Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast - GGACP Rewind: 46. Joan Kramer & David Heeley

Episode Date: June 25, 2026

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with my co-host Frank Santo Padre. Our guests today have written, produced, and directed 17 documentaries for PBS, ABC News, Turner Entertainment, and various film studios, taking viewers into the lives and homes of dozens of Hollywood legends, including Fred Astaire, Humphrey Bogart, Henry Fonda, Catherine Hepburn, Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward and Jimmy Stewart and Spencer Tracy to name just a few. In the process, they've worked with people like Jane Fonda, Richard Dreyfus, Johnny Carson, Olivia de Havilland, Audrey Hepburn, and Frank Sinatra.

They've won numerous Emmy Awards and set the gold standard for every televised biocan. of the last 40 years. They're also revered for their body of work and so respected in the industry, I can't for the life of me figure out why they agreed to do this show. Welcome to the authors of the new book in The Company of Legends, Joan Kramer and David Healy. You're talking about us? What an intro? I don't think we can live up to this. Yeah, well, it's an intro slash obituary. Found dead.

In there late to a ho-home. That's not funny. You do know Dick Cavett holds the record of the only talk show host to ever have a guy die. Oh, yes. The health food guy. The guy that wrote health food book. Yeah, yes. He told us about it.

Killed over. Yeah. I would think that hurt the shells of that book. Well, you know what happened? I'll tell you the story if you have the time. He arrived at the studio and the makeup artist, a woman named Toy Russell, who was Dick's makeup artist and everybody else's, led him into the makeup room and said, you know, you look fabulous. And she said to me later, you know, I know faces. I've been doing people's faces for a long time.

And this guy looked great. I didn't know how old he was. So he sat down in my makeup chair and I said to him, you know, you don't need a lot. you just need a little powder to take off the shine. And he said, you know the secret of my success? I'm 77 years old. She said, what's the secret of your success? I eat nothing but twigs, leaves, bark.

In the meantime, she says she's pushing her potato chips and her Coke down the counter. And he said, I eat nothing but natural things that you can find outside. And she said, really? And she led him out to the stage. And he goes on camera. tape segment one, and Dick says, you know, without the real commercial rolled in, we'll be right back with J.J. Rodale. And they went, you know, a two-second break and then up came the camera because they'll roll the commercial in later. And he starts talking to J.J. Rodale again. And J.J. Rodale went. Thank God I wasn't there that day. And Dick said, am I boring you? No answer.

the way, the wife was in the audience. Okay? And Dick said, hello, and he leaned over and poked him and the body fell on the floor. Well, you know, to say the least, it was the one and only time, it's certainly in my days there, that they ever stopped tape

and cleared the audience. They taped no matter what, except this. Well, they called the fire department, which was across the street from the little theater where we were taping, and the stage was ramped. And so the fire department came with a stretcher up the ramp through the audience. The wife is hysterical, of course, sitting there. And they, in such a

melee, they put the body on the stretcher and went straight down the ramp. They forgot to strap the body on the stretcher. It rolled off onto the floor. In the meantime, Dick had disappeared backstage, no cell phones at that time. He was overheard on a payphone making an appointment for a complete physical with his doctor. Oh, nice time. So some good came out of it. Unbelievable. Thank God my mother used to go to tapings. Thank God she wasn't there to see a body roll on the floor.

He told us the story. It's scary. It really is. Does it match my story? Oh, yeah, pretty much. Now, there was another, like, in the movie on Golden Pond, where Henry and Jane Fonda play appropriately enough father and daughter, she's a woman trying to come to terms with her emotional. emotionally aloof father who has no love or affection for his children. And judging by your book, that sounds like it could be a home movie.

There were certain reflections of the truth in that. I think making the movie was a catharsis for Jane because she was able to say things as a character to her father that she couldn't say in real life. and Kate was with her moral support. Kate would stand just behind the camera offstage, basically egging Jane on, giving her the strength to continue with some of these extremely difficult scenes.

With her fist, you can do it. Really? You can do it. Go! Because Jane was, she said it was a waking up in the morning wanting to throw up kind of experience on the day she had to do those scenes. And the other thing is that in the script

she was required to do a backflip into the water. And her intention was to have a stand into it, obviously. And then she, and talking to Kate, she realized that Kate would not approve of that. And she learned to do a backflip, to prove to Kate that she could actually do it. And that's what we see in the movie. It's really Jane doing it. Because Kate admitted to her that she could do a back flip. She herself could do a backflip.

And Jane thought, I'll be damned if I'm not going to do this backflip. Somehow they'd gone 45 years, both of them in Hollywood, Henry Fonda and Catherine Hepburn, without meeting. And what did Catherine Hepburn say upon meeting him? And she say something like... Well, it's about time. And didn't she give him Spencer Tracy's hat? The first day of filming, he told us, she had something in her hand all crunched up and he couldn't tell what it was. And she said, here, this was Spencer's favorite hat.

And he said, you know, this beautiful, brown, crushable feather. felt hat. And he said, I collapsed. He started to cry. And he wore it in the first scene of the film. And he said, after the scene, I thought she wanted me to just have it as wardrobe. And he tried to give it back to her. And she said, but it's yours.

I want you to have it. And he had it. And he propped it on the side of a bench in his backyard. And we shot it. It's in the book. Now, there was a story that hit Frank. and I very hard. And that was that he was so so unloving to his children, Henry Fonda, that what did Peter Fonda

used to do as a child? Well, first of all, let me just say that Henry Fonda, you know, we're quite close to Shirley Fonda, Henry's widow, still. And Shirley made it very clear. from the time that she knew Henry, which was the longest marriage he ever had. Henry had two complicated children by his first wife. Jane is not uncomplicated. She's a wonderful lady, and we adore her.

And very vulnerable, by the way. She's not a tough, broad, as some people think. But Peter is complicated, and so is Jane. Is that Henry's fault? I don't know. She had a mother who committed suicide. You know, their mother committed suicide. I mean, I don't know how much of aloof and unloving Henry Fonda truly was.

There are pictures of him with him with the kids crawling over his shoulders and as little kids, etc. However, the answer to your question is, long-winded, Peter told me on the phone in my first conversation with him that he used to open his father's dresser drawers and touch his pajamas and his socks just to feel closer to him. and he told me at that point that he was writing a book called Don't Tell Dad, which wasn't published for about five years after we did the show, but he did publish it. And I suddenly realized I'm talking to a grown man who's basically, I mean, I had to pinch myself to remember I'm not talking to a little kid. Not that he sounded like a little kid, but the emotions were still looking for his father.

Still looking for approval and love from his father. When he told me that, I mean, I was very. Number one, I was touched that he would share that with me. And number two, I really had to stop and remember that Peter was at the time, 50-something years old when he was talking about this. This happened because when we did the show, Jane, it was, this is the time when Ted Turner and Jane Fonda were engaged. And Ted, in a way, gave Jane an engagement gift, which was a show about her father, which was going to go on TNT,

and she was going to host it. So when we met, and then they called us and asked if we'd produce the show. So when we met Jane, she said, I'm going to contact everybody for you. She contacted Shirley to introduce us to Shirley, and she contacted Peter to introduce us to Peter. And that's when Joan called Peter and got this wonderful story about the pajamas in the drawer. But Shirley, we had met actually a number of years earlier when we interviewed Henry in connection with a show we were doing about Catherine Hepburn, and they just finished on Golden Pond. And Shirley wouldn't let us into the house.

She did not want to film crew in the house. Really? And frankly, I totally understand. I've taken film crews into houses, and I can understand somebody saying, I don't want a film crew in my house. So our first meeting with Shirley was she was somewhat distant. And when we actually met her again as a result of Jane introducing us, when we were doing the show on Henry, we met her in a restaurant in New York.

And she was very polite, very pleasant, but we sensed a little remove, a certain remoteness from her. We eventually met her again in the house in Bel Air, where she and Henry had lived. And we met because we were going to go through some memorabilia. She found stuff for us. And what it was going to be like a half hour or maybe the most an now meeting, went way late into the evening. We ordered pizza and she was rummaging, going down to the basement,

pulling up photographs and bringing up film. David and she were running up and down stairs while I sat there looking through it all. And then the next morning she called Joan and said, I found more, you've got to come back, I found more. But what she said was, I'm really sorry. I felt I was somewhat remote.

She said, I wasn't ready to deal with talking about Henry yet. It's still too close to. to me. So too difficult for it. And she had never looked through the stuff that she was showing us from the basement before. Interesting. So it was very emotional and cathartic at the same time. And didn't she give you some

lithographs? Yep. That's a gift? We're very close to Shirley. We're very close to Shirley. We've gone from this remote. Henry was an incredible. He was an incredible artist. Needlepoint and painter and sketch, black and white sketches. Yeah, the lithographs are in the book, I should say.

One of the lithographs includes the hat that Kate gave. That's a thought in the book. Yes. Now, one thing in the book that, you know, me and Frank Bing through Stooges fans hit us in particular is that Jimmy Stewart, was he like taking lessons or influenced by Ted Healy? What was the story he told down about Ted Healy? It was something about respecting the audience, never talking down on the audience. Ted Healy was a stand-in for him, I think, at one point.

very early on in the 30s. Because for those who don't know, it originally, Ted Healy was a vaudeville performer, and it was Ted Healy and his three Stooges until they branched off on their own. I didn't even know that. We're trying to wrap our minds around Ted Healy and Jimmy Stewart. It's so incongruous. Ted Healy was basically Moe before Moe took over. Like he would slap them.

