Joyce Sloane, mother of The Second City, is dead at 80
1930 ~ 2011
(2005 Tribune photo)
Joyce Sloane, the beloved maternal powerhouse of The Second City, and the woman who found and nurtured such comedy giants as John Belushi, Gilda Radner, Chris Farley and Bill Murray, died Thursday.
According to her daughter Cheryl, Sloane died, “absolutely peacefully,” late Thursday night, while in bed and getting ready to watch Jim Belushi on TV. She was 80.
“In a business that is filled with heartbreak and rejection,” Belushi said of Sloane on Friday, “she somehow could heal those wounds in a flash of a smile and restore confidence to keep us going.”
Sloane was associated with Second City for all but one of its 50 years. She held virtually every title in the place: associate producer, executive producer, founder of the e.t.c. Company, founder of the national touring company, co-founder of the Toronto branch of The Second City, producer emeritus. So on and so forth across the years.
But those titles don't fully convey the import of a gifted woman who could spot raw talent with ease and who provided a crucial nurturing presence in what was, especially in the early years, almost exclusively a boys' club.
Cheryl Sloane was born a year or so after the founding of Second City, but the young comedians who started out there in the 1960s, '70s and '80s found that the maternal instincts of Cheryl's mother were available for sharing.
“You loved Joyce and you were afraid of her at the same time,” former Second City cast member Stephen Colbert told the Tribune Friday. “But she was incredibly kind to me and believed in me. For the first year, she called me Michael. When she started calling me Stephen, I knew I had made an impression.”
“She would be just as happy if you came out of Second City with ‘a nice husband' instead of a movie career,” said Tina Fey from the set of television's “30 Rock.”
“Everybody who comes to Second City has issues,” said Tim Kazurinsky, another of Sloane's charges. “She was the mother to the largest dysfunctional family in the world. Second City was like marine boot camp, but over in this corner there was little Jewish mother. It's hard to imagine the void.”
“She cared about every waitress and dishwasher, not just the famous alumnae,” said the actor George Wendt. “If you got some good news or a gig or something, you called your mom and then you called Joyce. And if your mom had passed away, you called Joyce first.”
“The one consistent thing that happened to me at Second City,” said the comedian Jeff Garlin, “was that Joyce believed in me and always let me know I was the funniest person there. Whatever else happened.”
Indeed, it was Joyce Sloane who held Gilda Radner's hand whenever things got tough, on and off-stage. “When Gilda came out on stage,” Sloane told the Tribune in 1999, “the whole audience wanted to put its arms around her.” She was, of course, speaking mostly of herself. At the time, Sloane still could not speak of Radner, who had died of ovarian cancer a decade before, without her voice breaking.
Yet it was also Sloane who headed out to the College of DuPage and found a raw, edgy young student named John Belushi and hired him in the early 1970s without even requiring him to audition.
“Oh, John,” Sloane used to say, her round face lighting up with the memory of one of her most notable discoveries.
But the Belushis were hardly the only ones. It was also Sloane who trekked to London, Ontario, in 1990 to check out a young comic named Nia Vardalos. Sloane brought her to Chicago. Vardalos went on to make “My Big Fat Greek Wedding.”
Sloane was den mother to Chicago actors, comedians and improvisers for nearly a half century; she regarded the likes of Vardalos, Fey, Bonnie Hunt, and countless others as her surrogate daughters.
Her real daughter, Cheryl, said she was trying to call her rabbi on Friday morning, even as several phones in the house were ringing simultaneously, many with famous names on the other end of the line.
“The loss,” said Andrew Alexander, the executive producer of Second City, “is monumental.”
In the early years, Sloane also was crucial to the fledgling business, initially little more than a beatnik cabaret cafe.
“My Aunt Nettie would do the payroll,” she told the Tribune in 2009. “My father, who was in the printing business, said to me one day, ‘Am I a partner in the business?' I said, ‘Why, Dad?' He said, ‘Because I don't get paid.'”
“My favorite thing was when she sat on the stage at Christmas time and handed out your bonus checks,” recalled Colbert. “And on Thanksgiving, she made you eat her hot fruit.”
Sloane had other passions beside hot fruit, including a longtime seat on the board of the Victory Gardens Theater and deep involvement as a supporter of the Chicago Academy for the Arts. She was instrumental in the development of many seminal off-Loop theaters in the 1970s and '80s, lending a hand any way she could.
“One day at Wisdom Bridge,” said Northlight Theatre artistic director BJ Jones, referring to the defunct theater company, “I watched Joyce and Essie Kupcinet bringing in carpet.” Chicago director Barbara Gaines said that without Sloane lending the company space at a crucial moment, there would not be a Chicago Shakespeare Theater.
