Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast - GGACP Classic: Peter Bonerz

Episode Date: August 7, 2025

GGACP celebrates the birthday (b. August 6) of actor and director Peter Bonerz, by revisiting this interview from 2018. In this episode, Peter shares his views on the state of television comedy, the pros and cons of laugh tracks and the rights and wrongs of improvisational theater and looks back on his decades-long friendships with Bob Newhart and Suzanne Pleshette. Also, Redd Foxx changes his tune, Carroll O’Connor cashes a check, Woody Allen brings down the house and Peter directs Gilbert in an episode of “Wings.” PLUS: Rod Serling! Captain Kangaroo! The wit and wisdom of Buck Henry! Murphy Brown meets Walter Cronkite! And Peter remembers the late, great Bill Daily! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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A hilarious new comedy filled with drama, excitement, and a little bit of hatred, proving that marriage isn't always a bed of roses. See The Roses, only in theaters, August 29th. 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, here's another Gilbert and Franks.

Colossal classic. Hi, this is Gilbert Gottfried, and this is Gilbert Gottfried's amazing colossal podcast with my co-host, Frank Santopadre. Our guest this week is an accomplished actor and stage and screen, an Emmy nominated and DGA award-winning director of feature films, TV movies Hundreds of hours of network television As an actor You've seen them in movies like fuzz Funny Man

Medium Cool Whatever happened to Aunt Alice Catch 22 Cereal And Man on the Moon And in the popular TV series The Adams family Sanford and Son

9 to 5 Murder She wrote Home Improvement and Parks and Recreation. But he's perhaps best known to audiences for playing the sarcastic dentist, Jerry Robinson, Barb Hartley's friend and office mate, on one of the most beloved situation comedies of old time, the Bob Newhart Show. In a performing career spanning seven decades, he shared the big and small screen with Peter Eustinoff, Austin Wells, Christopher Lee, Bert Reynolds, Jim Carrey, and Robert De Niro,

as well as former podcast guest Michael McKeon, Jessica Walter, Hal Lyndon, Chuck McCann, and Carl Reiner. As a director, he's held popular and critically acclaimed television shows such as The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Friends, News Radio, Wings, Just Shoot Me, and Murphy Brown, and worked with dozens of our favorite stars, including William Shatner, George Siegel, Betty White, Tony Randall, and Jack Klugman, and even a brilliant performer known as Gilbert Gottfried. Please welcome to the show a man of multiple talents

and the only guest we know of who played another one of our guest, Peter Bonner's Hello Peter, how are you? I'm just fine We're so glad you schlepped And even though it was only 10 minutes It was 10 minutes from my doorstep

So it wasn't much of a drive Do you remember directing this man? Yes, I do What was the show? So I think it was two shows There was wings Oh yes You know on the drive over

I was preparing by saying Gilbert Gottfried, yes, what show was that? And Wings was the first one that popped into my head. But, you know, I have an 80-year-old head, so I can't trust it anymore. Wings and the other one? Hope and Gloria. Ah, Hope and Gloria. That was a short, live show. Oh, yes.

And I remember it was Alan Thick, Cynthia Stevenson, Jessica Lund, and Erica, Enrico Colentone. Enrico Colentone. What a wonderful actor. Oh, he was terrific. He probably still is. I haven't seen him for a while. Oh, I had so much fun with him.

Yeah. He was great. And then I worked with him again, I think, on Just Shoot Me. Gilbert was in the episode, Say Uncle Carlton, where he was Bill Hickey's nephew, or grandson? Yeah, his grandson. Oh, Hickie. I'm really a great actor. There's a name.

I actually studied acting with Bill Hecky in New York. Wow. Oh, no kidding. At Herbert Berkoffield. Yeah, he taught there forever. Oh, he was a wonderful actor and a terrific acting coach. A very good teacher. Yeah, memories of Bill Hecky?

A strange fellow. Yes, very odd guy. Well, he was severely alcoholic. Oh. So by the time we got to. No, no. By the time we got to work with him, he was really only 30% on the set. Yeah, I remember what was funny, it was one of those almost cliched things.

He would be walking there, and he looked like the living dead. Yeah. I thought he was going to drop dead any second. And yet, he was one of those people. You yelled action, and he did it. Right. You know, there's a thing that in the theater. Dr. Theater, a person can be sick or abusing any number of substances.

And when they call action or when the French stage director goes thunk, thunk, thunk in the floor or in the curtain opens, they're there. And they're there for, you know, the necessary 30 seconds on camera or three hours on stage. And then they collapse. Yeah. it's a curious thing it's i guess it's adrenaline but uh doctor theater yeah yeah i think i worked with shirley hempel and i experienced the same same thing she was i could name names of people that i worked okay now you but i won't you gave me a piece of direction once oh where you said okay let's do another take and act better

perfect exactly i can't tell you how many real big shots i've given that same simple direction to because if a person's a professional that's all they need i say okay i can act better than that if they're not a professional they get very confused and sometimes angry but i've given that direction to Bill Shatner, to Candice Bergen, to Bob Newhart, to Suzanne Plachette, to Peter Cook, any number of really good pros. And it works. You could probably give that to athletes, too. Oh, I'm sure. Pick up your game a little bit. Act better. You might be able to give that direction to Donald Trump, but because he's so poor at what he does, he would merely get angry. What do you mean better?

I'm the best I can be all the time. Yeah, well, that's sociopaths for you. And a day or two, after I completed that episode of Wings, I was doing a voiceover and I ran into one of your old co-stars, Marsha Wallace. Oh, great. And I said, oh, I just got directed by someone you know, Peter Bonner's. And she looked at me and said, And what did he tell you to do?

Act better? There you go. Well, that means that I had a dying respect for both you and Marsha's acting ability. Love it. And, well, I heard a story like Michael Douglas, Oliver Stone, said to him at one point. He said, are you on drugs or anything? And he said, no. He goes, are you okay?

and he said, what do you think of the performance you've been giving? And Michael Douglas said, I thought it was pretty good. And Oliver Stone said, yeah, it is pretty good. And that was what he needed to tell him, no, no, we want more than pretty good. Exactly so. So be a little better. Yeah. Well, now I'm curious, because the second time, was it the first or second time?

Because in Hope and Glory, you were actually playing yourself. So if you got that direction, that's a sad state of affairs. I suck as myself, yes. Oh, no. See, I could argue, and I can argue anything because I'm been schooled by the Jesuits. Jesuits can argue anything. And I could argue that the hardest person to act is yourself. Oh, absolutely.

