Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast - Sally Struthers Part 2

Episode Date: January 17, 2022

In this conclusion of a memorable two-part episode, veteran screen and stage actress Sally Struthers regales Gilbert and Frank with entertaining backstage tales from "All in the Family," "The Gilmore Girls" and the all-female production of Neil Simon's "The Odd Couple," while sharing personal recollections of Joan Crawford, David Frost, Betty Garrett, Liz Torres and her idol and hero Ruth Gordon. Also, Burgess Meredith philosophizes, Katharine Hepburn paints a birthday card, Sally "gooses" Dennis the Menace and Mel Blanc shows off his vanity license plate. PLUS: Burt Mustin! "Harold and Maude"! "The Great Houdini"! The genius of Rupert Holmes! Colonel Potter goes to Russia! And Sally dates the King of Rock 'n' Roll and...wait for it...Pat McCormick! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Taking on jaw-dropping obstacles all across Canada is one thing. Working together on a team with some pretty big personalities is another. It's a new season of Canada's Ultimate Challenge, and sparks are gonna fly. New episodes Sundays. Watch free on CBC Gem. We just had Jim Colucci, the author of the new book. I know you were interviewed for the book. Yeah. All in the Family, the show that changed television that he did with Norman.

And I was going through it looking at the Gloria episodes. You know, you go back to the Women's Lib episode. Gloria is an important character. There was no female character on television at that time. People talk about how Mary Richards was liberated, and she was a different kind of female character. But you're quoting Germaine Greer at 8 o'clock on network television. Nobody was saying those things. Nobody was standing up for those things she was

apparently enticing enough to a young man like mike stivick that he wanted to marry her and from marrying him she became more aware of what was going on in the world and became less and less you know every day her father's daughter and someone with some knowledge and it's fun to watch her become empowered that way yeah and also she wins a lot of those arguments because the writers were not afraid to point out that though mike was a liberal that that he had some of the same failings in fact some of the same failings. In fact, some of the same failings and shortcomings and short-sightedness as Archie. Absolutely. Especially when it comes to women. You have that great speech in the Women's Lib episode where you're saying to him,

oh, you've got the sympathy and the compassion for blacks and Puerto Ricans, but none for women. It's the whole speech about how he's, for all his progress he's he's a bit of a misogynist yeah certainly sexist anyway yeah she traded she traded one thing for another between her father and her husband did they tell you on the first uh did i just want to get this in gilbert john rich tell you guys after the first what was it the first couple of tapings or or or the after the or after the first show had aired, we want to see you all back here tomorrow morning, but know that you might come back and you all might be out of jobs. Exactly. The night before, when we were all leaving CBS, the night that the first one was going on the air, he said, okay, I suppose you're all going home now and you're having parties in your home friends relatives neighbors coming over you're all going to watch the first episode I know you're all

excited I want you to know that CBS is manning their affiliates all over the country with extra operators to take the angry phone calls if they get too many of them we won't have a job tomorrow so there was that hanging over our heads while we watched the first one in our own homes and then we tiptoed into CBS the next day wondering whether or not we had a job and Norman came in the rehearsal hall and said CBS received an inordinate amount of phone calls but most of them almost all of them them were, what was that? Is that going to be on again next week? We love that. So that was a very frightening night. But the next day, you know, I got my shoulders came out of my ears. I was telling Gilbert that you said you knew it was a hit. You and Rob used to, because it was a CBS television studio near the farmer's market,

and you guys would go to lunch at the farmer's market and then you realized one day you could no longer do that. Yeah, overnight we were all of a sudden people who would get recognized and luckily back then people didn't have cell phones with cameras but everybody plows through their pocket or their purse for a piece of paper and a pen and if they're at the farmer's market they're probably a tourist and they have a little kodak camera and they they all you know wanted something and there wasn't we had a finite amount of time to go there and order something to eat and come back to cbs so we couldn't go there for lunch anymore and your life changed very quickly frank and i were talking that you worked with Joan Crawford.

