The Ace Trucking Company was one of the most innovative comedy troupes of the 1960s and 1970s. It consisted of four guys and one woman with George Memmoli, Michael Mislove, Bill Saluga, Patti Deutsch and Fred Willard. They were doing “sketch comedy” long before show such as Saturday Night Live, “Friday”, or Mad TV ever came along.
The Ace Trucking Company appeared 35 times on “The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson” between April 1969 and May 1975. They also performed their comedy sketches as well as improvised routines on “The Mike Douglas Show”, “The Dick Cavett Show”, Burt Sugarman’s “The Midnight Special”, and “This Is Tom Jones” (as series regulars). They also appeared in the motion picture, “The Harrad Experiment”, and recorded an album of improvised sketches for RCA records.
Before it was called Ace Trucking Company, it was called The Bleecker Street Improvisational Ensemble performing late at night at both The Bitter End Cafe on Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village and Budd & Silver Friedman’s Improvisation Cafe uptown on W 44th St. In January of 1969 actor Michael Mislove formed the group by asking friends George Memmoli, Marilyn Sokol and Bill Saluga to join him and perform improvs late at night after the regular shows at The Bitter End. Fred Willard, who Michael had met at a party in Hollywood months before was performing in Jules Feiffer’s “Little Murders” at the Circle in the Square one block down Bleecker Street, and Patti Deutsch was appearing at The Upstairs at the Downstairs Cabaret at the Plaza Hotel. Both were asked to join the group, and they did. The group did not become The Ace Trucking Company until they were booked only 6 weeks by The Tonight Show. The producers on the Tonight Show felt the unknown group needed a better, hipper name. George Memmoli did a character named Tony Catucci, who worked for the mythical “Ace Trucking Company”, and in an act fraught with desperation, the group renamed themselves hours before the their first of what would be 35 appearances on the Tonight Show on April 24th, 1969. Johnny Carson introduced the new group as The Ace Trucking Company, they performed 7 minutes worth of blackout sketches, and the NBC Studio audience rewarded them with thunderous applause, and with that the Ace Trucking Company was born.
