Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast - 109. Marvin Kaplan

Episode Date: June 27, 2016

Gilbert and Frank catch up with one of their favorite comedic actors and one of the last surviving cast members of "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World," Marvin Kaplan, who's worked with pretty much everyone in his 70-year career, including Charlie Chaplin, Katharine Hepburn, Clark Gable, Jack Lemmon, Paul Newman and Lon Chaney Jr. (to name a few). Also, Marvin praises Sam Jaffe, props up Broderick Crawford, remembers Zero Mostel and risks his life for Blake Edwards. PLUS: Fritz Feld! Strother Martin! Arnold Stang takes a fall! Stanley Kramer sacks Jackie Mason! And the return (once again) of Maria Ouspenskaya! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Also, visit our terrific new website, gilbertpodcast.com, for the latest news, episodes, synopsis, behind-the-scenes photos, and videos, and other cool stuff. And if you like the show, and you know you do, please rate and review us on iTunes. Can't you see we're starved for affection? For the love of God! Hi, this is Gilbert Gottfried, and this is Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast

with my co-host, Frank Santopadre. We're here at Nutmeg Post with our engineer, Frank Ferdarosa. Our guest this week is a writer, producer, and popular actor in films, theater, TV, and commercials, with a career spanning seven decades, during which time he's worked with virtually everyone, including Charlie Chaplin, Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy, Clark Gable, Jack Benny, Ernie Koufax, Jonathan Winters, Paul Newman, David Lynch, and yes, even Lon Chaney Jr. And he's still working at age 89. He's written and produced plays, scripted TV shows such as Maud, The Maud Squad, The Adams Family, and acted in dozens of others, including The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, The Detectives, McHale's Navy, I Dream of Jeannie, Love American

Style, My World and Welcome to It, Ally McBealR., and Becker, to just name a few. For eight seasons, he's played diner patron Harry Biesmeier in hit sitcom Alice and famously voiced the lovable character Choo Choo on Hanna-Barbera's cartoon series Top Cat. Film roles include Adam's Rib, The Nutty Professor, Angels in the Outfield, Freaky Friday, Wild at Heart, and two movies we talked about a lot on this podcast, The Great Race and It's a Mad, mad, mad, mad world. Please welcome, I believe this is true, our only guest to have known both Danny Thomas and Maria Ospenskaya, the legendary Marvin Kaplan. Wow. I did a lot, didn't I? You sure did, Marvin.

Now, before anything else, anybody who listens to this podcast knows what a fan I am of Lon Chaney Jr. He was a lovely man. We worked together on a movie called Behave Yourself. And he was a very quiet kind of guy. And we had in the company we had Shelley Winters and Polly Granger and Hans Conrad and William Demarest and Lysha Cook

and everybody you can think of. And Shelley didn't know how to work as an actress and she made the picture go way over budget, and he had another assignment that he had to go into, and he had to lose that other job because there were all the delays.

But my mistake in that movie was we had to shoot each other. Sheldon Leonard and I, I fell first. Never fall first because the others are going to fall on top of me. And Lon Chaney weighed at least 210 pounds. Wow. Now, he, like another guy you've worked with, Broderick Crawford, were both. I loved him also.

I did a radio show with Broderick. His mother was the famous Helen Broderick, who was one of the best light comedians supporting people around. But Mr. Crawford, we did a suspense together. It was directed by Elliot Lewis, and it was about Dutch Schultz, and I played his secretary, bookkeeper. And we're sitting around the table, and in this cast was Bill, a wonderful actor who played Nero Wolfe, a radio actor. William Conrad.

Bill Conrad. Bill Conrad and Herb Butterfield and Jay Novello and all the top head and beater leads. And they're talking about contracts. And I said, ask Peter. I said, what does that mean, contract? He says, well, that means they took out something to bump a promise to bump somebody off. And I said, oh, my God, they're going to kill somebody. I went over to Mr. Lewis,

and I said, Mr. Lewis, I don't know if I can do this show. They're making me very nervous. They're talking about this like they're saying pass the butter. And I can't take it. It's so callous. It's so awful. He said, use it. Use all your fear. And I did, and I was fine.

Now, Mr. Crawford had had a drinking problem. And I also worked with him in Highway Patrol. And you had to get his shots early in the morning because in the afternoon he was gone. And he usually held on to the police car to say his lines. But he was a very sweet man, and I liked him very much. I heard the same thing with Cheney. He would warn people,

just you got to get it all by a certain time. And then I'm useless because he was also a drinker. He was very they were very gentle people. Marvin, take us. I had to hold up Rod Crawford across the microphone in the scenes I did with him. Oh, you had to hold him up? Yeah, because he was drunk. So, Rod Crawford was drunk and you had to hold him up?

Yeah, so he shouldn't fall either on top of me or... Or fall back, you know, do fall back. And he wasn't exactly a light guy. No, he was a big dude. Yeah. No, he was a tall person. And he was pretty much on the heavy side. And he was brilliant in all the king's men. And he was very good when he did Lenny in Of Mice and Men on Broadway.

