THE FUNNIEST PEOPLE IN TELEVISION AND RADIO: 250 ANECDOTES

By David Bruce

Dedicated with Love to Jeremy and Jennifer Jacobs

Copyright 2007 by Bruce D. Bruce

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Cover Photograph

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The Funniest People in Television and Radio

Chapter 1: Actors to Critics

Actors

• Star Trek: The Experience can be seen at the Las Vegas Hilton. Among other attractions are actors portraying characters from the various Star Trek series. Many of the actors are very good, and they stay in character. For example, a famous Ferengi is Quark. When a fan yelled “Quark!” at an actor in a Ferengi costume, the actor sighed and said, “Billions of Ferengi in the Universe, and they [Hu-Mans] all think we are Quark!” The Ferengi are a notoriously acquisitive species, and Star Trek fan Kevin Wagner was shocked that an actor playing a Ferengi agreed to pose for free for a photograph with a fan. Therefore, Kevin quoted the 13th Rule of Acquisition to the Ferengi: “Anything worth doing is worth doing for money.” However, the actor playing the Ferengi knew his stuff: “Don’t quote the Rules of Acquisition to me, Hu-Man. Free publicity!”

• Fans of Buffy the Vampire Slayer were shocked in Season 2 when Angel, a bad vampire turned good, then bad again, killed the interesting and important character Jenny Calendar in the episode titled “Passion.” According to an interview with series creator Josh Whedon, the killing of an interesting and important character served many purposes, including being a message to the actors: “Be very good or I’ll kill you.” (Mr. Whedon was joking. Robia LaMorte, the actress who played Jenny Calendar, was very, very good.)

• Jack Riley played the character of the insulting, misanthropic Mr. Elliot Carlin on The Bob Newhart Show. One of his favorite episodes was “You’re Fired, Mr. Chips,” in which the great actor Ralph Bellamy co-starred. A consummate professional, Mr. Bellamy came to work the first day with all of his lines memorized. Mr. Riley asked Mr. Bellamy how he had learned his lines, and Mr. Bellamy replied, “The way I always did it. I keep the play in my back pocket. I’m standing in line at the supermarket, I got it out.”

• Panamanian actor Rubén Blades avoids jobs that involve his playing stereotypical Hispanic roles. Once, the people behind Miami Vice offered him the role of a Hispanic drug dealer. He turned them down. In one six-month period, he was offered 15 roles. Approximately half of the roles were Columbian drug dealers; the remaining roles were Cuban drug dealers. Mr. Blades, who has a degree in International Law from Harvard, asks, “Doesn’t anybody want me to play a lawyer?”

• In the days before women commonly became pregnant first, then got married, actress Paula Winslowe read a commercial over the radio that caused the studio audience to laugh. She read, “I am a June bride. My silverware pattern is International Silver’s exquisite ‘First Love.’” The audience began laughing after the first sentence because they could see that Ms. Winslowe’s pregnancy was far too advanced for her to be a conventionally moral June bride.

• Comedian Phil Foster (who played Laverne’s father in Laverne and Shirley) and his wife knew an actress before she became famous, but when the actress got a TV series, she ignored the Fosters. But after the TV series was cancelled, she became friendly with them again. A few years later, the actress won a Supporting Actress Academy Award. Mr. Foster sent her this telegram: “CONGRATULATIONS—AND GOODBYE AGAIN.”

• Dick Gautier played Hymie the Robot in the 1960s TV series Get Smart. This was an unusual role, because Hymie spoke in a monotone and showed no emotion—the opposite of what an actor usually does. After Hymie had performed in a scene with Don Adams, who played Maxwell Smart, Mr. Adams would sometimes say, “Dick, that was absolutely one-dimensional,” then give him a thumbs-up sign.

• During the Avengers episode “Mandrake,” Honor Blackman, who played Mrs. Cathy Gale, accidentally knocked out pro wrestler Jackie Pallo during a fight scene, kicking him in the face and knocking him backward into an open grave. He remained unconscious for six or seven minutes, and the newspapers had a field day with the story. For a while, Ms. Blackman was afraid that she had ruined his career.

