Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast - 69. Bob Costas

Episode Date: September 21, 2015

Emmy-winning sportscaster and journalist Bob Costas joins Gilbert and Frank at the New York Friars Club for a penetrating analysis of such essential topics as "Top Cat" cartoons, the "Million Dollar Movie" theme and Ralph Kramden's apartment decor. Also, Bob imitates Howard Cosell, "interviews" Jack Palance, praises Kevin Costner and recites Babe Ruth's farewell speech. PLUS: Crazy Guggenheim returns! Rod Steiger emotes! Shirley MacLaine clams up! Gilbert sings the theme from "Underdog"! And the underappreciated genius of Bud Abbott! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode is brought to you by FX's The Bear on Disney+. In Season 3, 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+. That's the sound of unaged whiskey transforming into Jack Daniel's Tennessee whiskey in Lynchburg, Tennessee. Around 1860, Nearest Green taught Jack Daniel how to filter whiskey through charcoal for a smoother taste, one drop at a time. 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. Don't forget to follow us on our Facebook page, Gilbert Gottfried's amazing colossal podcast, on Twitter, at Real Gilbert ACP, and on Instagram,

Gilbert Podfried, P-O-D-F-R-I-E-D. You see, it's kind of a pun on the last name. Ah, never mind. Hi, I'm Gilbert Gottfried, and this is Gilbert Gottfried's amazing, colossal podcast with my co-host, Frank Santopadre. Okay, a guy leaves his office, but he realizes he's left his wallet behind. He comes back. He finds his secretary, his supposedly loyal assistant, rifling through his wallet and his personal files. He says, that's it.

I'm caught. Oh, wait. Okay. Our guest this week is a sportscaster, talk show host, best-selling author. Good God, what a wonderful man he is. Occasional actor and the only guest we've had on our show who has his own trading card. He's one of the most respected and admired broadcasters of his generation.

With an impressive 26 Emmy Awards on his list of accomplishments as a performer, he's appeared in everything from Family Guy to the Larry Sanders Show to Pixar's Cars and, of course, Louis C.K.'s immortal Pootie Tang. Welcome a man who is much too famous and successful to be on this show, the legendary, never to be confused with Rich Little, Bob Costas. Welcome, Bob. Thank you for having me on your show, Gilbert.

Hey, how about that World Series? Yeah. It was over in October. Yeah. Well, that's what I meant. It should have gone on longer. They had planned it better. What's the rest of the joke?

Oh, that's a long joke. Is that a long joke? Yeah. It's an incredible joke. All right, we'll tell it later. It's an incredible joke and best told by Gilbert. Okay, we'll have him do it later. Do you know I once tweeted your name in one of my bad jokes on Twitter?

Yeah. Once tweeted your name in one of my bad jokes. Really? On Twitter. Yeah. I tweeted, knock, knock. Who's there? Cost us. Cost us who? Cost us $20 to get here by cab. Open up.

That's like from the My Weekly Re profile weekly reader that's like highlight highlights remember an airplane the little girl the boy is sitting there and he's reading boy's life and then they they widen out and there's a nun sitting there, and she's reading Nun's Life. It's a great game. Now, I don't know a fucking thing about sports. Yes, you've made that clear. Yeah, okay. All right, so we've had Bob Costas on this show. We'd like to thank him for being here. Okay, one serious topic first because this fascinated me.

Yeah. First, you know, there was the incident in 1971 or 72, the Munich Olympics. 72. Okay, say what happened. The Olympics are always in an even-numbered year. He's just proved that he knows nothing about sports. Don't know a fucking thing. In 72 in Munich, the security was nothing like what it is today.

In fact, the Germans were looking at this in part, the West Germans, looking at this in part as welcoming the world back post-World War II. When you really think about it, we're further removed from 1972 now than 72 was from the end of World War II. So this is them welcoming the world in the form of the Olympics. And what happens is that Palestinian terrorists barge into the athlete's village and they take 11 Israeli athletes and coaches hostage. And they get to the airport and supposedly they've around arranged something where they can uh get out of there uh and then they're they're ambushed by israeli commandos but in the ensuing firefight um they kill all the terrorists but also all 11 israelis are killed as well and and then when was it that you were was it the next uh no i think what you're referring to is then at the 2012 london olympics which would have been the 40th anniversary and because

of the way the olympics play out every four years of summer every four years of winter there wouldn't have been a summer olympic games on the 50 anniversary, plus the widows of these men are getting older, and they petitioned the IOC to have some sort of commemoration of the 40th anniversary of this tragedy. And the IOC's position, I thought cowardly and said so, was that we will not allow politics to intrude upon the Olympics. Well, that's a joke on its face because the Olympics are fraught with politics. For better or worse, they've always been fraught with politics. Plus, this is something that happened within the Olympics. No one is saying that the Olympics should acknowledge other terrorist circumstances or political

circumstances outside the Olympics. But this happened at the Olympic Games. And if they feared that they would somehow offend Arab countries by acknowledging that an act of terrorism in the name of Palestine took place against 11 Israeli athletes, to me that was unconscionable. And the place to do it was at the opening ceremony when all the nations are gathered and when the world is watching and they wouldn't do it. So when the Israeli team came in, I explained the circumstances that I just explained

more concisely than I just did. And then I fell silent for 10, 15 seconds, and then they went to commercial. So I gave them a moment of silence on the telecast. So you, I mean, and it's not even a joking thing. You basically told them, you know, go fuck yourself. Yeah, it was more an attempt to honor the memory of the Israelis in a positive way than it was to rebuke the IOC. But I guess it was both.

He was impressed by that. We were talking about it when we got here. Yeah, very much. So now you know something about sports. You know one thing. And I know baseball players have very strange names. Such as? Who's on first?

What's on second? Who's on first? One's on second? I had a long conversation with Seinfeld about that routine. On the Major League Baseball Network, we sat in a small theater, and he dissected the entire routine and how great Bud Abbott was because there's not a half a breath in there. It's so tight, his response and his setup to everything that then propels Lou Costello forward and he becomes more and more flustered. But the real star of the piece is the straight man, Bud Abbott.

See, I think Bud Abbott never gets enough credit for how great he was because especially that, because you're going, you're giving someone this ridiculous premise of these names that couldn't exist, and Bud Abbott convinces the people listening. You go, how come Costello is so stupid that he doesn't realize common sense that the guy's name is I don't know and who and what and tomorrow? Right.

And if you need any proof of how difficult it was to do it well, take a look at Harvey Korman and Buddy Hackett's version in the unfortunate Bud and Lou biopic. Because Gilbert and I laugh about it all the time. It's as if they never actually saw the routine. And yet Buddy Hackett was in his own way brilliant, incredibly funny. And Harvey Korman was tremendous in the Carol Burnett troupe.

Love them both. Those two owned, those two being Abbott and Costello, owned those bits. That bit. But to do that bit required a certain kind of timing. Yeah. Because it's the music to the bit that really gets it. There's that rhythm. One of the things that I always enjoyed most

when I did the late night show that at that time was after Letterman between 88 and 94 on NBC, the later show that came on at 1.30 in the morning, one of the things I enjoyed most was talking to comics or comic actors because we didn't have an audience except for the technicians so if you got a laugh you really earned the laugh and mel brooks could do that

and richard lewis could do it but a guy like seinfeld for example excels at explaining his craft and having people not just go for the laugh but explain their craft and break it down was always fascinating to me i'll just give you one example, not necessarily the best, but it pops in my head. Audrey Meadows says to me, now for whatever else she did, she'll always be known as Alice on The Honeymoon. She said, Art Carney was so physical and limber, and Jackie Gleason as Ralph Cramden was so physical and such a big presence and moving around the room in a bellowing voice. She said, I decided to play Alice stationary. Now, as soon as she said that, you realize, well, of course, that's obvious. I've seen those classic 39 episodes probably 39 times each, but it never occurred to me until you said this.

