Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast - GGACP Classic: Sally Struthers Part 2
Episode Date: March 13, 2025The celebration of March's Women's History Month continues as GGACP revisits Part 2 of a memorable two-part episode featuring veteran screen and stage actress Sally Struthers. In this episode, Sally r...egales Gilbert and Frank with entertaining backstage tales from “All in the Family,” “The Gilmore Girls” and the all-female production of Neil Simon’s “The Odd Couple,” while sharing personal recollections of Joan Crawford, David Frost, Betty Garrett and idol and personal hero Ruth Gordon. Also, Burgess Meredith philosophizes, Katharine Hepburn paints a birthday card, Sally “gooses” Dennis the Menace and Mel Blanc shows off his vanity license plate. PLUS: Burt Mustin! “Harold and Maude”! “The Great Houdini”! The genius of Rupert Holmes! Colonel Potter goes to Russia! And Sally dates the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll and…wait for it…Pat McCormick! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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TV, comics, movie stars, hit singles and some toys.
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So here's another Gilbert and Franks! Here's another Gilbert and Franks! Here's another Gilbert and Franks!
Colossal Classic
We just had Jim Colucci, the author of the new book. I know you were interviewed for the book.
Yeah.
All in the Family, the show that changed television that he did with Norman.
And I was going through it looking at the Gloria episodes.
You know, you go back to the Women's Lib episode.
Gloria is an important character.
There was no female character on television at that time.
People talk about how Mary Richards was liberated and she was a different kind of female character,
but you're quoting Germaine Greer at 8 o'clock on network television.
Nobody was saying those things.
Nobody was standing up for those things. She was apparently
enticing enough to a young man like Mike Stivick
That he wanted to marry her and from marrying him she became
More aware of what was going on in the world and became less and less
You know every day her father's daughter and someone with some knowledge.
It's fun to watch her become empowered that way. Yeah. And also she wins a lot of those arguments
because the writers were not afraid to point out that though Mike was a liberal, that he had some
of the same failings. In fact, some of the same failings and shortcomings and short sightedness is Archie.
Especially when it comes to women.
You have that great speech in the women's lib episode
where you're saying to him,
oh, you've got the sympathy and the compassion
for blacks and Puerto Ricans, but none for women.
It's the whole speech about how he's,
for all his progressiveness, he's a bit of a misogynist.
Yeah.
Certainly sexist, anyway.
Yeah, she traded one thing for another
between her father and her husband.
Did they tell you on the first,
I just want to get this in Gilbert,
did John Rich tell you guys after the first,
what was it, the first couple of tapings?
Or after the first show had aired, we want
to see you all back here tomorrow morning but know that you might come back and you
all might be out of jobs?
Exactly.
The night before when we were all leaving CBS, the night that the first one was going
on the air, he said, okay, I suppose you're all going home now and you're having parties
in your home, friends, relatives, neighbors coming over, you're all going home now and you're having parties in your home, friends, relatives, neighbors coming over.
You're all going to watch the first episode. I know you're all excited.
I want you to know that CBS is manning their affiliates all over the country with extra operators to take the angry phone calls.
If they get too many of them, we won't have a job tomorrow.
So there was that hanging over our heads while we
watched the first one in our own homes and then we tiptoed into CBS the next
day wondering whether or not we had a job and Norman came in the rehearsal
hall and said CBS received an inordinate amount of phone calls but most of them
almost all of them were what was that is? Is that going to be on again next week? We love that. So that was a very frightening night.
But the next day, my shoulders came out of my ears.
I was telling Gilberth that you said you knew it was a hit.
You and Rob used to, because it was a CBS television studio
near the farmers market.
And you guys would go to lunch at the farmers market.
And then you realized one day you could no longer do that.
Yeah.
Overnight, we were all of a sudden people
who would get recognized.
And luckily, back then, people didn't have cell phones
with cameras.
But everybody plows through their pocket or their purse
for a piece of paper and a pen.
And at the farmers market, they're probably a tourist,
and they have a little Kodak camera and they all wanted something and there wasn't, we had a finite amount of
time to go there and order something to eat and come back to CBS so we couldn't go there
for lunch anymore.
Your life changed.
Very quickly.
Frank and I were talking that you worked with Joan Crawford.
Yeah, Tim Conway.
On the Tim Conway Comedy Hour.
Luckily, before the, I was so cheap that they let me go.
Yeah, and she, she was married to a man that owned the Pepsi Corporation, right?
And she showed up in the rehearsal hall like Sammy Davis, but with one of those big coolers
that you see at a service station
Inside when you go in and buy your cigarettes or pay for your gas and there's always like ice cream in them
She had two people roll that in the rehearsal hall. It was full of pepsi's
And I'm what was John Crawford like
Really nice and when I read her daughter's book, I was shocked
But then I realized that what Christina Crawford said in the book was my mother was wonderful to everybody else except us kids
Disturbing yeah, you said you said you learned something from her
You learned a certain kindness or how to write she write thank-you notes and she write personalized. Thank you know
She wrote thank-you notes to each one of us,
thanking us for being so nice to her
while she was on the Tim Conway Comedy Hour.
And she talked to me during breaks in the rehearsal
about how she wrote to all of her fans
and she spent an hour at least every evening
answering all her fan mail.
And so she was about keeping up appearances,
but she wasn't about mothering her two adopted children.
From one legendary actress to another,
and this factors into Gilmore Girls, my wife's favorite show,
which we were just watching before I came in here
to prepare, your favorite actress
and one of your heroes, if not your number one hero, the late great Ruth Gordon.
And I'd also like to point out that Harold and Maude is 50.
Oh, I love that movie.
That's in my top five movies that I've ever.
It's a great one.
I got cast in the television film The Great Houdinis,
playing Harry Houdini's wife, Bess,
and was told that Ruth Gordon would be playing my mother-in-law,
Mrs. Houdini, Harry's mother. And we bonded while we made that film and stayed friends
for the rest of Ruth's life. And when I got my first Broadway show called Wally's Cafe,
written by Sam Bobrick and Ron Clark who wrote the oh there you go
The Tim Conway coming at Ron Clark on this podcast by the way. He's still around. Yeah
I
Called Ruth and said I'm coming to New York and she said well Why don't you stay at Garson's in my place on on the East East 42nd Street?
