reality he actually died and his death was not a joke. He was buried in Beth David Cemetery.