November 29, 2009: Andy Kaufman Hate Mail Compiled in New Book

Rating 3.00 out of 5

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Dear Andy Kaufman book The comedian Andy Kaufman pioneered a bizarre way to meet women: he would wrestle them. “He was shy around girls,” said Bob Zmuda, who was Kaufman’s longtime friend and writer. “He realized when you wrestle a woman, you break down all the physical barriers immediately.”

In 1979, Kaufman famously wrestled a woman on “Saturday Night Live” and won. In a mock-misogynistic rant after the match, he insulted the intelligence of women and challenged female viewers to a wrestling match. Any woman who beat him would win $1,000, and Kaufman would shave his head. The hundreds of responses to his taunts have been collected in a new book, Dear Andy Kaufman I Hate Your Guts (Process Media).

Comprised of letters and Polaroids, and sent from everyone from Midwestern housewives to an 11 year-old girl, the responses demonstrate the range of emotions elicited by Kaufman’s provoking style of comedy. One woman, Sheryll “Brickhouse” Holzapfel, addresses the comedian as “Dear Turkey Kaufman” and writes that when her male co-workers at the shipyard where she works “get fresh” she hits them “with my fifty-pound tool box.” “Mrs. Donna (The Bruiser)” from Hibbing, Minn., calls Kaufman a “scrawny little stick man” and says she can “whip you in nothing flat.” Yet another woman sent a headshot and a cheesecake picture of herself standing beside a convertible in a bikini.

Kaufman welcomed the mail, be it fan or hate. “He loved real reactions,” Zmuda said. “That animosity was theater to him.” According to Zmuda, Kaufman used the wrestling stunt as a kind of dating service; he’d ask for a picture, and if someone was attractive, he’d write a letter explaining he didn’t hate women. Kaufman also took the wrestling schtick to college campuses. Zmuda, who acted as the referee, recalled: “You’d have anywhere between 20 to 25 girls go on stage and the crowd would vote on who they wanted Andy to wrestle. Nine times out of 10 the same thing happened. We’d get it down to the last two girls. One would be the biggest, ugliest girl who could possibly beat him. The other would be a sexy knockout that all the guys wanted to see Andy wrestle.”

Zmuda said Kaufman’s fascination with wrestling dated to his Long Island childhood, when his family took him to see matches at Madison Square Garden. “It was always in his head, the wrestling,” Zmuda said. “If you were in a Hollywood diner and there was Marlon Brando in one corner and Haystacks Calhoun in the other, Andy would go, ‘It’s Haystacks.’”

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