Yeah, and Tim Conway. On the Tim Conway Comedy Hour. Luckily, before I was so cheap that they let me go. Yeah, and she was married to a man that owned the Pepsi Corporation, right? And she showed up in the rehearsal hall like Sammy Davis but with one of those big coolers that you see at a service station inside when you go in to buy your cigarettes or pay for your gas and there's always like ice cream in them she had two people roll that in the rehearsal hall it was full of pepsis and what was Joan Crawford like really nice And when I read her daughter's book, I was shocked.

But then I realized that what Christina Crawford said in the book was my mother was wonderful to everybody else except us kids. Disturbing. Yeah. You said you learned something from her. You learned a certain kindness or how to write. Didn't she write thank you notes? Didn't she write personalized thank you notes to everybody? She wrote thank you notes to each one of us, thanking us for being so nice to her

while she was on the Tim Conway Comedy Hour. And she talked to me during breaks in the rehearsal about how she wrote to all of her fans and she spent an hour at least every evening answering all her fan mail. And so she was about keeping up appearances, but she wasn't about mothering her two adopted children from one legendary actress to another and this this factors into uh gilmore girls my wife's favorite show which we were just watching before i came in here to prepare uh your favorite actress

and when and one of your heroes, if not your number one hero, the late great Ruth Gordon. And I'd also like to point out that Harold and Maude is 50. Oh, I love that movie. That's in my top five movies that I've ever... Yeah, it's a great one. I got cast in the television film, The Great Houdini's,

playing Harry Houdini's wife, Bess, and was told that Ruth Gordon would be playing my mother-in-law Mrs. Houdini Harry's mother and we bonded while we made that film and stayed friends for the rest of Ruth's life and when I got my first Broadway show called Wally's Cafe written by Sam Bobrick and Ron Clark who who wrote the Tim Conway comedy. You've got to get Ron Clark on this podcast, by the way. He's still around. Yeah.

I called Ruth and said, I'm coming to New York. And she said, well, why don't you stay at Garstin's, in my place on East 42nd Street. East 43rd Street. It's called Turtle Bay. And it's a five-story brownstone. You'll love it. Your little baby and your friend, you'll have a good time. So I was living there and quickly found out that Garson Canaan and Ruth Gordon

were the next-door neighbors of Catherine Hepburn and Stephen Sondheim. And on the morning of my birthday, my friend Pamela was three floors up trying to potty train my daughter who was about to turn two. And someone was knocking on the front door and I hollered up the stairway three floors, Pamela, could you come down and answer the door? I'm in my pajamas in the kitchen. I don't want to answer the door in my pajamas. She said, I've got Samantha on the potty chair. I can't come down. I said, oh, okay. I opened the front door.

It's Catherine Hepburn. She said, hello, Sally. I'm Catherine. I'm your next door neighbor. Mary told me that it's your birthday. I painted you a birthday card here, dear. Happy birthday. And why don't you card here, dear. Happy birthday. And why don't you come over sometime and have coffee and tea or tea?

And we'll talk about Spencer. And you can see my costumes. I've got so many of my costumes here, my brownstone. I said, I'd love to do that, Miss Hepburn. I mean, what are the chances? Unbelievable. Catherine Hepburn and Joan Crawford in one career. And Ruth Gordon.

And Ruth Gordon. Nice work, Sally. I remember I can actually say I was up at Katharine Hepburn's house once. What were you doing there? I used to work the concessions before I had a career. I had a job with the concessions in the Broadway theaters of selling grape drinks and T-shirts and stuff. And Katharine Hepburn would come in before the show and talk to us. And she was having a party and she invited us, all the concessionaires, to her house.

Is that a matter of gravity with Christopher Reeve? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. That's very cool. By the way, Sally, that's a great Hepburn impression. Oh. Thank you.

Way better than Mario Cantone's. Did he try? I got a couple of quick questions from listeners for you. Let's see, let's see. Perry Shield says, please tell Sally I will always remember her kindness to this 12-year-old who visited backstage at All in the family as a personal guest of betty garrett oh so there you go well just tell us tell us something quick about about betty and also any memories of of mr quigley burt mustin a favorite of gilbert's oh i've got great

stories about both of them um betty garrett uh was a child at heart and lived well into her 90s. And I was doing a benefit with her. It's called STAGE, S-T-A-G-E, acronym for Southland Theater Actors Give Something. And it was an event that happened every year. And Betty and I were each singing a number in this particular production. And so all sorts of luminaries were in the ladies' dressing room downstairs. And I was sitting right next to Betty.

