Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast - Mini-Ep #91: The Grinch Turns 50!

Episode Date: December 22, 2016

Each week, comedian Gilbert Gottfried and comedy writer Frank Santopadre share their admiration for lesser-known films, underappreciated TV shows and criminally underrated performers -- discussing, dissecting and (occasionally) defending their handpicked guilty pleasures and buried treasures. This week: Boris Karloff's 'busy season'! In praise of Chuck Jones! Gilbert takes over the Tiki Room! And the astonishing talents of Thurl Ravenscroft! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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I am future. I wait in the world of Echo. Discover Echo from Cirque du Soleil. Now playing under the big top at Toronto Lakeshore Boulevard West. Tickets at CirqueDuSoleil.com. Echo, thanks for presenting partner Sun Life. The world is yours to create. Hi, it's Gilbert Gottfried telling you that our producer this month is Big Daddy

because he went to Patreon.com slash Gilbert Gottfried and contributed. And now Big Daddy says that he became a fan of mine when he sawing of Saturday Night Live on November 22nd, which is also the anniversary of when John F. Kennedy was assassinated. And it's equally as funny. My season of Saturday Night Live and the Kennedy assassination, I think the Kennedy assassination gets more laughs than my season of Saturday Night Live. But anyway, our producer this month is Big Daddy. Hi, this is Gilbert Gottfried begging you for money. Give me money to make more. Uh, cut, take two. Hi, this is Gilbert godfrey saying to you give me money i want money just give me money to make more gilbert godfrey's amazing colossal podcast it costs money believe it or not. You're over there saying, but it's so cheap and amateurish.

I know that, but it still takes money. So, it's patreon.com slash Gilbert Gottfried. Patreon.com slash Gilbert Gottfried. And there are rewards in it. I can't even say reward. Rolling. And there are

Cut. And, you know, like signed posters. And some of you, if it's enough money, I'll roast you. And there's so much, so much. But it's patreon.com slash Gilbert Gottfried. Give me money.

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You're a mean one, Mr. Grinch. You really are a heel You're as cuddly as a cactus You're as charming as an eel Mr. Grinch You're a bad banana With a greasy black peel You're a monster, Mr. Grinch

Your heart's an empty hole Your brain is full of spiders You have garlic in your soul, Mr. Grinch. I wouldn't touch you with a 39 and a half foot pole! Lordy! Hi!

Hi, Gilbert Gottfried! In case you thought Tony Bennett was hosting this week. I'm Gilbert Gottfried, and this is Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast with my co-host Frank Santopadre. Once again, we're recording at Nutmeg with our engineer Frank Furtarosa. Oh. Now, in case you're wondering where that song came from. If you don't know.

Yeah, a lot of you are guessing Gone with the Wind. But no, it was the Grinch, the original. Yes. Boris Karloff. Yes. And, oh, well, it's based on the-

The Dr. Seuss. Dr. Seuss and the guy from the Warner Brothers. Chuck Jones. Chuck Jones. Great Chuck Jones. So you had a combination of Chuck Jones, Dr. Seuss, and Boris Karloff. Yeah, and it's rare that you hear of three guys spinning in their graves at the same time. I think you achieved that.

And Boris Karloff, of course, legendary horror actor, and Sarah Karloff we interviewed. We did. And she said that he wasn't that excited about most of his pictures, and he knew she didn't like horror movies. Right. But when he did this, he was truly excited and knew he did something great. Yeah, and Sarah told us he used to refer to Halloween and Christmas as his busy season. Oh, yes.

So he was very proud of this and very proud of kids coming around at Christmastime. There's some interesting, I found some interesting tidbits on Dr. Seuss. Paul Rayburn, our researcher, is here. Hey, Paul, Paul, before anything, can you say, there's no need to fear, Undertog is here. I really feel like I'd need to rehearse. I don't want to go into that cold. Did you decide that he sounds like Wally Cox? I say yes.

Yes. Okay, I was wondering. That was a non sequitur. Okay, so Dr. Seuss, the Grinch laments that he put up with the Who's for Christmas for 53 years. Right. At the time he wrote the book, Dr. Seuss was 53. Oh, that's interesting. And he looked back, he was shaving one morning, he saw a Grinch-like character in the mirror,

and that was part of what gave him the idea for the book. And his stepdaughter said years later, I always thought the cat in the hat was Ted's good side and the Grinch was his bad side. And to cap it off, he drove a car with a license plate that read Grinch. That's very cool. Isn't that funny? We will return to Gilbert Gottfried's amazing colossal podcast after this. right here, right now. With DraftKings Casino, all your favorite games are in the palm of your hand. Play the classics like