East 43rd Street, it's called Turtle Bay, and it's a five story brownstone.
You'll love it, you little baby and your friend,
you'll have a good time.
So I was living there and quickly found out
that Garson Cane and Ruth Gordon
were the next door neighbors of Katherine Hepburn
and Stephen Sondheim.
And on the morning of my birthday, my friend Pamela was three
floors up trying to potty train my daughter who was about to turn two and
someone was knocking on the front door and I hollered up the stairway three
floors, Pamela could you come down and answer the door? I'm in my pajamas in the
kitchen I don't want to answer the door in my pajamas. She said I've got Samantha on the potty chair I can't come down. I said okay. I open the front door it's Catherine
Hepburn. She said hello Sally I'm Catherine I'm your next door neighbor. Mary told me
that it's your birthday I painted your birthday card here dear you a birthday card here, dear. Happy birthday. And why don't you come over sometime and have coffee or tea. And we'll talk about
Spencer. And you can see my costumes. I've got so many of my costumes here in my brownstone.
I said, I'd love to do that, Ms. Hepburn. I mean, what are the chances?
Unbelievable. Catherine Hepburn and Joan Crawford in one career and Ruth Gordon and Ruth Gordon nice work Sally
I remember I can actually say I was up at
Katherine Hepburn's house once
What were you doing there? I?
Used to work the concessions
before I was had a career.
I had a job with the concessions in the Broadway theaters
of selling grape drinks and t-shirts and stuff.
And Catherine Hepburn would come in before the show
and talk to us and she was having a party and she invited us all the concessioners to her house.
Is that a matter of gravity?
Yes.
Yes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's very cool.
By the way, Sally, that's a great Hepburn impression.
Way, way better than Mario Cantone's.
Did he try?
I got a couple of quick questions from listeners for you.
Let's see, let's see.
Perry Shield says, please tell Sally I will always remember her kindness to this 12 year
old who visited backstage at All in the Family as a personal guest of Betty
Garrett.
Oh.
So there you go.
Well.
Just tell us something quick about Betty and also any memories of Mr. Quigley, Burt Mustin,
a favorite of Gilbertson's life.
Oh, I've got great stories about both of them.
Betty Garrett was a child at heart and lived well into her 90s and I was doing a benefit with her
it's called stage STAGE acronym for Southland theater actors give something
and it was an event that happened every year and Betty and I were each singing a
number in this particular production and so all sorts of luminaries were in the
ladies dressing room downstairs and I was sitting right next to
Betty and she was just so energetic she was already 91 and
and I said, Betty how do you know when you're getting old? And she said when you
have to sit down to put on your underwear.
She killed me she was so much fun and Bert Mustin
the wonderful old character actor,
guested on All in the Family.
Oh, we loved him.
And Rob Reiner and I had a conversation with him one day on the set. And Rob said to Burt,
what did you do over the weekend, Burt? And Burt said, well, I celebrated my 90th birthday.
And Rob said, well, what did you do to celebrate?
Did you have a party?
Did somebody take you out for drinks?
He said, well no, I didn't have anything to drink.
I don't drink, I never have.
I didn't have a cake, I don't eat sugar, I never have.
Rob said, well did you stay up late?
He says, no, I didn't stay up late.
I like to go to bed early, but I celebrated my birthday.
And Rob says, how?
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha Well, let us know when you get settled. We'd like to see both of you again. Wait a minute.
How would you two like to be new grandparents?
I don't think we got time.
No, I mean like foster grandparents for all of us.
Oh, Holden, I don't need no kind of grandparents.
Come on, Daddy.
I never knew my real grandma and grandpa.
Well, you wouldn't like them.
He don't mean that.
Well, I like these two,
and I'd like you to come visit us on holidays.
Oh, what a lovely idea.
Thank you, dear.
Maybe sometimes we can go visit you.
Go as often as you can, Meathead.
Well, Joe, it looks like we've just been adopted.
Well, see you all next Christmas.
Yeah, yeah, that's a good idea.
Next Christmas.
See you next Christmas there.
Ha ha, quickly.
Yeah, oh, I'm going to give you one more piece of advice.
And this is just for you, sonny.
Something my father said to me.
He said, son, don't ever grow old.
What's that supposed to mean you will find out
A man who looked old when he was 50. Yeah, he was born
He looked to me like a turtle that's come out of its shell. Yes, you're so sweet with him on that show.
He was a darling man.
You were in the production of The Odd Couple.
Yes, when Neil Simon rewrote it for two women.
And it was you and...
Brenda Vacaral.
Ah! That's fun!
Well, we'll buy that.
Well, she came in and took over at the end.
I'd rather not mention the name of the woman that I did it with because she's probably the meanest woman in show business.
I don't want to give her a moment of airtime.
295 performances. That must have been stressful.
Well, first the people that contributed money
to make the show happen wanted to make sure
that if we opened on Broadway and closed in one night,
as some shows do, never a Neil Simon show,
but they wanted to be sure they made their investment back
before we even opened. So they made their investment back before
we even opened. So they made us go on a nine-month tour of the United States with the show first
before we ever got to New York. And I got to tell you, the person I was sharing the stage with is
one of the meanest human beings I've had the displeasure to know. And she made my life a living
hell. And then one day our producer, Manny Azenberg, came into the know and she she made my life a living hell and then one day our producer
Manny Aisenberg came into the theater and came downstairs to my dressing room and said uh she's
given her notice to leave and I screamed there is a god and then she was replaced by my dear friend
Brenda Vaccaro that's who you need the interview is Brenda Vaccaro well we'll get Brenda on here. This unnamed actress, what was she doing to you?
She doesn't like other women and she really didn't like me because I was getting all the
laughs in the play. I see. Well you were the Felix character as we said in the intro.
Yes and she had, I came along after she had already chosen what she wanted to play.
I see. I see.
She assumed, and they say how do you spell assume?
It makes an ass out of you and me.
She assumed that why would Felix, who's now Florence, be funny?