That's right. The Stooges went through many incarnations, didn't they? Yeah. Well, Ted Healy apparently either was a stand-in or something at MGM when Jimmy started making movies. And they became good friends. And he, Jimmy Stewart told us that that was the best advice he was ever given. Never treat your audience as customers. Treat them as your partners.

And he said he's never forgotten that. And another thing about Jimmy Stewart that seems to be common with people who've been through World War II is he actually was a hero. I mean, he wasn't one of those guys, you know, in down south station. He didn't just sell war buttons. Yeah. He wasn't just having his picture taken in front of a plane. He was on bombing missions. The lead pilot on over 25 bombing missions over Germany. It was very hard to find film of him at that time because he avoided the cameras. we did find one piece of him talking to camera, and you can see how tired he is. You can see he's drained of energy because they were up all hours and those those were very draining.

He already had his squadron. And we had on the Jimmy Stewart show, I don't know if either of you have ever seen it. I've seen it. But we had on the show his superior in the United States Air Corps, it was called, before the Air Force. Ramsey Potts, his name was. James Stewart, A Wonderful Life, the show was called. We should. Thank you.

Tell our listeners. And Ramsey Potts told us that he was always very, you know, very easy to talk to, but he also, you know, he had a hard, he had a hard sense of discipline. And he could be very tough when he had to. And he led, as Ramsey Potts said, over 25 bombing missions as the lead pilot, and there would somehow sometimes be hundreds of, hundreds of planes behind him. I mean, it was a huge battalion going after these.

By the way, the reason we had to get Ramsey parts is because we'd heard that Jimmy himself wouldn't talk about those. Yeah, what happened when you asked him to talk about it? There's something in the book about it. Well, we had to talk. We had to deal with his war experience. Otherwise, it was not going to be a full portrait of Jimmy Stewart because most people didn't know about this. And it was a very important aspect of who Jimmy Stewart really is, or was, I should say.

But we'd been warned that he didn't like to talk about it. Nevertheless, when we sat down to do the interview, and I did the first off-camera interview with him before we put him with Johnny Carson, who was the host of the show, I decided I had to go for it. And I said to him, Mr. Stewart, could you describe for a... as a typical bombing mission over Germany. No. And being the brave fellow that I was, I moved right on to the next question. It's very peculiar.

You got out while getting was good. Yeah, but you see, and I don't, I'm sorry to interrupt you. How dare you talk. Yes, I'm not known for that. My guests aren't allowed to speak. I had called around to ask people to talk to me about Jimmy Stewart, not necessarily for quoting them, or to be on camera. But I just wanted a full picture of the man that had this image of aw shucks and gee whiz.

And it's, you know, it's a wonderful life. All the caper heroes. All the caper heroes. So among the people I called was a producer-director named Hal Cantor. Hal Cantor had produced, and I don't, I think he directed like seven episodes. He directed some of the episodes of something called The Jimmy Stewart Show in 1971. Am I right about that, David? Whatever.

Close. And I said to him, you know, I know that he's got this reputation. And please believe me, Mr. Cantor, I'm not looking for negatives. I'm not. But I'd like a full picture of this man who has this awes' image. and he said, let me tell you about Jimmy Stewart. I'll give you a little piece of advice. Because I said to him, Mr. Candor, you worked with him, you know, on a weekly series.

It's not quite the same thing as us dealing with Jimmy Stewart maybe five times during the course of the making of this program. I said, you had him every single day for months, right? And long hours. He said to me, let me give you a piece of advice. He said, first of all, Jimmy Stewart has lived in the same house. for over 40 years in Hollywood when people tear down houses and build houses faster than we change socks.

He's been married to the same woman for over 40 years without a hint of scandal. He is nice, he is polite, and he's a gentleman. Don't mess with him. He didn't say mess. He used the F word. I see. I see.

Joe won't say it. I said, excuse me? And he said, never forget a few things. The man knows what he wants. He knows what's right for him, and he knows how to dig in his heels when he has to. He has, again, been a Republican in a town where all of his friends, including Henry Fonda, his best friend, are Democrats, for the most part. He does not back down. He retired as a brigadier general from the military after 27 years, and he never forget that he flew over 25 bombing missions as the lead pilot.

My best advice to you is don't try pulling wool over his eyes. Don't mess with him, and you'll get along fine. And we did. We didn't pull wool. No, I wouldn't imagine. On possibly the other side of the World War II battles, Errol, Farrell, Flynn, who, you know, was the big swashbuggler, handsome Earl Flynn, who I remember hearing a quote, much the same way they called John Barrymore, the great profile, that they had nicknamed Earl Flynn the great Jew hater. Oh, I've never heard that.

Yeah. That, that, I had read that somewhere. There were a lot of rumors about Earl Flynn, and I didn't hear that one. And they said that he, there's some people who even suspected him of being a not-seller. Oh, that's where it came from. That's where it came from. He, um, let me see if I can remember the story now. He, in his early days, before anybody knew who Errol Flynn was, met with, what's the Geisne? What's the guys name? What's the guys? Castro? No, no, no, no. Who's the, oh, I'm sorry. The German, there's a German, there was a German person who later was thought to be a spot. Yes. Double agent, so to speak.

Interesting. And Errol Flynn knew this man, and I can't think of his name for the life of me. So it rubbed off. If this guy was a spy, then Errol Flynn must be. We'll have our researchers outside. Look it up. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

It just went out of my head. But he also was accused because Errol Flynn was hired as a journalist to cover the Spanish-American War for a while. he also knew Fidel Castro and everybody put it all together and came up with, okay, he's a spy. And it was proven that he wasn't. Makes good copy. It makes good copy.

It makes good copy. But there were so many rumors that went around about Errol Flynn. We tried to see if any of them were true. Most of the rumors were not. Right. By the way, can I just debunk, tell you a rumor that we did debunk? Please do. Jimmy Stewart was never draft was never,

Jimmy Stewart one more time. Jimmy Stewart never enlisted, which was everybody's impression in the United States military. That's what the publicity. Because he was such a patriot. It was easy to believe that. He was drafted. And he told us umpteen times, I was drafted. Read my lips.

I say it's the only lottery I ever won. And by the way, when we, when Johnny Carson was reading the narration script for that, he came across that point and he said, this is wrong. You've got this wrong. He was. He enlisted. He enlisted. And he said, no, no, no, no. We've checked and he said, please, please, call, call Jimmy again.

I want to make sure we'll get this right. Joan called Jimmy. He said, read my lips. It was the only lottery I ever won. I was drafted. I will tell you again. And Carson originally didn't want to narrate. The story about Johnny Carson is rather interesting.

When we finally persuaded Jimmy Stewart to let us do a show about him, We had to come up with a host. And strangely, we hadn't thought much about it. We'd had having so much trouble getting Jimmy to say yes, yes, yes. But we were actually on our way to a meeting at MGM. We were co-producing the show with them. And I said to Joan, Joan, we haven't got a host yet. Who are going to use as the host?

We're in the car. We were literally in the car on the way to the meeting. We knew this question was going to come up. Gene Arthur didn't cross your mind at all. I love Jean Arthur. My lover, too. She made several pictures with him. But it probably retired by that, well retired by that point.

Gene Arthur was hard to find anyway. She was a, she becomes so big of a recluse. So I said, but, you know, I said to Joan, look, he's so wonderful with Johnny Carson on this. And I should, maybe we should ask Johnny Carson. And she said, look, let's say Johnny Carson. They'll love the idea, right? So we go into the meeting and said, we're thinking of going after Johnny Carson. And we said to ourselves, how the hell are we going after Johnny Carson?

Joan got to work. Joan, you spoke to Jimmy's publicist. Jimmy's publicist was a lovely man who quickly became a friend named John Strauss, who represented everybody in Hollywood at one point, but he was Jimmy's press agent for something like 46 years, 45 years. John Strauss, I said to him, John, you know, we're thinking of Johnny Carson, but, you know, he never does anything outside of occasionally the Oscar telecast as the host. Johnny was on the Tonight Show.

He knew he did that well. he didn't want to do anything else. Yeah, there's a piece in the book about him telling you guys why he always turned down movie roles. Exactly. Turn down the king of comedy. Yep. Yeah. The talk show host part.

He knew who he was and he knew what he did well and he knew for a man who obviously must have had a ego and I'm sure people fed it. He knew exactly what to stay away from because he knew what he couldn't do and a lot of people don't know what they can't do. He said the moment I do a movie, the critics are going to chew me up and they'll be right. Well, he was fun in cameos and television shows. He played himself on the Mary Tyler Moore show. That was fun. But that's him. But that's being him.

He's being Johnny Cos. That's true. That's true. And also, anyway, so I, John Strauss said to me, the only person I could think of for you to try getting to Jimmy, to Johnny quickly, is David Tebitt. David Tebitt was largely responsible for Johnny getting the Tonight Show when Jack Parr quit. Because David Tebett was the head talent person at NBC for years.