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Now, I had heard that Ted Geisel, that Dr. Seuss had his name removed. I'll have you look this up at some point. That he had his name removed from an early production. That he was reluctant to do this because he had been burned by Hollywood. Well, they worked on him for a number of years. He was, I think, in 57 or something. Well, he and Chuck Jones had history because they'd worked on animated films

in the Army together. Oh, I didn't know that. So it was Chuck Jones who persuaded, his old pal Chuck Jones, who persuaded him to do it. Right. And it's like they've so far made at least two live-action Dr. Seuss films,

The Cat in the Hat and The Grinch That Stole Christmas, and they're just creepy. Well, did you ever see The Jim Carrey? The Jim Carrey Grinch is a complete... I have never seen it. I mean, it's okay, but it's nothing like it. The thing about Boris Karloff, for all his fame as a horror actor, there's a lot of heart there.

I mean, in The Grinch, you can really get the feeling. You don't get that so much from the Jim Carrey version. Yeah. Yeah. And Jones was, you know, we should talk a little bit about Chuck Jones for a second. Oh, yes. Because he was a genius. I'm not sure how many times, if ever, he's come up on this show.

Oh, I don't think we've ever talked about him. His daughter's around, and we should get her at some point. Oh, yeah. And talk about the great Chuck Jones. I mean, One Froggy Evening with Michigan J. Frog is my favorite. But he was the creator of Pepe Le Pew and the Wile E. Coyote and the Roadrunner and Marvin the Martian and so many wonderful characters. And it's true that Grinch is the work of three geniuses. Yes. Of three masters collaborating. And when you watch the Grinch, you could definitely see that Warner Brothers style.

Oh, absolutely. Oh, absolutely. And he had said that the dog Max was the viewpoint character, was the character that you sympathize with. What else did you find, Paul? Well, this was not the first Christmas special to show up of this type. It actually had two predecessors. 1964 was Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Right.

65, I didn't know it went back this far. 65 was Charlie Brown's Christmas. Oh, yeah. 1965. Oh, sure. And what was the name of that jazz musician? Oh, Vince Guaraldi. Yeah, that music's wonderful.

Yeah, that really, I mean, both the show and the music stand up incredibly well 51 years now. Whenever you hear that music, you go, oh, Charlie Brown. Yeah, absolutely. Private Snafu was the name of the cartoons. A goof-up soldier that Warners made, that Chuck Jones and Dr. Seuss did together in the Army. It's very interesting. I'm watching an interview with Chuck Jones.

Wait, wait. Did Private Snafu, did he have a Bugs Bunny voice? He may have. I have not seen them. There was a World War II soldier thing that warner brothers put out and and he didn't have that kind of voice it could be it could very well be we'll put that out there to our to our experts um but chuck jones had to sell he's saying in those days you you didn't have to so much sell it to the network you had to find a sponsor you had to sell it to the sponsor

and he was trying to sell it to breakfast cereal companies and chocolate companies. And the people that wound up biting on it was a bank commercial, was a banking company. Well, that's an odd connection. Well, and he found it particularly ironic given that there's the line that Christmas doesn't come from a store, that a bank, they were the people that- Well, it's a very anti-greed message. That's what I mean. Yeah, he always found that ironic that the bank was the one that, the banking company was the one that actually gave them the green light and allowed them to do it because apparently it was very expensive to produce to that point.

And let's talk about the man who actually did sing Your Mean One, Mr. Grinch. Thurl Ravenscroft. That's right. Who goes back to 1940. He had something like a 55-year voiceover career. Thurl, T-H-U-R-L. And if you don't know who he is, he was the voice of Tony the Tiger. It's great.

Yeah. And he did a lot of work for Disney. Oh, yeah. He was the voice of the Monstro, I guess is the whale, in Pinocchio. He worked for Disney for years and years and years. He was Monstro the whale? Did Monstro talk? He did a voice.

He just did maybe some kind of sound effect. I've got Tony the Tiger right here. Here we go. Hi, I'm Tony the Tiger to tell about Kellogg's Sugar Frosted Flakes and their secret sugar frosting. Uh, that vault's where we keep the secret. Little kid, he can't open it. Why, you need 16 combinations to get in. Yipes! The secret! As I was saying...

Hey, Junior! Let me out of here! It won't open, Pop. Better let the man do the talking, son. Kellogg's Sugar Frosted Flakes. They're big, frosted flakes of corn that say, the best to you each morning. From Kellogg's. Hey, Pop, maybe this will work.