• Sarah Michelle Gellar, star of TV’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer, in which she regularly killed vampires with a combination of karate moves and stakes to the heart, really got into the role. She once visited an amusement park where an actor dressed as a vampire jumped out to scare the amusement park visitors—Sarah gave the “vampire” a karate chop.

• For a while, Ray Engle was the voice of old-time radio hero Sky King. He carried a gun and acted like a character out of the Old West. One day, when a director criticized his performance, Mr. Engle drew his gun, shouted, “You can’t talk to Sky King like that!”—and shot a hole in a wall of the radio studio.

• The hit TV series Knight Rider, featuring a car that had artificial intelligence and communicated using a human voice, started life as a joke. Brandon Tartikoff, an NBC executive, used to joke that he needed a TV series that starred a talking car so that the leading man wouldn’t need much talent at acting.

• Gypsy Rose Lee starred as Phyllis Diller’s nosy neighbor in the TV sitcom The Pruitts of Southampton. Ms. Lee could be difficult. Getting ready to do the show one day, she started to scream. The man doing her hair complained, “I haven’t even touched you.” Ms. Lee replied, “But you’re going to.”

• Alan Young got the part of Wilbur Post in Mr. Ed after George Burns, the show’s producer (Mr. Burns became a TV producer after his wife, Gracie Allen, retired from show business), said, “I think we should get Alan Young. He looks like the kind of a guy that a horse would talk to.”

• In 1984, Lily Tomlin was nominated for an Emmy for an appearance as Ernestine the telephone operator in Live … and in Person. Ms. Tomlin dressed as Ernestine at the awards ceremony—when she lost, Ernestine pouted.

Ad-Libs

• While taping an appearance on TV in a special produced by Norman Lear called I Love Liberty, comedian Geri Jewell ran into a problem: No one was laughing. She stopped and told the audience, “I’m sorry. I need help. I need a line. I need … someone to laugh.” This ad-lib made the audience howl. Fortunately, Mr. Lear came on stage and told her what the problem had been—for the first part of her performance the microphone hadn’t been working and so the audience couldn’t hear her. She started over again, and this time the audience laughed throughout her performance.

• In the days of live television, mistakes did happen. Ed Wynn once forgot his lines and couldn’t see the cue cards. He ad-libbed, “I must have something to say—otherwise I wouldn’t be standing here.”

Advertising

• In the 1960s, the advertising company W.B. Doner and Company created a series of TV commercials that asked about Tootsie Pops, “How many licks does it take to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop?” In one commercial, a young boy is advised by his angel side to keep on licking, while his devil side advises him to give in to temptation and bite the Tootsie Pop to get to the Tootsie Roll center quicker. The boy gives 187 licks before giving in to temptation and biting the Tootsie Pop. The commercial ends with these words: “How many licks does it take to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop? The world may never know.” This commercial was so popular that people wrote the Tootsie Roll Company about how many licks it takes to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop. The company responded by giving the writers Clean Stick Award certificates.

• In the early days of television, everything was live—which allowed for the opportunity to make mistakes. In Columbus, Ohio, a man named Spook Beckman often did a commercial for Big Bev hamburgers, in which he took a big bite out of a hamburger, then said (after pushing the food out of the way of his tongue), “Big Bev—it’s delicious!” Unfortunately, the next thing the viewers saw one day was not the cartoon they were supposed to see. Due to a mistake at the TV studio, the viewers at home were treated to the sight of Mr. Beckman spitting the hamburger into a sink.

• Balanchine ballerina Allegra Kent appeared in a few television commercials, some of which were very successful, but she did not get every part she auditioned for. In one case, a sadistic producer told her that she did not get the part because she was “not nubile enough.” He also wanted her to recommend a nubile ballet dancer “aged 18 to 20.” Ms. Kent responded, “Oh, gee, I just can’t think of anybody that young, and you happen to be a tactless numbskull.”

• Henry Morgan was a comedian who knew how to treat a sponsor—like dirt. One of Mr. Morgan’s radio sponsors (until they fired him) was the maker of the Oh Henry candy bars. While doing commercials for Oh Henry candy bars, Mr. Morgan would say, “Yes, Oh Henry is a meal in itself. But you eat three meals of Oh Henrys and your teeth will fall out.” But Mr. Morgan did even worse than this—from the candy maker’s viewpoint. After one commercial for Oh Henry candy bars, he told the radio audience, “Feed your children enough Oh Henrys, and they’ll get sick and die.”