But Second City and its performers were her professional life. Her post-retirement age and declining health notwithstanding, she remained a fixture at the theater. She was normally to be found off to the side, perched on a stool or bench, watching, laughing.
“She was the mother of Second City,” said Sheldon Patinkin, who first hired Sloane nearly 50 years ago. “And she was the mother of Chicago theater.”
“I'm the only one who still keeps an office downstairs,” she said, during Second City's 50th-anniversary celebrations in 2009. “To me there are two things that are important here, the stage and the box office, and I'm near both of them.”
That was only partly true. What mattered most to Sloane at Second City was the people.
In addition to daughter Cheryl, survivors include Sloane's brother, Danny Coval, and her grandson, Sasha. Services are 11 a.m. Tuesday at Anshe Emet Synagogue, 3760 N. Pine Grove. Afterwards, a reception will be held at Second City, 1616 N. Wells St. The family has requested that contributions in Joyce's memory be sent to Chicago Academy for the Arts or the Victory Gardens Theater.
oh no, I am so saddened by this. I didn't know Joyce well but would see her at theater (especially Victory Gardens and Remy Bumppo) from time to time. She was a major force and a very supportive person. She will really be missed.
Posted by: Nancy McDaniel | February 04, 2011 at 07:52 AM
A classy, smart, great lady. She truly loved actors and they loved her back.
Posted by: Ed Kross | February 04, 2011 at 09:03 AM
I would not have my career if it wasn't for Joyce Sloane. I'm a better man for having known her.
Jeff Garlin
Posted by: Jeff garlin | February 04, 2011 at 09:29 AM
i was in a show at the second city over the summer and my parents flew up to see me preform. my dad was sneaking around the e.t.c. theater and bumped into ms. sloane. instead of kicking him out of the theater, she gave him a little tour and they ended up chatting for over an hour. my dad really liked her. my father is an er doctor, and told ms. sloane about what he did for a living. ms. sloane then asked my dad to give her a little "check up." he checked her heart and her vitals and she said "well, I wish you lived in chicago and were my doctor!" that made my dad very happy. he is the biggest fan of the second city and went home and told everyone about his little meeting with ms. sloane. she was a great lady for the arts and will be missed!
Posted by: alisha cardenas | February 04, 2011 at 09:38 AM
Joyce will always be the heart and soul of the Second City. I remember when Gilda died and Joyce was incosolable. She loved us, helped us find apartments, beds, she gave us clothes form the resale shop. All her cousins and friends loved us too especially Rosalie, and of course her daughter Cheryl. May God Bless Joyce and Second City during this period of grief and rememberance of a great great lady.
Posted by: Tim O | February 04, 2011 at 09:43 AM
What a great lady she was! I hope she had some idea of how much of an impact she had in my life. I really do.
Posted by: Lynn Baber | February 04, 2011 at 10:21 AM
Joyce was always really good to us. This is a loss for the theater/improv community as well as us personally and The Acorn Theater in Three Oaks. It is also a loss for the Chicago Improv Festival where Joyce served on the board.
Posted by: David Fink | February 04, 2011 at 10:50 AM
All class one of a kind who always had time to hear an idea or answer a question.
Posted by: Lou Volpano | February 04, 2011 at 11:04 AM
Joyce and Cheryl were my neighbors from about 1971 to 1975 in Edgewater - very nice people outside the world of SC, just great neighbors.
Posted by: George | February 04, 2011 at 11:20 AM
What a fantastic, great woman! I met Joyce and Cheryl in the New Buffalo, MI area where they rented a house each summer. We were '"summer friends", and had no idea how important she was. She was so humble, never told tales about the Second City alums, and we didn't know her as a "celebrity" but as a wonderful, warm, generous, sweet Earth Mother. She would leave the lake every Sunday to volunteer at the Mt. Sinai Hospital Resale Shop and never missed a Sunday (she said she made a promise to her mother) even though we tried to convince her to stay and enjoy the sun and good weather. I have since learned how many people she has helped over the years, how many honors she has received, and what a force she was in the Chicago Arts community, but to me she will be remembered as a loving, classy, interesting, humble woman with a huge generous heart. My thoughts and prayers go out to Cheryl and Joyce's family.
Posted by: Judy Bednar Swindle | February 04, 2011 at 11:29 AM
Some news hits you like a fist in the stomach.
AMERICAN ENTERPRISE is dedicated to her by way of thanks for introducing me to Dennis Zacek and making my association with VG possible.