Yes, she's always standing still with her arms folded across the apron or her house dress, and she's just watching this man she loves and understands better than anybody but she understands his flaws and shortcomings and she's watching him rant and rave and move all around and she's just the rock of Gibraltar standing still and that was a conscious decision on her part, which elevated the rest of the troop. I had never realized that. It makes perfect sense. Yeah.

Now, you must be a very, very big fan of the Cedric the Entertainer honeymooners. Oh, God. Who isn't? You know, sometimes it works. The Wiz, I'm down with The Wiz. I'm not so much down with Cedric the Entertainer as Ralph Kramden. And I'm talking about my St. Louis homeboy. Cedric is from St. Louis.

We love Cedric, but not every turn at bat is a home run. I didn't even like the musical Honeymooners with Jane Keene when they went to Miami. Oh, did you remember that? The June Taylor dancers. 70s TV. That's best. Yeah. And what I remember about the musical Honeymooners, they would be on stage.

And Gleason, a Brooklyn bus driver, has that brown-orange tan that you can only buy at me. And he's got a pinky ring. And you wonder, how does he get this tan sitting in a bus in Brooklyn all day? The only part, though, that I thought redeemed it, Audrey Meadows was gone. Oh, Sheila McRae. Right. Sheila McRae and Jane King. So after they had done their honeymooners thing,

he'd bring them out. He'd be in his dressing robe. Right. So it would start with Jane King. Sheila McRae! And then finally, the last, Aunt Connie! And he'd come out and shake Gleason's hand and always lift his right leg and do like a little dance while he was shaking his hand.

And then Gleason would say, as always, a Miami Beach audience is the greatest audience in the world. Take a drag on the cigarette, a sip out of whatever was in the cup. Good night, everybody. Right. A little Reggie Van Gleason. And it was always his voice would always give out for the good night everybody. It would be good night everybody! And I remember one song from the musical Honeymoon. Of course you do.

Of course. He sings on every show Bob. I warn you. When he gets mad at Art Carney and they're not talking he goes if I was talking to him, I'd really get hot. I'd tell him not a

gentleman, he's certainly not. If I was talking to him, which I ain't. If I was talking to him, he'd certainly know precisely and exactly where I want him to go if I was

talking to him, which I hate. Nice. Nice. Now before... Now before... Who is listening to this? Before they brought that part back, there was another kind of iteration of Gleason's show where Frank Fontaine.

Oh, Crazy Guggenheim. As Crazy Guggenheim, right? He's come up on the show many times. So he'd come and lean over the bar, right? And Gleason was Joe the bartender, right? And he'd be cleaning the glasses behind the bar or whatever. And then Frank would come in as Crazy Guggenheim and go through this whole thing. Hiya, Joe.

Hello, Mr. Donaghy. Blah, blah, blah, blah. Mr. Donaghy. Back when drunks were funny. Right, exactly. Foster Brooks' whole career went away when mores changed. And I remember Frank Fontaine, if I interrupt you for a second, always would do a joke, and that's just as dirty as you could get on TV back then.

I was on a date with the Farquhars. Right. with the far cross. Right. And the payoff was always at the end of one of them. And you'd never guess who came by just at the end. And then Joe the bartender

would fall for it, lean forward, and he'd say Fruity Tootie and spit right in his face. But now it all ends and this complete, shambling, disheveled, crazy Guggenheim would suddenly turn into one of the three tenors. Right. Hey, can you sing a little song for us? And if you go back in the archives, if there are archives,

Gleason always says, as a 10-year-old, I don't know why I took note of this, hey, Mr. Donaghy, put a 10-year-old, I don't know why I took note of this, hey, Mr. Donaghy, put a dime in number 16. It's always 16. It's always 16. Put a dime in number 16. And then all of a sudden, with Gleason looking on in sort of this sort of look of serenity would come over Gleason's face look on in admiration and sweet serenity as Fontaine

sang something like Danny Boy or whatever, in the sweetest way and then he'd say put it there, Craig shake hands, and then as they faded to commercial Gleason would sing his own theme song which was,

A bit of a devil, but dead on the level, was my gal, Sal. Yeah, I remember, because he would say, Can you sing a song for us, Grazy? Okay, Joe. And then he'd go, In my Easter bonnet. Right. It's a little like how Jim Neighbors would go from Gomer, from the Gomer voice, and he'd suddenly be Caruso. With Frank Fontaine and Jim Neighbors, if you actually asked people who know about singing, aren't the two of them great singers?

They'd probably say, no, they suck. But in comparison. Good enough. Right. Right. But also, I'm glad that you brought up In Your Easter Bonnet. Yeah. Because that's the only time to this day, and I knew this word when I was seven years old,

the only time to this day I've ever heard the word rotogravure. Wow. years old. The only time to this day I've ever heard the word rhodogravure. The photographers will snap us, and you'll find that you're in the rhodogravure. Oh, I could write a sonnet about your Easter bonnet, and you're the girl

I'm taking to the Easter parade. Hey, you know what a pathetic child I was? That's a great setup. I'm a regular butt out. I'll bite. When I was a little boy.

I always followed that by saying, as opposed to a little man. When I was a little boy, I remember having the album. I was the only little boy with this album. When I was a little boy, I had the album, and I would listen to it. Frank Fontaine,

Songs I Sing on the Jackie Gleason Show. There you go. You still have it? No, I don't know, but I remember it was a close-up of his face with the lip offleason show. There you go. You still have it? No, I don't know. But I remember it was a close-up of his face with the lip off to the side. Were you like seven?

Yes. The other kids are listening to the cow sills and your groove went out to... One of the reasons I loved your show later is that you would pull out a reference like Frank Fontaine

on the show. I saw a clip last night. You were interviewing Richard Dreyfuss. And he's talking about how the mechanical shark came out of the water and with a woo clip last night. You were interviewing Richard Dreyfuss. And he's talking about how the mechanical shark came out of the water and with a woo kind of face. And you said the shark

was doing Frank Fontaine? I did say that. It's in the anniversary show. That's 25 years ago. I know. I didn't expect you to remember it. That's what I liked about that show is the obscure references would fly. Yes. You and Richard Lewis would just... No question about it. Hey, getting back to

something we discussed earlier in the interview, I remember me and a friend of mine, our favorite line in Who's On First is Costello goes, you know, I'm a pretty good catcher myself. And Abbott goes,

so they tell me. How would he know that? How about when he asks when who gets paid, right? So his wife comes down, she collects the paycheck. Absolutely. She gets every penny. She's entitled to it. He earned it. Every penny of it. Every dollar. And why not? The man's entitled. By the way, I just looked over your shoulder. We're on the third floor here of the Friars Club. And Jimmy Durante's seat is right there. And I'm thinking Jimmy's not showing up.

I could sit in Jimmy Durante's seat. What seat? We gave you a special seat, Bob. We're at the Friars Club and the seats have plaques of celebrity names. We gave you a special one. Oh my gosh. Without realizing it because I draped my jacket over it because it's only 98 degrees today in New York City.

I'm in Howard Cosell's chair. Oh wow. See, I originally had Orson Welles seat, misspelled. But not surprisingly Orson Welles seat was misspelled. But not surprisingly, Orson Welles' seat was wobbly.

