Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast - 279. Don Reo

Episode Date: September 30, 2019

Comedy writer, producer and showrunner Don Reo regales Gilbert and Frank with memorable anecdotes about Jack Benny, Milton Berle, Redd Foxx, Jackie Gleason and Bob Hope and shares behind-the-scenes stories from classic shows like "Rhoda," "Sanford and Son" and "Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In." Also, Groucho takes a phone call, Tom Waits provides inspiration, Robert Altman cuts to the chase and Don joins forces with the legendary Slappy White. PLUS: Phil Spector Week! "The Rifleman" loses his cool! The return of "The Honeymooners"! The comedy stylings of Elton John! And Don remembers the late, great Clarence Clemons! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Partner Sun Life. The world is yours to create. People, this is Phil Rosenthal, and I'm on Gilbert Gottfried's amazing, colossal podcast. Why aren't you listening? Hi, this is Gilbert Gottfried, and this is Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast. I'm here with my co-host, Frank Santopadre, and our engineer, Frank Furtarosa. and our engineer, Frank Fertorosa. Our guest this week is a producer, author, director, Emmy-nominated television writer who scripted some of the most popular TV shows of the last 40 years, including Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, Ola and the Family, MASH, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Rhoda, Sanford and Son, Empty Nest, The Golden Girls. He even had the pleasure and honor of doing two episodes of Till

Death with Gilbert Gottfried. Finally, a sitcom guru who hired you. And he's done two and a half men, and everybody hates Chris. He's also the creator of hit programs like Blossom, The John Larroquette Show, My Wife and Kids, and the Netflix series The Ranch, starring Ashton Kutcher, Sam Elliott, and Deborah Winger, which is entering its fourth and final season. In a career that started way back in the 1960s with a personal invitation from Slappy White. He's written for and worked with a who's who of showbiz icons, including Jimmy Durante, Bob Hope, George Burns, Red Fox, Cher, Lily Tomlin, Goldie Haett, Alice Cooper, and David Crosby. And yes, he has worked with Milton Berle.

And yes, I do have a question to ask him. He's also worked with many of our previous guests, including Ted Wass, Ileana Douglas, Art Matrano, Norman Lear, Alan Alda, and John Amos. Hell, the guys even worked with Sid Melton. He's also the co-author of a terrific book about his late great friend Clarence Clemens called Big Man, filled with entertaining stories about their lifelong friendship and life on the road with Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. Please welcome an artist of many talents and interests, and a man who claims that Jackie Gleason once made him sit and watch him work

from a couch in the men's room. The very funny Don Rio. Wow, that's quite an introduction. You know, Big Man could have been the title of my Milton Berle story, too. There you go. Well, that leads us right to it, Don. Well, we might as well start off there. You know, it was my first job on television.

It was a show called Jimmy Durante Presents the Lennon Sisters Hour, and there were three of us writing it. Me, a guy named Bill Box Box who had invented the box card, the amusing greeting card. He was the other writer and a guy named Hugh Wedlock Jr. who had added the junior to his name so everyone would think he was his own son. I love it.

Hugh had worked for Jack Benny for years and years and he was the old pro on this show. And Durrani had called in all his markers, and all his old friends were going to be on the show. We got to go to Jack Benny's house. It was all kinds of interesting things that happened. But on the first day in the writer's room, we were in this little bungalow, Hughie says to me, you know, if Milton likes you, he'll show you his cock. And I thought, wow, you know, we're not in Kansas anymore.

I had never heard any stories about Milton Berle. You know, I was a show business, almost a show business virgin. So I said, oh, really? And he said, yeah, yeah, yeah. He won't just take it out. He'll find a way to show it to you. The Milton week comes along.

Every star was there for a week and Milton's there. We do a table read. We do rehearsal, rehearsal, rehearsal. We're finally getting to the dress rehearsal on Thursday and Huey and Bill and I were sitting in the audience and somebody comes out and says, Milton wants to see you guys in the dressing room. He wants to talk

about the gladiator sketch, which he was about to rehearse. And while we're in there, Milton's dressed, he's got a suit and a tie on, and there's a wardrobe guy there with him, a guy named Bill Ballew who also designed Elvis' costumes. He was really a brilliant

guy. Anyway, he was there to put Milton in this gladiator outfit and during the 20 minutes that we were there, Milton gets completely undressed, smoking a big cigar and he's standing there naked talking about the punchline to the sketch. It was a little disconcerting. So describe Pishcock to our listeners. Okay, yeah, sure. Have you ever seen a fungo bat?

Very similar to a combination of a fungo bat and a cyclops baby. Gilbert, you know what a fungo bat is? No, but it's just such a great word. It's a bat used to hit batting practice. It's a large baseball bat. So it was everything you imagined it would be. And more. I was going to say it's an exclusive club, Don, but it may not be an exclusive club. No, no.

Alan Zweibel has seen it. Yeah. I think a lot of people, I think he waved it around quite a bit. I know I would. I certainly would i would i certainly else to ask you okay well that's good it was a pleasure talking to you now another thing we've had this guy on our show and that was the terrific marty allen yes yeah marty allen used to be in the team of Allen and Rossi. I mean, I loved watching them growing up. They were like the poor man's Martin and Lewis.

Yeah, hello there. Yeah. Hello there. And now you told me you have a connection there. Well, it's a loose connection. You know, I was working at my father's furniture store in North Kingstown, Rhode Island when I was a kid, and I was writing jokes for comics that came through town. And I saw Slappy White on The Tonight Show on a Wednesday night with Johnny Carson, and Slappy was doing a bit called The First Black Vice President, which was set up punchline. Where do you stand on unemployment? At the head of the line.

You know, there was a, I understand you were, you got a scholarship to the University of Mississippi athletically. He said, yes, I was a javelin catcher. So it was set up punchline, set up punchline. So I wrote, he's coming to Rhode Island that Saturday night, I see in the paper the next day.

I write some jokes, I go there, go in the dressing room Saturday night. I see in the paper the next day. I write some jokes. I go there, go in the dressing room between shows, and I show him the jokes. And he says, can you read? And I said, oh, shit, yeah. Well, yeah, yeah, I can read. He said, the reason I ask, he says, I'm using maitre d's and busboys to do the setups,

the straight lines, and they can't read, and they fuck it up. So I'll give you $350 a week, and they can't read and they fuck it up. So, you know, I'll give you $350 a week and I'll pay your expenses and you can be in the act with me if you can write jokes like this every day. And I said, sure. And he said, okay, we open at the Apollo Theater next Friday night with Jackie Wilson and Big Maybell. And I said, great. And he gave me his address and his phone number, and I went home.

And the next morning, I had to tell my parents I was leaving home with a 52-year-old black guy named Slappy. And I did. I did. Wow. And I went up to his house in White Plains. He lived in White Plains at the time. We started working on the act, and we did a couple of bits

and we opened at the Apollo Theater that Friday night. So we did that for about two and a half years and Steve Rossi, who was splitting up with Marty Allen, saw us one night

and he came to Slappy and said, look, I'm splitting up with Marty. I can get us 10 grand a week at Caesar's Palace, which was more than Slappy and I were making. And Slappy said to me, look, I got to take this opportunity.