So when I was saying act better, I'm. meant, you know, try to get a little closer to that person whose name is Gilbert Godfrey. And that's a hard thing, hard thing to do, because even when you look in the mirror, you don't see yourself. No. You see a polar opposite image. You see a mirror image of yourself. Tell, tell Peter, it's interesting, what the direction David Steinberg gave you when he was

directing me. Oh. Half worse. Yeah, no, David Steinberg was directing me where I had to say something, and they, run off the set and I did it and Steinberg said can you run a little faster and and I said yeah I could run a little faster and he said no no I don't want faster necessarily I want it more graceful and I said graceful and he said yeah you know less choppy more evenly and

Finally, I shrug my shoulders, and he threw his hands up in the air, and he goes, Can you run less Jewish? That's very good. And I knew exactly what he meant that. Peter, tell us about the early days. You mentioned being raised by the, schooled by the Jesuits. You were born in New Hampshire. you grew up in Milwaukee.

Oh, you got it all there. It's all written down. It's all written down. Yeah, yeah. And you went into, I saw an interview with you with, I think it was the Television Academy. Yes. Oh, wow. You were talking about, that was a good interview.

A long time. Boy, that was really fun. I really enjoyed that because when people ask you questions, you immediately respond and you call these memories up that you didn't know you had. That's what we do every week here. Oh, well, great. Good for you. I really enjoyed that interview, I must say.

So you go on with your question. No, I'm just going to say, we found it interesting. You were dealing with a stutter. Is that part of what attracted you to acting? I think so, yeah. As an only child, I stuttered. And I really stuttered seriously. I had blocking sort of stuttering.

And this is not uncommon for stutterers to stutter on the first initials of their names. And so I stuttered on the P and the B. Oh, interesting. It was terrible. And it really isolated me. I became socially isolated. Then around a fourth grade or so, a nun, I went to a Catholic school. And I, because I stuttered, I think I was driven to act foolish. I had seen Danny Kay in the movies. And I had seen the Marks brothers. And I knew that acting foolish was a good thing because people liked them. Interesting. People liked people who acted silly.

So I acted silly in class. And a nun said, Peter, would you stand up, please? She said, is that what you want to do in life? You just want to be a silly guy? And where most kids would hang, hang their heads and embarrassment, I actually thought about that for a second. I said, well, what's the choice here? being a stutterer or a silly guy that commands attention. And that stuck with me for about 15 seconds.

And then when I was in high school in speech class, I still stuttered and a Jesuit said, you know, they say that for people to stutter when they get on stage, they don't stutter because they know what they're going to say. Oh, fascinating. It was a theory that this guy had. So I entered the elocution contest by performing a piece. I got from watching the Sid-Cesar television show.

Weirdo shoes. It was a monologue about a guy walking down the street and seeing a pair of silly shoes in the window, and he goes in and tries them on and stuff. And it was a pretty funny routine, and I memorized it, and I did it. And the other contestants at this Jesuit high school were doing soliloquies from Shakespeare

and the Gettysburg Address and prayers and all sorts of stuff, and I got up there and did this Jewish entertainer in a Jesuit school. Heaven knows I won the contest. Wow. And that said to me, okay, this is, you can do this in front of people now. Then I started to act in plays in high school. Then when I was in college, I acted in plays, and I got a scholarship. So it really started to snowball there.

I figured that this was something. that I had a talent for, and they would pay me for it. They gave me a scholarship at Marquette University. Yeah. And then I, you know, I did some MC work and stuff. You did a little stand-up, too? Oh, yeah, because in those days, that's what you did. I had seen the work of Second City and Mike Nicholand May,

Shelly Berman, Bob Newhart, of course. Yeah. And Lenny Bruce was our idol. during those years. And I cobbled together, and I was a jazz drummer, so between sets, I would get up and do a set of accommodate, which was about five minutes or so. I never had more than 20 minutes in my life. You never have more than 20 minutes of material?

No, no, no, because I can't write where the shit. So I went to New York. I can't write. And I've tried. I mean, I've got a whole warehouse, not a weird. house, but a stack of stuff in the garage screenplays. I cannot write. I'm not stupid, and

I know big words and stuff. I can't write. I just have no time. So when I went to New York and started my stand-up career, I was at a place called Upstairs at the Duplex. Oh, sure. Here's who was on stage with me. Woody Allen,

Dick Cavett, Siegel, George, but he sang. John Rivers. Dick and Joan, yeah. And then me. And Peter Bonner's from Milwaukee. Woody would get up there and do three sets at night with different material.

Amazing. And I got up once, once a night and did the same stupid talking Christmas tree. It was embarrassing. Didn't you have a story? I remember a story now. You had a date with you and you asked her to evaluate. evaluate your performance. My wife.

Oh, it was your wife. The woman I'm going home to. Your future wife. Ross Bonner's, my wife that I met in the fourth grade. And she came to New York and she saw me up, up against Cabot and Woody Allen. And I said, what did you think? And she said, boy, that did Cabot was really funny. But I tell you, that's, we're still married.

I've known her since I was eight years old. Oh, that's romantic. She's honest And she's really bright She reads a lot of books She's a lot of movies We go to a lot of theater A lot of music

So I trust her Had she said Oh you were like the other girls When I was dating her You were really funny She didn't go there She gave me the honest evaluation And it's a good thing she did

Because I at that point said Maybe I should Stop flogging myself here. Those guys are funny. It's not funny because they're Jewish. Dick Havler wasn't even Jewish. Sure. You're not going to do this. You do that other thing. You do improvisational theater.

You can act a little bit. So I went there. And do you remember any of the material? Talking Christmas tree. Yeah. Can you do, can you treat? Next. Peter warned us. No, but I tell you what I would, what I used to do. when I ran out of material, when they wanted me to do the second set.

Yes. I would do what I called a professor's spot that I stole from Second City, Severn Darden. Oh, the great Severn Darden. Great improvisational actors. And he would get on stage, and in a German accent, I could do a little German accent, and I would ask the audience for an area of expertise. Physics, astronomy, you name. Biographies of famous people, and then I would extemporize a lecture.

And I, you know, I had a pretty good education, so I could bluff my way through four or five minutes of questions from the audience via the German accent. And that's all it's funny to begin with, because people always laugh at accent. So that was where, that's the only thing that I remember that I actually got consistent laughs at or with because they thought I was making it up and I was because I was desperate. How did you make the transition into improv because eventually you joined the premise and... Yeah, yeah, one of the reasons that I went to New York from Milwaukee, Wisconsin with one suitcase and $200 was that I had seen Second City in 1959.

And it literally turned my life around the way I've heard musicians talk about hearing Charlie Parker or Art Tatum. They just go, what? People are doing that live on the stage night after night. I couldn't believe it. These people were talented. They were funny. They were touching. This was Paul Sand, Alan Arkin, Barb.

Barbara Harris, Severn Darden, the list goes on. You know the list. Yeah, Paul Sills, of course. Yeah. It turned my life around. And Paul Sills became my guru. I've worked with him in story theater, and I went to his workshops up in Green Bay, Wisconsin. He was a fabulous person.

