The Tragic Real-Life Story Of Andy Kaufman

Authored by grunge.com and submitted by KnotKarma
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A dyed-in-the-wool New Yorker, Andy Kaufman grew up in a middle-class Jewish family. Despite his shy tendencies, by the age of eight, he had already become passionate about making people laugh: When he wasn't doing make-believe TV shows in his bedroom, according to Biography, he was performing stand-up at birthday parties. As pointed out by AndyKaufman.com, it was in these early years that Kaufman first donned his father's jacket and developed his famous "Foreign Man" character, mostly to entertain his younger sister.

Kaufman struggled in high school, according to Bill Zehme's biography Lost in the Funhouse, but kept going largely to please his father. After graduating in 1967, he could have been drafted into the Vietnam War, but following a psychological evaluation, received a permanent 4-F deferment. The reason? A letter from the doctor claimed that Kaufman had lived "in a fantasy world since preschool days," completely disconnected from reality, and that if he were ever put in the military, he would "lose his mind." Kaufman, for the record, absolutely loved this letter. He proudly displayed it to all his buddies, who knew full-well that Kaufman had purposely treated his psych evaluations as a high-stakes joke. As friend Gil Gevins said, "He was aware that it was all this kind of game that he played. He knew what he was doing — not all the time, but a lot of the time. He just encouraged people to believe what they wanted."

Noulbot on March 12nd, 2021 at 03:22 UTC »

Anyone else remember that site, andykaufmanlives or something like that? I remember finding it like 10ish years ago with these weird photos and theories and this KING person putting it all together. What was that?

TorgoLebowski on March 12nd, 2021 at 02:49 UTC »

"treated his psych eval life as a high-stakes joke."

wjbc on March 12nd, 2021 at 01:51 UTC »

Arlo Guthrie had a similar experience -- he was rejected because he had a criminal record of littering -- and turned it into a 18-minute song, "Alice's Restaurant Massacree."