So he gave me the telephone number of David Tebitt. How he knew David Tebitt, I never asked. But anyway, I called David Tebitt, who couldn't have been nicer? And he said, send me a letter and I'll hand it to Johnny. So we sent a FedEx letter to California. And three days later, David Tebitt called me and said, don't tell him I told you. He asked me to give you his home number, which was a clue.

Don't tell him, I told you, but he's going to do this for you. But let him tell you himself. He wants to tell you himself. So I took the number and I dialed the phone. And I have to say, you know, I grew up watching Johnny Carson. You know, I'd sit in front of a television doing homework watching Johnny Carson in Chicago. Yeah, we all did. Yeah.

And I, so, you know, when he, he answered the phone himself. He and Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward all answer phones by themselves. And Catherine Hepburn. And Catherine Hepburn. Interesting. So he answered the phone. and I must say it was a, you know, I don't consider myself a sycophant when it comes to stars, because I've dealt with them so many years.

But this was a high talking to Johnny Carson. And I said to him, I told him who it was. And I said, David Tebitt asked me to give you a call. And I didn't say, because I didn't want to betray Dave Tebitt. And he said to me, listen, I'll be happy to do this program with you if you're sure it would be okay with Jim. I said, trust me. It'll be fine. By the way, they were both like that.

They both wanted to be sure that the other one was okay. They were constantly asking if the other was comfortable doing something for them. They really, they were very close and very caring about each other. Two Midwesterners. Yes. And also, but it was real. I mean, that wasn't just because Jimmy appeared on the Tonight Show and they were terrific reading him reading his funny poem. What you saw on The Tonight Show was real.

That was real. They really adored each other. And they were like a mutual admiration. They drove me crazy because on the day that we shot both of them at Universal for the full day on the lot. You know, David will tell you in a minute about his concerns for Johnny. He wasn't concerned for Jimmy, but this is Johnny out of his milieu, right? Johnny's used to a live audience. One take and it's over.

Here, he had to sit around and the crew had to move locations and he had to wait and he had to do it over again. And he kept saying, David, I know you need it again. Okay. Okay, I'll do it again. And Jimmy would sit by when he had to do something alone and say, that's great, John, great John. And Johnny would blow his lines and say, do you like that one, Jim? Anyway, but Johnny, what was I talking about? You were talking about Johnny saying yes.

Oh, yes. Only to then change his mind. So Johnny said yes. Could I just interrupt for a second? Getting a big star like that so easily. It was very, very rare. Usually you're chasing all around the moon looking for this contact. This was almost unheard of to get somebody to say yes, through one contact like this.

So we were on the moon. We were over the moon with this. This is wonderful. And he said, when you're coming to California again, we tell him, he said, okay, come to my house in Malibu, let's talk about it. Point Doom. He had a beautiful new house. Literally, 100. 80 degree view of the water.

Wasn't quite finished. He was still building tennis courts, which he showed us. He was a great tennis fan. He took us out and he was so proud of these tennis courts. He told us that the next door neighbors, which probably is about three miles away, but the next door neighbors had two emus. You know how big an emu is? He said, every so often, I see the emos in the distance because they're big.

Anyway, so then he led us downstairs to his den on a winding staircase. By the way, the landing of the staircase had a full-size figure of Stan Laurel. Oh, I love that. Full style, because he was a great fan of Stan Laurels. And so we got downstairs and he... And his weights, by the way. And his weights. It was a little kind of gym down there.

Yeah. Very cozy, not terribly big. And he said, you know, I've been thinking about this. You just did a show with Hathrin Hepburn hosting a program about Spencer Tracy. And, you know, she. She not only knew him, but she worked with him in films. I never worked with Jim other than when he comes on my show, but we're friends. I think I'm the wrong guy to host this show.

It was too easy, wasn't it? Yeah, I threw a monkey wrench in there. Well, David and I, I mean, you could have cut through the room's silence. David and I, we couldn't believe it. And neither of us opened our mouth. I mean, we couldn't stand it. And we said, what? Why? What? And he said, you know, the guy you need is Carrie Grant. Now, if Johnny seldom did anything on television, Carrie Grant never did anything on television. And I mean never. But you have to admit, from producer's point of view, the idea that Carrie Grant would host our program would be the coup of all time. Not that Johnny wasn't a coup, but Carrie Grant never appeared on television, ever.

And hadn't he turned you down already to that point, Carrie Grant? You'd approached him about doing a show about him. Right. And didn't he say, if I do it for you, I have to do it for everybody? Yeah, but if Johnny was going to ask him, who knew what he was going to say? Of course. Worth a shot. So Johnny said, that's when I found a voice somehow.

And I said, Johnny, look, Catherine Hepburn hosting a show about Spencer Tracy is one thing. It's unique. We're not trying to replicate that. We can't replicate that. We're not going to ask Gloria Stewart to host a show on her husband, It doesn't make any sense. I said, what you represent is every man who was lucky enough in the end to become his friend. And he nodded and he said, let me ask Carrie and see what he says.

Well, David and I left that house. We came on a high and we left feeling like death. Talk about going from one extreme to the other. We were really up when we drove driving back. We were in the depths of depression because I said to John, look, Carrie Grant, Yeah, it's a great idea. But if we get him, he's going to overshadow Jimmy Stewart. The show's about Jimmy Stewart.

People are going to be watching Carrie Grant. What the hell do we do with this situation? And Joan said, and I have a feeling that if Carrie Grant says, no, Johnny's going to try and find somebody else. He's trying to get out of this. I mean, just could go on for months and we thought we were in heaven because we got somebody, Johnny, in three days. He could run around for months looking for one person after another, checking with us whether we think it's a good idea and then getting a no and starting with the next person. It looked like he was trying to find a way out. It's a nice way out.

But fast forward to the next morning. Next morning, I'm in my hotel room in Los Angeles in Beverly Hills. By the way, none of us slept very well. I can imagine. At all. On top of which, we weren't sure Johnny may not have been testing us because, after all, we didn't know Johnny. The first time we met him, he could very well have been thinking, let's see what they say if I try somebody really big. Because Johnny didn't think of himself that way as a movie star.

And so I thought, I said to David, David, do you think he's testing us? I mean, maybe he doesn't want us to leap at the idea of Carrie Grant. But he was serious. He said, let me try him. So the next morning my phone rings in the hotel room. Well, he said, I've called Carrie. And the housekeeper told me he's out of town doing that one-man show he does at colleges about his life and career. He won't come on my show or anybody else's show and we're friends, but he goes to colleges and talks about his life and career.

And so he's going to be away for several weeks, and I guess so. I guess you're stuck with me. Well, as you probably can gather, I'm seldom speechless. And I had to stop for a minute, and I said, Johnny, you have no idea how happy I am to be so stuck. Fast forward two and a half weeks. We're back in New York, and it's Thanksgiving weekend. And the Sunday after that, Thanksgiving that year, at about 6 o'clock at night, there was a news bullet and flash all over the full-screen television.

Carrie Grant dead in Davenport, Iowa. He died on the way to one of those appearances at one of the colleges. Next morning, Monday. Phone rings 10 o'clock in the morning, which is 7 a.m. in L.A. I was going to call Johnny, but he beat me to it. I didn't want to wake him up. I didn't know what time he gets up in the morning. He called me.

I said, Johnny, I'm so sorry I was going to call you. I'm so sorry. After all, we were fans, but we didn't really know Carrie Grant. You were a friend. I feel terrible just as a fan, let alone what you must be feeling. I'm so sorry. And he said to me, Joan, I hope you're sitting down. I said, why?

And he said, because I have to tell you what I wanted to say when you just answered the phone. I said, okay. and he said, I wanted to say, I asked Carrie Grant to host your show, and he dropped dead. Another great actor. And I think he was like one of the earliest of a different type of acting, and that was John Garfield. Another guy you made it a documentary about. We did. With the help of his family members.

Yes, Julie, Julie, and it's just like the Shirley Founders, Julie is a great friend. We're still very close to Julie. We see her frequently. Julie apparently had suggested to TCM that they might want to do a show about her father because they owned all his early movies. And TCM then called us and said, would you be interested? We said, wow, it sounds like a great story.

This John Garfield story is a wonderful story. Terrible story. And sad. It's a terrible story. It's a wonderful story in terms of, of it has all the ingredients of a fictional story. It's somebody who started as a street kid, became a great movie star, and then died in his prime. He was hounded.

39 years old. Yes, shame. Many people say he was hounded to death. Well, didn't Lee Grant say it in the documentary? She does say it. Yes. We have people in a documentary who are very outspoken about this. He was hounded not because he was a communist, but because he knew people who were communists.

and because his wife had at one point mean a member of the Communist Party, and the House and American Activities Committee basically wouldn't let him go. They were at a point in their life where people were losing interest in what they were doing. They needed a big movie star to bring themselves back into prominence, and they chose John Garfield. Because what Julie told us is that after they grilled him for hours and hours after day after day with the FBI following him, They would all ask, all the members of the Hewak Committee would ask at the end of the day to take a picture with him.

So here they are in the process of ruining his life, but they want a photo-up. Literally. I mean. Yeah. It tells you what kind of people they were. It's hypocrisy, of course. But I guess we're used to hypocrisy life. And this was just to tell our audience, this was during the communist scare in the 50s of Senator Joe McCarthy.

