Comedy sources tell us that live in New York on Saturday night, one of Eddie Murphy‘s kids, Myles Murphy, did a surprise set at the West Side Comedy Club. And he then got a history lesson on his dad backstage!
“He’s only been performing for less than a year,” a source said of Myles, adding that club manager Gina Savage was introducing Murphy to people backstage.
“He got up, did his set, and he’s really good,” said the insider, adding, “Though everyone remarked how handsome he was.”
Myles, 33, is the fourth of Eddie’s 10 children. His mom is model Nicole Mitchell Murphy, who was married to Eddie from 1993 to 2006.
Said an insider of Myles: “During the day he’s a screenwriter … Performing comedy was something he’s always wanted to do, and he’s performed in several of the clubs in LA.”
We hear that after the set, Myles chopped it up with some comics on the scene who reminisced about his dad back in the day. One performer, the ubiquitous comedy guru, author and ex-dentist Jeffrey Gurian, who wrote the book “Make ‘Em Laugh” about the venerable Manhattan club the Comic Strip, was telling Myles how Chris Rock was discovered by his dad at the club in 1985.
Eddie got his start at the Comic Strip, and was even managed by the club’s owner, the late Richie Tienken, for the first 11 years of his career. Said a witness: “Jeffrey got to sit with Myles for almost an hour, telling him stories about his dad that he never heard before and had no idea about.”
“One story in particular involved Joe Piscopo,” who was on “Saturday Night Live” at the same time as Eddie, from 1980 to ’84. “Eddie was just a featured player on ‘SNL’ and the show was running short one night, so Jean Doumanian — who produced the show for one year — asked Joe to do five minutes of comedy. Joe was such a nice guy, and was a fan of Eddie’s, and he suggested to let newcomer Eddie do the five-minute spot and give him the big break.”
That’s when “Eddie called his manager Richie in a panic, and told him they asked him to do five minutes — but he wasn’t sure he should do it. Richie asked him why and Eddie said, ‘Because I curse!’ So Richie said, ‘Well don’t curse!’ Eddie did the five minutes — and cursed — so they had to bleep it out. But that five minutes became a blessing for Eddie.”
“When it came time to renew his contract on ‘SNL,’ Richie went in to negotiate,” Gurian recounted to Myles, we hear. “They were going to renew Eddie’s contract, leaving him as a featured player, until Richie reminded them that Eddie saved the show by doing the five minutes, so they made him a regular cast member and his salary went from $750 a week to $3,000 … Richie said that’s when he started taking his percentage. Before that he didn’t take anything.”
We hear that when Gurian was driving home after meeting Myles, he was listening to Piscopo’s live radio show, “Bulova’s Sinatra Showcase,” in his car on WABC. The former “SNL” star and Ol’ Blue Eyes expert was broadcasting live from Winnie’s Jazz Club on West 38th Street, and was coincidentally talking about Eddie on the air.
That’s when night owl Gurian decided to head to the club to get on his old pal’s show! He even stopped at home in Midtown to throw on a sports jacket, then “ran over,” was handed the guest mike and told the Myles story live on the air.
Myles is performing tonight in LA at the Laugh Factory’s Spotlight Special showcase that’s being taped.
