Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast - 275. Jeff Abraham and Burt Kearns

Episode Date: September 2, 2019

Comedy historian Jeff Abraham and producer-filmmaker Burt Kearns discuss their new book, The Show Won't Go On and provide fascinating backstories on the untimely (and unusual) passings of Dick Shawn, Joe E. Ross, Al Kelly, Parkyakarkus and Karl Wallenda (among others). Also, Moe Howard wears a dress, Sid Caesar packs heat, Burt Reynolds gets a paint job and Paul Anka tears down Wayne Newton. PLUS: Carmen Miranda's final bow! The poetry of Buddy Hackett! The history of the "bullet catch"! The strange death of Washington Irving Bishop! And Jeff and Burt attend the Jerry Lewis auction! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Baseball is 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. This episode is brought to you by FX's The Bear

on Disney+. In season three, Carmi and his crew are aiming for the ultimate restaurant accolade, a Michelin star. With Golden Globe and Emmy wins,

the show starring Jeremy Allen White, Io Debrey, and Maddie Matheson is ready to heat up screens once again. All new episodes of FX's The Bear are streaming June 27, only on Disney+. Hey, hey Mo,

you are listening to Gilbert Gottfried's colossal, terrific podcast. Why don't you say mammy? Hi, this is Gilbert Gottfried, and this is Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast with my co-host, Frank Santopadre. And our guests this week are, one, Jeff Abraham is one of America's foremost comedy historians and a go-to pop culture expert for TV producers, documentary filmmakers, and authors. As a senior account executive at Jonas Public Relations, he's repped some of the top names in comedy, including Andrew Dice Clay, Steve Harvey, George Lopez, Bill Maher, and for the last 11 years of his life, George Carlinlin he's also the owner and curator of the largest comedy album

archive in hollywood that's for sure and has served as a consultant on documentaries and tv including Make Em Laugh for PBS, Comedy Central's 100 Greatest Stand-Ups of All Time, Cinemax, Let Me In I Hear Laughter, A Salute to the Friars Club, and Encore's Method in the Madness of Jerry Lewis. He is also on the board of the National Comedy Center. Method to the Madness, but good enough. Ah, whatever. It's Jerry Lewis. Yeah. And National Comedy Center, he's on the board of the National Comedy Flogish and Hivenbogel and is the author of an upcoming authorized biography

of the Ritz brothers. biography of the Ritz brothers. And he was once reamed out by Paul Anka. Bert Kearns is an award-winning producer, director, writer, journalist, and author of the controversial book, Tabloid Baby, about his role in the development of Tabloid Baby about his role in the development of tabloid television. He's written and produced the non-fiction series Conspiracy Theory

with Jesse Ventura, all the President's movies with Martin Sheen, and The Secret History of Rock and Roll with Gene Simmons. He's also produced the comedy Hi There and the documentaries Death of a Beetle and Bin Laden's Escape. That was a comedy. I missed that one

and I tip off and fuck it I want to go home and direct it and produce the non-fiction films the Chris Montez story basketball man

and the those are two different projects fuck it all Ted Story basketball man. Those are two different projects. Ah, fuck it all. Just get me out of here, please. Don't die on us. The seventh python. See, if I would have died on you before, I could have gotten in the book.

It's never too late. My timing is just... The night is young. He worked with everyone from Burt Reynolds to Cher to Robert Duvall and he was once cursed out by Buddy Hackett.

Their brand new book is called The Show Won't Go On. The most shocking, bizarre, and historic deaths of performers on stage. Welcome to the podcast, Jeffrey Abraham and Burt Kearns. Wow. Found dead in their West Hollywood apartment. That's the one that they like.

They wanted you to add the found dead in there. Yes. Welcome, boys. Thank you. Great to be here. First of all, thank you, Gilbert, for giving us a quote for the book. We appreciate that. Thank you so much.

You gave them a quote for the book. Yes. I don't remember what it was, but I'm sure it was good. I'm going to read it. Nobody knows what it's like to die on stage like Gilbert. Yes. Now, this book definitely teaches you one thing, and that's that if you're desperately in the moment in need of medical help, being on stage is the worst place because everyone's going to start laughing and applauding when you're gasping for your last breath.

That's true. That happens a lot, especially the poor woman who dropped dead after singing, Please Don't Talk About Me When I'm Gone. Yeah, that's a good one. That's a good one. That's a good one. Well, what was the Cavett thing? When Rodale was, when Dick Cavett realized that, our pal Dick Cavett, realized Rodale was in trouble, he purposely did not say, is there a doctor in the house?

No. Right. Yeah. There was that pregnant pause. He was thinking, if I say this, the entire audience will think it's a joke. So he actually had to think for a second, what should I say? It was tragic beyond words.

Yeah. The book is fascinating for so many. Gilbert and I were discussing it. And we were just talking about, before you guys sat down, we were talking about both the guy that was buried in cement. Amazing Joe. The Amazing Joe. you guys sat down the we were we were talking about both the guy that was buried in cement joe what was amazing joe the amazing joe and we gilbert is fascinated by the one-armed lion tamer yeah you figure if you're a one-armed lion tamer isn't it pretty much time to quit and don't get drunk before you walk in on a lion. Yes. You did as well. Yes. Yeah.

In the book, they say that the guy was scared. He already had an arm bitten off by a lion. And there was one lion that he couldn't really fully tame. It was really an angry lion and he decided the best thing to do to calm his nerves would be to get drunk before trying to tame wild animals you you guys want to field that one and and and give our listeners a little quick overview well the it's the epitome is the show must go on these performers have all said i would rather die on stage than in bed you know carl willenda said i would rather die in the wire you know so here's a guy who so a guy who loses a one arm he says i'm not gonna quit i'm a lion tamer that's what i do you know

that's what he did exactly he did that's there's go ahead and it was quite a show because i think there were seven lions in the cage with him and each one of them took a bite and then once they got some of the lions off the other ones went back and had some more all in front of an audience of children and families which is great and i heard it i think it was like one lion who was the one to break the ice and he took a bite out of him right and then the other started thinking hey we're lions we should be doing this and they all started eating them yeah there was one lion that was very polite took a bite that went back to where he was sitting and then when they thought it was all over he went back and finished them off that was the story that stayed with me and

haunted me through the night but you guys broke this thing down. You decided you wanted to do, how did you first tackle the book? I mean, you decided to do some circuses and then some stage performers and even people who died on radio. Well, let me back up. The idea came 15 years ago this August. I went to see an Elvis impersonator. My friends were the opening act and the gentleman who didn't coin the phrase but you've heard him hundreds of times on elvis

recordings al devarin said ladies and gentlemen elvis has left the building oh yeah he was in the lobby talking with friends and fans and they said al when are you going to write a book? You've done it all. You had an amazing career. And he goes, you know what? I have time. I'll get to it, whatever. That was Saturday night. Monday morning, I'm watching the news,

and they reported he was killed in a car accident Sunday morning. I said, wait, I was just with him less than 48 hours ago. And you realize life is fleeting. And you think about how many people have died on stage. Elvis died the day before a tour. Hank Williams died between a show. And we knew about Dick Shawn. And this man next to me said, and I came up with this title, The Show Won't Go On.

And he said, well, put your money where your mouth is write the book and we were going to do all these great stories of people who dropped dead you know during a rehearsal and carrie grant dropped dead but bert says you know what i think if we just limit it to guys who or people died on stage we may have enough we didn't realize how many people died literally on stage going back yeah that took about a year i have to tell you before i forget i was once on stage this was about i don't know two three years ago i think i was on stage and in the middle of a bit, a guy did scream out. Is there a doctor in the house?

And, and I thought, and I started laughing because I thought this is like a vaudeville routine. You know, if there are a doctor in the house and, and some woman died while you were performing yes yes you were in the middle of a norman fell bit and that was the last the last thing she heard was joyce was a consummate professional wow wow but there are there's there's a surprising number of people who've died on stage

we we started out again as jeff said we started by getting people like har of people who've died on stage. We started out again, as Jeff said, we started by getting people like Harry Chapin, who died on the way to a show. Lynyrd Skynyrd, who died on the way back from a show. And it turned out that there were so many, it was just unwieldy. So we narrowed it down to people who died. Literally.

