Dick Gregory: A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Lunch Counter

June, 1961

Slim, chain-smoking, Twenty-Eight-Year-old Dick Gregory is the first Negro stand-up comic to ever make it big in night-clubdom, yet early this year when he was signed for a three-week stint as one of a quartet of hip variety acts to open the new Penthouse room in The Playboy Club in Chicago, comedian Gregory was washing cars during the day to augment his salary and was seriously considering getting out of show business altogether. Three weeks after he opened, he was the hottest new comedian on t...

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