Because what was funny about Jack Lemmon being Felix Unger was he wore an apron and he had
ladle in his hand and he was walking around worried about what he was cooking in the kitchen and which is all feminine things, you know, and so if you're a woman
and you're doing feminine things, that's not going to be funny. So she thought it would
be funny to be Oscar who became Olive because he was the slob and that's what made Jack, you know, Mathow a star and it on Broadway it made, from the
Jackie Gleason show, Art Carney a star. And so she, you know, was mistaken and
she took the role of Olive and so the role left for me to play was Florence
and I just made Florence the most neurotic person
on the face of the earth.
And it was funny.
And...
Well, that'll teach her for being unkind to you.
Oh, she...
Look, we went to the White House
for a state dinner for the King of Saudi Arabia.
And she went with her husband,
and I went with the stage manager from the odd couple.
And during that evening, Secretary of State George
Schultz and his wife came up to talk to me.
And they said, how are we so lucky to have you here
at this state dinner?
And I said, well, we're here in Washington, DC,
doing the female version of the Odd Couple.
And in a couple months, we'll be in New York
and opening on Broadway.
And the Schultz's said, said well we come to New York all the
time we see a lot of Broadway shows we'll come see you I thought yeah sure
so we open on Broadway and one day I got to the theater and they said the
Schultzes are coming tonight and the Secret Service has already swept the
theater make sure it's safe they don't want to meet the whole cast they want to
come quickly backstage when the play ends with their couple they're traveling
with and a photographer and take a couple of pictures of themselves with the odd couple
and then they're going to be swept out to their car and leave.
So please the rest of the cast go to your dressing rooms when the show is over after
you've taken your bows and Sally and Miss Koosberger stay on stage. So.
So.
So.
So.
So.
So.
So.
I'm like a, I'm like a Cocker Spaniel.
If you say stay, I stay.
Now at the end of the show,
I have been vacuuming and singing
what's love got to do with it.
And I have, I'm in all polyester
and I'm sweating and my hair is matted to my forehead.
But I stay because the Schultzes are gonna be there
in three seconds and we have to do this quickly.
And she disappears.
And they wanna take a picture with both of us
and she's not around and now we're all waiting.
Where did she go?
She's the only one with a dressing room on stage level.
Her dressing room door opens, she steps out,
she says, Mr. and Mrs. Schultz, this way, please.
Photographer, oh, you're the Schultz's friend,
so nice to meet you.
Please come into my dressing room.
She's ushering them all in.
I'm the last one in line, I'm about to go in her dressing
room to take the picture that the Schultz's want.
And she puts her arm across the door jam
and she says, we won't be needing you.
And then she shuts the door in my face.
Wow.
Wow, wow.
Now times that times, you know, a year and a half.
I'm sorry you had to do 300 performances.
Yes.
Under those circumstances.
Let's not say our name.
Let's not.
And here onto onto a legendary performer that I'm sure that Gilbert loves, that I'm sure you'll have
lovely things to say about our listener Joseph Chiaro Lanza. What are Sally's recollections of
working with the legendary Burgess Meredith on the Gloria, the short-lived Gloria Spinoff?
He was a dear friend of Carol and Nancy O'Connor, so I first got to know him that way. And then,
when CBS decided to do the Gloria show and book ended at the end of Archie Bunker's place, they
hired him to play the veterinarian that Gloria worked for and I was just thrilled because
I loved that man. And he always had that sparkle in his eye as if he knew some sweet little
secret and was going to tell you. And I went to his house and Malibu wants to visit him and his daughter is an artist and he was pointing out her
paintings to me and she did, Talia did this and Talia did that and he obviously
loves his daughter so much. And I don't know what I said but he gave me the
sweetest speech and I can paraphrase it. It was, you know, he said, oh Sally we're
all on this little tiny round thing that
we've named Earth and we're held onto it because there's this thing called gravity and we're
hurtling through space and all we have is one another and when human beings can finally
understand that there are no borders, there are no national anthems
for each country, there should be one anthem, we are all brothers and sisters,
we have to help each other because we're on this little planet together. And he
gave me this most astounding speech and I remember just sitting there, I couldn't
even speak afterwards. Wow, what a smart man. Yeah. What a wise thing to say. Yeah, and I always hated that that
Twilight Zone episode where he breaks his glasses and I feel like why is he being punished
because he likes to read? Oh, I never saw that one. Oh yeah, you have to see that. That's one of the famous Twilight shows. We'll send you a link.
Oh, okay.
What a great American actor, a guy who could do anything.
Yeah, remember him as the penguin in Batman.
Yes.
Yeah.
Gilbert is fond of the film of Mice and Men.
Oh yeah.
She does wonderful work with Lon Chaney.
Yeah, that's a powerful film.
And he's wonderful as the boxing manager in Rocky.
Yes.
Mickey, yeah.
And the one that I really, I wanted to open the show
with it, how much I wanted to ask you this one.
Here it comes.
Okay, did you fuck Elvis Presley?
I dated Elvis Presley for a while and he was so physically beautiful.
There were times where I was near him where I thought I couldn't breathe.
And the first night I met him, he said to me, Sally, I said, yes, Elvis. He
said, Sally, would you like me to sing you a song? I said, yes. So I said, well, I can't
stop looking in your eyes, so I'm going to sing you Blue Spanish Eyes. I said, well,
okay. So he put his record on and he sang along with his record
and he sang it to me and then it was going, it's going around now the record's over and
I looked at him and he's looking at me and I said, again. And he said, all right, Sally.
And he put the record on again. He sang it seven or eight times to me.
And that was the beginning of quite a steamy affair. Teardrops are falling from your Spanish eyes.
Please, please don't cry.
This is just adios and not goodbye.
And I found him to be all things perfect.
He was kind to his friends, kind to his family, kind to absolute strangers, generous to a fault, so physically beautiful it took your breath
away, talented, thoughtful. This girl came into a party at his house one night in
Palm Springs and she was she had two of those crutches that go around your
forearm and she had two prosthetic legs and I said at this point I was calling him E
because all this guys called him E. I said E who's that girl? He said well
Sally one time someone brought her over to one of my parties and well she had a
real good time and I I don't think she has a good time very much in her life so
we make sure every few weeks we invite her
over so that she can come over and see other people and have a good time. So he
kept inviting this girl to his house to all of his parties because he cared
about her which I thought was amazing but he was also so simple and believing
he believed other people. He said one night to me, it was like
three in the morning and he said, Sallie, I want to take you outside Sallie and show
you something I can do. It's pretty wonderful. I said, okay, let's go. So we're outside.
