Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast - Mini #191: Collecting TV Treasures with James Comisar, Part 2

Episode Date: November 22, 2018

This week: The Flying Fickle Finger of Fate! Superman works up a sweat! The true story behind Jeannie's bottle! Gilbert disses"Night Gallery"! And James rescues Carnac's turban! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Call Connex Ontario. 1-866-531-2600. 19 and over and physically present in Ontario. Eligibility restrictions apply. See casino.draftkings.com for details. Please play responsibly. Previously on Gilbert and Frank's Amazing Colossal Obsessions. What else do you have from Batman as long as we're on the subject?

Because I don't want to lose that thread. Okay, Batman. You have a Redler Frank Gorshin's costume? So, propstore.com We're having an auction On December 1st And The Bat Shield

Is going to be In the auction How cool So in the In the mid 60's They had one hand prop And that was it And if you broke it

They glued it back together And there was one Bat Shield used In the first and second season It says Bat Shield Right across Sure The center I'm familiar with it It's as good as it can get The colors are vibrant There's no cracks Shield used in the first and second season. It says Bat Shield right across the center.

Sure. I'm familiar with it. It's as good as it can get. The colors are vibrant. There's no cracks. We're thinking four to six hundred thousand. Wow. I'm working three jobs, Gilbert, and I can't afford a Bat Shield. Can I afford a Batarang, James? And now, part two with Hollywood memorabilia collector James Commissar. What's the first piece, and I'm sure you've been asked this question, but we're full of cliches here. What's the first piece that really meant a lot to you?

So the first piece I ever bought was, it was just accidentally. As I went, it was raining, I was supposed to go to the beach. There was some thing written up in the newspaper, some auction that was taking place at the Wilshire E. Bell Theater. And so I went in, and there were hundreds and hundreds of lots, all film stuff, and almost the very last lot were two bumper cards from The Tonight Show. Oh, I used to love those. More to come cards, yeah.

So those were hand-painted by a guy named Don Locke at NBC. They were just brilliant pieces of art. There was two in one lot, and I waited all day just to get those. And I think the pair of them were like $200, including tax. And I thought, something's wrong here. All this film stuff is selling, but no one cares about the TV. So a light went off in my head that you know a fat kid like me who grew up watching all these shows who loved all these characters i guess i gotta go out

and find them and thankfully we have gilbert were you on that were you on the tonight show did you ever sit on the couch not not with carson i've been on a bunch of times with leno but never with carson so so he was a very interesting guy. You know, when I heard that he was going off the air, I mean, it was shocking to me and horrifying. So I started a letter-writing campaign to him. His nephew there, Jeff Sotzing, was the producer. Helen Sanders ran his company.

I wrote letters to every one of them saying, let me save the set, let me save the Carnac Turban. Please, please. And nobody responded. Finally, maybe a month before the show went off the air, Helen Sanders called me back. And she said, just wait. You know, it's very chaotic. Just wait.

And like a few months later, she said, do you still want the Carnac outfit? Oh, boy. Wow. And she said, it's like in mr carson's closet under the tennis rackets he took it home it's just in his closet he was not a nostalgic guy and did i still want it and so she took me over to his house and he opened the door and he was holding it and i had a good talk with him for about an hour or so super humble great, great guy. And, you know, one of the things that I really worry about, guys,

is in 10 years, is Johnny Carson going to be invisible? Or do people remember that brand? Yeah, that's something we run into here is that people don't know who these, you know,

people don't know who Bob Hope is. It's shocking. Oh, God. I know, it's shocking. I work with them. We had somebody over our house

who we were talking to him and saying, we asked him if he knew who David Letterman was. Who was this person? Someone from Bosnia? Who did you have at the house? Yeah, so it just shows, you know, forget about knowing who Clark Gable was. He didn't know who David Letterman was. It's crazy.