And she was just so energetic. She was already 91. And I said, Betty, how do you know when you're getting old? And she said, when you have to sit down to put on your underwear. She killed me. She was so much fun. And Burt Mustin, the wonderful old character actor, guested on All in the Family.

Oh, we loved him. And Rob Reiner and I had a conversation with him one day on the set, and Rob said to Burt, what did you do over the weekend, Burt? And Burt said, well, I celebrated my 90th birthday. And Rob said, well, what did you do to celebrate? Did you have a party? Did somebody take you out for drinks? And he said, well, no, I didn't have anything to drink. I don't drink. I never have. I didn't have a cake. I don't eat sugar. I never have. Rob said, well, did you stay up late? He says, no, I didn't stay up late.

I like to go to bed early. But I celebrated my birthday. And Rob says, how? We love Burt Mustin. Well, let us know when you get settled. We'd like to see both of you again. Wait a minute. How would you two like to be new grandparents?

I don't think we got time. No, I mean like foster grandparents for all of us. Oh, hold it. I don't need no kind of grandparents. Come on, Daddy. I never knew my real grandma and grandpa. Well, you wouldn't have liked them. He don't mean that.

Well, I like these two, and I'd like you to come visit us on holidays. Oh, what a lovely idea. Thank you, dear. Yeah, maybe sometimes we can go visit you. Go as often as you can, Maid Hen. Well, Joel, it looks like we've just been adopted. Well, see you all next Christmas.

Yeah, yeah, that's a good idea. Next Christmas. See you next Christmas, dear. Ha, ha, Quigley. I'm going to give you one more piece of advice. And this is just for you, Sonny. Something my father said to me. He said, son, don't ever grow old.

What's that supposed to mean? You'll find out. A man who looked old when he was 50. Yeah, he was born an old man. He looked to me like a turtle that's come out of its shell. Yes, you're so sweet with him on that show.

He was a darling man. Ruth McDivitt. You were in the production of The Odd Couple. Yes, when Neil Simon rewrote it for two women. And it was you and... Brenda Vaccaro. Ah. That's funny. women and it was you and brenda vicaro ah that's fun well we'll buy that well she came in and took over at the end i i'd rather not mention the name of the woman that i did it with because she's i understand she's probably the meanest woman in show business i don't want to give her a moment of airtime well 295 performances that must have been stressful well first the people that that

contributed money to make the show happen wanted to make sure that if we opened on broadway and closed in one night as some shows do yet never a neil simon show but they wanted to be sure they they made their investment back before we even opened so they made us go on a nine month tour of the United States with the show first before we ever got to New York and I gotta tell you the person I was sharing the stage with

is one of the meanest human beings I have had the displeasure to know and she made my life a living hell. And then one day our producer, Manny Eisenberg, came into the theater and came downstairs to my dressing room and said, she's given her notice to leave. And I screamed, there is a God.

And then she was replaced by my dear friend, Brenda Vaccaro. That's who you need to interview is Brenda Vaccaro. We'll get Brenda on here. This unnamed actress, what was she doing to you? She doesn't like other women. And she really didn't like me because I was getting all the laughs in the play. I see. Well, you were the Felix character, as we said in the intro.

You were Florence Unger. I came along after she had already chosen what she wanted to play. I see. I see. I see. She assumed, and, you know, they say, how do you spell assume? It makes an ass out of you and me. Right. She assumed that why would Felix, who's now Florence, be funny?

Because what was funny about Jack Lemmon being Felix Unger was he wore an apron and he had ladle in his hand and he was walking around worried about what he was cooking in the kitchen and and which is all feminine things, you know. And and so if you're a woman and you're doing feminine things, that's not going to be funny. So she thought it would be funny to be Oscar, who became Olive because he's he was the slob. And that's what made Jack, you know, Matthau a star. And on Broadway it made, oh, from the Jackie Gleason show. Oh, Art Carney. Art Carney a star.