A lot of people. I met a woman in the lobby here at the recording studio, and she was a member of an improv group. The improv people today, first of all, we used to call it improvisational theater. It had a much classier ring to it. But they don't even know who Paul Sills was. Yeah, it's a shame. Or as Mother Viola Spohen, who wrote the book Improvisation for the theater. Yeah, it's a shame.

It all came from her book. It wasn't Del Clovis. It was Viola Spohen and her son Paul Sills. I hope this gets in the podcast. People should know that. Absolutely. Didn't you try to join and you said that Paul threw you out the door? Yeah, I went down there. Physically threw you in the street?

I would go down on weekends to see the show. And one weekend I finally got up the courage and I went to Paul and I said, look, I'm graduating from college here next semester. And I would like to just throw myself at your feet. I don't expect to be paid or anything. and he said He looked at me and he said I'm busy He took me

I swear this is true He turned me around I looked me in the eye and said I'm very busy here I'm directing this show How old are you? And I said I'm 19 He said okay here's what you do

Go back to where Milwaukee Wisconsin Go back to Milwaukee Wisconsin Finish theater and figure it out for yourself Oh, wow. And he pushed me out to the door. It was fabulous.

I could have sucked around that for a long time, you know, just waiting by the door. And I went back to Milwaukee, and we started a little improv group of our own. Right. Did some stand-up. And I literally figured it out. Yeah. But that involved coming to New York and joining the premise. In other words, he said, get out of here, act better.

I got you. Now, when did you get your first? actual job in showbress? 1961 at the premise theater, not at the premise theater on McDougall and Bleaker. Yeah. He's in the old

basement. In the old basement. Ted Flickr? Oh, what a wonderful show that was. Ted Flickr. Gilbert and I were just talking about the President's analyst. Oh, what a swell movie. Yeah, Ted Flicker. Yep. Joan Darling, Tommy Aldrich. Oh, boy. Buck is still

living and we had buck on the show we had him a couple of months ago he's he's one of those one of the funniest people that i've ever met in my life he is great peter cook buck henry oh my god i i could i could even quote him anyway here i'll give you a buck henry quote uh we're in uh it used to be called uh peking we were in in Beijing in Beijing China the second trip over after Jane Fonda and Buck and I were there and we saw

this interminable opera, one of these Red Women's Brigade opera that go on for five hours and it's just about the heroes of the social magical world

and we're sitting with 35 American tourists and we're bored, stiff. And I asked Buck, what's the name of this? And without hesitation, he said, they're doing moon over my army. It was the Red Brigade of women. Very quick.

He's beautiful, these beautiful. And so I nudged the person next to me and said, moon over my army. And then she nudged the person next to her. So for the next 35 seconds, you heard these. Americans going, oh, 35 different laughs. He's a genius. Moomoon over my army. Anyway, they were doing a show in Westport, Connecticut, and a guy named

Zev Putterman, a wonderful director, hired me to go up with Sandy Barron. You remember Sandy Barron, sure. Sandy Barron. We've talked about him on this show. And I and a couple other people. Is James Fraule in that group? No. James Frowley was actually in the New York group.

Oh, he's in the New York group, okay. Westport group with Sandy. Okay. But that was my first job, got paid $65 a week in 1961, and I was on my way. This was it, the start of Peter Bonner's in the show business, got back to New York, waiting to be plugged into the New York show. What do I get in the mail? Greetings. I was drafted into His Majesty's United States Army and spent two years.

years of my life in the Army at that very moment when my career could have taken off. Such is my hatred for the military. Thank heaven. It was only two years. Yeah. And it was a pretty good two years because I was stationed in Long Island City at what is now the Astoria Studios. Right.

And I worked making training films with the United States Army. Oh, great. That sounds like a cushy arm. And I lived in Manhattan. I lived in Manhattan. Exactly. He was there. I lived in Manhattan, took the subway to the army.

That worked out. I lived in Hell's Kitchen $20 a month. And you said you, all of your friends would like try to outsmart the draft board. Yes. Who told you that? In one of your interviews. Okay. Well, I just keep repeating.

We do research here, Peter. Interview number 12. Yes, most of my show business friends at that time were really clever and knew how to get out of the draft. They could say they were gay. They could say they were drug addicts. They could drink a lot of coffee the night before. There were any number of things. Dick Cheney, our president, had bonespurs.

Any clever guy in my era could get out of the draft. So I was either not clever or I chose not to do that. And I still am not sure. My heroic sense of self tells me that I didn't want to go there. I just didn't want to default on what I knew to be true and ethical in myself. off. That's giving me far too much credit, but that's what I think I thought then. Oh, good for you. You had integrity. But you were stationed.

Well, whatever I called it at times. But you were stationed in Long Island Cities, so. Yeah, but I didn't know I was going to be stationed there. Yeah. I went and did basic training in Fort Dix in December. Oh. I still don't like camping because you go out with, half a pup tent in the middle of December in New Jersey where it's wet and cold.

That's not fun. And I didn't know. The guys around me when we were standing in line after basic training, where are you going? One guy's going to tank school. He's going to get his ear blown off in submarine school. I don't know. And Peter Bonner's, you're going to Long Island City. The guy standing next to me, you said, what's there?

And he said, it's the movie place, you fuck. Yeah, the Marks Brothers made animal crackers and coconuts there. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's historic. King Kong stuff. Sure, absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely.

And I directed some wonderful stuff there. I directed a show. I don't remember. But I went back as a director. Did you leave the Army and rejoined the premise? Or I'm trying to figure out how you got to the committee. I left the Army and this guy who was directing me at the, the premise had a friend named Alan Meyerson who was starting a theater company in San Francisco,

and I went and got plugged into that theater company called The Committee, which is an historic improvisational. And the old botchy court. Exactly. Yeah. It was actually next to the old bunch. Oh, it was next to the old. I obviously was long gone.

And what do you remember? By the time I was of age. What's the deal with the sponsors on Gilbert Confrid's Amazing Colossal Podcast? We were safer in space. FX's Alien Earth, an original series streaming August 12 on Disney Plus. Sign up today. 18 plus subscription required TNCs apply.

We now return. Why? Why do we have to return to Gilbert Godfrey's amazing colloquy. What do you remember about working with Woody Allen back then? Nothing. Nothing at all. Because I didn't work with him.

I worked against him. Yeah. That's how Woody went off and I came on. I followed a really funny guy. Genius. Didn't really have new material every time you saw him? I don't know That's how it appeared to me

Okay, so who was in the committee It was Howard Heseman who we love Yeah, you know, you got it written down there I can see your eyes But we're going to go through it for our listeners Roger Bowen who we loved Oh Remember Roger Bowen from

He was Henry Blake in the MASH movie Oh, okay And Carl Gottlieb who was here on the show Great people Yes Was there any sense? Larry Hankin. Oh, Larry Hankin, who's still around, funny guy?