Yeah, McCarthy was the face of the various committees that were basically trying to make a name for themselves by convincing the American public that there were communists in their closet and the communists in the government and we had to get rid of them all. I had a friend. I went to film school and I had a friend of a screenwriter named Arno Dousseau. I don't know if you know the name. He was named by Kazan. Yes, yes. And had to go to Mexico and work on beat pictures. People's lives were ruined by the politicians who were trying to put themselves in the limelight. And those who decided to name names. And what was interesting is that some people named names such as Odette's Jerome Robbins, they were in the end forgiven because they capitulated and apologized. Kazan never did.

Interesting. Because Anne in his autobiography actually said, I did the right thing. I had to name names because there was a serious communist scare. He never, never apologized. And when we did the program with Joanne Woodward about the group theater, she had a rap party after the production, which took, by the way, five and a half years, but that's another story. she had a rap party

and she invited everybody who participated in the program and she called me up and she said what am I going to do about Gaj which was Cazan's nickname for a long time Gaj I said what do you mean?

She said I can't invite him to the party even though he's in the show nobody will come because every one of the participants such as Phoebe Brandon Karnovsky and Ruth Nelson and Eunice Stoddard and Margaret Barker

were all named by him from their days together in the group theater. And they said to us, we'll participate in the show, but I cannot be in the same room with Kazan. Never. And this is 40 years later, right? Some of the 40 years. And so I said, Joanne, I don't know what to tell you.

She said, you know what? Let me call you back in 10 minutes. I know how to handle this. And she called back in 10 minutes. And she says, I simply called Gaj. And I said to him, look, I'm giving a rap party for the show we've done about the group theater. And I can't ask you to it. She said, however, you and Paul and I have dinner next week, Paul Newman, her husband.

And that was the end of the problem. She says, when she called me back, she says, he's not dumb. I didn't have to explain why I can't invite him. Such a shame. A man of such talent. Yeah. And the films he made. Yes, just brilliant, absolutely brilliant.

Face in the crowd. And yet, and yet here's this fatal personality floor. I read a quote where the yes, Paul Newman, his opinion on Ilya Kazan, being a friendly witness and he said, it's very easy now to say what you would have done back then. That's what Catherine Hepburn told us, too. I asked her. You did. I said to her, because she had Kazan's autobiography on her side table when we went to lunch one day. And I said, what do you think of that book? And I said, let me ask you something. Would you have ever, could you ever see yourself as having done what he did back then? And she said, you know something? I will never.

judge somebody until I have stood in their shoes. I had a family, if they had come after me, you know, she made speeches wearing a pure red dress at the time deliberately on behalf of Roosevelt. And she said, if they had come after me and my career went, you know, in the dumps as a result, I had a family, I had a house, I had siblings, I had, I didn't have to support, a family and a wife or husband or whatever. She said he did. I don't know what I would have done if I were in his shoes at the time. I said to her, I do.

And she just smiled. She wouldn't have named names. No way. You knew her well. No way. You knew the kind of person she was. So they were after John Garfield. And then what happened then?

Well, he, again, what really happened, we'll never know because we don't have that insight. He had had a heart problem. Rheumatic fever. Romantic fever from his late teens, early 20s, and it had always bothered him. Was it just coincidence? Well, the stress of it couldn't have helped. Of Klesland. Because he had stopped working.

Well, he couldn't. Now he was blacklisted. Yeah, yeah. He could not find work. He couldn't make any. He made two films himself and his own company. He couldn't get any other work at all. He went back to the stage as a result and did work on the stage and work in television.

But he could not get any more movie work. Interestingly enough, he was still friends with Kazan, who directed him many times. To the end. You know, I can't answer that. Oh, interesting. I remember when Kazan was given that Oscar a few years ago. Oh, there was a polarizing that was. Uprise.

Oh, very. Oh, very, yeah. Some people would stand and applaud and other people remain seated. Oh, the shot of the audience was very revealing. The audience shot was what was the big. It really divided people. Absolutely. We will return to Gilbert Gottfried's amazing colossal podcast after this.

Now, I have to get a little salacious. There's always the rumor that. It took him this long. John Garfrey. That John Garfield. died in a hotel room with a young blonde? It's not all that far off the truth. What?

It's not all that far off the truth. It wasn't a hotel room. He was in Gramercy Park, I think. It was a woman whose name was Iris Whitney, who I believe was an interior decorator. The story we heard was that their intimate relationship had come to an end. But they remained friends, and they went up. out to dinner and he ate all the wrong foods. You know, when you're upset and stressed, you start giving yourself comfort food. Well, he had a rheumatic heart and he's hounded and followed and,

you know, phones were following him in addition to, oh, absolutely. The FBI was following him and the phones were tapped. The phones were tapped. And he ate all the wrong foods and he said he wasn't feeling well. And she said, come back and, you know, you can take a rest in my place in Gramercy Park. And she put him to bed and she went in to check on him in the morning and he was dead. By the way, talking about the FBI following him, many, many years later, his wallet turned up. In his wallet was the number of the FBI agent that followed him. Unbelievable. Oh, my God.

Underrated actor, John Garfield. Oh, he was quite brilliant. I don't know if you've read that part in the book, but you know who's an incredible movie buff is Richard Dreyfus. Yeah, we should mention that Richard Dreyfus was worked with you guys. was a narrator on the Universal story as well. And he wrote the forward to the book. And wrote the forward to the new book. He dictated it to me on the phone off the top of his head.

We're big fans, Gilbert and I, of Richard Dreyfuss. He's wonderful. He's so funny and so brilliant when it comes to movies. I mean, he can pick out a tiny little element of a movie that you would have never paid attention to. And suddenly he brings that element alive. Can I remind you how we first met him and realized this? when we were doing the show on Jimmy Stewart, we said to Stuart,

can you tell us some of today's actors that you think are good? Worth watching. And on the list was Richard Dreyfus. He only had four, and we went after two and got to. Wow. I'll tell you who the four were, if you want to know. Redford,

Dustin Hoffman, Richard Dreyfus, and Clint Eastwood. And why? Clint Eastwood was on the list, because he hoped that Clint Eastwood would revitalize what he considered a true American art form, which is the movie Western.

And so we went after Clint Eastwood and we went after Richard. We didn't go after Dustin and we didn't go after Redford because in those days, they've gotten better. But we used to see them every how often on a television interview and they weren't great. It was sort of monosolables answers. Oh, yeah. When we got Richard, he was actually making a movie on the Warner's Lot with Barbara Streisand. Called Nuts. Oh, yes.

Where he's the psychiatrist, right. That's right. And he said, look, I'm going to have a break in the afternoon tomorrow. Why don't you come to the lot and we'll do the interview? So we said to him, are there any particular scenes in any of Stuart's movies that we should pay attention to? He described a scene, was it in Mr. Smith? Mr. Smith. A scene in Mr. Smith in such great detail.

That nobody would pay attention to him normally. about how Stewart is handling a hat. Stuart's talking to somebody, but it's what he's doing with that. Oh, he keeps dropping the hat when he's in the scene with. It's a Jean Arthur scene. It's not Jean Arthur. It's another senator's daughter who he's smitten with. You're right.

You're right. And every time she comes in the room, as Richard said, he can't hold his hat in his head. That's right. So he keeps dropping the hat behind him and bending down it. But he never loses eye contact. He said, Richard said, I've tried it in a mirror. It's impossible. I don't know how he did it because it's Cori.

in addition to delivering the lines and keeping the dialogue going. He said, we never in a million years would have used that scene in our show. We did, thanks to Richard. But that's when we realized that Richard really is a movie buff. He knows his movies big time. And it's Jimmy Stewart who named Olmos? Yes. I can't get over what an honor that is to Olmos actors.

Isn't it? So Richard must have been thrilled when you told him that. Oh, he was upset. And Richard became a friend ever since that we asked him to host Universal story, which he ate up and spit out. He just loved that stuff. I mean, here is the history of movies, the history of universal. Wow. That's right now.

That's Gilbert's stuff. Yeah. But let me just say one thing to you. But when Richard, he became a repertory player for us. So when we asked him to appear on the John Garfield for the John Garfield show, he told us. something that I couldn't remember because we didn't use it in the program in any great length. And when we were writing this chapter in the book, I remembered. And I said, David, I've got to ask him what he said about people of dramatic actors who have a wound. And he said, call him.

So I called Richard at home. This is several months ago. I said, Richard, do you remember when you did the John Garfield show for us? You started to tell us about your theory that every dramatic actor in the 30s and 40s has a wound. I said, can you talk to me about that? Because frankly, we have the transcript somewhere, but it's in David. Our office is in David's loft. He has a big loft. And David was having construction work. We couldn't get to anything at that moment. And I needed to know what he had to say. He said, sure. He said, my feeling is that every actor of the 30s and 40s who played in dramatic roles, not necessarily. not comedies. Even now, he says, has an off-stage wound. I said, you mean in real life? When he said off-stage, I thought that's what he meant. He said, no, I mean an off-stage as the character that the audience may

never be told about. For instance, he said, the best example is take a look at Humphrey Bogart's face. The moment you see him in Casablanca, he's got a wound. And you know that before it's explained in the script. So he didn't mean the actor had it in his personal life. He meant it was a device that the actor was using. Do you know what he's doing? Richard is describing to me a method, and Richard is not a method actor. He wasn't trained in the method.