• Alka-Seltzer once had a very funny TV commercial in which a man making a commercial for spaghetti and meatballs keeps blowing his line—“Mamma mia! That’s some spicy meatball!”—take after take, forcing him to consume more and more meatballs and causing indigestion, which is of course cured by Alka-Seltzer. In real life, the man making the commercial, Jack Somach, suffered through 175 takes, requiring him to bite into 175 meatballs. He skipped lunch and dinner that day.

• Jack Benny’s radio series occasionally made fun of its sponsors. For example, in one commercial, a telegram was read that supposedly came from a Canada Dry Ginger Ale salesman after he had found several people lost in the Sahara Desert without water for 40 days: “I came to their rescue, giving each of them a glass of Canada Dry. Not one of them said they didn’t like it.” (Believe it or not, Canada Dry stopped sponsoring The Jack Benny Show, and General Motors became the new sponsors.)

• An actress was supposed to say these lines on a radio commercial: “Helen, darling, what a delightful necklace! It looks as if it had tiny real violets entwined in it. It speaks of springtime and the outdoors. It gives you an aura of freshness and youth, hope and beauty!” The actress performed flawlessly during rehearsals and during the performance, except that she forgot it was the performance and after saying her lines complained, “Do I actually have to say this garbage?”

• When David Brenner appeared live on The Ed Sullivan Show, he was a major hit—the audience applauded so much that Mr. Sullivan brought him back on stage to take a bow. While acknowledging the audience’s applause, however, Mr. Brenner looked at a TV monitor. The TV audience was seeing none of this wild audience enthusiasm, for after Mr. Brenner’s final joke, the TV cameras had cut to a Preparation H commercial.

• While appearing on My Three Sons, William Frawley (he also played Fred Mertz on I Love Lucy) and the other actors were required to do commercials for the sponsors’ products. Mr. Frawley enjoyed the taping sessions when executives from Quaker Oats or Heinz were present. He used to take a bite of the sponsor’s product, make a face, spit the food out, and then cuss while saying how bad it was.

• In 1986, Michael Jackson made almost $15 million by appearing in two Pepsi TV commercials and serving as a consultant on a third commercial. The commercials did not show Mr. Jackson drinking Pepsi, and they did not show Mr. Jackson holding a Pepsi in his hand. Why not? Mr. Jackson is a Jehovah’s Witness, and he does not drink beverages that contain caffeine—including Pepsi.

• Jackie Gleason stood up for the integrity of The Honeymooners. His character, Ralph Kramden, lived in an apartment with an icebox—the Kramdens were too poor to have a refrigerator. A refrigerator company offered to sponsor the show if the Kramdens got rid of the icebox and used one of its products, but Mr. Gleason refused.

• In a very successful publicity stunt in 1933, Gracie’s brother turned up missing, and Gracie wandered from radio show to radio show searching for him. In a tense radio drama featuring a submerged submarine, a character radioed the submarine captain and asked, “Is Gracie Allen’s brother down there with you?”

• Some celebrities are not for sale. Lily Tomlin once turned down $500,000 to have her character Ernestine (“One ringy-dingy. Two ringy-dingys. A gracious good morning to you. Have I reached the party to whom I am speaking?”) perform in commercials for AT&T.

Alcohol

• Dodgers president Branch Rickey used to talk to all the Dodgers once in a while, even the minor leaguers. One thing he stressed in his talks with the players was the importance of leading a good, morally pure life. One day, he talked to Chuck Connors, a minor-league Dodger first baseman. He asked Chuck, “Son, do you smoke?” Chuck answered, “No, sir, Mr. Rickey.” He then asked, “Chuck, do you run around with fast women?” Chuck answered, “No, sir.” Next, Mr. Rickey asked, “Do you drink hard liquor?” This time Chuck answered, “Mr. Rickey, if I have to drink to play for you, I want to be traded.” (And yes, this is the Chuck Connors who later starred in the TV series The Rifleman.)

