Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast - Mini Ep #118: Remembering Bill Dana

Episode Date: June 29, 2017

This week: Byron Glick! "The Las Vegas Show"! Archie Bunker meets Sammy Davis Jr.! Bill's brother composes the "Get Smart" theme! And NASA salutes Jose Jimenez! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

That's the sound of unaged whiskey transforming into Jack Daniel's Tennessee whiskey in Lynchburg, Tennessee. Around 1860, Nearest Green taught Jack Daniel how to filter whiskey through charcoal for a smoother taste, one drop at a time. This is one of many sounds in Tennessee with a story to tell. To hear them in person, plan your trip at tnvacation.com. Tennessee sounds perfect. Hi, I'm Gilbert Gottfried. I'm here with Frank Santopadre. And we're once again recording at Nutmeg with our engineer, Frank Furtarosa.

And this is Gilbert and Frank's Amazing Colossal Obsessions. Gilbert and Frank's Colossal Obsessions. Colossal Obsessions. I liked the week when you said, Amazing Colossal Obsessions. It's a very Calvin Klein commercial. Circa 1990. Paul Rayburn is here. Crack researcher.

Oh, is that what he does? Researcher on crack. Yeah. Well, at least that would be an excuse. And he's wearing a lovely spring shirt, and he's got a haircut, a responsible seasonal haircut. I hate to look unruly on the podcast. You look lovely. You look 12 years younger. You almost said I look delicious.

Those colors become you. Thank you. Yes, you're definitely a spring. Have you been told that? A spring? You're a spring. That's your're definitely a spring. Have you been told that? A spring? You're a spring. That's your season. No, I haven't been told that.

In fact, can you spring out of the earth? So what are we here to talk about? Well, this is one of those sad subjects. Yes. For a while, we wanted to get the great Bill Dana. A long while. Yeah. And it wasn't for a lack of trying, believe us.

And we finally got in touch with him. We were sending emails. And he would send emails back to me and Dara. And it was like he'd send the funniest. What kinds of things did he write? He and his wife would send us the nicest. Here's one. His wife, Evie.

Bill Dana's wife, Evie, wrote in this email, We see that you got Carl, that's Carl Reiner, and Norman, Norman Lear, during their promotion of the documentary. And that is wonderful. Thank you for honoring the classic guys now old in their 90s. I can tell you that Bill will not be doing any interviews until after Gilbert's. Oh, that's nice. I wish it had happened. Yeah. Yeah. It was. And he was like, seemed very enthusiastic. Yeah. We got his information from Cliff Nesteroff. So I want to give Cliff credit for that, for connecting us. And you guys

were going back and forth on email for months. And he'd send us these funny, wild, and like reading the emails, I kept thinking, this guy is going to be a funny interviewer. At sharp at 92. Yes. Yeah, he was. He had like just the weirdest email. And then I started corresponding with Evie on Facebook. I just, I friended, there was a Bill Dana page, and she wrote me back,

and she said, we listen to the podcast. And I said, please tell Bill we want him on immediately and that he's a legend. And she said, oh, I'll go in the other room and tell him right now. I thought it was, you know, we started to think it was it was definitely a foregone conclusion. And I got on the phone with him once and he told me he was a fan. He was familiar with my work, which was great. Oh, God, what a compliment. Bill Dana.

And it's like, well, Bill Dana, most famous, of course, as Jose Jimenez. Jose Jimenez. And nowadays there would be riots in the street. There was protest then. Yeah. Over the character. When did he say he, Paul, he did that character for the, he created that character for the Steve Allen show. That's right.

Yeah, that's right. And I can just run through some of the early career for a minute. Yeah. William, we think Shathmary. Shathmary. He was a Hungarian Jew. Hungarian Jewish descent. No Italian in him as far as I can tell.

No. Sorry about that. Don't think so. That's why I was a fan. Yeah, exactly. We think it's Shathmary. If somebody knows Bill and is a family and wants to correct us. But he did grow up in a Spanish and Italian neighborhood.

So that's throwing you a little bone there. His older brother, Gilbert, do you know what his older brother Irving is famous for? Oh, we do know this. Yes. Dun-da-da-da! He composed the Get Smart theme. Unbelievable, yeah. Well, I don't know.

You'd see his name in the credits. Yeah. Composed the Get Smart theme. That was a great thing. It's a great thing to have on your resume. Yeah, it's unbelievable. So he actually started writing for Don Adams. That was one of his early gigs.

And he invented the Would You Believe? He sure did. Which was a staple of Don Adams. Did you know that Bill Dana had written these things? I did know he created them. Well, Maxwell Smart was an outgrowth of a character from the Bill Dana show. Right. From the House Detective.