Oh, that's right. You saw it. No, I didn't see him do that. But I saw him do Mice and Men, All the King's Men. And Mercedes McCambridge was one of my favorite radio actresses was in that. And I also, you were, getting back to the Wolfman again. I don't know if he worked with her, but he saw her in local productions.

Oh, okay. Maria Ospenskaya. I loved her. She was, I didn't actually work with her, but I knew she was teaching. And she had very long hair. She was about four foot ten. And she was marvelous in what she did. She's a great actress.

Yeah, well, she was one that started with the whole Stanislavski. She brought that over from Russia, yeah. For those of you who don't know Maria Ospenskaya. Shame on you. Yeah, number one, shame on you, yes. But you would know her from The Wolfman, best of all, where she was the old gypsy woman, Maliva. She played, yes, she played in The Wolfman with a friend of mine, Elena Verdugo. Oh, wow.

Elena Verdugo. Who's still around. Elena's still around. Yeah. We got to get her. And can you tell us the name of the legendary actress who discovered you? Oh, the one who discovered me was Katherine Hepburn. How did it happen, Marvin?

I was in the Circle Theater production of Doctor in Spite of Himself. of Doctor in Spite of Himself. Our teacher at the circle was Constance Collier, the daughter of Shakespeare. And Hepburn was preparing something Shakespearean she was going to do as you like it. And so Collier laughed so much she recommended me to Hep Hepburn come see it.

Hepburn came to the theater with Gladys Cooper and Constance Collier. And when you had people like that in the audience, they usually met the cast afterwards. usually met the cast afterwards. But this is how this producer of this theater named Jerry Epstein, who was not a nice human being, this is how he introduced us. This is the cast.

And Hepburn came up to me, and she was so beautiful. She had red hair. She was about 46 years old. No makeup whatsoever. And she was so fresh and so beautiful. I loved her.

And I said to her, she said, you're Marvin Kaplan, aren't you? I said, yes. She said, you've done a lot of work, haven't you? And I said, no, this is my first job. And she said, well, you're very good in it. And I said, I don't know what made me say this, but I said, I hope you don't think I'm being fresh or anything. But you remind me of my sister. You both have red hair and freckles.

And she said, yes, this damn son. And then I figured that was the end of that. But the next day, I had a report to rehearsal because the people in the cast thought I was terrible in this show. And so I came to rehearsal, and on the bulletin board it said, call MGM. Well, I tried to get a job as a page at MGM, so I figured that's what it was about,

but it wasn't the right extension, so I called them, they said, you have an appointment to see George Cukor at 3 o'clock. Wow. It's now about 12. I said, oh, my God. So I had to hang up, excuse myself from rehearsal,

because I dressed like a slob at rehearsal. In those days, when you went on an interview, you wore a suit and a tie and tried to look good. That doesn't happen anymore. But in those days, that was very important. So I took a bus home. I lived in a boarding house. And I didn't remember even where MGM was, so I took a cab to MGM, which is fairly expensive,

and I arrived at about 10 of 3, and I go to the talent department, and they look at me like I came to do the books. And they said, we don't watch. And I said, you must be up for the QCOR movie. And they pointed me to Mr. QCOR's office, which was in the Irving Thalberg building. And I arrived exactly at three minutes to three

and Mr. Cukor came out at three o'clock and he said, Catherine Hepburn is your agent. She saw you in this play last night and she wants you for a part in our movie. And he told us, he told me the movie was then called Man and Wife

and it was written by Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanan. And he described, he said, I need a court reporter who repeats very melodramatic testimony in a dull, flat voice. And I said, I have a dull, flat voice. And he said, I've noticed. We will return to Gilbert Gottfried's amazing colossal podcast. But first, a word from our sponsor. That's the sound of fried chicken with a spicy history. Thornton Prince was a ladies' man. To get revenge, his girlfriend hid spices in his fried chicken. He loved it so much, he opened Prince's Hot Chicken.

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All new episodes of FX's The Bear are streaming June 27, only on Disney+. And now back to the show. Marvin, tell us about working with Chaplin in the Circle Theater. Chaplin, I got the job as a fluke. William DeMille, who was my professor at USC. I started out to be a playwright.

I came out here to be a playwright. Yeah, you're from Brooklyn originally, too, we should tell people. Right, right. And DeMille gets me in his office. He says, I saw your play. It's very funny. And I think you have me in his office. He says, I saw your play. It's very funny. And I think you have a lot of talent. He says, but you haven't completed one term paper.

You've taken all our classes and that one term paper. So why don't you? He threw me out of the school. He said, why don't you get a job as an assistant stage manager somewhere and see what actors do to writers' lines? And then he threw me out. And there were only two theaters that I could go to without a car. One was the Actors Lab, and I went there. And they said they only hire their own students to be stage managers.

Then I went from there to the circle and I said, I've just come from the lab, which was the truth. And they said, we've been expecting you. They were expecting somebody else. But they gave me the job, and it was stage managing for Charlie Chaplin. And what was he like, Marvin? I heard you tell a story that he did a handstand on a table, and he must have been in his 60s.