Where's that catchphrase? Give it to me. All I got to say is try some Kellogg's sugar-frosted flakes. They're great! Fantastic. That's when commercials were two minutes long. Does anybody think that actually sold any cereal? I don't know.

That was like a fever dream. I have a Disney connection with Thorol Rosencroft. Thorol Rosencroft. Thorol Rosenbrook. Cousin of Cliff Nesterman. Cliff Neffenweibel. Thorol Ravenscroft. For a while.

I love how you made him Jewish. He's Rosencroft. Thorough Rosenberg. Slomo Rosenberg. That was his real name. The voice of Tony the Tiger. Slomo Rosenberg. For a while, Disney listened to reason and said, you know, people fucking hate the Tiki Room.

Oh, the Tiki Room. Where it was just a bunch, a thousand birds going, it's a Tiki Room. It's a Tiki, Tiki, Tiki, Tiki, Tiki Room. So they made a new one that my character Iago, the parrot from Aladdin, was the star of. And he takes over the Kiki room. And one of the other birds in a German accent is, you say the name. Is Thurl Ravenscroft. Thurl Rosenbeck.

Thurl should have hung out with Thor Heyerdahl. Teddy Rosenthal. Speaking of the tiki. But yeah, we never actually met. We were coded separately. So I have kind of a connection. You know, when my wife and I were in Disney World, we looked all over that park for an Iago. I said, there's got to be an Iago magnet or an Iago

t-shirt or something. We went through the whole park. Every single gift shop, every rack. Couldn't find anything. Oh, yeah. Aladdin stuff in general is really hard to find. Hard to find. People kept saying, oh, go to the bazaar or go over there or go... Well, it was a whole generation of kids

who missed it because the DVD was off the market. I guess so. For a long time. I mean, that may be it. I looked everywhere. I was trying to surprise Gilbert with some Aladdin swag. Here's the thing about Thurl Ravenscroft that's interesting.

Now you got me calling him Rosenstein. Most viewers wrongly assume that the narrator of the special, Karloff, also sang the piece. Oh, yeah. Saying you're a mean one, Mr. Grinch. Because he does two different voices. Correct. He's the Boris Karloff voice as the narrator, but the Grinch is talking like this. Very good.

Antipasto. Yes. I think that was Charlie Callow who came up with that. I think that was Charlie Cowell who came up with that. I think so. That the perfect word for Boris Karloff was Alton DePaul. But he somehow Ravenscroft was not credited. And it says here that Geisel personally, Dr. Seuss personally apologized to Ravenscroft and vowed to make amends. He went on to pen a letter urging all the major columnists that he knew to help him rectify

the mistake by issuing a notice of correction yeah speaking of which we'd like to uh uh issue a correction uh something to a previous episode it was not in fact the trustee and reliable frank who was responsible for the lost audio yeah Yeah. In case you've missed where I explain that, we did three, three mini episodes where we sang like forgotten songs by forgotten artists of like 72, 73, and 74. We had a crowd do a sing-along with us, a piano play. We had it was great, and it's gone.

Audio. Gone like Jimmy Hoffa. Jimmy Hoffa may still be found. Yes, yes. It's already become the stuff of music lore. Yes yes one of the great dreams you're made of we wanted to say that frankie verdorosa was in no way responsible he was at a parent-teacher conference oh that i easily could have been responsible i just wasn't but he wasn't

there was one you may have been looking at the same page that I'm looking at. Hit me, brother. But Karloff received a Grammy Award for the spoken word record. Yes, I did know that. Did you know that? And it was the, according to this, can this be true, the only major performing award of his career. Can that be right? Oh, yeah. Wow, that's interesting. There's a whole list of actors who have never won Academy Awards.

Legendary stars. Cary Grant. Oh, yeah. Yeah. He did, however, do an Oscar Mayer commercial. Want to hear that? Who? Who?

Thurl Ravenscroft? Ravensburg. I thought Cary Grant. I would love to hear Cary Grant do an Oscar Mayer commercial. You got more Thurl for us? Yeah. Let's do an Oscar Mayer commercial. You got more Thurl for us? Oh, yeah. We admire wieners. Oscar Mayer wieners.

They are so plump and tender, too. It's Oscar Mayer for me and you. Wieners. Oscar Mayer wieners. The best you ever put in buns because they're the juicy all meat one and they're oh so handy they're fully cooked just heat and eat and eat and eat and eat and eat, if you've been wishing, say, for great nutrition, Only another six minutes of this commercial.

From Wieners, made by Oscar Mayer. The joke of that is his character in the cartoon is really, really short. And they keep having to lift him up to the microphone with his big voice. What a talent. What a voice that guy had. Amazing. This is what we get when we leave Frankie at the board without supervision.