We've been putting together this great auction at propstore.com and I'm working with a really talented team, but they're all millennials. And we'd sit there while we're laying out the catalog and we'd talk about shows and nobody knew Johnny Carson, nobody knows Archie Bunker,

nobody knows Maude, nobody knows any of these characters. So what I worry about is I'm saving these pieces because they're historic and they deserve to be collected, but I got a family to feed. If you hold all this stuff beyond the sell-by

date, in 10 years from now, is anybody going to care about these shows? Justin Hoffman said one time that he he had to speak somewhere and he stood up and he said does anybody remember or has heard of the film the graduate no one knew it and he goes have you ever heard of a film called midnight cowboy and none of us knew that it was well it's part of why we do this show, James, you know, is to keep this stuff alive. It means something to us.

It should and it's amazing how quickly these icons are forgotten and I think it depends on the family. Like when Mr. Carson passed away, his nephew Jeff Sotzing has a lot to do with the estate. And I said, whatever you need, man, you want me to tour the desk around the country, the Carnac Turb, and just let me know whatever I can do

to keep Mr. Carson's legacy alive. And their response was, nah, we're not going to really be doing any of that. We have some, you know, CDs available. And if people want to check us out online, that'll be fine. So no desire to perpetuate the legacy, and that's problematic. Of course. Unless the family or the estate, I mean, unless they get humping on it,

these names disappear quickly. And getting back to, well, getting back to Citizen Kane, those shakers, those, I don't know what you call them, those snow. Oh, the snow globes. Yeah. Snow globe. Snow cone. Yeah.

Snow globe. Globes. Yeah, snow cone. Exactly. Snow cone would melt. Yeah. Snow globe. Yeah.

Yeah. It's, everybody wants this stuff now, Gilbert. All these things you're mentioning, I mean, would be very valuable, are very historic, are touchstone objects from our shared history. But now I fear that I get calls from guys who are like business managers, investment brokers, and they're calling me and they say, what if we had a million dollars to spend? My client has a strip center and he already has a Picasso. And we want to slot in something for about a million bucks. We want it to go up about 8% to 10% a year.

And these are just now assets to a lot of people. It's along the top tier. A lot of people are speculators. So that kind of takes the fun out of it. kind of... Kind of takes the fun out of it. It's sad. It takes the fun out of it. But, you know, those are the guys who can spend five or six or seven million dollars on one piece. I'm going to run through a couple of these quickly.

The Clayton Moore's Lone Ranger costume. George Burns' hairpiece. Do you have George Burns' hairpiece? I do, and I have his glasses. So George was, you know, a little bit prudent, shall we say. He was of that era. And so wherever he went, he would have two El Producto Queens cigars in his pocket to hand out. And those are like, you know, the shittiest product on earth.

I mean, you know, I think they were two for a dollar in George's lifetime. And somebody once asked him, well, why are you handing those out? And he would say, because they're free. He got them for free. Unbelievable. That's what he would hand out. George Reeves, you have the muscle shirt that George Reeves wore under the Superman leotard. This guy schwitzt.

For his work, he wore this very thick rubber uh torso and then on top of it he was essentially wearing a woolen sweater that the top that he wore was all made out of wool and it was it was hard work and you probably know that early on in the series when he was flying around they flew him over the sound stage you know 15 20 feet in the air until they dropped him the wire broke and he smacked into the ground and george reeves was like fuck this i'm done i'm never going in the air again so the special effects guy sy simonson created a pan that he would essentially lay on on the floor of the soundstage and they would rock him back and

forth and then they would incorporate that into like a very early green screen image and that's how if you watch now you'll see that you you'll see the outline of this big metal thing under his costume and that's that's kind of what he did but he was a george reeves was a very good guy you know at the end of every season he would cut the s off the superman tunic and he would send it to sick kids who rode in. That's great. That's wonderful. Yep. So when I got the top, and it took me like 10 years to find the S to go back on the top because they were all taken off by George and taken away.