So all the actors of that are. They all have it. So we could look for that. But John Garfield had a wound. He said the best example, he talked to us about gentleman's agreement, you know, in which Garfield has a very small part, but it's a pivotal. part. Oh, what a powerful scene. And he said, you know, and Richard described, he says, you know, a drunk bumps into his chair,

and he's sitting there in full dress uniform because he plays a military officer. And the drunk bumps into his chair with his buddy. And he said to him, sorry, man, sorry. Hey, you know something? I don't like, you know the scene? Yeah. I don't like officers. And Garfield laughs.

And he says, it's funny, I don't like officers either. And the guy says, hmm, what's your name? and Garfield gives him his character's name, which is a Jewish last name. And he said, and I particularly don't like yids. And as Richard said, I was doing the interview and I was as close as I am to this microphone, to him, or maybe this far. And Richard said, he shocked the hell out of me. He said to me, he goes from this lighthearted, easygoing scene, and he's suddenly in that guy's face faster than you can spit. That's the wound.

He said it's usually a wound that has to do with lost love, but sometimes it has to do with racial bigotry. And that's what that wound was in that movie. In acting, I think they teach that actors should create a backstory like that. It's a story the audience doesn't know about. That's exactly what Richard's talking about. This is the back. He says in the backstory, there's going to be a wound somewhere. And he says that may not be in the script, but as an actor, they find it.

It's fascinating. I'm going to look for it now. And you named Universal Studios. Back to Universal. When I was a kid, they had all the old movies on TV, and I watched all of them, the old gangster Bogart and Robinson Cagney and the mute everything. But I fell in love, of course, with the old monster movies. And Universal were the king.

of the monster movies. It was such a joy to do the Universal Story because of that. Also, stage 28 still exists, which is the original Phantom stage, with the Paris Opera boxes there. I think I read that they tore it down

last year. Oh, no. Wasn't it supposedly haunted? Did we mention that somebody say that the original phantom of the opera was shot on stage? We didn't say that. On stage 28? The original 1920 With Lawn Cheney, Phantom of the Opera. That's up, Gilbert Talley.

They built the stage especially for that. What did you find out about the old movies and how they became the Masters of Monster? How long have you got? Because I love this. How long have you got? Universal kind of stumbled into the horror movie thing. Carl Lamley brought a lot of Germans over. Uncle Carl.

Uncle Carl. We're talking about that. Who needed to have his teeth done? Uncle Carl, who had. employed his entire family on the Universal City lot. And it made his son the head of production at one point, which everybody said this is going to be a total disaster, you know. We were going to interview Carla Lemley for the show.

Yes. She just passed away. Yeah, yeah. What was she 100 to her at the time? Right after we wrote her name down. We wrote her name down and she passed away. You know, the irony is that Carl Jr. ended up producing some of the best movies that Universal had.

So they were wrong. Who knows how that happened? But a lot of these German filmmakers that came over in the silent era were experimenting with the sort of impressionistic lighting that was very common in German film. Like Caligari and those kind of things. Those films. And they realized, well, Carl Lemley realized that some of these films are extremely effective when they were telling these rather. supernatural, strange stories, and they kind of stumbled into it. Then they got the rights to Dracula, the stage play Dracula.

And they were not going to use Bella Lugosi. They were going to use Llan Cheney. And Lon Cheney died. So they brought in Lugosi, who'd done the stage play, and, of course, the rest is history. Big break. And I heard that at one point, there was even... a note sent down that said no Legosi. I think you're right.

I think you're right. I think you're right. And that I think Legosi said they considered every single actor in Hollywood, plus Lemley's cousins and nephews and grandchildren. Unbelievable. I mean, all, and apparently he really, there's an article, which I can send you by email that was sent to us about how many people he saved. from the Holocaust. Carl Lemley

did not know that. Wow. By supporting their coming over, sponsoring them coming over. People like Murnau and Germans. I don't know. I can't tell you off the top of my head, but I have the article. It was sent to me by email. Because that was always something that bothered

me, the power that the studios had, and they were mainly Jews, and were they doing anything? He was. Universal had a huge German subsidiary. as well. All the studios were heavily invested in Germany. So there was this tremendous conflict that the heads had.

As you say, all the heads of the studios were Jews. But they had this business interest in Germany. So even though everything was going on there that they could see was pretty dire, they were very conflicted about what to do. By the way, to this day, Richard Dreyfus, as recently as two months ago, he's in Europe at the moment, So I haven't talked to him for a while. You know, what he does is teach civics.

You know, he's teaching civics. He's an Oxford fellow. He went to Oxford for three years, and he teaches civics all over the world. I did know that. A smart actor. I love that. We just talked about him on the previous podcast, the Goodbye Girl, which we both love. Anyway, Richard, Richard was crazy about the story of Carl Lemley and how he gambled the studio and lost it.

On Showboat. On Showboat. That's a wonderful story. And Richard has said to us, every time I talk to him and every time we see him, the two of you should do a series of documentaries. Hold on to your chair. A series of documentaries tracing the entire history of the movie industry. I said, Richard, you're out of your mind.

He says to me. He said to me, he said to me, you're wrong. I said, first of all, we're not qualified to do that. We don't know very much. I mean, we know about the silent era, but I can't claim that I'm an expert on silent film. Joan, you don't know how much you and David know. I said, Richard, how much money do you think this series of yours,

this concept, is going to cost? Do you know how much money studios charge for a film clip these days? We'd get them all for free. I said, really? Who do you know up there? I mean, he's unbelievable. He keeps talking to me about that over and over. and over. I said, Richard, give it up. It's not going to happen. Now, as far as like the famous

Germans, it was, well, Carl Freund. Sure, he directed the mummy, right? Yeah, and the cinematography for Dracula. Yeah, he was the cinematography for Dracula. And brilliant, of course. Kurt Siedomac, who was the screenwriter of all those, you know, the wolfman. Yes, yes, yes, the later one. And, you know, William Wire was a lemely, a lemley relative. We didn't know that, so you told us before. It's good stuff. I mean, I don't know how. I don't know if he's a nephew or if he's a cousin.

I don't know. But Lemley sort of gathered in multiple. This business of hiring members of family sounds crazy, but it actually paid off a few times. And the beginning of Dracula is his granddaughter is the first line. Yes. In Dracula, in the carriage. So Dracula did so well that they realized they had something with monster films? And they just, you know what happened?

They went all in, huh? At the same time, they shot Dracula. They had a night crew. And we interviewed the leading lady of the Spanish version. They did the Spanish version at night with the same costumes, the same sets, and different actors. What we should explain in those days, they didn't take an English language film and dub it. They actually produced separate films for other markets. And because the Spanish market was so big, they would often produce a Spanish language version of exactly the same film.

Same sets. Same actors. Same sets. Same lighting. Incredible. Same script. And just did it the whole thing in Spanish. And we interviewed the leading lady for the Spanish version whose name is Lupita Tovar, who is the mother was the mother of the actress Susan Conner.

And the wife of the agent Paul Conner. I know that name. Wasn't he Billy Wilder's agent? I think he was. Oh, he was a huge agent. Yeah, yeah, I think he was. Lupita Tavar told us that the costumes were often the same, but not hers. She said, in the American version, the costumes were quite, you know, fine.

Demure. And she says, my costume, you know, dip down to there. The neckline really plunged and for the Spanish version. I heard they would pass by each other when the American actors and crew were going home. They would see them, the Spanish chapters come in, say, hey, how are you? You know what, you know, the line we used in our show because we go from, we go from a clip from American Dracula with Bella Lagosia. I am Dracula. And suddenly, we cut to the exact same scene.

The exact same scene with soy Dracula. Soi Dracula. So the line we used for the narration was Richard Dreyf is saying, no, we haven't rewritten. The film. Did they just do a Spanish Frankenstein and a Spanish mummy? Did they do all of this? Don't know about... Because they stopped doing it at a certain point.

I see. I don't know when they stopped, but that's certainly a Spanish Dracula. Which, interesting enough, for people who are technical like me, was in much better shape. Because the British Dracula film, sorry, the English-speaking Dracula film had been used so many times. The negative was beaten up. Whereas the Spanish Dracula film was almost immaculately... And you know what else Richard loved is that show? The people that got away that the studio didn't sign. Tyrone Power.

Universal, you mean. Yeah. Elizabeth Taylor. They all made movies. Betty Davis. Rudolph Valentina. So Carl was not batting a thousand. No, no, no.

He made a few mistakes. And now... So did Carrie Cohn, by the way. He lost Marilyn Monroe. Yeah, well, that was in the book. Now, another one with a sad end in Hollywood is Montgomery Cliff. Also a brilliant actor. Yes.

I'm not an expert on Montgomery Cliff, but you're right. What a tragic story. Get out. Sorry. Okay. We're here by mistake. Since you brought up Harry Cone and you also did the Columbia story, I found this interesting.

Gilbert and I were talking about the famous joke where every Harry Cohn's funeral was so well attended. What is the joke? Red Skelven's. Yeah. Gilbert heard it as as Georgie Jessel. Oh, no. The judge's been attributed

to different people. Redskelton said, give the people, you know, there was a huge turn-out. Red buttons, you mean? Huh? Red buttons or Redskel?

No. Redskel? Give the people what they want and they'll turn up. Not a well-liked man. No. But, you know what we found? And it's in the show. We found home movies.