Absolutely. I also want to give a shout out here. Phil Roman, the legendary animator, Hal Ashmead, Oral and Richard Thompson, and Maurice Noble were the animators too that assisted Chuck Jones or were involved in the making of that wonderful, wonderful cartoon. And the music, some of the music was composed by Albert Haig.

Do you know that name? Oh, wait. He was the bearded actor in Fame, the music professor. Oh, my God. Yes. Swarovski from Fame, the movie and the television show. He has to be a Jew. Yes, indeed. Yeah, he be a Jew. Yes, indeed.

Yeah, he's a Jew. German-American Jew. German Jew. He's a German Jew. Yes. And I think Boris Karloff was Karloffstein. Oh, stop now. I think it was Karloffski.

William Henry Pratt, wasn't he? Yeah. Or Boris Karloff. And Pratt in England. Oh, yes. We talked about this. Yeah. Bad word And Pratt in England. Oh, yes. We talked about this. Yeah. Bad word to call someone in England.

A quick nod to the legendary June Foray, who was the voice of Cindy Lou Who. Also uncredited. Also uncredited. Also uncredited. And somehow or other, still with us. And maybe we should pursue. Oh, we have to get. Let's not rush on it.

No, no, no. Rush on that. She's 111. And my friend Alan Asherman, who we've had on the show. Oh, yeah. He came on to talk to Leonard Nimoy with us. He told me that he once met Boris Karloff, and he asked him if he could send him a signed photo. if he could send him a signed photo.

And he received a signed Boris Karloff photo the day after Boris Karloff died. Oh, that's eerie. And if that's not the perfect way to get a Boris Karloff photograph. Oh, that's just spooky. That gave me a chill. And Boris Karloff said, you know, he switched from Universal to, I don't know, RKO or something because he was sick of doing the same type movies over and over. And there they were doing the same type movies. And they explained to him, they said, look, we're basically doing the same thing over and over.

We know it takes this much time to do it, this much money, and we know what the return is going to be. Yeah. Karloff's one of those guys, I know a lot of his latter work, you know, he wasn't proud of, but what a long, varied career. I mean, Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein. Oh, but sure. But even if you talk about later, the Luton pictures.

Oh, yes. You know, are great. Yeah. The body snatch and even things like um like targets uh the thing that he did oh my god and he was fun and uh in uh the secret life of walter mitty absolutely absolutely and the man from uncle yes he he was he did that in drag yeah he, he had a wonderful career. He had a lot of range.

Sir? A couple of Edgar Allan Poe's, The Black Cat. Oh, and the Poe pictures, yeah, sure. And he was on I Spy. That's correct. Yeah. Yeah. By the way, I'll hold my phone up to the microphone to see if you can see these spectacular posters that go with some of these movies.

They're just incredible. Oh, the artwork. Look them up online. The artwork is incredible. And Karloff, out of the three top horror guys, he seemed the most stable. Like Chaney Jr. and Lugosi always, you know. Yeah, he was a family man. Yeah. He had success so late in his career people don't know he gets the question mark he doesn't get credit in frankenstein yes the

question mark as the monster uh because he was really an unknown actor so 50 years ago this month this this cartoon uh december 18th 1965 excuse 66, and 38 million people tuned into CBS to watch it. That's a lot of people. There you go. The Grinch. And they said how Karloff, he even in his later years when he was really sick, he said to someone at one point, he was recording a voiceover or something, and he says something like,

isn't it wonderful that this late in my life, I'm still doing something that I love? Oh, that's nice. That's great. Is there any, I want to give a shout out to Gilbert Gottfried here. Is there any performer alive that does Boris Karloff and Hervé Villachez? And David Brenner.

It's alive! It's alive! Do you want to take it out as Boris? I have another song we might be able to take it out on. Hit us, brother. It's less of Gilbert's album. Let Gilbert do a sign-off, and then we'll go to the music. This won't be as good. But anyway, this has been Gilbert and Frank's amazing, colossal obsessions.

I'm Gilbert Gottfried, my co-host Frank Santopadre, and this guy Paul, who every time he opens his fucking mouth, he kills anything we try to build up. Happy holidays. Thank you very much, Gilbert. Thank you, sir. Merry Christmas, guys. Fahoo forays, dahoo doreys, welcome Christmas, bring your light. Davudores, welcome Christmas, bring your light. Fahufores, Davudores, welcome in the cold, dark night. Welcome Christmas, Fahurabus, welcome Christmas, Davudamus.

Da-hoo, da-woos, welcome Christmas While we stand heart to heart and hand in hand