Yeah. And so she, you know, was mistaken and she took the role of Olive. And so the role left for me to play was Florence. And I just made Florence the most neurotic person on the face of the earth. And, and it was funny. And well, that'll teach her for being unkind to you. Oh, she let, let, look, we went to the white house to, for a state dinner for the King of Saudi Arabia. And she went with her husband and I went with the stage manager from the Odd Couple. And during that evening, Secretary of State George Shultz and his wife came up to talk to me. And they said, how are we so lucky to have you here at the state dinner? And I said, well, we're here in Washington,

D.C. doing the female version of the Odd Couple. And in a couple of months, we'll be in New York and opening on Broadway. And the Shultz's said, well, we come to New York all the time. We see a lot of Broadway shows. We'll come see you. I thought, yeah, sure. So we opened on Broadway, and one day, I got to the theater, and they said, the Schultzes are coming tonight, and the Secret Service has already swept the theater. Make sure it's safe. They don't want to meet the whole cast. They want to come quickly backstage when the play ends with their couple they're traveling with and a photographer and take a couple of pictures of themselves with the odd couple and then they're going to be swept out to their car and leave so please the rest of the cast go to your dressing rooms when the show's

over after you've taken your bows and sally and miss kuhuzberger stay on stage. So, I'm like a Cocker Spaniel. If you say stay, I stay. Now, at the end of the show, I have been vacuuming and singing What's Love Got To Do With It and I'm in all polyester and I'm sweating and my hair is matted to my forehead, but I stay because the Schult is matted to my forehead.

But I stay because the Schultzes are going to be there in three seconds. And we have to do this quickly. And she disappears. And they want to take a picture with both of us and she's not around. And now we're all waiting. Where did she go? She's the only one with a dressing room on stage level. Her dressing room door opens.

She steps out. She says, Mr. and Mrs. Schultz, this way, please. Photographer, oh, you're the Schultz's friend. So nice to meet you. Please come into my dressing room. She's ushering them all in. I'm the last one in line. I'm about to go in her dressing room to take the picture that the Schultz's want. And she puts her arm across the door, Jim, and she says, we won't be needing you

and then she shuts the door in my face. Wow. Wow, wow. Times that times, you know, a year and a half. I'm sorry you'd had to do 300 performances under those circumstances. Let's not say her name. Let's not.

And here, onto a legendary performer that I'm sure that Gilbert loves that i'm sure you'll have lovely things to say about our listener joseph chiaro lanza what are sally's recollections of working with the legendary burgess meredith on the gloria the short-lived glorious he was a dear friend of carol and nancy o'connor so I first got to know him that way. And then when CBS decided to do the Gloria show and bookended at the end of Archie Bunker's plays, they hired him to play the veterinarian that Gloria worked for. And I was just thrilled because I loved that man. And he always had that sparkle in his eye as if he knew some sweet little secret and was going to tell you.

And I went to his house in Malibu once to visit him. And his daughter is an artist. And he was pointing out her paintings to me. And Talia did this and Talia did that. And he obviously loves his daughter so much. And I don't know what I said, but he gave me the sweetest speech. And I can paraphrase it. It was, you know, he said, oh, Sally, we're all on this little tiny round thing that we've named Earth.

And we're held onto it because there's this thing called gravity. And we're hurtling through space. And all we have is one another. And when human beings can finally understand that there are no borders. There are no national anthems for each country. There should be one anthem. We are all brothers and sisters. We have to help each other because we're on this little planet together.

And he gave me this most astounding speech. And I remember just sitting there. I couldn't even speak afterwards. Wow, what a smart man. Yeah. What a wise thing to say yeah and i i always hated that uh that twilight zone episode where he breaks his glasses and i feel like why is he being punished because he likes to read oh i never saw that one yeah, you have to see that. That's one of the famous Twilight shows. We'll send you a link.

Oh, okay. What a great American actor, a guy who could do anything. Yeah, remember him as the penguin in Batman? Of course. Yeah. Gilbert is fond of the film of Mice and Men. Oh, yeah. She does wonderful work with Lon Chaney.

Yeah, that's's a powerful film. And he's wonderful as the boxing manager in Rocky. Yes. Mickey. Yeah. And the one that I really, I wanted to open the show with it, how much I wanted to ask you this one. Here it comes.

