Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast - Mini-Ep #45: The Dean Martin Celebrity Roasts

Episode Date: February 4, 2016

Each week, comedian Gilbert Gottfried and comedy writer Frank Santopadre share their appreciation of lesser-known films, underrated TV shows and hopelessly obscure character actors -- discussing, dissecting and (occasionally) defending their handpicked guilty pleasures and buried treasures. This week: Orson Welles performs "That's Amore"! Demond Wilson takes down Jack Benny! And the comedy stylings of Stanley Kramer! Let Selfie Station be the Picture taker, Ice breaker AND your money maker. As a special introductory offer, get $500 off the professional package. Go to SelfieStationpodcast.com and enter promo code GILBERT. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Be just like Steve and get rewarded for supporting our podcast. Head over to patreon.com slash Gilbert Gottfried. Go to patreon.com slash Gilbert Gottfried. That's patreon, P-A-T-R-E-O-N dot com slash Gilbert Gottfried. As always, thank you for your generosity. hi this is gilbert gottfried this is gilbert and's Amazing Colossal Obsessions. I just stumbled a little bit and I'm here with my co-host Frank Santopadre. My money was on you losing that. Yes. Not coming out with that correctly at all. Yeah. So we got a lot of wonderful responses to the Bob Hope. Yeah. Which is interesting in that we were in the booth

at Nutmeg and you weren't even going to talk about Bob Hope. Yes, but it just got me on that subject because that last Bob Hope special works as one of the greatest horror films ever made. The Jack Frost. Yeah. We got a lot of mail. Oh my God. We got a lot of tweets. It kind of struck me when I was watching that special, like this is Dolores getting back at Bob for all the times he's cheating on her, that she dresses him up when he should be six feet under, and she keeps him alive. She won't let him die. And she dresses him in funny outfits.

And icicles hanging off his fists. Yes, yes. Dresses him in funny outfits for the world to laugh at. It's so scary. Pathetic old man. If you guys didn't hear that episode, check out. Yes. Go and Google Bob Hope slash Jack Frost,

and you'll thank us or hate us. Now, this week, along those lines, something involved the participation of Bob Hope, and it's kind of a train wreck in its own right, maybe not quite as bad a train wreck, and it's something we've talked about on the show before. So this is a colossal obsession, but not a recommendation. So it's a negative obsession. Oh, okay. Those are even better.

But it has its moments. As was proven with the Bob Hope spin. Well, we've talked about these before, and these are the Dean Martin celebrity roasts. Oh, yes, yes. From the 70s, which I've been watching on YouTube. And I got to tell you, and there I sound like Bob. Oh, yeah, I got to tell you. Here I got to tell you, that Brick Eklund.

Ah, he's helping me. These things are surreal. Have you seen them recently? I've seen them. I see them in the commercials. Yeah, they sell the, there's a box set. Yeah, very peculiar. Well, there were 54 of them made.

I did a little research. Between 1974, they started out as part of the old Dean Martin show. And then they became kind of a spinoff. They became standalones. Between 74 and 84, they made 54 of these things. And as we've talked about before, they were shot in Burbank and in the MGM Grand in Vegas. And many times, the same people weren't in the room. They were reacting to—

I remember I met Milton Berle a handful of times, and one time he said he had just shot a roast. And he said how sometimes he'd be by himself, and the director would just point the camera at him and say, Okay, now you've just heard a real shocking joke. now you've just heard a real shocking joke. Like you're shocked, you laugh, but ooh, how did they get away with that? And now like somebody really zinged you. Okay, get a little offended. And so he wasn't even there.

Yeah. Often the people they were reacting to were shot in a different state at a different time. I knew that, and we've discussed that. What I didn't know is that they got so lazy that they would use the same reaction shots in different specials. Oh, jeez. Apparently there's like a Michael Landon roast where they just kept using the same shot of Dean in the tux from previous roasts. Oh, yeah. Because who would know? Yeah, because he's wearing the same tux.

No VCRs in those days. People weren't recording them and going back and looking at them. Once it was done, it was done. He could have been wearing an entirely different suit. You wouldn't even remember it. And the laugh track is ridiculous. Oh, yeah. I mean, you've got to listen to these things.