Oh, yes. Yes, yes. Was there any written material, Peter, with the committee, or was it all improvised? Well, what is writing? Okay. You know, we would, what we would do is we would do sketches that were developed from improvisational undertakings. so we would go out and ask an audience give us an idea of social occasion someone would say blind date and then a man or woman would go on stage and they'd improvise a scene about a blind date

and if it worked that time we would then take it into a workshop I see and we'd work it up into a scene and look for an ending because The sad thing about improvising on the stage is unless you're brilliant, unless you're really Severn Darden or Mike Nichols or Elaine May, you don't come up with endings bang like that, usually. Sometimes you do, and you impress yourself. But usually you workshop these things. You cut them down.

That's what occasioned my initial work as a director is I would help to form these improvisational undertakings into scenes. So you could say that I was writing. Of a sort. Boy, what I'm given to see the committee in those days, to see all those people up there. And Mel Stewart, who we loved that.

Oh, yeah, Gary. Gary Goodrow. Gary Goodrow. Oh, oh, just. Was Rob Reiner in there at some point? Yeah, yeah. He was in the workshops and he would guest star. He never was, I don't think he was overpaid.

is a performance. I see. But the thing to remember about the committee in those days, this was the 60s and early 70s. So it was Vietnam and the psychedelic revolution. So we had it all in San Francisco. We could be impactful politically every night. We would go out and do adjut-prop theater. We were working really hard as artists to stop that foolish war. We would go off in the afternoons to

Berkeley and attend demonstrations and entertain the people on the steps of Sprawl Hall. At night, Joan Baez and Bob Dylan would come in to see the show. How about that? Wow. You know, we'd

go and see the music and they'd come to see our show. San Francisco at that time was a swell place to be. That's sort of how you got discovered for legitimate television, for legitimate acting roles, right? They sent Fred Ruse to see you and some casting people. But before that, a wonderful director named John Cordy had seen the show at the committee, and we went out to lunch, and he said, I'm thinking maybe. doing a film about a performer in improvisational theater.

So we got together and we concocted a film which turned out to be funny man. And we raised money. In those days, you could raise $250,000 in San Francisco and made the film and took it to New York Film Festival. And it did reasonably well. and William Morris agencies chap saw the film and signed me up and that was good because William Morris in those days was one of the premier agencies

so that was important and then my friend Sandy Barron got a job in a television show called Hey Landlord and he invited me down to see the show and I met Gary Marshall, I met some other people and Jerry Paris and they had me down to do a guest star and that sort of got me seen in Los Angeles.

I see. And the rest. The rest is history. Getting back to that thing with endings, I think that's where Monty Python developed that giant boot. Oh, sure. All the animations would just stop the... Or they would have another actor walk in and just stop the sketch.

This is silly. Yes. Yeah, yeah. Or just say now for something completely different. Sure, to avoid writing an ending. We had the same, same thing at the committee, and Ted Flickr did, although it was harder for Ted because they only had four actors at some time. Sometimes they were all on stage at the same time. It was hard to turn the lights off on stage.

So one of the actors, Ted usually, would reach off when the scene just was going on and on. He'd wait for what could be described as laughter, and he'd reach off. to the side and pull the light switch so the the blackout or the yeah exactly yeah we just turn the lights up whatever works Gilbert you ever do improv did you ever you were you would you be good at something like that fast on your feet so uh yeah I would do improv um but I it was funny you know when you ask comics to do do improv, comics go for the joke. Yeah.

And it's like, you know, you don't want to play by like, you know, they go, where they go, oh, there are certain rules. Well, well, there are rules, and you just hit upon one of Paul Sill's rules. Don't do jokes. Because what a joke does is it stops the dramatic flow of a human interchange. right yes you tell a joke here and it stops our conversation interesting because we laugh and then we say oh now what happens oh and a dramatic scene or a comedic scene something always has to happen next uh famously Mike Nichols repeatedly told Doc Simon don't go for the joke go for the human interaction

That's what the audience is going to remember. They're not going to remember your jokes. They're going to remember Felix and what's his name? Oscar. Oscar. That's what they're going to remember. That relationship. Not your jokes.

So the comic always goes for the jokes. So when we were casting a show on improvisational theater, we didn't look for the, we didn't look for comedians. we look for actors who were funny there's a difference yeah that's interesting Peter Cook was one of the funniest actors I've ever worked with and if you look at a Peter Cook monologue it's not jokes it's I could have been a judge if I only had the Latin that's not a joke yeah that describes an entire sad person thinking he could have been something if he had just spoken Latin. Since you brought up, Peter Cook, can I jump ahead, are you directing the two of us

and working with one of your comedy heroes? Oh, man. Because I know you were a fan of Beyond the Fringe. No, there have been certain jobs that I've had where I would go to work with such anticipation and come home younger and more awake than when I left. Wow. And that was true with Peter Cook, and I must say I was true with Peter. Tim Allen

working, I don't know how he is today because I've watched Last Man Standing and he's gotten sort of stricter.

He doesn't seem as free with himself. I don't know. That's because we'd probably differ politically. Maybe I'm reading that in. But going to work with Tim Allen or Peter Cook

it was such a joy on the set because they would constantly amuse themselves and everybody within earshot, using everything they had. Props, the dialogue as written, the dialogue has not written, the cameraman falling asleep, whatever. It was a joy to work with. That's a nice thing to say about those people. Oh, my gosh. Could we ask you about some of these early TV roles?

because you brought up Gary Marshall and Jerry Belson's Hey, Landlord. We love talking about Sandy Barron, by the way. Any excuse to talk about Sandy Barron? You did Sanford and Son. You did the Adams family. Yeah. You did a bunch of stuff. The Adam's family, the only reason I did the Adams family is I was living in New York

and they wanted me to come out to do a pilot. No, they didn't want me to do the pilot. They wanted me to do a test for a pilot. It was sort of a rip-off of get-smobile. mart and so i went out to and they flew me all the way out from new york city put me up in a hotel so this this was expensive cost maybe a thousand dollars so to pay for it they cast me in the adams family i see and that show the only part available was i don't know a CPA or something but i had to look older so they actually grayed my hair so if you see that me in that hair

It's a 28-year-old guy with shoe polish and his hair. You're a young actor. I heard you say John Aston was good to you. Oh, he was very nice. He stayed on after work and acted with me in my screen test. Well, he loves actors. He's still teaching acting in Baltimore. Oh, really?

Yeah. He's teaching in the drama school. It bears his name. Yeah. Any memories of Red Fox on Sanford and Son? I came to work with a gun. That's a good one. I don't know why.

