Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast - 162. Norman Lear

Episode Date: July 3, 2017

Gilbert and Frank welcome one of their most sought-after guests, iconic writer-producer-director Norman Lear, who holds court on a variety of subjects, including the inscrutability of Dean Martin, the politics (and Jewishness) of Edward G. Robinson, the "inventiveness" of Mickey Rooney and the heroism of the Tuskegee Airmen. Also, Norman woos Frank Sinatra, praises John Amos, presents Jerry Lewis with a one-of-a-kind gift and remembers his friend Carroll O'Connor. PLUS: James Franciscus! Roscoe Lee Browne! "Hot l Baltimore"! Norman buys the Declaration of Independence! And the legend of Joe E. Lewis. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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problem call 1-866-531-2600 or visit connectsontario.ca please play responsibly Hi, this is Gilbert Gottfried, and this is Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast. I'm here with my co-host, Frank Santopadre, and we're once again recording at Nutmeg with our engineer, Frank Ferdarosa. When we started this podcast over three years ago, we fantasized about getting the chance to talk to certain showbiz icons, but we figured it was mostly a fantasy. Well, one of the people on our list is here with us today, and we couldn't be more thrilled about it. He's a writer, producer, director, activist,

about it. He's a writer, producer, director, activist, and one of the most influential artists in the history of popular culture. As a writer, he's created material for Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, Danny Thomas, Frank Sinatra, Danny Kaye, Bobby Darin, Bob Newhart, Dick Van Dyke, and Henry Fonda, to just name a few. As a producer, he's brought us popular films such as Divorce American Style, Start the Revolution Without Me, The Night They Raided Minsky's Fried Green Tomatoes, Fried Green Tomatoes, This Is Spinal Tap, Stand By Me, and the anti-smoking satire Cold Turkey, which he wrote and directed. But it was his work as creator and producer of the groundbreaking series All in the Family, Sanford and Son, Maud, The Jeffersons, Good Times, Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, One Day at a Time, and Fernwood Tonight that reshaped and reinvented television comedy and forever changed the medium itself. In a career spanning seven decades, he's won four Emmys, been nominated for an Oscar, and received Lifetime Achievement Awards from both the Writers' and Producers' Guilds of America. He's been honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and was one of the first

seven inductees into the TV Academy Hall of Fame. And in 1999, he was awarded the National Medal of of Arts by President Clinton, his terrific memoir called Even This I Get to Experience, and he's still working at the tender age of 94. We're pleased to welcome to the podcast a man who is proud to this day to see his name included on Richard Nixon's enemy list, the legendary Norman Lear. And who happened to make it also to Gilbert Gottfried and his podcast. I like that. Is that the longest intro you've ever received, Norman? The longest fucking intro in the history of intros. See, these intros can also work as an obituary.

Well, I hope not at the moment. Although we would be making a certain kind of history. Hey, tell us about your podcast. You said you were doing one, too. Yes, we started with Amy Poehler about four weeks ago. And I think the last one I did was with Kevin Bacon. I've had a wonderful time. I love doing it. I love gabbing.

This is going to be fun. Yeah, it's a good medium. I can tell already. Okay. Now, one thing that surprised me about we were looking up stuff about you, and I always thought of you as, you know, Norman Lear. He's just this Jew liberal. And instead...

Instead... What did you find besides Jew liberal? You're like a badass World War II hero. Well, I served in World War II and flew 52 missions. Actually, I did fly 52 missions, but when they sent me over, we were on a mission basis. That meant every time we flew, in my case, from Foggia, Italy, sometimes we got credit for two missions. So I flew 52 missions, but halfway through my tour of duty, they took us off the mission basis and put us on a sortie basis. A sortie was every time you

dropped bombs. Sometimes on missions, we got credit for two missions. So the statistic is I dropped bombs 35 times and flew 52 missions. I'm an American, so of course I use the larger figure. So I flew 52 missions, but dropped bombs only 35 times. And you actually enrolled in, you enlisted, I mean, in the armed forces. Yeah, I mean, it was in the book that you as a college student, you could have gotten a deferment, but you chose not to. Yeah. No, I chose not to. I wanted to kill.

As a matter of fact, my wife and I flew to visit our friends. John Emerson was the ambassador to Germany for the last several years, and John and Kimberly, and we decided we were in Europe. We would visit them if they had room and they could take, and they did, and we were flying to Berlin, and I remembered the one time we bombed Berlin. I flew out of Foggia, Italy. I was the radio operator and gunner. And the radio operator was the closest to the bomb bay door. So I was the guy who 35 times when we dropped bombs looked over and saw the last bomb drop out of the bay. And I was the guy who could notify the pilot that the last bomb had left

the bomb bay, and he could close the bomb bay doors. So I had the experience of looking down and watching our bombs fall out of the bay all those times, and then gather with the bombs from the other planes around us. So I'd be watching hundreds of bombs. And I remember thinking, as I'm looking at these bombs from everywhere dropping, well, what if one bomb misses a target and hits a farmhouse? And I remembered thinking, and I clench my teeth when I say it because that's what i was feeling at the time and i and it was screw him i didn't give a shit then some hours later flying back i remember

asking myself if somebody came up to me with a pencil and paper said, Mr. Lear, if you sign this, you will mean forever that you didn't care if a bomb hit a farmhouse. And to my toes, I believed that I would never sign such a thing. Never. But the fact of my life, thank God, is that I was never tested. It never happened. But this human being had that feeling all those times, that degree of hatred. And it's helped me understand a bit of the human condition. And it's helped me understand a bit of the human condition. And was it your experiences with anti-Semitism that kind of pushed you into the war? Well, I think I'd have enlisted anyway, but I do recall thinking, I want to be, I remember thinking 50. I want to be a 50-year-old Jew who served and saw combat. And I guess that was because, you know, what we heard about the Nazis and what they were doing to the Jewish people.