I remember that. Yeah, Glick. But today on YouTube, you can find the very first would you believe joke from Get Smart. And so he hit Don Adams says, would you believe? He says, I suffered the Chinese water torture. One drop on the forehead every minute. Would you believe they had 300 gallons of water? And the guy just shakes his head and he says, would you believe a quart?

How about once a day with a glass of water and an eyedropper? It's a triple. Would you believe this entire warehouse is surrounded by a hundred cops with Dobermans? I find that hard to believe. Would you believe 10 security guards and a bloodhound? I don't think so. How about a Boy Scout with rabies? That was the rhythm of them. If you look up the water torture one, guess who is in the scene while he's doing this? Bill Dana. He's in two Get Smart episodes.

Yeah, that's one of the ones. He was an NBC page. Bill Dana. That's how he actually got his career in the business. On the Steve Allen show, they had a man in the street segment. And so he was involved in that. And the thing about his name, and we can't pronounce his name, he told a story, a man in the street segment, and so he was involved in that. And the thing about his name, and we can't pronounce his name, he told a story, I think in the Ed Sullivan show at one point, and he said some woman came up to him and said, well, what's your real name?

And he goes, William Shathmary. She goes, oh, I can see why you changed it to Jimenez. Well, Dana actually was his mother. His mother's name was Dena, D-E-N-A. And that's where he got Bill Dana from. His real name was Bill. And Don Adams was a lifelong friend. He wrote for, you know, people don't think of him as a writer.

He did a lot of comedy writing. Yeah, Bill did. Yeah. Well, he wrote that classic All in the Family episode that we were just talking about outside with Larry Kenney, the Sammy Davis episode. But he wrote for a lot of people. He wrote for Spike Jonze and Don Knotts, and he wrote sitcoms like Chico and the Man, and he wrote for the Smothers Brothers. He was a very prolific comedy writer. You know, there's no way around it.

I remember watching him as Jose Jimenez and I crack up. Uh-huh. Yeah. Sure. I think everybody. And now that was one of those things, though, where it came to that, you know, scary underbelly of show business where it was like the mob got a hold of the tapes of him as Jose Jimenez and I think they got all the money uh Cliff told us a story I think it's Bill Dana where they release an album without his knowledge yeah I think they recorded him yes they recorded him Sullivan they recorded him and

they released a Bill Dana record that he had no knowledge of. Pretty sure it's Bill Dana. We'll double back. We'll double check on that. Yeah, he was on Ed Sullivan and they just put a tape recorder to the TV. Yeah, and as long as we're talking about Cliff, check out Cliff's website, Classic Showbiz, on his blog. He has two very, very lengthy interviews with Bill that are really worth reading where they cover everything. Yeah, that character was created for a skit. I think the first skit for Jose Jimenez is he was an instructor

for department store Santa Claus. And he writes Joe, Joe, Joe on the blackboard teaching them how to do J-O-G. And then he came back as a deep sea diver. And I think the album got released as like, he was like the first man on the moon. Yeah, he was an astronaut. But I mean, the thing that made it funny was he was completely unaware of how he sounded or why people couldn't, you know, he would just march on. I teach Santa how to speak. Yeah.

Well, the interesting thing about the character, he wound up retiring it over time because there were protests. There were people who didn't like it. There were people who misunderstood and thought that he was making fun. He was belittling immigrants and Latinos. And he claimed that he never was, that it was a, you know, it, a sad character. It was a character that was an immigrant trying to assimilate. Yeah. And you were supposed to sympathize with this character, not mock him. And somehow the meaning was lost. His intent was lost. Yeah. And he said he knew it was time to retire the character

when people would walk up to him in the street and say, I love the way you do that dumb Mexican. Oh yeah. And he, and he realized, cause he's a very sensitive guy. I mean, by all accounts, a really beloved guy and didn't, didn't want to be misunderstood. Didn't want the character misunderstood. Um, and he finally read the character's obituary at an event in Los Angeles when he, when he retired him. We will return to Gilbert Gottfried's amazing colossal podcast after this. And now back to the show. And what was happening with us, it's like we were getting the emails that were great.

And then it was like he kept saying he'd do it. And he was really excited to. Yeah, I wish we'd gotten to him sooner. Yeah, and then he had a cancel one time, and then he had a cancel again, and then we knew. Right. And he said he was going to the doctor, and there's a wonderful line that Evie sent to us. We find laughter sustains us. That's nice.