So tell us again, if people go to the sale, the auction on December 1st, they're going to find this stuff. Almost everything we're talking about. A lot of these pieces. So this was my thinking. I've started talking about a museum 30 years ago, and I frankly thought by now it would be done. Who wouldn't come to see these pieces? But Hollywood has been a little skeptical and slow to respond. So I thought, you know what? this is my 30th year doing this.

I'm going to release some of these pieces back to the fans. They have never been ambiguous about these pieces, the shows, the character, the stuff. They've always loved it. So even though I have an amazing fine art climate humidity controlled warehouse, it's still a warehouse. I want to get some of these pieces out and let the fans enjoy it uh while there's still people on earth who remember these brands in these shows so i feel i feel like it's my duty to let some of them go i mean i have thousands of pieces and i think

there's 400 in the sale but every piece in that prop store sale uh i personally picked out and i have great stories like uh howard stern's fart man your old pal so here's a classy piece for you gilbert here's a classy piece you're gonna love this so he he decided in in the early 90s that he was going to fly over the mtv video awards audience as fart man and his secret superhero power was gas. So the back of the costume is rare. His ass is hanging out of this thing. His stomach is hanging out the front. It's airbrushed to look like a sort of a urine yellow color.

But it's a beautiful piece of art. It was made by Ted Schell, who made a lot of Michael Jackson's costumes. He created Ronald McDonald's costume. This thing cost $10,000 to make in 1992, and it's just a sculptural piece of art. But here comes the problem. So part of our business is we loan and sometimes rent pieces to existing museums across the country. And I have personally pitched many times, hey, you guys, we have Howard Stern's Fartman costume. It's amazing.

He's got such a big fan base. This is going to be the greatest thing for you. But the people who select what goes on view in a museum are these 80-year-old blue-hair Republicans, and getting them to display Howard's bare-ass costume proved to be difficult, gentlemen. So that's like $4,000 to $6,000. It cost $10,000 to make 20 years ago.

I mean, I hope that finds a great home. I hope it goes to a home that somebody will really appreciate that even for Howard, that as brave as he is, what a courageous performance to get in that costume and do his thing. Well, how much are the soaps

under Gilbert's bed worth? What kind of soap? Are we talking about pump soap? Oh, I have soaps under Gilbert's bed worth? What kind of soap? Are we talking about pump soap? Oh, I have soaps from TWA. He'll sign them. This is 40 years of hotel soap, buddy. Dara's nodding. You get a part with any hotel towels?

Oh, I was thinking with I Dream of Jeannie, there was the regular-sized bottle, and then there would be like a giant bottle when she was inside. You're absolutely right. That's exactly right. So Barbara would have this half-cut bottle, and she'd sit on the couch, and she'd do her thing when she was supposed to be in the bottle. So let me tell you the story about the genie bottle that the the you know hand-sized bottle so the show was the pilot was shot in 1964 in december and so one of the producers got this fancy booze bottle it was a 1964 jim beam christmas decanter and it it had this sort of cool shape. And they said, screw it, paint it.

And that was the bottle. It was a 1964 Jim Beam booze bottle that was under that paint job. Wow. That's pretty cool. I've seen. So there's a lot of history. You were on a show that I worked on, Personal FX at the FX Network years ago. You remember this?

Okay. All right. Do I remember it? That was the first. Many years ago. I'm going to right do i remember it that was the first it many years ago the name of the guy who did it i was i was you know i know it because i was on the same lot this was in my days of writing comedy one of the first jobs i had was writing questions for bachelorettes on the all-new datingating Game. And it was on the same lot, Sunset Gower. I'm sitting across the street from that studio right now.