I don't think the Holocaust was in our language when I enlisted, but the fact that they were rounding up Jews and Jews were looking to leave Germany and our own administration at the time chose not to accept a shipload of Jews that were trying to get to America. And all of this stuff was in the air and I wanted to be a Jew who served and, God, I hate to say it, and killed. And you, and it was interesting missions because you're a Jew,

and you were a lot of on the missions with the Tuskegee Airmen. Yeah, you know, two years ago, they found out, I don't know how the Air Force found out, but I got a call. They knew that I had flown from Foggia, Italy to Berlin, which was the longest, it turned out, was the longest trip in the European theater. longest, it turned out, was the longest trip in the European theater. And they found a Tuskegee airman. His name was Roscoe Brown, president of the university earlier in his life. And we should tell the people listening, the Tuskegee airmen were like an old black outfit. They were the only black squadron of fire of fighter planes that that flew escort for the bombers and uh they were in a plane of p-51 and uh the tuskegee guys had a red tail their the tail of the plane was painted red and uh when we saw the red-tailed P-51s come,

we felt a little more comforted because they flew closer somehow and often flew over the target. I, for one, felt, you know, well-protected with the Tuskegee guys in the air. So I had the experience two years ago of leading the Veterans Day parade on Fifth Avenue with Roscoe Brown, my Tuskegee friend. That's great.

So a Jew and a group of black men bombing the Nazis. That sounds very dramatic. I think it'll make a good film. I think you'll make a good film. I think you ought to make that film. A lot of responsibility, Gilbert. Don't go away. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. I'm going away.

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Kids, time to get back to Gilbert and Frank's amazing Colossal Podcast. So, let's go! Norman, let's talk about some of the stuff in the book about your childhood. And I also watched the documentary, Just Another Version of You, which is great, on American Masters. And it's very touching when you go back to Coney Island

and you're reminiscing about when you had the fun. And Gilbert's from Coney Island, which is another reason I bring it up. Yeah, I was born there. Oh, is that right? Yeah. You know, tell me, how old are your girls now? Aren't they two girls, two daughters? It's from Coney Island, which is another reason I bring it up. Yeah, I was born there. Oh, is that right? Yeah. You know, tell me, how old are your girls now? Aren't they two girls, two daughters?

Oh, I have a son and a daughter. A son and a daughter. Watch me screw up their ages. My son is eight and my daughter's nine. You got it. Well, I saw a sweet picture of them in your documentary, which I thought was terrific. Oh, my God. Thank you. Wow, what a compliment.

I thought it was, oh, it's a wonderful documentary. And I saw as much of it as I could getting ready to prepare for this because we hadn't really met. I know your work well, but I wanted to know more about your life and I like your life. Oh, thank you so much, Norman. It's a good doc. Credit to the filmmaker, Neil. And the documentary is called Gilbert. Yes, Gilbert. Gilbert. Well, my documentary was made by two women. I had absolutely nothing to do with it except show up a couple of days, only a couple of days. The rest they took out of, you know,

historic footage. I don't know where they found it all. And they did a glorious job making the documentary, I thought. And now, could you tell us, you know, your child life was really interesting. Tell us about your father, first of all.

Well, my father, it's difficult to talk about in the heart. You know, I want to call him a rascal. I love the word rascal. It's hard for me to talk about what he really was. He served time. He lied. He lied. He stole. He cashed bad checks.

He took, he borrowed $200 from my friend Herman Rosen. I learned this long after my dad passed, and I was still in touch with Herman. He's gone. And he gave up the only $200 he had to my dad passed and I was still in touch with Herman, he's gone. And he gave up the only $200 he had to my dad who begged him for it and was going to pay him back by check. And weeks and weeks went by and he didn't get the check. And Herman called him and called him. And finally, he said, he had sent him a, he said, no, I'm going to, I'll bring the money to you.

And Herman said, you don't have to, you can just send me the check. He said, no. And my father is, my father shows up and brings him the $200 months and months later and says, I sent you a check a long time ago, Herman. He said, Herman said, yes, you did, but it bounced. And he said, well, this is why I wanted to come over and talk to you in person. When you receive a check, you go to the bank and you cash it right away you don't wait two days and when your your father was arrested and and you were nine at the time so this was uh and his picture was in the papers hiding his face and and you talk about some guy in the neighborhood coming up. Oh, yeah. My mother was selling. My mother was shamefaced, couldn't live in Chelsea.

We were in Chelsea, Massachusetts. And she was selling the furniture, and we were going to move. It turned out I was sent to live with an uncle, then another uncle, and finally with my grandparents. But this evening, people were in the house looking at furniture. I was nine years old. I'm clutching some cloth tape, Norman M. Lear, Norman M. Lear, Norman M. Lear, which my mother had not yet sewn into the clothes

I was going to take to camp. I was supposed to go to camp in two weeks. Of course, I never did go to camp, but I'm clutching that role, and I'm in that situation, and my mother's selling my father's red leather chair from which he and I used to listen to the Friday night fights from Madison Square Garden. It was very precious. And this asshole who was about to buy my mother's

chair, my father's chair, puts his hand on my nine-year-old shoulder and says, well Norman, you're the man of the house now. And I like to think that that was the moment I understood the foolishness for the first time, the foolishness of the human condition. What kind of a fool tells a kid in that situation? Oh, and then a moment later he's saying to him, there, there, Norman, a man in the house doesn't cry. So that

moment really influenced you. It influenced me a lot, I think. Fair to say it influenced your work, since you've made so many shows and so much television about the human frailty and about the absurdity of the human condition. Do you ever think about want to thank him for that moment?

