Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast - 220. Bruce Vilanch

Episode Date: August 13, 2018

Gilbert and Frank welcome an old friend, legendary comedy writer Bruce Vilanch, who looks back at the "golden age" of TV variety shows and specials, including "Donny & Marie," "The Brady Bunch Hour," "The Star Wars Holiday Special" and "The Paul Lynde Halloween Special." (all co-written by Brucehimself). Also, Margaret Hamilton makes her move, Robert Reed channels Carmen Miranda, Jack Benny does "The Match Bit" and Gilbert takes over "Hollywood Squares." PLUS: Jack Palance! Bob Hope's filing cabinet! "Wayne Newton at SeaWorld"! Bruce hangs with Tallulah Bankhead! And the Oscar joke that never made the air! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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with perfect harmony in pure Michigan. Keep it fresh at michigan.org. Hi, this is Peter Riegert and I'm on Gilbert Gottfried's amazing, colossal podcast. Listen in. Hi, this is Gilbert Gottfried, and this is Gilbert Gottfried's amazing, colossal podcast with my co-host, Frank Santopadre, and we're once again recording at Nutmeg with our engineer,

Frank Furtarosa. Our guest this week is a producer, actor, songwriter, activist, TV personality, and one of the most prolific and sought-after comedy writers in the history of the entertainment business. As a performer, you've seen him in movies like Mahogany, The Morning After, You Don't Mess With the Zohan, I fucked up already, You Don't Mess With the Zohan, and The Aristocrats, as well as hit TV shows such as The Nanny, The Simpsons, The Martin Short Show, RuPaul's Drag Race, Hollywood Squares. Another one I think I've caught. As well as the Broadway production of Hairspray in the role of Edna Turnblad.

As a writer, he's contributed to dozens of specials and award shows, including Comic Relief, the Primetime Emmy Awards, the Tony Awards, the People's Choice Awards, and the American Comedy Awards, as well as an impressive 23 Academy Award telecasts. He's also taken home six Emmy Awards himself for his writing. But wait, there's more. He's also wrote some of the most iconic, for lack of another word, variety shows and specials of the 1970s, including the Donnie and Marie Show, the Brady Bunch Variety Hour, the Paul Lynn Halloween Special, and last but definitely not least the star wars holiday special religious

experience in a career spanning five decades he's written joke songs and special material for such artists as Cher, Carol Burnett, Billy Crystal, Steve Martin, Nathan Lane, Lily Tomlin, and, of course, his longtime friend and muse, Bette Midler. He's even had the honor of working with beloved entertainer Gilbert Gottfried. Please welcome to the show an artist of many talents and a man who delights in the fact that he once got Marie Osmond to sing Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me. Our pal, Bruce Fulanch. And the Mormons have never recovered.

Bruce is so sharp, he knows the jokes that are coming in the intro. Before they come, he's never seen it. To anyone who will listen. He's like six seconds ahead of the jokes in his intro. I actually just told somebody that story the other night about how that happened. Marie? Marie. It was the Mormon censors who are really the worst.

They're worse than the network censors. The elders? The elders. The network censor has nothing to do. She's counting the strobe lights to see if it's going to put epileptics into seizure. The Mormon sensors are saying, oh, no, you mentioned coffee. Oh, God, no, you mentioned tea. Oh, yeah, they couldn't say caffeine.

Oh, you couldn't say caffeine. Everybody had a milk break on the Donnie and Marie show. And so it was, I mean, every lyric that came along, they censored. And I kept bringing in songs from Marie Doudou, and they'd say, oh, she can't sing that. That's just too – it was an Ira Gershwin song called Treat Me Rough. And they said, oh, no, it's too salacious about getting knocked around by your lovers. And so Ira Gershwin wrote a new lyric for her, and they said, no, it's still too much.

And I couldn't – I said, Ira G it's still too much. And I couldn't. I said, Ira Gershwin, the Ira Gershwin. Well, it doesn't matter. It's just she can't possibly do it. So then I brought in Coming from the Rain, which was – Oh, I love that. My friend Melissa Manchester and Carol Sager had just written. And they said, well, it's about a woman who accepts her husband when he philanders.

I don't know where they got that from. I mean, from that lyric. It's just a lover song. Yeah, right. and they said that she couldn't possibly do it so out of desperation i brought in don't let this thing go down on me that they love oh oh that elton john oh he's so peppy what a sweet message and so i was sitting in the booth with the network sensor mrs futter, who looked the way she sounded. Mrs. Futterman. She weighed in. She was on the heavy side.

The plus size. Melissa McCarthy will do her movie. And the owl's eyeglasses. And we're sitting there. And Maria's singing, don't let the sun go down on me. And she's shaky. She got away with it, didn't you? Beautiful.

Beautiful. The Mormons were just kind of, oh, this is wonderful. The irony is you were brought in in part to adult her up. Well, I was actually. I was formally brought in when she turned 18 because they wanted to make her more adult. Exactly right. Bob Mackey was brought in to give her dresses. Wow.

You know, he gave her the gave her the... Bob worked with a woman named Elizabeth Courtney, and she built all of his costumes. And one of the tricks to the Bob Mackie costume is it's what's called a Moliere bodice. It's whale bone. It's a corset. And so it's like early version of Spanx. It pushes everything in. And then at the top of the corset are cups for your boobs. And so you take whatever boob you have and you put it in those cups and you look like you have gigantic boobs.

And so they did it for everybody. So people who were really not known for their boobs, you know, suddenly, oh my God, she's bodacious. Look at her. And that was part of, they wanted that for Marie. They wanted her to have that. These same Mormons who would not let her sing Ira Gershwin,

Treat Me Right. I wrote her talk show, the morning talk show she did with Donnie, the syndicated show, and I found her to be a bit randy. Oh, well, now she has eight kids. Yeah. You know, we all went to her wedding. We all flew to Utah to the wedding because it happened while she was – she married the basketball player. I remember.

And we were all – we got there and we discovered that we couldn't go inside because we were all Jews. Oh, God. Geez. Because they kept hiring Jews because in variety television in those days, the more Jews in the room, the funnier the show. So there was a whole – a whole passel of Jews had flown up and we all were in the courtyard of the Mormon tabernacle sitting on lawn furniture, listening to the thing of the year while the Mormons were in the tabernacle. Incredible. Yeah. So then she got then she really got Donnie to once they were freed of being Mormon. He was a prankster and she was a little hand on the handsy side. Yes. kids. He was a prankster and she was a little on the handsy side. Yes. So when did

how did you find out and when did you find out that Jews weren't allowed in the Mormon tabernacle? That was the day. Nobody had told us. We flew up for the wedding and they said, oh, you can't come in by the way. We've organized a lawn party for you. And we sat

out there and Art Fisher was the director of the show and he was a big Jew and he was in love with Marie. I mean, I we I think first of all I think he wanted to marry her and and they said under no circumstances you know could you possibly go near this this girl and they married her off to this the the basketball coach the basketball player he was a star like BYU and then they had kids and then she took the unprecedented step of getting divorced i remember just don't do and then years later she came back to him finally after after a bunch of other adventures but that so we we know we figured okay well we will kind of respect you

know i'd always said that uh uh we all had to respect each other's religions. I mean, at the beginning, the very beginning, Mother Osmond, Olive, who looked a bit like Mrs. Futterman, actually. Olive Osmond came into my office and I was drinking a Bloody Mary. It was the 70s. And I was on the phone with my drug dealer looking up. I had the physician's desk referenced so he could mention a drug and I could look it up right there. And she came in and she looked and she said, smoking and drinking. Your body is a temple. How can you desecrate your body this way?

And I looked at her and I said, mixing meat with milk, you heathen. Toy! And she abruptly left. And I thought, that's it, I'm done here. But no, they figured, we need the Jews. Gotta have Jews. Can't have comedy without Jews. We need the Jews.

So we're not getting rid of him. But it was like that. At that point, it was like, okay, literally, you go to your church and i go to mine and i won't do i won't mock yours if you won't mock mine and we would just cheerfully mock each other's well and there's a famous freelance story that uh donny osmond when he was about five or something said to you you, oh, you look like a big Muppet. It was the first day on the show.

He came into my office to meet me. And he looked at me and I had a huge beard and a lot of hair. I was very Unabomber in my look. And I was larger than I am now. And behind it, there wasn't a desk that fit. They had to go down to KTLA and get the news anchor desk and bring it up from my desk. So I was a formidable presence. But fluffy.

And kind of squishy and cute. And he came in and looked at me and he said, you look just like a Muppet. And I said, it's the funniest thing. Jim Henson had his hand up my ass not 10 minutes ago. I think I said fist up my ass. And there was this pause, this long pause. And he started giggling. And also doing what turned out to be the moonwalk, you know, backing out of the

office while giggling. And I thought, okay, I'm done here. I always thought I was done there. You know, I thought I'd never survive. And, uh, and then he decided I was okay. You know, I was, I was one of them. I wasn't one of them. I was one of them. I was like an ally because he was always looking for, uh for people who would enable him to get out from under the family because the family was completely suffocating. I mean, these kids had only known the family. When I say the family, I mean everything, religion, family, business, show business, all was one great big ball of wax that was the Osman Empire.

And those kids were part of it. And there was no escaping. They lived together and they worked together. And they did everything as a unit. And so anybody who could like spring him from that for an hour to go get his face sanded was the ally. And Marie was like that too, except they were, she had to fight her way in because they didn't want her to be,

she was supposed to be a good Mormon housewife. And they had like 14 kids, one of them a girl. And they didn't want her to do it. They were promoting Jimmy. I remember Jimmy. Who was at the time. They said, isn't he wonderful?