He says he gets in this like karate stance, you know, one arm up like a crane and the
other hand out spread his fingers spread
Right really near a bush and at that moment a little
Wind went through in the bush tremored a little and he said did you see that Sally?
Did you see how me pressing my hand he had the power for my hand made the bush move
I knew it was the wind but I said, oh
That's wonderful.
He really thought his hand was making the bush move.
It was so-
An interesting man.
It was so dear.
And also he was funny, he was fast too.
He was like a caged animal.
One leg jiggled the whole time.
It almost jiggled when we were in bed.
I mean, he just, his leg never stopped
because he was a caged animal
because he couldn't go out anywhere
because he would just get mobbed.
So he had to stay indoors,
so he was like the tigers you see pacing in their cages.
And we were playing this game one night
like Dorothy Parker at the round table at the Algonquin.
You know, it was coming up with clever words.
And so we said to him,
make something out of the word Argentina.
And he said, ladies and gentlemen,
the Argentina Turner review. said, ladies and gentlemen, the Argentina Turner
review.
Oh, quick.
Yeah.
Very good.
Yeah.
Very good.
How long did this love affair last, if we may ask?
A few months.
And then I took my roommate with me, a girl named Pam Walter.
He sent his airplane to the Santa Monica airport
to fly us to see him.
And he met Pam that night
and that was it. He was over me and on to Pam. But that was okay with me. I mean, you
can't, you can't own Elvis. You can't expect Elvis to make you his end all be all. I mean,
I-
Especially if he was a cage tiger.
Yes, exactly We will return to Gilbert Gottfried's amazing colossal podcast after this
This Friday grab your friends. Okay, I thought you'd be dead by now
Get to the theater and experience the movie audiences are calling an adrenaline rush of a good time
It's a big screen blast find a bad badass. I know, right? Novocaine, Friday.
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When the frustration grows and the doubts start to creep in, we all need someone who has our back to tell us we'll be okay,
to remind us of our ability to believe
because their belief in us transfers to self belief
and reminds us of all that we're capable of.
We all need someone to make us believe.
Hashtag, you got this.
What a life, Sally, Catherine Hepburn Hepburn Ruth Gordon Joan Crawford Elvis I was chased around a hotel room by Robert
By Robert by David Frost by David Frost
I what did you say?
I'm sorry, but frost asked me to dinner in New York and I went to dinner with him and and our dinner mates were Ruth Gordon
and Garson Canaan and George
We went to dinner with him and our dinner mates were Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanan and George C. Scott
and his wife Trish Vandevere, the six of us in a booth.
And at the end of dinner, he said,
Sally, I'd like you to come up to my room for a moment.
I have some things to show you.
I fell for it.
I went up to his room and he just wanted to attack me.
He chased me around that room for a good 10 minutes.
He's saying, Mr. Frost, no Mr. Frost, no.
But he'd had so much to drink, he finally sat on the bed
and kind of went to sleep and I snuck out.
Oh dear, Sally, why aren't you writing a memoir
or doing a one woman show?
I'm waiting for everyone to be dead.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. That makes a lot of sense.
I don't want to be sued.
Chanel Vickers says, first off, thank you for all you've done for us in your career,
Sally.
And you work with Liz Torres, another favorite of ours, on both All in the Family and Gilmore
Girls.
You guys go way back, you and Liz.
We do.
I first met Liz when she...
Miss Patty?
Yes, Miss Patty on Gilmore Girls,
but the housekeeper on All in the Family.
And I fell in love with her at that time,
and she was married at that time to a man named Peter.
And she invited my husband and me over to the house
one night for dinner, and we all got higher than kites,
and we laughed till we were rolling on the floor.
But she told me about a time when she got in a fight with Peter,
and she was so mad at him that she left the room and she was
wearing a dress and she took off her shoes and her underwear and she came
back in she still had the dress on and she told him how furious she was at him
with him and then she pulled her dress up and squatted and and and urinated on
the rug in his office and left. And I said, that's the most primal feral kind of that's just
perfect that says more than any words could ever say that's a peckinpah
moment yes yeah let's Taurus I believe dated Pat McCormick no I know what I did
oh you dated Pat McCormick I dated Pat McCormick. I dated Pat McCormick. Oh
Well now we buried the lead, please do tell oh well
the first time I met him we were both in a commercial together for ranch style beans and
The art director had turned the whole soundstage into the top of a table
The whole floor would look like a red and white checkered tablecloth and there was a giant plate that they made that was about 15, 16 feet wide, round plate
and Pat McCormick was dressed as a ranch style bean and I was dressed as a hamburger and
I was Betty Burger.
I was toe dancing around him and he was trying to interview me and take a bean pole of what
I felt as a hamburger about ranch style beans.
He just was so hilarious that we'd swap phone numbers and stayed in touch for years and
then right about two years before he had his huge debilitating stroke, I started dating him.
And dating him was insane.
I mean, he would get in my car and he would drive my car.
I had a 1956 Ford Sunliner convertible.
And he would pretend constantly that the brakes were gone.
And he would pretend like he was pumping the brakes.
And he'd say, I can't stop the car, I can't stop.
And on New Year's Eve, I looked up at him at a party
and I said, do you have any New Year's Eve resolutions?
Pat was six foot seven and I'm five feet tall
and he looked down at me and he says, yes,
I promise never to take a dog's temperature in church again.
And he was just, he was insane. We went to a Halloween party.
This is a gold mine.
We went to a Halloween party. He went as Pope Skippy, the answer pope, and I went as a pregnant
nun and all night long he would take questions as the pope and give people insane answers.
All I did was laugh with him 24-7.
The answer pope. Well, we had a writer named Ron Friedman on the show who used to write with Pat, who had
wonderful stories.
He supposedly brought his shopping cart to a checkout in a supermarket, and he said to
the checkout girl, did I buy enough toilet paper for all this food? We were at a mutual friend's house who lived at the top of the mountain in Malibu and going
up to that house was a wildly circuitous drive and it was not a drive that you want to make
too many times a day.