This guy's a player, and I'll keep you on it the same amount of money as a writer. And I said, no, I think I'm going to take a shot at television. So that's my loose connection with Marty Allen. So Rossi indirectly launched you into a television career. Indirectly, yes. You ever think of the strange odds of this, Don, that a kid who's working in a furniture store in Rhode Island

should suddenly be on the road with Slappy White performing in an orange tuxedo? Yeah, I know. Jackie Wilson on the bill. Yeah, Jackie Wilson, Big Maybell. Wow. What was seeing Jackie Wilson live like? Mr. Excitement. You know, it was pretty astounding, you know, for me to suddenly find myself in the Apollo Theater.

At that time, I don't think I had ever seen more than four or five black people in my life, certainly not in a group. group so you know to to go to the Apollo Theater and and be on the stage at the Apollo Theater was certainly a life-changing eye-opening experience and imagine and you worked with these like legendary black entertainers I did yeah I I did we we went back there uh the following year with Lou Rawls and the OJs wow um. We worked with Young Holt Unlimited. We worked with Arthur Prysock. We worked with a lot of different people. The Platters. There were all kinds of different places.

We played a lot of colleges and clubs around the country. And Vegas. We worked in Vegas for months at a time. What was the act? I know you said you wore an orange tux and you were the straight man. Yes, I wore the orange tux sometimes. You know, he would say, that's a nice tuxedo you're wearing, Mr. Riera. He said, we used to dress like that.

That was the opening joke, which worked very well at the Apollo, not so good in the Catskills. But yeah, we did that. And he did, you know know I was playing straight for him and writing jokes every day I'd try to write topical jokes from whatever town we were in and he did an act the first black astronaut

which was again set up punchline and then we had an act where I was reading Life magazine and he was reading Ebony which were exactly the same size at the time and I would do some highfalutin story and he would do the black version of the same story.

19 years old. Yeah. Yeah. It was pretty wild. That was my education. And he became like a surrogate dad to me. He would tell me things that my dad wouldn't tell me. You can smoke dope, but stay the fuck away from the cocaine.

He told me that. My father would have never told me. I don't tell me. You can smoke dope, but stay the fuck away from the cocaine. He told me that. My father would have never told me. I don't think so. It was very good advice, too. And did you do it? I did. I avoided the cocaine. Yeah.

Yeah. How did you meet Red? Because we were talking before we turned the mics on that Slappy and Red had history, too. Yeah, Slappy and Red were partners in the early days. Red Fox. Yeah, and I met him on the road. We hung out together.

We got high together. It was a small fraternity of people that Slappy knew, and Red was one of them. So years later, when Red got Sanford and Son, that was how I got to graduate from a joke writer to a sitcom writer, which in those days was a huge leap. Sure, sure.

So much more difficult. But let's take it back. Rossi comes and joins the act and this is an invitation for you to hit the road and try your hand as a writer. And I love the story where you wound up in LA.A. with a couple of bucks in your pocket, and you had given yourself a limited amount of time. I gave myself five days to get a job writing television.

Five days. Well, I thought that would do it, because Slappy gave me a phone number for George Slaughter, because George had made a black version of Laugh-In called Soul, and it didn't sell. It should have. It was really funny. But it didn't sell, but Slappy now had a relationship with George, so he gave me this phone number.

So I checked into what was then the Players Motel over here on Vine Street on a Sunday night, and Monday morning I called a number, and it was the switchboard at NBC. And I said, okay. And I talked to George Schlatter and they put me through to his secretary and she said, he's in a meeting. And I thought, okay, well, you know, he'll call me back. He didn't call me back. So, the other thing we had done was the Steve Allen Show.

And there were two guys named Jeff Harris and Bernie Kukoff who produced that. And Jeff had said, if you wrote this material, if you're ever looking for a job, call me. So, I called the Steve Allen Show. Kukoff and Harris have been fired. They're not there anymore. I said, well, who's producing it now? They said, Elias Davis and David Pollack. I said, can I talk to them? They said, they're in a meeting. So, I thought, eh, this is weird. Everybody's in meetings, you know? So, I said, do you have a number on Harrison Kukoff? And they said yes, and they gave me the number. I called it, and Bernie Kukoff answered the phone

because their assistant, Tina, was in the bathroom. And they were looking for a third writer, someone young to complement Bill Box and Hugh Wedlock Jr. Right. On the Jimmy Durante show. So they invited me to come over and bring my material with me. Timing. Had she not been in the bathroom,

Bernie doesn't answer the phone, things wouldn't have turned that way. You would be talking to Treat Williams, right? As we will. And then they just hired you from that no uh i i left i had a i had you know a phone book size of jokes because i've been writing jokes every day for two years so i left those and they said we'll call you uh in a couple of weeks we're going to london which was a lie they just told that to everyone so that no one would call them back the next day. It was total bullshit. So I went back to the hotel,

and George Slaughter had returned my call. So I made an appointment to go see him. Good old George. I met him, dropped off my material there, copies of it. Never heard from him that year. I finally heard from him a year later, and he hired me a year later. But Bernie Kukov calls back and says, you know, can you write some stuff for us? I said, what do you need? He said, I need a monologue for Jimmy Durante, a monologue for Bob Hope,

and three pages of crosstalk between Durante and the Lennon sisters. So I said, sure. He said, when can you have it? I said, I'll have it tomorrow morning. So I went out and bought newspapers and wrote topical jokes and whatever. I wrote all night. And I brought it over there Wednesday morning now. And Wednesday afternoon, they offered me a job. About that. So things really fallen into place.

They did. Yeah. Yeah. And what did that lead to well first of all tell us about jimmy durante yeah gilbert's got a good durante story too that's that's what it led to it led to me working for jimmy durante on jimmy durante presents the lennon sisters hour which was you know it was unbelievable it was really an education because jimmy, he was 82 years old at the time and he was doing this show so he could bring in all his friends.

He brought it, you know, we would, we would have Jack Benny for an entire week. I think he did two episodes. Bob Einstein was on it once. Oh, it was on the show.

Yeah. I remember him being in the dressing room, but we had, you know, Frank Sinatra and Danny Thomas and – George Burns and Benny. George Burns, yeah. Everybody, yeah.

Everybody in the world. We got to go to Jack Benny's house. You might like this story, Gilbert. We're writing some stuff, and they said, Jack wants to see you. He wants you to come to the house. And I thought, oh, shit, Jack Benny's house, wow. And Huey knew him for years. Hue so and here we knew him for years huey had been writing him writing for him for years so we go to this house it was over where the playboy mansion was right

in that neighborhood and we pull up and there's this big house and a butler an actual butler a guy in a butler uniform answers the door right and and i walk in and there's a Matisse on the wall and we go up the stairs into Jack's wing. Jack had his own wing on the right side of the house, as I recall, down this long hallway and Huey knocks on the door and from inside the door I hear, yeah, come on in, right? It's Jack Benny's voice, right?

Not bad, Don. And so Huey goes in and i step into the room and okay there's a four poster bed there big bedroom and jack benny is sitting on the end of the bed in a in an elegant robe and leather slippers and he's watching a tv that's here on the wall that i can't see and he's laughing his ass off he says come on in i watch this every day it's hysterical and i come in and he's laughing his ass off. He says, come on in. I watch this every day. It's hysterical. And I come in and he's watching Highway Patrol with Broderick Crawford. And every time Broderick Crawford speaks, Jack Benny collapses in laughter.