Little Jimmy Osmond. They said, yeah, he looks like they let the air out of Wayne Newton. That was then. Then I got, I mean,

subsequently I got friendly and he became a TV producer and I was in a TV movie that he produced. No kidding. I played Santa's elf. It's called,

it nearly wasn't Christmas. How nice, you've both played elves. Charles Durning was Santa Claus and I was the elf on steroids. I was all little people. All the other elves were little people.

We shot the whole thing in, guess where? Utah. Where Jimmy Osmond built a studio in Orem, Utah. And the Jews flew up. A plane load of Jews would fly up every week to do the show. What was Durning like, as long as you've mentioned him? Durning was fabulous. Somebody we love to talk to do the show. What was Durning like, as long as you've mentioned him? Durning was fabulous. Somebody we love to talk about on this show.

He was hysterical, and he was a great raconteur, and he was a wonderful actor and very naturalistic and was not one of these actors who spent a lot of time on process. If he did, it was privately. He got to the set, and he was just kind of ready to go. I mean, and we'd rehearse it. And then right before we would do the take, he'd say, is that how you're going to do it in the take,

the way you did it in the rehearsal? And I wasn't sure if he was saying you wanted to make sure or he didn't like what I did in the rehearsal. Because at that point they said, action. So we would play this. So this was just his, you know. Right. Was he busting balls?

Oh, no. No, he was serious. There was a girl, a child actress in the thing. She was local, which by local in Utah means they brought her in from Denver because they were cheaper than flying. So and she was she was good, but she was like a bratty kid. And and we were driving home from the set the first day that she worked. And he said, you know, I met her this morning and I thought, what a cute little kid. And now I've worked with her all day and fuck, it's Faye Dunaway.

Wow. Jeez. So he, yeah, I mean, that was, you know, he absolutely broke no trap. We love character actors on the show. We love to talk about people like him and Jack Warden and who Gilbert's worked with. He never worked with Durning, Gilbert. No, I would have loved to have worked with him. He was.

He had great – we also had war stories. He had literal war stories. Oh, I know. He fought in the war and he killed people. He carried this tremendous guilt around. That's what we heard. Because he said, everybody who I killed was a kid. He said they were like teenage soldiers by the time I got over there and they were fighting the last stand.

And he said it was heartbreaking because I would be close enough to actually shoot them. And I had to. It was him or me. And since the kid, it was always a kid, I knew he would shoot me. So I had to shoot him first. But he, you know, I'm doing a very abbreviated version of it. But I mean, with Charles Durning telling you this, I mean, it's Charles Durning.

He must have liked you because my understanding was that he did not like talking about that to anyone. Oh, I realize. He must have taken you into his confidence. I heard that Charles Durning was among the troops liberating the camps, too. He was. When did you guys meet?

Do you remember meeting for the first time? Would it have been Hollywood Squares? It might have been Hollywood Squares or it might have been at the Comedy Store one night. I was never performing, but I would have been seeing you. I think probably it was Hollywood Squares. Yeah. I mean, or some other award show, you know, maybe the Comedy Awards,

maybe Schlatter. Oh, that's right. I used to do that. Oh, the night you pissed Schlatter off by going on and doing the – you did something. That one they wrote for me, and I did it. It wasn't funny to begin with. I see.

Was this where you were stuck in the podium? No, no. This was – Did you do a bit about Pee Wee Herman? No, it had to do – this was – that was on the Emmys where they got pissed off. Okay. This had to do with, you know, wearing the red ribbon, the AIDS ribbon. And I thought in the middle of a comedy show –

Oh, they wanted everybody to wear – yeah, I remember that. Yeah. And I remember that didn't do – and I remember that while I was up there thinking, eh, they'll never have me back. And I didn't write that thing. They handed it to me. I don't think I did either. There were a bunch of us writing on it.

But I wrote on a lot of those shows. Were you present for the famous You Fool recurring gag? I was up there, absolutely. You were on the board? I was up on the grid. On the on the board? I was on the grid. On the grid? I was. And Penn, right?

I think Whoopi was up there. He first did it, and then I just started doing it after each joke. And then I was like the entire show. But it was a guy who kept getting it wrong. It's great. The contestant. I mean, every answer. And the woman.

They went back and forth. They went back and forth. And we were bluffing them every time. And they went for it every time. And so it was, you fool. Yeah. It was so obvious. Yeah.

But yes, I was. I don't know that she actually called on me. But, you know, in Hollywood Squares, like, they call on you if you're strategically where they need to be. I mean, some people they would never call on, and they only will call on them if they have to use it to win or block. Yeah, and I think with that show, i was the only one left they had to get through me yeah that's right so it was like i was the entire show and they kept missing and so the next one would have to go to him again yeah yeah so it was like six jokes in a row or something like that yeah it's a legendary one at least you among us, among aficionados of the square.

It's funny. Growing up, I would watch Hollywood Squares, and I always liked it, and I always laughed. But I remember growing up thinking, oh, this has got to be the bottom of everyone's career, doing Hollywood. And then when they offered it to me i i had so much fun on that show it was great you know it was on 14 years the first time and it was a network show and uh i think by the end it had become i think a lot of people thought that's what it was and then it came back in the 80s for five years and then then our version that was the John Davidson version? John Davidson and John Rivers and Waywinder and Madden. I don't really remember that.

And then our version came back, which was like, with Whoopi, it was sort of like star-loaded. And the idea was that she would attract big names. And to a degree, she did. I mean, a lot of people use it as a vehicle to promote stuff. Did you audition to host the show? I did. Yeah. Yes, degree she did. I mean, a lot of people use it as a vehicle to promote stuff. Did you audition to host the show? I did. Yeah.

Yes, I actually did. She suggested I host the show. And they all said, oh, well, she's nuts. But we can't piss her off this early in the game. I could see that. So they auditioned me. And there I was with all these other hosty types. And this one's for the win, Louise.

And they said, well, you know, we like your energy. We want to put you in a square. And I thought, I mean, my friends were producing the show, and so they liked me, and they wanted me to be in a square. But I thought that King World that owned the show wanted me because I think they thought I might tame her. You know, I might like because they put me next to her

so that she and I could like, you know, chat and have something going on camera and off camera. And of course they, you know, you can't tame that. I mean, we used to joke that they mistakenly they didn't realize that she is basically a Jewish gay guy and I am basically a black woman.

Ask anybody who has slept with me and you will know. And you worked with someone, well, Paul Lynn. Yeah, I worked with Paul. Now, he was a legendary Jew hater, wasn't he? Oh, yeah. Well, you know, he was a legendary Jew hater, wasn't he? Oh, yeah. Well, you know, he was, Paul, on one drink was wonderful. And on two drinks, he was the Wannsee Conference.

He was the Luftwaffe High Command. Hilarious. He was, you know. You lousy cunt. You fucked me over, you goddamn cunt. And he, and so the goal was to keep him on one drink and not to get the second glass of wine. And the Jews were the cause of all of his troubles. And, of course, he was surrounded by Jews.

His managers were two Jews. Incredible. Ray Katz and Sandy Gallen. And everybody significant in his life, but the other reason he was annoyed was he always felt that he was a big star and had made a lot of money. But he'd come up in New York with other people. Charlie Ray. Well, yeah, but specifically, Woody Allen and Mel Brooks had become movie stars. Oh, I see what you mean. And Paul was always like the guy, Rock Hudson's psychiatrist. Right.

You know, or the next door neighbor, J. Tadaris Day, or someone like that. And basically it started with Bye Bye Birdie, which was his biggest acting role, where he played the harassed father and the suburban dad.

And he never got to where they were, and it just pissed him off and decided it's because they were jews and i kept saying to him they write their own material come up with stuff and they make their movies yes that's a good point you know they are two filmmakers and they generate their own stuff and it's not because they're jews it's because they're brilliant and they're funny and uh and they have this other skill set that you know you don't have aside from the fact that paul was a great flavor i mean he was he was exhibited best on the squares because he would come in we do that with the one line and get out and it's it's hard

to carry something when he they gave him a sitcom. Oh, the temperature's rising. Well, that was the second one. Paul Lynch Show, which had a huge first week. And the second week was half the first week because he didn't really carry. You know, it's very hard for the antic character to be the central character in a sitcom because basically you have to have a cool character who is surrounded by colorful people i mean think van dyke mary tyler newhart newhart i mean those are the things

that that work it's rare that you get archie bunker i mean uh that was a magical combination but i mean maude was too hot to last you know as a as a soul, the center of the thing. And Paul was just the wrong guy to be the centerpiece of a show. But great when you'd see him like his Uncle Arthur on Bewitched. Exactly right. When he hit Come and Steal, See Him. So that never happened. And they bought him out and put him on Donny and Marie as a regular at the salary he would have gotten had he been doing his own show. So he was making a ton of money.

And then we would do specials. But they were special by the nature of it. And we would surround him with funny people. And so he wouldn't have to be on that much. You know, we'd have Betty White and other people around him doing things. Florence Henderson. Yeah, exactly. We had that Halloween show with everybody. I'm glad you got there because we were going to get there eventually.

I mean, and Kiss, you know, and Witches. He was a witch. And who do you know who Kiss was? Margaret Hamilton is the wicked witch of the West. That's what I was going to ask you about her. And Witchy Poo. Billy Hayes. Billy Hayes.

We had witches. We had Tim Conway. We had Roz Kelly, Pinky Tuscadero. We had about 12 guest stars on that show. So he was well protected. And who came first, Paul Lynn or Alice Gosa? Well, everybody. They came together, although probably not in the same room.

They were both, I believe, in New Faces of 52. And Leonard Silman discovered them both and put them in the show. And I was too young to have seen it. And the movie, there's a movie of it, but you don't really get the flavor of them too much. You can't figure, I mean, the claim always was one of them imitated the other. And they became the same person as it went along. But I never was sure who it was.

