Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast - GGACP Classic: Don Reo

Episode Date: June 1, 2023

GGACP once again pledges support for striking TV and film writers by revisiting this 2019 interview with comedy writer and showrunner Don Reo. In this episode, Don regales Gilbert and Frank with anecdotes about Jack Benny, Milton Berle, Redd Foxx, Jackie Gleason and Bob Hope and shares backstage stories from classic shows like "Rhoda," "Sanford and Son" and "Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In." Also, Groucho takes a call, Tom Waits provides inspiration, Robert Altman cuts to the chase and Don joins forces with the legendary Slappy White. PLUS: ”Action”! 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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Try the new creamy parmesan and bacon Quarter P pounder today and discover how words are so unnecessary for a limited time only at participating McDonald's restaurants in Canada. TV comics, movie stars, hit singles and some toys. Trivia and dirty jokes, an evening with the boys. Once is never good enough For something so fantastic So here's another Gilbert and Franks Here's another Gilbert and Franks

Here's another Gilbert and Franks Colossal Classic 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. 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 Hawn, Steve Martin, Jerry Lewis, Buddy Hackett, 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, who had invented the box card, the amusing greeting card. 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 Jr. to his name so everyone would think he was his own son. 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, Huey says to me, you know, if Milton likes you, he'll show you his cock. And I thought, wow, you know know we're not in kansas anymore i had i had never heard any stories about milton burl i i you know i was a show business almost a show business virgin so uh i said oh really and he said yeah. You know, he won't just take it out. He'll find a way to show it to you. Well, the Milton week comes along. Every star was there for a week, and Milton's there.

We do a table read. We do a rehearsal, rehearsal, rehearsal. And 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. Gladiator sketch.

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. 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. That's why Bell has seen it. Yeah, I think a lot of people I think he waved it around.

I know I would. I certainly would. I have nothing 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. Now, 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. I understand you got a scholarship to the head of the line you know there was a i understand you were uh you were uh you got a scholarship to the university of mississippi athletically he said yes i was a javelin catcher so it was it was set up punchline set up punchline so i wrote about 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 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, you know, I'll give you $350 a week, and I 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 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 $10,000 a week at Caesar's Palace, which was more than Slappy and I were making. And Slappy said to me, look, I've got to take this opportunity. This guy's a player, and I'll keep you on at 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.

With 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. So, you know, to go to the Apollo Theater and be on the stage at the Apollo Theater was certainly a life-changing, eye-opening experience.

I can imagine. And you worked with these legendary black entertainers. I did, yeah. I did. We went back there the following year with Lou Rawls and the OJs. Wow. We worked with Young Holt Unlimited. We worked with Arthur Prysock. 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. 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, I was playing straight for him and writing jokes every day. I'd try to write topical jokes from wherever 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 yeah it was pretty wild that was my that was my education and he became like a surrogate dad to me you know he was uh he would tell me things that my dad wouldn't tell me you know you know you can smoke dope but stay the fuck away from the cocaine you know he told me that my father would have never told me it was very good advice too and did you do it i i did i avoided the cocaine yeah yeah yeah how did you meet red because i we were talking before we turned the mics on that slappy and red had history too yeah slappy and red were partners red fox in the 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. Well, 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 L.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 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 the number, and it was the switchboard at NBC. And I said, OK.

And I talked to George Schlatter, and they put me through to his secretary. And she 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. Kukov 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 Harris and Kukov? 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,

maybe 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. I had a phone book size of jokes because I'd been writing jokes every day for two years. So I left those and they said, we'll call you 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 and so i made an appointment to go see him good old george met him dropped off my material there copies of it uh never heard from him uh that year i finally heard from him a year later and he hired me a year later but uh 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 was he was 82 years old at the time and he was doing this show so he could bring in all his friends. He brought in, you know, we would have Jack Benny for an entire week. I think he did two episodes. Bob Einstein was on it once. Oh, cool. He 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. Everybody. Yeah. Everybody in the world. You 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. Huey had been 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 I walk in, and there's a Matisse on the wall. Wow. 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. It's Jack Benny's voice. Not bad, Don. And so Huey goes in, and I step into the room. And, okay, there's a four-poster bed there, a big bedroom. Jack Benny is sitting on the end of the bed in an elegant robe and leather slippers. He's watching a TV that's here on the wall that I can't see. He's laughing his ass off.