Okay. Did you fuck Elvis Presley? I dated Elvis Presley for a while. And he was so physically beautiful. There were times where I was near him where I thought I couldn't breathe. Wow. And the first night I met him, he said to me, Sally, I said, yes, Elvis. He said, Sally, would you like me to sing you a song?

I said, yes. So he said, well, I can't stop looking in your eyes, so I'm going to sing you Blue Spanish Eyes. I said, well, okay. So he put his record on and he sang along with his record and he sang it to me. And then it was going, it's going around now the record's over. And I looked at him and he's looking at me and I said, again, and he said, all right, Sally. And he put the record on again. He sang it seven or eight times to me.

And that was the beginning of quite a steamy affair. Thank you. Blue Spanish eyes Teardrops are falling from your Spanish eyes Please, please don't cry This is just adios and not goodbye Adios and not goodbye And I found him to be all things perfect. He was kind to his friends, kind to his family,

kind to absolute strangers, generous to a fault, so physically beautiful it took your breath away, talented, thoughtful. This girl came into a party at his house one night in Palm Springs, and she was, she had two of those crutches that go around your forearm, and she had two prosthetic legs, and I said, at this point point I was calling him E because all these guys called him E I said E who's that girl he said well Sally one time someone brought her over to one of my parties and well she had a real good time and I I don't think she has a good time very much in her life so we make sure every few weeks we invite

her over so that she can come over and see other people and have a good time so he kept inviting this girl to his house to all of his parties because he cared about her which i thought was amazing but he was also so simple and believing he believed other people. He said one night to me, it was like 3 in the morning, and he said, Sally, I want to take you outside, Sally, and show you something I can do. It's pretty wonderful. I said, okay, let's go. So we're outside, and he says, he gets in this karate stance, one arm up like a crane and the other hand out,

spread his fingers spread right really near a bush and at that moment a little wind went through and the bush tremored a little and he said did you see that Sally did you see how me pressing my hand he had the power from my hand made the bush move I knew it was the wind but i said oh e that's wonderful he really thought his hand was making the bush move it was so interesting man it was so dear and also he was funny he was fast too he was like a caged animal one leg jiggled the whole time it almost jiggled when we were in bed i mean he just his leg never stopped because he was a caged animal, because he couldn't go out anywhere because he would just get mobbed.

So he had to stay indoors. So he was like the tigers you see pacing in their cages. And we were playing this game one night, like the Dorothy Parker at the round table at the Algonquin, you know, it was becoming clever words. And so we said to him, make something out of the word Argentina. And he said, ladies and gentlemen, the Argentina Turner Review. Oh, quick.

Yeah. Very good. Yeah. Very good. How long did this love affair last, if we may ask? A few months. And then I took my roommate with me, a girl named Pam Walter, down on, he sent his airplane to the Santa Monica airport to fly us to see him.

And he met Pam that night. And that was it. He was over me and on to Pam. But that was okay with me. I mean, you can't own Elvis. You can't expect Elvis to make you his end-all, be-all. Especially if he was a caged tiger. Yes, exactly.

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of your phone plan with Chatter Mobile. Score big with nationwide prepaid plans from only $15 a month on Canada's number one prepaid mobile provider, Chatter Mobile. Visit ChatterMobile.com for details. What a life, Sally. Katharine Hepburn, Ruth Gordon, Joan Crawford, Elvis.

I was chased around a hotel room by David Frost. By David Frost. What did you say? I'm sorry. David Frost asked me to dinner in New York, and I went to dinner with him, and our dinner mates were Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanan and George C. Scott and his wife, Trish Vanderveer. Six of us in a booth. And at the end of dinner, he said, Sally, I'd like you to come up to my room for a moment.

I have some things to show you. You know, I fell for it. I went up to his room, and he just wanted to attack me. He chased me around that room for a good. I have some things to show you. I fell for it. I went up to his room and he just wanted to attack me. He chased me around that room for a good ten minutes. Mr. Frost! No, Mr. Frost! No! But he'd had so much to drink, he finally sat on

the bed and kind of went to sleep and I snuck out. Oh dear! Sally, why aren't you writing a memoir or doing a one-woman show? I'm waiting for everyone to be dead. That makes a lot of sense. I don't want to be sued.