The funniest of all is that, I mean, like, Paul has been dead for 40 years. Has he been 40 already? 1981 or 82. Wow. If he thought that we would be talking about him, he would be stunned because in his mind he hadn't made it. He hadn't done anything. He'd made money, but he hadn't become an icon, that figure. And now he is.

He would be absolutely amazed. Watching that Paul Lynn special, first of all, I mean, you're talking about the assortment of drugs. Well, yeah. I mean, you said talking about the assortment of drugs. Well, yeah. I mean, you said Tim Conway, Betty White, Kiss. It's just,

it's the perfect 70s TV special. He's a trucker, right? He's a trucker at one point and he's covered in rhinestones because I guess it's a,

I guess it's a Glenn Campbell the song was on the charts and then he and he and Tim Conway fight over Pinky Tuscadero in a trucker bar. I mean, it's a Clem Campbell. The song was on the charts, and then he and Tim Conway fight over Pinky Tuscadero in a trucker bar. I mean, it's unbelievable. I've been watching you, Pinky.

Oh, yeah, I've been watching you watching me talk, Paul. I bet I'm having a better time than you are. Oh, yeah? Do you think you could teach me to do that? I don't know. Give me a little whistle. That's too little. All right, I'll tell you what you do.

All you got to do is follow me everywhere. Shake it up, shake it down. Move it in, move it round. Disco, baby. Move it in, move it down. Move it in and about it out, move it in and about, disco baby Shake it up, shake it down, move it in, move it round, disco baby Move it in, move it out, move it in and about, disco baby

Shake it, baby, shake it Baby, shake your thing Shake it, baby, shake it Baby, shake your thing You got us groovin' We feel like movin' It's such a key thing For Halloween day I like that funky stuff.

And he didn't know who Kiss was? Is that true? He didn't know who Kiss was. He didn't know who Kiss was. Good, but you've seen it, yes? Oh, yes? He didn't know who Kiss was, but he was profoundly depressed when they brought over the president of their fan club. And that was Ringo's daughter. Oh, interesting.

Way back then. And he knew who Ringo was. And he was kind of like, he has a daughter. She's old enough to do this. And that made him feel old. But at the time, we were shooting the thing. I mean, he didn't know who anybody was, really, except, like, from golden age people. But Roots was on, and it was a huge success, gigantic success.

But Roots was on, and it was a huge success, gigantic success. And we were standing outside, because I think they had just passed a cigarette law. We were standing outside the soundstage smoking, and Paul was in a cape and a witch's hat. Smoking. And LeVar Burton, who played Quintet Quintet, walked by with a little entourage of people because he was going to do, I don't know, Live with Regis or something like that that used to be on that lot. And he's walking by and he sees Paul.

And Paul, of course, doesn't remember his name. He just looks at him and goes, Roots! Love it! Hilarious. Much to his credit, LeVar Burton just burst out laughing. What else can you do? Here's a guy in a wizard outfit.

That voice. What was Margaret Hamilton like? She was adorable. She was, at that point, a very old Lesbeterian. Lesbeterian. She was a Lesbeterian, and she had, of course, lived on the down low for many years.

I would imagine. And she was living in Gramercy Park here in New York. And she was pretty frail and she didn't come out much, but she just couldn't resist this, the opportunity to do this thing with Billy Hayes, who she admired a lot. Right. She thought it would be like her kind of swan song to just do the Wicked Witch of the Wisps one more time. And she was just really funny and, of course, told all the stories and everybody flocked to her and all that.

But I did get a kick out of her because every now and again, there was like some gorgeous girl would walk by and she would nudge me on the elbow. Get me her number, would you? I love it. I'm sorry, she's dating Marjorie Maine. Marjorie Maine. Well, Marjorie Maine was another lesbian.

Yeah, I'm aware. Hey, guys, everyone's away on summer vacation, but we still have to record those commercial breaks. So here's Gilbert knocking one out in his bathroom. I'm assuming. Hi, I'm Rosanna Arquette, and you're here listening to Gilbert Gottfried's amazing, colossal podcast. Finally back. Get in on Major League action and swing for the fences with BetMGM, the king of sportsbooks. Log in or sign up to play along as BetMGM brings the real-time action. Embrace a season's worth of swings with BetMGM,

your one-stop shop for all things baseball. BetMGM.com for Ts and Cs. 19 plus to wager. Ontario only. Gambling problem? Call Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Has Tim's got a treat for you?

Well, actually, a treat in a treat. Get ready for Tim's dream cookies. Now in three delicious flavors. Double Stuff Oreo, Caramel, and Reese's Minis. They're soft, chewy, and baked fresh daily. Try one today at participating restaurants in Canada for a limited time. Live from Nutmeg Post, we now return to Gilbert and Frank's Amazing Colossal Podcast.

And you did that very surreal Star Wars holiday special. We had Steve Binder in here too. Well, he was called in. I know, he was the second guy. Yeah. He's oddly proud of it, by the way. Look, first of all, it was the 70s. We were on

everything, really, but skateboards. We could have been if we had any balance left from all the weed we smoked. But we could if we if we had any balance left from all the weed we smoked but i mean if we thought that 40 years later we'd be talking about it we would have paid closer attention i mean it was uh in the the world of television it was not unusual to do something insane uh just to get the audience's attention you know way, Wayne Newton at SeaWorld. I mean. Did you write Wayne Newton at SeaWorld? I did.

Oh, jeez. Cole Porter in Paris starring Connie Stevens. It was just who you want to hear sing Cole Porter in Paris. Oh, my God. A great woman. I'm a friend of hers and I'm a fan. But, I mean, it was just. But that was the kind of show, you know.

Steve and Edie sing The Beatles. This was. Yeah. You know. And so this Beatles. This was, you know. And so this was, it wasn't so unusual. Sure. Because you would do this thing and it would have a theme and then you would load it up with stars. You were cross-promoting things, like it was a CBS show. So it was full of Harvey Korman and originally Cher, but she had had a little surgery and she couldn't do it.

And so Diane Carroll, who fit into the costume. She's the fantasy. Was the fantasy sequence. Which, by the way, was the first. She was the fantasy of one of the Wookiees. Yes. And he was wearing a VR helmet, which George kind of came up with. And now they exist.

Wow. A virtual reality helmet. And it would plug in and your fantasy would be realized. And she was his fantasy realized. I can't remember if it was Itchy or Lumpy. It was the grandpa. Oh, it was the grandpa. Itchy. Lumpy was the kid.

That's right. And Itchy had the fantasy. So it was the first interracial, interspecies romance on network television. Where is my NAACP image award? I ask you. You should have one. We broke ground. It was a double header.

Not merely racial, but special. What did you describe the Wookiee language as? The sound of... Well, I said the Wookiees, they sound like fat people having orgasm. Right. Trust me, I know. That's my favorite. That was... Hi, hi honey i'm home and and the wookies they had a strange description of what they looked like

i did really well there was one in particular i think that he's alluding to the george lucas referred to one of them? Well, Cunface. Yeah, that's the one. Cunface. Cunface was not a Wookiee. Cunface was an alien. Okay. You don't want to call him by the wrong name.

I made the same mistake. George had done... I have to explain that. They're on their way home to the Wookiee planet, Chewbacca, and he's in the Millennium Falcon with Han Solo and Princess Leia and Luke Skywalker, and they stop off on the planet Tatooine with a cantina. Yeah, sure.

That's the cantina. And all these aliens are there. And George had shot the Empire, but it was editing it. And so he had a whole bunch of new aliens, but he didn't want to use them on the show. And he didn't want to design, build new aliens. So we used remainder aliens. We went to the alien warehouse and pulled out the aliens that had not made the cut in the first two movies. And they were all like Elmer's glue all and scotch tape.

And those were the aliens. And one of them was like a huge vagina on your shoulders and kind of nondescript space captain outfit and but and george has this there's a vaginal leitmotif in those movies you know in the empire there's a huge vagina that almost swallows jabba the huck oh yes and car And carries holding on like she's got handcuffs. And she almost goes. It's a big hole in the desert that looks like. The third one.

The Jedi. Big old vajayjay. And the prototype, I think, was this puppet, this head that we called him Cunface. And he made the cut. He was on our show because we just said, you know, we can't. We have to. Even the censor let us use him. And then it was like he had to be there while Bea Arthur.

Bea was singing a song. Yeah, she wanted a song. Bea was maud at the time, and she had come from Broadway, where she had won the Tony for Mame as Vera Charles, and she had been the original Yen to the Matchmaker in Fiddler and she wanted to sing. And she brought in a song that she wanted to sing and she was, it was, you know, the dark alien bar and she decided that she was the kind of Brechtian bartender, the woman who runs the thing. And she was very Statue of Liberty, you know, standing there with her beer stein.

And she wanted to sing the alabama song by berthold brecht and kurt weill oh show me the way to the next bar oh no that's why oh and it ends with i tell you i will die i tell you i will die and she said this is my brecht vial number i said it's your vial Brecht number is what it is but we should you know

and we had to clear it with Bertolt Brecht's estate and they said what are you nuts you're singing so she should sing this thing

on television with the alien with the cunt face so so we had Ken and Mitzi Welch who had written all of those carol bernette medleys sure they're they wrote a piece of special material that was a sort of homage to brecht and vile uh-huh and uh it was i forget what the song was but it was kind of it also was a lot like

those were the days my friend yeah i didn't write it down. It was one of those kinds of songs. And so it was a bit more up than the Alabama song. And Bea sang it. And Cunface was part of the group behind her. And it was 123 degrees, and these guys in the heads were boiling, and they would keep passing out. And every time one passed out and had to be taken away, I would move Cunface closer to B. Hilarious.

And so finally it was like a two shot with her and Cunface. At the end of the thing and she's singing it to him. Whose idea was it to put Harvey Korman in drag as a Julia Child type? I don't know. Well, I remember it may have been mine or it may have been Rod Warren, who was one of the writers, or Lenny Ripps, Pat Proff.

