Howard Jerome

RolesCo-Founder

Howard Jerome Gomberg was a Brooklyn-born actor, comedian, and improv innovator who spent most of his career in Canada and co-founded the Canadian Improv Games in 1977, creating the country's primary competitive improvisational comedy program for high school students. He also collaborated with David Shepherd on early Improv Olympics formats. Before and alongside his comedy career he worked as a professional wrestler, a football player, a folk singer, and a poet, and he built an extensive film and television acting career in Canada that included roles in Naked Lunch (1991), Barney's Version (2010), and Lucky Number Slevin (2006). He died in Hamilton, Ontario, on December 17, 2021.

Career

Howard Jerome Gomberg was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1939 and pursued a wide range of careers before establishing himself as an actor and improv innovator in Canada. He worked as a professional wrestler under the ring name Erich von Hess, competing in professional wrestling circuits before the sport's television era had fully transformed it, and he also worked as a football player, a folk singer in the tradition that flourished in the early 1960s, and a poet, developing a range of creative and physical disciplines that informed his subsequent work in comedy and performance.

Gomberg eventually settled in Canada, where he built an extensive career as an actor in film, television, and stage spanning several decades. His film credits include Naked Lunch (1991), David Cronenberg's challenging adaptation of William Burroughs's novel, in which he performed alongside Peter Weller and Judy Davis; Barney's Version (2010), the adaptation of Mordecai Richler's novel starring Paul Giamatti and Dustin Hoffman; and Lucky Number Slevin (2006), the crime thriller starring Josh Hartnett, Bruce Willis, and Morgan Freeman. Beyond these major productions, he undertook extensive voice acting work in animated television series throughout his Canadian career, contributing to multiple productions in a medium where his versatile vocal range could be applied across varied character types.

In 1977, Gomberg co-founded the Canadian Improv Games, a nationally recognized competitive improvisational comedy program for high school students. The Canadian Improv Games brought structured competitive improv to students across the country, establishing a framework in which high school teams would compete in improvised scenes and formats judged by panels, creating an educational and competitive pathway for the form that made it accessible to young people who were not connected to professional theater institutions. The program established itself as one of the primary structures through which young Canadians encountered and developed improvisational performance skills, and it has continued across subsequent decades under ongoing organizational stewardship, with the Howard Jerome Trophy awarded in Gomberg's honor.

Gomberg also collaborated with David Shepherd, a co-founder of The Compass Players in Chicago who had pioneered improvisational comedy performance for popular audiences in the 1950s, on early Improv Olympics formats. Shepherd had continued developing competitive improvisational frameworks throughout his career after the Compass Players dissolved, working on structures in which improv teams competed in formats inspired by the Olympic Games model. Gomberg's collaboration extended that work into the Canadian context where he was simultaneously building the Canadian Improv Games infrastructure, connecting the American improv tradition Shepherd represented with Gomberg's Canadian institutional work.

Gomberg died in Hamilton, Ontario, on December 17, 2021, at age eighty-two.

Historical Context

The Canadian Improv Games' founding in 1977 represented a significant institutional development in the dissemination of improvisational performance education beyond the professional comedy world. While Keith Johnstone's Theatresports format was also using competitive structures to extend improv to new audiences in Canada during the same period, the Canadian Improv Games specifically targeted high school students, creating an educational rather than entertainment-focused competitive improv program and building a national infrastructure for youth improv engagement.

Gomberg's collaboration with David Shepherd on Improv Olympics formats connects his work to the broader international movement to develop competitive and structured improvisational frameworks during the 1970s and 1980s. Shepherd's career-long interest in bringing improvisation to popular audiences through competitive formats, which dated from his Compass Players period through his subsequent work in Chicago and internationally, found a Canadian partner in Gomberg, and their collaboration represents one of the international connections through which improv ideas circulated between the American and Canadian improv communities during this formative period.

The ongoing Canadian Improv Games, now honoring Gomberg with the Howard Jerome Trophy, represents one of the most successful examples of a competitive youth improv program maintaining institutional continuity across multiple decades, growing from a co-founder's initiative into a nationally recognized educational program serving students throughout the country.

Legacy

The Canadian Improv Games, which Gomberg co-founded in 1977 and which continues with the Howard Jerome Trophy, represents his most durable institutional contribution to Canadian performing arts education. The program has introduced competitive improvisational performance to generations of Canadian high school students, providing an entry point into the form that did not require professional aspiration or geographic proximity to a major improv theater, and has served as an entry point into the performing arts for many young people who did not pursue comedy as a career.

Gomberg's wide-ranging career, from professional wrestling and football through folk music, poetry, film acting, and improv innovation, documents an unusual personal trajectory that brought broad experiential range to his comedy and performance work. His acting credits in major Canadian films including Naked Lunch and Barney's Version place him within the history of Canadian cinema of the 1990s and 2000s, and his extensive voice acting career demonstrates the longevity and adaptability of his performing presence across multiple media contexts.

Early Life and Training

Howard Jerome Gomberg was born on August 16, 1939, in Brooklyn, New York. Before entering the comedy world he pursued an unusually varied career as a professional wrestler under the ring name Erich von Hess, a football player, a folk singer, and a poet.