That seat had been put under a lot of pressure over the years. The first time I ever met Cosell, I walk up to him. I'm a young sports broadcaster at NBC. I'm probably 28 years old. Look half that. I walk up to him. I say a young sports broadcaster at NBC. I'm probably 28 years old. Look half that.

I walk up to him. I say, Mr. Cosell, my name is Bob Costas. It's a pleasure to meet you. He says, I know who you are. You're the child who rhapsodizes about the infield fly rule. I'm sure you'll have a fine career. And he flicks a cigar ash and walks away. Wow.

My first thought is, this is the biggest schmuck I ever met. But in the next instant, I say, no, this is great. I just got the full Cosell treatment. You did. This is one of the highlights of my life. And since we're on the subject, and there appears to be no particular roadmap for the interview. No. You noticed that.

Yeah. No skill. This is not NBC, buddy. Here to me is the quintessential, and I like to use a word like quintessential when I can. You've used rotograver. Why not? Rotogravure. What is a rotograver? In the old – in a newspaper file, the Rodeo Graveur was like the way they kept pictures that had to be developed when they were still on plates and you had to take them into a darkroom.

Oh, wow. And you kind of flip through the folder. I think that's what the Rodeo Graveur was. Rodeo Graveur! Rodeo Graveur! Oh! Rowdy, Paul! Somewhere on the wide world of sports road in the 1970s,

Cosell is holding forth in a hotel lobby wearing that hideous gold ABC jacket, the toupee perched precariously atop his head, a gigantic cigar in his hand, the makeup from whatever broadcast they just completed still on his kisser, and he's surrounded by people in the hotel lobby as the late, great Jim McKay comes through the revolving door. Jim, the longtime host of the Olympics, the man who presided over the tragedy at Munich, and that was the distinguishing moment of his career because he handled it with such journalistic skill but also a touch of humanity and sensitivity. And the highlight – or this highlighted the difference between the two men.

McKay, much honored, much revered, walking through the revolving door and heading toward the elevator when he hears, Jimmy, Jimmy, come over here. Jimmy, Jimmy, come over here. Ladies and gentlemen, here he is, the diminutive yet revered host of Wide World of Sports, the Olympics, and countless other events on the American Broadcasting Company. Jimmy, take a look at this scene, a scene which plays itself out in hotel lobbies, restaurants, airport terminals, across the length and breadth of this great land of ours. People seeking a photograph, an autograph, a moment of my time, my thoughts, not confined to sports, no, no, far too mundane,

on the larger issues of the day. I ask you, Jimmy, where can I go for some sanctuary? Where can I find a moment's peace from this adulation and McKay says Howard may I suggest your room that's perfect great I remember years ago seeing Orson and yeah Orson Welles was the guest and Howard Cosell was a substitute guest on, I don't know, like, the Dick Cavett show or something.

And it was Howard Cosell interviewing Orson Welles. Two big egos to fit in one soundstage. Now... You got notes all over the table This is all I'm never going to get to all this

I'm never going to get to So you're an announcer? Our mutual friend Alan Zweibel Yes Who I spoke to Who's done the show Who I spoke to yesterday

He says ask him about Cosell Ask him about Muhammad Ali He has a Muhammad Ali story Well And if you don't We can cut this part Well I've given you The best I've got on Cosell Yeah Ask him about Muhammad Ali. He has a Muhammad Ali story. And if you don't, we can cut this part. I've given you the best I've got on Cosell. My Ali story is not all that funny, but one of my favorite – skip it. It was a touching moment.

But this podcast is not about touching moments. It's not about Olympic glory. No, I'm touching myself all through the podcast. We ask everybody this, Bob. Well, go ahead, Gil. Okay. This, Frank and I were discussing this. We watched it yesterday. This is the time you were interviewing Anthony Quinn.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. If you could tell us, that was an untouching moment. You did go for a touching moment. I'm impressed. So here was the thing about later, which some of your listeners may recall. It was a single guest show that ran for half an hour. If the guest was interesting enough, we'd bring him or her back for a second or even sometimes a third show, which we'd tape all at the same time.

But there was a single guest and no studio audience. So any reaction you got, any laugh you got, you got from the cameramen, the technicians. So Anthony Quinn comes on. And the nature of the show was, it wasn't a five- or six-minute thing about your latest interview. It was sort of biographical. So I'm talking to Quinn about Viva Zapata

and about Marlon Brando and various other things and Requiem for a Heavyweight, whatever was in his filmography. And then I say to him, some people are method actors. You've said you're not a method actor.

How do you prepare yourself for a scene like the one in Zorba the Greek where as Zorba, and I just re-watched the night before the interview, so it was fresh in my mind. Zorba says, as he's trying to tell his young friend the secret to living life fully, he says, when my son Michael, who is four years old, died, everyone at the funeral wept. But I got up and danced. I said, so what were you thinking about when you shot the scene? And he says, kind of straightens up in his seat, and that granite face that could be on Mount Rushmore, if there was a Mount Rushmore of actors, as strong a face as you could ever imagine. And it softened a little bit, and he said, well, you know, I've never talked about this, but you've been very nice to me, and it seems like you genuinely are interested in my life.

So I'll tell you. I had a young son. I can't remember if the boy was three or four. I had to look it up afterwards, but I didn't know any of this as he told the story. He said, I had a young son who died. And after he died, I created an entire life for him in my head.

Now, did you say how he died? Where? No, I just let him continue. I found out afterwards. And he says, he's an architect and he lives in San Francisco, and I talk to him every day.

And that's what I was thinking about when I shot the scene, my own son losing my own son. Then I put myself in Zorba's place. That's where the emotion came from. But the script called for Zorba to react as this bigger-than-life character who was always going to have an energy about him. And the way he told the story, I'm not doing justice to it, you could actually hear the cameraman being choked up that this mountain of a man, Anthony Quinn, was being so vulnerable and so open. And I think that was the beauty of the format. You don't see that very much anymore because the format wasn't designed to have a soundbite wind up the next day on Access Hollywood or to sell anything. It was an honest

attempt to, in an entertaining way or at least an engaging or interesting way, have someone tell the story of their life and the guest had to be someone who had a body of work. It couldn't just be, you know, the starlet of the moment. That wouldn't work. And I found out subsequently that, in fact, he had a son who was three or four years old who drowned in the late 1930s in W.C. Field's swimming pool. And that's how we lost him. And he carried that burden throughout his life. And I guess, at least in that one moment when he needed to access something emotionally, that's where he went. And in his mind, he kept his son alive. His son grew older. Became an architect and lived in San Francisco. It's a beautiful clip. And I should say that you

can find it on YouTube if you do a little searching around. It's in the anniversary show, which I guess you called Five Years Later. Five Years Later. So that would have been 1993. Yeah. And I left the show in February of 94. I wanted to continue, but I was doing so much in sports for NBC, and I was commuting between New York or wherever the games were and St. Louis, where we lived. And my children were, I don't know, five and eight, something like that, and it was just getting to be too much.

But of all the things I've done, that's in the top five. Oh, it's a great show. Just in terms of enjoyment. And also because you can't get a story like that on a standard talk show. It's never going to come up with a little package pre-interview. It's only when you have this kind of time to get into somebody that you're actually going to get that kind of gem. It might happen on Charlie Rose, but generally speaking,

Charlie's topics are a little more political and a little more serious and less biographical. Not exclusively, but less so. You did a show that was the closest thing to the old Cabot show, where you could actually sit down with one guest for a long time and go through their whole career and get to real meat.

