Bob Golub

Bob Golub is the quintessential realized American dream. Poor kid from a family of ten, leaves a one-movie theater western Pennsylvania steel mill town and through sheer fortitude and drive becomes a headlining comedian and movie actor. Bob’s vast array of experience in the entertainment world has lead him on The Tonight Show to a role in Martin Scorsese’s blockbuster film Goodfellas.

In his relentless pursuit of the role he landed, was quoted by Ed Masley of the Pittsburgh Press, describing what led him to his part. “I didn’t know any better” Golub says of his first interview with the casting director. “I went in there dressed as Jimmy the Gent with two thousand cash and a gun”. This resulted in being cast as a tough truck driver in the dinner scene. Golub spent six months doing character research, which led him, mistakenly, to John Gotti’s lair, which almost got him shot. The Jimmy the Gent role went to another actor by the name of De Niro.

Both media and press have closely followed the activities of Golub’s entertainment career. Cindy Adams, of the New York Post captured the essence of what makes Bob tick in her September 1998 column: “I’m a street kid. I grew up tough. Everything I wanted, I got myself.” When he landed in New York in 1984 broke, he went to the streets and sold Bob’s Lucky Potatoes, which got him featured on every news station and newspapers in the country.

Bob has co-hosted and been a guest on hundreds of radio stations around the country and has filled in at LA’s number one AM talk radio KFI. He is working on a book called The Big House to the White House. Bob went from being in prison in the 70’s to being a guest at the White House in ten years.

Bob developed and produced the first stand-up comedy for the deaf and hard of hearing people. His fund-raiser has raised over two million dollars for the League for the Hard of Hearing in New York. He was given the Volunteer of the Year award in 1996.

Since moving to Los Angeles in 1993, he was a special guest performer on Evening at the Improv three times. Ross Mark, booker of the Tonight Show, called Bob one of the most unique comics working today. He is featured in national commercials and is co-starring in Terry Zwigoff’s new film Art School Confidential playing Steve Buscemi’s, henchman. Bob’s hit one-man show, Dodo, has become a Docu/comedy with Bob directing and starring. This sport theme Documentary recently won best documentary at both Pittsburgh Film festival and New York Independent Film Festival and is being turned into a film.

​Bob Golub began his career as a stand-up comedian in the 1980s following a two-year prison term for cocaine dealing, appearing in various clubs in New York City, Pittsburgh, Miami, Las Vegas and Los Angeles. His intensely profane and candid style has, over the years, landed him featured roles in such films as Goodfellas, Art School Confidential, The Glass Beads, Johnny Virus, The Kings of Brooklyn, and The Watermelon. Golub’s self-written, self-directed independent feature docu-comedy Dodo is a unique synthesis of taped live performance, professionally shot auto-biographical recreations of past events, and hundreds of hours of home video featuring himself and his family. Originally a one-man show, Dodo derives its title from the nickname given to Golub’s deceased father who, having lost an eye in a freak childhood baseball accident, was unable obtain work in the local steel mills of Farrel, Pennsylvania. With no real skills, Dodo began a family roof-repair business which provided some income.

In both the one-man show and film of the same name, Dodo is portrayed as an angry and frustrated alcoholic, who routinely beat his wife and children. For Golub himself, the only real way to avoid beatings was to become funny enough to make his father laugh in spite of his anger, thus deflecting violence. Bob Golub’s one-man show ran just over an hour, and toured America from 2003 to 2006, receiving large audiences and highly supportive reviews. Industry Link

Bob Golub is known for Goodfellas (1990), The Little Things (2021) and Die Laughing (2017).