I love it. This is the funniest guy. Bizarre. Wow. The whole year was like that. And everybody we've spoken to has nothing but good

things to say about Jack Benny. Yeah, we've done 260 of these and not a disparaging word. Here's who Jack Benny was. The week of the show, we meet for breakfast in the commissary, the old ABC commissary on Prospect and Talmadge, and he orders bacon and eggs. And the bacon and eggs come, and

we're the only people in there. And he takes a bite of the eggs, and he says, waiter, who made these eggs? And the guy says, oh, well, you know, the chef, chef, it's a short order cook. He says, the chef, he says, bring him out here. And we're all looking at each other saying, oh, shit, what's going on? And this guy comes out, you know, terrified. He comes out. It was almost like, yes, Mr. Benny. And Jack says, did you make these eggs?

And the guy said, yeah. He says, these are the best eggs I've ever had in my life. And that's kind of what he was like. He was a positive force. You know, everything was, every day was the best day of his life. And he was like, he was like a funny Mr. Rogers. Wow, that's interesting. Wow.

Yeah. What about Durante? I don't think we've, in all the shows we've done, I don't think we've had anyone tell us about Durante. Durante was a show business animal. You know, he was, everything about him was steeped in show business. All his stories were references to people he knew in vaudeville and how the actor evolved and where Mrs. Calabash came from. The actor evolved and where Mrs. Calabash came from. He was an encyclopedia of stuff that I had never heard of.

Was it fun to just sit and let him hold court? Oh, God, yeah. I can imagine. The most fun was I would sit in there. I was the kid. I said, come on, kid. We're going to go eat. And I would go to lunch with him and Sammy Davis Jr. or Frank Sinatra. We used to go to this restaurant called Sarno's

over on Vermont. They sang opera there. We ate there every day. It was always with a different star. Tell us your Durante story too. Oh, but first I just want to say I remember growing up, people

who old enough to remember Durante on TV, he would always end the show with, and good night, Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are. So who was Mrs. Calabash? Well, you know, there are different stories. I asked him this question directly once, and he said she was a woman who ran a boarding house that he stayed in when he was struggling, and she let him stay there for nothing. Interesting. And the act hit, and the act took off, and he would always thank her for her charity,

which enabled him to get his career going. The story I have is that Durante, toward the last years of his life, became a recluse. And he wouldn't go out. He locked himself in. No one would see him around. So someone I know said they searched and found this house,

knocked on the door, and they hear, Who is it? And he goes, I'd like to speak to Jimmy Durante. And from inside the house, they hear, hey, I'm here. That's true. Gets me every time.

I don't know. I had a friend who went to go to George Burns' house one night, and he knocked on the door, and this guy answered the door, and he didn't have the wig on or he didn't have his teeth in. It was George Burns, and he didn't know it was George. He looked like someone completely different. Moms Mabley was like that. Moms Mabley lived next door to Slappy White in White Plains when I first started this.

She was his next-door neighbor. She had a sign on the roof of her house that said, no squares allowed. That's cool. But she was, you know, you would not recognize her at all if she was out of the drag, you know, and she was like a normal human being.

Everybody came through that Durante show, and I heard your interview with Barry Katz. Oh, yeah. I was listening to, going to IMDDB and looking up those Durante shows. I mean, everybody. Yeah. What an experience for you. What are you, 20, 21?

I sat with Colonel Sanders. Colonel Sanders. The real Colonel Sanders. You're a kid at this point, right, Don? I was a kid. 22, 23 maybe? Yeah, I was 22 years old. Yeah, yeah. And you worked

with Jackie Gleason. I did. You know, this is a the Gleason story is very interesting. It was, Alan Katz and I were partners. I'm actually having dinner with Alan Katz tonight. Alan Katz and I were partners in the early days of Laugh-In, and

we were writing together. We wrote the Sanford and Sons together in the early days of Laugh-In, and we were writing together. We wrote the Sanford and Sons together in 73, I guess. And we get a call that Frank Pepiot and John Aylsworth were going to do a Jackie Gleason special in Florida, and they wanted to take some writers with them. And would we go meet Frank Pepiot? And if you don't know who they are, they created Hee Haw and syndicated Hee Haw themselves. And they were rich. They had a lot of money. Two Canadian guys who created Hee Haw.

Exactly. And they wanted to wear the T-shirt, as Frank said, of having written for Jackie. So we go out to the Malibu colony and knock on the door. of having written for Jackie. So we go out to the Malibu colony and knock on the door and Frank Peppiot, who was one of the most elegant people I've ever met

and a consumer of gin. Let's put it that way. But he had a martini in his hand. He said, hi guys, do you drink? And we said, yeah. He said, you're hired. Do you drink? And we said, yeah. He said, you're hired.

That was the interview for the job. And we went to Florida for six weeks in the Everglades down there to work for Mr. Gleason, who was very unpleasant to us. It was not good. It was not good. It was not a pleasant experience. There were the four of us and then Walter Stone, who was one of Gleason's writers, terrific guy. I could never get him to leave Florida and come out here.

And one other guy, Jimmy something, who wrote the special material. Anyway, Gleason said hello to us the first day. He set up some chairs. We were sitting in the sun. He was in the shade. And he told us, okay, here's the show. And he laid out the entire show. He had it done. There was virtually nothing to do except fill in the blanks. And we're there for six weeks. And he came over and introduced himself to me. And I thought, well, this is nice. And later, Jack Philbin, his producer, said, Gleason thought you were Pepe Nailsworth's agents. Otherwise, he would have never talked to you. Which turned out to be true.

He would come into the room to hear jokes and stuff, and Alan would pitch a joke to him, and he would answer Walter. He would never make eye contact with anyone else. He would only address Walter Stone. So it was a... Unreal. It was a tough six weeks. Would he peek in the blinds to see if you guys were working?

He would come around in the afternoon and peek in and see if we were writing. Sturbing. You know, it culminated at the Miami Beach Auditorium. I've loved Frank Pepe my whole life for this night. We had a car. They gave us a car finally that we could drive down to Miami because we were staying up in Fort Lauderdale or Inverary someplace.

The night of the show, it's raining hammers and nails. It's raining like it can only rain in the tropics it's just unbelievably hard rain and we pull up to the miami beach auditorium frank and is driving john is in the passenger seat alan and i are in the back seat it was like a ford some kind of ford a fairfair fair laner and they've been drinking a little bit and we pull up and there's a guy there in a yellow slicker he He's got a clipboard. Frank says, hi, we're the writers. The guy says, what are your names?

And Frank gives him the names. He says, you're not on the list. And Frank turns around. He looks at us. He says, we're not on the list. And the guy says, yeah, you pull out here. You go down two blocks. There's a parking structure.

And Frank says, thank you very much. And he puts the car in reverse and backs up at full speed, bounces over the lawn there, and slams into the flagpole, opens the door to the car, opens the door to the car, stands outside. It's pouring rain. It's like he's standing in a shower. He's soaking wet instantly.

And he looks back at Alan and I and he says, see ya. And he walked off into the night and I never saw him again. That's an exit. That's fantastic. You told a story, too. You told a story that one time, you know, he was berating his writers and all the people who worked with him. And, oh, now I've got a mental block on his composer. Oh, Sammy Spear.

Sammy Spear, yeah. That was at the production meeting, the first production meeting. He's going around talking to, you know, June Taylor and Art Carney. And he says, Sammy, Sammy, work on the music. It's never been any good. And I'm thinking, he's kidding, right? Not kidding at all. Like, dead serious.