He was the most energetic. First of all, he moved like a ballet dancer. Most graceful man I ever saw. And he was a very short man, white hair, a perfectionist, an absolute perfectionist. And I had to take down the blocking. Well, we would start rehearsals at 5 o'clock in the afternoon because he was writing limelight in the daytime. Wow.

And so we had this five o'clock and at nine o'clock we would break for dinner and he paid for everybody's dinner. We had steaks at Lucy's and Mousseau Frank. It was great food. But then we'd come back to the theater about 11 o'clock, and then we'd rehearse until 4 in the morning, and then he would go home.

Again, to the right limelight. So the rehearsals were non-union type rehearsals. And Mr. Chaplin, he wanted me, it was circle theater, which means that you have to sit in the same place to take down the notes when you see a different show. So I'm sitting down in the place, and I had to take down the blocking. And around 3 in the morning, he says to me, did you get that down? I had a note on the blocking.

And I said, yes, Reverend Davidson moves to the desk. First of all, he played all the parts. He moved for all the actors. He played Sadie Thompson. He played the native woman. But when he played Reverend Davidson, something terrible happened to him. He hated religious bigots, which is what this man was. And all the evil in this man came to the surface and he scared the hell out of him.

So he said, did you get the blocking? And I said, yes, Reverend Davidson crosses to the desk. And he said, how many steps did I take? And I said, I don't know, Mr. Chap. And he said, this time concentrate. I was ready to go. I was falling asleep. And I said, yes, yes, Mr. Chap.

And I counted. At this time, even though he scared me to death, as Reverend Davidson, I concentrated on his feet. And I said, you took seven steps, Mr. Chappell. He said, that's correct. And I realized he was a master technician. He had to work. He worked mainly in music halls and in movies

where you had to hit marks that's what they did, he was hitting marks so he was a real disciplinarian and he had I stopped the scene once because the actor

crossed his legs, the right leg over the left instead of the left leg over the right. He also believed in matching, which you do in movies. But he was, I loved him. I was like a sponge. Anything he said, I was in heaven. He was magnificent. Also, Chaplin told me two very valuable things. He said, if you have a scene with violence, do the violence offstage. It's much more frightening. Let the audience think of the violence. Pretend, let them imagine what happened offstage. He's absolutely right. And he believed in the Japanese school of acting for instance there's a scene

the first thing he had me do as the stage manager was cross out all the stage directions in the play cross them out and they had parentheses hysterically in a rising voice cross all that stuff out

and I did. And then he said, so there's a scene where she's screaming at Reverend Davidson, Sadie Thompson. She's denouncing him and screaming. And all he had Bill Shaller do, who played Reverend Davidson, was cross his legs. And you knew that she was in his power. A simple thing like crossing your leg. He believed in that kind of economy.

He was absolutely brilliant. Let me ask you about a couple of other legendary comics you worked with, Marvin. Red Skelton, who I know you were very fond of. I loved him. And Jack Benny, Jack Benny too. Red was a very kind and a very generous man. Now, the problem with Red was that he had a preview, and he had the dirtiest preview. I heard this. What does that mean? I heard that. It's creepy. Like the line was, it was a Mother's Day program. And I played a man who wanted to buy a box of candy for his mother for Valentine's Day. Right? So the line was, he offered me, he said for a quarter, she can smell the jelly beans.

And then, that's not what he said. In rehearsal, he said, well, let her come over, and for a quarter, I'll let her lick my popsicle. I heard on the Red Skelton show... I thought I was going to pass out. I heard on the Red Skelton show. I thought I was going to pass out. Yeah. I heard on the Red Skelton show when the guests would crack up, it would be remembering how he did it in rehearsal.

Interesting. He would rehearse really dirty. Exactly so. Because the next day we had to do it for an audience. We had to do the show. And I figured, oh, God, if he says this, I got to say, I'm going to say this. If he says this, I'll hate it. Well, he followed cue cards on the show.

He said everything he was supposed to say. But he looked at you like, remember what I said here last night? And I couldn't hit the lines had I laughed so hard. I heard all the guests would crack up just that. Oh, he was a, he loved to make people laugh.

And he was a tragic man in many ways. His son died when he was about nine years old. Yeah. Richard Skelton was terrible. He had a hard life. He said to me before this show, he says he was also accident prone

and he would run into a breakaway wall that wouldn't break away. And he said to me, if anything, he said, I get very nauseous before a show. So if anything happens to me, he said, don't worry. We have a kinescope.

I said, I don't want to reduce the kinescope. Now, you worked with Jack Benny. I loved him. I loved Mr. Benny. GE Theater you did with Jack Benny. Well, I only worked with him once. It was the Memorial Show when they dedicated the building at Television City. And I loved him so much.

Now, Mr. Benny was just the opposite of Milton Berle, let's say. Because I was in Vegas at the time, and Benny was the headliner. And I saw him after the show, and he was crying. I said, what happened? He said, well, we had a drunken woman in the audience, and she heckled me. And she threw me. Now, Burrell would have told her a couple of miserable things. But Benny didn't play that kind of character.

And he played a very gentle kind of character. And then he was, so he was lost. This woman ruined his performance. And Jerry Lewis in The Nutty Professor. I wasn't crazy about Jerry. The jury is still out on him. It's right or something. What didn't you like about Jerry Lewis?