Most people weren't carrying. I assume you two guys are sitting there in New York and you're armed because these days everybody in the world is armed. But in those days, not everybody was armed. You know, the National Rifles Association wasn't bigger than the post office in those days. But he came to work when they, and at the reading, I don't know, he said, I'm here for the reading, and then I'm going to the track. Okay. And the writers looked at each other, and the producer looked at me. I was directing, and I was supposed to say, well, no, we're going to rehearse. And before anybody could say anything, he reached in his pocket and pulled out this enormous Smith and Weston and went, put this gun on it. So there was no argument with red in those days. But I'll tell you, that being said, he was funny. Oh, yeah.

Boy, oh, boy, was he funny? And people who write for funny people do get it. They, like you guys have researched a guy named Peter Bonner's. I can tell by the questions you're asking. and the knowledge you have of my life. They sit down and they look at the material, they listen to the material, they think about it, they talk about it.

So by the time they write for the star, the Gilbert Godfrey, they know that guy. They know the rhythm, the people who wrote for Newhart, boy, they had him down. Newhart would be astonished sometimes at how they got his voice and his voicings. That's fascinating.

is true of red and and this wasn't a room full of of older black fellows that was orange steed and turtle towel exactly turns the right what's that story said get me my jews from toronto was he get me my jews oh yeah fox story uh red fox at one point got angry and he was very militant at one point yeah and he said no i i want just black people working for me and they got old black people and the shows weren't working out that the scripts the material was terrible the scripts weren't there on time everything was off and then finally red fox throws his hands up in the air and goes get me my jews back absolutely absolutely that's hilarious I'm going to, go ahead, Gil.

Oh, I heard a story, and another name that pops up on the show a lot, that Danny Thomas used to carry a gun. Oh, really? Interesting. Well, I never worked with Danny Thomas, so I have no, no knowledge. Well, you know, Bill Persky, who you did work with. Yeah, boy, sure. Billy, on that girl.

Bill directed DeMond Wilson in a show called Baby on Back, and he told us that he carried a gun, too. So there's both Sanford and Son. I don't know what it was. I don't know either. Persky and Denoff. Denoff. Yeah.

Persky and Denoff. DeMond didn't get along. Oh, no, they didn't get along. Oh, oh. Because I said to Persky that now I heard DeMond Wilson's a preacher, and Persky said, there's no God. Very good. I got to read this real quick, Peter, because this is just fun for us. This is, we alluded to it in the beginning of the show.

This is a very short list of the people that have been here on this show that you've worked with in your career. And I do a lot of research. I don't think we've ever had anybody here who's worked. This breaks the record. I'm going to go through it quick. We mentioned Jessica Walter, Chuck McCann, Mike McKean, Lee Meriwether, Hal Lyndon. We just mentioned Bill Persky, who you work with on that girl. Ken Berry, Bernie Coppell, Paul Dooley, Stuart Margolin, Stephen Weber, D. Wallace, Alan Thick,

Andrea Martin, Joyce Van Patten, John Amos, Tony Roberts, the late great J. Thomas, David Steinberg, and Norman Steinberg. Penn Gillette, Billy Persky again, Ed Asner, Bill Macy, Norman Lear, Carl Reiner, Carl Gottlieb, Buck Henry, Richard Benjamin, Richard Kind, Adam West, future guest Alan Alda, will throw in Dick Cavett. And you played Ed Weinberger, who we had on this show. Yes. But you didn't mention Captain Kangaroo. Oh, he didn't have.

Well, he was, I tell you, he was a fabulous human being. Captain Kangaroo, you didn't mention Robert Kennedy, or rather John Kennedy, Oh, those are people who weren't here. These were all people we had on the show. All these were all our guests. Amazing. Yeah, 28. You break the record.

You broke it. Well, that's true. Not counting Gilbert Godfried. Most people don't. Okay. Yeah, that's what's so amazing. I kept finding our guests in doing the research. We've never had him on the show, but I had to get to this.

Did you once direct O.J. Simpson? Oh, not only direct him, I worked with him as he was one of the executive producers on a show. It was a rather low point in my career. I had wished to be a motion picture director, so I went out and directed a couple of pictures. The mistake that I made was somebody came at me with a script, and they said, do you want to direct this picture? And what I heard was, do you want to direct this picture? The question I should have heard was, do you want to direct this picture? Oh.

Yeah, so I picked the wrong script or two. And they sent me to movie jail. I see. When you go out and you're a newcomer film director and you fail in your first two films, the phone doesn't ring it just sort of sits there menacing so i was really not desperate but i was looking for work and o j simpson had this show called first and ten they were looking for it for a director and it meant uh directing i don't know 20 some shows in 15 days using football players and pads in the heat of summertime.

So I did direct O.J. And he was a very incredibly charming fellow, an incredibly powerful personality. You used the word earlier sociopath. I did. That would describe O.J. Yeah, clearly. But I do remember his. a relationship to the Los Angeles Police Department.

We'd be on location a lot, and every day we'd have lunch outdoors at big picnic tables, and hundreds of police would show up for autographs. And they'd bring footballs, they'd bring helmets, they'd bring jerseys. And he loved the police, and they loved him. So when this thing happened with his wife, I wasn't at all surprised at the care they treated him with because he was one of their own. They really liked O.J. And I think they took a while before they made the obvious decision to, well, wait a second. when a wife is killed like that violently who's the first person you suspect always always it's the

husband always in oj it took them like 10 days to even say well wait a minute who's who she married to again and it's funny they were very slow interesting how they played up like the racist police department but meanwhile they were his fans and his friends oh they were but they were but that but but they they Johnny Cochran was a fabulous lawyer and the people who I think the guy who uncovered uh what was a police detective's name Furman Mark Furman Mark Furman the people who uncovered that the person who uncovered that name was Jeff Tubin of the New York Times oh yes he's the guy who did the research that that uncovered that name and then that name got to Johnny Cochran and his lawyers.

History is, history is very strange. It is. You want to talk about show business. Show business. I hope you never said to O.J.'s giving a bad performance or anything. The fact, fact is, he didn't give bad performances, but he didn't give good performances either. He just behaved like O.J., like the sports guy.

he was he knew enough to behave like himself he had the right smile oh yeah well he was a sports announcer he was a color guy yeah he was uh by the time he he uh did the show he had done any number of television commercials yeah he was the avis guy or sure how he's in the towering inferno by that point yeah yeah yeah yeah no he had a whole whole whole career yeah yeah uh the one one job that you failed to mention yes ha ha which was one of my last jobs was was directing a circus show up in Seattle and again in San Francisco called the Teatro Zanzani. And it's a in the round variety circus show. So I got to work with all these international circus stars.