He says, come on in. I watch this every day. It's hysterical. 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 them 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. And, you know, 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 the – I was the kid, you know. So, come on, kid. We're going to go eat. And I would go to lunch with him and Sammy Davis Jr. or Frank Sinatra. You know, we used to go to this restaurant called Sarno's over on Vermont. And they sang opera there. And we ate there every day and it was always with a different star now tell down your Durante story too before you forget oh

but first I just want to say like I remember like you know growing up people who old enough to remember the Durante on tv he would always end the show with and 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, He ain'm here. That might be 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 but she was you know she you would not recognize her at all if she was out of the drag you know and she was in she was like a normal human being everybody came through that Durante show and you I heard your interview with with Barry Katz I was listening to go going to IMDB and looking up those Durante shows. I mean, everybody. Yeah. What an experience for you. And what are 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, yeah. 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 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 and and and two canadian guys who created eeyore yeah exactly and they and they wanted to uh they wanted to wear the t-shirt as frank said of having written for jackie so we go out to the malibu colony knock on the door and frank pepiot who was one of the most elegant people i've ever met and and and and a consumer of gin let's put it that way but but he had a martini in his hand he said hi guys uh do you drink and we said uh yeah he said you're hired that was. 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 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 at 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 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. Disturbing. 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 is driving. John is 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 fair for a 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's got a he's got a clipboard frank says

hi uh we're the writers uh the guy says what are your names and frank gives their names he says you're not on the list and frank turns around he looks at us he says we're uh 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, of course, 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. Oh, my God. 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, 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. 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? He would wet his finger? He would put the jokes on the— Well, there was 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 and according to 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

that's true i don't know that story what is that 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, you know, 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. It's as possible. We didn't do that. It was so hot down there. That would have been good.

But was, was he not getting along with Carney? We heard some things that there was, there was tension, but that I don't know. I never saw any sign of it. You know, Art Carney was,

you know, he showed up and did what he did so brilliantly but i i don't know we were privy to to any of the of that stuff you know we were sort of banned from the stage and wasn't sammy spear the one writing you know because at one point jackie gleason was all of a sudden a great composer yeah Yeah, and a conductor. And a conductor. Jackie Gleason and strings. And he put out that album, Music for Lovers. Yeah, yeah.

Which I somehow doubt. Yeah, I think, you know, 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 it 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. Right. 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. Hum hum. Oh, it's New York. And now, back to our show. Tell us about so Schlatter came back into your life, and this is how you wound up on Laugh-In. Yeah, I love George. Which is another fun period.

You know, I've talked to him recently. He was... We had him here. He's fun. He's unbelievable. He's great. He's a force of nature. He is. Terrific guy.

Yeah, the following year, you know, I was a hot young writer, 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? Or I know you recognize Tomlin, Lily Tomlin's genius right off the bat. Yeah. No, I don't have any stories. Arnie Johnson? Yeah i i that era was you know it was it was pretty fantastic for me i was just thrilled to be there i was i was very happy to be around these people you know it was uh it was it was it was a really magical time you know uh the all the the the great show business stories were all happening somewhere else.

That place ran like a clock. That was really good. And what about the guests? Do you remember anything of the guest stars? I remember meeting some of them. I remember meeting John Wayne. I remember meeting Wilt Chamberlain. I remember meeting William Buckley.

They would come in and out of there. And Nixon, you know, it was an exciting place to be. You know, 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. And do you know what I'm talking about? No. I'm not sure.

Harry Belafonte. Did I write it? Yeah, that you and Alan wrote. And John Wayne was on it. Yeah. Yeah. Does that ring any bells? No.

I mean, 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. 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 – 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. Well, Red knew his way around that subject. As I recall, that was the number one topic. Now, Red hated white people. Well, you know, his tolerance for white people was was was not as high as it was for other for other races you know it was uh you know 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. Yeah. We wrote that one. And the Lena Horne one. Lena Horne, yeah. Yeah.

I remember I went to the dress – 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. I hadn't realized that you could modify your performance where it's not so good at one performance

and it's really good when the lights come on. And Red was really only there for 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. 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 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 I 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 carried a... You know, he's a preacher now.

Now he is, yeah. You should have him on. That would be really fun. That would be really interesting. We'll make a note of that. I don't know. I'm not sure if he's still packing here you are gentlemen nice cold pitcher of sangria I grassy a negro I what would you call him calling Negro it's a very common thing It's a friendly way of talking to each other in Spanish, what we call ourselves.