Well, I did this part in Nutty Professor. And I had to wear a mattress jacket and the only jacket I had was purple. I thought that was a good color for a mattress jacket. The name of the set was the Purple Pit. So my costume went right into the wallpaper. So they had to make a suit for me. They made a suit one day, but the first day,

Jerry directed the picture as well. And the first, so I came on the set. The first thing, he tried to run me over with his kiddie car. And he fires, he followed. The first thing he did was fire off a gun. And I nearly fell out of the makeup chair.

So they knew they had a live one, right? And the second thing he did was try to run me over with his kiddie car. So I went over to him, and I said, Mr. Lewis, I don't know if I can work in this picture. I was 4F. I've heard you say, Marvin, that you didn't admire his way of doing comedy, that he was somebody you say was working too hard. He's a brilliant talent.

Jerry is an exceptional talent. But he's his own worst enemy. He needed yes men around all the time. He directed everybody better than he directed himself. And he's a brilliant – they called him, in Paris, they compared him to Chaplin. Well, he's not Chaplin. He did his last movie, one of his last movies, was a wonderful script that a friend of mine wrote called The Day the Clown Cried. It's about a clown during the holocaust.

Oh, yes. We're familiar with it. Well, it was released because he was so bad in it. It was written by Joan O'Brien. Yeah. It really needed somebody like a red skeleton in the audience with love, or a Robin Williams, you know, a likable personality.

And Jerry came up with a very obnoxious ending. Now, you worked with someone who is a favorite of Frank and I, and that's the great character actor Fritz Feld, who used to, like, do this popping sound, popping his hand against his mouth. He would always be the maitre d'. Oh, Fritz Feld.

Yeah, Fritz Feld. I loved Fritz. Fritz was an original. Fritz came over from Ufa. He was a dramatic actor. But Lubitsch used him, and then he was in Bringing Up Baby. He was brilliant. He was absolutely brilliant. And for people out there who don't know Fritz Feld, it's like he must have played

the maitre d' about a million movies and TV shows. Yeah, he had the trademark cup. Absolutely. Actors did that in those days. And he would always be like... All they had to do was show up on the screen and the audience knew all about them. They didn't have to go into tons of exposition. The Beatles knew all about them. They didn't have to go into tons of exposition. Yeah, he'd hit his hand against his mouth, make a popping sound, and it would be like, table for two. Yeah, and he'd click his heels. Yes.

When he played a Nazi, he had a popping sound. He was an outrageous man. He was a lovely, sweet man. I loved him very much. And another actor we brought up on the show, Sam Jaffe. Oh, Sam was my role model. I worked with Sam in Get It For You Wholesale. Now, Sam was a lot older than me.

And I called everybody Mr. I called Mr. Daly, Mr. Sanders. And Sam said, Marvin, my name is Sam. Call me Sam. That's nice. And I called him Sam. And he was very supportive. And he said to me, he saw me in the play once in a lifetime. And I asked him how he liked it. And he said, you're not yet a diamond, but you're a wonderful piece of coal. That's nice.

piece of coal. Wow. That's nice. Yeah, I worshipped him. And he chose me to give him an award at Equity, the Diversity Award. He chose me. I was nobody. He could have gotten

any big star to give him the award. But they liked me and they trusted me. Oh, and when Sam was married to a wonderful woman named Betty Ackerman, they did

Ben Casey together. And Gunga Din was the first one. Sam hated Ben Casey. He didn't like, what's his name? Oh, he didn't like Vince Edwards? No, because he wasn't a serious actor. He was a horse player. And Sam didn't like, what's his name? Oh, he didn't like Vince Edwards? He didn't like, no, because he wasn't a serious actor. He was a horse player. And Sam didn't like people who weren't serious about their work.

And that's why he didn't sign. He didn't extend his engagement. They brought in Franchot Tone for the extension. But Sam was brilliant. And Sam lived to be in the 96, I think. And his best friend was Edward G. Robinson, who started a standing ovation for me when I did Once in a Lifetime. He started it.

I started to cry when I came on stage. I couldn't believe they were standing up for me. I was a comic. I was alright. But they stood up and the other person that Sam introduced

me to was Zero Mustel. Oh. Tell us about that. He was bona fide crazy. We had his son Josh on this show, Marvin. Huh? We had Josh Mostel on this show, on our podcast. I can't understand what you said.

I said we had Zero's son, Josh. Oh, yes. I worked with Josh, but he hasn't got the old man's magic. Josh is a very good actor, but Zero Mustel was in the class by himself. I saw him do a play by Paddy Chayefsky called The Latent Heterosexual. called The Latent Heterosexual. And in it, he admits Harry Caray. And I saw it.

I said, oh, my God. Oh, my God. He cut himself. He's really going to die. I went backstage to see him. And I said, Zero, are you okay? I said, I'm sure you hurt yourself when you

did the carry carry. He says, nah. He lifts up his shirt and there's a huge gash on his stomach. But he didn't feel it. Wow. I heard Zero Mostel. I heard Zero Mostel. I heard Zero Mostel was, like, scary to work with.