Yeah. So we narrowed it down to people who died in front of a camera, people who died on a stage in a circus tent, and then there were still too many. So we had to get rid of movie stars and TV stars and people who died in rehearsals and narrowed it down finally to just people who died in front of an audience, whether it's an audience in a theater, in an arena, or on social media now we have people we have not people that commit suicide on social media but performers like the guy who had who took uh all of his social media followers on a on a wingsuit flight off a mountain and he was one of the first to do it and he flew about 20 feet before he dropped and what you heard at the end was just him hitting. You heard a scream. Him hitting. And then you started hearing the sound of cows. Because he fell in a field and all these cows came over to see what just dropped in the middle of their field.

So I was talking about how you guys decided to categorize the material. So that was what you narrowed it down to. Anybody that died in front of an audience, be it on radio, conducting an orchestra, in a circus tent. In the case of Walenda, he was on the high wire. And not athletes. We couldn't fit in boxers or people that go into an arena knowing that death might be a possibility,

except for the circus performers, because they consider themselves to be performers and not athletes. Didn't, I mean, and she didn't die on stage, but I think she died immediately after. I think, didn't Carmen Miranda, I think she was doing like the Jimmy Durante show. Yeah, she had a heart attack while performing on the Jimmy Durante show and then went home to Beverly Hills where she hosted a party, I believe, and then her husband found her, I think, the next morning in the hallway. Oh, jeez. How did you know that, Gilbert?

Yeah, no, that one I knew. He's working on a sequel. That's one of the things we're finding are the misconceptions people have. Like people think Irene Ryan died on stage or Frank Sutton, Sergeant Carter. Yes. Sergeant Carter was in his dressing room and he dropped dead before he went out on stage. Yes, I found that on your website. Doing further reading.

We had very strict rules. We're a sick man, Bert. We had very strict rules. We're a sick man, Bert. We had very strict rules and criteria. Like Lee Morgan, we said another five feet, he would have made the book. This is a jazz trumpeter who was walking toward the stage when his common-law wife shot him in the back. His band was on the stage.

He didn't quite make it, so he didn't make the book. So now Common Miranda had a heart attack on the show? Yes. Yes, while dancing, yeah. Yeah, I think Cesar Romero was somehow involved. I don't know. I don't know how. We love that you guys are attracted to the dark side of show business like us.

Obviously, you listen to this show, and you're also perfect for it. Why is orchestra conductor the highest? Why does that come with the highest risk? Yeah, orchestra conductor is probably the most risky occupation in show business. Yeah, that struck me. And the reason, well, to give it away, they're all usually between the ages of 50 and 80.

They travel a lot they they travel between cities to conduct for various orchestras they don't eat well they eat a lot of airplane food uh it's very high stress getting these orchestras together in time for the show and then once they get up on the podium the adrenaline the adrenaline starts going and then the conduct the the music starts getting a little bit faster, and they're conducting harder, and then they plot. It's funny because I remember many years ago, someone saying that orchestra conductors are among the most in shape people

because they're giving themselves a workout every day day they you know it's like waving their arms it's like you know it's like a roba size but i guess it's not working it's not working no it might be it might be too much exercise for some of these people yeah what what about what and we jump around here too because we gilbert and I are fascinated by the magicians, which we'll get to. But what about a Gilbert favorite? What about Joey Ross? Well, Joey Ross. And how did he not die in a hooker?

He was putting on a show in his apartment complex in Burbank. In the middle of the show, he stopped. He sat down on the side of the stage, realized he was having a heart attack, and died. And the person who put on the show only paid his wife half the money because he only did half a show. He was supposed to be paid $100. And he said, here's $50. He didn't complete it. That's happened to several people.

That happened to our jazz man, Warren Marsh, as well. Well, that was the whole point of the book is to come. I always say to Bert, what's the button? Because otherwise, and he had a heart attack, and he had a heart attack. And I think the epitome of that is to find is the story that tells it best is the first entry is Jane Little, this woman who was about 4'11". Oh, yeah, that's a good one. She was about the size of June Foray. She had the Guinness Book of World Records

for the longest tenure in an orchestra. And the largest instrument she played. Right. The instrument was bigger than her. She comes back after ill health and drops dead, unfortunately, during the Encore of her show. And as Bert said, if you wrote this in a movie they would say no way take it out nobody's going to believe it she dropped dead while she's playing there's no

business like show business perfect and there was a horrible not like there was only one horrible thing that that woman or the girl actually she was a dancer and she was set on fire yes that goes back to the 1800s that's that's an early one where her where her flimsy nightgown or flimsy gown caught on one of the stage lights and as she kept dancing and running around in circles the flames just got higher and then it turned out that other dancers learned there was a flame retardant they could put on their costume so that wouldn't happen again but none of them would do it because the costumes look better without it and and wasn't it like the manager you know ran up on stage and said everything's fine they say that a lot yeah yeah all right let's let's ask

the thing with the girl dancer that gave me a chill is when the mother her mother was in the audience to make matters worse and and that the mother went up and said something to her while she was dying, and then the daughter answered. Remember this? Yeah. Yeah. There are so many instances, unfortunately, where people have literally died in front of their children or their spouses. And the one thing we wanted to do was to celebrate these performers' lives and really not to make fun of their tragic endings. lives and really not to make fun of their tragic endings, you know, but it is, I mean,

some of them are almost cartoonish the way they died, you know, when Tommy Cooper, you know, drops dead on stage, you know, the audience is laughing and then quickly people go, wait, that's not in his act. The British comedian, Tommy Cooper. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, people go, wait, that's a in his act the british comedian tommy cooper yeah yeah i mean people go wait that's a new bit you know when dick shawn died his son was the stage manager and knew the act and dick dropped to his feet and he goes he doesn't do that in the show normally you know i mean it's literally yeah dick shawn is probably like one of the most famous instances of somebody just before you go on to dick shawn yeah there i heard

with the girl who died you know on fire that the mother ran up to her afterwards crying hysterically and she said had i been in the the balcony seat i could have thrown a cloak on you and put the fire out. And the girl, her dying words were, yes, you could have. Yep. And I thought, oh, my God. Thanks for that. Thanks, Mark. Thanks a lot. How the fuck did the mother live with that as the daughter's last words?

Yeah, because usually the mother was in the wings waiting and the mother could have just thrown her cloak on her and saved her. There's a couple, yeah, there is a couple of stories. There are a couple of stories like that. I mean, Sean's son is one of them, which is one of the sadder things in the book. And I knew for years that Dick Sean died on stage, but I didn't know the details.

Yeah. As Jeff was alluding to. I didn't know he tried out for Major League Baseball. I didn't know he was a ball player. That was his original dream. Dick Sean did not know that. To be a baseball player, yeah. I mean, Dick Sean's one-man show,

the second greatest entertainer in the world, started out, he started every show by lying down on the stage underneath newspapers, totally still, not moving at all. And when the audience came in and filed into the theater, they didn't realize he was on the stage. And then the lights would go down and he'd come up from the underneath the newspapers. When it came time for intermission, he'd say, I'm going to take a nap. And he'd fall down and lay down on the stage through the entire intermission and then get up for the second part of the show.

So here he is. He's at the University of San Diego playing in the auditorium. And he's riffing. He's doing one of his more surreal bits. And he says, let's pretend that there's been a nuclear war and everyone in the country is killed except the people in this theater and i will be your leader and then he fell and everybody kind of waited the stagehands knew that he falls down on the stage once in a while the son who was in the back of the theater again realized he doesn't

usually fall like that doesn't hit his head that way so he he calls down uh through the uh through the headphone to the stage manager says go out and check him see if he's all right so the stage manager walks out yes i i don't know is i can't tell if he's breathing or not he walks back and so then then suddenly uh dick sean's son realized what was going on ran out to try to save his father and it was too late but he was and then the worst part was people in the theater some of them asked for their money back oh this is a man we haven't seen the whole show here god ah while he was on the stage and in this case they said is there a doctor in the house and there were about 40 doctors in the house because it was right next to the hospital

i guess san diego has a um the university there has a teaching hospital so a lot of doctors are there trying to save him but and then out in the lobby comes his cousin who is a cardiologist ah who they they didn't need to do an autopsy they just realized right there and then he had died wow that's a sad one well the sad one is also it's been what 35 years and you know when we talk to adam sean his son he still cries about it it's not you know it's not a joke you say to somebody you know well do you get any you know do you get any kind of relief or comfort in the fact that he died doing what he loved it's like well a little bit but i would rather have him around for another

20 years well of course that's the question that was asked to bob einstein yes about your carcass yeah they the greatest the greatest answer and where albert's answer is different albert says isn't it amazing he finished the act he didn't die going to the theater he didn't die in the middle he waited until he finished. He sat down. And if you've heard the recording, you've never heard laughter like that. Desi Arnaz is screaming. People are pounding tables. No pun intended, Gilbert.

