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David Steinberg Just Wants To Talk Comedy

The biggest names in American comedy today get big laughs and big pay checks. They don't have to go on a little show on the TV Land channel, but they do because it is hosted by comic legend David Steinberg.

"The reason I'm doing this show? I told David, I don't need this," Jerry Seinfeld said when he appeared on the show. "But I felt so indebted to him, because when I was just thinking about comedy, he was already doing it."

If you're a Baby Boomer and older, you probably remember David Steinberg from his edgy comedy. If you're too young to remember the '60s and '70s, he probably made you laugh with some of the hit sitcoms he directed in the '80s and '90s, like "Designing Women," "Seinfeld," "Friends" and "Mad About You."

But if you like your comedy unplugged, unguarded and unrehearsed, Steinberg invites you to sit down and laugh with him once a week.

"It is my favorite thing to do," Steinberg told Sunday Morning correspondent Bill Whitaker. "I love stand-up comedians. I understand them. We all speak the same language. Stand-up comedians are like jazz musicians. They 'get' each other. We do it in front of an audience and it's totally, completely unscripted. I truly don't prepare, much the same way that you're working."

Steinberg grew up in a Jewish household in Winnipeg. He got his big break at Chicago's Second City Comedy Troupe.

"It's improv, is what you do. And Second City, of course, fueled all of 'Saturday Night Live.' That's where everybody came from, because you have a place to experiment."

After Second City, Steinberg made a brief foray into acting and starred in two Broadway plays.

"I really didn't feel like acting was what I wanted to do as much," he said. "Neither did the critics and the audience, so I thought, 'We're connected.'"

Steinberg came running back to comedy. With his boyish grin that seemed to soften his antiestablishment bite, he tickled the nation's funny bone and pushed the envelope. He got national exposure in the late '60s on "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour," here at CBS.

Tommy and Dick Smothers' political satire kept them in hot water with the CBS censors. Steinberg brought things to a boil when he played a rabbi giving a sermon. These lines are said to have gotten the show cancelled:

"Old Testament scholars say that Jonah was swallowed by a whale. The Gentiles, the New Testament scholars, say, 'Hold it, Jews, no.' They literally grabbed the Jews by the old testament."

That supposedly upset the censors' Standards and Practices and the heads of CBS to such a degree that they just canceled the entire show. Steinberg said the Smothers Brothers took CBS to court and a few years later won back $1 million.

"They played my sermon for a jury and I got big laughs," he said.

Steinberg kept getting laughs with a string of TV shows in the '70s. "The David Steinberg Show" in Canada helped launch the careers of a new generation of funny men like John Candy and Martin Short. But the funny man who looms largest in his career and life is the late Johnny Carson. Only Bob Hope made more appearances on Carson's "Tonight Show."

"With Johnny, we connected immediately," Steinberg said. "You know, I always was doing 'The Tonight Show.' I would come on and announce what my career was — I was doing this show or that show — and it turned out 'The Tonight Show' was my career."

While the audience was still laughing, Steinberg walked away from stand-up.

"The thing about stand-up comedy, as much as I love it and doing it and stardom, is you have to pop yourself up like a Thanksgiving Day balloon every day," he said.

He stepped behind the camera - becoming an award-winning director of hundreds of commercials and dozens of TV sitcoms. These days, he's directing Larry David's HBO hit "Curb Your Enthusiasm."

"Directing is like being a father on set," he said. "Stand-up is like being a kid. So, is it better to be a father than a kid? Not really, but how long can you be a kid? But you know what, I never expected directing to take off and have a whole other career."

At 64, Steinberg remains busy. His first book, "The Book of David," will be out in June. But hosting his show is what he loves most.

"It's my favorite thing to do: Talk to comedians, be around comedy people. It's one of the pleasures in life," he said. "I haven't had one person on that show that just didn't make me laugh almost the whole hour."

Steinberg lives in Beverly Hills with his wife Robyn. He says his multi-faceted career has been his greatest improvisation act. And like his show, he can never be sure where it's going next.

"It would be hard for me to do stand-up because I like to be in my jammies at 10 o'clock at night," he said. "It's an accident, my career is. I just kept working and I never, never looked too far ahead — and I never looked too far back."

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