When Los Angeles-born actress Victoria Carroll Bell walked into a new comedy workshop she had recently heard about, she had no idea how much it would change her life, or how much impact this workshop would eventually have on comedy in the decades to come.
“I saw these actors doing fascinating things, lots of laughter and I just looked at them and thought, ‘Well there’s the rest of my people, there’s my family,’” said the now 83-year-old.
Bell, along with some of the people she met that day in 1972, went on to become the founding members of a legendary improvisational company that is now marking its milestone 50-year anniversary.
“I started working with them and then we decided to name ourselves, and we named ourselves The Groundlings. And the first show at the Oxford Theatre that we did as The Groundlings was in 1974,” she said.
Since its founding 50 years ago The Groundlings have pretty much become a factory of talent with a list of alumni that include comedic stars like Will Ferrell, Maya Rudolph, Phil Hartman, Conan O’Brien, Jimmy Fallon, Kristen Wiig, Paul Reubens (who created his Pee-wee Herman character at The Groundlings), Kathy Griffin, Chris Parnell and many others.
The anniversary is being marked with a series of special shows that include a June 28 sold-out “Saturday Night Live” panel with SNL and Groundlings alumni including Cheri Oteri, Jon Lovitz, Will Forte, Parnell and others. Also planned as part of the anniversary celebration is a MADtv panel July 23 and a July 27 Pee-wee Herman panel featuring Cassandra Peterson, who created her famous Elvira persona on the Groundlings stage. That panel will be moderated by Tracy Newman, one of the company’s founders. Other anniversary shows will be announced throughout the year.
For many famous alumni like Parnell, The Groundlings gave them the tools to launch their careers.
“I shudder to think where I would be without that background. I think it would have been much harder to break into the acting world and sketch comedy and sitcoms and all that kind of thing without that background and the connections I made from that. That’s where I was seen by SNL talent scouts and that ultimately led to me being on ‘Saturday Night Live,’ and that was certainly my big break,” Parnell said.
“I think their legacy is pretty big. Certainly so many Saturday Night Live actors have come out of The Groundlings and continue to,” he added.
The beginning
The roots of The Groundlings go back to 1972 when improvisational teacher and actor Gary Austin got a group of performers together who just wanted to hone their craft by improvising, performing monologues, creating characters and scenes. About a year after coming together they started doing public performances and as word got out more people started coming to the shows. In 1974, with a group of about 50 founding members, Austin turned the workshop into a theater company and named it The Groundlings.
The first show as The Groundlings was in the 30-seat basement of the Oxford Theatre, which is now The Met. Bell remembers that very first show well.
“It was just so much fun, so much laughter. There was a lot of excitement, a lot of trepidation on my part because to go out on stage without anything planned was pretty challenging and frightening at that moment. And of course the more one did all of these things, the more would come out of your mind that you didn’t even know was there,” she said.
According to The Groundlings’ website the company quickly started getting a lot of attention from comedians such as Lily Tomlin, who was a regular in the audience and hired several company members to perform on “The Lily Tomlin Show.” Lorne Michaels, who created “Saturday Night Live,” also took notice and asked founding company member Laraine Newman to be a cast member for his new comedy show.
The legacy
The Groundlings started offering classes to the public in 1979 and that continues to this day with several improv and comedy courses open to anyone who wants to apply. Those who want to move up have to audition to become members of The Sunday Company, who write and perform a new sketch comedy show every Sunday. From there they can audition for The Main Company (aka The Groundlings) which is made up of no more than 30 members at any time. They perform the Friday and Saturday night shows.
That’s the path Groundling and SNL veteran Parnell took when he first heard about the school in the early 1990s, shortly after moving to L.A.
“Some of my friends said I should take classes at The Groundlings because they knew my background and so I did. And it was some of the best advice I ever got,” he said. “For me it was kind of like going to graduate school for comedy,” he added.
At this point Parnell was working at a toy store in the Beverly Center and took classes at night with The Groundlings.
“When I got into the Sunday Company, where people come to that show and see some of this new Groundlings talent, from doing that I was able to start getting little parts on sitcoms and got a manager. So yeah, that’s when things started to sort of take off,” he said.
And for founding member Bell, her legacy still continues today with The Groundlings because her daughter, Ashley Bell, is one of the Main Company members.
“Would I think that when I was this youngster just having a blast and just having fun that one day I would have a daughter and she would be doing the same thing that I was doing? No, I never thought that I would have that. We were just hoping to make it to the next performance, to pay the rent,” Bell said.
Ashley Bell, who is now 38, has been around the company most of her life, first taking classes as a teenager.
“This is honestly just a magical place. The Groundlings operate from a spirit of joy. There’s so much joy there, in the sketches and how you start looking at the world and how you start finding your point of view. You kind of start looking at the world a little differently, you look at the world with a smile,” Ashley Bell said.
“It’s been half a century. It really hits you when you say it like that. So something is working here,” she said with a laugh.
The Groundlings theater is at 7307 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles. For more information go to groundlings.com
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