Who did you write for in those days? Joan Rivers? The late Danny Gans? Oh, Danny Gans. I spent so many evenings in his kitchen. He was a lovely guy. He lived in La Cunada out here in Southern California. Smart, funny, super talented guy know he wanted to be in baseball and he was in the minor leagues and he was on his way up he injured himself and he was hospitalized and while he was in bed

he started to entertain himself and his dad he started doing little impressions and it turns out the guy was great so I was writing um I think he got my name from Joan Rivers at the time, and he wanted to punch up his act. You know, he was talented, but not necessarily a joke writer. So this was a very conservative religious man, extremely conservative. So I'd give him a joke, you know, a joke about, you know, a sexy joke. And he'd go, that's funny, can't't use it and then i'd do a joke about a gay couple oh that's great people would love that nope and we'd go through the whole list

and he would use nothing because he it was against his religious beliefs but he was a lovely guy i started out with joan rivers she was very interesting she was a a lovely lady let me tell you a little jewish story gilbert so right out of high school i knew i was funny i wanted to write jokes i wanted to write for joan rivers so i had a buddy of mine brad grunberg very well-known character actor heavy set guy he went to western costume he rented a chef's outfit i went to junior's delicatessen on pico and westwood and i said I want you to make me the biggest two matzo balls you can possibly make. So they spent all day making it and they

came up with one that was somewhere between a grapefruit and a basketball. And my buddy ran it over to Joan Rivers and the note said, from a new writer with the biggest balls in the business. And the note said, from a new writer with the biggest balls in the business. And she thought it was funny. And she invited me over to her taping. And I started writing for her. And she had a very interesting way of hiring writers. So she'd say, give me 20 jokes about Heidi Abramowitz, the tramp. I'm going to my high school reunion.

Give me 20 jokes. So you'd write 20 jokes. She'd buy two of them 15 each and then she'd use all 20 in her i know i know something of this so that's what and then howie he was on your show recently wasn't he howie mandel he's the best he's a great guy i wrote i did some writing for him and so there was a cbs special we were writing for him and we'd write a bunch of stuff. Wendy Liebman is a great stand-up. She was writing on that show and no matter what you put on the

cards for Howie, no matter what it was, as soon as he got on stage, he'd go to the person in the front row and say, where you from? And he would do 45 minutes on everything, which he was so brilliant at. But yeah, so I started, it's being a fat kid, watching TV had to be funny

so I didn't get my ass kicked every day in school. From that, I became a joke writer. I started walking around the lots, looking through the costume department. And it led you to this new career. And now I'm here with Gilbert Gottfried. We will return to Gilbert Gottfried's amazing colossal podcast after this.

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Eligibility restrictions apply. See casino.draftkings.com for details. Please play responsibly. This episode is brought to you by FX's The Bear on Disney+. In Season 3, Carmi and his crew are aiming for the ultimate restaurant accolade, a Michelin star. With Golden Globe and Emmy wins, the show starring Jeremy Allen White, Io Debrey, and Maddie Matheson is ready to heat up screens once again. All new episodes of FX's The Bear are streaming June 27, only on Disney+. Hey, Gilbert, what do you have from your career?

Do you do the roasts? Do you save any of your clothing? Nothing. Do you have a preserve? Nothing. He has about 600 t-shirts from radio appearances. Free t-shirts. Right? Dara's nodding.

Has he saved anything from Aladdin or Beverly Hills Cop? Do you have anything, Gil? Dara's nodding you do. Oh, let's see. The parrot sculpture. But that's not from the movie, is it? No. Yeah, he's looking for authenticated stuff from the films.

What, do you have your Aladdin script with your notes in it? No. Shit, that would be great. For me to write down notes? That would be called preparation. I bet he has some scripts, James, from certain things. What do you think, Gilbert? What do you think, 50 years from now, what are we going to be talking about?

As far as Gilbert Gottfried, what do you think yourilbert what do you think 50 years from now what are we going to be talking about as far as gilbert godfrey what do you think your legacy is going to be uh that uh you know some starlet died in a party i wish it'll be like fatty arbuckle like no one knows how she actually died, but the rumor is that. What do you got from the honeymooners, James, as we wind down? Thank you for asking. Well, how about Ralph Cramden's bus driving jacket? Excellent. Good, cool.