Dead serious. And finally, Alan and I walked into the Miami Beach Auditorium. Somebody towed the car away. John Aylesworth left. And we walk in, and he had set up a couch and a TV set in the men's room of the Miami Beach Auditorium. And his agent, Sam Cohen, who was the biggest agent in the world at the time, is sitting there also. And the three of us sat there, and we're looking at this monitor.

Off to our left, there are 100 urinals. It's hilarious. It's an auditorium, right? And it was like the smoking room, I think they called it at the time. But it was the men's room. And he comes on, and we had worked on the monologue for five of the six weeks because he had so much of it laid out in his head. We wrote The Honeymooners and the Reggie Van Gleeson, whatever it was, in two or three days. And he said, just work on jokes for the monologue.

So we had been writing jokes every single day for over a month. So I'm curious to see what he does. And he comes out and he says, oh, we got such a big show tonight. There's no time for a monologue. Hit it, Sammy. Never did a joke. Not one. Nothing that we wrote the whole time.

Wow. And then he did the show. And I have to say this. I sat there in the men's room and I laughed because he was so brilliant at what he did. He was so good at being a comedian that he made me laugh as much as I hated him. What was this thing Ted Wass was telling me that you told him on the golf course? That he would wet his finger? He would put the jokes on the...

Well, there was a... Yeah. He would wet his finger. He would put the jokes on the... Well, there was a... Yeah, you know, there's a story that he would... Marvin Marks was one of his writers also. Sure, I know that name. Yeah.

And Marvin could do Gleason. So he would come in and he would pitch jokes to him. And he would ask that the jokes be put in a pile, one joke per page. And he would slide them in front of him while all the writers were watching, read it, and then slide it off the other end of the table into a waste paper basket. So all the jokes, you'd have to watch him read them and then dump them in the waste paper basket. And according to Walter Stone, after the writers left, he would go into the waste paper basket

and take out the ones that he liked. Unbelievable. We also heard the swimming pool story. Oh, yes. Yes. If that's true. I don't also heard the swimming pool story. Oh, yes. Yes. That's true. I don't know that story. What is that one?

We heard when it was time for the writers to get their checks, he would have them all stand around the swimming pool and he'd say their writer's name, crumple up the check, and fling it into the pool. And the writers had to jump into the pool and retrieve their check. This is possible. We didn't do that. It was so hot down there, that would have been good. Was he not getting along with Carney? We heard some things that there was tension.

That I don't know. I never saw any sign of it. Interesting. Art Carney was, he showed up and did what he did so brilliantly. But I don't know.

We weren't privy to any of that stuff. We were sort of banned from the stage. And wasn't Sammy Spear the one writing, because at one point, Jackie Gleason

was all of a sudden a great composer. Yeah, and a conductor. Jackie Gleason and strings. And he put out that album, Music for Lovers. Yeah. Which I somehow doubt. Yeah, I think, look, I don't know, but it wouldn't surprise me if Sammy was actually behind that. I'm not sure.

I don't know. I don't know. But it was 55 degrees in there. You know, he's the one who started that temperature that has to be cold for comedy to work that Letterman later continued. Yeah, interesting. Was Frank Fontaine, he must have been gone by then. There was Crazy Guggenheim. He wasn't part of that.

Yeah, he wasn't on the show that I did. We just did this one special. I think it was called The Return of the Honeymoons. Right, right, right. We will return to Gilbert Gottfried's amazing colossal podcast right after this. That's what you say. Baseball is finally back.

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and I got hired for Laugh-In, so we did three years of Laugh-In. That's where I met Alan Katz, and then we segued into doing Half Hours together for a while. Any stories at all about that wonderful cast, about Gary Owens? I know you recognize Lily Tomlin's genius right off the bat. Yeah. No, I don't have any stories.

Yeah. That era was, you know, it was pretty fantastic for me. I was just thrilled to be there. I was very happy to be around these people. You know, it was a really magical time. You know, the great show business stories were all happening somewhere else that place ran like a clock and that was really good and what about the guests do you remember anything of the guest stars i remember meeting some of them you know i remember meeting John Wayne. I remember meeting Wilt Chamberlain. I remember

meeting William Buckley. They would come in and out of there. Nixon. It was an exciting place to be. It was very, very cool. But I don't have any great stories from the laugh in years.

I find that story, that show on IMDb too, the RCA special with Frankie Avalon and Ed Asner. Do you know what I'm talking about? No. And Harry Belafonte. Did I write it? Yeah, that you and Alan wrote. And John Wayne was on it.

Yeah. Does that ring any bells? No. There's so many things that I wrote that I have no recollection of. It's a little frightening at this point in time. But no,

I don't remember. You know, we did a couple of... I'll send you a picture. We did a TV... We did a couple of TV roasts, the early roasts. I think I wrote one of the first ones. It was for Howard Cosell. It might have been the first televised roast.

And I remember sitting in the back. I was with Red Fox and Muhammad Ali and Slappy. And the four of us sat around and talked for hours. But I wish I had taken the time to remember what we talked about. I know we talked a lot about pussy. Where Red knew his way around that subject. That was, as I recall, that was the number one topic. Now, Red hated white people.

Well, his tolerance for white people was not as high as it was for other races. Listen, it worked for me, selfishly speaking. Listen, it worked for me, selfishly speaking. You know, the reason that we got a chance to do Sanford and Son and start writing half hours, I think we wrote seven of them in that first year. Yeah, some good ones, too. In the back nine. Yeah, there was some fun stuff in there. I think you wrote the one that introduced Julio, that introduced Gregory Sierra.

That's right. The Puerto Ricans are coming. The Puerto Ricans are coming. Yes. Yeah, it's a great one. Yeah, we did write that one. Yeah. We wrote that one. And Ricans are coming. The Puerto Ricans are coming. Yes. Yeah, it's a great one. Yeah, we did write that. Yeah. We wrote that one.

And the Lena Horne one. Lena Horne, yeah. Yeah. I remember I went to the, we used to do two shows. You know, you do one at 4.30 and then the audience, another audience at 7.30. And the 4.30 show was so bad that I called my family and said, don't come to the show tonight. It's a disaster. And then at 7 30 it went

through the roof they did i i hadn't realized that you could modify your performance where it's not so good at one performance and it's really good in the when the lights come on and red was really only there for the for the the real show as he called it. Our friend John Amos was in that Lena Horne episode. Yeah. He was on the ranch recently. Yes, yes. Yeah, and here with us twice. Lovely guy.

Bill Persky we've had on a couple of times. Yeah, Persky and Denhoff. Persky and Denhoff, yeah. And he's not too quiet about his hatred of Demond. Oh, Demond. Oh, really? Yeah, they didn't care for Demond. He did a series with Demond called Baby on Back.

I know that there were people shooting at each other at one point in time. Demond apparently carried a piece. Yeah, he's a preacher now. Now he is, yeah. You should have him on. That would be really fun. That would be really fun. That would be really interesting. I don't know.

I'm not sure if he's still packing. Here you are, gentlemen. A nice, cold pitcher of sangria. Gracias, negro. What did you call him? It's a very common thing. I call him negro. It's a very common thing. what would you call it? I call him negro, it's a very common thing, it's a friendly way of talking to each other in Spanish, what do we call ourselves?