They were all writers on the show. And, you know, in a stone session, who knows? Right, right. But we knew we had to use Harvey because Harvey was on the Burnett Show, which was a big CBS show, and part of it was... Working the CBS people in.

Yeah, right. And so we were trying to think of somebody funny Harvey would do and Harvey of course loved to do drag. He loved to do the big bosomy

as the stomach churns. Yes. And so we thought it would be funny to have him as Julia. There were a lot of people doing Julia Child. Dan Aykroyd

did the very funny one with all the blood which of course we couldn't do but we had to do a different one. So we said, let's make Julia Child an alien and have her cooking with eight arms so she can do a million different things. You've brought it up to Lucas over the years when you've run into him. Oh, he walks away. He walks away.

Whenever I see him, his head goes down. He doesn't want to be reminded. Don't talk about it. Yeah, for a long time. Nobody knew about it, And then the Internet happened. Yeah. And what happened was a generation of kids who had watched the first three, which are, of course, now the second three. They watched the first three Star Wars movies on video and knew everything about it and took it as a religion.

Discovered through the Internet that there was this other thing that they had never known about that George had actually been involved in that they then, of course, had to study. And they were betrayed. They felt, how could he have done this? How could he have lowered himself to this vaudeville with this thing, which is kind of like, you know, the Mishnah. Yeah, they take it very seriously. It's the Talmud, these three movies. So they began writing him serious hate mail. And so he was appalled because he really thought it was dead and buried.

Nice thing to be a part of, though. A nice part of pop culture history to have been a part of. Oh, yeah. From your standpoint. The author, at the end of her song, she like hits her big note and swings her arm. Yeah, she swung her, well, she swung her arm and she knocked cunt face. And he went over.

And she turned to the camera and she said, I've never hit a man in the cunt before. What would you kill to be on that set, Gilman? Oh my God. The whole thing got cut and we had to reshoot the number one. I just want to,

I said one other thing about the Paul Lynn Halloween special. And by the way, I just watched it again. I own it on DVD. It makes me happy. Like the Marty Allen song

makes you happy. Oh, yes. Every year people say, oh, we watch it ritual. Oh, it's just great. And Billy Barty, we didn't makes you happy. Oh, yes. Every year people say, oh, we watch it ritual. Oh, it's just great. And Billy Barty, we didn't ask you about. It is so surreal. Yeah, it's wonderful.

It is. It is incredibly surreal. Julie Newmar told me a story. Isn't it Julie Newmar? Sure, we had her on here. Oh, you did. Okay. She told me a story about a Billy Barty story.

She said that they worked together on something. And he said to her, um, he said to her, I want to eat your pussy. And she said, if you do, and I hear about it. Oh God.

And I, and you know, we've had many, we used to have, uh, Billy, we always had something that we would put in for the sensor to cut out. And it was always Billy Barty walking over to some tall creature and say, I want to go up on you.

Hilarious. And it was never failed. You worked on that show that I remember I watched it recently and thought this must be what hell looks like. And that was the Bradyady bunch variety hour oh actually we had a lot of fun but it was like sid marty was it that was uh that was sid and marty yeah it's marty croft because they i remember one of them that i watch they were all in, of course, spandex and costumes ugly by 70s standards. Oh, God. And they did, and now we're going to do a tribute to disco.

Always. Always. They also did a disco number to end the Paul Lynn special. That's right. With Billy Barty. Right. They sing like Stayin' Alive or something. Well, that was Billy Barty. Right. They sing like Stay Alive or something. Well, that was very popular then.

Yeah. At all the Sid and Marty shows, Earl Brown was a writer of special material who was actually quite brilliant. And he had a Christmas present for everybody. And it was a framed, a glass frame. and it was a glass frame, and inside there was a feather and confetti and a balloon and a little note that said, break in case of finale. Perfect.

Because every one of their shows ended with balloon drops, confetti. Yep, the whole thing. Well, Sid was a showman, going back to the Garland stuff. They did that show in the image of Donny and Marie. I mean, Donny and Marie had ice skaters. They had water ballads. Right. That's right. And there was a guy named Fred Silverman who ran all three of the major

networks at the time at one point or another. And he kind of came up with the idea of weird host couplings. And some of them, of course, were huge. Sonny and Cher, Tony and Andy Wendon. Pink Lady and Jeff. Well, that was one of the disgraces.

But he had a lot of them really worked. I mean, the very last variety show was Barbara Mandrell and the Mandrell Sisters, and that was a Silverman idea. And both Donny and Marie and the Brady Bunch were still – he had originally wanted the Partridge family. And both the Partridge family and the Brady Bunch were still, he had originally wanted the Partridge family. And both the Partridge family and the Brady Bunch, which were like on in an hour together. Sure, Friday night. Friday nights.

They had both gone out on tour for their audiences. And so he wanted it to be the Partridge family because it was an extension of the old Partridge family show about these people who do a show and they live together and it's a variety show instead of a sitcom. And they didn't want to do it. And so he decided the Brady Bunch should do it. So it was about the Brady family. Which you've described as a meta show. It was totally meta, yeah.

The Brady family goes to Hollywood to do a TV variety show. The fact that they couldn't sing or dance. We called it One to Kneel and Seven Captains. Yes, I love that. It's a very 70s reference. I love that. But they had done state fairs and things like that, but they were not like a big Vegas act.

They were not cast for that. But on this show, they had to do all of that, everything, and deal with guest stars. Yeah, The Simpsons does a wonderful parody of The Simpsons' Smile Time Hour. I remember they, in one of their tributes to disco, they have Rick Taylor. Oh, yeah. Rick D's first singing disco duck.

We had Rick D singing disco duck. Yeah, and then he comes on in a big duck outfit. And so does Anne B. Davis. Yes, Anne B. And then the same one. His love interest. Rerun comes out in his full rerun outfit. Well, it was an ABC show, and What's Happening was on.

He came out with the cast of What's Happening. Yeah, and they were all. This is my childhood, damn it. One of Tina Turner's first gigs after she left Ike to make some money on her own

that did not involve him was on the Brady Bunch Variety Hour. Wow. Wow. I remember her on that Cher special, too. Tina Turner.

The one with Elton John and Tim Conway. Yeah. Yeah. Where she was solo. Oh, yeah. Tina Turner. Later on, yeah.

Actually, it was all around the same time. She had a lot of gigs that she had to do where they had bought Ike and Tina, and they weren't interested in Ike's solo, but they were interested in her solo, and that was – so we put together an act. Did Robert Reed enjoy doing drag? He actually did. He was so repressed.

I think he got to you know work out a whole a whole thing i'm gonna put him in his carmen miranda he loved he loved being carmen miranda what about guest stars on those shows by the way before we jump off a milty buddy hackett bob hope vincent price anything stand i worked with all well vincent price was hysterical and really worked, loved the kids. And he played it. When I tell people this, they don't believe it, but the model for the show was the old Jack Benny show.

Interesting. Where Jack Benny would just say, Oh, Mary, I'm going next door to Ronald Coleman's to borrow a cup of sugar. That kind of stuff. Right, right, right. Which is that great sound sound the radio gag you know this gag with him where he says i'm we're out of sugar i'm going down and he said i'm going to take a cup and go over and borrow and you hear footsteps and you hear footsteps and then you hear footsteps approaching and then suddenly the footsteps stop and you hear a quarter going into the cup

right it's a great radio joke right you know the jack benny just put the cup out Great. It's a great radio joke. Great. You know that Jack Benny just put the cup out like a beggar. Anyway, so that was, the idea was they live in Hollywood

and all their friends are stars and so Vincent Price was the new neighbor at Malibu. Right, the Bradys. Right,

the Bradys. The Bradys are in Malibu and Vincent Price had bought the house next door and was coming over to meet the kids. I forget the rest of it, but it was a funny episode. I think it may have been like the Halloween episode.

Sounds right. But all of those people showed up. They were on both shows a lot. Donny Murray, yeah. Well, Hope would do every show to kind of promote himself. Right. His own specials. But he also, he was on Donny Marie because he loved the kids.

And Lucille Ball was on Donny Marie because she wanted to sing and dance. It was crazy. So you had to write some things for the guest stars as well? Always, yeah. So you had to deal with Lucy and Red fox and and milty and all of these people and what was bob pope's i think it was bob pope's nickname to you to me oh he called me mansfield because of your hair yeah you look like jane mansfield with a dick this is amazing he and he was and i wrote for for him separately aside from the show.

I didn't know that. Oh, yeah. I had a big kick out of writing for him. And we got as friendly as you get. You used to just drop – you have to drop the jokes off with the guard at the gate of the house. To Luke Lake. Yeah. drop the jokes off with the guard at the gate of the house. And I said, no, I'm coming over and I want you to hear you do the jokes. And then he had a box, like a toolbox, or it was a file cabinet, and he'd pull out jokes and they were on cards

and he would deal them like a blackjack dealer. Yeah, that's good, that's good, that's a beauty, that's that's good and and you realize you know this was a world about gas rationing and i realized i was competing with writers who'd been dead for years these were world war two yes he was going over oh i guess there was another because of the energy crisis. Oh, it's in vogue again. He was very funny and he was very randy. But I do have to say, I called him up and asked him to do a PSA about AIDS with Everett Koop, who was the Surgeon General. Right, sure. And he did it. No questions asked.

He came and he did it. He said, I'm yours. He said, this is a horrible thing and nobody should have to die from this thing. And this is. Props for Bob Hope. I know. I was, I was kind of, I mean, the famous like right wing, you know. Yeah.

Yeah. I don't know. Well, Charlton Heston marched with Dr. King. So you never know. Did you write for George Burns too? I did write for George. I don't know if I wrote so much. I did write stuff, but I remembered for George Burns too? I did write for George Burns. I don't know if I wrote so much. I did write stuff, but I remembered for George.