And he leaned over to me in a corner in these people's house and he said
to me, would it be funny if you wanted me to go to the grocery store from here? And
I went down and got all the groceries and I came back up and I bought them all except
for I forgot to buy the cigarettes. And then I had to go down that drive again and I got to the bottom and then I realized I don't smoke
That's gold yeah
Gilbert before we get out of here. Do you want to tell Sally about that?
Yes, you want to ask for the verification on something on the helicopter, sir? The story I heard is that
He and his friends, like at, you know, like once a year or so,
Jack Riley and people like that, they would get together and each one would try to outdo
each other, like with the dinner they throw. And then when it came time for Pat, he all brought them down to
this area where there was a helicopter. And he handed them each just a little paper bag
with a tuna sandwich and an apple in it. And they were all like looking at it like, this is our dinner, what the hell is this?
And he put them on the helicopter one by one,
each time with a hooker.
And the hooker, while the helicopter would circle
the guy's house while his wife was at home.
It would circle and the hooker would blow the guy.
Now we heard this story from Buck Henry and Ronnie Shell.
Oh my God.
And I heard that with one of them,
he came home and his wife said,
so how was dinner?
And he goes, it was okay, how are things with you?
And she says, all right,
except that this helicopter kept circling my house.
Well, I didn't want to say,
but the day I met him auditioning for the commercial,
we were standing very close together and we were saying the dialogue and the
creatives in the room were looking at our chemistry and thinking how funny it
was. This very large man and this small woman. And,
and all of a sudden he stopped saying the lines on the page and he just said,
Oh Sally, go up on me.
and he just said, oh, Sally, go up on me. Go up on me.
Oh, and I remembered I was working somewhere
and I met Tim Conway and I went over to Tim Conway
because he knew Pat McCormick and I said, yeah,
I heard a story about Pat.
And before I even said McCormick,
Conway looks at me and goes, Alan Copter.
What do we think Sally, was it in it?
It sounds like it was well in his character.
Yeah, oh definitely. Yes, he was well in his character. Oh, definitely.
Yes.
He was very respectful of me, however.
One year he says to me, what do you want for Christmas?
I said, oh, Pat, I don't want a Christmas present from you.
I just want to make sure that if you get invited to any great holiday parties, I'm on your
arm.
And so he says, yeah, but if you could have anything you wanted, like anything around
the house that you need.
And I said, I don't know. And he says, well, just if you could have anything you wanted like anything around the house that you need and I said
I don't know and he says well just write a few things down for me. Give me an idea
So I wrote a list of maybe ten things that he could possibly purchase for me like a new vacuum cleaner
He bought all ten things for me and surprised me
but Wow one day I I
surprised me. But one day I noticed that one of my camellia bushes
beside my porch was dying, and the camellia bush
on the other side of the porch was thriving,
and I never knew why.
And then Pat pulled up in front of my house one day,
and I was looking through the Venetian blinds
watching him come up the walkway,
and he was sloshing around mouthwash in his mouth
because he always smoked a cigar in his car
and I think he didn't want to smell like a cigar
when he came in.
And he spit the mouthwash on my camellia bush.
He killed my camellia bush with all his mouthwash.
What a wonderful showbiz character.
Yeah, nobody like him ever.
Yeah, larger than life. We, Sally, this is a wonderful
ride. Also, you know, we didn't even get into your wonderful stage work. You were in Curtains,
by the way, written by our pal Rupert Holmes. Oh, I love Rupert Holmes. The best guy. Oh, yeah.
Yeah, I was, yeah, I failed in that musical.
I did it at a theater in Pittsburgh
where they only give you one week of rehearsal
to learn an entire huge show.
And I couldn't learn my Snappy Patterwitty Chatter song.
It was one of those songs that there's a lot of lyrics.
It's a clever song, not a melodic,
tuneful love song or something. It was a lot of words. It's a clever song, not a melodic, tuneful love song or
something. It was a lot of words. And so I would just stand on stage and let the orchestra
play and just stand and smile at the audience. And they would wind up smiling and laughing
and clapping because that was obvious I didn't know what I was doing. But Rupert Holmes didn't
even get mad at me. What a nice man.
He's a mensch. He is a mensch. I heard John with Marin talking about how
going on the road and going to all these different states and towns, you know, was
such a wonderful experience for you. You met so many people. Your address book
got so thick with names. You made friends in every city and every state.
Yeah. What a nice thing for an actor. Yeah. To be able to get to do. And
theater is not for sissies.
So you can take somebody that's got a major motion picture
career, and you could ask them to learn
a play, which means they have to know all 100 pages of dialogue
and do it from beginning to end without anyone yelling cut.
And it's too frightening for them.
They won't do it.
They can learn three, four pages of dialogue a day
and shoot at
a hundred different angles and that's your work for that day and the next day you've
learned three or four more pages of dialogue. But they're too frightened to get on a stage
without a director saving them by yelling cut, let's do that again. So I love doing of doing theater because it requires the most professionalism.
And you have to do that same performance eight times a week.
And there are people that just won't do that.
And so while I'm out there applying my trade
in all these theaters, doing what I feel
is the best work you can do as an actor,
I'm meeting all these other people who work in theaters.
They're the crew guys and the women
in the wardrobe department.
And they all love theater and they work in it too.
And I've saved all their phone numbers and addresses.
And when I go through these cities, we-
That's nice.
Yeah, it's great.
That's nice.
You know, it's, that is something Gilbert
is not attracted to as we've learned on this show, right Gilbert playing playing the same role
Seven nights a week that cut that kind of grind. Yeah, you know Sally Sally
You wanted to be a character as you always saw yourself as a character actress and you you you certainly became that yeah
And we go back to the story. I told you earlier about
Screaming at my mother on this payphone on the pawns girl and the pawns girl and then I went to the wardrobe fitting and
there was this really pretty girl in there and I said hi my name's Sally
what's your name and she said Carol I said hi Carol I said I'm here because
I'm doing a pawns commercial what are you having fittings for she said a pawns
commercial I said oh which one are you doing she said I'm doing the one on the
pirate ship I said so am I and she said oh she one are you doing? She said, I'm doing the one on the pirate ship. I said, so am I.
And she said, oh, she says, so you're
going to play my friend who asks me what I
do to keep my skin so lovely.
Oh, jeez.
And I realized at that moment that I wasn't the Pond's girl.