Cabot was so great. The average talk show is like, and I notice this especially when they have a comedian on, where the host will go, you know, I don't know, I read somewhere or I've been hearing that you were trapped in an elevator with a gorilla. You're talking about the Leno version of The Tonight Show? No way. I heard some way. I don't know.

It's in the paper. They tell me that you're afraid of microwaves. I was fond of the episode when Harvey Korman told you you looked like Jerry Lewis and you threw yourself on the floor. It just struck him. In the middle of it, he said, you know who you look like? And I'm thinking, who? Who's he going to say? Rick Moranis?

I don't know what he's going to say. He said, Jerry Lewis. Jerry Lewis. And I just fell out of the chair. And did the Jack Palance, who we talked about, and the Shirley MacLaine episodes not go quite as well? Well, Shirley MacLaine's a shorter story, so I'll open with that one. I'll open with the jab and then go to the haymaker. Shirley MacLaine comes on and she wants to talk about her new book, which is about the colors of the chakra and how you find new consciousness.

Gilbert's into that. If you're in a room that's purple, you're going to be in one state of mind. You're in a room that's yellow. You're in another state of mind. These are the colors of the chakra. And, of course, she believes in reincarnation. And I'm less than reverential about this topic. So I say, how come everyone who says that they're now on their second or third life, in a prior life, they dueled on the deck of a ship with Bluebeard.

They were Lincoln's assistant. How come no one was ever a dishwasher in Albuquerque? And she gets so annoyed by this that she just kind of clams up on me. And so I say at the 10-minute mark, so, you know, how about I begin going through various Broadway shows or your brother Warren Beatty, whatever. And she says, but we're not talking about the colors of the chakra. And I say, because I have no more questions about the chakra. And I think it's a reasonable divide if we spend half a show on that and half a show on what the larger portion of the audience is probably interested in. Safe to say we did not part with a dinner reservation for later.

So now Jack Palin shows up, and it's right after City Slickers. Okay. And he gets after this long career, he actually gets a supporting actor. He wins the Oscar. Yeah, yeah. Sure. He does the one handed push ups. Yeah, of course. Okay. should do my show. And Jack apparently has an aversion to talk shows of any kind. So he sits down and he says, Bob, Billy tells me this is half an hour. And I said, well, it'll only take 22 minutes. Mine is like, oh, I thought it was just one or two questions like entertainment tonight. Don't worry, Jack. Don't worry. We'll take care of it. So there's kind of, it doesn't always work, but sort of a rule of thumb in interviewing. You ask a quick, short question. You hope to get a quick response. If you ask a more expansive question, maybe the person opens up. So that's going to be my tact with Jack because it's obvious that he's not going to give me anything.

So I say, thanks for staying up later. Our guest tonight is the legendary actor Jack Pounce. Jack, one of my favorite movies is Shane, with Alan Ladd as the hero Shane, and Gene Arthur as the loyal wife, who is it, Van Heflin? Right, Van Heflin. Van Heflin plays the rancher.

Brandon DeWilde. Brandon DeWilde is the boy who idolizes both his father and Shane. And you, as Jack Wilson, the dark gunslinger, you don't even show up until the last fourth of the movie. But you're a specter looming in the distance. And then you do the very embodiment of evil and then the ultimate scene when you have the showdown with Shane in the saloon. If you're somewhere on the road and Shane comes on the late show at 1 o'clock in the morning, what do you do? I grab the remote and change the channel. I couldn't give a damn.

That's his answer. I'm not defeated. I say. I say. All right, Jack, you were Mountain Rivera in Requiem for a Heavyweight on Broadway. Now, previously, that role had been played by Anthony Quinn. Was that in any way intimidating to follow in his footsteps? Didn't matter to me. I didn't see his performance. I doubt that he saw mine. So there's a digital clock behind the guest. You can see it clicking down. And normally the 22 minutes flew by. The question was, how can I get in everything I want to get to? Now we're two minutes in and a minute and 52 of that is my questions. So my next desperate attempt is, you know, I'm beginning to feel like Billy Crystal's tenderfoot in City

Slickers when you as the trail boss sneak up behind him and he's telling stories at your expense around the campfire and suddenly he sees your shadow, and he looks up, and you look down at him, and you say, I crap bigger than you, kid. Jack, you crap bigger than me, don't you? And he says, oh, I wouldn't crap on you, Bob. Maybe on some of your questions, but not on you. Great.

This is the way it goes for the whole torturous 22 minutes. Now, we finally end. We hope we've cobbled something together. And we walk off the stage. And we shot it in 8H, where Saturday Night Live is shot. But we're just in a tiny corner of this giant soundstage for our little modest set. And so we step off the set, out of the lights and into the shadows, and he drapes an arm over my shoulder.

This giant guy, 6'3", you know, and a hand the size of a bear paw has now clenched me and pulled me into his chest. And he says, Bob, I've got to tell you a great story about Marilyn Monroe. And I'm thinking, Jack, why didn't you do that five minutes ago back there? He says, oh, I was just toying with you, Bob. That's it. Wow. There's your Jack Palin story, ladies and gentlemen.

He just wanted to mess with you on the air. Either that or combine that with his own reticence about being interviewed. Right. Wow. You love that when they save the best story for after it's over. Well, people always think that the most combative guests are the most difficult. No. It's the ones that are reticent.

If someone is combative, they don't like you. They want to argue with you. That's actually easier. It's like when you broadcast a ball game sometimes. People will say, well, that was 10 to 9. That must have been hard. No, no. Lots of action.

What's hard is 6 to 2 and nothing happening. When nothing's happening, that's hardest. That's when you've got to go into the grab bag of anecdotes and fill. You read a Snapple fact. Yeah. Man, you're on it. You're on it. I remember Penn Jillette, after they did The Aristocrat, he said they interviewed Gary Owens from Laugh-In.

Right, right. Beautiful downtown Burbank, you know. And they couldn't get anything out of him. They were like digging and digging, and they barely got a word. And then after the movie was over and they had a premiere, Gary Owens goes over to Penn and goes, did I ever tell you where I heard the joke from? Jack Benny.

He heard it from George Burns. And it was like, you know, why didn't you tell me this? You know, talking about where we started or near where we started on this about how good Jerry Seinfeld and some others were at deconstructing comedy. That's obviously what the movie The Aristocrats is about and how all these different comics either told the story or how they had heard or seen someone else tell it and how they could add to it, including you, ways you could add to it to make it even more absurd and even more debauched. One of the things I remember, though, is Drew Carey, how pleased he was by whoever at the end of it, the punchline, so what do you call yourselves?

The aristocrats. Oh, yes. The aristocrats. Oh, yes. Yeah. The aristocrats. Right. Famous moment in Gilbert's career. So we ask everybody this, and what you grew up watching. I mean, you're a local kid.

You grew up on Long Island. I heard you reference the old Channel 9 million dollar movie in a clip. And how you used to watch King Kong. Can you hum that for us? Well, it's Tara's theme. Yes. Oh, yes. Ah. Ah.

Ah. And you know, even when you're seven years old in 1959, you're hearing this and you get some sense, I guess if you're wired a certain way, of what longing is and what poignancy is when you hear that. Yeah. It's a moving piece of music.

Yes. Even to hear it as a kid. And you don't, when a kid, you don't necessarily know where it's from. No. I didn't until years later. But the Million Dollar Movie used to come on, even in New York, there were only, I guess, six. No, there might have been seven. There was ABC, CBS, and NBC. And then there were the independent channels, 5, 9, and 11.