He killed. And literally seconds later. Yeah. Bob Einstein said, someone said, isn't it great your father died doing what he loved? And Bob Einstein said to the guy, he goes, what does your mother do? And he said, she's a housewife. And he said, let's go over to her house right now. I'll take out a gun and blow her fucking brains out.

And we can say she died doing what she loved while she was washing the dishes talk a little bit about that night and about park your carcass uh it was at the hilton right it was a beverly hilton yeah it was a for an la friars event it rose for lucy and desi a testimonial dinner if we may be correct. Oh, a testimonial dinner. Okay, forgive me. So there were men and women there. Big names. Burns and Burl and Ed Wynn. And Jessel. Jessel.

Your favorite was the emcee. Sammy Davis. Art Linkletter. Sammy was there. Tony Martin. Danny Thomas and Sammy Davis Jr. were waiting to go on, but they unfortunately got bumped due to unfortunate circumstances. And Harry Parkey Carcass Einstein had this bit where he would just take what was logical and then twist it around.

Like he said, the Friars is a very exclusive club. You must be pledged by two people in good standing, one of them by Chico Marx. You know, he loved to do those little switches, and he had been doing it for the last year or so at various roasts. I mean, testimonial dinners with great success. He had become a favorite. He had been in ill health for years before. He had did a TV movie earlier that year, and we thought we would see more of him, but the old ticker gave out. And it was that thing, is there a doctor in the house?

And the great story is, so Milton Berle gets up to calm the audience, and he goes to Tony Martin. Tony, sing a song. And Tony sings, There's No Tomorrow. How do you write that? And years later, Leonard Moulton told me, Milton Berle and Art Linkletter were doing a radio show, and they were in the hall. And they both looked at each other, and they go,

I'll never forget that night. goes neither will i and i mean that's schmuck tony martin what about al kelly which happened at the new york fryers the master of the double talk that was it that was i'd like to say it was a hilarious one. But yeah, that was one where old Al came out, did his double talk routine. And then he went back on his way back to his table. He went out and they carried him out to the Round the World bar. There were doctors in the house, of course. And they pronounced him dead on the bar. This is on 55th Street in the monastery. Yeah, in the monastery.

You know that bar. It's the Billy Crystal bar now, Gilbert. So he just laid him out on the bar. This is on 55th Street in the monastery. Yeah, in the monastery. You know that bar. It's the Billy Crystal bar now, Gilbert. So he just laid him out on the bar. They did his last rites on the bar? I've eaten pizza goldfish on that bar. Wow. We will return to Gilbert Gottfried's amazing colossal podcast right after this. That's what you say.

Baseball is 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. Introducing TD Insurance for Business, with customized coverage options for your business. Because at TD Insurance, we understand that your business is unique,

so your business insurance should be too. Whether you're a shop owner, a pet groomer, a contractor, or a consultant, you can get customized coverage for your business. Contact a licensed TD Insurance advisor to learn more. Contact a licensed TD Insurance advisor to learn more. Now, before we forget the stuff I'm most interested in, and Frank, is first with you, Jeff. Yes. Tell us about you and Paul Hanka.

Our firm had the privilege of representing Paul in about 2007 he was doing a follow up CD to Rock Swings called Classic Songs My Way where he would take rock songs and do it in the Sinatra style it was a very good album the first album got the New York Times and he was on Letterman but you don't strike lightning twice.

So it was getting hard to get press. Ironically, at the same time, we were working with Wayne Newton when he was on Dancing with the Stars, and all these singers hate each other. They're all jealous. You know, why is Tom Jones doing this? Why is Tony Bennett on the MTV Awards? So my boss was on an airplane with Paul's either wife or girlfriend. I'm trying to remember the relationship. And somehow she let it slip.

We're working with Paul, with Wayne Newton. So Wayne called. So Paul calls the office. I answer the phone. He goes, what's this? I hear you represent Wayne Newton. And I'm doing my Jackie Gleason hum the hum. The longest Paul is Gilbert in your life. I don't,, and I'm doing my Jackie Gleason hum-na-hum-na. The longest pour is Gilbert in your life.

What do I say? And he goes, I'll take that as a yes. He goes, I remember this to this day. The fucker can't sing. Now America will see that he can't dance. I go, okay, okay, okay. Why did he take it out on you jeff because i was the guy that answered the phone he goes like i'm paul anka how dare you represent that guy who can't sing wayne newton you just you know you know he's the guy how dare you represent somebody else i know

comics are competitive but it's great to know that singers are competitive the same way that they piss on each other and you know the you know he was i think we're about the same size five foot four you know and you know you're very napoleonic he's the first guy ever saw with a black american express card you know he would walk into chasen's and everybody knew him but you know he was very proud of the fact in oceans 13 al pacino yeah is doing his speech from the famous recording of him on the bus with yelling at the band but he was proud of that slice like a fucking hammer exactly and he said you know what i was absolutely right those band members were terrible it's my ass on the line you know he was proud of that he stands by it absolutely he is he is not contrite about the guys get shirts that's the fucking way it is

what about you and the buddy story you told me over the phone as long as we're doing the stories from the intros well i worked with with peter brennan at A Current Affair. He's the man who invented A Current Affair. And then later, Peter went on to invent Judge Judy. So he had great success with the courtroom show. Around 1999, we had the idea, let's do a comedy courtroom show. So we thought, you know, Pigmeat Markham was dead. Oh, no. Joan Rivers.

Here come the judge. No, Pig Joan Rivers. Here come the judge. No pygmy. Here come the judge. So through my attorney from the Friars Club, Paul Sherman was my attorney. He represented

Buddy Hackett and arranged for us to meet Buddy Hackett to see if Buddy Hackett wanted to do the show. So Peter and I and my wife, Allison,

had a meeting at Buddy Hackett's house at one in the afternoon in the middle of the week. We arrived at his house, this beautiful one-story house in the flats of Beverly Hills. Giant house. But Buddy's wife had turned every room in the house, and including the sunken tennis court, which we'd all seen pictures of Buddy Hackett and Johnny Carson and Alan King playing tennis. She turned the entire place into a cat sanctuary. Cats lived in every room.

There were cages and cat hangers. And Buddy had one room in the house, sort of a wing, a large rec room that was his. So we went into the rec room and it contained a pool table a bar a display case for his golf clubs a display case for his guns and he had a lot of guns and every shutter on every window was closed so it was pitch black it could have been midnight but it was one o'clock in the afternoon in the middle of summer buddy took out the drinks and he made us lime rickies

and we started drinking and spent about three hours didn't mention the show once he uh he did shtick for us he read us his poetry he um he read us the letter that he wrote to bill cosby when his son ennis died he wept while he read the letter to us. He gave us the full Buddy Hackett. And then at one point, he just stopped and said, I won't work with any assholes. I want my son Sandy involved. And he told us the amount of money he wanted per episode. And then we kept drinking. And he said, why don't we just meet?

Fuck the show. Let's just meet here once a week and drink. So we said, thanks, Buddy. We left. About three weeks went by, maybe a little bit more, four weeks. We're waiting to get some traction, arrange the meetings for the show.

And finally we have some meetings set up for the buddy Hackett comedy courtroom show. So I called buddy and I say, you know, hello, buddy, Bert Kearns. And if you remember me,

we were at your house for the, for the, to do this comedy courtroom show. He's like, no, leave me alone. No, no buddy. This is, we had the meeting, you know, you do this comedy courtroom show. He's like, no, leave me alone. No, no, buddy. We had the meeting.