You can see that pirate ship commercial on YouTube,
by the way.
Yeah.
So that day, walking back to the Hollywood Studio Club for Girls, I said to myself, Sally,
you've just met Carol and she's beautiful, but Hollywood is very vain and cold, and when
she's about 39, she'll be washed up and spit out because she's a beautiful girl and they
won't want to use her when she's 40.
But you're a character actor, so you can work until you're 97.
So consider yourself lucky.
And you've done everything. You've done song and dance. You've done sketch comedy.
You've done sitcoms and what a sitcom.
You know, dramas, features. You've, you know, you've really, you've run the gamut.
And yet, if you don't have a series on at the've really you've run the gamut. And yet if you
don't have a series on at the moment when you walk down the street but people
recognize you, for me I get the condescending sweetness. Oh Sally, you're
Sally Struthers, right? Yes, hi. Oh we used to love you on TV. Oh. Uh-huh.
So are you retired, dear?
No, I haven't stopped working.
Well, we don't see you.
Well, I've been doing a lot of theater lately.
Oh, all right, but no tell.
Well, I just did Gilmore Girls for seven years.
Oh, well, we don't watch much TV.
Well, if you don't watch much TV,
why are you assuming I'm not on it?
I mean, people just think if they don't see you
just last week on something that you must be washed up
or too old to work, I don't know what.
And nowadays, it's so weird.
Like years ago, you could appear in a,
they could see the back of your head
in a crowd scene for a second,
and the next day everybody would know who that person was.
Now it's like you could star in 10 series a night
and people will not know who you are.
Exactly, because they have too many choices.
Yeah, it's a different world.
I mean, I sit there with that remote, and when I get up to like channel 789, Exactly, because they have too many choices. Yeah, it's a different world.
I mean, I sit there with that remote and when I get up to like channel 789, I say, what am I doing? Go to bed, Sally.
But there's so many choices now.
Is it too hard? Go ahead, Sally, I'm sorry.
It's just there's too many choices now.
Is it too hard for you? I heard you say if you come across All in the Family, will you stay with it or is it hard for you to watch? Is it too emotional?
To see Jean and Carol?
I can't say that I watch a whole episode anymore.
I get so immediately melancholy and missing my castmates who became like a family to me.
And you know, I never thought about it at that time
but actuary tables would have told me that I was going to outlive them and it's just
so shocking to have the writers gone and the cameramen are gone and most of the actors
are gone and it's just Norman Lear and Rob Reiner and me left.
It's weird.
Yeah and a handful of writers. I've always wanted to ask you this,
and I'm sure you've been asked a million times, do you have a favorite moment from that show?
Is it a moment with Jean? I love the moment you brought up earlier about her trying to tell me about my wedding night. It's great. And she just played that so brilliantly. I remember doing that with
her and it made it so easy to play the part I had to play it in that particular
episode. When you're working with an actor that is that good it raises up
what you do and I had you know lots of favorite moments with Carol. I liked
the moments where I got to be feisty and not nice. I liked pulling Carol's fingers apart
until he yelled, ow!
That's great.
I liked when Mike was trying to be nice to me and I was overdue. The baby was supposed
to have arrived two or three weeks ago and I was overdue. The baby was supposed to have arrived
two or three weeks ago and I'm overdue and he's being sweet and he's got his face right in my face and they wrote a line for me to say because just like Terry Thomas, Rob Reiner has a split
between his two front teeth and they had Gloria say to him, how long have you been parting your
teeth in the middle? You know I like the physical comedy too that you do in the Women's Lib episode.
You say, what am I, a wind-up toy?
And you walk out on him as a wind-up toy.
And in Battle of the Month, he comes down, I was telling Gilbert, he picks you up, he's
going to treat you like a child because you want to sleep on the couch.
And he lifts you up and you slap him across the face. It's wonderful.
It's wonderful.
There wasn't a lot of physical comedy on the show,
but you did it very well.
I loved the moment where Gloria was giving birth
and the OBGYN is saying, okay, now Gloria, just push,
push down, like pushing on the pedal of a car.
And I said, well, I was grunting, I don't drive.
Just little moments like that are my favorite moments.
Babette is also such a wonderful character, you know, and of course I've watched these
episodes dozens of times, had no idea that you were doing Ruth Gordon or that you were
paying homage to Ruth Gordon.
Now I'll watch them differently.
And she's kind of a delightfully Randy character too,
with she and Maury have a sex life
that you'd love to peek in on.
Yeah, and-
Including the episode where she says
that last night, Maury, you'll love this, Gilbert,
Maury was dressed as a howler monkey.
Let me tell you about my first day on the set.
I landed that job to play the next door neighbor
to the two leads on the show, to Lorelei and Rory.
And I am doing a musical in Las Vegas,
and so I have to fly in on the last plane out that night
out of Vegas to LA.
So I got home at about one in the morning,
and I got three hours of sleep
and had to be at Warner Brothers by 5.30 a.m.
And I'm
just out of it I'm just slap happy and they're putting makeup on me and
somebody comes and says you have to come down get in the golf cart we're gonna
take you down to where the set is for Laura lies backyard and you'll shoot
the scene with your husband.
And so I get in the golf court, I'm only half made up
and the director comes over and introduces himself to me
and says, have you met your husband yet?
I said, no, I haven't.
So this very tall man is walking toward me,
he said, this is your husband.
And he said, Ted, this is Sally, Sally, this is Ted. is Ted I said very nice to meet you so we ran the scene for the
director and the crew so they can decide how to light it and then they said
Sydney's two lawn chairs here and we'll either excuse you in a minute to go back
to makeup or we might want you to run the scene again so we're making small
talk Ted and I and I told him how I had been in Vegas the night before
and how tired I was.
And he says, I was hiking in Mexico
and my cell phone went off and my agent said,
you gotta get back here, you got this part in the show.
And I said, oh, you must be so tired too.
So we were quiet.
And then he said, so how are things in Portland?
And I looked at him and I said, what?
He said, how are things with your family
and friends in Portland?
And I said, well, how did you know that I'm from Portland?
And he just had this big Cheshire cat grin on his face.
And I said, wait a minute.
I said, they sent me the script in Vegas with the cast list.
And I read your name.