You know, they never – she didn't say – you know, as Frank pointed out, he was 92. So it's not – it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to ask what he died of. But it was – there's a little – it makes you wonder if maybe he was sick. Maybe that's – there was a reason they couldn't do the podcast. Oh, I'm sure he was sick. I mean, there were delays, too, because he was in Nashville, and we were trying to figure out a way to get him to a microphone because we didn't really want to do a phone call because we've come to a point in the show with this show where we prefer not to do phone interviews, and they couldn't figure out Skype, and it was a little bit of a comedy of errors. Now we wish we had the phone call. Well, the irony is had we booked him, had we tried to get him right off the bat,

which, you know, and I keep kicking myself. I just said outside, I was talking to Andrea and Frank and you, and I said that the enemy of this show is the Grim Reaper because we've lost so many people that we've tried to book. I mean, I have a list in my office, so I keep crossing names out. You know, it's become a dark joke on the podcast, on the Listener Society, and Frank wrote something about it yesterday, but it's really true. Another thing with this show is that, and this is another thing that we both kick ourselves about,

And this is another thing that we both kick ourselves about is when we'll see a name of somebody who died recently and we'll go, we didn't even fucking think of this guy. Well, and that's why we appreciate the fans sending names. Look, our list is pretty long. There's a couple hundred names on it. And most times I would say 75% of the time, I see a name posted on Facebook. Hey, how about this guy? How about Henry Silva? Yes, we've thought of Henry Silva.

How about William Daniels? Yes, William Daniels said no thanks. So we've pretty much, you know, we've reached out to a lot of people. Oh, yes. But there are occasionally people that slip through the cracks. And listen, this was when we were working full time. Oh, we were. We were pushing it and pushing it.

And he was truly great. It's funny that there were ones like with Marvin Kaplan. Yeah, that we got in under the wire. Yeah. Yeah. We got in before the door slammed closed because I think he died about two weeks later. It was a little after that, but not much longer. Yeah, we've caught a lot of them.

I mean, we've got a lot. Yeah, we also interviewed people in their 90s three years ago who were still with us, like Roger Corman. Yes. And Larry Storch and Marty Allen. Mad Magazine. Al Jaffe. Al Jaffe. Yeah, but Marty Allen and Larry and Corman were in like our first six months, and they're still going strong.

So you just never know. We didn't know Adam West was going to pass. It's good to mention that because we don't want people to start turning us down because if I even have a conversation with those guys, my health is going to— No, that's just a rumor Frank Verderosa likes to promote on social media. But my wife is smart. She says start with the 98-year-olds. Start working your way backward. Well, my theory has always been, hey, watch the rest.

That's caught on on social media. A great talent, Bill Dana, did a lot of different things. And yes, as you said, Don Adams' character, Maxwell Smart, well, Don Adams started a character on the Bill Dana Show. And he was a house detective named Byron Glick, an inept house detective. And he talked like that.

And that's kind of where, but Dana said that Don Adams was always generous about giving Bill Dana credit. Wow. For writing that character, for inspiring so much of his act um and he did write the nude bomb the get smart get smart okay we don't have to include everything do you remember the bill danis show do you remember who played his boss who played his boss Ooh. Wait, wait, was it John MacGyver? No, it was somebody in that vein, a little thinner.

A little thinner than John MacGyver. Somebody, sort of a skinny, tall, maybe a John MacGyver type. I may stretch a little bit. This is going to kill me. Jonathan Harris from Lost in Space was the boss. Oh, my God. Yeah. Yeah. Bill actually worked with a friend of mine.

He worked with the late Herb Sargent, who was a mentor of mine and a great comedy writer, original Saturday Night Live writer, when he joined the Steve Allen Show. And, of course, we were saying when Bill passed that he's the last of that repertory company. Tom Poston and Louis Nye and Don Knotts. And Pat Harrington we lost. That was another guy we were dying to get. And he slipped through our fingers. And he wrote that wonderful All in the Family episode that we just talked about. Where Sammy, where Archie leaves, or Sammy leaves his briefcase in Archie's cab.

Yes. That's one of the classics. Yeah. Because Archie is sort of out of character. He's actually impressed with Sammy Davis and he's very nice to him. And then, of course, it ends with Sammy Davis posing for a picture and Sammy Davis gives him a kiss on the cheek. It's the quintessential – And Archie is just immobilized.

It's great. It's the perfect all-in-the-family episode. And Archie keeps saying to Edith, don't say anything about his eye. Oh, yeah. And then he says, Mr. Davis, you take cream and sugar in your eye? Worth seeing again. And I remember Archie says to Sammy, he goes, look, I know you had no choice in being colored, but what made you turn Jew? Great stuff.