You look like no negro to me. Mr. Sanford, you are going to enjoy this. It is called sangria. Sangria. Sí. Say, what does sangria mean? It means blood it's only a name because of the color oh I'm always something it brought back from the boomer he's a very popular drink do you like it yeah it tastes good uh-huh tastes like

ripple is gone flat in fact they should call it flapple he was that stuff down there in the bottom oh that is fruit hmm look like garbage you can stay here and eat with him if you want to but I'm leaving no no excuse me mr. Sanford Lamont please come back with bottom kids Lamont a Negro come here 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 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. 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, within the world of show business, show business is like a big tent. 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 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 Son, I'm going to try to jog your memory on these, Don. You wrote the Rowan and Martin special in 73. Did I? With Ruby Keeler, for Christ's sake. Ruby Keeler?

Dolly Parton, Newhart, and Belafonte. Ruby Keeler was? Yeah 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, Borg9, 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 you know the the the only stories I remember about Jack Carter when we did this I started to tell you we did this big roast one night that was for celebrate Frank Sinatra's I don't know 100th year in show business or whatever it was. It was again with Bernie Kukoff 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 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 dais. 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? You know? And he was like... And he had always been my hero, you know? He's like Chuck Connors, the rifleman. And, you know, he had a bad night that night. What about this one? One more time.

I don't remember Jack Carter. You 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 Peseta.

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, too.

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 own showbiz stories in the book, too. Was it he had an attack dog named Agnes? Red? All I remember is this giant St. 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 police.

Yes. Yes. That, and he said, you ever see me with a white woman? I'm holding her for the police. Yes. 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. 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 be and will never be. As long as – But, you know, he was devoted to Jerry. Even when Jerry fell out of favor, you know, Jerry became sort of passe, and Bill would always defend him saying, you know, 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 and the show was appropriately about greed um uh that was a wonderful experience i loved working on that we had eliana here and we talked about it i mean it's that was a show i mean if you did that show today it would probably be better suited for for a netflix or a or 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. Yeah. You know, 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 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. 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.

I knew him. I worked with him a couple of times. I met him in Chicago once when we were working at Mr. Kelly's. He was there. He came into the club and he was like a building. 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's and i can i know from the sounds that he's walking over to a urinal now there's a there's a there's a certain set of rules in this situation you either cough or you make noise so the person 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. 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.

Tell us about working. It was one of the best moments of my life. Tell us about working for Cher, Don. Another larger than life personality. I have fond memories of working for Cher because that's where I met my wife. She introduced us. It was

fortuitous for me. That was the Cher special with George Schlatter. George hired me to write the Cher special and we went to New York together. We went to see Bette Midler, and she was going to be on it. And we flew down to Washington, D.C., Cher and I, to see Elton John. We flew back on the Starship, that famous rock and roll airplane.

We came back on that with Elton. And, you know, 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. We had David Bowie there for a week. Yeah, Tina Turner.

Tina Turner, yeah. Ray Charles. You know, he had David Bowie there for a week. Yeah, 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 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, there's 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. He's, you know, 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, the wheelchair. He was doing his grandmother. 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 want to malign Captain Kangaroo.

Let's talk a A little bit about The big man The book Which I want to Which you wrote In what 2009 I think that's right

Yeah This is when I actually Met you When you and Clarence Were on the Joy Behar show Right Plugging this book Yeah

Ten 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, did he play nine ball with Fidel Castro? I don't know. I hope so. 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 uh 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 i certainly hope it's true you know i wrote it 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. Yeah, Mrs. Robinson.

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. Oh.

He introduced himself on the phone. But Clarence didn't know who Groucho Marx was. So, you know. It was, you know, one of those things. Do tell the De Niro, the painting story, too, because that's a great story

in the book. The De Niro story is, are you talking to me? That's, you know, that, you know, Bruce has addressed this story, too, and it might be urban,

an urban, what do you call it? Myth. Yeah, an urban myth. 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 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 for Taxi Driver. 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? Do you experience him that way yeah he is funny he is funny you know i'll tell you i'll tell you a good a story um when clarence died um i was down in florida for 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 and anyway after Clarence died we were up in his apartment uh and Clarence's apartment we're getting ready to to go to uh to the church I think and 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, okay. 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. know and i said i'm not willie nelson so he doesn't laugh right he 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 springston we will return to gilbert gottfried's amazing colossal podcast after this so many good stories in the book one of them my favorites is your robert altman story which you have to tell gilbert quick that 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, 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, 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.