And then, too, on those roasts that used to bother me was when the actors would come on sometimes as their characters. Oh, I just wrote that down. Yeah, like Peter Falk shows up as Columbo. Oh, God. That was horrible.

Terrible. And Art Carney shows up as Ed Norton. Yeah, he shows up as Ed Norton. Right, right. And Ruth Buzzy would come on as Atlantis. Oh, yeah. She would always be there with the purse to hit everyone. Yeah.

You've got to see these things if you haven't seen them. I mean, again, we've talked about them a bunch of times. They were pre-taped. Doing a little research, I also found that Rickles was the one person, I think it was Rickles and Jonathan Winters, were the two people that didn't use writers. Wow. The writers couldn't write for Rickles was the one person, I think it was Rickles and Jonathan Winters, were the two people that didn't use writers. Wow. The writers couldn't write for Rickles that he would do. He would basically

do his own thing. And they would just give them, there were 10, 12 writers, led by this writer Harry Crane that Bill Persky talked about. Oh, okay. With us, remember that name? Yes. And they would just give these guys just reams of jokes. And anybody could use them or not use them.

You know. And the thing was, too, it's like back then, before the Dean Martin roast started, which was primetime roast. Right, Thursday nights, yeah. Yeah, so you couldn't do what a roast, what happens at a roast. No. But before that, they would have, like, the Friars Club roasts that weren't televised. Right, going back to the 20s.

Yeah, and all these major stars would be filthy. Yep. And they'd be bombed out of their skulls and cursing each other out. Yeah, these were sanitized versions of those. But you'd be surprised. I was watching a bunch of them on YouTube

doing research. I mean, first of all, before PC times be surprised. I was watching a bunch of them on YouTube doing research. I mean, first of all, before PC Times, I mean, there's gay jokes. Oh, yes, yes. I mean, Orson Wells is doing very, very strange gay stuff as he's reading the lyrics of That's Amore. He's doing the dramatic reading.

There's a lot of racial stuff. There's all these jokes about Sammy, about the, at Sammy's roast, yeah. There's jokes about Sammy. At Sammy's Roast, they open with a joke about the NBC peacock having an afro. Jan Murray does a joke about Sammy saying, if you keep closing your show with my way and Frank finds out about it, you're going to wake up with a watermelon in your bed. It's unbelievably politically incorrect stuff.

Oh, yeah. And now the station would close down. Absolutely. There's a joke I wrote down. DeMond Wilson shows up from San Francisco. They're roasting Jack Benny and he calls Benny a visionary. He says he hired a black actor to play Rochester

but he did it because he knew television was coming and it was going to cost him a fortune in burnt cork. I'm watching this and I'm thinking, well, it's not as bawdy as an old fryer's roast, but they're getting away with a lot. Oh, yes. So apparently they did. Yeah, because it was a weird thing that back then it was generally accepted.

You could do jokes like that. And you generally accepted. You know, you could do jokes like that. And you see everybody. You see everybody on these things, and it's that weird mixture. Yeah. Or like you said, people in character. Yeah, oh, the people in character I couldn't take. Yeah, hard to take. That was embarrassing. Like LaWanda Page, I think, would show

up as Ann Esther. Oh, yes, yes. And I mean, I wrote down, you know, Foster Brooks, we talked about Ruth Buzzy, Angie Dickinson, Nipsey Russell, Barry Goldwater, and they would get these old actors, these legends, like Gene Kelly and Orson Welles and John Wayne

and Jimmy Stewart, and then new comics they would break in. Oh, yes! You know, it was like Billy Crystal and Gabe Kaplan. Oh, and Freddie Prinze. And Freddie Prinze and Tony Orlando. And they're really dreadful. Oh, yeah. So I don't know if it's,

it's not a recommendation, but it's sort of an obsession. And I read, too, that Red Fox, apparently, and I don't know if this is true, there's not a lot of information about these. I did a lot of research that Red Fox had a fight with Rickles, supposedly. And also, and I don't know why this is true, Red Fox, Michael Landon,

Joe Namath, and Jack Klugman were the only people roasted twice, which makes absolutely no sense to me. Yeah. So, and I just got to thinking about all the roasts and the roasts you've done and the Comedy Central roasts you've done and the Friars roasts. I remember hearing a story that happened. They said they saw it at a restaurant. Don Rickles was in a restaurant, and while he was sitting there, Morgan Freeman walked by. Okay.

