Wacky Stand-Up Comic Was 91

Lenny Schultz, the frenetic stand-up comic who used food and other stuff as props in a madcap act that took him to The Tonight Show and the rebooted Laugh-In — all as he kept his job as a high school gym teacher — has died. He was 91.

Schultz died Sunday of natural causes at his home in Delray Beach, Florida, his son, Mark Schultz, told Best In Business 2024.

With a physical brand of humor later embraced by the likes of Robin Williams, Gallagher, Carrot Top and Sam Kinison, the curly haired Schultz would compile a list of admirers that included David Letterman, Jerry Seinfeld, Billy Crystal, Brett Butler and Jon Stewart. Audiences at his shows would yell “Go crazy, Lenny!” and that’s what he — and his fans — would do.

“They would go nuts, the people,” Schultz said in a 2017 interview. “It was very hard to follow my act because I’m doing silly and crazy things,” and also because he often left such a mess. “That was my reputation, unique and different and wild and ‘how does he think that way?’”

Watch him perform in all his glory on Letterman’s Late Night show in 1982.

As an actor, Schultz played quirky Washington Americans pitcher Lenny “Birdman” Siegel opposite former big leaguer Jim Bouton on the 1976 CBS sitcom Ball Four, based on Bouton’s best-selling book.

After that comedy was canceled after five episodes, Schultz was hired by George Schlatter as a regular on NBC’s new Laugh-In in 1977-78. He joined Williams, June Gable, Ben Powers, Kim Braden, Wayland Flowers (and his puppet, Madame) and others in the lineup, but that program lasted just six episodes.

Leonard Schultz was born in the Bronx on Dec. 13, 1933. He said he turned down a minor-league contract with the New York Yankees when he was 18 because he had suffered a shoulder injury.

Schultz earned a bachelor of science degree from NYU and a master’s in education from Hunter College, and after serving in the U.S. Army, became a gym teacher in Queens in 1955.

“When I was teaching, the kids in my class used to laugh so hard and say, ‘You should be in show business,’” he recalled in a 1980 interview. “But I didn’t take them seriously for a long time.”

He finally got onstage during an open mic night at Budd Friedman’s The Improv in New York in 1969. Before he knew it, he was getting booked on The Merv Griffin Show, The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, The David Frost Show, The Ed Sullivan Show and The Mike Douglas Show.

He also became a regular performer in the Catskill Mountains in New York.

“I was never a real stand-up comic, like a monologist,” he noted in 1996. “I would do sound effect things, very visual. I did a cockfight routine between a Russian chicken and a Japanese chicken.” He also played the banana as a violin.

Even though his stand-up career was thriving, he stuck with his job — for more than a decade — as a gym teacher, leaving clubs early when it was a school night. “The next day I’m in a smelly gym with kids! It was crazy!” he noted.

In 1976, the uninhibited Schultz appeared as a recurring character known as The Bionic Chicken on CBS’ The Late Summer Early Fall Bert Convy Show before segueing to Ball Four. In 1980, he played a cartoon artist on the NBC children’s show Drawing Power, then starred in a series of “There’s a Smart Way to Watch TV” public service ads for kids.

In his stand-up act, he often was assisted by his second wife, Helen, who helped him with his sound cues and myriad props (they were married from 1965 until their 1982 divorce). She said he endured two bouts with COVID in his later years.