Hollywood Improv

Budd Friedman opened the original Improvisation in New York in 1963 and brought it to Melrose Avenue in 1975, where the Hollywood Improv became the West Coast standard-bearer of the club that invented the brick-wall-behind-the-comic look every comedy club has copied since.

The Main Room hosts touring headliners and stacked lineup shows, while the smaller Lab stage runs alternative and developing acts. Fifty years of comedy history have crossed these stages — the Improv circuit was a career-making machine for generations of comics, and the Hollywood room remains a place where major names work out new hours between tours.

The Improv name now spans clubs across the country, but the Melrose flagship keeps the deepest bench: on a random weeknight the lineup can quietly include comics who headline theaters everywhere else.