Well, I thank everybody that ever happened my way for every single moment. Because, as I said earlier, it took me all of these years, these moments, these days to get to look at you two guys on this little screen. And know that we're talking to tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands or however many people. A million a month, we're happy to say. That's a big crowd, a million a month. That's why we went out and got you. After this, I want to invite everybody over to my house for a cup of tea. Okay.

Now, aside from your father, you had an uncle who was a hold-up man? Oh, my God. I haven't thought about Eli in a long time. Yeah, no, I worked when I got out of the service. I always wanted to be a press agent because I had one uncle. He was my hero, one uncle in the course of the Depression, who used to flick a quarter to me now and then. I wanted to be an uncle who could flick a quarter, so I wanted to be a press, to a nephew, so I wanted to be a press agent, and I got out of

the Army, and I was a press agent in New York, And my job, a piece of my job, was to open the office earlier than the others and look in the newspapers to see if any of our clients had made the columns, the Louis Sobel, Ed Sullivan, Walter Winchell. And there on the front page of the New York Daily Mirror was Toy Gun Bandit nabbed in Philly. And it was my Uncle Eli. It's fantastic.

You know, it's funny. That's fantastic. You know, it's funny. I just got a flashback of something that Groucho Marx said when he was a kid and they had no money, his uncle was Al Sheen from Gallagher and Sheen. Gallagher and Sheen. That's right. And Sheen used to flick coins to the local kids. He was not my uncle.

And Al Sheen probably didn't do time. No. Norman, since we're talking about your family, there's a funny story, too, about your grandmother, about your boobie, what she used to say. I mean, I think Gilbert will get a kick out of it. Well, the other thing, the thing about when she was presented with the information about the Dodgers winning the pennant. She would say, go now. Anything she didn't understand, go now.

Didn't she also ask if this was good for the Jews? Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Oh, that's true. But she didn't understand it. She was asked her opinion. She'd say, go now. But walk in and say, yeah, the Dodgers just lost a pennant. Good for the Jews.

I thought Gilbert would like that. And tell Gil the story. It's great. I thought Gilbert would like that. And tell Gil the story. It's great. It opens the book about your mom when you were honored with a wonderful honor. I received a call on a Sunday from John.

I just lost his last name. He was the first president of the Television Academy of Arts and Sciences. He called me on a Sunday morning. He said, Norman, we met all day yesterday, and the Academy has decided to start a Hall of Fame, and we picked the first inductees, and they are David Sarnoff, who started CBS, and Bill Paley, who started NBC. Bill Paley, who started CBS, and Bill Paley, who started NBC.

Bill Paley, who started CBS. Edward R. Murrow, Patty Chayefsky, Milton Berle, Lucille Ball, and you. And I raced to the phone, as was my won't, called my mother in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Mom, I just learned they're starting a Hall of Fame. And these are the first inductees. And I mentioned them all. And me. And she said, listen, if that's what they want to do, who am I to say?

That's so good. And also, you had an uncle who got angry at you for peeing too loud. That's another good one in the book. My father's brothers were quite a crowd. Eddie, you know, before I tell you that story, his son Harold was like one of my best friends my cousin harold and uh the summer that i stayed in woodmont connecticut when my father was away uh i'll tell you the uncle eddie story in a moment but that summer uh harold and I would be out playing. It was my 10th summer and his 11th. And, you know, 5 o'clock in the afternoon, he'd hear this whistle,

and we'd run home because the whistle meant his dad was home. His dad would whistle for him. And my little heart ached because I just so wished I had my dad with me and whistled for me. So we're in our 30s, Harold and I, having a glass of wine one day. And I tell him, I had never told him this, that when his dad came home and whistled for him, I felt this way. And Harold said, oh, my God, really? He said, I felt like a dog.

That's interesting. That's a telling story. That's a telling story. Tell us about the peeing incident. It was that tense summer, and I get up at 5 o'clock or sometime in the early morning, and I'm peeing. And it was a cottage in Woodmont, Connecticut. There were four bedrooms,

and you could hear everything in every bedroom. And suddenly the bathroom door is crashed open, and it's bouncing again, making all the racket. The door would make stuttering against the wall, which meant that everybody was up everywhere. And he said, Norman, I'm going to teach you the biggest lesson you ever learned in your life. And never forget, he said, you the biggest lesson you ever learned in your life.

I'll never forget. He said, and he took out his thing, and he peed into the bowl, and he said, you hear that? You hear that? That's what you were doing woke me up. Now listen to this. And he pees on the side of the bowl, And he says, you hear nothing, don't you? Don't you ever forget that. The first thing that I ever wrote when Simmons and I teamed up

was telling that story in the way we thought Joe E. Lewis, who was a great comic at the time, nightclub comic, would tell it. And he wound up, I remember the two lines that he wound up. So never forget it, ladies and gentlemen, that water sprayed on water makes a sound that all can hear, but water spritzed on porcelain

falls silent to the ear. That's beautiful. That was the lesson men through the centuries of all races, all stripes understood. You gave us the perfect segue, Norman. Let's talk about you launching

your writing career because you were doing PR work. Can we talk about Gilbert? What would you like finally a guest next to my own heart yes when i do these interviews i'm always thinking can i switch it over to me somehow yes when you when you're with your family you're talking like I'm talking now. And you get into the comedy, and I'm trying to do now a Gilbert Gottfried impersonation. It's not bad. I wish I had that laugh.

I love that laugh. So where did that come from? When did that start? What, my personality? I love your personality. Your showbiz personality. Yes, he is. Larger than life.

It's a weird thing. I always say this. To me, I've been like working so long and going on stage so many times that one day I woke up and realized, wow, I've been doing it this way for this many years. It's kind of like if you went up to somebody in a restaurant and said, hey, the way you're holding that coffee cup, where did you develop that? And the person would say, three days ago, it was 14 in the afternoon. And can we get to Martin and Lewis you worked with? Yes, he sure did and now Jerry Lewis describes a him and Dean Martin as like practically Romeo and Juliet in interviews like the love that they had for each other what did you see there uh two guys having a I'm sure they cared about each other.