You wanted this amount of money. We're going to go out and pitch it now. Now, fuck you. I don't want to do it. Leave me alone. Goodbye. And buddy, this is the real thing. We're going to do a show.

Go fuck yourself. And then he hung up the phone. Actually, Gilbert, if you could play Buddy buddy hack i think you could do it better you could do it buddy oh fuck yourself it turned out that buddy had signed on to that the jay moore show action oh action yeah so his career yeah yeah it's nice to meet your heroes, isn't it, guys? Yeah. By the way, back to the book for one thing. I've known Bob Greenberg about 50 years, and I had no idea that he was Al Kelly's what? Grand, grand nephew?

Yeah. Al Kelly's like honorary grand nephew or something. I've known Bob forever. You know Bob Greenberg. We all know Bob Greenberg. Yes, yes. How is that possible? Well, if anyone was it would be him he lost 33 pounds on the diet just recently i saw on facebook he's a good guy

there's a perfect example you know bob was would always tell the story he didn't even know what uh fryer's event it was at we had to tell him it was one for joey lewis hilarious he thought it was for something else for somebody else okay now on to the magicians, which is where Gilbert wanted to go. Tell us about Washington Irving Bishop. Because we both love this one. Well, Washington Irving Bishop was a mentalist. He was able to drive a horse carriage through the streets while he was blindfolded he was able to to find people in the audience who had a coin in their pocket um a modern day

crescan uh-huh but to get into the act he did a lot of cocaine a lot of drugs a lot of alcohol and he would go into these conniption fits on stage and then drop to the stage and go into this very death-like coma. And everybody that he worked with and everybody he worked for knew that if he fell out on the stage and appeared to be dead, he wasn't really dead. He was in this trance-like state. So he actually kept a little note in his pocket, in his front front pocket that said, you know, if you find me, I'm not dead. Gilbert, may I recommend such a note?

So he was actually performing in, he was performing in New York and it happened. He fell and they took him over to the doctor's office and his mother, who worked with him and his wife showed up to say, well, where is he? And they said, oh, sorry. They took him to the doctor's office, and his mother, who worked with him, and his wife showed up to say, well, where is he? And they said, oh, sorry, they took him to the funeral home. And they had removed his brain.

Unbelievable. On fucking balloon. And I was like, but he wasn't dead. And I think they sued. Yeah, and rightly so. So they were a little overzealous. Yeah. They performed an autopsy they were a little overzealous. Yeah.

They performed an autopsy on the guy and he wasn't dead. What about, this is another one Gilbert and I love, and we forgot the name, the Chinese bullet catcher. Oh. Who wasn't really Chinese. This is the most famous Chung Ling Su. Oh, we're big fans. No relation to Jack Su. No relation to Papillon Su Su.

His real name was William Robinson. Of course. And there was another Chinese magician with a similar name, and he decided, I will do a name similar to his and people will think I'm him and I will adopt his persona and I will work and it became very successful. He was one of the most successful performers in

all of vaudeville. Like Gallagher 2 Exactly And he would speak in mock gibberish Chinese and he had a phony interpreter who would ask him questions. Oh Gilbert you'll like this. The person that he was ripping off was named Ching Ling Fu. Thank you, Bert.

Sorry, no subject. Exactly. Now, did he make himself up to look Chinese? Yeah, you know, a shaved head and the ponytail and the oriental robe. And so he had been doing this, the bullet catch, for about 10 years. It had been done by a number of magicians for about 100 years prior. Oh, excuse me, Gilbert. His assistant's name was Su-Sin.

But I think she was from Yonkers. She wasn't trying to eat it. Sorry, Jeff. Go on. It's the no-blank bit. Yes! Sure. So he had been doing it for about ten years and it had already become like, it wasn't like the grand finale.

It was something he did on occasion. So he had done it and he had this whole thing where he's going to catch the bullets on a silver tray. And unfortunately he had two men load. He was so secretive. No one in his show knew how the trick was done. He was so protective. So they put gunpowder down one of the barrels, which was a trick barrel, and would not shoot.

And a phony projectile would come out of the second one. But unfortunately, doing it so many times, the gunpowder got into the other barrel. And next thing you know, a bullet came out and he was shot dead. And that's when they found out he was not Chung Ling Su, but William Robinson. He spoke his first words of English.

He goes, I think I've been shot. That was the thing. When he was shot, he went, I think I've been shot. And the audience went, he's speaking English.

Nobody cared that he got shot. They said, wait a minute, he's not really a Chinaman. Get your money back. I love these magicians. Who was the guy whose wife substituted the bullets, real bullets for wax bullets? Was that Professor Marvo in Argentina? Might have been Arnold Buck. Or was it the Black Wizard of the West

in South Dakota whose wife was angry at him? I think she was the one that swapped out the wax bullets, the real bullets for the wax bullets. You know, it's amazing. Bert and I were just chatting. The first recorded entry

we have of the bullet catch was 1820 of someone dying during a bullet catch. And the last one is 2007. Oh my God. Nearly for almost 200 years. No, you would think at some point somebody would wise up and go,

this is not for us. You know, I mean, and people were, have been killed by having audience members load, load the bullets. Yeah. One time someone from the audience actually pulled out a gun and shot the performer. Yeah. That was professor Marvel. He was getting ready for the bullets. Yeah. One time, someone from the audience actually pulled out a gun

and shot the performer. Yeah, that was Professor Marvo. Professor Marvo. And an audience member said, hey, catch this, Professor, and shot him and killed him. And the guy went on trial and was acquitted

because he really thought that Professor Marvo would catch the bullet. Oh, jeez. Couldn't they just lock him up for being an asshole? But our good friend and yours, Gilbert, Penn Jillette, really put this whole thing in perspective

on how morally irresponsible it is to do a trick that puts you in danger. And he really explained it quite well in the book. And we're so thankful that he gave us such a great interview and he talked about people like David Blaine he said I'm going to risk my life for you and he also talked about you should have a warning in front of the theater and he said that's ridiculous

people know it's just a trick he goes when you go to Disneyland if you were going on a roller coaster and getting killed, it wouldn't happen. Well, what's Teller's philosophy? Nothing more dangerous than sitting in your living room. Absolutely. That was Houdini's philosophy, and that's a philosophy that Penn and Teller lived by this day. Even though Penn thinks he's going die doing a a stunt on stage i i remember pen

and teller did a bit where teller is in a water tank oh yeah and and he starts like get gasping and like pounding on the glass like he's like drowning and then you know works out at the end and and Penn said to the audience he goes you know what stands out not one of you in the audience got up to help him but but that is a perfect example of a magic trick that is completely safe, and I shouldn't say that. I should say that's a complete example of something that you think is safe can turn in a second. Of course, the bullet catch is a trick when done correctly, but the amount of danger that is inherent to that trick. Well, the saddest one is actually Ralph Biala. He was the most famous bullet catcher in Germany.

He caught bullets about more than 3,000 times. And he actually did it with steel gloves and steel dentures that he had in his mouth. So he would catch the bullet in the steel gloves and it would go into his mouth. Unfortunately, it gave him really bad headaches. mouth unfortunately it gave him really bad headaches and one day he was walking through the tyrolean mountains and got dizzy and fell off a cliff you see gilbert you think you got a hard career you think you think going up there and and and it's difficult you you wouldn't think it would cause bad things like headaches, catching bullets in your mouth.

Well, you feel better now when you're doing the chuckle hut on a last show on a Sunday, and you think about what these guys had to do. Tell us about the diving bells and the connection to the Three Stooges, something we love to talk about on this show, because Gilbert was fascinated by this too. Go ahead. That was a vaudeville act the the the six diving bells were some you know pretty girls who would sit would stand on diving boards around

the side of a of a high of a pool and when the curtains would open each one would dive into the water uh unfortunately the the diving boards they had were were touchy, and if you took a wrong step, you'd go flying. And right as the curtains were about to open, one of the diving bells went up in the air, came down on her head, and was killed. And again, the stage manager ran out and said, everybody's, it's all fine, she's fine, you know, the show goes on. It turned out that the six diving bells were not all girls. Two of them were men. One of them was Ted Healy, and the other was Moe Howard. How about that?