I mean, because he was still doing his act and he would forget. And I was the archivist, you know, I would say. Right. We used to do this joke about, oh, let's do that. Yeah. And we'd put that in and, you know, we'd meet for breakfast and then he would take a long nap. Did he talk about the old acts? He did. Yeah. Yeah, F about the old acts? He did.

Yeah, Fink's Mules. Fink's Mules. You were sitting in when Ron Delsner was here, but did you hear us talking about Swain's Rats and Cats? No. Okay. That was another vaudeville act. What was Fink's Mules?

They were trained mules. They would do things and generally i think a gorgeous girl would ride on them and they would i don't know they would do i'm trying to remember what he told me about them but they were a lot like uh uh there was an act and her horse and she also a lot of work with doves and her finale would be the doves would fly from the back of the house and land on the back of the horse at her command. Just think about getting in a time machine and going back and seeing those vaudeville acts. We're seeing the Marx Brothers in vaudeville on stage.

When I was with George, one of the things, the Pointer Sisters were the opening act. And one of the big jokes was, well, we got here and the stage manager came in and said, George, there is a hole in the wall between your dressing room and the Pointer Sisters' dressing room. Should I fill it up with something? And he said, ah, let him look. So did you work with Benny? I didn't work with him I interviewed him I was a journalist and I interviewed him and I interviewed him a few times uh for the Chicago

Tribune he was in town I don't know he was going up to Waukegan to do something they were honoring him and I interviewed him then and then he had a book and he called and asked me to interview him again we had a good time doing it and he was and at the time they were trying to do I remember uh hello dolly Merrick thought it'd be funny if they did hello dolly and he was dolly and George Burns was Horace and they were going back and forth and back and forth. And he said, well, you know, I do it, except he won't show up. And I'll be standing there in a dress. And they tried to do the Sunshine Boys with Benny Burns.

They did try, yeah. And he had many stories about Burns and how Burns had screwed him over at various public appearances. Well, they shared that manager, right? Irving Fine. Irving Fine. Irving Fine.

Yeah, sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, they had many. He said he told a story about a fortune cookie dinner where everybody had to read their fortunes, and Burns had put all these fortunes in. And then he gave Irene Dunn a fortune to read. I want a dwarf to eat my pussy.

Irene Dunn gets up and very fast, I want a dwarf to eat my pussy. He did that and he did the thing he would always do, he told me, was he would be at a party and Jack would go to light a cigarette. And George would go, shh, shh, he's going to do the match bit. Oh, that's funny. Yeah. There was no match bit. That's funny. He was now with a cigarette and a lighter and a badge and everybody looking at him.

And he was, of course, Jack Benny. What was he supposed to do? So he just said, at some level, I hated him, but I loved him. I don't think people know this about you, too, that you were a journalist and a film critic. You know, it's a... And you were a child model, too. They made a movie about me 20 years ago called Get Bruised. It's a good documentary.

It's all in there. Produced by Harvey Weinstein. Yeah, you were telling me outside. And who never touched me. Forget me too. I'm starting. Why not me? The doc is good.

What was so wrong? The doc is good, by the way. Is Rose McGowan that much prettier than I am? Jesus. The doc is good and your mom shines in it, as I was saying outside. She and Robin Williams are the stars of the thing. Yeah. And she was really, really funny.

And she's very funny in that, particularly. And you were a child model? I was a child model. I was a charming chub in Lane Bryant. It was a very, talk about a niche market. Yeah. But it didn't go much beyond that. It's all in the doc.

I was a child actor, too. It's all in the dog. I was a child actor, too, but I'm never a star. And another rumored to be a Jew hater who you worked with, Engelbert Humperdinck. You know, he was great to me. I didn't know that. I never heard he was a Jew hater. I heard that twice. Really?

Yeah. But I remember principally that Engelbert was that he was deaf in one ear, and he couldn't hear the orchestra. And I would say, turn around. Seemed to me to be the most obvious thing. We tried to get him here. It didn't work out. I haven't seen him in years and years.

I mean, I worked with him. Love to have him. We had fun, and it was – But, you know, he was resisting. He wanted new stuff, but he was using stuff he'd always come up with, like in, I don't know, English musicals or something like that. And he also kind of resented that he had... He had bought Jane Mansfield's house in Holmby Hills, which is now all gone.

It's part of the Aaron Spelling estate. But one of the things that was in the house was a piano, and he said, this is the piano where Cole Porter wrote, they can't take that away from me. And I said, Cole Porter didn't write that. I regers from him. No, said, Cole Porter didn't write that. I regressed from it. No, no, I know it was Cole Porter. And he went back and forth about this.

And I said, no, no. And Cole Porter probably wrote nothing on this piece. Because he basically was in New York. He may have come out here for something and all that. But it's not worth it. If they told you that was the song, they were making it up. Where did you come up with this? He loves to talk about anti-Semites on the show.

He loves to talk about which of our guests are Jewish. I heard two different sources. One was Stewie Stone. Oh, well, that must be true. And he said he was opening for Engelbert Humperdinck. Yeah, he did open. And Engelbert Humperdinck said that the Jews killed Christ. And Stewie Stone said, he goes, no, it was the Romans.

The Jews might have stolen the nails. Hell. Did Red Fox say you were too dirty? No. Oh, too dirty for what? No, give you – I got it. Give you jokes that were too dirty for him? Give them to you for someone else?

He would – oh, yeah. He did give me one that I gave to Beth that we turned into a Sophie Tucker joke. Okay. Oh, God. I couldn't read my own card. Forgive me. Too dirty for Red Fox. No, it wasn't.

Henry Youngman gave me stuff that he had gotten from Red Fox. Gotcha. And he said it was too dirty. I couldn't do it. And one of them was one of the first Sophie Tucker jokes we did about... I forget what it was. I remember the punchline. You've been munching grass for the last 10 minutes.

Something about – I forget what it was. But I also – I mean I wrote clean stuff for Red Fox. You did. That was what was funny, yes. I mean because Red Fox had this filthy act. Oh, yes. And then he became a big TV star with Sanford. And so he got all these huge bookings that he'd never had before.

And he would go, and people would come with their families because they wanted to see Fred Sanford. You know, and he would come out and say, you've got to wash your ass, you know that. And it was like people streaming up the aisle. And so we constructed this show where he would come out and do stuff, funny but not dirty. And then he would say, now I'm going to bring out the lovely Miss Lola Falama,

and she's going to sing for you. And when she leaves, I'm going to come back, but it's not going to be Blue Fox. It's going to be Red Fox. It's going to be Blue Fox. So's going to be Red Fox. It's going to be Blue Fox. So if you want to stay and hear that, you can stay. After he had done like 45 minutes. Yeah. And they would, you know, stay and they would see Lola.

And Lola would do like a half an hour. And then he would come back out and do the old material. And so everybody with kids would leave. But they felt they'd gotten a show. So they hadn't been shortchanged. Was he great live oh he was hysterical you ever see him live kill red fox no no boy what i wouldn't have given is there a george burns before we move on from george burns is there a george burns piazzadora

story uh yeah there is i feel terrible you don't have to tell it you don't have to tell it i saw you tell it so i do it my act in my act sometimes, but I ran into her now. Oh, okay. We won't put you on the spot. What about Jack Palance? Well, I only knew him from the Oscars, and he won for City Slickers, and he came up and he did the one-arm push-ups. Yeah, sure.

But what he did before was he, what people didn't realize was that he was, Billy was the host and he introduced Whoopi and Whoopi came out and presented the award and Jack won and he came up. And his first thing he said was, Billy Crystal, I crap bigger than him. And then he started thanking Billy for putting him in the movie. And then, you know, they all think I'm an old guy and he did the push-ups. And of course, that became, like, iconic.

And we were in the wings. And Billy said, well, we have to go with this. I mean, first of all, he said, I'm a piece of shit. And then he thanked me. And then he did these things. It's hysterical. So we just kept cutting material that we were going to do, and we kept making jokes about what was going to happen.

And it became a thing. We won an Emmy for it. And then the following year, he came back to present. And Billy was hosting again. So we did a whole thing where he's dragging the Oscar, a pyramid, like, you know, a huge. Oh, sure, I remember. He's dragging it. He's wearing a harness and bringing the whole thing on and all that.

So, I mean, that's been my only experience with him. But I remember Billy telling me that, you know, he's really quite scary. We've had people tell us that. He's an actively scary guy. Yeah. And Billy tells a very funny story about Jack Pounce coming up to him on the first day and looking at him and saying, Don't be nervous. And he was towering.

I mean, he was towering. We've had people in here who said he was intimidating. Yeah. Oh, I think. I think. And so when you see him in that picture with Joan Crawford, you realize it really is Godzilla versus the smog monster. What? Can you just speaking of the Oscars, can you tell? And I know people always ask you which jokes never got on. And it's probably a cliched question at this point. But can you tell the off color Sharon Stone joke?

Yeah, but it got on, actually. Oh, it did? It was. It was, well, there was a theme. It was the year of the woman. Gil Cates, the producer of those shows, loved themes. And it was the year of the woman. But it wasn't a big year for women. And the joke we had was, oddly enough, the biggest part this year was Sharon Stones. Ah. oddly enough, the biggest part this year was Sharon Stones.

Ah. And she was not nominated, but she was there, of course. And they shot, they went to her and she kind of, the problem was somebody, and I don't know who to credit, put together a really incredible clip package of women in film. And it was absolutely gorgeous and and weepy i mean by the end of the thing the audience was like in tears and billy followed that i see so it was the placement it was the place that was the problem it was a placement that got it and we we all felt mortified and uh there was no time to change it.

And he was, you know, he just said, I'll just go ahead and see. He did it. But it wasn't, you know, it wasn't an obscene thing. We did have, many, many years ago, Richard Gere was going to present. And it was after the gerbil incident. And it was after the gerbil incident. And we were going to introduce him as Richard. Richard McGeer was going to present, and his original presenter was Fievel from an American tale.