But they were not good talking together, planning together. They were not great friends. They worked brilliantly together. And Dean was too funny for Jerry sometimes. There were times we rehearsed above a delicatessen. On 46th, it might have been Street, before we went to the theater for the show. And there were times when uh dean came in his i don't know i remember thinking his knuckles were funny when he would be sipping coffee and i'd look at his hands his hands were

funny he was uh he was funny and uh when he was very funny jerry, a time or three, was curled up in the corner on the floor with a bad bellyache. And a guy by the name of Miv, he called him, Marvin Levy, a doctor, was flying in from Beverly Hills. I remember that. I think that's in the book. Yeah, it is. Jerry had a bad reaction to Dean being too funny? That's the way it was. Wow.

That's the way it was. And Dean was a loner. Now, that's my and Eddie's interpretation of why Jerry wasn't well. But we saw that enough times to believe that was the case, which was probably three times. Right. What did you mean in the book when you were talking about Jerry, and I was trying to read between the lines a little bit, I think you were being kind of subtle, when you said that

certainty kills comedy in Jerry's case? Yeah. Certainty kills, yes. case yeah uh certainty kills yes when you think you have all the answers you know it all uh you are ceasing to to listen uh and observe and you know the answer to anything you can ask me about that rests in film you can look at just look at uh jerry lewis as he hosted the the uh muscular dystrophy awards or the telethon the telethon the telethon uh over the years he was a very funny in the first years hilarious jerry as jerry and uh and then you saw him grow to be what i describe when i say certain it's it says everything yeah it's it says everything i could say you know but it says it brilliantly. You call Dean inscrutable

too in the book. Yes. I loved him. He wasn't anybody you thought you really knew. He was inscrutable. He was great. And a lot happened to him after he lost his son. You know, I'm not sure where the inscrutable, whether it was there at the very beginning also, but if inscrutable can become more inscrutable, it did when he lost his son. I remember hearing Jerry Lewis say that he said to his wife when he found out Dean's son had died, and he said, my partner died today because he knew this would destroy Dean, the death of his son.

Yeah. I don't know what to say. Well, you know, I'd like to say this about my partner, Ed Simmons. Yeah. When they broke up, everybody thought, you know, Jerry was going to be the biggest star in the world, and poor Dean. That was the message we got a lot. Anyway, Eddie went to Dean and said, I want to help you do whatever it is that you want to do. I'm not looking for a job. I don't want any money, but I want to help you write the new Dean Martin.

And Dean said, and he mentioned a name that I mentioned earlier, Joey Lewis. Joey Lewis was earlier joey lewis joey lewis was gone by then and dean said to eddie uh you know i'm going to joey lewis used to have a drink in his hand and he used to hold it up and say post time and everybody said that everybody knew he had a drink in his hand he said but he didn't really play a little, you know, not drunk, but what's the word, this side of drunk? Tipsy? Tipsy, yeah. And Dean invented that character for himself, and Eddie helped him with the first, know 50 or what jokes and and if I just bring it

up one more time do you think there was an affection between Dean and Jerry I think there had to be uh it was not evident I think there had to be uh it was she said it's hard to talk about because it just wasn't all that it wasn't evident uh but how could how could you not love somebody who was helping you so much in both directions there's two funny jerry stories in the book norman there's the one about him beckoning you into a darkened room and the birthday you want to you want to tell that There's the one about him beckoning you into a darkened room. The birthday. You want to tell that one or the one about the special gift you gave him? Oh, especially he had a birthday and we knew everybody was bringing gifts. We went back and forth. We had no idea. We tried to find some some funny idea it was the day of the birthday and we

were we had an apartment we worked in uh instead of an office and uh there was a broken window and they sent somebody to fix it and he was a papayish man. Early 70s or something. Wiry little old guy. And we had the idea. He fixed the window quickly. We said, you want to work tonight? For $100, he said yes.

And we took him down to Santa Monica and Fairfax, somewhere in that area, where they built boxes for mailing big objects and so forth. And he squatted, and they made a box for him that he could squat in. And we could put the top on at the last minute, and there would be a ribbon on the top and a ribbon on the sides of the box, and it looked like it was ribboned when we put the...

Anyway, at the last minute, there was a huge coffee table in the Garon Playhouse, named after his sons, Gary and Ron. And at the last minute, we went out and we got the guy who was in the car with the motor running. It was a cool night. And walked up to the guest house, and he got in the box, and he was in cellophane up to his chin.

And I was concerned that he might laugh. I said, if you don't laugh, you get an extra $20. And we put the top on, and we carried him in danny uh the writer great great guy who wrote barney miller oh danny arnold danny arnold danny arnold said uh simmons and leah they got him a tv set it looked like a floor model tv set could be in that box anyway set it on the coffee table where they were opening it and patty was the one who lifted the cover off the box jerry's wife yeah and uh and the little guy had his eyes closed and his head bent and he was biting his lip to keep from laughing and uh everybody was crowded around and and the only doctor in the room the same uh that i mentioned earlier is standing on a on a on a chair at the outskirts of the

of the group looking over and the only doctor in the room said oh my god they got him a corpse at which point patty screamed the crowd went crazy the little i'm yelling into the box get up get up it's okay it's okay you can laugh now and uh all i know is he was a big hit afterwards you know we were we were shunned and uh he went home we left he went home with sammy davis drove him back and what was the one about you being let into a dark room we were in uh the hell is the hotel in in uh chicago they were playing the chaper Paris there. And it was Jerry's birthday again. Well, maybe it was the same weekend, you know. But anyway, we were going out to dinner, and Eddie and I knocked on his door. We were on the same floor.