Wow. How about that? When they were teenagers. The diving bells. Yeah, because it turned up in one of Moe's memoirs. Right. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

What about the actual death of Ted Healy, which is shrouded in mystery? You guys got a theory? You know, they say it was the relative of Cubby Broccoli. The Cubby Broccoli was directly involved. Right, right, right. That's right. Beaten to death, supposedly. That is pretty much the given theory, that it was a result of that.

You know, he got in a fight. pretty much the given theory that it was a result of that. He got in a fight. He was drunk, and I believe he was in an alley afterwards I think with Cubby Broccoli, if I remember correctly. And then what about the death of Alfalfa? Wasn't Alfalfa's

last words, you know, where are my drugs? He was shot in a drug deal, I believe. I think he was shot over a dog. Yeah, like someone, he borrowed a dog or someone borrowed his dog. And then I think he pulled out a knife and someone shot him. Something like that. He didn't die on stage, don't ask me that. If he died on stage, I could tell you the whole story.

You know, a recurring motif, by the way just in in uh not only we're talking about shootings but you you you mentioned before you mentioned hackett's gun collection and this is something jeff and i were talking about on the phone what is this obsession with comedians and guns you know you guys went to the jerry lewis auction recently so in vegas we had to sit through 75 lots of guns. 75 different lots of his guns. We both got the catalog and said, oh my God, Jerry Lewis's estate auction catalog. I figured there's going to be costumes, the Nutty Professor outfit, and all these great

items. The first 40 pages was 75 lots of guns. So we go to the auction and we had to sit through 75 lots. And lot number 42, a Beretta. Lot 42, a Colt.45. It was just like... Was he paranoid? Did he think somebody was after him?

You know, he had a stalker, and he would always say, if that guy comes here, that fucker, he was very proud of it. I get having two guns or three guns, but we're talking an arsenal. An arsenal, yeah. And then he had one gun was engraved. I think it said Jew or Super Jew. I will give him credit. He was very proud of his heritage.

He had many things. He had desk ornaments that said, Super Jew, the Jew stops here. He was very proud of that. What's the Sid Caesar story with the gun, Jeff? So Sid Caesar dies, unfortunately, and they're cleaning out his closet, and they find more cigars, suits,

a couple of handguns, you know, a hunting rifle. And then his daughter finds something and says, I don't know what this is. I have to, I better call the Beverly Hills police. It was like a Thompson submarine, a submachine gun. You've got a Thompson submachine gun in his closet. I mean, it's amazing what these comedians what's wrong with these guys you never know when you might need one of those so i don't i forgot who said it put it in perspective at the burt reynolds estate auction he had two guns in his collection jerry lewis had 75 75 so what does that tell you about jerry lewis you you worked with burt reynoldsurt Reynolds, Burt, but despite the fact that several of the people around him

were always worried that he was going to take a swing at them, which was, I guess, not an unfounded fear, you liked him. You got along with him. Oh, Burt Reynolds was terrific. The movie we did was called Cloud Nine, and I wrote it with my partner in time brett hudson from the hudson brothers oh yeah we had mark of course yeah uh brett and i and al ruddy and al

had won the oscar for the godfather and he was sort of in his autumn years at that time and brett had known al for about 20 years and um we got together al Al had a Showtime special that he was offered to do, and his company and our company got together, and it was called My First Time. It was a series for Showtime where we interviewed 84 women about the first time they had sex, and then reenacted it with porn actors. Al Ruddy and his partner kind of worked under pse show worked under pseudonyms so we did that for

showtime and then uh brett and i would go out uh to lunch every day at this chinese restaurant on pico with al and we would talk and one day al said um i just went to visit my uh my son at nyu and he had this poster on the wall of uh this really sexy woman at the beach. It was Gabrielle Reese. And I said to my son, I didn't realize that you were into beach volleyball. And he said, no, I'm into Gabrielle Reese. Look at her. So then we kept talking and said, why don't we do a movie about beach volleyball strippers?

And we said, yeah. So we came up with an idea to do a movie where Burt Reynolds played the coach of a team of strippers playing beach volleyball. And Al actually got funding for it. And we hired a director who had just come off a really hot movie, Funky Monkey. Oh, my God. There you go, Gil. Oh, my God. Harry Basil? Harry Basil. Yeah. Wow. oh my god there you go guilt oh my god harry basil harry basil yeah wow and so you know brett and i

thought that we had you know the next sob we had this movie set in malibu where you know burt reynolds was playing a this this con man who comes up with this idea to start a beach volleyball team. We really had a movie about beach volleyball strippers. But we had quite a cast. We had Gary Busey, D.L. Ugle. Well, actually, it was Burt Reynolds, D.L. Ugle, Paul Rodriguez, Angie Everhart, Gabrielle Reese. And Gary Busey came on to do a one-day cameo. But Gary knew some of the people there, and he liked the craft service food so much

that he showed up every day for the rest of the shoot for the next three weeks. It's like a Godfrey move. And when Access Hollywood showed up to interview the cast, Gary ran over as if he was the star of the movie and did all the interviews for us. But Burt loved him. This seems like the kind of movie I would have shown up all night.

Yeah, or shown up in. Yeah, it was good. But Burt Reynolds was terrific. Every morning, again, Harry did a great job. He did a great job with what we gave him. There were a lot of dicks swinging around the outskirts of that movie, and Harry managed to negotiate everything, got everything done on time.

But he was a bit afraid of Bert because Al had told him the story that Bert had punched out a director on one of his last movies. So Harry didn't want to get punched. So every morning, Brett Hudson and I would meet with Bert in the makeup trailer and go over the script and go over some lines, etc. And the way Bert Reynolds had makeup put on was he would sit and he had a pair of jeans that he would roll up above his ankles. He had a t-shirt that the neck was cut out and the sleeves were cut out. And the makeup lady had an airbrush and sprayed every exposed part of his body with orange paint. I can't make this up. And then he put on his rose colored glasses and went out.

But he was, you know, I came against him. He treated you well. He never threatened you. No, he was great. He worked well with all the young kids. I mean, I had come from tabloid television in the tabloid world. Sure. And I said to him, I said, you know, you always show up in the National Enquirer.

And we've always heard stories about you. Do you like the National Enquirer? Do you cooperate with them you do you like the national inquire do you you know do you cooperate with them or do you hate them and he said i fucking hate them he said you know these people called up my parents in the middle of the night to tell them i was dying of aids and he said one christmas uh the national inquire down in florida had some giant christmas tree in lantana florida and burt reurt Reynolds and a friend of his got a helicopter and dumped half a ton of horse shit on top of the tree.

Did you know that, Gilbert? No. That's a fun story, yeah. But you know, I remember working on some movie where there was going to be a scene. It was in a comedy where Burtnolds is in a hospital bed for the bit and and i heard the word on the set was that one of the tabloids said they were offering a certain amount of money to anyone who could snap a picture of burt rey Reynolds in a hospital bed so that they could run the headline,

Burt Reynolds dying of AIDS. Yeah. Unbelievable. Yeah. Unbelievable. One afternoon, he invited Brett and I into his trailer at lunchtime. And so we get to the trailer,

and we open the door, and it's dark. And we're like, oh, shit, did he get a hit on us or something? Now we always heard about Burt Reynolds and the tabloids, you know, best friends with, you know, Charles Nelson Reilly and Dom DeLuise. You're never sure what's going on here.

But he was sitting there and he says, come look at this. And there's a documentary on the screen. It was an Errol Morris documentary. I think it's called Vernon, Florida. Oh, it's a good movie. Right. And there's this a good movie. Right. And there's this old turkey hunter being interviewed.

He's talking in this really deep south, backwoods Florida accent. And Burt is sitting there trying to get the accent down. He was saying, you know, only Jonathan Winters could do this. He's the only one. I really, you know, he was always trying to be a better actor, which was great. He's the only one I really, you know, he was always trying to be a better actor, which was great. We will return to Gilbert Gottfried's amazing colossal podcast after this. What if we told you you're already off to a great start with so many ways to squeeze the most out of summer right here?