But Fievel backed out. Full of a joke. And Billy said, Richard was sitting in the audience and there was a camera on him and so he wondered why is there a camera on me because i'm not nominated and i'm not him and so billy said look at him he's he's gonna have a heart attack i can't do it to him i just can't do it so we we cut. I just heard you say this is funny, too. Maybe this was in the doc. Were you talking about everybody that got a Life Achievement Award died, so Doris Day turned it down every year?

Doris turns it down every single year. Right. Because you get that, you die. Myrna Loy got it. Dead. Tell Gilbert the other story that's great. Is it you and Shaman are trying to do a musical number about JFK. We were. Well, you know, Billy did those film packages.

The packages. And they were all, it was title songs from the nominated movies. Gotcha. Of course, they had no title songs. But we would take another song and do a parody of it. And the hardest was JFK because nobody wanted to be associated with the movie because it was Oliver Stone and it was about the candidate and all that. And so one of the ideas we had was trouble.

You got trouble right here in Texas with a capital J. It rhymes with K. There's F in between. And it was written from the music man by Meredith Wilson. And this is Meredith Wilson who was living in a home somewhere in West LA. She had the rights. Of course. And so we had to call her and sing it.

Billy and Mark at the piano had to sing it over the phone to her. I love that story. And she said, very funny boys. No way. That was that. Right. And finally, I mean, really, we had a lot of ideas. And one of the other things was we were working on this particular number when Maria Shriver showed up with her camera crew for her NBC show that she was doing.

And she was doing a behind the scenes and we said uh you know billy took her side and said you know we're doing the jfk section maybe you want to sit this out she said oh no she said i'm a journalist i can take it so she came and recorded all of this stuff um and finally when nobody would do it uh billy called sammy khan and uh he gave us three coins in the fountain. Oh, nice. Three shots in the plaza. I don't know.

Right. FBI or Homer Simpson. That job is problem solving. It was. Yes. It was exactly. Yeah. I teased Gilbert with this over the phone.

Is there a story about Joan Crawford and David Niven? Yes. There is a story that David Niven Jr. told me. Or maybe it may have been David Niven when I interviewed him. Seems perfect for this show somehow. After we'd had some drinks. But the story was, well, you know, after the book came out, Mommy Dearest, people started telling the Crawford stories that they'd never told.

And a lot of them had to do with stuff she did when she was drunk, which was a lot. And I knew her, and I knew her as a drinker. I was a favorite interviewer of hers when I was a journalist. And so I'd done seven. She was always drunk in these interviews. And David Niven said that when he came to Hollywood,

he was fixed up with her on a studio date. And they went out and it was a terrible thunderstorm. And he took her home. And it was made fairly clear to him that, you know, when you went on a date with her, you wound up fucking her. So that was what she liked. Or if you starred in a movie with her, you know, and all these guys, you know, it was like part of the drill, as it were.

And so he said, I should call the people I'm staying with to tell them that I'm going to be overnight here or late or whatever. And she said, I'll slip into something comfortable. And she had in the house had a gorgeous staircase. You probably saw in the movies that went up to the second floor. And in those days, people didn't have phones in every room. There were telephone rooms in some houses. There were like little phone booths off the hall.

Or she had a phone on a pedestal, and it was in the crook of this staircase, of the grand staircase. And so he went over to use the phone, and he's calling these people, and he's thinking, and it's like raining on him. And he said, she must have a leak in the roof i must tell her she has a leak in the roof and it looks up to see where the leak is and she is hanging over the banister peeing on him oh my god whether deliberately or by accident. He never knew. Because it was a good way to end the evening.

That's my early Christmas gift for you, Gilbert. John Crawford was peeing on David Niven? From how many feet above? I don't know. High ceiling, 12, 14, maybe 18. You didn't see A.J. Benz's reenactment? It was a great, yeah, it was a great haul, what they called a great haul. Great haul.

I knew that would make him happy, Bruce. Yeah. Yeah. I know my co-host. You know, it's semi-legendary, but I remember it being, I think he told it to me in an interview, but I remember asking, I think, his son, who was a producer, David Newman Jr., was a producer, if that was true. And he said, oh, yes.

He said that was the Crawford story. Lucille LeSueur? Lucille LeSueur. In this case, LeSueur. But she was, there were many, many. I mean, I collected for a while stories. Any more? Nothing as good as that. That's pretty more? Nothing as good as that.

That's pretty good. Nothing as good as that. I mean, just all kind of like kind of crazy. That makes you believe that all the stuff that happened in the book, you know, with chopping down the tree and harnessing the kids and making them clean the bathroom. All that stuff happened during what they call blackout drunk periods but i mean during during drunk periods um because she would always start by being you know fabulous and and more my mother used to play cards with gertie moskowitz who lived down the hall from crawford in the imperial house and up on the upper east side and. And she said she left.

They were playing cards. They used to play, actually, they would play at night. And she left at night, late at night, like around midnight, and went to, and there was, Crawford was in the hall at midnight, vacuuming the hall because it was dirty. Wow. And she was like in Academy Awards outfit, you know, to vacuum the hall. And she said she was completely plastered, but she said it was.

So it's like you hear enough of those and you think, I don't think the woman was lying a lot, you know, when she made up, when she wrote the book. Now, do you know, because it's connected, do you know any Faye Dunaway stories? Oh, I know a bunch because we had the same agent and all that. But nothing like crazy. I mean, a couple of things like when she was playing Maria Callas in L.A., I had a limo driver who said, yeah, we're having a pool to see

how many telephones has she thrown at you. It was stuff like that. I mean, I don't have anything that's really... Well, I knew her but I knew her towards the end.

I knew her before the stroke, but she was just kind of colorful. Not after, I knew her before the stroke, but she was just, she was just kind of colorful. I mean, she said, I would joke with her. I was on the Midnight Special. I do it like a politically correct thing.

Bert Sugarman's Midnight Special. Bert Sugarman's Midnight Special. And we did, David Steinberg hosted the first one and the other David Steinberg was a guest. And I was a guest and I was a guest and a few other people and he didn't come back the second week and I wound up hosting

it and I hosted it for two years because they people stopped doing live television they would give you their video they didn't want to come to the studio and do a performance so they had to fill that time that they used to have with bands.

So they did it with the politically, kind of politically incorrect model. And David was on it. And we were, how did I start this? You were Betty Davis. I was Betty Davis. Anyway, so I was on that show, and I knew I was friendly with a guy who was dating Betty Davis' secretary. And he said, you've got to meet Betty Davis. She's hysterical.

And she has seen you on the Midnight Special because we were talking about it because she's up all night. So we had dinner at Betty Davis' apartment. Very cool. And I came in. She said, Mr. Valanche with the cigarette. And she said, I saw your television show, Wretched. I said, well, that was an early one. We've done more since.

And she said, well, it had nowhere to go but up. And your hair. When you come in at the beginning of the day, you go to your hairdresser and you say, fluff me. And I said, well, you know, that means something else. No. I don't care. You need fluffing. So it was kind of like that.

Hilarious. I spent New Year's Eve with her one year, and it was during her period where she had the hats with all the buttons. And I went over and I just said something I've always wanted to say to you, Miss Davis. Happy New Year's Eve. And she was a long pause and she went. Nice.

Nice job. You know, I think one of the things I liked that Susan Sarandon did Betty Davis on that show was that Betty Davis would do Betty. She would pull out the Betty Davis character when she needed it. I see. But you could have a real conversation with her. And Serena did that on that show, too. Crawford was always Crawford. She was always in character. I never caught her when she was being offhand or anything like that.

I was glad to see that show that somebody was making in this day and age is making a show. Well, Ryan Murphy. Yeah, right. Robert Aldrich. Now he's resuscitated Vogue and ball culture and all that. And wasn't Joan Crawford in like stag films? Well, that was the story that she had done a picture with a donkey in Tijuana. Yeah.

And there are a million versions of it on the internet that claim that that's it. Right. I don't know. Well, speaking of all... We never spoke. We will return to Gilbert Gottfried's amazing, colossal podcast after this. At Miele, our partner is the planet.

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Speaking of off-color stories, where do you stand on the Paul Lynn Gold Diggers dressing room story? Because we've heard different versions of it. What was it? I don't know that. Oh, where he said... Peter Marshall tells it. He walks into the dressing room and he goes, Oh, that.

Oh, yeah. Well, I... That could be... I tell that story differently because I had a similar a thing maybe he was repeating it you tell well we were playing houston the arena theater which was brand new and there was uh the dressing room was a trailer parked over a septic tank and uh this was his act we were doing and with with ross kelly and mimi Hines and a bunch of people. And he was putting his makeup on,

and he had one of his young nephews with him. This one was named Zach. They were all named Chad. One of his nephews. Yes. Chad and Dash and things like that. They all looked faintly Hitler Youth. And he was putting his makeup on, and I walked in, and he said,

Harold, this trailer smells like a cunt. I think. Is that the same story? That's the same story. Yes. But now it's very interesting because there are several versions of it. Yeah. But he actually said that now.

Whether it may not have been the first time he said it, he may have said, ah, I came in and here's a chance. Because it really did stink to high heaven. Peter Marshall says it happened to him in the Gold Digger's dressing room. Well, I wouldn't be surprised. I mean, I wouldn't be surprised because I remember we talked about the Rockettes dressing room smelling like a sushi bar. And you wrote quips for him for Hollywood, for the old Hollywood Squares. I did.

Well, we were doing Donny and Marie, and he would, then they, at those days, they would do Squares at night because that's when people were available rather than asking them to do it on the weekend. And so they would do like one,

three shows one night and two shows another night. And he was leaving ABC and going to NBC to shoot it. And he said, come with me to Squares. I haven't got shit. And we went through the questions and wrote some jokes. And I would do that periodically for him. And that was towards the end of, well, it was the end of Squares.