Our associate producer tracked down one of Harry Cohn's daughter-in-law, daughter's in-law, who had her father-in-law scrapbooks and home movies. And there's Harry Cohn hugging his children with a birthday party for his children. Different side of Harry Cohn. He had a reputation of such a tyrant. He was.

Crude, rude? Yes. We will return to Gilbert Gottfried's amazing colossal podcast, but first a word from our sponsor. And can you explain the story how Catherine Hepburn met Peter O'Toole? You better handle that one, David. Take it, David. Well, this isn't, this isn't, not when they met. Gilbert.

Okay. This was during the line. Why didn't we know this is coming? Of course. We have to know. We'd have to know who your host is. They were making the line in winter. which it was Peter O'Toole's movie

and he'd asked for Catherine Hepburn to star in it with him and she said, make it before I die when she got the script. So they were filming in England and she had arrived but he hadn't met her on the set

and he's in his dressing room and there's a knock on the door and he says come in not knowing you who it is and he's taking a leak into the sink. I wouldn't expect anything last to Peter O'Don. And he told us he had to pretend he wasn't doing that.

It's like the scene in my favorite year where he goes in the ladies' room. By the way, I have to tell you, when we were filming Peter O.2 in England, in London, in his house, the British crew was incensed that you tell that story. Really? Oh, yes. Offended by it. David, who was British, I don't think was incensed. Were you?

Were you incensed? We never asked Kate to tell us that story, by the story. The stories about Hepburn in the book. I mean, everybody knows she was a firebrand and her reputation was well known. I never knew she spat in Joe Mankowicz's face. Oh, my God. That's because... It goes back to Monte Clift.

That's the Monteclift story, yes, that she... When they were making... Suddenly last summer. Monty, I think he'd had an accident not long before and he was actually in very... I think he was leaving a party and it was like right down the hill from the party that he rammed into a tree or something. Yes, yes. He'd had an accident. He'd recovered, but he was in pretty bad shape.

And he was pretty fragile both physically and mentally. And Kate felt that Mancowicz had really treated him badly. Mancoitz was the director of the movie. John Mancores, a director of all about his. as well, yes. Which we almost lived, but it's another story. We'll do a part two down the road. She didn't say anything to Mancow it until the very end.

She did what she thought was her last scene and she went up to Joe and she said, do you need me anymore, Joe? Is that it? He said, no, we don't need you anymore, Kate. We've taken all your scenes now. She spat in his face and walked off and said, that's for the word. way you treated Monty. And they never spoke again. And he had extensive, he had to have his face reconstructed. Yes. I remember hearing a story, Murph Griffin told that a guy, he got a knock on his door. A guy came to Murph Griffin's house and he was standing there and he was looking at a total

stranger. And he goes, you don't know me either. And he walked away and he realized it was Montgomery Cliff to see if anyone recognized him. Can I give you a little corollary, an ending to the Joe Manco? Sure. When we were doing the Spencer Tracy Legacy. What? Corrali. Well. That's a British. That's a British. Corollary? Yes. I just nod in my head and aclocated. She's probably the wrong word anyway. I tend to ask questions, which can get me in trouble.

I just go, oh, I know that. Anyway, there were a couple of people that we felt were important to Spencer Tracy's story, but we weren't going to invite on to the show without getting Kate's permission. And one was Mancovic. And we said, we're thinking that we should talk to Joe Mancovic for the show. And she said, yes, you have to. he was so important in Spencer's life. So Joan, you contacted him, I think, and asked him if he would come and be interviewed.

And he said, does Kate know? And we said, yes. She does know, and she wants you to be interviewed. And when he turned up and he said, you're sure Kate's okay with us, he said, yes, tears started rolling down his cheeks. Wow. And the same thing. Something similar happened with Garcin Canaan, who had. betrayed her trust by taking notes on their all their vacations together with Ruth Gordon and Kate and Spencer.

And he then published a book called Tracy and Hepburn, and she just banned him from her life immediately. And we said to her, we decided we better take the bull by the horn. What do we do about Garson? You got to ask him. Garson and Spencer were really close, and you have to ask him. And Garson wrote some of that great. move it. And so we called

him and the first thing he said was no. And then he called us back, I think. And he said, okay, I'll do it. And then Kate invited him after years. She invited him to have dinner. And she told us that he'd been to dinner

and she said, I'm back in touch with Garson. I'll never trust him because I think he's writing it all down, but we're back in touch. Wow. Tell us some of the Michael Jackson stuff. Gilbert and I were really enjoying this. Yeah, we were laughing about.

The Catherine Hepburn Michael Jackson relationship, which I frankly never understood, but you guys had a front row seat. It goes back to on Golden Pond. It's an on Golden Pond's story, really. And it's a Jane Fonder on Golden Pond's story. Yes. We're sitting in Hepburn's house having lunch, and I saw a book on her side table.

I said, are you reading that book? And she said, no, it was left here by Michael when he came to dinner not long ago. I said, Michael. And she said, oh, yes, Michael Jackson. And she saw the look on David's in my face. You know, the woman hasn't won four Oscars for nothing. I knew she didn't have to play a season. She said, yes.

Does it surprise you that we're friends? And I said, you want to tell me this story? I said, I don't think it's a match made in heaven in my mind, okay? She said, okay, here's what happened. Shall I tell this? Well, I'll tell the beginning. You'll tell you. Okay.

She said we were shooting on Golden Pond. And Jane said to me, I'm going away for the weekend, but I've got a friend that's coming, that's been staying here. And would you mind looking after him for the weekend? And it turned out to say Michael Jackson. And Kate said, what am I, she said to Jane, what am I going to do with this young kid? I don't know. She said, don't worry, he adores you. You'll get on fine together.

So Jane had found Michael a room in an attic of an old house up at Squam Lake where they shot on Golden Pine, New Hampshire. So Saturday comes the weekend and Kate goes to that house and goes upstairs and Michael opens the door and, you know, he talked in this little sweet Konda voice. Miss Hepburn, thank you for coming. Don't you ever do your laundry because everything was all over? He said, well, you see, Ms. Hepburn, somebody usually does that for me. Let's go. Pick up all those clothes. We're going down the street to a laundromat.

This is a scene I find very hard to visualize, but she told us it's true. Catherine Hepburn and Michael Jackson. With a bag full of dirty laundry going into the local laundromat. Into a public laundromat. With a roll of quarters. Can you imagine you're sitting there watching your laundry going around? You're thinking, oh, I'm hypnotized by this. It's not really happening.

Okay. So I said, so what happened next? She said, we went to the laundromat and I taught him how to put the quarters in the machine. And as we're sitting there, she says, people were rather astonished to start with, but then they got used to it and then went about their own business. And she said, as we're watching the clothes tumble around, I said to him, Michael, take off those goddamn sunglasses. I want to see your eyes. Yes. Yes, Ms. Hepburn.

She takes off the glasses. She said, then he came to dinner when he was in town, in New York. And I said, what would you like to eat? And he said, I'm a vegetarian, Ms. Hepburn, all vegetables, please. She says, so Nora, her housekeeper, went out and created this absolutely beautiful dinner with all the colors of fresh vegetables. And when Michael arrived, she said, Michael, which is your favorite vegetable? And he said, cauliflower.

She said, it's the one vegetable we didn't buy. She said, but I was going to let him discover that for himself when he didn't see it on the platter. So she said, and he said to me during that dinner, you know, Ms. Hepburn, I'd like to read some good books. Could you recommend some? She says, so I took, I asked my niece, Kathy Houghton, who was in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner playing her daughter, remember that? Yeah, sure. Kathy Houghton. She said, I asked Kathy to take Michael to Brentonnells or whatever it was at that time.

and he came back, they came back with three huge shopping bags filled with hardcover books. And she said he proudly showed me what they bought. First of all, I want to see Michael Jackson in the store picking out books. Okay, that's another scene that should be in a movie. But anyway, so she says, and he happened to leave that one behind right over there. She says, I'll bet he's never cracked the spine of one of them. So then she said, but the story goes on. She said, he then invited me to one of his concerts at Madison.

I said, did you go? Well, I didn't want to go, but of course, you know, he insisted, please, Ms. Hepburn, please, Ms. Hepburn. So she said, I took Phyllis. Phyllis was her assistant who was older than Hepburn. Phyllis was supposed to look after Hepburn, but Alton was the other way, right? Phyllis used to be Constant Collier's assistant, and when Consent Collier got very sick, she said to Hepburn, take care of Phyllis. So Hepburn adopted Phyllis. Phyllis was a British schoolmarm type.

She was wonderful, by the way. Oh, wonderful. Just a wonderful. Oh, no, no, no, you mustn't do that, Ms. Heddon? Very, very protected. Very, okay. Well, Phyllis and Hepburn. I was afraid of Phyllis.

Not afraid of Kate. I was afraid of Phyllis. Phyllis, two octogenarians and Kate's great niece, Skyler, decided, who 17, decided to attend this concert at Madison Square Garden where Michael arranged third row seats. They walked down the aisle and, you know, people were a little stunned. I mean, even young kids knew who Catherine Hepburn was, even though that was Michael's main audience, right? So they sit in the third row. Catherine Hepburn had no clue that when you go to a rock concert, the main star is not the first person to appear.