No, he got me his house seats when he did Fiddler on the Roof out here at the Schubert Theater. The first thing he does, he falls into the milk. He fell in the milk. The second thing he does, he's singing the song, Do You Love Me? He gets his nose caught in the door. So it comes out, do I love you? it comes out, do I love you?

But in the third act, when his third daughter leaves him, he broke your heart. He acted like him. I was told Barrymore did the same thing. They get bored with the parts. They can do them so easily. And they throw in all this garbage to throw themselves to make it more interesting. Just to keep themselves amused, yeah. Now, we have to get to a movie that both Frank and I want to know about. And that's a movie that had just about every celebrity in the world at the time, every great comedian. It's a mad, mad, mad, mad world.

I got that on a fluke. They gave off in me the part of Edwin Everett, who was an assistant assistant played by Doodles Weaver. Oh, yeah. That was my... I got that job. But then what happened was their original choice for Irwin

was Jackie Mason. Did you know that, Gil? Yeah, I heard this. So it was supposed to be Jackie Mason and Arnold Stang? Right. And Jackie gave Mr. Kramer his nightclub assignments, his commitments. And Kramer thanked him very much and fired him.

And now there's a vacancy. So they thought of me, switching me over to that part. And the agent, Maya Michigan, sends me the script. I didn't read through it. They sent me the script, and I read it. It read like a Manhattan phone book. It was very thick, very heavy. Big movie.

Four-hour movie, originally. Yeah. And I called him back and I said, you know, Meyer, I almost got killed reading this script. You know what I have to do with this thing? I have to get thrown through a play class window. I have to throw heavy equipment around. I said, I can't do any of that. And he said, Marvin, your deal is that you can do all the stunts that your partner can do.

I said, who's my partner? He says, Arnold Stang. I know Arnold's the biggest coward in the American theater. And he won't do anything. So I said, anything Arnold consents to do, I'll do, knowing he wouldn't do anything. Right. It's a safe bet. So I get the part. Anything Arnold consents to do, I'll do, knowing he wouldn't do anything. Right.

It's a safe bet. So I get the part. And the day before, they have a party in Palm Springs. We were going to shoot it. It was a Sunday. They brought me in on a Monday. Arnold falls in the swimming pool and breaks his wrist. Right?

Yeah. So Kramer says to him, he says, thank God it's your left hand. He says, I'm left-handed. So they gave him a glove, looked like a catcher's mitt, and they put a monkey wrench in the glove, and I had to do all the work. I had to wash the windshields. I had to check the tires.

I had to do everything, because Arnold was with us. He was stunk in a wrench in his glove. All right? Now, everything is going great, except they hired Jonathan Winters for this crazy part. Now, Jonathan had never really acted before,

and he's an ex-Marine, and he felt all the actors should do their own stunts. So I said, oh my God. So Arnold and I are watching him on the sidelines, hoping he'll get hurt. Not seriously, but just... So he'll require a stunt. Well, he wrenches his back.

And Arnold looked and I looked at each other and smiled. We knew if he wasn't going to do the stunts, we didn't have to. The only problem was to get a stuntman that looked like Arnold Stang. It was almost impossible. So they got a guy who does chimps. Man, it looked like Arnold Stang. It was almost impossible. So they got a guy who does chimps. Oh, wait a minute. You mean a guy that got into a chimp suit?

Janusz Bukowski. He just plays chimp. And he had no chin like Arnold, but he had six shoulders. He had no chin like Arnold, but he had thick shoulders. So Arnold had to have his shoulder pads so he'd look as good as his stuntman. For me, they got a very handsome kid who was thin named Bill Maxwell. And they kept putting padding in to make him look fat like me. And I kept taking it out because I wanted to look thin. They put my glasses on him and he walked into a tree.

But he saved my life, this man, Bill, because he was one stunt, which I was supposed to do, where they throw me across a table. And I'm supposed to slide across the table and then release something that takes down the roof. And I'm supposed to escape whatever's in the roof and then keep on going. Well, the first time they threw him, they didn't have enough momentum and his neck hit the edge of the table.

I thought, oh my God, they killed him. Or they broke his neck. Well, he was alright. The second time they had enough force and they threw him. But that could have been me. Yeah, easily. Now, that movie had also Sid Caesar, Milton Berle.

Jimmy Durante, Phil Silvers. Spencer Tracy again. Right. The list goes on. Mr. Tracy. Tracy wasn't well when he did the movie. Yeah, you can tell. But Hepburn, I understand.

I only had a very few scenes with – I don't think I had any scenes with Tracy in the picture. But I loved him, and he was very good in the movie. He was wonderful. Didn't Phil Silvers... I was so grateful I wasn't in any of the automobile stuff. Right. The car stuff was absolutely fatal. Didn't Phil Silvers get injured doing the fight scene with Jonathan Winters, Marvin?