Great stuff. Yeah. And he, well, he had another person he was friends with forever was Norman Lear. Oh, yeah. Yeah. They went way back. You know, we're lucky. We got Norman. We got Carl Reiner. We got Dick Van Dyke. We got all these people in their 90s. You know, the last time we sat to do a tribute like this, which was not too long ago, was for Adam West. It was last week. Last week. And there's some interesting parallels. I mean, we've got to mention the cameo on Batman.

We talked about Batman and Robin climbing, you know, they would climb up walls and they would tilt the set and all that. Even as like a little kid, every little kid knew what I did. That spatial effect. The Bill Dana bit was he

Batman's climbing up the wall and he opens a window and starts a conversation with Batman. As Jose Jimenez. He's in character when he comes to the window. We better hurry, Batman. Not too fast, Robert. In good bat climbing

as in good driving, one must never sacrifice safety for speed. Right again, Batman. Who are you, citizen? Oh, my name is Jose Jimenez. And who may I ask, are you two nice people climbing down the side of this building when the elevators are available? I'm Batman. And I'm Robin.

I'm the foreman of a jury. We're trying to make up our minds what to do to a terrible, nasty criminal person, you know? Oh. Trying to find out now. Excuse me. Oh, you decided? What?

Oh. Fellas, could you leave the rope? But, you know, the two of them, they're similar because both of those guys were like working actors. I mean, Bill Dana wrote, you know, did a lot of other things. He acted a lot. But I've got, you know, like the filmography and stuff. I don't know. He has 50 credits as an actor.

I don't know how many as director or as writer. He wrote a lot. TV. Plus the albums. I mean, he was just working all the time. Right, right, right. And he did, I think, Golden Girls toward the end of his career. Golden Girls?

Oh, yeah. He would pop up on there. Yeah. A lot of those guys popped up on golden girl that's a show where boy i'll tell you the character character actors that's a little like the love boat oh you go through that roster and it's like oh leslie nielsen her bedelman and you just and you just click them off uh one after the other what are some of those other credits well you know no he retired he retired him and jose jimenez in the early 70s

and i was trying to remember i just found it here that he had in 1988 he briefly brought it back for smothers brothers thing smothers bro what better place to do it right smothers brothers show right and just discuss it and that was the last uh the last time we saw what were some of those other acting credits in the season he was in he was He was in, most of these are like one show, St. Elsewhere. He was in one episode. He was how he met his dad. He was actually in several episodes, I think, in that one. And Mr. Fiscus, right?

That was that. What other shows? What other shows? Because he worked a lot in the 60s. I don't remember this one. Zorro and Son. Don't remember that one either, but I like the premise. Sounds like the kind of show we...

No Soap Radio was with Steve Guttenberg. Yes. Future podcast guest, we hope. Let's see here. Yeah, Golden Girls, six or seven Golden Girls episodes. Yeah. 1987, Haven't Gun, Will Travel.

Haven't Gun, Will Travel. But he did a lot of other popular shows in the 60s. What do you have there? You have the IMDb. I got to go back. Did you print it out? They're in reverse order here. Great Expectations, 1978.

What do we got? Some of these things. 1978 TV movie, Windows, Doors, and Keyholes. Don't know that one. It sounds like a This Old House repair show. I know he did a TV movie called A Guide for the Married Woman with another one of our 90-year-old guests, Peter Marshall. Oh, wow. 1976, he did an Ellery Queen.

Yep. And a character. Tell me the ethnic background of this character, Salvatore Mercadante. I don't know. Well, he played his fair share of Italians. I'm not sure that's Italian, but if you say so. Remember Ellery Queen with David Wayne and Jim Hutton? Oh, yes, yes.

He was very visible on television in the 60s and the 70s. I mean, I remember him on variety shows specifically. But he acted a lot. He turned up in a lot of different things. He was in 1973, The Bob Hope Show. Has Bob Hope come up in this show? Never. Never.

I think he produced or wrote an animated project, too. I don't know. Let's see. The Courtship of Eddie's Father. Sure. The Hollywood Palace. With Bill Bixby. He was on about five times. Hollywood Palace.

That was a famous variety show. Adam West hosted that show. 1967, An Italian in America. Yeah, he played Italians. See? Like Hector Elizondo. He played, oh my God. Who plays a lot of Italians.

We got to get him on this show. We got to get Hector Elizondo. All right, so here's 19. We just booked Tony LoBianco. Oh, my God. Who plays a lot of Italians. We got to get him on this show. We got to get Hector Elizondo. All right, so here's 19- We just booked Tony LoBianco. Oh, yeah. How many Italians am I allowed a month? He's not even Italian. Hector's not Italian.

