by Karilon L. Rogers
Leslie Norris-Townsend (77c) spent the first part of her life being good at playing someone else – a role on stage, Hollywood starlet or character on your TV screen. But when someone suggested she play herself through stand-up comedy, she “killed it,” as they say in the business, and never looked back.
Today, Norris-Townsend is a “clean comedian” with home bases in Nashville and, surprisingly, a more than 100-year-old family farm in rural Celina, Ohio. She performs an average of four shows monthly, using her own life experiences as the basis for her routines – no swearing or suggestive material involved.
“Stand-up is the best therapy you can ever have for free,” she declared. “You mine yourself for material. I love it!”
Norris-Townsend’s career in stand-up began when she was living in Los Angeles making appearances in such sitcoms as Silver Spoons, One Day at a Time and Sledge Hammer. She previously had chosen beaus on The Dating Game as an employee of Chuck Barris Productions and hawked Toyotas, refrigerators and Mattel toys in national commercials, among countless other gigs. Discovering that many people found her funny, she took the Harvey Lembeck Comedy Workshop at Paramount Studios and excelled, especially with a “Miss America” character she created. An agent signed her, advising that she take the character to stand-up at the Hollywood Improv.
“I did it,” Norris-Townsend exclaimed, “and it killed!”
Working her way from opener to featured performer, she fearlessly left “Miss America” behind and became herself. That led to scores of comedy club shows and impressive TV appearances.
She almost struck the motherload on Ed McMahon’s Star Search (a precursor to such shows as America’s Got Talent), making it to the grand finale for comedy only to feel the $100,000 prize slip through her fingers, dollar by dollar, when she finished second.
“I cried like Lucy for a week,” she remembered, referencing the “wail” made famous by the late, great Lucille Ball. “I had truly thought, ‘This is the moment!’”
Her own Green Acres
Not long before Star Search, her attention and her heart were captured by Tim Townsend, a production manager and sound engineer for such country artists as Loretta Lynn, Brenda Lee and the Oak Ridge Boys. He worked out of Nashville, she Los Angeles, so they had a long-distance marriage until their sons were born. She then used Music City as a base, although work still required both parents to be away from home for long periods. With two young boys, this was untenable. Add to that, the couple was helping keep afloat his family’s old farm in Ohio, both before and after his father’s death. Her answer? Move to the farm with the kids to give them a better life, even if her career suffered. It was a true fish-out-of-water experience for her.
Her husband eventually joined her on the farm, and together they started a variety of entrepreneurial enterprises, some successful, some not. Before there was American Idol, they created a singing competition that ran for 10 years on their local NBC station. They also bought a 450-seat theatre for plays that “no one would buy a ticket to see.” In the meantime, she was still performing, even appearing in “Pitch to America” segments on Jay Leno’s Tonight Show twice.
In 2010, with friends in the stand-up world serving as judges, she launched The Clean Comedy Challenge that continues today. New comedians from across the country participate in the three-day comedy bootcamp, competing for $1,000 in prize money and an opportunity to get a leg-up in the business.
"I got off the bus, and there I was at Berry. I got there on a wing and a prayer, and I found a career that I love."
— Leslie Norris-Townsend
Norris-Townsend still appears at comedy clubs, but conventions, church-affiliated events and corporate retreats are her bread and butter. She wins rave reviews with acts that often are described not just as shows but parties with laughs, music and audience participation. She is loaded with material from her life on the farm, making her a natural for Farm Bureau conventions, with audiences as large as 5,000. She also is a regular on TBN’s Huckabee, appears on Circle TV’s Stand Up! Nashville at Zanies Comedy Night Club and is featured in a 30-minute Dry Bar Comedy special entitled “Outstanding in my Field.” [She headlined at The Spires at Berry College while visiting for Mountain Day 2021!]
Berry was the best thing
Fifteen hours on a Greyhound bus transported Norris-Townsend from a difficult childhood to a career that would span a lifetime. That’s how long it took her to travel to sight-unseen Berry College where she’d won a full-tuition drama scholarship.
“I’m not sure how it happened,” she mused. “But going to Berry was the best thing that ever happened to me.”
Norris-Townsend almost had a happy childhood. Her father was a Duncan Yo-Yo champion who became a successful salesman for the company in New Jersey. Their seemingly idyllic American family life was shattered, however, by his drinking and gambling, which led them to flee with nothing in the middle of the night for his hometown of Pensacola, Florida. There, the family regularly careened from flush to bust, based on his gambling luck, although no one outside the home would ever know there was trouble. They always kept up appearances.
When it came time for Norris-Townsend to attend college, her mother – now dying of cancer – was determined her daughter would go. Norris-Townsend was young for college at 17, but studying drama was a dream. She loved theater, having acted and sang on stage from grammar school through high school, as well as competing in Junior Miss pageants.
“On stage is where I felt comfortable and almost normal,” she remembered, “because I felt like a misfit otherwise due to my family life.”
So she climbed on the bus – heading in her mind to who knows where – and the miraculous happened.
“I got off the bus, and there I was at Berry,” she said. “I got there on a wing and a prayer, and I found a career that I love.”
The first thing Norris-Townsend did at Berry was win the talent show. The experience thrilled her, as did the opportunity to appear in multiple theatre productions. But she didn’t do well academically and wonders now if it was lack of ability or lack of attention caused by her love of performing and the distraction of competing in beauty pageants.
In her first two years, she won the local Miss Cedar Valley pageant and twice participated in Miss Georgia pageants, finishing first in the top 10 and then as first runner-up and talent competition winner. These pageants helped cover her Berry room and board, though her success was tempered by the feeling that she had “lost” by not finishing first.
Pageant gowns were paid for with wages earned in the Berry cafeteria, where she worked in the wee hours of the morning to avoid being seen by other students.
“I was embarrassed that I had no money,” she said. “I was the pageant ‘queen,’ after all.”
The habit of keeping up appearances was deeply ingrained.
At the end of her second year, life changed for Norris-Townsend. She still “loved Berry more than anything” but continued to lack funds, a fact she never admitted to anyone at the school. She realizes now that if she’d been open about her plight she may well have received help to stay.
Then came an offer she couldn’t refuse. She saw a sign on a bulletin board in Assistant Professor of Speech LeRoy Clark’s class about sending an audition tape to Disney. So, with his assistance, she did and was picked from among thousands of applicants to open a new show at Walt Disney World in Florida – Hoop De Doo. Then she was offered a five-year contract.
“I couldn’t believe I had to quit Berry,” she said. “But I had no money, and I thought the Disney job would be show business. It wasn’t, but it did give me a start.”
Norris-Townsend ended up doing two Hoop-De-Doo shows five nights a week while attending Florida’s Rollins College. She also entered the Miss Florida pageant as Miss Orlando, again finishing as first runner-up. Not long after, Disney offered her a job at Disneyland in California, and she soon found herself in Los Angeles, making connections and getting more and more work. And so her story went.
The show must go on
Norris-Townsend is clear why she continues to work.
“Getting applause or laughs … there is nothing like it, no matching feeling,” she explained. “If the audience is with you, it’s like winning the lottery, getting the crown. It is kind of an addiction. Sometimes I wish I hadn’t experienced it. My life would have been easier, perhaps. But doing a show that works is like falling in love again.”
As for Berry, she gives the college much credit.
“It was a dream come true for me. In all the chaos of my home life – and it was chaos – Berry focused me. Then in one class, one sign on a bulletin board about that Disney audition started my career. It happened for me. It happened at Berry.”
As for her career in the future, she declared simply: “It ain’t over!”