The thing with Jonathan Winters, this is what happened. Jonathan had to ride this little girl's bike. Sure. To the thing. And it was 107 degrees outside. And my job really

was to be a babysitter, someone who would make sure that Jonathan did not leave the dressing room, did not leave the trailer because he went crazy in the heat. So I had to keep him there. In order to keep him there, we played little games like, who are you today, Jonathan? keep them there. We play little games like, who are you today, Jonathan? And he said,

today I'm the Tuesday bear. And you had to be another bear or someone who feeds the bears. And this didn't go on for 10 or 15 minutes. It went on until they were ready to like 40 minutes. He was a until they were ready to light. Like 40 minutes.

He was a bear? You know, the bear or something. And one day he was the son of the chief who loved beadwork. Loved what? Beadwork? I mean, he played him like a homosexual. The son loved do beadwork. The Indian son.

How bizarre. He was crazy. And then somebody would walk into the dressing room, into the trailer. I'd ask him to repeat some of the stuff he did. He couldn't repeat it. Or he didn't want to repeat it. He couldn't repeat it. Or he didn't want to repeat it. I heard that just sitting around the set of all these people, Phil Silvers, Milton Burrell, all of them, the Stooges popped up.

There was no one. Milton, whom I like very much, but I was, he had to, he was bald at the time. And they had, I was, we were both in, I was in the makeup chair after him. And Milton would not let them put this dye on his head. They had a pencil in all the hairs in his head, which was very strange. When he died, he died with a full head of hair. But Milton was very good to me.

But Milton and Ethel Berman weren't? when he was a kid, and he went to a place and said, I'm sorry, Mrs. Burrell, we're casting dogs. And she said, fuck those dogs. Good stuff. Now, what was it like just being on the set with all these great comedians just waiting around. Who was that? No, when you were on the set of Mad, Mad World, surrounded by the greatest comedians. Merman was a shark.

She's one of the strongest women I ever met. But she got hurt on the picture. She'd been running away. Her ankle hit a rock. Oh, yeah. And then they had to pick her up and turn her upside down to get the keys. Oh, she really screamed.

And she had a pocketbook. And she hit them with the pocketbook. And they shit him in the head a couple of times. And Milton complained. He said, what's in the pocketbook. And Milt hit him in the head a couple of times. And Milt complained. He said, what's in the pocketbook? He said, nothing. They opened up

the pocketbook and he has the heaviest jewelry. They don't have wire or steel or something. She was hitting him in the head. And he wanted at a certain point when he talked to her for his finger

to just touch her nose. And he said to her, it's not close enough. She said, where do you want it? Up your nostril? So they didn't get along very well. Milton and Ethel Merman. Everybody got along. It was the craziest cast I ever saw in my life.

Yeah. Tell us a little bit about Arnold. Because Gilbert got to work with him later in his life. Who was that? Arnold Stang. Tell us a little bit about him. Arnold was a businessman. He wouldn't do anything unless you paid him. Good for him. He wouldn't do anything unless you paid him.

Good for him. He wouldn't do extra lines. When you did recordings, they used to ask you to throw in a funny line. Arnold wouldn't do any of that. Arnold was like a stockbroker. He always wore bow ties in real life. He was a very nice man. I loved his work. I remember

him from the Henry Morgan show and radio and from Milton's program. He worked with Milton as a stooge. He's a wonderful actor. I saw him do again the thing with Man with the golden arm.

Oh, great. He was terrific. Sure. With Sinatra. Yeah, he is. Now, you also worked with Arnold Stang in a cartoon that was a favorite of mine as a kid, Top Cat. Yes. I know how I got that job.

I got another fluke. In order to work for Hanna-Barbera, you had to audition. And the first one they auditioned for Top Cat was Michael O'Shea. Well, he's a nice man and a good actor, but he's not very funny. And you got to realize they were trying to do Bill Coe.

Sure. Right? Yeah, with Arnold doing Phil Silverson. Yeah. Phil, they wouldn't get Phil, but they got Maurice Gossfield. Remember Moe? Oh, sure. Oh, yes.

Sure. Moe played Toberman. Right. And Benny the sure. Oh, yes. Sure. Mo played Toberman. Right. And Benny the Ball. He was the funniest man I ever worked with. I absolutely worshipped Maria Scott Field. First of all, when he ate dinner, you knew exactly what he ate. dinner, you knew exactly what he ate.

And they used to go to when they were doing Bilko, they would go to the Italian restaurant beforehand and the guest actress was Kay Kendall. And Maurice ordered meatballs.

And Phil, watching Maurice balance these meatballs, he said, he's doing it without a net. It's so funny that Hanna-Barbera, Top Cat was a ripoff of Sergeant Bilko. An homage. Yeah, an homage. Everything. And they say they ripped off everything. Sure. And the Flintstones was a ripoff of the Honeymooners.

Sure. Of course. Of course. And Yogi Bear was Art Kearney. Oh, yes. Yes. Joe Barbera, in order to get a job for Joe, you had to audition. Now, he had three guys under personal contract.

A man named Doors Butler. Oh, yes. A man named Don Messick. Legends, both. Wonderful. And a man named Len Weinrib. Oh, Lenny Weinrib. You remember him.