• When brothers Glen and Les Charles and friend James Burrows set about creating Cheers, they did research in bars. They discovered that often people go to bars for the companionship, not for the alcohol, and that is the kind of bar they chose for Cheers to be set in. At one bar, they heard the regulars discussing soup. Les Charles remembers, “We were sitting there, listening to them have this extended conversation about soup. They were all really into it. … They were having the time of their lives.” For an episode of Cheers, they had the regulars discuss the world’s sweatiest movie—another topic of conversation they had heard discussed in a friendly neighborhood bar.

• At a BBC Light Entertainment Christmas party, Monty Python member Graham Chapman started crawling around the floor biting people’s ankles. This joke started to get out of hand, so Monty Python TV director Ian MacNaughton went over to him and said, “Graham, can you just select whose ankles you bite?” Mr. Chapman stood up, brushed himself off, said, “I get the picture, old boy,” and behaved like a gentleman during the rest of the party.

• Cavalcade of America once devoted an entire broadcast to Alcoholics Anonymous, but ran into a problem with the name of the announcer: Tom Collins. He was able to help disguise the problem by using a middle initial when he stated his name at the sign-off.

• The then-President of CBS, Bill Paley, once came into the dressing room of George Burns and Gracie Allen with a bottle of champagne. He poured glassfuls all around, then said, “Bottoms up.” Gracie asked, “Isn’t that an awkward position for drinking?”

• Ernie Kovacs used to own a watch on which every hour—instead of being 1 through 12—was 5. In other words, no matter what time it was, it was the cocktail hour.

Animals

• Early in her career, actress Betty White lived in an apartment where pets weren’t allowed. However, she fell in love with a dog and brought him home. To get her dog past the security guards so he could take his morning walk, she used to hold him on her arm and throw a coat over him. For a long time, she thought she was fooling everyone, until one day a security guard said to her, “Miss White, your tail is wagging.” She looked down, and sure enough, her dog’s tail was sticking out from under the coat and wagging. The security guard grinned and allowed her to keep her pet. (Betty White came from a family who loved pets. In her family, it was the parents who brought a dog home, then begged, “Betty, he followed us home. Please, can we keep him?”)

• Vincent Price once appeared in a comic skit on TV in which his co-star was a trained chimpanzee that was supposed to mix a martini and then light a cigarette. The chimp mixed the martini without any problem, but ignored the cigarettes in take after take. Finally, the chimpanzee’s trainer figured out what the problem was—the cigarettes used in the filming weren’t the chimp’s brand! Once the chimp’s preferred brand of mentholated cigarettes were used in the scene, the chimp lit the cigarette.

• Many people enjoyed listening to Milton Cross as he announced the radio broadcasts of the Metropolitan Opera—so did some animals. A letter to the Met reported, “I’m not particularly fond of Milton Cross’ voice, but my dog loves it. As soon as I turn on the radio and Cross comes over the airwaves, the pooch remains glued to the set. When the music starts, he leaves. As soon as Cross is on again, the dog is back—all ears.”

• When Patrick Macnee shared an apartment with fellow actor Dennis Price, he ran into a problem. Mr. Price kept a flock of chickens in the bathroom. One advantage was that the roommates always had fresh eggs for breakfast, although there were also some obvious disadvantages. When Mr. Macnee remonstrated with Mr. Price about the chickens, Mr. Price asked, “Can you lay eggs?”

• Comedian Wally Cox (TV’s Mr. Peepers) was a bird expert. At his farm in Connecticut, birds even flew to him and rested on his hands and arms. One of his friends wanted very much to do this. She learned the proper birdcalls, but the birds wouldn’t come to her the way they came to Wally. Finally, the woman put on Wally’s hat and coat—seconds later, she was covered with birds.

• During World War II, Spike Milligan and some fellow soldiers were shipped to Algiers. On the voyage, the soldiers became trigger-happy, frequently firing anti-aircraft guns at seagulls. Eventually, the ship’s Captain told them, “Gentlemen, all seagulls in this area are unarmed. Can we refrain from shooting at them?”

• Ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev once watched a nature show during which a sheep carcass was thrown into the Everglades, where frenzied alligators immediately devoured it. Mr. Nureyev recognized the scene: “Ah, Paris Opéra.”

• Jack Webb, star of Dragnet, took steps not to be overwhelmed by success. To remind himself to be humble, he kept a photograph of his Hollywood Walk of Fame star—on which a dog had left a stinky memento.

• Columbus, Ohio, radio deejay Bob Simpson once asked listeners for silly pet names. One caller had a friend who had named his cat “Stir Fry.” Why? “It’s a threat.”

Auditions

• In the early days of television, when most shows were live, many local stations featured homegrown talent, which meant that TV directors such as Paul Ritts were “treated” to a variety show weekly as they tried to find a few people with actual talent to put on the air. Of course, actual talent was frequently absent (many of the TV people working during the auditions turned off their earphones until after the auditions were over), although some performers tried to make up for it with deviousness. Often, these performers would find an excuse to speak to the person auditioning talent after the audition was over; that way, they could make a plug for themselves. One day, a pretty dancer who was much more talented at being pretty than she was at dancing stopped by Mr. Ritts’ office to explain that she had “mistakenly” written her old address instead of her new address on a form she had filled out. Mr. Ritts got the form out so he could make the correction, and the pretty dancer sat down and crossed her legs. Since she was still wearing her dance costume—which was both scanty and flimsy and only sort of covered by a scanty and flimsy outer garment, the crossing of her legs was an event of interest to almost any man and more than a few women. One of those women happened to be Mr. Ritts’ wife, who walked into his office, looked at the dancer’s legs, remarked that dresses were definitely getting shorter, then paid a visit to her husband’s boss. Shortly afterward, Mr. Ritts received a note from his boss informing him that due to his many other duties someone else would henceforward audition talent.

• Pop star and actress Brandy attended the Hollywood High Performing Arts Center, where she studied acting and singing. She thought that her drama teacher would recommend her for auditions, but that didn’t happen. One day, Brandy asked her drama teacher, “Why aren’t you sending me out on calls?” The teacher replied, “Because you’re not drop-dead gorgeous.” The criticism didn’t stop Brandy, who starred as Cinderella on television. By the way, one person who had faith in Brandy’s talents from the beginning was Brandy’s mother, who, after giving birth to Brandy, told her physician, “You just birthed a star.”

• David Hasselhoff starred in Baywatch, which was a huge international hit. Earlier, he had struggled as an actor, and so he was kind to struggling actors. Often, after a first scene in an audition he knew that he could not use a particular actor in the TV series, but he would allow the actor to do a second scene anyway. Why? He says he did this “because I knew they’d practiced, because I knew how much it hurt me when I got rejected when I first started.”

• Early in her career, Lucille Ball wanted to be a showgirl. During the audition, producers would line the women up in a line, then walk down the line, looking the women over. Lucy knew that some of the other women were better endowed than she, so she stuffed her bodice with toilet paper. Unfortunately, some of the toilet paper was sticking out of her bodice—this did get Lucy noticed!

Autographs

• Diana Rigg, who played the very sexy Mrs. Emma Peel on The Avengers, once declined to sign an autograph for a fan by saying, “I’m sorry, but it’s illegal to sign autographs in the street.” (It’s not, of course.) It was Ms. Rigg’s mother who answered fan mail from overeager youths by writing, “My daughter is much too old for you and what you need is a good run around the block.”

• A woman was a little too much obsessed with soap opera Another World star Paul Michael Valley. Once Mr. Valley fell and hit his head on a fireplace mantle on the set. He was put on a stretcher to be rushed to the hospital when a woman handed him a pen and asked for his autograph, saying, “I know this is a bad time ….”

Bathrooms

• An English lady—Miss Jean Marsh, actress (star of Upstairs, Downstairs)—was given a crash course in American euphemisms before coming to New York City for the first time. Her mentors told her that in American polite society, one does not use the word “toilet.” Instead, one uses such phrases and words as “ladies room,” “powder room,” “restroom,” and “lounge.” She arrived at a television studio in New York City, where a man was to give her a tour. But first he asked her, “Before I take you on a tour of the studio, would you like to use the facilities?” Miss Marsh replied, “Oh no, I’m not mechanical at all—I’d be afraid to touch anything!”

