Randy West is a great announcer of game shows…or just about anything. He sent me the following…
Enjoyed the kudos for Dave Barry. When I worked for Wayne Newton, 1978-1981, I often saw Wayne's show in Vegas. Something like 50 times total. That means I also saw Dave Barry about 30 times. The other 20 I only heard Dave because I was backstage with Wayne.
"I almost didn't make it out to the stage tonight. I was putting on toilet water, and the seat fell on my head." I loved his stuff, but I didn't fully understand why Wayne had Dave as his opening act for so many years.
I came to believe it was, in part, because Dave was a solid performer. Good, but never "too good" to steal any starshine from Wayne. When I asked Wayne's bodyguard/assistant why Wayne liked Dave, the answer was something like, "Because when Wayne cues the booth to turn on the red light, Dave is off the stage in less than 5 seconds."
It was probably that plus a few other things. Dave had the rep of being 100% dependable and cooperative — always there on time, always able to stretch if he had to or get off the stage early with no issues of ego. He had genuine TV credits so he was a minor celebrity but he probably wasn't beastly expensive.
Someone once said of another comedian who opened for headliners in Vegas, "He's good enough to keep the audience in a good mood but not very famous. So if the show sells out, the star would get 100% of the credit for that and if the show didn't sell out, the star and his people can blame the opening act."
I only spoke to Mr. Barry two times but I got a pretty solid feel that he was the kind of performer whose main goal was to keep working and make a steady living. I'm sure he would have liked his own series, his own talk show, to star in movies, etc., but the primary goal was to avoid unemployment. He seems to have done that pretty well for something like forty years without ever becoming that well known or having a role on a sitcom or anything. He had a few acting roles but what kept him going really was stand-up and occasional voiceover gigs, mostly the former.
Years ago, a wizened acting coach (someone way older than me) told me that she had two kinds of wanna-bes in her classes. One was the kind that really, really wanted to be Very Famous and make millions per movie even if that meant they'd burn out in 5-10 years. The other kind was the one who would be very content to just make a decent living until they were ready to retire. She said that with each passing year, a higher percentage of her new students were in the first group.
Some of that, I'm sure, is because a top star today does make a lot more moola than they used to, even when you adjust the amounts for inflation. Jerry Lewis got rich but not Adam Sandler rich. Some of that is because we're far, far from The Great Depression when guys like Dave Barry grew up. The same divide can be seen in the comic book business. The guys who got into it in the forties and fifties didn't care about being famous — most didn't even sign their work — and there was really no way to get rich in the business then. All you could hope for was to always have steady work on something…anything. Not a lot of guys who get into comics these days would be happy, like the first generation was, to stay in one place for the rest of their careers.
Barry probably opened for Wayne Newton for ten years…and since Wayne always worked, Dave also worked. Today, there are comedians who if you offered them a steady ten-year gig like that would run from it in horror. Opening for a Wayne Newton like that would be a great way to freeze your career. No one ever gets "discovered" for a TV series that way. No one ever parlays it into their own stardom. Gary Mule Deer, who's pretty darn funny, has spent most of the last twenty years opening for Johnny Mathis. It takes him almost completely off the radar for most TV networks and keeps him on the road a lot…but I'll bet he's got a nice home and bank account. There's something to be said for that.