She'd know there was an opening act. That's right. So they're sitting there and somebody's carrying on loudly, you know, the decibel of it was enormous. let's get out of here. I can't stand this. He's late. Kate, who was more than on time, she was always early. Always 45 minutes early. You could not give her a call time because she'd show up 45 minutes before that, whatever. So she said, let's get out of here. Skyler said, Aunt Kath. They called her Aunt Kath. Aunt Kath, we can't leave. He knows we're here. Please stick it out.

All right. She says, and on top of which he's not late, this is the opening. act. Well, then why didn't he tell me so we could arrive later? And Skyler said, no, no, no. We had to be in our seats when the concert started. Well, the open act finishes and out comes Michael doing

Michael. Being Michael. Yeah. On stage, which is not the soft-spoken little kid. Yeah, the hand on the grind. He's gyrating and he's pelvic bumping and, okay. Hepburn says,

I'm leaving. He's lewd. I don't ever want to see him again. Poor Skyler, 17, says, Aunt Kath, we can't leave. He's expecting us backstage. That had to be another scene in a movie. Well, they all trapes backstage, troop backstage, and the stage door opens, and in walks Catherine Hepburn,

and Michael comes out to greet her, back in his sweet voice. and she says in a voice that a whole backstage cut. Michael, what the hell was that? You're lewd and you're vulgar. And he said, Miss Hepburn, that's what I do when I perform. Well, don't ever do it again. I love that.

I doubt they, I doubt. Not the best advice. I doubt she ever, ever went to another Jackson concert, but he was smart enough not to take that. Boy, what an odd couple. Well, he loved Elizabeth Taylor, Jane Fonda. But there are photographs with them together. It's a true story.

It's not made up. How did he become friends with Jane Fonda? Because she's the one who introduced. I have no idea. I don't know the answer to that. Somehow they knew each other from Los Angeles. And she invited him to the set. And he liked the idea.

You know, he obviously contacted famous lady stars. Elizabeth Taylor was crazy about him. He used to escort her of her. around town. And apparently he was very sweet with them. And but Catherine Hepburn was in no mood for this craziness. Now, this is a ridiculous story that I'm sure is total bull, but I have to say it anyway. Allegedly, there's a popular story that after September 11th, Michael Jackson panicked and took his two friends, Elizabeth Taylor and Marlon Brando

squeezed into a car together and tried to make a run for it. This is a new one on me. Now, if you told us that early, we'd put it in the book. Who told you that story? I had heard this story a couple of times. Was Brando even around still?

I imagine. I guess he was. And how they could have. have gotten like three feet without a tremendous crowd gathering. Well, Catherine Hepburn walked into a laundromat. What else do you? But speaking of vulgar and lewd, some subjects actually escaped you guys over the years, people you wanted to feature in documentaries. Which vulgarer was people you're talking about? I was referring to Ms. Dietrich, actually, specifically. And there's something in the book about how her response to your you guys approaching her was unprintable. I think that was the word you used.

Well, we, we approached a number of people and she seemed like a prime candidate to do a story about. Fascinating life. Oh my goodness. What a wonderful show. That would have been. By the time she was living in Paris. So we didn't have any direct contact, but we did have an address. So we wrote her letter. John, would you tell us the story, what she said in the? No, David. I'll fill in the blanks.

Okay. I want to hear Joan say it. Thank goodness we're not on television. It's only the Internet, Joan. She wrote back. David has the letter, the original letter. At least she wrote. Yes, she responded.

I have no. What we tried to do is goad her into it by saying, if you don't let us tell your story and you tell it yourself, somebody will do it without... Yeah, you're a public figure anybody can do it. Why don't you tell, let us tell it with you? Affectionately. Yes, we've been very nice about it.

I don't give a damn who tells my story and how. But basically she told us to... Fuck off. German or English? That was an English. Now, Frank and I were talking that Judy Garvey. Garland used to talk to President Kennedy? This is my favorite thing of the book, maybe,

besides Michael and Kate at the laundromat. Oh, you don't like Betty Davis? I loved all of it, but this one really got me. There was a story when we were doing the Judy Garland program with all these shows. You research, research, research, research. And there's a famous authorized book about Judy by Joe Frank. It's called Judy. Called Judy.

Big thick book. And there was a one. wonderful story in it about Judy Golan and President Kennedy. But it was too good, it seemed too good to be true. And told to the author by Judy's daughter, the author Gerald Frank quotes Liza telling him this story. I see. And the chapter in our book is, excuse me, is really about how we went about verifying the story because the story is that. Well, let me, can I just interrupt them one time?

What happened was Lorna was our host. Lorna left Liza's half-sister, Judy's daughter. And I said, Lorna, I've read the Judy biography. And there's a story that Liza tells in the book about your mother calling at the end of a work week when she was doing her live television show. At the end of a work week, she'd pick up the phone in front of Liza and say,

what a week, I think I'll call Jack. And Liza would hear her mother dial the White House and asked to speak to the president. And Lorna said to me, look, I know the story. She said, but just as a general piece of information, let me tell you something. We're a family filled with liars. I said, Lorna, you're hosting this show.

You're not giving me a warm, secure feeling. I don't like that statement at all. She said, I'm telling you the truth. I said, is that the truth? Are you lying now? So she said, I think that story is true, but I wasn't in the house. So it's Liza's story. Well,

Oh, so, so why didn't we call Liza? I don't know. Well, Liza was supposed to do the show. She already stood us up. That's right. Liza stood us up once. You guys have a fun Michael Jackson, Catherine Hepburn kind of chemistry.

No, you know what it's known as? George and Gracie. Everybody talks about us as George and Gracie. And by the way, I've been the victim of his British wit. No, no, no, no. She just misunderstands me. So what was it that actually happened when she would call the White House? Well, the story is that she'd call the White House and Liza heard her chatting with the president.

And then suddenly she'd burst into song and start singing. Sorry. You're missing the big points. We don't have cameras. You can't see me. Can the two of you get your stories straight next time? She would say, Liza would hear her mother say, again, you really want me to do that. Okay, somewhere.

And she'd sing eight bars of over the rainbow into the phone. So President Kennedy would always ask Judy Garland to sing somewhere over there. I love it. So we decided, thanks to Lorna telling me a family filled with liars, I decided we, even though it's an authorized biography, who knows, right? I decided we have to check out. we decided to check out this story because, as you guys know, Judy Garland's life and career was swirled for years with rumors, some of which true and some of which not true, right? We didn't want to perpetuate false rumors in our show if we could help it.

So the mission began. First person I wrote to was Jacqueline Onassis at her apartment on Fifth Avenue. And I asked, on public television stationery, no less, okay? I love your life. You're writing to Jackie Onassis to ask her if this story is true about Judy Carlin singing over the rainbow. Well, Jackie was an editor at Double Day, and she started her life as an inquiring photographer. I mean, she knows what it means to check out a story, and I'm not writing from the National Enquirer. I'm writing from the public television, WNET.

So I told her that there is a story. I did not tell her that it's attributed to Liza Minnelli. I thought that was a bad idea. I just told her that there is a story that Judy Garland used to call the White House and that the president would always never let her off the phone without asking her to sing a little bit of over the rainbow. Could you please confirm for me that the story,

could you tell me whether the story is true or not? And three days later, I get a, call from a woman named Nancy Tuckerman, who used to be the social secretary to Jacqueline Kennedy in the White House years. And she was her assistant to double day at this point. Is this Joan Kramer? Yes. I said, Nancy Tuckerman for Mrs. Onassis. I said, Mrs. Tuckerman, how nice of you. Thank you for calling. I'm replying to your letter that you said to Mrs. Onassis. She wants me to tell you the story is not true. Well, I was stunned. I then said, Mrs. Tuckerman, I think I have to tell you something. The story appears in the only, at that point, the only authorized biography in extant of Judy Garland by Gerald Frank. And it quotes the story comes from and is quoted to the author by Judy's eldest daughter, Liza Minnelli.

You're saying the story is not true. That means Liza's lying not only about a president of the United States. but about her mother. There was a dead silence. And she said, well, if the story comes from Miss Medelli, maybe Jackie just wasn't in the room when the phone calls came in. And as David said to me at the time, you sounded a bit like you're giving a lecture,

which I realized. I said, Mrs. Tuckerman, I had nothing to lose at that point. I said, Mrs. Tuckerman, please forgive me if my facts are wrong. here. But Mrs. Onassis started her to career as an inquiring photographer. She married a senator who became the president of the

United States. Then she married a world statesman and now she's an editor at a big publishing house called Doubleday. I think she knows what it means to check out a story. If she wasn't in the room, shouldn't her answer have been I don't know? Story not true and I don't know or not the same

thing. I said, what did she actually say? Was any part of the story true? Did he not always ask her to sing. She said, to be honest with you, she sent it to me into her office. You sent the letter to her apartment, and she wrote on the top of it, please call Joan Kramer's story not true. I said, Mrs. Tucker, would you do me a favor and ask her if any part of that story is true? Because, frankly, I'm stunned that Liza would make up the entire story. She said, okay, I'll try. Never heard from her again, which I knew what happened. So I told David.