That's fun. Jugglers and unicyclists and magicians and stuff. Oh, that was great. And it reminded me it's all show business. It all is. whether it's a multi-hundred-dollar hundred-million-dollar movie or a little comedy club at an airport it's all show business you love show business i saw that in the interview i well it's it's the thing that i liked whether it was a circus or a big movie or a little television show i really do like show business because you're you're giving people something back oh yeah You're taking their lives and saying, well, this is what's funny about your life. This is what's good about your life.

This is how you can act better. It comes back to that, Gilbert. And now, after Olin the Family ended, there was a strange show that I always found it very awkward to watch called Archie Bunker's Place that you directed. right now what was wrong with that show I love the way you ask questions it wasn't Peter's fault no not your fault no there wasn't anything right about it

except for Carol O'Connor and Marty Bolson Martin Bolsom yeah yeah and they had some really good writers but it wasn't about anything it was about him sitting at a bar and just being Archie Bunker.

That wasn't what all in the family was. No. On the family was Meathead and his black neighbor and his wife and maud. It was about America at that time. Archie Bunker's place was about a bar at the corner. It wasn't even as good as, well, I don't want to go there. But it just wasn't about anything. Yeah.

It was about let's try to keep this franchise alive for another 15 minutes. Did you enjoy working with Carol O'Connor? Sure. Yeah. Well, that goes back to our previous discussion. I enjoyed it because it was show business. Uh-huh. Because I remember.

Huh? No, I remember the show every episode of it just kind of sat there. Well, he sat there. Yeah. In Archie Bunker's place, he sat there too, but they all ran around him. Right, right. She was running around him. She was making chicken casserole.

Meathead was coming in. The neighbor was coming in. They gave him the little girl on Archie Bunker's place. They tried to make the, what was her name, Danielle Bribois. They tried to make her the conflict. Exactly, exactly. Well, you try to add these things. It's like you make a.

You make some soup at home, and he should just let it go if it's not working. Don't keep adding and greeting. We talked to Norman about it. He doesn't have anything nice to say about it either. And what was Martin Bolsom like? He was. Well, by the time I met him on Catch 22, where I actually did meet him. And then again, on Archie Bunker's Place, he was a grand old man, and he had wonderful stories.

about theater, about working with Sidney Lumet, and 12, angry man. Sure. And, you know, it wasn't so much working with him. It was being with him. That's great. Because he was a grand veteran of the show business. Of the show business.

Yeah. I love that. Joyce Van Patten's ex-husband, by the way. Martin Balsam. Oh. Yes. Father and mother of Talia Balsam. This just in.

Yes. Who was married to George Clooney. Since we're bringing up Norman Lear, too. George Clooney, George Clooney, I directed in a show called E.R. Oh, the first E.R. Not the one-hour version, but the wonderful Norman Lear half-hour show. Oh, that's that good. Yeah, the one with the Elliot Gould.

With Elliot Gould, yeah. Oh, that was a fabulous show. Uh-huh. Yeah. I was going to say, speaking to Norman Lear, Apple Pie was a show that I liked with Rue McClanahan and Jack Gilford. You directed that too. I did.

I directed the pilot. Yeah. And that like the ER show was from a play in Chicago. You know, what Norman did in those days is he would get ideas from elsewhere. You know, all in the family was a London show. Right. ER was a Chicago play The show Apple Pie was from

I think an off-Broadway play about the Depression It was really a terrific show Got a great cast A great, great cast, wonderful scripts Charlie Hauck, who's magnificent writer really wrote sensational stuff We had Richard Libertini on the show We had great actors on the show.

But it was a period piece, half-hour comedy. And I think that kept it from working as well as it should have worked with the American public. There was nothing wrong with the show. The show was great. But I don't think it was ever accepted. I don't think people want to sit home and look at period pieces. Now, that being said, they did like that 50s show in Chicago with, what was the name of that show, set in Milwaukee? Oh, happy days.

Happy days, yeah. That was a period piece, but it wasn't the Depression period. Right. Yeah, well, Gary David Goldberg also had trouble with finding an audience for that Brooklyn Bridge, another period show. Good period show. I don't even remember that. Marion Ross. What was the show that Rob Reiner?

Rob, was that the show that Galbart? I think he played an immigrant. Yes, it was short-lived. Bud York and Norman Lear might have been behind that show. I'll think of the name of it in a minute. I think many have tried, but few have succeeded. Yeah. To do period half hours.

I think the audience for a half hour, I speak like I know something. but I've directed a lot. I've been enacted a fair share. I think audiences really want to see themselves up there with a laugh track. Yeah, that's interesting. And I'm not kidding about the laugh track. I just saw again the other day a piece about two people putting together a situation comedy, and the argument was about the laugh track.

And I've always made the argument for the laugh track that you're sitting, at home watching television and something funny happens or something funny is said and if you've got that laugh track you become a member of a larger audience you're not just sitting there alone in your home or with your

small family you're given permission to laugh at it that's interesting because you're in an audience that's what makes live theater so wonderful I remember they did an episode of The Yacht couple without a life track. First season. Yeah.

And it was kind of awkward to watch. Yeah. Yeah. No, we've all tried it for a whole season of Murphy Brown, for example, while Candice's husband, Louis, was terminal. She could only work two, three days a week. and we didn't have we didn't have time to really get the show

mounted correctly for an audience and that was a big show anyway so we do it without an audience but what we did is we hired

actors to be in the audience and they were advised don't laugh just because you think it's supposed to be funny only laugh if you want to laugh

And they were a very good audience. That's interesting. Yeah. How many people would you put out there? Let's see. Probably about 50. Interesting. And then you'd multiply the laughs.

That's different. The problem as I saw with later sitcoms, as I did, the last sitcom I directed was three, four years ago. The audiences come in so hot. They've been warmed up to such a degree that they overlapped the shows. they literally laugh at anything a kid walks on with suspenders you know

they're just they want to perform as an audience that's why they're there that's why they get free pizzas or a t-shirt laugh tracks almost seem quaint now like it's really becoming a thing of the past if you look at comedy on television

well I don't Yeah. I don't look at television comedy. I watch television. You know, I watch Better Call Saul. I watch the deuce. I watch shows that I really like.

I think the wire is still the best television ever made. And I'll watch some shows that have humor in them, but I don't know the last half-hour comedy that I watched. Maybe it's a function of my getting old, I don't know, but I do what I want to do now. I don't look at stuff just because, like it's your job to look at stuff because you have a show on the air which necessitates you're being up to date. I don't have to be up to date with anything. I can read two newspapers a day or not. It's a nice luxury.