You look like no negro to me. Mr. Sanford, you are going to enjoy this, it is called sangria. Sangria? called sangria sangria see what sangria mean it means blood it is only a name because of the color oh I'm always um it brought back from the boom man he's a very popular drink do you like it yeah it tastes good uh-huh tastes like ripple this gold flat in fact they should call it flapple he was that stuff down there in the bottom oh that is that is fruit. Mm, look like garbage. That's it.

You can stay here and eat with him if you want to, but I'm leaving. No, Lamont, please, man, come back. Don't be like... Oh, excuse me, Mr. Sanford. Lamont, please, come back. Pardon me, please. Lamont! Hey, Negro, come here.

Damn. Bring me another picture of that Shangri-La. And look here, waiter. Hold the garbage. What was the thing, though? You were told, you guys were told, you tried to make the jump, and you were told you can't write half hours. That was, yeah, that's the way it was. You know, there were joke writers, and then there were, like, real writers, you know, sitcom writers. Right.

And that's how we made that transition. real writers, you know, sitcom writers. Right. And that's how we made that transition. It was largely due to the fact that Red said, yeah, let these guys do it, because I knew him because we had hung out together as contemporaries. You know, look, in comedy, you know, within the world of show business, show business is like a big tent, you know? It's like a circus, and you're either in the tent or you're out of the tent.

And when you're in the tent, I don't think there's a whole lot of um color a whole lot of prejudice it's just sort of like we're all in this together at least that's what i like to believe before we go deeper into red and sanford and i'm going to try to jog your memory on these don you wrote the rowan and martin special in 73. with rub? With Ruby Keeler, for Christ's sake. Ruby Keeler? Jesus. Dolly Parton, Newhart, and Belafonte. Ruby Keeler was?

Yeah. Incredible cocksucker. RCA opening night was the one I was talking about. Yeah. Okay. Well, you'll have to talk about that because I got nothing. Jack Carter, Borg 9, Glenn Ford, Howard Cosell, John Wayne, and Tony Orlando and Dawn. Wow. I'd like to see that.

So would I. Can you tell us about Jack Carter? Jack Carter, the only stories I remember about Jack Carter, we did this. I started to tell you, we did this big roast one night that was to celebrate Frank Sinatra's, I don't know, 100th year in show business or whatever it was. It was again with Bernie Kukov and Jeff Harris. And right before we started shooting, Frank's lawyer, Mickey Rudin, said, by the way, Frank will only appear in this show for four shots. You can only shoot him. You can only shoot him. You can only photograph him four times,

and they have to be less than 10 seconds each. Go ahead. And I don't know where this came from. It might have been a ploy for more money. They might have been negotiating, but that was the rule. You couldn't shoot Frank more than four times, a total of 40 seconds. And the roast is about him.

He's sitting next to the deus, so it was a bit of a triumph. But Jack Carter was on that, and the one I remember was the guy who played the rifleman. Oh, Chuck Connors. Chuck Connors. He was sitting down to the left, and he got hammered during this thing,

and he started to yell at the audience. You know, you fuckers. Why don't you go back to Beverly Hills, you fucking cunts. He had always been my hero. You know, he's like Chuck Connors the rifleman. He had a bad night

that night. What about this one? One more time. I don't remember Jack Carter other than his bit. He was an angry guy, we're told. Yeah. One More Time was another show you wrote with Pearl Bailey, George Goebel, Carol Channing, Pat Boone, Tiny Tim, and the Jackson 5. That I remember.

Directed by the great Marty Posada. I remember one joke that we wrote for that show. And the joke was, it was an introduction. It was like, it was Cher, Judy, Frank, all the greats you can recognize by one name. Ladies and gentlemen, George Goebel. There you go. It's the only thing I remember from that show i think the pointer sisters were on that show wow wow well and now on the subject of red and i'm trying to

remember where i read it maybe it was in big man because you tell some of your your own showbiz stories in the book too was it he had an attack dog named agnes red i all i remember is this giant saint bernard that he had when he lived in the house in Toluca Lake. And I went over there one day and started to walk through the gate and Red comes running out. No, no, no, wait, wait, wait, wait. And they had to put the dog away, he said, because the dog doesn't like white people. I avoided the dog. I loved his line in your book, too.

He said he loved Asian women. And he said, you ever see me with a white woman? I'm holding her for the dog. I loved his line in your book, too. He said he loved Asian women, and he said, you ever see me with a white woman, I'm holding her for the police. Yes. That's what he said. What a piece of work. Another name that's come up on the show a few times with people with stories, Jerry Lewis. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, I was friends with Bill Richmond. Bill Richmond is the guy who wrote with Jerry Lewis. Sure, a nutty professor. A nutty professor. Bill and I were very, very close. I met him on Laugh-In. Bill was in his 50s on Laugh-In.

He was, I'd rather talk about him than Jerry Lewis because I don't have a whole lot about Jerry Lewis. But Bill was an amazing character. You know, he had been a pilot in World War II. He got out and became a big band drummer. He was Frank Sinatra's drummer. He was the drummer in the Les Brown Band. And that's where he met Jerry Lewis.

And then he wrote The Nutty Professor with Jerry Lewis and all those Jerry Lewis movies. And he looked like Cary Grant. and he was a scratch golfer. He was one of the most incredible guys that I ever met. He was a cool, cool dude. We lost him a couple of years ago. Yeah, we were going to try to have him on here. He wrote The Errand Boy, too, and Ladies' Man. Yeah, great, great guy.

Did you put him on staff at Larroquette? I put him on staff on everything. I loved being around him. He was everything that I wanted to be and will never be. He was devoted to Jerry. Even when Jerry fell out of favor, Jerry became sort of passe, and Bill would always defend him, saying that Jerry was an innovator and was really a good guy.

I don't know. I didn't have much interaction with Jerry. As long as we're talking about classic comics, you did work on Action. Yes, Action. The terrific Jay Moore, Ileana Douglas series that you and Chris Thompson did. And you must have worked on it.

Chris Thompson said we did that show because of his need and his love for narcotics and hookers and trips. That's why the show was appropriately about greed. That was a wonderful experience. I loved working on that show. We had Eliana here and we talked about it. That was a show. If you did that show today, it would probably be better suited for a Netflix or an Amazon where you'd get away with it.

Well, it was originally for HBO. Yeah. You know, it was, and it should have been on HBO. It should have been. You know, it really didn't work on Fox. It was, the audience actively hated the show, not just a little bit. You know, it was, there were heaping hunks of hatred hurled at it. And within the business, people still talk about it and still refer to it as one of the

touchstones. Beverly Hills Gun Club. Yeah, a great deal of fun. What about Hackett? Anything? He was terrific. I mean, Buddy was great. He was, you know, he was tremendous fun to be around.

As long as you wanted to talk about Buddy Hackett, you would have a wonderful time. Another guy who liked to pack heat, by the way. Yeah. Yeah. He was great. He had a lot of Buddy Hackett stories, none of which I remember. And what about Bob Hope? You know, I don't know bob hope uh i i knew him uh i worked with him a couple of times you know um i met him in chicago once when

we were working at mr kelly's he was there um uh he came into the club and he was like you know he was like a building you know i mean it was like Bob Hope was an astoundingly giant character in the business. But I was in the men's room at Lakeside Country Club one day. And I was in one of the stalls, and I hear Bob Hope coming in. He's talking to somebody outside of the bathroom and he walks into the room and I know from the sounds that he's walking over to a urinal. Now, there's a certain set of rules in this situation. You either cough or you make noise so the other person in the room knows there's someone else in the bathroom, or you don't make any noise.