And if they couldn't do your voice, you got the job. None of them could do my voice. Perfect. Marvin, we got to get running along, but tell us, I heard you tell a story about working with Clark Gable. Oh, God. I didn't get along with Mr. Gable. Especially to get along with the co-star, Loretta Young, who had a swear box on the set. Oh, she had a swear box.

Yeah. So this is what happened. I was very young. said. Oh, she had a swear box. Yeah. So, this is what happened. I was very young. I was 23 years old. I was 22 years old when I worked with Gable. And he was

a good friend of Spencer Tracy, so I thought he'd be a real nice guy. Well, Mr. Gable was called King. You call to call him King. I only called him Mr. Gable. And I made the mistake. I wandered into his dressing room by mistake, letting him know where I was going.

And I saw this man without his teeth. I started to laugh. And then I had to do a scene with him. Well, he hated my cut. The one who I loved on that picture was Frank Morgan. Oh, Frank Morgan. Sure, Wizard of Oz. Oh, yes. But he was in this movie.

And he had a, I remember Mr. Morgan, they were rehearsing, and he had a line, who me? That's all he had to say in the scene. And he said it, and the guy working with him cut it too short. He wanted to put in a little laugh after, like, who, me? He wanted to put that in. And the guy kept cutting his hair, and he said, please, I have very little to do with this movie. Don't cut my laugh. And he was at the third part in the picture.

I loved him for saying that. The other one I loved was James Gleason. Oh, we love James Gleason. Yes, sure. And he says to me, he said, I've been watching you work, kid. Get your puss in the camera. Wow, good advice. Get your puss in, oh, you were kicked out of the commissary by John Wayne.

By John who? John Wayne. John Wayne. Oh, I hate him. I never liked Mr. Wayne. Oh, I hate him. I never liked Mr. Wayne. Because we were doing Thelma Ritter, Joanne Wood and I were doing a movie at Paramount. We had lunch. And I don't remember, I think it was something Thelma said.

And I was laughing. He came over to our table and he said, get out. Oh, wow. What a son of a bitch. And so the other people said, we all lived together, Thelma, Joanne and me. Oh, great. He was not a nice man in many ways. That has come up on this show.

He treated my friend Strutham Martin, he almost killed him. Oh, great. He was not a nice man in many ways. That has come up on this show. He treated my friend Strother Martin. He almost killed him. Oh, wow. Strother Martin, best known for in Cool Hand Luke. Sure. We've got a failure here to communicate. Yes, yes, that was Strother. And you worked with Paul Newman.

Yes, yes, he was very short. But Struther was a diving champion. And he worked in a movie for John Farrow, Submarine Command. And that man was a sadist. And the submarine was submerging into the water. And Struth was swimming on the top of the deck. And he wouldn't, so he got out. He thought he'd left too soon. He made Struth stay down until the thing completely sucked him underneath.

Wow. They were terrors. There were some terrible things that happened. Now, but you worked with Paul Newman. He was one of my favorites. He still is. And he had never done comedy before that. And he had never done comedy before that.

The way I met Newman was I was on this picture at Paramount, A New Kind of Love. It was directed by Melville Shables, who wrote the script. And I came in with my wardrobe. And this kid comes in. He's dressed in a t-shirt I thought he was one of the crew and he said they want to run lines and I said

I'll see you in a minute and he said I'm Paul Newman I said let's run lines and then it has been running the lines. There's a line there. I have to have a woman every night. You know, there was a sign up and I threw in stamina.

And he said, that's very funny. Now let's look at it. He became instant friends, but he was not used to comedy. And he would tell me, he said, Marvin, I did a comedy called Rally Around the Flag. And I was lousy in it. I overdid it.

I'm not good in comedy. I said, Paul, if you see me doing rotten stuff, I want you to shake your head and say you can't use that take. I'm not going to get in the middle between an argument with a director and an actor. I said, sure. And I saw what the director's reaction was. And I nodded if he liked it. And I went, no, if he didn't like it. And you were in the...

He had no confidence. I said, Paul, if he didn't like it. And you were in the... He had no confidence. I said, Paul, comedy is no different than drama. All you got to do is think a little differently. And that was his first comedy. And after that, he did lots of other stuff. Harper, he was very funny. Oh, yeah. Very funny in the sting.

He had great humor in his work after that. And you were in the great race with Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon. Blake Edwards. I loved Jack. Jack was marvelous. Tony Curtis, my new from Universal Days. Tony Curtis, my new from Universal days, Tony had a show off and he had two Rolls Royces. And he brought one of them to the set and he asked me to drive it. And I said, Tony, it's wrong to the period.

I got to say, Marvin, you're very funny in that movie, as Frisbee. I know, but that morning that I worked, Jack Lemmon had to jump out of a window, and he jumped out of it, supposedly on cartons, but the cartons didn't give and Jack wrenched his back. Now the scene is, we're doing the scene where I'm supposed to catch Carrie a pigeon. Right, you're on the ledge. Do you ever work with pigeons? I can't say I have. I work with a parrot every week.

I can't say I have. I work with a parrot every week. So, Oki, Poser O'Connell and I are on this roof. And I look down and I see there's no net.