From our largest shrimp skewers ever to a Vietnamese inspired dish ready in minutes. PC makes any culinary adventure an on-budget breeze. At Miele, our partner is the planet. Our appliances use less water and energy and are tested to last for 20 years of use. That's the ultimate form of sustainability. I'm Nelson Fresco, president of Mila Canada. From now until June 30th, every Mila dishwasher purchased supports the planting and preservation of Canadian forests

through the Mila Forest Initiative. Join us in making an impact today for a better tomorrow. Visit mila.ca to learn more. We got to talk a little bit about Jerry. And we'll get, I'm going save jerry for last because you've all got your jerry stories but let's and gilbert has his but i do want to know um one one other

thing from the book and we you guys know we jump around uh we got to talk about rodale dying on cavit because we've heard dick's perspective because he was a health expert yes that's the he was the guru of organic food yeah organic foods that was the best part of the story well dick always said the gods gave me that you could not ask for a better guest to die on your show by the way it was interesting in your book that he and marshall brickman got together and put in the tape one night. Because the tape's in a vault, right? He won't let anybody see the tape.

Yes. He let us see it. He let you guys see it. I think I can publicly say it. Your friend and ours, Robert Bader, who works very closely with Mr. Cavett, he said to me, if you sell this book, I will let you watch the Rodale episode. And as soon as we, I had a contract in my hand. My first phone call was to Bader.

Fantastic. And we got to watch it. We probably, you can literally almost count on one hand the number of people who have seen this episode. can literally almost count on one hand the number of people who have seen this episode and as dick will tell you about 20 people a year come up to him and say the expression on your face and no one has seen it unless you're in the audience they saw it it's it's right it's it's yeah the episode never aired right between everybody thinks that it did between dick telling it as recently uh you know earlier this year year on Seth Meyers to the detailed account that Pete Hamill did because he was the guest on the show in the paper. It's one of those things that everyone feels they have seen that episode.

Yeah. I didn't know that Hamill was a guest on that show until I read your book. So you guys are among the select few. It's like the select group of people who've seen the day the clown cried footage right you're in an exclusive club right tell not a bad movie either but you know it's the little subtleties that you know people have gotten wrong did he actually say this phrase right did he say this you know there's little things we were watching and i don't know if bird even caught it the first time he says a line like oh let me, let me save this until I come back next time.

Or Cavett says, oh, we'll have you back. I mean, it's those little subtleties which were very eerie. I mean, for instance, part of the legend is that when Pete Hamill was being interviewed and Rodale was next to him, and then suddenly Rodale started making a snoring sound, which was apparently like the death rattle. And the legend has been that, that Dick Cavett leaned over and said,

excuse me, Mr. Rodale, are we, are we boring? Yeah. Yeah. I was going to ask you about that.

And that never happened. Interesting. When, when, when he made the noises, some of the people in the audience giggled a bit, but Dick Cavett and Pete Hamill knew right away. And the alarm on their faces was like, they're like, holy shit. And immediately they went into action.

There was no time for any sort of, you know, bon mots or whatever. That story was told on the very first episode of this podcast. Yeah, absolutely. Right. Absolutely. bon mots or whatever that story was told on the very first episode of this podcast yeah absolutely right absolutely and the other thing is that said during the course of the interview rodale was very concerned about having like free electric shock therapy for before anybody was doing it to you know to get the energy back into his body. And we came across a piece from Marshall Efron, who was the other guest on the show that night, and he believes that the lights

and the microphones were zapping the electricity out of Rodale's body, and that may have been the cause of his death. Alright, Jeff, you're the big Jerry defender on Facebook, and you and I I've picked bones with you before and there's no no no bring it on bring it on frank jerry defender than you are and gilbert

you know of course gilbert loves to use the line he was always nice to me he was he was as it turns out nice to both of you well i mean i've seen both you know i've been very lucky as you saw i promoted the documentary the method Method to the Madness. The filmmaker told me, hey, when Jerry goes, I have all the outtakes, you know. So I've seen the great side. You know, when I was doing my Rich Brothers book, you know, we wanted to interview Jerry. He called me up, left a message on my machine. And, you know, fast forward, I'm dead in his house doing an interview with him.

And I've been in his company many times. A sweetheart. Bert and I both have friends who've worked on the telethon for 20 years. So that's the great side. So they were doing an event in Las Vegas called the Founders of Las Vegas. Oh, this is the George Schlatter show. I was there. Were you there?

Yeah. This is great. I'm trying to get a ticket to the event. I think it was Caesar's Palace or Flamingo. I'm trying to get it, and they say it's sold out. They said, well, all right, we got you a couple of comps. I went with Bader. And then I sit to a woman who's sitting next to us.

I said, how'd you get in? She said, oh, they were giving away free tickets in the lobby. I said, really? So because George Carlin was on the panel, along with Norm Crosby, Phyllis Diller, Shecky, and Jerry, I got to go backstage. And Jerry walks in, and the room lights up. He's the big, you know, we have to give him credit. I mean, who else had a career of, you know, 75 years? You know know and he walks in lady and everybody's laughing and screaming and having a great time so then the panel takes

place and they're talking about vegas and performers and jerry says this quote which has been handed down from george jessel to george burns to milton burl there's no place for young comedians to be bad. Gilbert, how many times have you heard that? Yes, yeah. And Shecky Green goes, Jerry, what the hell are you talking about? Bud Friedman has 100 improvs. My friend Sammy Shore invented the comedy store.

What are you talking about, Jerry? He goes, I'm sorry. I thought I was right. And next thing you know, Jerry excuses himself to go to the bathroom and never comes back. He was that offended. Yeah, I was in the audience. And that was a scary moment because obviously Shecky hates him along with probably everybody else on the earth that Shecky hates. So I saw a, they never sold this, but when they were trying to sell this, they did an

edit of the taping, and they had a cut around it, so Jerry never looks like he walked off the set. I mean, the other side was that the TCA for the Method to the Madness, the documentary had not been available for the critics, so they only had a few minutes of it. It was just after he got fired by the telethon, so he really wasn't in a good mood. I remember him being introduced by Chris Albrecht,

and he gives this long intro, and Jerry, in that kind of Burl-esque delivery goes, hurry up, Chris, I have to shave again. He gets a laugh. He's out there. And someone says, Jerry, what do you think about reality television, American Idol? And he goes, in my day, we didn't say TV. We called it television.

And everybody on these shows looked like McDonald rejects these kids today. No one knows who Al Jolson is. I go, what? What is he talking about? So you see this side of him. But again, having been in his home backstage at shows, I've had great experiences with him. But, you know, if you tell me a story, I'm not going to deny it.

And Bert spent a great time with him on A Current Affair. You were at the telethon too, at one of the telethons. Richard Belzer has a Jerry Lewis tattoo. Uh-huh, he sure does. I have two. One is the familiar telethon logo.

The other is Hirschfeld's caricature. He's got two Jerry Lewis tattoos, Gilbert. Wow. And now, I've heard more than a few people, and I mean, maybe that's why Nutty Professor is such a great film. That's why Nutty Professor is such a great film. I've heard more than a few people I asked who described Jerry Lewis as Jekyll and Hyde. Well, it was Sean Levy, and I helped him with the PR for his book, The King of Comedy. He was the first one to make that conclusion.

You know, everyone always thought he was doing Dean Martin in that movie. And then he said, no, he's doing Jerry Lewis. Yeah. If you look at Jerry Lewis and Jerry Lankford, they had the same initials for a reason. Sure, sure, sure. But Bert, you had also mostly positive experiences of Jerry. I did. Back in 1987, I was working for NBC News, and a friend of mine was the assistant director on Saturday Night Live. And she had a gig in the summer as the assistant director for the telethon in Las Vegas.

So I said, please, can you get me a gig as like a production assistant, just some low-level gig so I can be there with Jerry for the entire – I want to stay up all night and stay up the whole time with Jerry for the telethon. Stay up with Jerry. So she got me the gig. I show up at Caesar's Palace. We go into the trailer where the production offices are. And they said, this is Bertie's going to be a production assistant. They go, get over here right away.

Jerry just found a big mistake in the rundown. You've got to fix it. Great. What do we have to do? So they gave me the rundown, which is the whole schedule of the show that gets handed out to everyone. And they sat me down at a typewriter, this is the old days, and gave me a bottle of whiteout because Jerry himself looked at the rundown and realized there was a big mistake at the top of every page. So it was my job to take the white out and white out the words muscular

dystrophy because what it said at the top was 1987 muscular dystrophy telethon i had to white out the words muscular dystrophy and type in jerry lewis so it said the 1987 jerry lewis telethon and i was i just was was just so happy to do that. You were happy to do it. Oh, I was crying. The main thing I wanted to know was how real Jerry was. At the end of every telethon, you know, he sings, you'll never walk alone.