I didn't make any noise. And I heard this. Come on along and listen to a lullaby of Broadway. And then he washed his hands and he walked out. Oh, boy. You're going to top that one, Gil. It was one of the best moments of my life. Tell us about working. One of the best moments of my life. Tell us about working for Cher, Don, another larger than life personality. You know, Cher, that was, you know, I have fond memories of working for Cher because that's where I met my wife.

You know, she introduced us. It was fortuitous for me. You know, that was the share special with george schlatter george hired me to to write the share special and we went to uh we went to new york together we went to see bett middler and she was going to be on it and we went to flew down to washington dc share and i to see elton john we flew back on Starship, that famous rock and roll airplane. We came back on that with Elton. And it was, again, you're shot out of a cannon. I was into this other world. Cher was as exotic and as desirable as a human being could be at that point in time. And it was

a thrill to do that show. Again, there were all these incredible people that showed up. You know, we had David Bowie there for a week. Tina Turner. Tina Turner, yeah. Ray Charles. You name them, they were there. Captain Kangaroo. Captain Kangaroo.

David Bowie came in with his assistant at the time was this redhead woman, I forget her name. But we walked into one of the rehearsal halls over at CBS over here in Fairfax, and she was dressed in this black dress, a see-through dress that had, she had nothing on underneath it. And you were supposed to just conduct business like,

you know, there's nothing unusual about this. And he never referred, nobody ever referred to the fact that this is a naked woman here talking to us. But Bowie was great. He was, he's the one I remember the most I think because I was so into his music and stuff. That special,

that pilot or that special is good, the one with Bette Midler and Elton. And Elton's doing comedy skits. Yeah, yeah. When we went to see him, we were at the Sherry Netherlands the first time we saw him and he was running around the suite up there

doing his grandmother because there was a bit in the special where he plays an old person. Yeah, in a wheelchair. He was doing his grandmother. Yeah, he was great fun. That show was fabulous.

Anything about Captain Kangaroo? I don't remember a whole lot about Captain Kangaroo. I don't remember a whole lot about Captain Kangaroo. I don't want to malign Captain Kangaroo. Let's talk a little bit about The Big Man, the book, which you wrote in what, 2009? I think that's right, yes. This is when I actually met you, when you and Clarence were on The Joy Behar Show, plugging this book 10 years ago.

And it's a wonderful read, not only because it's a great rock and roll book, but it's also filled with fantastic anecdotes and some of your anecdotes, as well as stories about you and Clarence. The Groucho phone booth story? Can you comment on it? I can comment on it. You know, listen, Clarence told a lot of stories. He was a storyteller. And I can't verify whether, you know, did he play nine ball with Fidel Castro? I don't know. He claims that he did. I hope so. He claims that he did. He claims he was there with Hunter Thompson and they were playing nine ball with Fidel Castro.

I don't know if it's true. I'd like to believe it's true. I haven't really tried to disprove it. So the Groucho Marx story is, you know, Groucho was walking down the street, and he picked up a phone in a phone booth that was ringing, and it was Clarence. And Clarence had been given a phone number by a girl he tried to pick up in a bar. Lovey. And she said, yeah, she said, this is my phone number.

And it really wasn't. It was the number of this phone booth, and it was answered serendipitously by Groucho Marx. That is wild. Yeah. How much of that Sinatra story about Sinatra meeting with him and wanting to cover Born to Run? As far as I know, it's gospel, Frank.

I certainly hope it's true. I wrote it the way that he told it to me, and I hope that it's true, that Frank wanted to do Born to Run at one point in time. But he wanted to do it as a ballad. We talk about his version of Mrs. Robinson where he references Jilly. Jilly, yeah, yeah.

Can you imagine? I met Jilly before I met Frank. I wanted to be in that world when I was in high school, even before I met Slappy. I would drive to New York and hang out in Jilly's. And I got to know the guy, the cab driver who drove him, this guy named Artie. Wow. And he introduced me to Jilly, and I started to hang out in Jilly's. That's the first time I met Frank was in Jilly's.

Jilly and his wife, his wife was Honey. Her name was Honey. Just to jump back a story, how did he find out he was talking to Groucho Marx? Groucho introduced himself. He introduced himself on the phone, but

Clarence didn't know who Groucho Marx was. It was one of those things. Do tell the De Niro painting story, too, because that's a great story in the book. The De Niro story is, are you talking to me? Bruce has addressed this this story too and it might might be urban uh an urban uh what do you call it myth yeah an urban myth yeah but according to clarence de niro said the are you talking to me thing that he did in

taxi driver he got from bruce that bruce was he went to a Bruce concert early on and Bruce was standing on stage and people were yelling, Bruce, Bruce. And Bruce stood there and said, are you talking to me? I'm the only one here. Are you talking to me? And De Niro says that that's where he got that bit from Taxi Driver. Really cool. That's cool. At some point in the book, Clarence says that Springsteen was funny, that he could have been a comedy writer. Is he funny? He is funny.

Do you experience him that way? Yeah, he is funny. He is funny. You know, I'll tell you a story. When Clarence died, I was down in Florida for the funeral. You know, we were all in the hospital for that last week. It was really, really a difficult week. And Bruce was amazing that week, bringing people together.

Anyway, after Clarence died, we were up in his apartment, in Clarence's apartment. We were getting ready to go to the church, I think. And at one point in time, there's just Bruce and I there. And I said, you know, Clarence used to tell dirty jokes all the time. Yeah. So I said, did Clarence tell you the Willie Nelson joke? And Bruce said, no.

I said, oh, OK. I said, here it is. It says, what's the last thing you want to hear when you're blowing Willie Nelson? And Bruce said, oh, gee, I don't know. And I said, I'm not Willie Nelson. And Bruce said, oh, gee, I don't know. And I said, I'm not Willie Nelson. So he doesn't laugh, right? He walks over into the kitchen. He leans up against the counter.

He looks down. He says, he looks up and finally he says, you know, that's really funny. My heart stopped. You know, I thought, oh, my God, I've offended Bruce Springsteen. We will return to Gilbert Gottfried's amazing colossal podcast after this. See yourself buying a home one day? Do future you a favor? Open a Questrade first home savings account and help that future come faster. The FHSA is a tax-free account where all your

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Hot chicken in the window. This is one of many sounds in Tennessee with a story to tell. To hear them in person, plan your trip at tnvacation.com. Tennessee sounds perfect. So many good stories in the book. One of my favorites is your Robert Altman story, which you have to tell Gilbert quick. That's a true story. I'm in New York.

I'm at an apartment, a full floor apartment on Park Avenue with these very socially upwardly mobile people who I have nothing in common with. And the host came over to me. He said, there's somebody else in show business here. So I said, oh, great, good, anything. And he says, come with me. And he says, Bob,

and he says, this is Don Rio. He says, this is Bob Altman. That's Robert Altman, right? Yeah. And Robert Altman turns to me and shakes hands.

He says, you're in show business? So I said, yeah. He said, do you have any dope? And I said, I said,

no. And he walked away. That's my favorite. Never said another word to me. I went back to talking to Muffy or Biffy or whoever I was with. And we worked together twice.