And I thought, no, it couldn't be.
But you are?
And he shook his head.
And he said, uh-huh.
And I said, so you're Ted Rooney, son of Ed Rooney,
my high school math teacher.
How about that?
And he says, yeah.
So I said, so you grew up in Portland, too?
He says, yes.
So I said, you went to Grant High School, too?
He says, yeah.
I said, oh, my god. And then. He says, yeah. I said, oh my God.
And then he said, what no one wants to hear.
He says, but I'm younger than you.
I wasn't in your class.
It was a nice moment for a while.
I said, but you're tall and skinny and you look older
and I'm short and have a round fat face
and I will look younger than I am for the rest of my life.
So there you go.
That's a fun coincidence.
If you hang around in this business long enough,
things like that happen.
Yeah.
Sally, yeah.
What is that?
It's just my phone.
Holy smoke, I don't know what I thought that was.
Some alarm on your pants or something.
No, that's not my pants alarm.
Pants alarm sounds more like a siren.
You want to answer that?
Should we put this down?
Oh, well, no, that's okay. I'm free to answer that. I'm free to answer that. I'm free something. No, that's not my pants alarm. Pants alarm sounds more like a siren.
You want to answer that?
Should we put this down?
Oh, well, no, that's OK.
I'm afraid if we put it down, we'll pick it up again.
Oh, this is going to be good.
What with this one here and the two palms.
Oh, boy, Maury's eyes are going to pop out of his head.
Why?
Does he find plants particularly startling?
I'm making a jungle.
A jungle?
By the bedroom.
Oh, enough said.
Hey, is that your inside phone?
Yeah, I'll call him back.
So anyway, I got this negligee with sort of a snake pattern.
Oh boy, is this heavy.
It is.
It is.
I'm sorry, doll.
I wasn't hoping that you would lug this with me.
I was planning on asking Christopher.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, I haven't seen him much lately.
Oh, well, his work keeps him busy.
Yeah, well, what's he do?
Something with computers?
Very mysterious. He's a man of mystery. You know well, what's he do? Something with computers? Very mysterious.
Yeah, he's a man of mystery.
You know who's a man of mystery? Maury.
After decades in the bedroom, who would have thought that the idea of dressing up like a howler monkey would be such a turn-on?
Right, I'm gonna get this.
Gilbert, we can't get you to do legitimate theater, huh? We can't entice you.
What if you and Sally toured in the gin game? Oh my god!
The closest I ever came to doing actual theater was they had like a week of the Rocky Horror show
and they were having like different celebrity guest narrators.
So I did that for a week and I thought,
that's all the work I wanna do.
So it ain't gonna happen, huh?
We had Jason Alexander on the show.
We kicked the idea around of Gilbert and Jason
doing the Sunshine Boys.
Oh my God, everyone would pay to see that.
Come on Gil, be the hottest ticket in town.
And someone else told me I'd be a good Willy Loman which uh that I would have to think about.
You would have to do it using your Carol O'Connor voice though.
Yes last question from a listener before we let you go home, Sally, and you've been wonderful.
Ed Marcus, does she have any funny stories, and again, this speaks to your versatility,
about playing Pebbles Flintstone with the original cast with the great Mel Blank and Alan Reed?
Yeah. Oh my God. So lots of funny stories. Two that come to mind were that Jay North, who played Dennis Cemenus
on TV, was now a young man and he was playing Bam Bam and I was his pebbles. And he was
very easy to make blush, so when the sound was rolling in the sound booth and we were
all having to say our lines, when I didn't have to be talking but he had to say bam bam lines I would reach over and grab his behind.
He would turn.
You'd goosed Dennis the Menace.
He turned fuchsia every time.
He couldn't handle it.
Now I would be sued and my career would be over.
You can't do that anymore. Different times.
Yeah, and Mel Blanc, I was leaving Hannah Barbera once,
and we were pulling out of the parking lot at the same time.
And I beefed at him, and he rolled his window down.
He says, yeah.
And I said, why does it say KMIT on your license plate?
What does that stand for?
It's standing, I think it was German it's
standing for Kishmir eintuchus
wonderful Sally we have to thank our Wonderful.
Sally, we have to thank our mutual friend, John Shuck.
Oh, I love Johnny Shuck.
He's so talented and he's so funny and he was the best Daddy Warbucks I have ever worked
with.
He's so elegant on stage and darling and he has the most wonderful wife who's a great
artist, Harrison Shuck.
Yes.
And he's a great man. We love John.
Yeah. He did this show a couple of months ago and he was like a duck to
water. He was the perfect guest. Yeah I can believe that. Yeah and we'll thank
Pamela Sharp too who helped us put this together and our friends Lan Romo and
Aristotle Acevedo and thank you Sally too for all the things you've
done for children over the decades. It's important. Well my family taught me that you always give back,
you always help others. That's the only way you can get through life is to help others.
And it was a great lesson. Well you put yourself out there for a very very long time and you
changed a lot of lives for the better.
It was my joy.
So bravo for that.
The first time I went, the first and only time I went to Italy about 20 years ago with
my friends Sugar and Margaret, they said, you're having a really wonderful time, aren't
you?
And I said, yeah, I don't have to feed anybody here.
Everybody in Italy is very well fed.
I said, I have only been to remote and shoddy outposts
where you get covered in flies and children are crying and I said this is a unique experience for
me to go to a country that's beautiful and no one's starving. It was my first experience.
Oh and you you were in you worked in Russia. I did. I made it. Oh, is that the Harry Morgan? Harry Morgan and I went to Russia to make
a special about the Leningrad Ice Show. Oh my God. That was so amazing to be with all those Russian
people and it was, you know, very scary because they were watching us and our rooms were bugged
and we just felt like we were being watched all the time. And I was with my Japanese hairdresser and he starts having conversations with
people.
And he tried to talk to this Russian taxi cab driver and I said, Huck,
don't even bother.
Your English is broken and you have this very thick Japanese dialect and
the man doesn't speak a word of English.
He doesn't know what you're talking about. He says, by time we get to ice Paris, I know everything about this man.
And so he says to the man pointing at him, you have any babies and he rocks his arm like he has
babies and the man goes da da nails up two fingers. He in the hot Kudo turns to me in the back seat
and says, see he has two babies. He says, you have a girl baby or boy baby? And Hawk touches his breasts and then his groin
and then makes the baby sign again.