Okay. We had Jim Burrows here last week, and Gilbert was writing him for Never Actually Hiring Him. Happy to see you did. We probably met through Jimmy Vallely early on. Yes. Oh, yeah. Funny guy. I have a great Jimmy Vallely story.

I've got to tell you this story. Jimmy Vallely is writing. Jimmy Vallely, for those of you listening, is a very, very funny comic 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 uh I said to Damon why don't we get a Louis XIII? It's this fancy brandy. It's like $500 an ounce.

And Damon says, yeah. So the maitre d' comes over. We ordered one. And Damon says, hey, do you have anything better than Louis XIII? And the guy says, in 1853, a galleon went down off the coast of Jamaica and it lay at the bottom of the sea for a hundred 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. And 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 to Damon. 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. But it was a bold, bold, funny thing to do.

Now, you were on Till Death. You were on the Brad Garrett. 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. Listeners. Jason Pagano.

I'm a fellow Rhode Islander, Dan. Dan. Don. Big fan. 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 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 in the off season and and the following monday like we 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 uh marcia 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. 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. Blossom, yeah. 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. A little bit of a different point of view. A very different. He thinks funny. Yeah. Just quickly, Don, we got to talk a little bit about the lara cat show before we get out of here yes i loved uh hearing your story about who was the executives 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 said i hate this just get it out of the. I'm not going to give you notes. I hate this. Right? And that was it. It was dead at CBS. And then I think it was three years later, Larraquette stumbled on it, got a hold of it,

and it became the John Larraquette Show. A very edgy show. Ran for four years. Very edgy. It was edgy. It was dark. We wanted to do a very dark comedy. 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. I mean, 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 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, yeah. 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.

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 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 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. J.J., yeah. I talked to J.J. a week ago. Oh. 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 is. He's a great guy. Can we ask you before we jump about a couple of people? Brian Keith, the late Brian Keith that you did a series with. Yes, yes. Called Heartland. Yeah, Brian was a cowboy.

He was a no-nonsense kind of Western character. He would sit on the can with the door open and give you notes for the script. It was something else. 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 came to a sad end. It's like from a Peckinpah movie, you know? He's like that kind of guy. He came to a sad end, unfortunately. Yes. Brian Keith.

Yes. What about somebody we've desperately wanted to have on this show, Malcolm McDowell? You did Pearl with. Well, yeah. I am still friendly with Malcolm. We adore him. I love Malcolm.

He's, he's. Ask him to tell you his Danny K. Olivier story. 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 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 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 people that, you know, are inside the tent, but they're near the exit. What about Bill Dana, who was on the Lenny Schultz show?

Yeah, Bill Dana I knew mostly from Hawaii. For a while, 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 most of the time that I spent with him was was there we you know we almost had him we had him booked yeah oh no we had Jack Carter booked too and they both they both took a turn for the worse yeah I had to check my insurance yeah you want to how did Ted Ted's character, and you know Ted was here, right?

He's obviously, he brought us to you. Ted Wass. The lovely Ted Wass. We had a great time with him. How did he come to be based on, 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, so back in the 70s. 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. Dads on television are not 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. 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. 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 in 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. And Zach jumped up. He said, no, no, it's okay, Phil. He's a friend of Dion's. He says, okay, don't shoot. So he didn't shoot. He said, all right, 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 mean some of the stories the sinatra story the the we'll let people buy the book but there's that story about buying the painting yes with the de niro and the the story of the painting uh which people will have to buy the book yes let them buy the book let them let them buy the damn book let's keep something secret and the larry ketch 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. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And tell us about The Ranch. The Ranch, well, my work on The Ranch is finished. There are 20 episodes to go.

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. 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 want to be Sam Elliott.

He's great. He's great. I loved him. 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's told from your point of view, but also Clarence's point of view. Yeah, I know. I'm going to have to hurry because, you know, 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, you know, 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 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. It's an 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 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. Thank you. yeah yeah thank you Don this was a lot of fun And you can call on me until the day you die Kids may come and go Here's one thing I know All my life You're a friend of mine That argument You're a friend of mine That argument

I can't forget We fought so hard I don't think I'm covered, yeah 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

Know 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 Please make a man go Here's one thing I know

All my life You're a friend of mine I'm sorry. Over and over, over and over Know that I intend to be The one who always makes you laugh until you cry And you can call on me until the day you die Please make 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 know if you wanna get out Out I'm going to die. 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.