Comedy club pioneer Caroline Hirsch helps women take centerstage in male-dominated business

By KRISTINE JOHNSON

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    NEW YORK (WCBS) — As we continue to celebrate and honor women this month, Monday we do it for laughs with a comedy club pioneer.

CBS2’s Kristine Johnson introduces us to Caroline Hirsch, the woman with her name in lights, who’s given voice to some of the biggest names in the business.

“We called comedy the rock and roll of the 80s when I opened, because that’s what it was. It was just catching on like that. It was so cool,” said Hirsch, founder and owner of Carolines on Broadway.

Forty years ago, Hirsch captured that cool when she opened her namesake club.

“Jerry Seinfeld and Jay Leno, to a Sandra Bernhardt to a Carol Leifer, that were happening at that time,” Hirsch said, “and I wanted to be part of it.”

Hirsch, who was born in Brooklyn and a onetime employee of Gimbels department store, opened a small cabaret club on 8th Avenue in Chelsea. A few years later, Carolines moved briefly to the South Street Seaport before lighting up her marquis on Broadway in 1992.

She was a rarity: a woman in a male-dominated business.

“I never said, ‘Oh poor woman. I can’t get ahead because it’s a man’s business.’ I never felt that,” Hirsch said.

But Hirsch worked hard to make it happen.

“I remember early on, you know, sitting in my little office, which was a closet, you know, paying the bills,” she said.

Carolines gave voice to some now legendary names in comedy: Seinfeld, Tracy Morgan, Pee Wee Herman, Robin Williams and so many others.

“I’ve always tried to go out of my way to make sure that we have enough women on stage,” Hirsch said.

“She was just groovy. She was just in the pocket. She was a businesswoman, she was somebody who appreciated creative, unique people,” said actress and comedian Sandra Bernhard.

Bernhard said Hirsch was integral in helping shape her career.

“I found my footing in a venue with a person who was my champion, and a woman,” Bernhard said.

Hirsch was also ready to evolve with the business.

“Because things changed with the arrival of cable,” Hirsch said.

She put her stamp there with the award-winning Caroline’s Comedy Hour in 1989.

In 2004, Hirsch co-founded the New York Comedy Festival, and there’s the Stand Up For Heroes fundraiser to offer up laughter as part of healing to veterans and their families — Hirsch, always aware of the power of laughter, even in some serious situations and times.

“I’ve had my ups and downs in the business. We get through it, you manage it. Look, what the world is going through right now, I bless every day that I’m able to come in here and make people laugh,” Hirsch said. “I’m very proud of what I accomplished here.”

Hirsch added that she owes her success not to luck, but to having good intentions.

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