And then the seventh would have been channel 13, which was the PBS channel. So you didn't have the wide variety of choices that you have now. And stations went off the air sometimes. That's right. One or two o'clock in the morning, you just get a signal. Yeah. Well, first it was dun, dun, dun, dun, dun. And then the color bars. Play the National Anthem with color bars or some kind of symbol that just was a static

thing that stayed until it came back on the air at six o'clock in the morning. So the Million Dollar Movie came on every night at seven o'clock on Channel 9. And for an entire week, it would be the same movie. And then back to back twice on Saturday, twice on Sunday. So if you on Channel 9, and for an entire week, it would be the same movie, and then back-to-back twice on Saturday, twice on Sunday. So if you had the time, and during summer vacation, that 8-, 9-, 10-year-old kid has

the time, you could watch the same movie, if you liked it, nine times in a week. So I watched Yankee Doodle Dandy nine times in a week. I watched King Kong nine times in a week. Which accounts for a lot of what's wrong with King Kong's worth watching. Get rewarded for supporting our podcast. Head over to patreon.com slash Gilbert Gottfried for a set amount each month. you can get some colossal benefits, such as access to new podcast episodes before anyone else, early access to tickets to live podcast tapings, exclusive video hangouts, And, just added, I will record a personalized roast of you

and only you so you can share with your friends me telling you what a schmuck you are. Well, I don't have to join Patreon for that. And you don't have to pay me either because you are a schmuck.

That I do for free. I want no money. That's my, I just speak the truth. I'm so blessed. You are a schmuck. So go to patreon.com slash Gilbert Gottfried. That's Patreon. slash Gilbert Gottfried.

That's Patreon. P-A-T-R-E-O-N dot com slash Gilbert Gottfried. Thank you for your generosity. I remember watching Rebel Without a Cause. Yeah. A bunch of times. With Jim Backus as James

Dean's father. Thirst and Owl. You couldn't think, now it's 1965 and you're watching it, right? And the movie's made sometime in the 50s, so all of this predates Magoo, but you're a kid, and you go, wait, that's Mr. Magoo!

He's James Dean's father. I'm very confused. We talked about, too, how they used to run the Abbott and Costello movies on Sunday morning. Yeah, Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein. Every Sunday. That was my favorite Abbott and Costello movie

was meets Frankenstein. Yeah. It's a classic. But that's a phenomenon that kids of our generation, if you like the old stuff, and I always, when I was 10, I experienced nostalgia. I experienced nostalgia for stuff that I had not experienced firsthand. So now I'm watching Double Indemnity, which is an incredibly great movie. But wait a minute. Fred McMurray from My Three Sons is plotting with Barbara Stanwyck to push the husband off the back of a moving truck. Oh, my gosh. From the Big Valley.

Yeah. Yeah, right. It's very hard to process when you're 10. Right, right. What else did you watch? Were you a sitcom guy? Were you a cartoon guy? You grew up in Comac before you moved to? Hicksville first and then Comac on Long Island. You remember Saturday mornings used to be nothing but cartoons. And some of them are well-remembered,

and others have kind of gone to the dustbin of history. But I used to love Quick Draw McGraw. Oh, yes, yes. And I loved Top Cat. Yeah. He's the boss. He's the pip. He's the championship.

He's the most tip-top Top Cat. Wasn't Top Cat Bilko, basically? Yeah. Cat. Yeah. He's the boss. He's the pip. He's the championship. He's the most tip-top Top Cat. Well, wasn't Top Cat Bilko, basically? Yeah. Yes. Yeah. And it was, oh, um. Just like the Flintstones or the Honeymoons. Oh, Arnold Stang would do an imitation of Phil Silvers.

Right. And I think it also had, what's his name? Marvin Kaplan. Marvin Kaplan. Right. From It's a Madman World. As Benny. And all these shows

had theme songs, right? Like Tennessee Tuxedo, Parachuting for Your Pleasure, Or in Search of Sunken Treasure, Tennessee Tuxedo and His Tails. That had a double meaning that if you were a really sharp 11-year-old, you could pick up on. Tennessee Tuxedo and His Tails. Tennessee Tuxedo and His tails. Tennessee Tuxedo and his tails.

There was a line in Top Cat's theme song that I loved. Even as like a 9-year-old kid. Top Cat. I'm trying to remember it. Whose intellectual close friends get to call him TC. Provided it's with dignity. Top Cat. Even a 9-year-old.

Wait a minute. He's an alley cat who lives in a trash can. How much dignity is required? And who provided the voice of Mr. Whoopi on Tennessee Tuxedo? He was a podcast guest. I should know this. Don Adams? No.

Don Adams was Tennessee Tuxedo. Tennessee Tuxedo. Right. Gilbert, do you remember? One of our first guests. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. Was it Larry Storch? You bet.

Larry Storch from F Troop. Nice work. Oh, my God. And we sang the F Troop theme with Larry Storch. And I remember for Underdog. Do you remember the Underdog theme? When criminals in this world appear. Break the laws that face us, dear,

and frighten those who see and hear, the cry goes out for far and near. For underdog, underdog, speed of lightning, roar of thunder, frighten those who rob or blunder. Underdog, Underdog. Underdog. You know what's another thing in these? This is too great. And Simon Barr Sinister was Lionel Barrymore. Oh, yes.

Just for the record. You know what's something we just accepted? It was just willing suspension of disbelief. There'd be entire cities that were patrolled in human form by dogs or cats. Yes, yes. I always accepted it. A dog would be the police chief and other dogs would be the entire police force and the cats would be criminals up to no good. There's no humans, but they have cars.

They're eating in a restaurant. Now, do either one of you remember Roger Ramjet? Oh, sure. I don't know the theme song, but I remember Roger Ramjet. Okay. We're Roger Ramjet and his eagles fighting for our freedom. We fly with him through outer space not to join

him, but to feed him. Roger Ramjet, he's our man. Hero of our nation. And for more adventures, stay tuned to this station. Roger and Ted, he's our man, hero of our nation. Bob's getting it. And for more adventures, stay tuned to this station. I remember Gigantor. Oh, Gigantor. Yes, yes.

Clutch cargo. Gigantor, the teenage robot, is at our command. Where is this stuff stored? In the back of our brains. So you're a big movie guy. One of the things I liked about Later is you would have a John Frankenheimer on the show or a Sidney Pollack. Gilbert and I are obsessed with Sidney Lumet, who I don't think ever did the show. No, no, he did Later.

Oh, he did? Sidney Lumet was a fantastic Later guest. Because Gilbert loves him. Yeah, because he was, we always talk about this, like these movies where New York was the star of the movie. Yep. And Sidney Lumet was a master. He was one of, Dog Day Afternoon and others, he was one of the great masters of kind of the feel of New York. And Martin Scorsese was a guest the last week that I did later. And I asked him,

just one of these off the top of your head questions, could you do what Spielberg does and could Spielberg do what you do? And he said, absolutely not. I can't do what he did because everything he did is about light. Now, obviously, Schindler's List might be an exception. But everything he did was about light. And everything I do is about shadows. And when you think about it, a lot of it was black and white. And even if it wasn't in black and white, it's all about the shadows and how kind of constricted things can be in a city, where Spielberg's stuff is more out in the open, generally speaking. He's a fantasist, generally, too, as opposed to... Right, as opposed to trying to capture a slice of reality.