I like it. So the reason this survived and it's in beautiful condition is, you know, Jackie Gleason was a big boy. And so that costume went back to rental stock, but not too many people had a 52-inch chest. So it never rented out. It was never dry clean, and it's in beautiful condition. But what I wanted to remind you guys about, especially you, Frank,

I know you're a little bit of a collector. A little bit. A little bit. I'm not your class. It's okay. This prop store auction, propstore.com. Let me just tell you some of the craziness we have.

We have Adam West's bat shield, the only one ever made in this sale. We have Frank Gorshin's Riddler costume. Not just his costume, the one he wore in the first scene of the first episode when we're introduced to him. Hey, diddle diddle. And the question marks are handwritten on with a marker. That's wild. It's unbelievable. What do you got that I can afford, James?

What can I get for 500 bucks? 500 bucks? I'll autograph a catalog. Great. Does that sound good? Hey, but I know where you can get a hotel soap collection for in-the-price rooms. Tell people how they can get there. So, propstore.com.

The sale is on December 1st. It's all lives online. Whether you want something from the Sopranos or whether you like the Twilight Zone. You have Laura Palmer's casket from Twin Peaks. Oh, my God. Fascinating. Who currently owns that little man that chased Karen Black around? Oh, the Trilogy of Terror model. I would like to know who that person is. It's not me. I can tell you that. that little man that chased uh karen black oh the trilogy of terror models

i would like to know who that person is it's not me i can tell you that you asked for the strangest stuff gilbert you know did you watch night gallery we were just talking about how bad the show it was it was a piece of shit night gallery we okay we call it a period piece we call it a period piece we don't call it a piece of shit but i say night gallery if you want to learn everything that was wrong with 70s tv just watch an episode of night but there are a handful of really good ones i must say the first step the first season was good second not so good. Third season was just a wild piece of shit because the studios had control of the cut, and they wanted to intercut episodes,

and it was just a clusterfuck at the end, a tremendous embarrassment. But I got news for you. We have a couple of those Night Gallery original paintings in the sale. I mean, those are good for $10,000, $15,000 each. Wow. See, those, I imagine imagine would be worth some. Yeah.

You have the grave from the Roddy McDowell episode from the pilot? That's the one to get. No. Oh, man. That would be $25,000 to $50,000. On Night Gallery, they would do these blackouts that were kind of like out of laughing. And they did about 20. All those little vignettes yeah yeah and a guy would be dressed as dracula and you'd even as a kid i'd go okay he we're gonna find out

he's in a blood bank that'll be the punch line the guy liked night. Don't pee on his cornflakes. That was a piece of shit, Joe. I don't want to talk to you anymore. Let's cut to the chase, James. Don't fuck yourself. Don't fuck yourself. Do you have a fickle finger of fate? Oh.

Yeah. Oh, now Gilbert's back in. He's back in. He's a fan again. What would you like? Yeah, so flying fickle finger of fate. Those were amazing. Every week, somebody in the What would you like? Yes. So Flying Fickle Finger of Fate. Those were amazing. Every week, somebody in the news would get one of those.

You know, there are quite a few of those around. Those are probably $1,000 to $2,000 each. Do you have a bikini bottom that Goldie Hawn would wear? Thanks for keeping it classy. Thanks, Gil. I wish I did. I wish I did. Me too,, Gil. I wish I did. I wish I did. Me too, Ari.

I keep telling you. If you could have, Gilbert, if you could have one piece from television, one single artifact, costume, prop, set, vehicle, what would it be? Ooh. God, let's see. Would it be something from Twilight Zone? Yeah, Twilight Zone would sure be good. What would it be? For me, it would be, from Twilight Zone, it, Twilight Zone would sure be good. What would it be? For me, it would be from Twilight Zone,

it would be the To Serve Man cookbook. That would be the piece to get. Oh, excellent. Or how about that little fortune-telling machine from the William Shatner episode with the little devil head? Or what about Burgess Meredith's glasses that break at the end? Oh, yeah. Any of the above, my friend.