I think we've already filled the chord. In 1967, he played Marvin Klump in what show? You got me. The Man from Uncle. Marvin Klump in what show? You got me. The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Marvin Klump. Oh, everybody was on The Man from U.N.C.L.E. And the episode was The Matterhorn Affair. Yeah, he was big in the 60s.

1966 was the Batman cameo. That same year, he was on Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theater. You know who his first comedy partner was? You know a guy named Gene Wood? You know that? Does that ring a bell? Our hardcore listeners will know this one. Gene Wood was a game show announcer, not a host.

He was the announcer on Match Game and Tattletales. Oh, my God. And you'd know his voice as soon as we dialed it up, Gene Wood. Gene Wood was a guy like him. It was from Quincy, Massachusetts, and they started out as a comedy duo. Who was the guy? I think I had this, but I don't think I wrote it down. In the Santa Claus, teaching the Santa Claus.

Pat Harrington Jr. Pat Harrington was the guy. He's great, too. The great Pat Harrington. He absolutely plays it straight. I had the honor of working with him just before we started this podcast. And by the time we got our wheels rolling and started getting into it, he passed away. But he performed Jose Jimenez.

It got so popular, he did it at a JFK inauguration. He did it in a Flintstones. I think it's in a Flintstones episode. I think it's in a Flintstones episode. Or I think it's on a Flintstones record. I mean, that character turned up everywhere. Oh, yeah. And it turns up, this is interesting. When Alan Shepard was lifting off in 1961 because the Jose Jimenez astronaut thing had become so popular.

This is interesting trivia. Deke Slayton, his co-pilot, turned to him and said, okay, Jose, you're on your way. Right. Which was a nod to Bill's character. And I remember in one of the Jose Jimenez, where he's the astronaut. Right. The interviewer says, so is that a crash helmet?

And he goes, I hope not. I certainly hope not. He was hilarious. And worked with a lot of our guests. Like I said, Peter Marshall in A Guide for the Married Man. He played Howie Mandel's father on St. Elsewhere. He did Rosetti and Ryan with one of our guests, Tony Roberts. Oh my

God. And of course, two Get Smart episodes with Barbara Felden. Yes. And of course, that all in the family episode with Norman. I mean, they're looking at his, I mean, it's like an encyclopedia of 60s TV, Make Room for Daddy.

Well, Danny Thomas, he did a lot of work with Danny Thomas. This is something I think Cliff brought up with us. He hosted an ill-fated talk show. Did this come up in your research? Called The Las Vegas Show. Oh, my God. Do you remember this?

Oh, my God. I remember watching that. It was for the fourth network that never materialized. It was supposed to be on a fourth network called the United Network. And that was their flagship show with Joanne Worley and Pete Barbeauty. How about that? For some names. And I think it lasted a month.

And the network folded. I remember. Went out of business like overnight. I remember seeing an episode. Remember we had Cliff in here. We did a mini episode about obscure talk shows. And you were trying to name, you were trying to come up with that weird talk show host that nobody could name. And we were talking about, who was the guy that was married to Tina Louise?

Les Crane. Yes, Les Crane. Oh, my God. Yeah. And Woody Woodbury. Woody Woodbury, who's still around. Maybe we can find Woody Woodbury. Woody Woodbury, who's still around. Maybe we can maybe we can find Woody Woodbury. Anyway, he hosted this thing called the Las Vegas show on this. This this United Network startup that that was it was a big white elephant and went away practically overnight.

So that's a that's a fun piece of trivia. About Bill. Gosh, I there was so much to talk about with him and we'll kick ourselves over this one a long time, but then again, we tried super hard. So what are you going to do? Anyway. So this has been Gilbert and Frank's amazing colossal

obsessions remembering Bill Dana. The great Bill Dana. A new policy here at the Hungry Eyes to bring you people who are in the news currently. And the gentleman you're about to meet could possibly be the most important man in any of our lives. He's the United States Air Force officer who has been chosen to be the first man sent into outer space. I'm referring to the chief astronaut with the United States Interplanetary Expeditionary Force, and here he is now.

How do you do, sir? May we have your name? My name? I'll say Manus. And you're the chief astronaut with the United States Interplanetary Expeditionary Force? I am the chief astronaut with the United States Interplanetary and a cheap astronaut

with the Chinese state in the planet with my name is Osahe Man Mr. Jimenez, could you tell us a little about your space suit it's very uncomfortable. you