We’ve discussed the odd performer David Liebe Hart on this blog before. Hart is a man of many talents about whom it’s not possible to feel at least a certain amount of genuine sympathy. He is also at least a little bit “off.” Hart is a man of some sensitivity/thin skin for whom slights and rejections seem to carry more weight than they do for most of us. He is a Christian Scientist, a puppeteer, a singer and songwriter, a street musician and “outsider artist” (whatever that means) whose rambling songs, to quote Wikipedia, are about “religion, aliens, women, trains, and his tragic love life.” He appeared on Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! several times and Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie.

Hart is a creature of Los Angeles—a few years ago Richard Metzger, well aware of Hart’s unusual status in L.A., told of a couple encounters he’d had with the man. He’s been on public access for much of the last couple of decades. With Adam Papagan assisting, he put out four self-released albums about a decade ago; song titles include “Women Today,” “Dicksboro,” “Ellen DeGeneres,” “I Don’t Need a Psychiatrist,” and “All My Friends Like Asian Girls.”

As Hart will be the first to tell you, he was a standup comedian at the Comedy Store scene in Los Angeles in the late 1970s. Somewhere in there Garry Marshall must have made some entreaties to Hart, which Hart took to be a promise that he would be the star of the new show he was developing, and…. well, another actor got the part. Hart tells it all in his song “Gary [sic] Marshall Blues.” The song was released in 2008, which tells us that Hart has a very, very long memory, on this topic at least. I’d relate some of the lyrics but you really just have to listen to the whole song to believe them.
 
Watch Hart’s unforgettable Garry Marshall song after the jump….....
 

As Los Angeles-based fans of Tim and Eric know, David Liebe Hart, the slightly off, but obviously harmless Christian Scientist puppeteer and singer/songwriter, has been one of the city’s…er best kept secrets for over two decades. I’ve seen Hart with “Doug the Dog” and his ventriloquist dummy “son” Chip the Black Boy performing outside of the Hollywood Bowl and the La Brea Tar Pits, singing his songs about alien abductions, staying off drugs and how badly he wants a girlfriend since I first moved here. Not only would I often see Hart busking for spare change, I’d also see him on cable access television with his Junior Christian Teaching Bible Lesson program. In fact, James Quall, another Tim and Eric cast member was (is?) a member of the Junior Christian Teaching Bible Lesson posse himself. Praise the lord that Tim and Eric have seen fit to provide gainful employment for these two rather eccentric fellows.

You can find numerous examples of David’s cable access handiwork on YouTube but here is a very revealing segment from The Daily Show where we catch him describing how his wife left him and trying to give out her phone number so people can harass her for committing adultery!! (I once recall seeing him tell a story about getting a venereal disease on a live cable access show and then giving the woman’s name and telephone number out on air. Each time someone would call in, the host would tease Hart that it was this woman on the line and that she was really angry. He seemed genuinely terrified every time the phone would ring).

One day my wife and I were driving down Beverly Blvd and we saw a determined guy with a deteriorating Afro darting across the street. “Hey… look… it’s….” I said, stammering at the famous face in front of my car, but she was quicker. “SALOME!” she shouted and David Liebe Hart grinned from ear to ear that, happy that at long last, he was finally being recognized.

Sadly Chip the Black Boy was “kidnapped” from David and has not been seen again. Don’t expect to see him on any milk cartons.

David Liebe Hart Was Viciously Slandered.

An uncomfortable David Liebe Hart anecdote

David Liebe Hart and Adam Papagan on MySpace (listen to their paean to “Ellen Degeneres”!)

Chip The Black Boy

He’s More Than Meets the Ear; The Hollywood Bowl’s ‘puppet man’ would like a better gig, but mostly he just wants to belong (Los Angeles Times article by Tricia Nelson)

Originally posted 08/20/09.