Well, it is, but I'm a very lucky. We will return to Gilbert Gottfried's amazing colossal podcast after this. Why just survive back to school when you can thrive by creating a space that does it all for you, no matter the size. Whether you're taking over your parents' basement or moving to campus, IKEA has hundreds of design ideas and affordable options to complement any budget. After all, you're in your small space era. It's time to own it. Shop now at IKEA.ca. Let's talk about a show that didn't have to rely on a laugh track.

That's the great Bob Newhart show. And we want to ask you about this. The timing of this is unfortunate, but your friend Bill Daly just passed away. Yep. And we thought we'd ask you a memory or two. Gilbert and I are such admirers. He was, as Bob. Bob said he was the bullpen guy.

When a scene was flagging, if they could, they'd figure out a way to bring Bill's character on. It's like a bullpen pitcher. You just go to his character, and you can get a laugh. And you don't have to strain for it. You know, he's late. He forgot to wind his watch. He could just make stuff work quickly. and Bob trusted him.

They were old Chicago friends. And, you know, he wasn't the most reliable fellow. He could get nervous. He could forget his lines and stuff. And other people could get frustrated with takes one, two, three, four, five because he would forget a line or name or something. Bob never did. How nice. Never got frustrated with him.

There was a great love there. And he was one of those guys that I wouldn't say act better because he was always as good as he was going to be. I see. No, he really came as prepared as he could. And if he gave him too much direction or tried something too much, it would unnerve him a little bit. he was a natural funny guy and a very charming guy and a real ladies man oh he could charm the pants off anybody uh and as his son's said repeatedly in in in in the obits he uh oh that's my telephone that's okay it's usually gilbert's going off yeah i'll just uh shut it off here um

His son said he was the happiest guy he knew. I saw that. It was sweet. Yeah. And he looked for ways to be happy. That's what he said. He looked for ways to be happy every day. And when something unhappy presented itself, he'd just sort of turn aside.

That's a nice quality. It's a remarkable quality, really, yeah. And I heard Bob Newhart used to write his dialogue around the same. You have it on, like, furniture. Very rarely. No, it is a funny thing. That's a brand-a-moot. No, it's a visual thing that he tells of himself.

But every once once in a while, they would write these long phone calls because Bob was known as a monologist who talked on the phone. And there were sometimes three pages long. and he would often if he was home write him in his office it was easy because he he would have a desk and some yellow pads there but at home he just had the couch so we'd put him on cards and pasted him to the back of the couch so he could be on the phone standing on set facing this big long wall of text and he was very good i mean actors get good at reading cue cards and we had they had taped up this stuff with masking tape or something and in the middle of this conversation

the tape started to unpeel from a corner so if you can visualize this the corner came down and slowly started to disappear from his view as the table and he

he started to bend over to read it And I'm watching, I was saying, what the hell is he doing? And finally he just gave up and laughed. And he said, cut, cut, cut. And then he ripped the cue cards off and showed the audience. And he said, this is what happened. You guys met on the set of Catch 22?

Catch 22, yeah. And I threw myself at his feet because as a kid in Milwaukee, you know, I would, I probably did some of his material in the nightclubs in Milwaukee when I was a drummer. And I remember I was selling records at a record store in Milwaukee when his record hit. It was so popular that we just didn't get the box of records in on Monday and put it on the shelf. We just took the box of records and put it on the counter.

And people would come in and buy a button down mind. Yeah, that's how popular that record was. For spoken word records in those days, it was phenomenal. Later on, you know, Shelly sold a lot of records, and Lenny Bruce sold a lot of records, and Elaine May and Mike Nichols. But Bob was really there with the buttoned down mine first. I found it interesting, too, doing the research. I never knew this, and I know the show so well, that it changed.

You were not originally a dentist. Right. I was a psychiatrist. You were both shrinks. And what was the premise that? Lorenzo Music and Dave Davis came up with. He was a Freudian and you were going to be a Jungian? Exactly so.

Yeah. Yeah. He was an established guy and I was sort of an off the wall. Let's try anything. I see. It turns out that that's probably the better way to be a psychiatrist these days because the Freudians that I know sort of given up on that and they become behaviorals and cognitive folks now.

The reason in those days was it tested badly. oh did it yeah they accepted bob because he was bob door yeah and they had a little trouble with with the behavioralist me uh and i they like me bob liked me so they tried to figure out a way to keep me on the show but change change the character so between the pilot and the show a couple things changed. I think in the original show, Suzanne was going to have a baby. Yes, I'd read that. And Bob, that didn't test, or maybe it was Bob. You know, babies and sitcoms aren't necessarily a good idea either. It's throwing that thing into the pot. Murphy Brown's a good example. You have a phenomenally successful Murphy Brown, who is

a cervic and really a ball buster and very negative all the time. And then he give her a baby. So now she has to be maternal. Yeah. Now. Change the character. I can't say it didn't work because it did work, especially the pregnancy episodes. But the more she had to care for that child, the less seconds.

she would have to be a ballbuster. Anyway, Bob didn't want the baby, and I think that turned out beautifully for the show because he and Emily could continue to be the Bickersons. I think babies on shows is usually a sign of desperation. Well put. That's interesting. Yeah.

Now, tell us about Suzanne Plachette. loved her trained actress talk about show business her father was the I think it was the manager the production chief

of the Paramount Theater in New York they lived on Park Avenue they had some money her mother didn't cook they ate in restaurants every night she was a show business baby her father would take her to the theater Oh, this is Benny Goodman.

Oh, Frank, Frank Sinatra. She met Frank Sinatra when she was probably nine. So she grew up in show business royalty. She went to Syracuse. She was phenomenally pretty. She went to Syracuse University and then came to New York and studied acting. So she was all set. And then she acted and acted and acted.

and then she became a movie star. She was really smart, really talented. She could write. She could write poetry. She was a very smart businesswoman. She was married to Tommy Gallagher, who took care of her. If you're show business royalty, if you're a big star like Suzanne Plachette, it's good to have a man who understands it.

And he took care of her. He would shield her from those untoward things that happened to females in show-ho business. He took care of her business affairs. He was a smooth operator. Smoked English oval cigarettes and lit them with one of those Dunhill lighters that Leslie Howard uses in the movies. He was really a smooth guy. They were so well-matched, really. I mean, whoever thought to put her with Bob Newhart.

I think it was, I think, I don't know who it was. Everybody claims credit for it, but I, I, I would think it might, might have been Mary's husband. What, what was his name? The head of, MPM's studio, Grant. Grant. I think it was Grant. Interesting. Or maybe Bob's manager.

Somebody saw her on the Tonight Show. Interesting. She was just a talking head guest and said, boy, oh boy, she's a young. beautiful tart-tongued Jewish with laconic Midwest Bob Newhart. Oh, wow. Yeah, they were perfect. Yeah, yeah. They were, as you say, perfect.