See, none of it. None of it's ever surfaced except this one piece that's coming up at propstore.com. none of it. None of it's ever surfaced except this one piece that's coming up at propstore.com. That's it. What about you, Frank? Favorite show, favorite piece?

Green Hornet. Nice. My friend Greg Pair is here, our Twitter master for the show, and he's got some cool stuff. He's got some

Green Hornet stuff. Anything from that show? Green Hornet is hard to get stuff. Only one season. Sorry? Didn't last. It was very short-lived but it's there's a strong fan base for it um not too many pieces have survived you know if you got one of

the masks of course that would be the i'd kill great piece um the car is sold once or twice um that's the saying the the uh the hornet sting the the uh the gun that used to come out like an antenna, or the mask, or any of that stuff. Any of that stuff. Anything superhero, science fiction genre, that's the gold standard. That stuff sells for more than anything because these guys, these geeks like us, who grew up to invent Google or some great technology who are now worth $200 billion. Those are the guys who go after those pieces at auction. Hang on a second.

We're getting a question from our Twitter guy. What was that, Greg? The radio. It's a great question. So I saw Russell Johnson a couple years before his death, and I said, where's the radio? And he says, it's in my living room. And I said, well, i'd like it to be in my living room would you like to sell it and so uh he he's now gone yeah i'm sure the radio is still with him um i find that i have a lot of clients

who are celebrities and when you're dealing with a client who's a celebrity and there's that one great piece that represents their whole career a genie bottle, the professor's radio, something like that. They usually have a very high idea of what they think it's worth that might be well in advance of the art market value so it's usually pretty hard to get

something like that out of a performer. He probably thought it was worth $100,000 when it was probably worth $4,000 to $6,000. So tell us again, James. December 1st, they can go to propstore.com propstore.com and find some of these goodies.

If you're a little flush. Hey, I'm on Facebook, James Commissar. Send me a message. I'm happy to answer any question about any piece or just geek out over any of these shows. Jeff, what do you have, Jeff? Anything? Does Jeff Abraham, who's sitting behind you, have anything? Jeff, we didn't mean to wake you.

Sorry, he's on eBay right now. So they're asking you, what do you have in your collection? I just bought Jerry Lewis's King of Comedy trademark glasses. There you go, Gilbert. That's a good one. That's a good one. That's a good one. Does anyone have any of Jerry Lewis's actual toothpastes that he wore like the Nutty Professor or anything?

I have his Nutty Professor pants, Professor Kelp's pants. I don't have the glasses. Oh, that's good. That's something. That's something. Let me ask James something, Jeff. What about the prop glasses from the jerk that's uh movie stuff yeah mid 70s not your specialty no i absolutely i'm a world expert

in authenticating motion picture stuff um that film is not remembered as one of the great films of all time i mean if you watch it now it's a little hard to get through, so that's a little soft, but if you had Steve Martin's white suit from his appearance on Saturday Night Live, I'm in for $25,000, and I know Mike Lacey at the Comedy Magic Club, he'd probably spend $50,000 for it. About that. What is a Batarang going for? One that was used on the show. Batarang, okay, so Robin was usually seen carrying a Batarang. Those were made out of metal.

They made very few of them. I would imagine if you had one in pretty good shape, the paint was still on it. You could somehow prove that it was from that era and used on the show. I got to think $25,000 to $50,000. Wow. Wow. Too rich for my blood. But I will go and I will look at the stuff that

you have because i'm absolutely fascinated by this as gilbert is and we should thank you too for fighting the good fight and trying to get this museum built all of these years and don't give up and i'm never i'm never giving up and you'll never be back on this show until you're ready to admit that night gallery was a piece of shit until next time gilbert we've been talking to the boy what the person robin leach called the boy wonder of collecting james commissar god bless you both james this was a thrill jeff thanks for setting this up oh our pleasure okay pleasure. Okay, guys. Thank you, guys. Cheers. Appreciate it. Colossal Obsessions.