The gritty. And you had Rod Steiger on the show, and I bring it up because Gilbert loves The Pawnbroker, and Steiger even talks about the scene in The Pawnbroker where he finds what he was channeling when he finds the guy lying in the street. That was a very moving scene. I think he was channeling Guernica, wasn't he? Yes, what he said. Yeah.

Because Gilbert loves that movie. That's more than 20 years ago. I know, I know. Was he channeling? He finds the Puerto Rican kid who was his assistant. You know, do I have the right painting? My art history is not as good as... Picasso?

The scream. Oh, yes, yes, yes. The monk. Yeah. I should know this, and I apologize for not. But that's what he was channeling. That kind of primal scream that comes from some place of emotion so deep that it actually – you open your mouth and nothing comes out. Yeah, it's a great moment. But again, that kind of show, I mean, you ran the gamut on that show.

You had so many different kinds of guests. You have Soupy Sales one night, Rod Steiger the next night. That's what I mean. I mean, Sid ran the gamut on that show. You had so many different kinds of guests. You have Soupy Sales one night, Rod Steiger the next night. That's what I mean. Hank Aaron the night after that. Carl Perkins, Chuck Barris, Sidney Pollack, Art Fleming. Art Fleming, yeah. Thank you, Don Pardo. Thank you, my friend. Now, I'm a fan

of the movie Bang the Drum Slowly. I'm not a sports fan, but I like that movie. What's your opinion? It's a poignant personal story. It's not a great baseball movie. There are very few great baseball movies. Count them on one hand.

Yeah, Michael Moriarty is very good in it. You know, it's an early De Niro thing. Vincent Gardinia told me on Later that he literally knew so little about baseball that in the first scene, he started running, upon making contact, he started running toward third base. He's running the bases clockwise. Like Jimmy Pearsall.

Right, yeah. Well, we had Danny Aiello on the show, and he claims that he taught De Niro how to throw a ball in the movie, which I'm not sure is – Which is hard to do. We'll take his word for it. You can look at great athletes like Charles Barkley. Look at Charles Barkley throwing out the first pitch at a baseball game.

He's an NBA Hall of Famer. He's obviously a great athlete. But if you haven't played baseball, the motion of throwing a baseball is different than other athletic movements. So I can throw a baseball better than Charles Barkley. Am I 1% as good an athlete as Charles Barkley? Of course not. Over your shoulder, there's one of the many paintings at the Friars Club. Yeah, we're in the George Burns room here.

Billy Crystal and Rob Reiner. Right. Billy Crystal and Rob Reiner. And Billy did 61, which as baseball movies go, is pretty authentic in terms of the setting. And the casting was fantastic. Thomas Jane looks like Mickey Mantle. Barry Pepper really looks like Roger Maris. But Jane, who had Mickey's whole attitude and body language, and he had Mickey the person down, Jane had never played any baseball. and he had Mickey the person down, Jane had never played any baseball. And Billy said to him, I just need one good swing right-handed and one good swing left-handed, and I need you to catch a fly ball.

And I'll work around it. Give me that, and I'll work around it. But it's very hard to find people who can play baseball well. That's why Kevin Costner, in addition to being an especially good actor in certain kinds of roles, as an aside, I think he's very underrated, Kevin Costner. If you look at his full body of work, he's very,

very underrated. He's a terrific actor. But the fact that he's a genuine baseball player made Bull Durham so much better and made For Love of the Game so much better because he looks real. And in Tin Cup, too.

He can swing a golf club. Yeah. And now, speaking of actors who are unconvincing as athletes, Gilbert and I love to talk about William Bendix in The Babe Ruth Story. Yeah. That was one I watched nine times. I'm so sorry. You know, talk about taking liberties.

They have the babe hitting a line drive in batting practice in Chicago, and the ball strikes a dog. Oh, yeah, he runs the dog to the hospital. So in his full Yankee uniform, he runs the dog not to a veterinary hospital, but to a regular hospital. Doc! Doc! This is a little kid's dog. You gotta fix

the dog. So the doctor mends the dog. Now, in one of the chances moments, the babe comes down with throat cancer. And they wheel him into the ward at the hospital. And who should be the doctor?

Combination vet and 1940s oncologist. The same guy. So he says to his wife, hey, don't worry, Claire. I know this guy. He's big league. Okay. You do a better Babe Ruth than Bendix did, by the way. A guy who does – a guy who operated on a dog, I don't want operating on me.

Well, the Babe didn't make it. Oh, okay. But, you know, the babe lay in state at Yankee Stadium. And hundreds of thousands of people filed by his casket in 1948.

And, you know, the things that stick in your head, this is evidently open-ended, so I don't feel defeated here at all. The things that you hear when you're a kid, I can't remember something that happened yesterday in some cases. But the stuff you hear that sticks with you when you're a kid, when I was 10 years old, I heard that Babe died in 1948. So this had been like 1962. I heard Babe Ruth's, in effect, farewell speech like a month or two before he died at Yankee Stadium.

And there's a famous photo of him, his body shrunken and that number three uniform hanging off of him like a rag. And he's leaning up against a bat, using it as a cane. And it's shot from the tunnel of the dugout. And you see the expanse in black and white of the three-tiered Yankee Stadium and the 60,000 people there and Babe Ruth nearing death. And W.C. Hines, the great sports writer, I'm not going to get it right word for word, wrote something like, he then turned and walked out into the tumult or the cascade of noise, something like that, that he must have known better than any living man. And he then said the following words. And at age 10, I heard them and I remember them. And he says, thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. You know how bad my voice sounds? Well, it feels just as bad. You know, this baseball game of ours comes up from the youth, and then you come to the boys you see representing themselves here today in your national pastime. the only real game I think in the world. Baseball.

He said it like that. Baseball. There have been so many lovely things said about me, and I'm glad I've had the opportunity to thank everybody. Thank you. And I remember that like the Pledge of Allegiance. I think you nailed it. Yeah, I think it's right.

So William Bendix, and that, you know, my friend John Goodman, who's from St. Louis, my friend John Goodman, who is a terrific actor, and how he has never received, for all of his great work, at least once or twice, a supporting actor nomination. He's never been nominated? I don't think so. That's shocking. I don't think.

He's a wonderful, wonderful actor. And he loves baseball. And he still feels badly that he couldn't get the baby. I was going to bring that one up. I think if he had one do-over, he either would like to do that Babe Ruth movie again or just pass on it and realize that it just can't be done. It can't be captured. The best Babe Ruth that I ever saw on film wasn't called Babe Ruth, but it was clearly meant to be the babe. Oh, in the natural and Joe Don Baker.

Joe Don Baker plays a character called the Whammer. Right. And it's clear that that's meant to be the Babe, even though he bats right-handed. And he looks like him. He carries himself like him. I think that's the closest. It's only a five-minute bit in the movie, but I think that's the closest anybody's come. And, of course, me not being a sports fan, when you say William Bendix,

I think of Life of Riley. And he took over for Jackie Gleason, who the network figured had no career. Jackie Gleason had no career. And now, Life of Riley, to me,

it was supposed to be a comedy, I guess. Dark. Creepiest show I've ever watched. It's even hard to watch Gleason in it because it's just depressing. Well, by the way, when they uncovered the supposedly lost Honeymooners, they looked so different from the first, from the 39 that we remember being repeated and that still show up on some of the nostalgia stations around the country. But it used to be on every night on Channel 11 in New York. The Yankees would play,

and then the Honeymooners would come on after the Yankee game. And my dad would let me stay up. My mother would want me to go to bed because it was school the next day. And my dad would let me stay up to watch the Honeymooners. And he would also let me watch the Untouchables with him. It was very cool to watch The Untouchables. When I met Robert Stack for the first time,

I was, oh, my gosh, Elliot Ness. This is tremendous. Remember him in, no, who would remember? I'm not even going there. Take a shot, Bob, take a shot. Where was I? Oh, oh, the earlier Honeymooners. Gleason is frightening.