Why are you so interested? I thought you didn't believe in IQ tests. Well, Emily, if I can give up three hours of my life to take an IQ test, you can give up three seconds to your life to answer it for me. What was the score? I don't think people should know their IQs Well, you know your IQ Well, that's different, I have to know mine Well, I have to know mine, what, what was it?

129 129, that's good, isn't it? Oh, that's very good, Bob, that's almost gifted Almost gifted What's, uh, what's yours? Oh, it's not. important. Oh, I know it's not important, but what is it?

I'm embarrassed. Well, honey, don't be embarrassed. I had four more years of college than you had on your kids. Bob, it's 151. That's good, too. And Gilbert worked with Jack Riley a couple of times, didn't you, on the Tonight Show? Oh, I, I, I. never actually worked with him

directly. Oh, you didn't? I remember he used to... I thought you interacted with him. He, I ran into him there. He looked like the guy in the Halbop comic cult. The heaven's skate cult. It was so weird. He looked like that guy exactly like him. So he had a resurgence in his career.

Oh, he was always there. Yeah. No, Jack Rowley was one of those guys who was always bubbling up. You know, when he died, I wasn't able to be there, so I wrote a little testimonial and was really just a sort of semi-onic list of all the roles he played. And it was read by someone, and they said he got really good laughs, good sentimental the laughs, just recalling the roles like

angry man and sport coat. All kinds of those roles. Do you still get male? Peter, do I have this right? From the fans of the Newhart show? Well, you don't know if they're fans, really.

Oh, I see. Obsessives. They're people living in towns you've never heard of. I see. And I don't know what my autograph gets these days, but when I was a minor celebrity there for a while, I would play in these golf tournaments.

And I was in a golf cart one day with a caddy, and he asked for my autograph. I said, what's your name? He said, Phil. I said, Phil, why is a 13-year-old kid like you asking me, you don't even know who I am? Why are you asking me for my autograph? and he said, $29.

Oh, geez. That's what he could get for my autograph in 1970 or whatever. I love that. So, yes, I get mail, but sometimes I think it's just for the $29 that they're going to sell it for in eBay. I don't know. I would guess that I'm down to $13.50 at this point. I just wanted, there's so much stuff we could. ask you about. Thank you. Yes. Well, you can have me back.

I'd love to ask you about directing Walter Cronkite. I will be entirely different the next time. Will you interview better next time? Yes. I'll come with the accent. How is that? I'll come as Frederico Fellini, and you can ask me all about La Strata. What about, let's see, do you want to talk about hanging out with Orson Wells? on the set of Catch 22 or directing... You don't hang out with Orson Wells. But we heard Richard Benjamin's version of the events. Oh, yes?

And Buck Henry. Everybody, yeah. And I think Bogdanovich was there at certain points. Yeah, we were all there. All the important people. Yeah. Do you want to tell us about directing Walter Cronkite? Was that a bizarre experience?

No, no. Oh, what was his name? Bob Kendri. Bob Kelso, oh, he didn't come dressed as Captain King Kangaroo. Oh, Bob Keishin. He was the nicest man. Bob what? Bob Keatshan.

Bob Keatshan. Right. I'll tell you this, of all the stars we've had on the show that I directed, his appearance on that rehearsal day got more applause than anybody else. Captain Kangaroo. Bob Kisham I love that That's great

Well because people had grown up With this wonderful chap God knows what the people would have done If we had Mr. Rogers on it Yeah They would have lauded him But He was a giant

He was I also directed Walter Kronkite Yeah I have that on my cards And at a certain point I wanted Walter Kronkine To look at the camera And And he turned to me and said, you know, I've done this before.

Perfect. There's so many things we could ask you about, Peter. We barely got into it. And next time we sit with you, we'll talk about medium cool. Well, the next time you can ask me about other things or other people besides myself. Yeah. I'll just make a lot of the shit up anyway. as I've been doing all day today.

You work with, I'll ask you quickly, you work with one of Gilbert's favorites, and that's Jack Guilford. Yes. Oh, my goodness, yes. Jack Guilford was, you know, he would have possibly been as big as Zero Mistel. But he's one of those people whose career was absolutely subtended by the blacklist. Absolutely. He was a known communist.

sympathizer and he had a big career going and he couldn't get a job great talent first yeah yeah and i worked with him he was he was one of those guys uh who uh delivered you know you'd come come to work and they by the time i've worked with him he was playing the geyser and uh he could play it better than anybody there are sad things in show business and and the blacklist is is another one of those sad things. Absolutely. That we do to ourselves. It's like guns.

The country has a way of doing itself in every once in a while. We're living through it. Absolutely. Unfortunately. I got one more for you. Yeah. Go ahead. Peter Eustanov.

What time is it? Peter. Any memories of working with him? Well, I, he drew, he was a very good artist and he drew on the back of a napkin he drew a picture of

Brezhnev when there was the Cold War was bubbling up and he drew this caricature of Brezhnev and on the bottom there was a quote saying

where we won't invade Poland or something he was a a real wit, wasn't he? Yes, yes, he was. And again, by the time we worked together, I was an actor on the show.

I played his nephew or grandson. Written by Rod Serling. Yes. Here, I'll tell you a Rod Serling story rather than a Peter Usenov story. Okay. It was the table reading, and we all came in to this CBS

studio, and we all had green leather binders. with our names and gold on them. So it was a very special event. We all sat down and opened our green leather binders to page one, and we read and we read and we read. Peter didn't open his, or I mean Rod, didn't open his binder. And we got to the middle of the thing,

and Peter misplaced a word. And Rod Serling said, I believe that's and corrected him. Without ever opening the book. Without ever opening the book. That's a writer's story.

It was really scary. That is great. Well, we'll probably wrap, Peter. Okay, good. We could go on for hours. It's 10 after 5, and this is when the little cuckoo clock in my living room goes, cuckoo, five times, and my hand automatically reaches for the bottle of Johnny Walker. Oh, I see.

It's like those sketches. We have no ending. Turn the lights off. Okay, goodbye, Frank, goodbye. We thank you for doing this. We're going to do a quick. We'll do a quick sign off. Hang on.

Okay. Okay, this has been Gilbert Gottfried's amazing cold. Yes. You forgot the name of it. of the show. Peter, he forgot the name of the show. Act better. Could you direct him through the clothes? Put your glasses on. Read the words written in front of you.

With the great Peter Bonner. Peter, this was fun for us. Okay. Good. Good. Good. Well, it was fun for me, too. It reminds me what a good time I've had in show business. Oh, great. And this is just for shits and giggles, but I want to direct people to find a clip online of you helping a woman win $10 grand on the $20,000 pyramid. Oh, yeah. And I must say, you're probably the best clue giver I've seen on that show. And she got the last answer with one second to go. Ah, that too is show business.

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