And Don Rickles said, oh, Morgan, they let you out of the kitchen. Unbelievable. But he's still doing that shit. And he got in trouble, Don Rickles, of all people, and they cut it out when they finally televised it, where Don Rickles said he did a joke about the president, and he said, but I don't mean anything against Obama. He's a friend of mine.

He was over the house yesterday, but then his mop broke. Unbelievable. I have to say, too, that Dean Martin's biographer, Nick Toshes, did you read that book? No, I never read that. He was not a fan of the roasts. He called it a dais of despair. And I think

he captured some of the feeling of those things. Oh, yeah. They're very uncomfortable. All these things that they sell on those infomercials. Yeah, you can buy them on Guthrie Ranker. Oh, yes, yes. All those Guthrie Ranker. Yeah.

Yeah. You can still buy them. Yeah. Those, like, all of them, none of them hold up like the Carol Burnett show. No. No. No, they're all dated. Yeah.

This was the exact quote. It's a dais of despair. They sat at banquet tables at either side of the podium, the undead of Dreamland and the fleeting stars of the television seasons. Ooh.

Which really kind of captures the, that's what I mean. I mean, they're great time capsules and it's great to see all these people, but they're eerie. They're unsettling. Baseball is finally back. Get in on Major

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Now, as a special introductory offer, get $500 off. That's $500 off the professional package. $500 off. Go to SelfieStationPodcast.com and support our show by entering promo code Gilbert. By entering promo code Gilbert. That's SelfieStationPodcast.com promo code Gilbert. It's kind of like, it's a mad, mad, mad, mad world. Yeah, same feeling. It's like, it's great in that you just have all these people on film, but none of them are at their best in it.

No, no. A handful of people come off well. Yeah. Dick Shawn's funny. Yeah, but... And Winters is funny. For the most part, the film's a mess. It's a mess.

Well, Stanley Kramer. Yeah, yeah. The guy who made Judgment at Nuremberg turns around and makes an all-star comedy yeah mr comedy himself fire ones he wasn't a funny guy yeah inherit the wind um and it and it looked like it was directed by like 50 different directors yeah it's a mess but but but you love it because it's it again because all those people are are in it. Yeah. And it's a historical document. And it's like Spencer Tracy is basically stuck with explaining it, trying to make it into a coherent thing, the exposition.

Like every now and then he'll go back to the station house and Spencer Tracy's pointing at the map on the wall, going, well, right now, Henderson is stuck in this abandoned building, and he's going to try to dynamite his way out. He's charting it. With William Demarest. Yes, yes. Aloysius.

It's great. I watched it recently with my wife. I guess it was on TCM. And it's a mess. Oh, yeah. But there are moments. Caesar's funny when he's trapped in the hardware store. And he's trying to blow his way out of there.

I mean, he plays it. Terry Thomas is funny. You know, it's hard to fuck these guys up. I mean, they're all naturally funny. But I remember getting back to Peter Falk, who was also in Mad Men. That's right. He's the cab driver in the third act. And he says that when he was doing that movie, how fun it was coming to the set.

And they'd all be hanging out together. Each one of them trying to be out to the other one, joking and insulting each other. And I thought, you know, the making of Mad, Mad World would have been a better film. Would have been. Yeah. Would have been. I wonder why no one's made a documentary about it. But also, just like I said, just the fact that all of those guys are on film together.

Yeah, another time capsule film. Keaton and Jerry Lewis and the Stooges and Uncle Milton. And Jack Benny pops up. And Benny pops up. And they're all in there, even though they're not all, and Durante, who you love. Oh, yeah. But they're not all well-serviced. And Arnold Stang.

Arnold Stang and Marvin, yeah. Marvin Kittman. Marvin Kaplan. Marvin Kittman. Marvin Kittman was the film critic at Newsday. It's not the Maleshko Theater. It's the Maleshko Theater. So quickly getting back to jokes, and then we'll sign off.