We did? Yes. We had Jim Burrows here last week and Gilbert wasbert was uh was writing him for never uh never actually hiring him happy to see you did we probably met through through through jimmy valily early on you know jimmy oh yeah funny guy i have a great jimmy valily story i've got to tell you this yeah jimmy val is writing. Jimmy Vallely, for those of you listening, is a very, very funny comedy writer. Very funny. He was working on My Wife and Kids.

We're in Vegas. Me, Damon, Dean Laurie, another writer, and Jimmy are in Le Cirque, this fabulous restaurant. We're drunk. We've just wrapped the Michael Jordan episode. And it's after dinner. And I said to Damon, why don't we get a louis the 13th it's a this fancy brandy it's like you know five hundred dollars an ounce and damon says yeah so the maitre d comes over we order one and damon says hey do you have anything better than louis the 13th

and the guy says in 1853 a galleon went down off the coast coast of Jamaica, and it lay at the bottom of the sea for 100 years until it was, it was, it was, divers went down and resurrected it. And on board were four barrels of brandy. Two of them belonged to Prince Rupert of Lichtenstein. The Queen of England owns one, and we have the other. It's $3,500 an ounce Damon says we'll have one and this starts the ceremony they come out with this cask and baccarat crystal glasses and the guy draws an ounce of this stuff and he says you got to let it sit just sniff it right so I take it and I sniff it I hand it Damon he sniffs it I hand it to Dean he sniffs it. I hand it to Dean. He sniffs it. Dean hands it to Jimmy. Jimmy takes the whole thing in his mouth and goes, spits it out on the floor.

He says, this is terrible. Well, it was the funniest thing I had ever seen a human being do in my life. Everybody else was aghast, right? They threw us out of the place. Wow. But it was a bold, bold, funny thing to do. Now, you were on Till Death. You were on the Brad Garage.

Yeah, I was on about two episodes of Till Death. Okay. And one of them, my favorite episode, was one that we're in the locker room together, me and Brad Garrett, and he notices that I have an extremely big dick. That's the whole

running thing. So that became my favorite TV episode. Well, we've bookended this conversation. Yes, yes! We open it with a big dick. I got a couple of quick questions for you don from listeners uh listeners jason pagano i'm a fellow rhode islander dan dan i'm a don

big fan uh given the timing of your interview do you have an anecdote or two about working with the late great valerie harper you wrote a couple episodes of rhoda i produced rhoda alan and i produced rhoda fora for one season, I guess. It was after we left MASH. No, she was a delightful person. She was lovely. I really enjoyed being with her. You know, she always struggled with her weight.

I remember when we showed up for the first day, she had lost a tremendous amount of weight in the off-season. And the following Monday, like we met on a Friday, and the following Monday, she said, I have to tell you this story. She said, when I was driving home last night, I stopped at a bakery and I bought a birthday cake and I had it, I had them write happy birthday Marsha on it and I took the cake out and I went to the drugstore next door and I bought a rat tail comb

and then I went into the car and I used the back of the comb to cut the cake and I ate the entire cake. So I said, wow. That's crazy. She said, yeah, welcome to the show. Here's another thing.

I got to work with her a handful of times. She was very sweet. She was very sweet, and so was Julie Kavner. She was great. Everybody on that show was great. Charlotte Brown was the showrunner of that show. Terrific, terrific writer. Lynn Mancini says, Don's choice on this question. Can he

tell us anything about spending time with either the hilarious Chris Rock or the dearly departed Dr. John? Well, Dr. John, you know, wrote the, did the theme for Blossom. I don't have any great stories about Dr. John.

Chris Rock, you know, I got to hang around with, I basically got paid to hang around with Chris Rock while we were doing Everybody Hates Chris. And, you know, it was interesting. The way Chris thinks, Chris thinks in a different way. It was, remember the time when Michael Vick got in trouble for the thing with killing the dogs and all this stuff?

So I'm having lunch with Chris that day, and I said, you know, this guy, there's no way to forgive a person for this. He said, well, that's because you're white. I said, what are you talking about? He said, black people have a different relationship with dogs. I said, how? He said, I'll tell you how.

During the Underground Railroad, the dog said, hey, they're under the stairs. I guess he's got a point. He's got a different point of view. He thinks funny. Yeah. Just quickly, Don, we've got to talk a little bit about the Larraket show before we get out of here. Yes.

I loved hearing your story about, who was the executive? Was it Sagansky at CBS that absolutely hated the show? Hated it. Yeah. Hated it. We delivered it on Friday. We thought, boy, this is going to be great. Let's hire a casting director.

And he called Monday. He said, I hate this. Just get it out of the building. I'm not going to give you notes. I hate this. And that was it. It was dead at CBS. And then I think it was three years later, Larroquette stumbled on it, got a hold of it, and it became the John Larroquette show. A very edgy show. Ran for four years. It was edgy. You know, it was dark. We wanted to do a very dark comedy. You know, he had a sign,

this is a dark ride that he got at a carnival when he was a kid and the line in the script was there should be one of these hanging at the end of the birth canal. Yeah, I watched

the pilot last night and I watched a couple of them last night. You know, there's like a Richard Ramirez Night Stalker reference in the pilot. Yes, it's dark. Yeah, it's an edgy show I watched a couple of them last night. There's like a Richard Ramirez Night Stalker reference. Yes, it's dark.

It's an edgy show for primetime. I'm surprised Gilbert wasn't on that show. Somebody who was on that show was slapping. Bobcat was on that show. Bobcat was on that show, and he played a character who, when he was drunk, didn't talk like Bobcat. He only talked that way and acted that way when he was sober but when he drank he kind of talked with a slight english accent you know did did listening to tom waits somehow inform your writing and creation of that show almost everything that i've ever created has been based on music it's been based on something i'm listening to and And at the time, I was listening to

Nighthawks at the Diner, you know, Tom Waits' early stuff. And I wanted to write about people who worked from midnight to 8 a.m. You know, the original title was They Only Come Out at Night. Yeah, it's very edgy and it's very smart. I mean, I'm listening,

I'm watching it and there's Edward Hopper references and Beckett references and Miles Davis. And I turned to my wife and I mean, I'm listening, I'm watching it and there's Edward Hopper references and Beckett references and Miles Davis. And I turned to my wife and I said, this is another show that might have been better suited on cable

or on HBO or in this day and age on Netflix as opposed to having to compromise by being on network. We were where we were, you know. There's a whole Thomas Pynchon run

in that show. And the Stephen E.D. Hitler episode. Written, I think, by your pal J.J. Wall. Oh. J.J., yeah. Yes. I talked to J.J. a week ago. Oh.

Yeah. Yes, that was a wonderful experience. I'm still friendly with John. We're talking about doing something else. What a funny guy. Yeah. He he is he's a great guy can we ask ask you before we jump about a couple of people um brian keith the late brian keith that you did a series with yes yes called heartland yeah brian was uh he was a cowboy you know he was uh he was he was a no-nonsense kind of Western character, you know. He would sit on the can with the door open and give you notes for the script.

It was, whew. He must have had stories. Oh, yeah. I mean, you know, we could stay here for a long, long time if I were to repeat other people's stories. You know, it goes on for days and days. But Brian was a real interesting throwback character. Yeah. He was like from a Peckinpah movie, you know? He was like that kind of guy.

