Improv ace who earned TV fame as Round Table Pizza guy

April 15, 2021 • The Datebook • Sam Whiting 

Improv artist Bill Bonham had a stage presence that stood out for the very reason that he did not stand out.

Soft-faced, balding and paunchy, Bonham was also sneaky funny. He took this combination to the stage as an unglued Chicago Cubs fan in the play “Bleacher Bums” and took it to the small screen as pitchman for Round Table Pizza, founded by Bay Area native William R. Larson. Bonham made the pizza commercials into goofy skits and gained broad exposure during the 1985 Super Bowl when the San Francisco 49ers defeated the Miami Dolphins.

He also had bit parts in movies, published a memoir, had a longstanding satirical column as a restaurant reviewer and produced a CD as a singer-songwriter. But whatever he did and wherever he went, everyone, including the stranger who would become his wife, would say the same thing: “You’re the Round Table Pizza guy.”

Bonham  trained as a classical French chef in Seattle, but was better at joking and cooking. In the late ’70s, he moved to San Francisco.

When the comedy scene was booming in the 1980s and ’90s, all the major comedy clubs had improv nights — the Open Theatre and the Holy City Zoo both on Clement Street, the Other Cafe in Cole Valley, Lipps in the basement of the Hotel Phillips, South of Market, the Punch Line downtown, the Improv near Union Square. Each club had its own house improv band too, with names such as Spaghetti Jam, the Committee and National Theatre of the Deranged. Bonham worked with all of them.

Audiences never tired of his creations: the Rev. Lionel Train, an evangelical preacher who could coax the audience into whistling “whoo whoo” at his command; Roaring Buck McCoy, who ran a  cattle ranch on Divisadero Street; and Oren Feldmiller, a nerdy 8-year-old in a beanie with a chinstrap trying to keep an embarrassing chronic condition from the kids at school.

“Of all the people in the Deranged, Bill was probably the most fun for the audience to watch,” said founding member Geoff Bolt. “He absolutely became his characters. There was no Bill Bonham onstage.”

His break came in the early 1980s when he was cast as one of the leads in “Bleacher Bums,” a play set in the outfield stands during an afternoon game at Wrigley Field.

Bonham’s “Bleacher Bums” performance led to a TV ad campaign, in character, as an Oakland A’s fan.

Bonham later played a drunk at a high school reunion in “Peggy Sue Got Married” (1986), and a garage owner in “Tucker: The Man and His Dream” (1988), both directed by Francis Ford Coppola.

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