We knocked on his door. Come in. We opened the door. It was pitch black. And Jerry was sitting with a candle, a little baby candle. Well, you know, you say it. It's in the book. Yeah.

Is this where his dick is at? He's got an erection and he's singing happy birthday to himself. And I say it with the deepest respect because it was as funny as anything I've ever seen in my life. I can imagine. So Jerry was totally naked with an erection, holding a candle over his erect dick, and he sang happy birthday. Don't act like that's not how you celebrate your own birthday.

Yes. Oh, don't we all? Don't we all? Yeah. Norman, you had a relationship with old blue eyes, too, with Frank, since we're talking about Dean and we're talking about Sammy. And I love the stories of you trying to, you know, just haunting him, trying to get him to do Come Blow Your Horn. Trying to get him to read the script yeah and became a running gag yeah yeah anyway

tried a lot of things the last i guess what you what you want to hear is uh send him a reading kit which yeah that's funny which which consisted of the corner of a room with a rug, a reading chair, a reading lamp, a hanger with a smoke jacket, a pipe, anything that might be part of it. Jackie Gleason had an album out called Music to Read By. Oh my God. What you went through. They set it up, Paramount truck and guys

set it up just outside his front door with a long cord. I had told him bring a long cord that can plug in someplace. And when he came home at night oh no no that was set up for him to come home at night and see it and then call because it was so funny uh but he never called when two days later i called this agent to say screw him if he didn't think that was funny, what the hell are you talking about?

What are you talking about? When the agent checked, he found out that help came an hour or so before Frank, but he was due to arrive from someplace. And they thought it was a delivery. They rolled up the rug and put it away. They put the chair away. They put the lamp.

They put the, the only thing Frank found was a smoking jacket that he didn't know he owned. And he didn't, you know, couldn't figure that out, but he never said anything. And when he heard that we had done that,

I got a call, and he wanted to see the script. That's how we finally hooked him. Yeah. Good picture with Tony Bill, too. With Tony Bill. It was Tony Bill's first book. Wasn't Edward G. Robinson in that? No.

Oh, you're thinking of Hole in the Head. Hole in the Head. Yeah. But I remember as a kid when in Hartford, Connecticut, we learned that Edward G. Robinson was Jewish. It became a holiday in the Jewish community. Oh, good liberal, Edward G. Robinson. Edward G. Rosenberg, I think his name is.

Is that right? Yeah. Good card-carrying lefty. Yeah. The word got out that he was Jewish, and it was, my God. Really. Norman, we jump around a lot. Let's jump into, you make a couple of- Let's get back to him for crying out loud.

Gilbert. He really wants to know about you, Gil. Anything you want to know, I'll answer. So how long have you been married? It's the interviewer in Norman coming out. I'll have to come on your podcast. Oh, I want you to do that. Oh, I definitely would love to.

I want you to do that so I can ask your stories. Do you know how many years you've been married? No. Okay, good. Your wife will be thrilled. Now, can we jump to, if you want to talk about it at all, if it was important in your career, all in the family. No, that wasn't important in my career i was getting there now you at one point asked mickey rooney oh we love this one to be i had started

yeah i don't remember the woman who mar Marion Doherty was the casting director. She was, there was a book written about Marion Doherty, which she earned. I mean, she was a great woman. Oh, legendary casting agent. Legendary. And I might have read, I don't know, 30 guys for Carol O'Connor before. At her suggestion, I was coming know, 30 guys for Carol O'Connor before she, at her suggestion,

I was coming to California to meet some others. So I had heard a lot of people read Archie Bunker. I came to California and, well, first Mickey Rooney came into it when I had the idea about

Mickey Rooney and I knew his manager had the idea about Mickey Rooney, and I knew his manager, Red Doft, and I called him. And he said, you want to talk about Mickey? He happens to be in the room. He's right here. And I said, no, no, it's an interesting character I want to talk to him about before he reads anything. I don't want to. I'll meet him, and I'll be there in two days.

No, no, no. Anyway, next thing I know, Mickey, whom I never met, is on the phone. Norm! Calls you Norm. He called me Norm instantly and spoke of himself in the third person. Norm, you got something for the Mick? Let me have it.

Let me hear it. I'm here. Mickey, I'm going to be there in a couple of days. I'd love to sit with you and talk about the character, the things I want to tell you before you. No, no, no, no, no. You got something for the Mick? Tell him now.

Well, he's a bigot. He uses bad words he uses all of the uh words that you would not expect to hear norm they're gonna kill you they're gonna shoot you dead in the streets he said you want an idea for the m? Listen to this. Vietnam vet. Private eye. Short. Blind. Large dog.

I kind of wish you had made that. I think make that show with James Franciscus, only he was taller. There's a show called Long Street about a blind cop. God, I'm so happy you remembered James Franciscus. Yeah. I loved him. I did a pilot with him and Suzanne Plach suzanne plachette oh two greats it was called band of gold oh sure they played a different uh newly married couple every week that was an ambitious idea it was a

very ambitious idea we did a pilot episode and five short scenes in different characters. And Carol O'Connor's Archie Bunker character was, I think you said he was based on a cab driver? Oh, Carol told me that after he was in the role. I said, where did you, did you ever know anybody like this? And he said, said yeah there was a cab driver it was in my mind but when you first learned about the material you sparked to the idea that uh you could get a little bit of your own relationship with your dad in there well my dad it reminded you the laziest white kid he ever met and i would do you don't dad you don't

have to put down a whole race of people to call me lazy that's not what I'm doing and you're the dumbest white kid I ever met so there was a touch of uh Archie in him and I heard about my partner Bud Yorkin had called me he had seen uh the show he was in London making a film and uh while I was doing Martha Ray. And he told me about this show that was on the air there. And I'm like, God, I knew right away this was my dad and me. How did I never think of it? And Gilbert and I were talking about Carol and the struggles that the two of you had is a fair word. And you've said that as an Irish Catholic liberal, he was in many ways uncomfortable playing the role and uncomfortable inhabiting that character. And the intellectual, Irish Catholic intellectual level.