And the guy says, one girl baby,
and he grabs his own breasts, one boy baby,
and he grabs his own crotch sign.
Hawk says, see, he has son and daughter.
He says, I find out, by the time we got the ice palace,
we knew what the score was on the ice hockey game
he was listening to.
Hawk knew everything because he was fearless talking to this Russian man on the other hand
My husband and I are in our room were saying things as we were picking up
Every tchotchke in the room and looking for the the bugs that were
Were you being bugged for real? Oh, yeah, we were saying oh, I just love Russia
Don't you and and we were winking at each other didn't we have a great dinner last night meanwhile?
We were looking under the bed,
looking at the sofa, it was scary.
And when we would leave our room and come back,
they made it obvious they'd been through our room.
Wow, geez.
It was scary.
Gilbert, I'm impressed by your research.
Ha ha ha ha ha.
Ha ha ha ha.
And we were filming us walking along outside in Leningrad,
and people just kept passing by.
We had a camera crew.
And we were dressed differently.
And I said to our guide one day, whose name was Vladimir,
but they pronounce it Vladimir.
I said, Vladimir, why aren't people
stopping in America if you're filming?
And people stop and watch.
He says, aren't they interested? He says says it is not that they are not interested it is
that they are not allowed to be interested they must not stop whoa what
you all live this way Wow I couldn't live here. Your career has taken you everywhere.
Yeah.
What a bizarre adventure.
And Gilbert, where did you find that tidbit?
Did Shuck call you?
Who?
Did Shuck, John Shuck call you?
No.
Sally, John wrote, John sent me an email and said,
don't forget to ask her some of the people,
about some of the people she dated.
Oh!
I think he meant Elvis.
Pat McCormick was a surprise bonus.
Yeah.
I dated some unusual people, Andy Williams.
And...
And...
How about that?
Gail, since Sally's impressed
by your Carol O'Connor impression, do you
and Sally want to take us out on a couple of bars of the theme song?
What do you think?
Okay.
Sheed away Glenn Miller plays.
Songs that make the hit parade.
Guys like us, we had it made.
Those were the days.
And you knew when you were thin.
Girls were girls and men were men.
Mr. We Could Use a Man Like Herbert Hoover again.
Didn't need no welfare state.
Everybody pulled his weight.
She are old but sound and great.
Those were the day! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha somewhere and do an evening with Gilbert Godfrey and Sally Struthers and we could tell stories come on Gilbert come on you can't refuse that offer only if you do most of it and I have two lines we will return to Gilbert Gottfried's amazing colossal podcast, but first a word from our sponsor.
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We'd love to talk business.
Sally, you are a sport.
This is a great episode.
We'll probably cut it into two parts
because there's so much gold here.
Oh, well, I'd be flattered.
And we could talk to you for hours and hours and hours.
Well, anytime you need me back, because everyone else
has said no.
Ha ha ha ha ha.
And you know, another thing that was different about you,
every single actress who's worked with Elvis
will say, they'll give the answer oh yeah women were throwing themselves
at him but no I didn't do anything with Elvis.
Oh yeah.
I was such bullshit.
I did.
Sally's an open book.
Yeah.
I'm telling you this when he started down the slippery slope of drugs And we would stay up till the Sun was coming up
And then it was time to go to sleep and then he would have to take something to sleep
They were called placidills. They were big
Maroon looking pills and then he'd say one for me, and then he'd say one for you, and he put it in my mouth
Wow yeah
Sally you got to write a memoir. I know, I really do. You really, really do.
Or a one-woman show with, maybe Gilbert can come on and be a little comic release.
I would love that.
I have a one-woman show that I've trotted out a few times.
It's called Life is Short and So Am I.
Love it.
I love it.
Thank you for the decades of entertainment on behalf of all of our listeners.
Thank you so much. Thank you, Frank. Thank you, Gilbert. Thank you, Land. Aristotle.
Thank you. Thank you, Land and Aristotle.
I thought, what? I'm supposed to get to the sound studio, call from my car and ask for
someone named Land, and I get Land on the phone and then Land says, I'm sending Aristotle
out to get you. But I thought he said, Aristotleol. I'm dealing with Land and Aerosol.
Land is very impressed that you played Dolly Levy.
Oh yeah. Yeah, I loved doing that. I did the Hello Dolly Tour. I loved it. I was the oldest
one on the tour. I was the only one that never missed a show.
You think Gilbert could play, jokes aside, he talked about Willie Lohman before, do you
think Gilbert could play a dramatic role?
Absolutely, and he would blow everyone away because when you have the gift of being funny,
which Gilbert I know was born with and so was I, inside are the deepest feelings and
maybe more drama
than most people have been through.
And when you tap into that, you are heartbreaking.
Jeez.
How about that?
Yeah.
How about that, Gilbert?
Wow.
Gilbert, the bar has been set.
Jeez.
I still say you should do the gin game with Sally
or love letters.
Oh my God, love letters. Oh
My god, yes Oh, I'm gonna call you every week and beg now, you know, you don't have to learn anything Gilbert
It's all read you get to read it. Oh, that's one good thing to an audience and and could I be off every other show?
And could I be off every other show? Hahahaha!
Sally, it was lovely to meet you.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
It was a great evening.
And a gift for us, really.
Our listeners will go crazy.
They'll love this one.
It was a pleasure to meet your beautiful wife.
I heard your kids in the background.
I'm remembering when my 42 year old daughter was 12 and 13 and those were fun times enjoy your
kids while they're young because when they get older they won't speak to you
you know I'm not sure they speak to him now. Yes, they know better.
So this has been Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast with my co-host Frank Santopadre. And we've been talking to the terrific Sally Struthers. Listen and hear that grass harmony growing.
Look at that crowd up ahead.
Pardon me if my old spirit is showing.
All of those lights over there
seem to be telling me where I'm going.
When the whistles blow and the cymbals crash
And the sparklers light the sky
I'm gonna raise the roof, I'm gonna carry on
Give me an old trombone, give me an old baton
The gala parade passes by I'm gonna raise the roof, I'm gonna carry on, Give me an old trombone, give it an open talk Before the parade passes by