Andy Kaufman

**Andrew Geoffrey Kaufman** (January 17, 1949 - May 16, 1984) was an American performance artist and wrestler. While often called a comedian, Kaufman preferred to describe himself instead as a "song and dance man". He has sometimes been called an "anti-comedian".

After working in small comedy clubs in the early 1970s, Kaufman came to the attention of a wider audience in 1975, when he was invited to perform portions of his act on the first season of *Saturday Night Live*. His Foreign Man character was the basis of his performance as Latka Gravas on the hit television show *Taxi* from 1978 until 1983. During this time, he continued to tour comedy clubs and theaters in a series of unique performance art/comedy shows, sometimes appearing as himself and sometimes as obnoxiously rude lounge singer Tony Clifton. In 1982, Kaufman brought his professional wrestling villain act to Letterman's show by way of a staged encounter with Jerry "The King" Lawler of the Continental Wrestling Association.

## Professional wrestling career

### Women's wrestler

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) – now World Wrestling Entertainment or WWE – 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.

### Feud with Jerry "The King" Lawler

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.

Kaufman finally stepped into the ring (in the Memphis wrestling circuit) with a man—Lawler himself. Kaufman taunted the residents of Memphis by playing "videos showing residents how to use soap" and proclaiming the city to be "the nation's redneck capital".

The ongoing Lawler-Kaufman feud, which often featured Jimmy Hart and other heels in Kaufman's corner, included a number of staged "works", such as a broken neck for Kaufman as a result of Lawler's piledriver and a famous on-air fight on a 1982 episode of *Late Night with David Letterman*.

For some time after that first match, Kaufman appeared wearing a neck brace, insisting that his injuries were much worse than they really were. Kaufman continued to defend the Inter-Gender Championship in the Mid-South Coliseum and offered an extra prize, other than the $1,000: that if he were pinned, the woman who pinned him would get to marry him and that Kaufman would also shave his head.

Eventually it was revealed that the feud and wrestling matches were staged works, and that Kaufman and Lawler were friends. This was not disclosed until more than 10 years after Kaufman's death, when the Emmy-nominated documentary *A Comedy Salute to Andy Kaufman* aired on NBC in 1995. Jim Carrey, who revealed the secret, later went on to play Kaufman in the 1999 film *Man on the Moon.* In a 1997 interview with the *Memphis Flyer*, Lawler said he had improvised during their first match and the *Letterman* incident.

Although officials at St. Francis Hospital stated that Kaufman's neck injuries were real, in his 2002 biography *It's Good to Be the King ... Sometimes*, Lawler detailed how they came up with the angle and kept it quiet. Even though Kaufman's injury was legitimate, the pair exaggerated it. He also said that Kaufman's furious tirade and performance on *Letterman* was Kaufman's own idea, including when Lawler slapped Kaufman out of his chair. Promoter Jerry Jarrett later recalled that for two years he mailed Kaufman payments comparable to what other main-event wrestlers were getting at the time, but Kaufman never deposited the cheques.

### Other appearances

Kaufman appeared in the 1983 film *My Breakfast with Blassie* with professional wrestling personality "Classy" Freddie Blassie. The film was a parody of the art film *My Dinner with Andre.* Lynne Margulies, sister of the film's director, Johnny Legend, appears in it, and became romantically involved with Kaufman.

On March 20, 2023, Kaufman was announced as the third inductee into the 2023 WWE Hall of Fame. He was inducted by Jerry Lawler, but he couldn't appear at the ceremony after complications from a stroke, so Jimmy Hart spoke for him.

## Death

At Thanksgiving dinner on Long Island in November 1983, several family members openly expressed worry about Kaufman's persistent coughing. He claimed that he had been coughing for nearly a month, visited his doctor, and was told that nothing was wrong. When he returned to Los Angeles, he consulted another physician and then underwent a series of tests at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. A few days later, he was diagnosed with large-cell carcinoma of the lung, typically associated with smoking.

After audiences were shocked by his gaunt appearance during January 1984 performances, Kaufman acknowledged that he had an unspecified illness that he hoped to cure with natural medicine, including a diet of all fruits and vegetables, among other measures. Kaufman received palliative radiotherapy, but by then the cancer had spread from his lungs to his brain. His final public appearance was at the premiere of *My Breakfast With Blassie* in March 1984, where he appeared thin and with a mohawk hair style (radiation treatments had caused the loss of his hair).

The next day, Kaufman and Margulies flew to Baguio, Philippines where, as a last resort, he received treatments of a pseudoscientific procedure called psychic surgery (now recognized as explicitly deceptive medical fraud). Afterward, Kaufman initially said that he felt better and returned to the U.S., but he died at 6:27 PM at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles on May 16, 1984, at the age of 35.

In 2002, Kaufman became a playable character in the video game *Legends of Wrestling II* and a standard character in 2004's *Showdown: Legends of Wrestling*. In 2008, Jakks Pacific produced for their WWE Classic Superstars toy line an action figure two-pack of Kaufman and Lawler, as well as a separate figures release for each of them.