Yeah. Yeah. And there's that great example in the movie of the famous elevator episode with Hector Elizondo and the great Roscoe Lee Brown. Yes. Oh, my God. I love the way you remember these names. Everybody doesn't know that was Roscoe Lee Brown. Sure. I love these people. Loved him, loved him, loved him. The best, the best. And he did not want to do that episode. There was a big to do about it. No, he couldn't see himself in an elevator for half an hour with these people and a baby born and so forth. And I coveted the notion of the camera on his face while the baby,

while you heard the baby being born offstage, you know, I mean, in the elevator. So that was the fight of fights. But I think he won an Emmy for that. It's great. I watched it last night in your documentary. And the expression on his face, it's just a wonderful performance. And he's barely speaking.

It's all in the facial expressions. Yes. Say a little about how you felt about Carol O'Connor's acting when he brought Archie to life in the show. Well, I know you've written also Gilbert, so you know, you write a character and I don't know who knows what you had in mind when you write it. You know, I don't know what I had in mind when I wrote Archie Bunker. I had some possibly version of my father saying the things that I wrote for him to say. But I don't know.

You write with something in your mind that you never, ever remember. And then you hear an actor and an actor and actually so many actors reading it and nothing happens and some of them are very funny and it just doesn't and then somebody comes in like carol came in and sat down and read half a page and there sat archie Bunker. Miracle of miracles. Yeah, you said you wanted to run into the street and celebrate. Yeah, it would never have happened had he not sat in that chair. I mean, there would have been another something,

but he and the words came together and made a third entity that I never envisioned. I can't believe it. I can't believe it. The two of you scheming all week together. Ah, what are you kicking about? Ain't you and your wife always telling me the colors and whites ought to work together? Not to stop Puerto Ricans from moving next door.

We'll do anything to protect our property on this street. So you lied to him about the condition of the Weedemeyer house. I didn't lie about nothing. That's right, Gloria, you didn't lie. I just told him he wouldn't buy a house that was riddled with termites. Which is the God's honest truth. My house doesn't have termites. I didn't say it did.

What did you say? I said I wouldn't buy a house that was riddled with termites. Boy, that's some kind of truth. You know you ought to be working for the White House. Will you get off of me? The only mistake the White House. Well, you get off of that. The only mistake the White House made was just hiring a couple of screw-ups. A couple of screw-ups? That's right. They should have hired Japs instead of all them Krauts.

What? Of course, the Japs are better than the Krauts at electronics. and if the chaps get caught they do the right thing to kill himself and you had a lot of arguments with uh carol o'connor while the show was on. Yeah, he objected to a lot of things, but they all worked out. And, you know, the end of the story is one of the dearest, sweetest stories I know. He passed. I went to his home to sit with his wife, Nancy, a number of people there, of course. She asked me to hang around because they were leaving. I did. She took me into his study where his desk sat, very few things on it, but one page sat alone.

It was a letter I had written him four or five years before expressing how much I cared about him despite everything that was going on and how much he, you know, how much there would never have been an Archie Bunker had Carol O'Connor not read those words. That Archie Bunker for sure. And he had never said,

it was my way of saying I love you. I might have even said the words, written the words. But his way of saying it was having way of saying I love you and I might have even said the words I don't know written the words but his way of saying it was having that on his desk every day from the moment he received it that's beautiful there's there's another tender moment I found uh Norman uh while doing research and it's Jean Stapleton and she's talking about being on the phone with you and you not being able to bring yourself to make the decision. You know what I'm talking about?

To kill off Edith's character at the end. And she's saying to you, Norman, it's a fictional character. Yeah. But I knew it had to be because when Carol did Archie Bunker's place, I had nothing to do with that. I didn't wish it to continue. Rob and Sally and Edith, all the others and I wished to put a ribbon around the series and put it away.

Only Carol wanted it. It is so interesting and ironic that Carol, who had the biggest problem with his character, was the only one who wanted to go on playing the character. But that was because he wanted to control it. And he did. For the couple of three years it was on the air it was all his i had nothing to do with it and i remember that was archie bunker's place yeah and it there was something dead about

the show it was just it didn't seem like there was any pacing. It just kind of was there. Like, Olna family had a life to it. It had a feeling. Well, you missed the conflict, and you missed the other people in the house and the relationships. Everything, all the air had been taken out of it. Yeah, and it was just dead. It just looked like there was no pacing to it at all. I heard you.

Yeah. But I remember it did have Martin Balsam, who was a great actor. Yeah. You know, since you're getting a kick out of me bringing up these names, Norman, I'll also bring up one of my favorite All in the Family episodes with the great Cleavon Little. Oh, my God. And DeMond Wilson. Coming in the window? Yeah, I was doing a little research on this interview, and I see it's one of your favorite episodes, too.

Archie buys the device that imitates the dogs barking. He buys a recorder to drive home to discourage burglars. And DeMond Wilson and Cleavon Little show up as the, uh, as the burglars. And they're wonderful. It's a great, it's a terrific episode. Yeah, it's a great episode. That's how, uh, DeMond Wilson got to play, uh, uh, the son of, uh, what's his name? Oh, Red Fox on Sanford and such.