He came to a sad end, unfortunately. Yes. Yeah. What about somebody we've desperately wanted to have on this show, Malcolm McDowell? You did Pearl with. Yeah, I am still friendly with Malcolm. We adore him. I love Malcolm.

Ask him to tell you his Danny K. Olivier story. Oh, yeah. Okay. All right. He's got some great stories. I don't want to repeat Malcolm's stories. Oh, yeah. Okay. All right. All right. He's got some great stories. You know, I don't want to repeat Malcolm's stories. No, no. But if you can get him here, he's got some wonderful stories.

We'd like to get him. He's got some great Caligula stories. Yes. Yes. Yeah. He starred in that movie, and he's got some great stories. This is throwing a bone to Gilbert, but Sid Melton was on Blossom. Yes.

And he's come up on Blossom. Yes. And he's come up on this show a hundred times. Danny Thomas' old sidekick. Yes. Anything? Not really. I mean, Sid Melton, you know, you would get a call from Paul Witt or Tony Thomas saying, you know, Sid needs his insurance. You've got to put him on the show. That's kind of how it happened he was a delightful guy you know he

was a wonderful guy but he was one of those one of those people that you know are inside the tent but they're near the exit what about bill dana who was on who was on the lenny schultz show yeah bill dana i knew mostly from hawaii for for a while i i had a house in Hawaii in a town that Bill had a house in and I met him on the beach in Hawaii and most of the time that I spent with him was there. We almost had him.

We had him booked. We had Jack Carter booked too. They both took a turn for the worse. I had to check my insurance. You ought to. How did Ted's character, and you know Ted was here, right? He brought us to you. Ted Wass.

The lovely Ted Wass. We had a great time with him. How did his character in Blossom come to be based on Dion? Dion DiMucci is a friend of mine. He's been a friend of mine for a long time. He was on the Cher Show back in the 70s. Okay. As I was creating Blossom, I went to Florida for Dion's 50th birthday party.

So that's 30 years ago. And I went to his house, and he lived in a neighborhood. He had two cars and three kids. And I thought, this guy's in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and he's got like a normal life. You know, dads on television are not in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. They're not hip. They're all, you know, older and they're like my dad. And that's why I changed the character of the father to a musician.

He was a studio musician. He was a piano player. of the father to a musician. He was a studio musician. He was a piano player. And it was largely due to the fact that Dion was a dad too. So why not have a dad like that? Why not have a dad who knew music and musical references and played on sessions?

Different approach. Yeah. It was just a little tribute. The night you met Dion, was that the Phil Spector night that you went to the room? It was the Phil Spector week, yes, because Dion was recording an album with Phil Spector, and he invited me over to the Gold Star Studios, which were on Santa Monica and Vine Street there. And I walked in. It was Studio 3, I think.

And we walked in, my wife and I, and I hear, who the fuck are you? And I turn to the right, and up behind the board is Phil Spector, who is in a white jumpsuit with a giant white Afro wig and red sunglasses, and he's pointing a.44 Magnum at my head, right? And I could still see it. It was like, oh, fuck, right? It was really odd because behind him was Bruce Springsteen and Steve Van Zandt and Robert Hilbrun from the L.A. Times. They were all sitting there. Yeah.

And Zach Glickman, who was Dion's manager at the time, was in front of me. Zant and Robert Hilbrin from the LA Times were all sitting there. And Zach Glickman, who was Dion's manager at the time, was in front of me and Zach jumped up and said, no, no, it's okay, Phil. He's a friend of Dion's. He says, okay, don't shoot. He didn't shoot. He said, alright, come in, sit down, shut the fuck up. I'm going to show Bruce Springsteen how to make a fucking

record tonight. And they cut this record called Baby Let's Stick Together. So you've had a gun pulled on you by Phil Spector. By Phil Spector, yeah. And you've seen Uncle Miltie's unit. I may be the only one who can claim both those things. At least the only living person. A life in show business right there.

I want to plug the book too, Don, because it's a lot of fun. And God, I mean, some of the stories, the Sinatra story, we'll let people buy the book, but there's that story about buying the painting. Yes. With De Niro and the story of the painting, which people will have to buy the book. Yes, let them buy the book. Let them buy the damn book. Let's keep something secret.

And the Larry Kett Show, why is it not available? I mean, I had to find them on YouTube. Yeah, me too. I'm sorry they're bootlegging your show. I have no idea why. I don't know why. I don't know why.

It should be seen. Yeah, it was a fun show. It was way ahead of its time. It was delightful. We had a lot of interest. Lenny Clark was a regular on that show. Gilbert, you know lenny clark yeah yeah oh yeah yeah yeah what and tell us about the ranch the ranch well my work on the ranch is finished you know there are there are 20 episodes to go there are there are 10 which will be released on this coming friday this week

and then 10 more in january and we will have completed 80 episodes of terrific terrific experience got to work with sam elliott i mean my god yeah tell us about sam elliott he's the coolest man in the world i just i just want to be sam elliott he's great he's great i loved. I loved everybody on that show. Ashton was terrific. Danny Masterson was great. Deborah Winger has, you want to talk about great stories. If you can get Deborah Winger to do your show.

We're taking notes here as you're talking. She is a raconteur. She's fabulous. Will you write another memoir? I mean, this is a partial memoir because it's also, it also told from your point of view, but also Clarence's point of view. Yeah, I know. I'm going to have to hurry because I've forgotten three shows I did today while you were

talking to me, so I'd have to... I'm not sure I really want to because the third act of memoirs is always the tricky part and I might let somebody else do it. Okay.

Okay. So this has been great, Don. We really appreciate it. Well, thank you. I've enjoyed telling you these stories. Get the good wine. Order the good wine. Order the good wine.

Order the good wine. You never know what's coming. Yeah. So I'm Gilbert Gottfried. This has been Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast with my co-host Frank Santopadre. And we've been talking about the man who produced a show that had me on in a case of art imitating life.

A man with a gigantic cock. The great Don Rio. And we want to thank's a great time, Rio. And we want to thank Ted Wos, too. And if you talk to him before we do, give him our love. I will. What a hell of a guy. Yeah, he's my best friend.

He's a good guy. And how many people can say they starred in a Pink Panther movie? Exactly. There's only two, and one of them's dead. Yeah, yeah. Thank you, Don. This was a lot

of fun. You can call on me until the until you die And you can call on me Until the day you die Here's where you come and go Here's one thing I know All my life You're a friend of mine That argument, I can't forget

You fought so hard, I don't think I've recovered yet Those girls we knew, who thought you were cool I never introduced my favorite ones to you Oh, you can't depend on me Over and over, over and over The girl that I intend to be The one who always makes you laugh until you die And you can't call on me until the day you die

Years may come and go Here's one thing I know On my mind You're a friend of mine You can't depend on me Over and over Over and over You can't depend on me Rollin' over, rollin' over No, the Lord intended me I'm the one who always makes you laugh until you die

And you can call on me until the day you die Things may come and go Here's one thing I know All my life You're a friend of mine You can depend on me I'll be fine Cause you're a friend of mine Yeah, let me go before you wanna get blown

Out! I'm coming in. Padre with audio production by Frank Verderosa. Web and social media is handled by Mike McPadden, Greg Pair, and John Bradley Seals. Special audio contributions by John Beach. Special thanks to John Fodiatis, John Murray, and Paul Rayburn.