Chanel Vickers says, first off, thank you for all you've done for us in your career, Sally. And you work with Liz Torres, another favorite of ours, on both All in the Family and Gilmore Girls. You guys go way back, you and Liz. We do. I first met Liz when she— Miss Patty. Yes, Miss Patty on Gilmore Girls, but the housekeeper on All in the Family. And I fell in love with her at that time.

And she was married at that time to a man named Peter. And she invited my husband and me over to the house one night for dinner. And we all got higher than kites. And we laughed till we were rolling on the floor. But she told me about a time where she got in a fight with Peter. And she was so mad at him that she left the room. And she was wearing a dress. And she took off her shoes and her underwear.

And she came back in. She still had the dress on. And she told him how furious she was with him. And then she pulled her dress up and squatted and urinated on the rug in his office and left and i and i said oh lord that's the most primal feral kind of that's just perfect that says more than any words could ever say that's a peckinpah moment yes yeah liz tor. Liz Torres, I believe, dated Pat McCormick. No, I did. Do you know anything?

I did. You dated Pat McCormick? I dated Pat McCormick. Oh. Well, now we've buried the lead. Please do tell. Oh, well, the first time I met him, we were both in a commercial together

for Ranch Style Beans, and the art director had turned the whole soundstage into the top of a table. The whole floor looked like a red and white checkered tablecloth. And there was a giant plate that they made that was about 15, 16 feet wide, a round plate. And Pat McCormick was dressed as a ranch style bean and I was dressed as a hamburger.

And I was Betty Burger. I was toe-dancing around him, and he was trying to interview me and take a bean pole of what I felt as a hamburger about ranch-style beans. And he just was so hilarious that we'd swap phone numbers and stayed in touch for years. so hilarious that we'd swap phone numbers and stayed in touch for years. And then right about two years before he had his huge debilitating stroke, I started dating him and dating him was insane. I mean, he would get in my car and he would, he would drive my car. I had a 1956 Ford Sunliner convertible and he would pretend constantly that the brakes were gone and he would he would drive my car i had a 1956 ford silent sunliner convertible and he would pretend constantly that the brakes were gone and he would pretend like he was pumping the brakes and he's saying i can't stop the car i can't stop and he on new year's eve i looked up

at him at a party and i said do you have any new year's eve resolutions pat pat was six foot seven and i'm five feet tall and he looked down at me and he says, yes, I promise never to take a dog's temperature in church again. I mean, he was just, he was insane. We went to a Halloween party. This is a gold mine. We went to a Halloween party. He went as Pope Skippy, the answer Pope.

And I went as a pregnant nun. And all night long, he would take questions as the Pope and give people insane answers and all i did was laugh with him 24 7 the answer pope well we we we had a writer named ron friedman on the show who used to write with pat who had wonderful stories that he he supposedly brought his shopping cart to a to a to a checkout in a supermarket, and he said to the checkout girl, did I buy enough toilet paper for all this food? We were at a mutual friend's house who lived at the top of the mountain in Malibu,

and going up to that house was a wildly circuitous drive, and it was not a drive that you want to make too many times a day. And he leaned over to me in a corner in these people's house. And he said to me, wouldn't it be funny if, if you wanted me to go to the grocery store from here? And I went down and got all the groceries and I came back up and I bought them all except for I forgot to buy the cigarettes and then I had to go down that drive again and I got to the bottom and then I realized I don't smoke he was always saying crazy stuff that's gold yeah Gilbert before we get out of here do you want to tell Sally about that yes you want to ask for a verification on something, on the helicopter?

The story I heard is that he and his friends, like once a year or so. Jack Riley and people like that. They would get together and each one would try to outdo each other, like with the dinner they throw. And then when it came time for Pat, he brought them down to this area where there was a helicopter. And he handed them each just a little paper bag with a tuna sandwich and an apple in it and they were all like looking at it like this this is our dinner what the hell is this and he put them on the helicopter one by one each to each time with a hooker and and the hooker while the helicopter would circle the guy's

the guy's house while his wife was at home it would circle and the hooker would blow the guy now we heard we heard this story from buck henry and ronnie shell and oh my god i heard that I heard this story from Buck Henry and Ronnie Schell. Oh, my gosh. I heard that with one of them, he came home and his wife said, so how was dinner? And he goes, it was okay. How are things with you? And she says, all right, except that this helicopter kept circling my house. I kept circling my house.