Red Fox. Yeah. So all these years I've wanted to know, does Norman Lear have a favorite? And I know you've answered this question a thousand times do you have a favorite all-in-the-family moment no I have a favorite Gilbert Gottfried podcast well I let me recommend the Carl Reiner episode then that we just did oh did you do one with Carl we did one with Carl Carl, and he was wonderful. Oh, yeah. Oh, he's great. You know, his nephew, George Shapiro, just did a film about over 90 that featured Dick Van Dyke, Mel, me, and Carl. We had a great time. Oh, and that reminds me.

great time oh and that that reminds me you uh just recently worked on something about old people because it's like in tv and movies they don't seem to know how to write or portray old people oh that's your pilot that you've that you've been shopping i i think we're going to do it. That's wonderful. I think we're going to do it. All I can tell you is it's called Guess Who Died. That's the title. It's in a retirement home where people are living in their own. They're not all living together. They're in cottages in a retirement village, not a retirement home. So they're on golf carts and they're on the golf course and they're dancing and they're in the

community room. And they're I mean, they're living full lives and they're in their 70s and 80s and some in their 90s. And the title is Guess Who Died. And what do you think are the biggest mistakes that TV and film make in showing an old person? Well, I think they make the mistake that the culture makes, you know, that it's all downhill. You know, actually, it should be uphill, because that's where they say we're going. That's what people expect.

We're going there. You know, the culture looks at old people from every negative point they find they can make funny. And it's not what I'm experiencing and it's not what Carl and Mel are experiencing and a number of other people who were involved with the film. The culture has a lot of things wrong. The culture, look what, you know,

while the culture is bemoaning the fact that women don't treated as even-handedly as men, look at the way the culture sells women. The sex that they decry, they sell. Yeah, it's a bit of they sell. Yeah. Yeah, it's a bit of hypocrisy. Yeah. And another person you had trouble with with a hit show was,

and we just had him on the show recently, and that's John Amos. Yeah, we had John Amos here a couple of months ago, Norman. Yeah. And he says you changed his life in a big way. I love him. I mean, you changed his life in a big way. I love him. I mean, we had a difficult time.

All of that shit is well-known. But here's a story that isn't well-known. I did a second show with him, 704 Hauser. Yeah. Do you know about that, Frank? Sure, sure. You also did a, didn't you do Mr. Dugan with him? Mr. Dugan was, no, that was, what's his name?

And I didn't do that. I had left. Oh, okay. That's another long story. Well, 704 Hauser we know. 704 Hauser, but what you don't know, or you would have mentioned it or asked me about it, was there were a couple of pre-shoots. It was live in front of a live audience like all the stuff I did,

but there were a couple of pre-shoots the day before. The second day after having him on camera in the pre-shoots, he came into work having been at the barbershop, and his hair was shaved. He had a full head of hair the day before, which we had already shot. Continuity problems. Yeah. So we had to stop for two or three days while they made a hairpiece for him.

That was made by some brilliant artisans. But it was the only way we could go forward. I always viewed that as the greatest fuck you in the history of show business. Yeah, because he was John. And now I'm getting, of course. Esterole. Esterole. Who you're thinking of.

And now I'm getting, of course, Estorol. Estorol. Who you're thinking of. And I heard that the two of them, they wanted it to be a more serious show. And it was sort of like with Jimmy Walker, they thought it was getting more silly. Well, they said they were bearing the responsibility of it being, of representing the, you know, a black family in a way that wasn't talking down to them. Yeah. Well, the show, people love the show and I hear about it all the time, all the time now. From young black people who are seeing it in reruns and watching it with their families and from older folk who watched it as a family

and Jimmy Walker distressed them because Dynamite got laughs that I'm sure we did too often but we were making 22 shows and an actor found a way to get a

laugh and he used it more than he should have and we allowed it and that might should have and we allowed it. And that might have been a mistake, but it couldn't have been more popular. Ask me when I last saw Jimmy Walker. When did you last see Jimmy Walker? It was at a dinner at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. It was at a big dinner.

We had a big at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. It was at a big dinner. We had a big table of people, some I didn't expect. Among them was Jimmy. Ask me who his date was. Who was Jimmy? Oh, I know the answer to this. Someone Norman can't possibly be very fond of. She was very nice that evening. But his date was Ann Coulter.

Oh, my God. I knew that. That is the strangest couple. You can't write that as a comedy bit. No, you can't. 704 Hauser was ahead of its time, by the way, watching some clips online. Pretty bold and pretty brave for the time yes he had his son was uh as black as john was and he had a jewish girlfriend yeah maura tierney

yeah news radio i i still can't get over jimmy walker and ann cul culture as a couple they were really a couple and uh my god you know they it's so interesting the fact that the black and white of that didn't mean a thing it was it was everybody's reaction is always political how did that happen yeah can i ask you quickly about two, two shows, Norman, that I liked, uh, hot L Baltimore and all the glitters. We had a great time with those shows. I love those shows. Hot L Baltimore was, Oh my God. What a great cast that was. We had Charlotte Ray here on the show. Oh yes. How long you been doing this? How many years. We've done 160 of them or 170 of them now. You know, six months ago, I didn't know what a podcast was. Well, we're glad you do now.

I still don't. It's amazing. It's a great new world. He still doesn't. And, oh, you bought the Declaration of Independence? He did. So did I. So what made you buy the Declaration of Independence? Gilbert, I didn't know you bought the Declaration of Independence.

Gilbert must have gotten it for a price. Yeah. I saw that there was a story in the paper that it was being auctioned off by Sotheby's on the net. Nothing like that had ever happened before. The night before I saw that at my kid's school, I met some parents I hadn't met before, and I met the guy who were on Sotheby's in Southern California.