I mean, it was the late 70s. But so I did write for him. I wrote Donny Marie stuff for him. And thens. So I did write for him. I wrote Donny Marie stuff for him, and then I wrote some Square stuff for him. I think it's fun to know that he would have gotten a kick out of people talking about him. Oh, yeah. All these, as you said, 40 years later. He would have just been completely stunned. Yeah.

Gil, did you meet him? Never met him, no. You never met Paul Lind? No. You met Vincent Price. You met Vincent Price? I met Vincent Price twice. And he also lost a part to Billy Barty, which he likes to dine out on. Yeah.

Do you have anything else for Bruce? I lost a part to Nell Carter. Did you? I did. I seriously did. It was, as you might expect. I love it. I love it. It was a a fantasy we're going a different

way what way is that nell carter oh it was uh a ghost it was a a strange ectoplasmic spirit and a pilot that never happened it was uh okay as we wrap bruce i Wrapping I got a couple here We already talked about Wayne Newton at SeaWorld Which I must get my hands on And Las Vegas, an all-star 75th anniversary special Yeah, I did that Did you work with a Rat Pack? Did you work with Dean and Jerry and Sinatra?

They were on it They were all on it It was a George Slaughter production, yes And they were all Was Frank on it? Well, on the IMD, maybe it was clips. Tom Jones, Rickles, Shecky, even Gallagher. Yes, they were all there.

And Dean was on. Dean and Sammy were on it. I remember that, yeah. It was great. It was at the convention center, and it was, I mean, it was one of those bogus things, a high-concept show. Right, right, right. You get a whole bunch of guys on the thing.

But everybody kind of came in and did their thing and went out. It wasn't – nobody hung out. I would love to say that, yeah, we were in Vegas, all that kind of stuff. Okay, I got one of three wild cards for you, and you can pick. You can tell us about being in Ice Pirates. Ooh. Ooh. Another epic up there with Star Wars.

Or you can talk about writing. You said you like to say you've written for every combination of Sonny and Cher. That's true. Including Sonny's comedy review. Brilliant. Which I will never forget. Which was opposite Cher. that's true including sunny's comedy review brilliant which i will never forget which was opposite share this the the sunny well not opposite but at the same time they had each

had individual shows and then they went back to do uh they went back to do to work together because they hadn't they hadn't had or he hadn't had success or there was something i mean they i forget what the timeline was but he uh he had his own show and uh the joke uh that he was on abc because uh uh if it's it takes a village oh no this is the if tv is the global village and he's the Global Village idiot. He tried so hard. He did. I remember hearing, like, because, you know, and the big news story was that Chastity Bono is a lesbian. And I remember, and Cher went out and said, you know, how shocked. And I remember hearing that she was a big lesbian years before this ever hit the news well

yeah i mean she was she was she was a tomboy and she was a very butch girl but she was at the time a rock and roller she was not a successful rock and roller no No. But she was very much in the Melissa Etheridge vein. She wasn't heavy. She was in the Melissa Etheridge vein of rock singers. It just didn't take. And then she decided to come out and kind of give up the performing career. And she went to work for GLAAD as their communications person and all that. And so, uh,

I, I think probably share was, I don't know. How can I say? I mean, she's the mother and she probably knew, but, um,

must've been a weird childhood for her. Yeah. Oh, it was very, yeah, it was very, because she was, I mean,

here she is with this, with the mother who's a mannequin and married out on stage too. Yeah. Right. Oh yes. That used to be scary yeah she was adorable it was cute but she was never comfortable in that role and uh but she had a very funny thing after that some years later she started she did a couple of big gay fundraisers

and she said i'm doing this uh to make amends to my daughter. She said, because when she told me she was a lesbian, I did a very unshare thing. And I regret it. It was not a share reaction. And it was bizarre because she was talking about sharing the third person. There really is no third person. I mean, Cher is Cher. She's Cher dressed up, and she's Cher in mufti,

if that's what I want to say. But it's always the attitude is exactly the same. And she shoots him in the hip, and she calls him as she sees him, and all those cliches. I mean, last week she gave somebody an interview. She went to see the musical about her that's trying out in Chicago. I saw that, yeah. And she said, some of it's great. Some of it needs work.

It could use a few more jokes. But I had a good time watching it. I mean, you know, obviously she's getting money off of this thing, but it was a very Cher thing to do. It was like, hey, I'm telling you what I thought. It's going to get better, you know, because she doesn't want to say, it's fabulous, it's great, and then reviews come out that are not terrific. So it will get there i'm sure but it's just i thought it was yeah and interesting we had one of the hudson brothers on we had mark hudson who's a lot of fun and yeah he

he had a story that chair used to hold auditions for her next boyfriend. In the house. Oh, that's good. While he was in the house. Oh. Yeah. Was he one of the- I guess they had a dalliance, but I think they were more friends than anything. I guess.

Yeah. He was friends with one of her boy- He is probably still friends with Josh Donovan, who was one of her boyfriends. He's very funny. Before Bagel Boy came in. But Bagel Boy apparently is a character. Rob Camillet is a character. In the Cher musical?

Yeah, I don't know if any of the other boyfriends are characters. We didn't even get to bet, but Gilbert and I found it very entertaining, the whole idea that old red hair is back, that she only wanted one guest, and it was Olivier, and he agreed to do it. That's right. He did. That is interesting. I know. He did, and then he called, and he agreed to do it. That's right. He did. That is interesting.

I know. He did, and then he called and said he had to go do The Boys from Brazil. One of Gilbert's favorites. He said, I'm an old man. I need the money. He said, I'm going to go hunt Nazis in South America. But getting Hoffman as a substitute worked out well. She had met him through Hoffman. They were shooting Marathon Man.

And Dustin brought him to see her. We were playing L.A. at the time, the Drive the Channel Pavilion. And he came back. We were, like, doing six nights. And he came back for every night. He was totally taken with her. And said he would do it. He said he would any opportunity.

He would, any opportunity. In fact, there was, at one point, they were going to do a big TV version of the second show from Anthony Newley and Leslie Brickus, Stop the World, I Want to Get Off of You. And the second was called The Roar of the Grease Paint, The Smell of the Crowd. And it's a lousy show with a phenomenal score. And they were going to do that.

It was Cyril Richard and Anthony Newley. And it was going to be olivier and bet and and the anthony character is like a cockney could be a woman could be a boy and um uh and it just never happened it was it was the material was like a little too rarefied but uh he said he would do this and then and then he couldn't do it and so Dustin said I'll step in and do it and we won the Emmy for that show so it worked out very well.

I remember it. Yes, I remember it. It's a really good show. What else do you have, Gil? Oh, I don't know. I've gone through almost every card. I will say this. I love,

I want our listeners and we have many of them to find Bruce's documentary, Get Bruce, which is great. Full of stories. Yes. I also enjoyed your book. Well, I was on Hollywood Squares, and I got a lot of book offers. I didn't have a book at the time, and I couldn't sit down and write one at the time.

So I collected a bunch of articles and things I'd written for magazines. Yeah. And then watched as it got reviewed like I deliberately published this thing. Oh, there were fun stories in there. Yeah, that's what I did. And it was fine. I mean, that's what happens. And now I'm working on another, a book book.

I was just going to ask you, what's up now? What are you doing? Well, I've written a musical, which is with all of Petula Clark's music. Oh, we love Petula Clark. I love Crazy Bits. Oh. 85. Sign of the Times.

Yep, that's the title. Sign of the Times. Oh, we love Petula Clark. Crazy, crazy. Oh. 85. Sign of the Times. Yep, that's the title. Oh, my God, I love that. And we're going to do it in Wilmington at the Delaware Theater Center. We open November 20th for six weeks. And this is, we've done a few regional theater productions. Wonderful. Did you love playing Edna in Hairspray? Oh, it was the greatest.

It was the most fun ever. Yeah. How many shows did you do? 778. Good Lord. But who's counting? I mean, it was two years. What a work ethic. It was two years. ever. Yeah. How many shows did you do? 778. Good Lord. But who's counting? I mean, it was two years. What a work ethic.

Yeah, it was. It hit an OCD button. You're complaining about going up on stage two nights a week. Yes. This man did 770 shows. Well, you know, you get into that harness. It's getting into the harness that's the hard part. Once you're in it, it's great fun.

I mean, Bette does a hilarious thing which I hope she will film like vaudeville performers hello Dolly about getting herself up the staircase to do the number like at the end of the week after the 8th time she's doing it

and hauling hand over and then the light comes out and and boom, it's Dolly! But it's hysterical. But that's what it's like. I mean, you do the same thing over, and you find a way to make it fresh for yourself. Of course.

But it's physically exhausting because, you know, it's repetitive. It must have been. Yeah. But stage actors, that's what they do. I mean... Did you have, and we talked to Gilbert about this same thing. Did you get the high and then have a hard time coming down sometimes after a show? Yeah. You come off and you're totally exhilarated. It's like when I get off stage, I totally understand why some people get into drugs. Oh, yeah. I'm with you. I totally get it.

Because you want to preserve that, that great feeling when it was a good night, when it's worked well and all that. But it's exhilarating. It's hard to just come down from it. And it's also difficult to be with people who haven't had that experience. And so you wind up seeking out people who...

That's why actors meet each other after the show. It makes sense. Yeah. I mean, because they're all sharing that thing. Go to Joe Allen's and drink till 4 o'clock so you don't have to go home. I always remember watching a talk show where Lauren Bacall was on

and she was doing a Broadway show and she said she would get the adulation and the cheers and then go back to her hotel and be sitting by herself. That's common. We know that's common. You know, that was part of what killed Janis Joplin, I think, is that she was the only female rock star who got that kind of reception. And then there was nobody there when she came off after 20,000 people were screaming.