No visit to Chicago was complete without an hour in her office. I've read that in Samuel Johnson's day, people made a circuit of the coffee shops to learn the news and exchange ideas. Joyce's office would have qualified as one of those coffee shops. She knew what was going on with everyone and you'd sit there talking with occasional input from phone calls of dispatches from far-flung buddies. And then she'd pick up the phone and make some bit of magic happen for someone.
Please post the news of how she is to be remembered and honored.
Posted by: Jeff Sweet | February 04, 2011 at 11:40 AM
mrs. sloane was a wonderful person. i am saddened. she was a
supportive person, an attentive listener and important in my life.
Posted by: Tom Skipper | February 04, 2011 at 11:40 AM
Correction - Joyce was a fixture at Second City until we closed on Tue/Wed due to the snow storm; Every week day until after the second show would go up.
Noon-11pm.
It is impossible to imagine working without her.
Posted by: Heather Whinna, Second City House Manager | February 04, 2011 at 12:05 PM
The world is indebted to you for introducing us to the likes of Belushi,Colbert,Radner and Garlin,Joyce. Rest in peace now and thank you,thank you,thank you.
Posted by: Apostate | February 04, 2011 at 12:10 PM
If it weren't for her words of inspiration many years ago, I would not be in this business that i love so much. Lady, you will be missed.
Posted by: Michael Shepperd | February 04, 2011 at 12:17 PM
I learned more from listening to Joyce while I was perched on a ladder pulling audio cables, than from anyone else face-to-face in my whole career. When designer Mike Rasfeld passed away, she gave me a chance to fill his giant shoes. Her confidence in me allowed me to have it in myself. I'll carry her with me always.
Posted by: Mike Konopka | February 04, 2011 at 12:27 PM
The. Nicest. Woman. In the world.
Posted by: Steve Leichman | February 04, 2011 at 12:34 PM
Joyce's final curtain call & exit stage left is a loss to all Chicago, the US, and the world. There will never be another like her. She was an amazing powerhouse and the ripples she made will go 'round the globe for a long, long time to come. Thanks forever for her eternal support and incredible contributions.
Posted by: Keith Fort | February 04, 2011 at 12:58 PM
40 years ago I worked at SC backstage and in the touring company. Joyce was always there with an open ear, a smile and good advice.
You always had confidence in yourself because she had confidence in you. She had a way of nudging you and giving you the chance to succeed or fail.
But if you failed, you’d fail brilliantly.
I saw her at the 50th anniversary and it seemed like no time had pasted as she asked me about people and times I had forgotten, but she hadn’t.
I shall miss Joyce more than I can ever put into mere words.
Posted by: Jack Berlinski | February 04, 2011 at 01:48 PM
I discovered The Second City as a young commercial traveler to Chicago & London, Ontario circa 1987. I saw several of their shows when I moved to Chicago temporarily in 1990. Now I live in coastal North Carolina, but I make it a point to see one every time I visit Chicago or Toronto, sometimes even Novi, Michigan!
Oh-so-thank-U for this news. May God rest Joyce's soul!
Posted by: Brendan | February 04, 2011 at 02:55 PM
I first met Joyce when I joined the board of the Jewish Theatre in Skokie and realized immediately what a true gfit Joyce was to her family, her friends, to the city, and the whole artistic community. Her ability to give far exceeded her desire to receive and while she will be remembered for the many careers that she launched, she will also be remembered for the care and kindness that she showed to everyone, regardless of their background.
She was a true "woman of valour" and I hope that her memory will be a blessing to the world.
Posted by: Marc Pershan | February 04, 2011 at 03:04 PM
I used to sneak by her office to check the score of the Cubs game when I was an intern at S.C. She ALWAYS had the Cubs game on the t.v. in her office. I loved that. She was such a great champion for the arts and the city of Chicago. Thanks, Joyce.
Posted by: Russ Natalie | February 04, 2011 at 04:15 PM
We are dedicating this year Chicago Improv Festival in honor of Joyce's memory. Thanks to Joyce for all of her support of CIF, from 1997 to 2011. She was the best!
Posted by: Jonathan Pitts | February 04, 2011 at 04:17 PM
I interned at The Second City when in college and while Joyce probably didn't know my name, she was a very nice woman, quick with a smile, and a genuine interest in other's lives. She once asked me if I was trying to get on stage, I replied "No, I'm a business major just looking for more experience at a Company I admire." She was the personification of the heart of Second City, a person who loved and believed in the Second City so much, she would of worked for free along with the Interns.
Her family is in my prayers.
Posted by: PCC | February 04, 2011 at 04:42 PM
Remember all the toys on her desk?
So glad her passing was peaceful. She always knew the right way to get things done.
Posted by: Johanna Humbert | February 04, 2011 at 05:10 PM