And I say, Arthur, there's no net. And I say, Arthur, there's no net. He says, why? And he's jumping around the roof. And so I finally got the pigeon and captured the pigeon. And then Arthur comes to me. And instead of rescuing me with the pigeon, he just rescues the pigeon and leaves me dangling off the roof. And then afterwards,

Blake Edwards, who was a very brave man and very athletic and could do everything and liked to hurt actors. He liked to hurt actors. He says to me, wouldn't it be funny if all we see is your hands, is these hands on the windowsill?

And he yells Frisbee. I just try to get it back into the office. He yells Frisbee and it throws you and you fall off the roof. I said, yeah, that's hysterical. I think somebody else is going to do it. Well, he had Dick Crockett, who was his stuntman, and he had Dick dressed like me with my glasses and the

same costume and everything. So I figured Crockett's going to do it. No, the camera's too close. You've got to do it. So I said, he wanted to rehearse it. I said, get my dying words on camera. It's a great scene, Marvin. I know. But he heard everybody in the picture.

It's funny. The two scenes where I fell in love with you when I was a kid, the scene in It's a Mad, Mad World and the scene in The Great Race, and now you're telling me that you risked your life to do both of them. Well, The Great Race, he made a deal with all the actors that they do their own stunts. I didn't know that. Wow. If I attack them, I'm going to get hurt.

I'm certainly going to get hurt. Oh, okay. Now, Marvin, I plucked something, I'm doing that? Of course, go, go. I just directed, well, I didn't direct it,

I was the dialogue director, but I wrote it, and I was the executive producer. A movie called Looking Up with Steve Guttenberg. Oh, we love Steve Guttenberg. He's a lovely, sweet man. Got to get him on here. Get him on the show. We will.

He's terrific. He's one of the nicest people I've met. And he's excellent in the movie. Looking Up. Most of the cast is over 60. Okay. And tell us... 20 actors in the cast.

It was done for about a quarter of a million dollars. Looking up, it's called. Right. It's about a man who decides to murder his family in order to get on television. I like it. So it's making fun of the whole realism TV. Reality. Yeah, reality TV craziness.

It was a takeoff on the view called the Yentas. Well, Marvin, you've come to the right place. Well, Marvin, you've come to the right place. It's a very funny movie. Now, Marvin, first of all, how old are you, Marvin? 89. And still working. Yeah, 89, still working.

And we had a conversation about this, you and I. Because we had on the show, Frank and I, we had on Dick Van Dyke, who's over 90. We've had on Peter Marshall. Who was 90? Who was 90. Look, they're crazy in Hollywood. And they're especially cruel to women. I mean, a woman that's over 30, you've got to tear her up. And there's so much talent out there in casting this movie.

I have to, I lucked out. I put in the greatest cast ever. Brilliant people. And everybody was over 60. And in the old days, which weren't that old, I mean, we had shows like Fantasy Island and The Love Boat and Murder, She Wrote, that would dig up these people who were older actors and

you'd go, oh, they're as good as they ever were. Right, right. I love good actors. I love actors. I'm not crazy about the brass. They invited me to parties when I was under contract to CBS doing Meat Millie. I would hide and I would go near the food. You couldn't get me away from the food. Or I'd go near the food. You couldn't get me away from the food. And the people who I hung out with were writers or other actors.

I could not talk to the press. Yeah. I was too frightened and I didn't respect them. Yeah. We both feel that way today. Oh, yes. Yes. It'll always be that way. But I'm just saying, like, someone like you, 89 years old, still working, still funny, still talented.

And there's a million other guys like that, where Frank and I are always finding. Funny as ever. There's a woman at the home named Connie Sawyer. Yeah, Connie Sawyer. She's 103 years old. We were told about her. 103. This year she decided to give up tap dancing.

Terrific. Okay, now Marvin, you're one of those actors that we could go on for the next 10 hours. We'll have you back another time, Marvin. We'll talk about the Chicago Teddy Bears and a lot of other stuff. Oh, yeah. I love to work with John Banner.

Hogan's Heroes Schultz. Yeah. I know nothing. And I work Schultz. Yeah. I know nothing. And I work with Hans Hall. Sure. The Bowery Boys. And I work with Jamie Farr.

Art Matrano. And Dean Jones. Right. And I work with Shirley Jones. I work with a lot of wonderful people. And Carl Ballantyne. We'll have to have you.

We'll have you back and we'll cover everybody we didn't cover this time. How about that? You got it, baby. Because we've just scraped the surface of your career. Anyway, this is Gilbert Gottfried. I'm Gilbert Gottfried. This is Gilbert Gottfried. You'm Gilbert Gottfried. This is Gilbert Gottfried. You forgot the show again.

Amazing. Happy Passover. Wait. Happy Passover to you, too. Happy Pesach. But wait for a second. I'm Gilbert Gottfried. This is Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast with my co-host, Frank Santopadre.

And we're once again at Nutmeg Post with our engineer, Frank Ferdarosa. And we have been talking to the great Marvin Kaplan. Marvin, you're a living legend, pal. Yeah, I don't know about the legend part of it, but I'm still living. Thank you, We'll see you again, buddy. Thanks for doing it. Thank you.

Bye.