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Wellesley
College Presidents
Wendy Liebman
Week of November 20, 2000
 "Figure
out your hair and wear what you want. Timing is everything. Time
is everything else. Dreams really can come true. Envisioning the
future helps create it. Prepare, show up, do your best, and learn
for next time. Pray that no one throws anything at your head."
Wendy Liebman ’83 has learned a lot during her career as a
stand-up comedian, as she wrote in the spring 2000 issue of Wellesley
magazine. She has become "the Queen of the One-and-a-Half-Liner,"
a master of "the throwaway line" and "the subliminal
afterthought," "a smart and canny comedic architect"
with a "time-release punch line." She was the American
Comedy Awards’ best female stand-up comic for 1997, has had
her own half-hour HBO special, is a regular on "The Late Show
with David Letterman," and was the very first comedian to appear
on "The Rosie O’Donnell Show." So, for us workaday
folks looking in on her star-studded Hollywood existence, that one
line in the middle of her life-lessons list—"Dreams really
can come true"—is worth remembering.
Liebman has been a performer pretty much her whole life. When she
was growing up on Long Island, she and her sister would put on plays
in the basement of their home and invite the local kids to watch.
In high school, she starred in school plays.
At Wellesley, Liebman majored in psychology and continued performing.
But after graduation, she entered the nine-to-five world as a secretary
at Houghton Mifflin Company and planned to pursue a career in psychology.
And then, one day, some mail in her building was delivered to the
wrong apartment.
The mixed-up delivery contained a catalog for the Cambridge Center
for Adult Education. "I stole the catalog," Liebman later
told the Boston Globe. "I signed up for a course on stand-up
because I thought those comics looked like they were having fun
on ‘The Tonight Show." At the end of the semester, she
started signing up for open mikes at comedy clubs in the Boston
area.
For the next six years, Liebman moonlighted as a comic. "I
kept my secretarial day job," she often explains, "though
I would call in sick a lot. I would say I had ‘female problems.’
My boss didn’t know I meant her."
Then, in 1990, Liebman got her big break. She won the regional Johnnie
Walker Red Comedy Competition, becoming the first woman to go to
the national finals at the Hollywood Improv in Los Angeles. Though
she didn’t win the national award, her consolation prize was
even better: The talent coordinator of "The Tonight Show"
liked her performance and invited her to be one of Johnny Carson’s
guests for the following week.
Soon after that, Liebman left her day job behind and moved to Los
Angeles. "After all," she told the Radcliffe Quarterly
at the time, "I can’t not move out there. I’m 30,
and not getting any funnier." She’s been a fixture on
the national comedy scene ever since, in clubs and on campuses across
the country as well as on television. Her credits include "Politically
Incorrect," "The Daily Show," HBO’s "Women
of the Night," VH-1’s "Stand-Up Spotlight,"
and lots more. In 1996, she covered the Emmy Awards for HBO, and
in 1998 she starred in her own "Pulp Comics" special on
Comedy Central.
So how does Liebman like the life of a glamorous performer, her
Hollywood dream come true? In reality, she says, all the touring
can get pretty grueling. She’s not home very much—but
when she is, she gets to see that Best Female Stand-Up Comic award,
which she keeps in the shower. That makes it all worthwhile.
Some Links:
Written by Liz Ruark
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