Marc Price's Family Ties Still Influence His Standup Act

NEW BRUNSWICK – Self-effacing humor is a tenet of child star-turned-comedian Marc Price’s standup act.

But when the former “Family Ties” actor tells a joke about being on a first date with a girl who discovers his bio on washedupcelebrities.com, the audience often responds with a long, sympathetic, “Awwwww.”

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“And I’m like, ‘No, no, no,’” Price said. “It’s OK. I’m OK.”

Price is better than OK.

He’s 56, well-adjusted, dating a well-known actress whom he is sworn not to name and still making people laugh 35 years after he last portrayed the nerdy but well-meaning Irwin "Skippy" Handelman on one of the most beloved sitcoms of all time.

Price, who will be performing on Saturday at 7:30 p.m. at the Stress Factory Comedy Club, was recently talking about his long, winding road to New Brunswick while traveling home from Florida, where he had just played the Lyric Theatre in Stuart.

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“It was packed,” he said. “It’s a big, old theater from the 1920s. I figure my dad played there at some point.”

Talk about family ties - Al Bernie had already established himself as a mainstay in clubs up and down the Borscht Belt and even hosted an early TV variety show called “54 ^th Street Revue” that debuted on CBS in 1949 when he brought his son out to Hollywood.

Price was all of 11 when he began to meet his dad’s pals, who just happened to be some of the greatest comedians to ever swear into a microphone during a late night Saturday show.

“He was good friends with Sammy Davis Jr., George Burns, Milton Berle - I got to meet all those guys and hang out with them,” Price said. “Joey Bishop and Jackie Mason, truly the funniest people on the planet and, at the time, the most well-respected comedians in the country.

“And I was a little kid. I was soaking it all in backstage. My dad would drive me to their shows. And then he started to take me to see Robert Klein, George Carlin, David Brenner and the guys who were more modern-day.”

Then Price started hanging out at an off-shoot Comedy Store location in Westwood Village, where he caught the first whiff of a new generation of comics that included Sam Kinison, Jim Carey and Andrew Dice Clay.

And then a funny thing happened: Price got booked to play Skippy on “Family Ties.” And suddenly he was beamed into millions of American households each week as Michael J. Fox’s best bud.

It seemed only natural that he would have a second career as a standup comic. He said his act is a blend of the comedians of his dad’s era with the up-and-comers he met later on.

“My act covers both,” Price said. “My act is sort of like the weather in some places. If you don’t like it, hang on a few minutes, because I think I have parts that are silly and physically goofy and funny. And then there are other parts that are about the news about things that are topical. And other things are very personal to me; true life stories about growing up in Hollywood in the 1980s. Michael Jackson never touched me and all that kind of stuff. It’s a kind of hodgepodge of different things.”

He might drop a few F-bombs if it’s a late show, but by and large, Price is a clean comic who eschews raunchy, sexualized humor.

“It’s not my thing,” he said. “The guys I looked up to were funny without that. They look at that like a crutch. It’s an easy laugh. And it’s not even funny. Sometimes it’s like a laugh just because people react that way, like an uncomfortable laugh.”

For more information about the Stress Factory, click here.

For more information about Marc Price, click here.

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