D.C. Benny was born Benjamin Wartofsky in Washington, DC sometime during the 60's, the first child of a struggling artist and a struggling modern dancer. There was a lot of struggling. His Polish/Austrian Jewish background was confusing because he looked like a giant Mexican. Early on, the youngster showed comedic promise. At a young age he started doing random impressions of Martin Luther King and Japanese actor Toshiro Mifune, which made his parents and kindergarten teachers laugh even though none of them knew who Toshiro Mifune was.
Benny grew up an off-white kid in the predominantly black DC public schools. There he learned that being funny would save him from the multiple ass-whoopings that were a rite of passage in grade school. He also studied Kung Fu under the tutelage of a very large Jamaican, which came in handy when his tormenters didn't have a sense of humor and took the sting out of living on welfare. During this time, his parents produced two more brothers, who followed in the Wartofsky tradition of getting kicked out of schools for not going to them. The brothers looked out for each other and "had each other's back" during constant run-ins with the authorities of all kinds. Never a dull moment.
In high school Benny gave up Kung Fu to pursue break dancing with an all-Nicaraguan crew named The Bad Boy Breakers. He also tutored them in English so they could compete in Rap battles with the rhymes he wrote for them when he was supposed to be doing homework. Sample: "My name is Garcia, and I rhyme real hard, I got da baddest crew, but no green card..." Benny put his rap career on hold after losing a talent competition to a Prince lip sinc'er from North Carolina in a hotly contested decision. He turned his talents to writing funny skits that he and his roommate would perform on a college radio show. Everything was going well until a satirical skit on how bad the cafeteria food hit the airwaves. Alas, the show was no more.
Never a quitter, Benny found new ways to vent his creativity. One favorite was dressing up as a foreign student and showing up to classes he wasn't a part of. He would then ask inflammatory questions in character until he was asked to leave.
After high school, he began attending college in College Park, Maryland at the University of Maryland. He supplemented his income by working at a fancy men's wear boutique and started working as a professional male model. Eventually, he tried stand-up comedy at a Korean Moonie bar in College Park. When a bunch of drunk rednecks started heckling him, he abandoned his prepared act, started insulting them, and had the whole place laughing. Soon after, he moved to New York to pursue his dream of being a stand-up comic.
When he arrived in New York, he didn't make it easy for himself. He became the only white comic working at Harlem's Uptown Comedy club where people came to heckle him every week. An old comic named Uncle Jimmy Mac - who gave everyone nicknames - nicknamed him D.C. Benny and the name stuck.
While at the Uptown, Benny would do all his characters, Puerto Rican building superintendents, Pakastani cabdrivers, Korean deli owners, Israeli Gangsters, Jamaican Nannies; everyone he interacted with became part of his act. To blow off steam he embarked on a secret career as an amateur boxer, fighting out of Brooklyn's world-famous Gleason's Gym, the palace of broken noses, his included. He soon met and married a beautiful black psychologist who was the best thing that ever happened to him.
Over the last few years, Benny's comedy and face have been popping up everywhere. His comedy performances have been featured on "Showtime at the Apollo," "The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson," and "Comedy Centrals USO Tour" As an actor, he's made numerous television appearances, including "Law and Order," "Now and Again," and the soap-opera "Guiding Light," where he was given the opportunity to use his finely honed fighting skills to beat-up one of the main characters. You might be a little surprised to know that he's also the "How You Doin'" guy from the popular Budweiser ad campaign. Most recently, he was featured in his very own Comedy Central half-hour comedy special, was a finalist in NBC's Last Comic Standing and is in the films "Freedomland" with Samuel Jackson, "Where God Left His Shoes" with John Leguizamo, "Spiderman 3", and as Cesar in "Illegal Tender" produced by John Singleton.