Yes. He's mean. He's mean. He's lurking in a way that really is off-putting. And I remember they had like it was supposed to be her catchphrase, which didn't work. And that's like Alice would go, ah, shut up. And it was like – It's like a Clifford Odette kitchen sink drama.

It's just depressing. It didn't work. Yeah. You know, I asked Audrey Meadows, and I always regretted that Jackie Gleason was gone either before or shortly after Later started. So I never met him. I never got a chance to interview him. But I asked Audrey Meadows, you know, could any of this fly today, even in 1989 or 90 when I was talking with her, the idea, one of these days, Alice, bang, zoom to the moon.

And she said, I don't know if it could survive the protests and fallout that would accompany it. But what redeemed it was that everyone watching it knew he wasn't serious. And everyone watching it knew not only that he adored her, but that he'd be nothing without her. That he was completely dependent upon her. And then every episode ended with, baby, you're the greatest. It was a real love story. Somebody figured that out in between the old ones and the original 39. The components

that were missing that humanized him and their relationship. She was always the rational one of the two. I was a big Uncle Leo fan. What about Mrs. Mrs. Manicotti? And here's something, again, an ethnic slur of my people.

Right, right, exactly. The things that go through your mind when you're 10 years old. Hey, Norton works in the sewer. Ralph drives a bus. How come Norton's apartment is ten times better than Ralph's? He had a TV, a phone. Right, and wallpaper. Right, and wallpaper.

A couch. There's two rooms, there's two rooms, evidently, in Cramden's apartment. Though you never see the bedroom. No matter how loudly Ralph speaks, and he spoke very loudly, as long as Alice was on the other side of the door, it didn't make any difference. All right, so Norton,

we'll tell Trixie and Alice that we're going to the Raccoon Lodge, but instead, we'll go bowling. Oh, wait, wait, wait. She's opening the door. Yeah, that great line. We're going bowling, only we're not going bowling. Do it for Bob the way you used to do it in your act with James Mason and Richard Burton.

Oh, God. I used to do Honeymoon is the Motion Picture. And it was James Mason as Ralph Cramden. Norton, we're going to go bowling, Norton, because the Grand Time Mr. Kruger will be at the bowling tournament. Aye, and then Richard Burton has known, I can't go bowling with you, Ralph. Chicksie's mother is coming over.

And Jack Nicholson has Alice. You can't fucking go bowling, Ralph. Beautiful. Still holds up. And I had, and of course the saddest thing in my act, not that it's ever stopped me. I do imitations of people who are dead. Their grandkids don't remember them. But I remember Richard Burton and James Mason died in the same week.

Wow. Wow. As in the movie Father's Day, where Robin Williams is conversing with Billy Crystal's character, and Billy says, Lou Gehrig. And Robin says, who? And Billy's aghast. He says, Lou Gehrig, number four, the Iron Horse, the pride of the Yankees, the greatest first baseman of all time. He died of Lou Gehrig's disease. And Robin Williams says, geez, what are the odds of that?

So what are the odds that Richard Burton and James Mason would die in the same week? I always like the bit where Gary Cooper is asking the doctor if it's three strikes. And Robert Klein later did a bit about that. The doctor not understanding baseball. Oh, and I remember as a kid, they used to have the Dick Tracy cartoons. Yep. Where Dick Tracy was like just the announcer. It was like Dick Tracy Presents. Was that the one that Chuck McCann hosted?

He would introduce it on the Chuck McCann show. But what I remember – and Dick Tracy would get a message, oh, so-and-so prune face is on the list. And he'd hire one of these other made-up characters. One was a dog. But I didn't find out until years later that Dick Tracy's voice in that was Everett Sloan. Wow. How about that? How about that?

Good stuff. You know what? I think all great classical actors have a desire to, under the guise of cartoons or in a bear suit or something, just let the inner child go. You mean Gilbert included, of course. Of course I do. By the way, apropos of nothing, which is fitting with this entire interview, apropos of nothing,

the first time I ever saw you in person has to be 25 years ago. It wasn't at Caroline's. It was at some other comedy club in New York but in any case the bit that I remember was a guy goes to outer space and he discovers that in fact

there is life on distant planets and what the residents of the planet want to know when they figure out that this guy is from earth is Ben Gazzara's a good actor. Why can't he get a series?

The first time I saw him, he was doing Tony Curtis and Gavin McLeod sharing a donut. And I fell in love. I have a good Tony Curtis and Gavin McLeod sharing a donut. And I fell in love. I have a good Tony Curtis story. Okay. But here's the problem, okay? Even on a podcast, if I tell a joke that has an F-bomb in it, it's going to get lifted, and it's going to exist in cyberspace in a way that's going to haunt me and do me no good. Oh, no one listens to the show.

So that's why I want you, I want you to tell the story of the guy who left his wallet before we conclude here. And then after we go to lunch, I'll tell you this Tony Curtis Walter Matthau story.

Oh, right. Which, in fact, Tony Curtis told me later, but they had to bleep it. That's a great story. Yeah, I know that one. Should I tell it just with a bleep? We'll bleep it if you like. Would you prefer that? We can take it out.

Are you actually going to bleep it? Yeah. No, we're going to. Alan Zweibel has walked in. Alan Zweibel. Alan Zweibel is here. I'm just waiting to whether you invited me here to warm up the studio audience. Go for it.

I did the podcast. I said some things that I regretted, and they took it out. So their word is good. I regretted having Alan Zweibel as a guest, but we couldn't, unfortunately. We needed a show that week. Hey, wait, before. Good. Stop me.

Divert me. Detour me. But wait, before you tell a Tony Curtis story, my favorite thing is you talking about me. So say one other thing about me and then tell a Tony Curtis. Well, you have to tell the joke and then he has to tell the Tony. Or we'll go out with a joke. You want to tell a Tony Curtis. Well, you have to tell the joke and then he has to tell the Tony Curtis. We'll go out with the joke. You want to tell the Tony Curtis story? I promise I'll bleep the word so it doesn't get out there.

So Tony Curtis is a guest on Later. And he shows up and he's wearing an elaborate scarf. We're indoors, but he's got like a blue double-breasted blazer with the gold buttons. and he's got not an ascot but a scarf tied around his neck and then flipped over his shoulder. So he's a very rakish figure, and he's still very much Tony Curtis.

You're not disappointed at first blush. And the conversation meanders along, not quite to this level of meander. It meanders along, not quite to this level of meander. It meanders along. And somehow Walter Matthau's name comes up. And Curtis says, so this is funny. I'm walking down the street in Beverly Hills near Doheny about five years ago. And I haven't seen Walter Matthau in 15, 20 years. And a limo slows down to a crawl.

And the window opens. And I hear, hey. And I turn for just a split second so he's sure that I recognize him. I haven't seen him in 15 years. And he says, hey, I f***ed Yvonne DiCarlo. And then the window goes up. And he drives away. It's still good.

Seriously. I'll do it. You have my word. I occupy two worlds. You have my word. I remember hearing a story. Tony Curtis was at a party, and Danny Kaye was very rude to him. He just told him off.

