'CELEBRATION OF JAN WALLMAN' AT CARNEGIE TONIGHT
By JOHN S. WILSON
Published: February 3, 1986
During almost 30 years as den mother to aspiring cabaret performers, Jan Wallman has provided an important step up the ladder to such now familiar names as Joan Rivers, Dick Cavett, Woody Allen, Rodney Dangerfield, Barbra Streisand, Robert Klein, George Segal, Marcia Lewis, Yvonne Constant and Linda Lavin. Now it's their turn to help her.
On Jan. 26, Miss Wallman closed Jan Wallman's, her intimate 33-seat restaurant and cabaret at 28 Cornelia Street, because her rent had been raised for the third time. When word of this got around, singers and comedians to whom Jan Wallman had given a helping hand - during the two periods when she managed Upstairs at the Duplex, on Grove Street, from 1959 to 1962 and 1964 to 1968; the two-year interval when she moved to the Showplace on West Fourth Street, and later at the restaurant - rallied round to help her relocate. Led by Judy Kreston, a singer who has been one of the recent regulars at Jan Wallman's, they are giving a ''Celebration of Jan Wallman'' tonight at Carnegie Hall at 8:30. The proceeds will go toward Miss Wallman's relocation efforts. The performers will include such veterans of Jan Wallman's rooms as the team of Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, Miss Rivers, Mr. Cavett, Bert Convy, Miss Lewis, Miss Lavin and Miss Kreston as well as a pair of Miss Wallman's friends who never performed in her cabarets -Kaye Ballard and Margaret Whiting.
''It's a rare and special opportunity to give back to someone who gave so much to me,'' said Miss Lavin, who starred in the title role of ''Alice'' on television. ''We were all beginners and she made us all feel hopeful.''
Mr. Cavett said he was still grateful for the opportunity she gave him ''when I was not considered ready for other places like the Village Gate, the Bitter End and Bon Soir.''
''I know other people need Jan to continue,'' he said.
Miss Wallman, a gray-haired, soft-spoken, motherly looking woman, is anticipating her celebration as ''a happy thing.''
''I'm glad they're doing it while I'm alive,'' she said. ''Send me the flowers now.''
Miss Wallman grew up in St. Paul and studied theater at the University of Minnesota, although she had no particular sense of what she wanted to do. Went Into Public Relations
''I was a dilettante,'' she said. ''When I was 12 my grandmother brought a singing teacher to hear me sing 'I Dreamt I Dwelt in Marble Halls.' He told my grandmother, 'Don't waste your money.' ''
She didn't and when Miss Wallman came to New York she bypassed theater and got into public relations and promotion. In the 1950's she became friends with the singer Nina Simone and her husband, Donald Ross. Miss Simone sat in occasionally at Upstairs at the Duplex and they talked about taking over the room.
''Don and I began running it in 1959,'' Miss Wallman recalled. ''Three weeks later he left and I was on my own. I suddenly found that I was doing what I liked to do. I loved what went on there - the music, the performers. It was a party every night.''
Acts were booked for two or three weeks at a time, with three acts on each bill. Miss Wallman held auditions once a week.
''It was awful painful to watch people who want to give but are not acceptable to anybody,'' she said. ''I'd try anything with even a glimmer of possibility. But sometimes I had to turn down people I knew had talent. I couldn't use Melba Moore because she could only sing with a rhythm section, and I couldn't afford more than a piano.''
Comedians and singers came as ''guests'' to break in new material. A comedian named Jackie Roy used visits to the Duplex to develop the persona that turned him into Rodney Dangerfield. After Barbra Streisand ended her first professional engagement - 10 weeks at Bon Soir - she made guest sppearances at the Duplex that had to be timed to fit Bon Soir's schedule because her pianist, Peter Daniels, was still working there. He had a 40-minute break when he could get away to play for Miss Streisand - 10 minutes to get to the Duplex, 20 minutes for Miss Streisand's performance, 10 to get back to Bon Soir.
When Joan Rivers graduated from the Duplex to the ''Tonight'' show and JoAnne Worley to ''The Merv Griffin Show,'' the room became a showcase for performers trying out for television. But after both Johnny Carson and Mr. Griffin moved their shows to California in the late 60's, there were no places to which Miss Wallman's performers could advance. She closed the room in 1968 and spent the next eight years as a hospital recreation director, a restaurant manager, a bartender and a hat checker.
Then, in 1976, Mona Katz, a friend of Miss Wallman who owned a bar with piano music at 28 Cornelia Street, asked her to take over the lease. ''I didn't think of it as a cabaret,'' Miss Wallman said. ''But friends started asking me to let them perform.''
For the last 10 years the fare at Jan Wallman's has been primarily singers rather than the comedians who once crowded the Duplex. Her two primary stars in recent years have been Miss Kreston and the singer Barbara Lea. On Miss Wallman's recommendation, some of her recent roster of performers will now be appearing at Panache, 149 East 57th Street.
She has not yet chosen where or when she will open a new cabaret.
In a way, the escalating rent that forced Miss Wallman to leave Cornelia Street has been a good thing.
''I've wanted to get out for a long time,'' she said. ''The room was too small. I bought what I could afford in 1976. But if Mona Katz hadn't offered it to me, I'd still be sitting on a bar stool somewhere.''
Amanda S. Stevenson 