He blubbers. He puts the microphone down on the stool and staggers off. I wanted to see if once he stepped off that stage, he went, you know, that'll hold the bastards for a while and see if he was the real deal. So I planted myself. I'd been up all night, Jerry and Sammy Davis. Sammy Davis had, it was before he had a hip replacement surgery. He was on two canes.

He had Alto on one side holding him up and his mother on the other side. Three o'clock in the morning there's a drunken crowd in the bleachers sammy goes out throws the canes down and does birth of the blues and that's where i realized sammy davis jr was like the greatest performer i'd ever seen sorry back to jerry so back to jerry i'm standing there he sings you'll never walk alone he's crying he puts the microphone down walks off stage and falls into his wife's arms and just weeps and i was like that's my jerry yeah oh how about that so to make a little story a bit longer tell them about the phone call two years later i'm working at a current affair and basically you could kind of do whatever

stories you wanted at A Current Affair. So I said, let me write Jerry Lewis a letter. So I wrote Jerry Lewis a letter, and I told him about what happened in 1987, two years earlier, and I said, you know, also, you know, I've been a fan my whole life, and on weekends, I lived in the West Village at the time, On weekends, I go to record stores, and I find copies of Jerry Lewis' Just Sings. That was the 1956 Standards album that he cut. One of the best albums ever made, and everyone should have a copy. It's available now. But anyway, so I wrote a letter.

I said, I've got a copy. I've got this album. I've got about 12 copies, and I'd like to give one to you. But what I'd like to do is follow you around during the preparations for and through the telethon. About two weeks later, I get a call at the office. Hello Bert, this is Jerry.

Jerry, what? Are you kidding? And he goes, I don't even have a copy of Jerry Lewis Just Sings. I'd love to have one. You're welcome to come to the telethon you'll have my complete cooperation the complete cooperation of my crew the only thing i ask is that not just be a two-minute segment i said fuck jerry you're gonna get the whole show if you're gonna let us

be behind the scenes of the telethon this is terrific i go as a matter of fact jerry this this is a great forum for you because you can address your critics. My critics? I fuck them! I fuck my critics! Fuck them! Fuck them! I'll see you next week.

So we ended up spending a week with Jerry Lewis behind the scenes, and he gave us the full Jerry. He had tantrums when he couldn't get his Eskimo pies. He did a two-way with Frank Sinatra. He did tap dancing with the old tap dancers. He rode around in a golf cart and came up behind people and honked the horn. He gave us the whole Jerry. It was terrific.

Fantastic. But the other reason we defend Jerry is I think we just find him funny. I mean, who else had a career that, again, you know, spanned 70 plus years of success in every medium from vaudeville up until, you know, cable television, you know, writer, performer, director, actor. I mean, singer. I think I also, I was born in that sweet spot of Jerry's career. I was around in the 60s when i would go to double features at the norwalk theater of you know hook line and

sinker and the family jewels and the ladies man uh you know at that time when you know your heroes were soupy sales alan sherman and jerry lewis and uh you had jerry lewis muscle dystrophy carnivals in my driveway i grew up with a Jerry Lewis cinema in East Meadow. I remember the Jerry Lewis cinema in East Meadow. Sure. They were a chain of those. Sure, sure, sure. They were going to be all family theaters, but they became people turned them into porno cinemas.

Pretty much. Do any of you have any inside stuff of why they fired him after all those years? You know, there was, I think the year before he was fired, he had a director named Artie, Artie Forrest. And he said, you know, Jerry, you know, he would introduce the cameraman, you know, the cue card guy if they made a mistake. It was a family. And the camera was following him around. He said, you know Artie, our fag director. Oh my God. And if you're 7-Eleven or the McDonald

Corp or the Sunland Corporation, you're not going to like that. He was getting a little ornery. And I think sponsors were starting to be a little schemish you know i think if you remember after 9-11 uh i think george clooney and a bunch of stars put on a telethon on hbo and it was on all the networks i think it ran for two hours and probably raised 60 million dollars money as the whole telethon would i think it sort of became a thing of the past they just didn't do it in a classy way. Also, in the telethon, it was, as Bert said, it was Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr.

The later years, it was Jack Jones. It was Maureen McGovern. So the telethon was losing its luster. So that was part of it. And Bert says it was the way it was handled. Jerry was the executive producer was handled you know jerry was the executive producer you don't just tell him and said we're changing it to six hours without telling him so that was the terrible part you know he did raise as jerry would say two billion and

that's with a b not an m for jerry's kids speaking of volatile comics either one of you guys have any experience of Pat Cooper, who turned 90 today, or Jack Carter? Jeff, I'm looking at you. Speaking of birthdays, shout out, Gary Lewis is 74 today. It's also his birthday. Oh, we have to have him on the podcast. That'll just be depressing. No, I had a good experience with Pat Cooper. I met him when he was doing Playboy.

When the Playboy channel had a show called Comedy After Hours, it was done like a roundtable like Broadway Danny Rose. I told him I had, like what Bert said, I had one of your albums. Before eBay, if you went into a used record store and found an album it was a big deal you know now you just sit in your pajamas but I said Pat I have a couple of your albums and I found him for him and he was nice had lunch with him at the Friars he was great we love him but the story I heard about Jack Carter was you know Jack Carter had the local had the local show on NBC just before your show of shows. And the network gave all the ammo and all the promotion to Sid Caesar.

And they said, you know, you really can't have this guest on. We're saving it for Sid. So he kind of held a grudge. And Jack Carter with a grudge is the ugliest thing you ever want to say. Wes Nesteroff has great stories about Jack Carter with a grudge is the ugliest thing you ever want to say. Les Nesteroff has great stories about Jack Carter. So they're at some party, and Jack is just needling Sid. You know, Sid is like 90 and falling apart. Not in good health, let's put it that way.

And he goes, you know, if it wasn't for you and Max Liebman keeping me off the air, I could have been this. And Mel Brooks is there. He goes, Jack, you were a big star. Sid was a bigger star. It's 60 years. Let it go. I love it.

Jeff, why, in your opinion, did everybody dislike Danny Kaye? I think George Carlin can sum it up best he as a kid wanted to be the next George Danny Kaye, a performer who could literally do everything and he went to see him at the Paramount Theater in New York, it's kind of a rainy

day, comes back goes out the backstage store, he's there with his autograph book and didn't even look at the kid and he goes here's a guy giving all his time and energy to unicef and wouldn't give me the time of day fuck danny k so and george vowed that if he became famous he would never he would absolutely treat his fans in exactly the opposite it's funny it's like Frank and I have had, we've lost count of the amount of guests

who've worked with Danny Kaye and all hated him. Bernie Coppell and Jamie Farr for two. Oh, yeah. I mean, I think it was Bernie or Jamie would say he would, or somebody said, if you got to laugh, he would grab your arm and say, yeah, don't step on my, I think I heard it here on your show. You know, he's also, like Jerry, one of those performers who could do everything. You know, he flew a plane.

He performed surgery. Gourmet cook. Right. And Mel Tolkien tells a story. You know, he prepares a gorgeous Chinese meal. He had a wok in his kitchen before anybody. You know, show showed up five minutes late he throws the entire food you know down the garbage disposal you know you know these

guys were just perfectionists and they they wouldn't you know um settle for second best and i think they took it out on everybody and and another one we've had on the show who everybody hated, Joey Bishop. Well, Frank, we were saying about the great story, and I think Gary Marshall told me this. Yeah, Bill Persky told us, too. It's the same story. You know, in every episode of every sitcom, you always have to play the evil twin, usually in season three, where they run out of ideas. And I think they're in a prison and one of the inmates looks like Joey Barnes. And Joey

looks at the script and he goes, hey, why does he have more funny lines than I do? Either of you guys encounter Jessel in your travels? No. Before my time. Just missed him. Well, he died in 81.