Jenny's your story David You're on your own When Joan does research She's very tenacious Just like Gilbert For this show So David

So David said to me You wrote a book right So David said to me David said to me I think that's the end That's probably not true I said David I'm not giving this up yet

My next call was to Ted Kennedy's office in Washington and I got his press secretary who said, I don't think the senator's going to know the answer to this, but I'll ask him. And he called the press secretary called back and said, the senator does not know. But he recommended that you call Evelyn Lincoln, who was John F. Kennedy's personal secretary in the White House. Here's her number. She lives in Pennsylvania. It's amazing. You followed us to the end of the earth. It's amazing that people actually give you all this information. Oh, absolutely. You want us to wrap. Anyway, so I called Evelyn Lincoln and she said to me, the story is absolutely true.

I said, Mrs. Lincoln, how do you know that? She said, because if anybody called the president that was well known, it had to be put through to me first. And sometimes I was still on the line when I heard him ask her to sing. I said, thank you so much. So I go to David and I said, David, we have one confirmation and one denial, right? I've got to break the tie. it suddenly hit me that in two offices away from me at Channel 13 was the office of Caroline Kennedy who worked for the Metropolitan Museum of Art. You'd think that I would have caught on to that one a little earlier, but I didn't, okay?

So I suddenly thought, Joan, you're really being a dummy. Go talk to Caroline. So I went to Caroline, I said, Caroline, did you ever hear family lore that had Judy Garland calling your father in the White House and asking her to sing over the rainbow? So she said, no, but it's a great story. You're going to use it? Because she knew what we were doing. And I said, I don't know, because I want to confirm the story. I said, I did talk to Evelyn Lincoln at your uncle's suggestion. I didn't tell her about her mother.

I left that part out. I said, I called Evelyn Lincoln, and she told me the story is true. But I really want to know, you know, I thought maybe you might have heard about it, you know, even though you were young. She said, look, I did know Judy Garland and Sid Luft and their families. They used to rent a house in Hyannisport in the summers. And my cousins were their kids' ages. I was too young. But the cousins of mine, my cousins played with their kids more than I knew the kids.

She said, but I know who will know the answer to this? Now, I've got to tell you something that I'm going to, that's not in the book, okay? This is, but you can hear this. I almost made the blunder of all. When I told this story to David, he said, oh, no. I swear to you that memories play games. When I wrote in this chapter about this story, I remember Caroline saying to me, I swear she said, I know who will be able to confirm this story. Call Kenny O'Donnell at the John F. Kennedy Library and tell him I told you to call.

Okay? That's what I wrote down in the original version in the book, okay? Well, to make a long story short, let me finish the actual story, and then I'll tell you what happened that's not in the book, okay? I called the library and I spoke to the person I spoke to. They connected me and he said the story is absolutely true. I said, how do you know? He said, because she used to call at the end of a Friday, we were still in the overall office. And he used to hold the phone away so I could hear her sing.

I said, I love you, thank you. And we used it in the show. It took about three weeks to confirm the story. It takes 15 seconds to show in the program with a clip, right? Okay. That's how long time. Now, fast forward. I write this story for the book, and I said to David, because we said in the first version of the story that Caroline was and still is president of the John F. Kennedy Library and Foundation in Massachusetts.

And I said to David, you know something? I better check her title because she's now the ambassador to Japan. Maybe she's not the president anymore. Well, I started Googling and I fell over a fact that almost made me pass out. Kenneth O'Donnell died seven years before we ever produced this program. Caroline did not tell me to call Kenneth O'Donnell. She told me to call David Powers. If I hadn't gone looking for Caroline's title, we would have published Kenneth O'Donnell and some astute critic would have said Joan Kramer thinks she talks to dead people and worse, that Caroline Kennedy told her to call him.

I'm a Kennedy buff, so I know all those names. Can you believe that I, I mean, that was. So I said to David, from nine. on with a tooth comb. We're checking every iota of this book. Memories are funny. I could swear she told me Kenneth O'Donnell. Fortunately, when it comes to the truth of the stories, we have two memories going on. We have our files and Joan, Joan kept notes. And date books. I have every date that we met for lunch for Catherine.

So we know we're pretty damn close on just about all this stories. That's a lot of research. And we walked around with the camera everywhere, so all the pictures are mainly ours. I wish it had been the trolley song instead. It would have made a better story. Oh, Frank. Don't you think? Clang, clang, clang, went the trolley.

Very good. Thank you. Nice voice. You have another career there. He sings on every show. Does you really do? I mean, that's good. Do you join?

No. No, no. He's quite the same. I thought maybe you'd do harmony. Now, before we wrap up, the worst part, we were just talking about the worst host are the ones that bring it about themselves. So you're going to do that? Yes. Okay.

Have at it. When I was a struggling comic, I was a teenager and I used to work the concessions in the Broadway theaters selling T-shirts and stuff. stuff. And they were doing Matter of Gravity starring Catherine Hepburn and an unknown George Christopher. Christopher Reeves. And we got to know. Catherine Hepburn would come before the audience arrived and talked to us. And she once invited us as I went to Catherine Hepburn's house in Turt. Yeah. And, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, you. And, And she one time gave me a book of James Cagney's autobiography that I still have that she autographed to me. Cagney by Cagney?

Yes. I have it, too. Yeah. I have Cagney's autograph in there. Oh. I love this. So, you want nothing. What's, what?

I'm sorry. She's stepping on my story. Damn it. I thought I would end it with me being the great one here. You are the great one. We're going to do. We are down on our knees now, people can't see it. We're groveling.

And we're bowing our heads. Well, okay. I'm Gilbert Godfrey. This has been Gilbert Gottfried's amazing colossal podcast with my co-host, Frank Santopadre. Coming to you from Nutmeg Post and the courtesy of our friend Frank Vradorosa. With two nut guests. Thank you, Frank. And tonight we've been interviewing Joan Kramer and David Healey.

And we just touched upon just a tiny bit of what you'll find in the book in the Company of Legends. There's so much we didn't get to. Frank Sinatra, drunk at the premiere. Also, could I tell you that Dick Cavett, my former boss and still my friend, has agreed to introduce David and me and an event that we're doing in connection with the book at the New York Public Library on June 4th, which I think is very sweet. Can Gilbert and I come? Yes, please. We'd love to be there.

Can we get lunch out of it? That I can't tell. It's at 6.30. It's not lunch. We loved it, Cabot. He was our first guest on the podcast. He was a great guest. We adore him.

We want to have them back. That's so funny. Oh, David, you know, David's a British wood. David's tried to at one point, you know, barb, trade barbs, he realized. No, I gave up very quickly. He was a joke writer and a comedian. And you used to get the guest for Dick Havitt.

I got an array of. Joan was a talent coordinator on his show. I mean, because his guest, the Dick Havitt show, was always like, wow, these are people you don't find on any other talk show. Not just that. Well, I always say that Dick, Dick's show was not just a talk show. It was a reflection of the times in which we were living. And so therefore, unfortunately, he had a lot of people walk out on him. People like, you know, when he called Lester Maddox a goddamn bigot, out walked, Lester Maddox says, I'm leaving unless you apologize. And Dick said, I'll apologize to anybody that I've called a goddamn bigot who swears to me that they're not. Well, Lester Maddox didn't buy into that. ruse and out he walked, leaving Dick, I told you, we never stopped tape. Dick had a fill time. Lily Tomlin walked out on him. I remember Lily Tomlin walking out. Because, Chad Everett. Brilliant. I was watching. Chad Everett decided that his time wasn't up yet. And he decided to

ask the entire panel, what is your favorite possession? I'll start with myself. My favorite possession is my wife. Lily got up and said Dick invite me back. I'm leaving. I remember that show. And of course, the Norman Mailer Golly Del show, which Dick Dick is that one's legendary. You know, we tried to do a show

a retrospective of Dick's shows and he narrated the little clip reel we put together for us and I mean it's just great stuff Unfortunately, residuals killed Of course

and Wells and Olivier and Betty Davis You know that's the famous show You know the show, right? John Lennon, George Harrison. Everyone. But you remember what happened

with Betty Davis? He turned, you know, he said he knew a straight line when he heard it. And she said, he said to her, how did you handle all those gossip columnists in Hollywood? And she said, you mean Loretta Luella Parsons and had a hopper? And he said, yeah, okay. And she said, you know, I'm a Connecticut Yankee. I never had a problem with somebody asking me a question that I didn't want to answer, and I would have a, some people think they have to answer everything. I used to say, you know, I'd really rather not discuss that. And she said, they usually respected it. And Dick said, I knew a straight line when I heard it. So I said to her, well, Ms. Davis, I think we've kept this on a pretty high level. She said, yes. She says, I wouldn't expect you to say anything that I wouldn't want to

answer, but if you did, I would say I'd rather not discuss that. So he said, well, I'm very glad you feel that way. Betty, when did you lose your virginity? Yes. And once again, Gilbert Gottfried's amazing colossal podcast, I'm Gilbert Gottfried. I'm here with my co-host, Frank Santo Padre at Nutmeg Studios. And we've been talking to Joan Kramer and David Healy, who proved once again, after we ended the show, they still had more stories that are in the book. Yeah, that are in their book in The Company of Legends. And tell us real quick when the book comes out.

Middle of April, April, April 16th is the public. It's a wonderful read. Thank you guys for doing this. Thank you, so much for having. Thank you. Thank you. It was a treat. Thank you.

We had a great time.