There was no one person. She tried to find one person, but it never really worked out. But yeah, it's an amazing thing to suddenly have that, all of that, and then it boils down to, okay, I'll get a cab now. And, oh, I just got a flashback of one story. You probably wrote this for her. Yeah.

Melissa Gilbert was on Hollywood Squares. Yes. Granddaughter of Harry Crane. Oh. The legendary comedy writer Harry Crane crane i have a great harry crane so melissa gilbert's line was if i married gilbert gottfried would i be melissa gilbert gilbert gottfried yeah and and you were on this show and you said you'd be the happiest woman in the world. I know.

Well, you know, I'd spoken to the staff at the comedy store. I knew. Fantastic. I knew. Harry Crane and I wrote the first People's Choice Awards. Okay. Whenever that was. And I was like the young writer and he was the the old pro his reputation precedes him i can't even remember who hosted it but we were um

we were i was you know i was bitching about something about you know this this guy wouldn't do this material and it wouldn't work and all that kind of stuff. And he said, hey, when you come across one of those, do what I do. I take the check and I put the check on the passenger seat of the Mercedes and I drive down Sunset Boulevard. And I come to a light and I look and there's a person waiting for a bus and I look at the person and I look at the check and I sing zippity-doo-dah, zippity-day. I love that. That's for you, Gil.

That's advice you need to follow. As Sophie Tucker said, I will never forget it. That is great. Harry Crane. What a legend. Oh, yeah. I mean, then he was writing Steve and Edie, but he was like one of the original of those guys who wrote this kind of stuff, who wrote variety shows. Right, right, right.

When there was a lot of variety shows. Look at the person. So you're working on the Petula Clark musical, which is soon to happen. Did I hear another book? I'm writing another one, but it's taken. I want it to be like a David Sedaris book. Great. You're the perfect person to do that.

Essays, fiction, nonfiction. I don't want it to be. Okay, great. You're the perfect person to do that. Essays, fiction, nonfiction. I don't want it to be, you know, another like, okay. And then I wrote the People's Choice Awards. You know, I wanted to have something more. Right. And I would be remiss if I didn't say that Arnie Kogan said, please thank Bruce for not letting the band play Jay, his son, offstage when he was making his Emmy acceptance speech.

Oh, that's funny. I remember that, yeah. That you were in the control room saying, let him talk. No, no, you can't. This is Jake Hogan. Yeah, and he appreciates that. Was he a Simpsons? He was winning for Frasier.

Oh, for Frasier. Yeah, and we did a Father's Day show with Jay and Arnie, and they were a lot of fun. There's so much crossover here. We had Arnie, and he was Donnie and Marie, and then we had Sid and Marty, and they said say hello to Bruce. And now you're here to give a different perspective on those shows. We should one day do a whole chart.

A flow chart of our guests? I think, yeah. When you do 200 and some odd of these, you know, it's funny how everybody intersects. The onset degrees, they're all. You all kind of bleed into each other. And this one's purely for Gilbert. Okay. And you don't purely for Gilbert. Okay. And you don't have to tell it if you don't want to, but is there a Tallulah Bankhead story?

Oh, there are several, but yeah. This is a gift for Gilbert. I hardly tell it because, you know, I have to explain who she was. Oh, well, our listeners know. But if I do it on stage. But I was in a summer stock with her. I was in a production of a play called Murder on the Rocks, sometimes called The House on the Rocks.

And it was kind of a ridiculous sort of melodrama. And I was playing the butler, and I was very young. And I was like 14, and I had a deep voice and all that. But they were casting on the cheap. And we toured all of these. Wherever there were nice young men who sold antiques, we played. Mostly barn theaters on Cape Cod. And they were kind of ecstatic.

And it's a long story. But we played, as I recall, it was the Tap Enzy Playhouse up the river. And it was a star. There was always a star in whatever the production was. And Helen Hayes lived at Nyack, where the theater was. And Tallulah did not care for Helen Hayes. And we never were sure. You know, when you would talk to Tallulah,

you couldn't quite make out what she was saying. You'd say, this is lovely. And you'd say, it's the weather. And I'd say, we thought you might go say, hell and hay. So you just say, okay, Ixnay, I'm the El and Hay. But talking to her was like talking to your dog, and your dog is kind of going. Tilts its head.

Kind of gleaning what you're saying, tilting its head. And so we would learn not to tread too heavily. And they kept trying to get her to go up to meet Helen, and finally on the last day she relented. And she went up and she had a bite between shows meet Helen. And finally on the last day she relented and she went up and she had a bite between shows with Helen and she came back and, uh, she looked a little green,

a little bilious. And the guy who worked for her, uh, I said, how was it? And he said, Oh, it was rest.

The food was terrible. Revolting. Tallulah has such gas. And so she got through the first act, and she was like, and then we go out to the car. And then the second act, the top of the second act, it was kind of a period thing. She wore hoop skirts.

And the top of the second act, the curtain went up and she was discovered downstage center sort of squatting over the prompter's box where she belonged. And she was in a pose. And before she could say anything, she let out with the longest, loudest, most vivid fart in the English speaking stage. Her skirt billowed off. The air turned blue in her vicinity. He enjoys this. And the audience began like, they all heard it. I mean, we could hear it.

I was in the third floor, and I heard it on the PA. Oh, my God, she cut the cheese. We ran downstairs. What's she going to do? And the audience is now like tittering, and they're laughing, and now it becomes a wave of laughter. And now it's hysterical now they're oh my god she got the surprise manual and she just stands there just majestically

spartan in her bravery and and the it all dies down and she's now alone and she just turns very grandly and says, that one was for Helen. Fantastic. You got to write another book. She was quite a fabulous. She was quite, quite. Yeah.

The other joke that she said, she would tell me whether she would tell me famous stories about her and then stuff that was true and all that. But I was reading the paper and on the train between one of these places and the other. out of every seven Americans is carrying a weapon. And a gun, is carrying a gun. And she looked at this and said, you know what this means, don't you, darling? One of the Lennon sisters is packing a rod. That's a fantastic line.

She must have been hilarious. She was very funny. But she was also drunk a lot. At that point, she wasn't around too much longer after that. It's funny we talk about this flow chart of names. You are a link to so much classic Hollywood. Yeah, to a lot of it. I mean, how many people knew Tallulah Bankhead

and Betty Davis and Joan Crawford and interacted? Well, you know, people say, how old are you? I said, well, I was very young when I worked with them. They were very old. Yes. Or they weren't that very old, but they were at the end of their careers, the end of their lives, old or not.

But so it was that kind of confluence. Not many people have worked with Tallulah Bankhead and Gallagher. It's true. Although you wouldn't have done badly with TARP around Tallulah. At a certain point, it could get messy. Gilbert will not soon get over

that Joan Crawford, David Niven story. Boy, that is a great one. Hear it back. Now I'll hear from David Niven story. Boy. Bruce. That is a great one. I want to hear it back. Yeah. Now I'll hear from David Niven Jr. I didn't mean it. Let this man go home. Okay.

All right. Thank you for coming here. Thank you. And doing this. It's true. When I was on Hollywood Squares with you, those were like the jobs that I didn't consider jobs. Yeah. Yeah. Sure, because they were fun.

They were just fun, and it was a party. Whoopi tells me all the time how much fun you guys had, and I'm so envious. It was a day. You showed up in the morning, and there was breakfast, and then we did three shows, You showed up in the morning and there was breakfast and then we did three shows and there was a big elaborate Wolfgang Puck catered lunch and then two shows and lots of wine. And we were out by four, but it was just fun and you'd be up there. And really, nobody could really act up because if they did, there were like eight other people going, girl, pull it together. Zan pulled some shit on it. I forget.

She wasn't having an attitude. And Pamela Anderson, I don't know, had a reduction or an enhancement or something. She was in pain. And Anna Nicole Smith, I remember, was also kind of out of it. Props to the joke writers, too. You, Dave Boone, John Max. Good people. Yeah, they were great. All good people.

And it was fun to write, you know, it was fun to write that stuff. It was fun to write for people. The funniest stuff was people who weren't, I mean, scripted, who weren't funny necessarily stumbling on something. But it was fun to write for the people who were funny and to get like like him yeah yeah sure yeah and yeah no i just remember that show yeah it was it never felt like work to me it was just having a good time there well i'll be looking for that petula clark musical for sure we love her come on so does Dara. Come down to Wilmington.

It's just two stops on the Acela. I'm going to come and see it. Don't sleep in the subway. It's in there. So, this has been Gilbert Gottfried's amazing, colossal podcast. I'm here with my co-host, Frank Santopadre, and our friend the hilarious Bruce Volland. Hilarious. Hey.

Thank you. Stories all day. And into the night. Thanks, man. Thank you. We'd like to thank the incredibly talented kids from What's Happening. Ernest Thomas, A. Wood Nelson. Fred Berry and Danielle Spencer.

Yay! And the far-out sounds of Rick Dees and Disco Willa. Hey! The band listed in the dictionary under Bananas. Rip Taylor. And the lady we love to love, Anne B. Davis. And the croftet dancers in Water Folly.

Hey! And John Steerwalt. Who? John Steerwalt. He's the guy who holds up the cards. Good night, John. You've written very well. And why don't I sing now? Right. Oh, I'm going to get you, John.

Right. Why don't I sing now? Thank you, John. Right, why don't I sing now? There's nowhere in the world that I would rather be Than with you, my love And there's nothing in the world that I would rather see Than your smile, my love For united we stand, divided we fall And if our backs should ever be against the wall

We'll be together, together you and I Let's go, Harry! Let's go, Harry! Also appearing in tonight's show were Patty Maloney, Mike Kagan, Bruce Valance and the characters from The World of Sid and Marnie Cross. Thank you.