• When Robert L. Mott was working for the Captain Kangaroo Show live on TV, his sound effects room was located next to the building’s only women’s restroom. The flushes from this bathroom were very loud, and Mr. Mott understandably did not want the sound of the flushes to be heard on the children’s program; therefore, before each show started, he put an “Out of Order” sign on the door of the restroom. One show, he had just turned on the microphone for a sound effect on the show, when a woman screeched, “OUT OF ORDER! OH, F**K!”

• When Tracey Ullman was 13 years old, she heard a knock on the door. When she answered it, she discovered a woman, who asked to use the bathroom. Tracey led the woman to the bathroom, which turned out to be a mistake because the woman was a bag lady who locked the door, then proceeded to take a shower, wash her hair, and shave her legs. Finally, Tracey’s stepfather picked the lock and was able to get her out of their home.

• In the 1960s, Ethel Winant was the head of casting for CBS, and as head of casting, she was a powerful woman at a time when few powerful women existed in television. In fact, no women’s restroom was close to her office. Whenever she needed to make use of a restroom, she went to the men’s restroom—and left her high heels outside the door so her male co-workers would know not to enter.

Cartoons

• Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera worked together on many Tom and Jerry cartoons, as well as cartoons starring the characters The Flintstones, The Jetsons, Huckleberry Hound, Yogi Bear, and Scoobie-Doo. Both were capable of causing mischief. When they were youngsters, Bill and Norma, his sister, cracked every window in the family’s barn. Of course, they had a good reason: They liked the patterns the cracked windows made. As a cartoonist working on Tom and Jerry, Joe once drilled a hole in a wall, then he inserted a soda straw into the hole. When the cartoonist who worked in the office next door sat down, Joe filled his mouth with water, then used the straw to spray the back of the cartoonist’s head with water. This is the artistic sensibility and the sense of humor that resulted in the Tom and Jerry cartoons winning seven Academy Awards. Nowadays, of course, the Tom and Jerry cartoons are shown on television.

• Leon Schlesinger was cartoon director Tex Avery’s boss, and he was a very hard man to get money from. However, he loved to gamble, so when Mr. Avery wanted a $25 raise, Mr. Schlesinger proposed that they draw cards to see who got the highest-value playing card. If Mr. Schlesinger won, Mr. Avery would get no raise. If Mr. Avery won, then he would get a $50 raise. Fortunately for Mr. Avery, he won—jack to eight.

Censorship

• Tommy Smothers realized that his 1960s TV variety show The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour was controversial, and he knew that it was only a matter of time before the censors would start making very strong “requests” to tone down the satire—especially the political satire. He had a decision to make: either fight to keep the satire or be bought off and lose the satire. He could fight the censors, or he could continue to live the easy life of a major television celebrity with lots of money, lots of cars, and lots of houses. He made his decision. He sold off cars and houses to reduce the kind of expenses that make courage difficult, fought the censors, and eventually his show was cancelled despite its coveted high ratings among younger people with lots of disposable income. Of course, by that time Mr. Smothers had made being fired affordable.

• In the early days of radio, producers avoided controversy; however, feminist Olga Petrova got her point across anyway. Before Ms. Petrova’s program of singing, the station manager asked what she planned to say on the air. She replied, “Just a few nursery stories like ‘The Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe.’” There’s nothing controversial about nursery stories, is there? Wrong. On the air, Ms. Petrova said, “There was an old woman who lived in a shoe. She had so many children because she didn’t know what to do.” Before the station manager realized the satiric meaning of what she had said, it had already been broadcast.

Children

• Tori Spelling’s father was Aaron Spelling, a spectacularly successful and wealthy TV magnate. Because of her family connection, Tori co-starred in Beverly Hills, 90210. Growing up in such a wealthy family led to experiences that were much different from those of lower- and middle-class kids, although for Tori they were the only experiences she knew. For example, she got a nose job as a teenager, and her mother reserved one room out of a 123-room mansion for the sole purpose of wrapping presents. In addition, when Tori was very young, her father trucked in several tons of snow so that she could enjoy a white Christmas in Los Angeles.