And so all of that was on my... Anyway, I called him. I said, you guys are going to auction off a copy of the Declaration. He explained to me that it was one of 25 left in the world. It was printed that night, July 4th, left in the world. It was printed that night, July 4th, and printed by a guy by

the name of Dunlap, down the street from where it was created. And then it was one of those copies that was sent by horseback around the 13 colonies. The one that was signed was signed months later

because it took that long to move it around to get all the signatures. I thought, my God, the one they're going to auction off, that's my country's birth certificate. The night of it was printed. And so we paid attention to the auction and we wound up buying it. But when I did, I knew that it would travel i

wasn't buying something that i was going to put in my home or anything it was it belonged to everybody and it was going to travel and uh and it did the great architect, designed a giant exhibition that broke down for smaller venues. Trying to remember the name of the company that gave me $15 million in five minutes of asking to travel the Declaration. Well, Home Depot CEO came. Home Depot. Yeah. Tell us what's happening with One Day at a Time again.

One Day at a Time, tomorrow we will be taping the first episode of the second season. There are 13 on Netflix right now that we made last season, the second season there were 13 on netflix right now that we made last season uh starring justina machado and rita moreno she's the best two showrunners are my your friend mike royce yeah and uh gloria calderon colette who is herself a Cuban-American and co-writer with Mike Royce. And they're brilliant. And we'll be shooting the first episode of the second season of 13 tomorrow. Okay, and let's plug the DVD too, which is great, American Masters. You were made by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady.

It's called Norman Lear, just another version of you it's terrific I'm so glad you mentioned their names because I mentioned them earlier and didn't mention their names Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady they did the most profound job it's artistic I mean it's not just a documentary that's what I'm in awe of it's them it's my life and how well they – it's them.

It's my life, and they made it. Yeah, it's really beautiful. It's their work. And the book, Even This, I Get to Experience. Even This, I Get to Experience. Which is a wonderful read, and we barely scratched the surface. Well, it's true of this moment. I met you guys this minute or this hour, and I couldn't be more grateful for it.

Oh, thank you. You're one of those people, and we've already had a few of them on. Early on, when we were saying who would be on our wish list, you were one from the very beginning. The other was Dick Van Dyke and the other was Carl Reiner. And we just we just completed the trifecta. And you said you did Mel Brooks. We didn't do Mel yet. No. It was Dick Van Dyke, Carl and you. Oh, that's great.

Yeah. We said we'll complete the quartet. You had a story, another story about your mother. While you were in the war, you would write her letters. Oh, yes. Okay, tell us that one. You want to take us out on that one, Norman? Well, no, it's a simple, sad story. I wrote these letters. I couldn't get over that.

uh i knew about the i i wrote these letters i couldn't get over that i i remembered when i came home that they were like writing love letters i was married but uh but we didn't have anything going uh you know how i got married that's in the book too i was stationed before i went overseas at the university of buffalo. Your first marriage, yeah. Yeah. And my great friend fixed me up with an Irish friend, a girlfriend, Helen O'Leary. And the joke of the evening, we were sitting at the Sattler Bar, at the circus bar in the Sattler Hotel in Buffalo, New York, up at the top.

And it was moving so slowly in a circle. Helen O'Leary, the joke was, we got married, she'd be Helen O'Leary Lear. And four of us were drinking Cuba Libras. I remember that. And I got up and left the table and walked to a telephone booth and called a number I remembered in West Hartford, Connecticut, collect. And the girl I was calling I hadn't seen in a year and a half or something, we broke up.

And she picked up the phone, hello, I said, hello. And just from the sound of hello, she said, Norman? And that thrilled me so much that within a minute I was saying, you want to come up to Buffalo and we'll get married? Just the voice on the phone. Just like that. And she said, yeah two weeks later she and her mother and father came up and my mother and father my mother and father came up

for us to get married and my father to my surprise when when they arrived, brought Sidney Feynman, his friend, who we introduced as my best man. I said, Jimmy Gorman was that fellow. He was my friend who fixed me up with Helen O'Leary. I said, Dad, my great friend is Jimmy Gorman. He's my best man. My father, as sad as I've everary. I said, Dad, my great friend is Jimmy Gorman. He's my best man. My father, as sad as I've ever seen him, said, Norman, we can't do that to Sidney.

He's a sick man. He's not well. And he was my best man. The unwell Sidney Farnham. Bizarre. And Jimmy Gorman. the unwell Sidney Farnham. The czar. And Jimmy Gortman.

But these letters, you were writing like love letters to your mother. Oh, yes. She showed me the letters. I asked her if I could see the letters, and I saw the letters, and I couldn't believe them. Then a year later, I said, Mom, i'd like to take those letters i i'd like to have those letters she had thrown them away wow she had tossed them well you saw them there's also a funny story in the book, too, about your mother meeting Sinatra.

And you tell her he doesn't like to be touched. Of course, she goes up and throws her arms around him. Yeah. Yeah. The book's full of great stories. We urge our listeners to get it. We've only told a few of them, folks. Yep.

Even this I get to experience. Norman, this is a thrill for Gilbert and me. It's a thrill for me, too. I love it. Thanks. We thank you, and we thank thrill for Gilbert and me. It's a thrill for me too. I love it. We thank you and we thank you for all the years of entertaining us. I appreciate that. Thank you for this and thank you for the years you've entertained me, Gilbert. Oh, thank you. What a compliment. Oh, wow. Thank you. And if you come back again, we'll only talk about me. again will only talk about me.

I'd like that. So I leave you with my favorite expression in the English language. Yes, please do. Which I promise will grow on you. To be continued. Oh. Okay, well this has been a thrill. Thanks.

Thank you, Norman. And we'd have to have you back on a hundred times just you know, just to scratch the surface. Yeah, I got 30 cards here, Norman. We got to about 10 of them. You've done a lot. Great. We'll do it again. We'll do it again.

Okay, buddy. And we'll do it again on my podcast. I'd love that. Absolutely. Absolutely. All in the Family was recorded on tape before a live audience. This has been Gilbert Gottfried's amazing, colossal podcast with my co-host, Frank Santopadre. And we have had a guy, we've just been talking to someone who really deserves the term legend and the great Norman Lear.

Thank you. To be continued. Thank you, Norman.