Two men who could be foppish? Yes. The original Seattle Mariners part owner, Danny Kaye. And Tony Curtis said, I looked at him in the eyes and I said, fuck you, Danny. That could have been Gavin McLeod. Okay, now. Okay. Big finish. I am a something I'd say of a connoisseur of Gilbert Gottfried routines. And when I've been on the dais of a Friars Club roast and you've done your thing, I try to remember as many as I can.

And then I relate them to other people who are fans of yours. One of your biggest fans, it's probably not mutual since you've admitted that you're not much of a sports fan, is the longtime announcer and one-time pennant-winning catcher for the St. Louis Cardinals, Tim McCarver. And I will call Tim with a Godfrey gem and do the best Godfrey I can. And then he will be convulsed at the other end of the phone, and he'll laugh so long, I can go to the bathroom, make a sandwich, come back, pick up the phone. Tim, Tim, are you good now? So now I'm going to ask you, this is the last one that I told him about two months ago, all right? And I tipped you off to what it is. It's the guy who leaves his wallet at the office.

I'll tell it, but this is a long one. It's good. This is like the aristocrats. Do your best. And you know what you can do with it, just like the aristocrats, and I've done it. I've added various layers to it. Oh, yes.

We got the time. I have him now having a Batman and Catwoman suit in the closet. So he dons the cape and cowl of the Caped Crusader and forces her to dress up as the Catwoman and tantalize him with her feline charms. So there's a layer for you. I love that a man who has 26 Emmys has his own version of the aristocrats joke. And I love too who's falling into a Howard Cosell with his feline charm. Okay, Gil, we'll take a second. Okay, because it's a special request from Bob Costas. Because it's a special request from Bob Costas.

An old Jewish man has a dress factory in the garment center. One day, he leaves his office to go to the bathroom. One of the models passes by. She looks in his office and sees he's left his safe open. So she reaches into the safe. Just then, the old Jewish boss comes back and he goes, you're robbing me. You're robbing me. I'm calling the police. I'm calling the police.

And she goes, no. I'm calling the police. And she goes, no. She goes, no, don't call the police. He goes, I'm calling the police. You're robbing me. I'm calling the police. They're going to throw you away for life.

And she goes, no, please don't do it. And goes i'm calling the police she goes no i'll do anything and he goes anything and she goes yes and he goes all right take your clothes off and she takes all the clothes off And then he goes, all right, lie down on the couch. And the model lies down naked on the couch. And the old Jewish man gets on top of her. And he starts squeezing her tits and her ass and sucking on her tits. Bob Costas has climbed under the table. He's hiding

under the table. He's crawling out of the woods in back of Frank. Okay. He did a complete circle of this. Bob, come back to us. He's walking through the entire room on his hands and knees. You have to see this.

and knees. You have to see that. The hell is Ralph Campagnoni doing? I'm in his seat. Continue. No, you gotta come back here. I'm not yelling across to you. Alright,

finish the joke. So he's on top of her. That's the man's name. So where was I? I don't know. He starts squeezing her tits and her ass and sucking on her tits and biting her nipples. And he's fingering her ass. And sucking on her tits. And biting her nipples. And he's fingering her pussy. Welcome to Sunday Night Football and the Olympic Games, ladies and gentlemen.

We're at Belmont Park for the conclusion of the trilogy known as Horse Racing's Triple Crown. The World Series, the fall classic, October in the Air, and so much baseball history surrounding us. I know you trust me. I know you count on me for highbrow reportage. Continue, Gilbert. This is America's Broadcasting Sweetheart, Gilbert. You're ruining his... Oh, my God.

Okay. How about if I do the joke and you announce along what's happening? Okay. How about if I do the joke and you announce along what's happening? Okay. Okay. So he starts squeezing her tits. They're engaged in foreplay. And he's grabbing and squeezing her ass. He is becoming more and more aggressive.

He's fingering squeezing her ass. He is becoming more and more aggressive. He's fingering her cunts. Somebody get me a thesaurus. He's a part-time gynecologist. Well done. Well done. And then he... This episode's going to need a part two. And then he lifts. This episode's going to need a part two. It will.

I think there's a separate part that's just this story. Oh, God. He lifts her legs up and spreads them open. And he tries to fuck her, but his dick is too soft. So he lies her back down on the couch. And he's sucking on her tit. Squeezing and sucking on her tit. And squeezing her ass.

And fingering her pussy. And fingering her asshole. It's evidently a double header because we're doing the same thing in the nightcap as we did in the lid lifter. So then he lifts up her legs again and tries to stick his dick in. And it's still too soft. Would you want to do a sports analogy on his tall dick? He's in a slump. He's below the Mendoza line at this point.

Yeah, right. He's below the Mendoza line. Yeah, at this point. Yeah, right. He's not swinging a hot bat at this point in the season. So he starts squeezing her tits and her ass and fingering her cunt and her asshole again. And he tries to stick his dick in again. And it's still too soft. And he stands up. He goes, oh, this is hopeless. I'm calling the police.

This is like the aristocrats. Yes. Because you could add whatever layer you want. And now when I heard you tell it the first time, it wasn't this is hopeless. It was that does it. I'm calling the first time, it wasn't, this is hopeless. It was, that does it. I'm calling the police. As if it was her fault. You want me to retell the joke? No.

No, my career is over anyway. Can you do the wrap-up to the joke? The sports wrap-up to the joke. What we have witnessed here today, ladies and gentlemen, is the continuation of what we have come to expect from Gilbert Gottfried. However, in a bizarre, out-of-character moment, a man who has spent the better part of his adult life building a career with some respect and prestige attached to it has instead wandered into some bizarre rat hole from which there is no escape and once he walks out the door of the friars club an entirely new reality awaits him because shortly this will find its way online and people will see and hear an entirely different version of the Bob Costas they have come to either know and love or know and loathe or something in between. And in any case, it will be taken out of context, and it will do me no good.

least, when we go downstairs to the dining room, what in the name of Henny Youngman are you going to pay for? Because I'm certainly not picking up the goddamn check. I wouldn't wait for that. I want the brisket. And I want enough to take home.

That's not something you want to rely upon. No. No. Okay. Oh, my God. Ah, but wait. Yes. Listen.

What kind of a talk show? What kind of a talk show is this? Oh! You know what? Don't get a chance. We didn't plug your book. Here it is. Fair ball.

A fan's case for baseball. It came out in 2000. You can get it on Amazon now for 99 cents. It's a great read. Of which I will realize at least a 14-cent windfall. Thank you. I was remiss in not plugging the book, Bob. It's a terrific read.

It's flying off the shelves. Fair ball, Bob's book. Pick it up. A real page-turner, Larry King. I couldn't put it down. Larry King. I couldn't pick it up. Larry King.

There's so much we didn't get to. Will you come back and do another one sometime? Good. Actually, yes. Because now that I think of it, I'm going to have plenty of time on my hands. Okay. Because now that I think of it, I'm going to have plenty of time on my hands. Oh, God. I'm Gilbert Gottfried. This has been Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast with my co-host Frank Santopadre at the Friars Club with Bob Costas, who you may remember as a sports announcer while he still had a career.

Thanks, Bob. You're a brave, brave soul. Good stuff. Wait for it. It's got interviews with comedians like Reggie Watts, Todd Glass, Liza Schleichinger. Schleichinger, I've been friends with her for 10 years. One of the funniest people out there, and I still have a hard time with the last name, Liza. Our very own Owen Benjamin, that's me, takes you on a musical journey down internet rabbit holes and much more. You don't have to wait any longer. Just go to youtube.com slash wait for it comedy.

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