You've done a million roasts. Do you remember your favorite roast jokes? Oh, God. Do you remember the ones you're proud of? Because I love your Cloris Leachman one from the Saget roast. Oh, well, in the Cloris Leachman one, or, oh, that was from the, was that the Saget roast like Cloris Leachman? Yeah, when you did the... Was that the Saget Rose type Cloris Leachman? Yeah, when you did the whole thing about Bob Saget raped a girl. Oh, yeah. I said

Bob Saget raped and killed a girl in 1990. Right, but then you did the Cloris thing where she's so old. Oh, I thought... Wasn't that about... That wasn't Joan Rivers? That was about Cloris? Cloris Leachman? Yeah. Yeah, I said... That's my favorite.

Cloris Leachman yeah I said it's my favorite Cloris Leachman is so old her breasts say colored and white so much but then you add lips then I added on and it was a shameful moment in this country's history when I saw them push Nipsey Russell.

Away from Cloris Leachman's tit. Yes. Oh, God. Three that I liked. One was Belzer and two were Jeff Ross. Just as long as we're talking about roasts. These were at Friars Roast at the Hilton, which they don't televise. And if you can get a ticket, if anybody's listening to this and wants to get a ticket to a Friars Roast, it's really well worth it. But at the Jerry Lewis roast, Jeff Ross said he was following Nathan Lane.

And he said, Nathan Lane and he said Nathan and Jerry have a lot in common they both started sucking in the 70s which is one I liked and I liked Jeff saying about Betty White that she was so old the first game show she was on the prize was fire

I think that's a phenomenal joke. It reminds me of a joke, and I forget who said it, but it was at one of the roasts, and Debbie Harry was on the dais, and someone said

Debbie Harry was gonna sing tonight, but she lost her voice in 1975. I love that. And Belzer at the, I guess it was at the Tom Cruise roast, not Tom Cruise roast, at the Matt Lauer roast, Tom Cruise showed up. But Belzer was following Freddie Roman. I've told you this one million times.

And he looks down at Freddie and he says, poor Freddie Roman, never made it to the big time. He said, Jack Ruby had a longer TV career. Oh, and I remember at the Joan Riffis roast, after I did my whole roast of her, then she went up and said, oh, after watching Gilbert Gottfried, it makes me want to drive to Malibu and blow Mel Gibson. Love that. So anyway, unfortunately, none of those things will ever be seen. No.

They're in-house. Yeah. The Friars tapes them and keeps them under wraps, but they'll never be. But if you can ever get to a Friars roast or buy a ticket, they're worth going to. There's some great, some of the hardest laughs I've ever had in my life. Anyway, so do you have an obsession, or are we just going to talk about the roast and it's a mad, mad world? I think we'll just keep talking about the roast. We'll wrap it up.

Okay. So this has been, if I can remember, we were talking about the roast. We went back a little to the Bob Hope specials again. Yep. And the roast and Mad, Mad World. You know, we should get whoever's alive from the roasts just to ask them about it. Yeah. Because there's not a lot of information.

I don't know if on the special editions, on the discs, there's information. Ruth Buzzy's alive. Oh, that's right. Daman Wilson, Gabe Kaplan, not too many people. Artie Johnson. Artie Johnson's around. Not too many people. But we really should do that.

Artie Johnson. Artie Johnson's around. Not too many people, but we really should do that. And, oh, we should say another goodbye and farewell to Abe Vigoda. Yes. The great Abe Vigoda. Yes, we're recording this the day after you performed at Abe's service. Yes.

And made the cover of the New York Post. Yeah. So, yeah. I even wound up in a paper in England. I'm glad you brought that up. I'm sorry we never got Abe on the show. He was a Yeah. So, yeah. I even wound up in a paper in England. I'm glad you brought that up. I'm sorry we never got Abe on the show. He was a doll. Oh, yeah.

We both got to work with him numerous times. Yeah, that was a shame. In the next life. We loved you, Abe. Okay, so this has been Gilbert and Frank's Amazing Colossal Obsessions. That's it. Here we go, boys. One, two, three, four. Gilbert and Frank's Colossal Obsessions.

Gilbert and Frank's Colossal Obsessions Colossal Obsessions