He made the book. Yeah. It is a shame that some of us, Frank, who may not like Jessel, but as someone who collects comedy recordings and has heard him on many Friars roasts, including the Friars events, including the Parkey Carcass. He's brilliant. He really did have a way of words.

He really was a master, you know? And there's a great clip of him on the Mike Douglas show. He did an old-timers vaudeville show with Rudy Valli, Molly Pecan, and Jessel. And Jessel does Hello Mama. And he still had it until the end. Favor him, Gilbert. He's such a Jessel and Jessel does hello mama and he still had it until the end favor him Gilbert he's such a Jessel fan

hello mama mama it's your son your son Georgie the one that sends you the checks oh yeah now you remember hey mama did you get that parrot I sent you?

You ate the parrot? But, Mama, that parrot spoke ten languages. Oh, he should have said something. And how's your eyes, sweetheart? Are you seeing spots before your eyes? Well, put your glasses on oh you see the spots more clearly wow i thought i had a lot of free time wow before we get out of here we'll plug the book

generously again burt uh tell us the Sammy and Frank story. If you can kind of condense it. Just to condense it, again, we made friends with Sammy Davis when we were at a current affair. We sent Maury Povich over to the Albert Hall to interview him for his latest autobiography. I think it was called Why Me? And all Maury had to do was open the book and just read a chapter because the entire book was about sucking and fucking and devil worship and maury maury would just read read a chapter and just go sammy sammy sammy then sammy would clap

his hands and give that great laugh um loved sammy davis when he died um i got an invitation to his funeral and to the house afterwards so um i promised my my boss i said look let's get a hidden camera get me a small camera and i'll get a picture of frank sinatra over the box looking at his little buddy and so great i go to i go to to la off, it turns out the, the, the funeral is in public and it's being televised at forest lawn. And the hidden camera they give me is the size of a boom box. It was like,

it was big. And so I'm sitting there and I'm, I'm in like the eighth row. Little Richard is on one side of me. Casey Kasem is on the other. And I'm trying to lift the camera to get a shot of the back. I see, I see Sinatra's toupee, like six one side of me casey casem is on the other and i'm trying to lift the camera to get a shot of the back i see i see sinatra's toupee like six rows ahead of me and i'm trying to lift the camera up to get a shot of sinatra the back of his head and sammy davis's lawyer

catches me and comes over and starts yelling at me at the funeral and little richard's going you got caught hi he's laughing so the service ends and and and Jesse Jackson, I think, was at the pulpit and he says, you know, everyone will proceed to the back of the chapel when it's over and Sinatra gets up and he and his wife go out the front. Excuse me, I jump up and I grab the boombox hidden camera and I run up the aisle and I burst through the doors and there's Frank Sinatra just getting into this limousine with Barbara.

And I lift up the big boombox hidden camera and I go, Mr. Sinatra. And I'm tackled by four forest lawn security guards and I'm on the ground, I'm in the dirt and they're all holding me down. And Sinatra looks at me and we make eye contact. And he looked at me like I was a piece of dirt, like I was just some little speck of shit that he didn't even notice.

And he gets into the limousine. They shut the door. The limo goes up the hill around the corner, disappears. Then all the Forest Lawn guys let me go. They wiped the dirt off their hands. They let me go. So I woundts off their hands they let me go so i wound up at sammy davis jr's house afterwards and i it was either liza minnelli was there a lot of celebrities were there i met it was either cheetah rivera or rita moreno i don't remember

which one it was i got them confused but the lawyer you were grieving. Right. The lawyer kept following me around Sammy's house. And I'm like, I'm trying to get a lawyer away from me. So finally, I locked myself in the bathroom. And I go, wait a minute. Glass eyes. And I open up the medicine chest. And I started going through the medicine chest looking for a glass eye. Didn't find one.

Sammy was the greatest. I'm going to admire a guy who knows what he wants in life. Now I have to wait until one shows up on eBay. I said when I started the interview, you're both very sick men. Gilbert, I met Herve Villachez.

You did? At Hard Copy. Too good. I made the mistake of trying to be a comedian. I guess we were doing an interview with him. I came down in the newsroom, and one of the producers had him, and he was standing up on one of the desks, and he's got his leather jacket on, his motorcycle boots, and his jeans,

and he's just standing there. Because he couldn't breathe, the poor guy. He was very sickly. And I walk over, and the producer says, Mr. Villachez, Herve, very nice to meet you. And I shake his hand. How do you do? How are you?

And she says, would you like an autographed 8x10? And I said, no, but I'll take a 4x5. and I said, no, but I'll take a four by five. And he looks at me and just, it was his version of crickets, his breathing. I felt bad about that. You feel bad about it, do you? I felt bad about it, yeah. Which do you feel worse about, that or searching for glass eyes in Sammy's medicine chest? Wow.

The glass eyes are fine. Sammy wasn't going to need them anymore. They're going to have a great memento. And I will find one on eBay. You'll see. Well, I know I'm going to die at my desk filling out cards for a Ronnie Shell interview. I don't know about that.

Oh, yes. All right. Does that count as dying in show business or dying in front of an audience? You know, I met William Shatner. You guys meet William Shatner? I met him backstage at the Bayhar show, and he was obsessed. He could not stop talking about Dick Shawn dying on stage.

We try to get to Shatner. He's the busiest man in show business. I have an autograph from him that says, Frank, just wait. It'll happen. So he's a man after your guy's hearts. He's obsessed with performers who died on stage. You should reach out to him. Yeah, you know, Penn Jillette talks about he wants to go out that way.

Yeah, Penn figures just statistically he probably will go out that way since the amount of time that he spends on stage. But it's interesting. On our website, we have a dozen performers have died on stage since we handed in the book since this year wild uh including two comedians today as a matter of fact uh a chinese mascot at an amusement park was dancing and i guess they're having a heat wave he dropped dead while dancing god but he didn't he didn't make the book because it was only a rehearsal and he wasn't on stage yet.

And you guys have standards. The book is wonderful. Gilbert's going to plug the book. And you guys, any other plugs? Bert, your website is a lot of fun. I found that great article about Richard Deacon and Joe Flynn, which I was reading at four in the morning.

That's going to be our next book, In Search of Perfecto Tellus. Great scandals. You guys come back and we'll do a whole Perfecto Tellus episode. So much I didn't get to. So I'm Gilbert Gottfried. This has been Gilbert Gottfried's amazing, colossal podcast with my co-host Frank Santopadre.

And today we've been talking to Jeff Abraham and Bert Kearns, whose new book is called The Show Won't Go On, The Most Shocking, Bizarre, and Historic Deaths of Performers on Stage. A great read. You guys are fellow travelers. We love you. Thanks guys are your fellow travelers. We love you. Thanks for this. It's terrific.

The book is fun. And I've got about 15 cards here I didn't get to, so you'll come back. And, you know, we'll talk about Red Buttons and Shecky and Mickey Rooney. Grandpa Al. And Grandpa Al and Fred Gwynn and everything else. Sid Melton. And Sid Melton. Oh, yes!

We'll do another one. Guys, this was a blast. Thanks very much. All right, I'll give you guys my Gene Bayless story next time. Oh, jeez! Can you do it in like 30 seconds? The only man to ever refuse me an autograph, which I love because now I have a story.

If he had signed the autograph, I wouldn't be talking about it. Tom Leopold ran into Gene Bayliss at the Friars. You heard that story. He said, how you doing, Gene? He said, I got a glass tube in my prick. Good night, gentlemen. Good night. We'll do this again.

Bye-bye. Thanks for staying up. We love you. The night you open, and there you are. Next day on your dressing room, they understand. Let's go on with the show. The costumes, the scenery, the makeup, the props,

the audience that lifts you when you're down. The headaches, the heartaches, the backaches, the flops. The sheriff who escorts you out of town. The opening when your heart beats like a drum. The closing when the customers don't come. There's no business like show business

like no business I know You get word before the show has started that your favorite uncle died at dawn And top of that your palm I have parted You're broken hearted, but you go on

There's no people like show people They smile when they are low Even with a turkey that you know will fold You may be stranded out in the cold Still you wouldn't change it for a sack of gold Let's go on with the show Out in the cold, still you wouldn't change it for a sack of gold. Let's go on with the show. Let's go on with the show. I love you. Special thanks to