Early Life and Career
Wright was born in Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and grew up in Burlington, Massachusetts, one of four children of Lucille “Dolly” (née Lomano) and Alexander K. Wright. He was raised Catholic. His mother was Italian American and his father was of Scottish descent. Wright's father, an electronics technician who "tested a lot of stuff for the Apollo space program," became a truck driver after that program ended.
Wright spent two years obtaining an associate's degree from Middlesex Community College in Bedford, Massachusetts, before enrolling at Emerson College. He graduated from the latter in 1978 and began performing stand-up comedy in 1979 at the Boston comedy club the Comedy Connection. He cites George Carlin and Woody Allen among his influences.
In 1982 Peter Lassally, executive producer of The Tonight Show, noticed Wright performing on a bill with other local comics at the comedy club Ding Ho, in Cambridge's Inman Square, a venue Wright described as "half Chinese restaurant and half comedy club. It was a pretty weird place". Lassally booked Wright on The Tonight Show, where the comic so impressed host Johnny Carson and the studio audience that Wright was brought back less than a week later. In May 2000, Wright and other Ding Ho alumni, including Lenny Clarke, Barry Crimmins, Steve Sweeney, Bill Sohonage, and Jimmy Tingle, appeared at a reunion benefit for comic Bob Lazarus, suffering from leukemia.
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