Well, I didn't want to say, but the day I met him auditioning for the commercial, we were standing very close together and we were saying the dialogue and the creatives in the room were looking at our chemistry and thinking how funny it was, this very large man and this small woman. And all of a sudden he stopped saying the lines on the page, and he just said, oh, Sally, go up on me. Go up on me. Oh, and I remembered I was working somewhere, and I met Tim Conway.

And I went over to Tim Conway because he knew Pat McCormick. And I said, yeah, I heard a story about Pat. And before I even said McCormick, Conway looks at me

and goes, Alan Copter? What do we think Sally It sounds like it was well in his character Oh definitely He was very respectful of me However One year he says to me What do you want for Christmas I said oh Pat I don't want a Christmas present from you

I just want to make sure that if you get invited To any great holiday parties, I'm on your arm. And so he says, yeah, but if you could have anything you wanted, like anything around the house that you need. And I said, I don't know. And he says, well, just write a few things down for me. Give me an idea.

So I wrote a list of maybe 10 things that he could possibly purchase for me, like a new vacuum cleaner. He bought all 10 things for me and surprised me. Wow. One day I noticed that one of my camellia bushes beside my porch was dying, and the camellia bush on the other side of the porch was thriving, and I never knew why. And then Pat pulled up in front of my house one day,

and I was looking through the Venetian blinds watching him come up the walkway. And he was sloshing around mouthwash in his mouth because he always smoked a cigar in his car, and I think he didn't want to smell like a cigar when he came in. And he spit the mouthwash on my camellia bush. He killed my camellia bush with all his mouthwash. What a wonderful showbiz character. Yeah, nobody liked him ever. Yeah, larger than life. Sally, this is a wonderful ride.

Also, you know, we didn't even get into your wonderful stage work. You were in Curtains, by the way, written by our pal Rupert Holmes. Oh, I love Rupert Holmes. The best guy. Oh, yeah. by the way written by our pal rupert holmes oh i love rupert holmes the best guy oh yeah yeah i was um yeah i i failed in that musical i i i did it at a theater in pittsburgh where they only give you one week of rehearsal to learn an entire huge show and i couldn't learn my snappy patter woody chatter song. It was one of those songs that there's a lot of lyrics.

It's a clever song, not a melodic, tuneful love song or something. It was a lot of words. And so I would just stand on stage and let the orchestra play and just stand and smile at the audience, and they would wind up smiling and laughing and clapping because it was obvious I didn't know what I was doing. But Rupert Holmes didn't even get mad at me. What a nice man. He's a mensch.

He is a mensch. I heard you on with Maren talking about how going on the road and going to all these different states and towns, you know, was such a wonderful experience for you. You met so many people. Your address book got so thick with names. You made friends in every city and every state. What a nice thing for an actor to be able to get to do.

And theater is not for sissies. So, you know, you can take somebody that's got a major motion picture career and you could ask them to learn a play, which means they have to know all 100 pages of dialogue and do it from beginning to end without anyone yelling cut. And it's too frightening for them. They won't do it. They can learn three, four pages of dialogue a day and shoot at a hundred different angles. And that's your work for that day. And the next day you've learned three or four more pages of dialogue, but they're too frightened to get on a stage without a director saving them by yelling cut.'s do that again so I love doing theater because it's it requires the most um professionalism and you have to do that same performance eight times a week and there are people that won't just won't do that and so while I'm out there applying my trade in all these theaters doing what i feel is the best work you can do as an actor i'm meeting all these other

people who work in theaters they're the they're the crew guys and the women in the wardrobe department and they all love theater and they work in it too and i've saved all their phone numbers and addresses and when i go through these cities, we... That's nice. Yeah, it's great. That's nice. You know, that is something Gilbert is not attracted to, as we've learned on this show, right, Gilbert? Playing the same role seven nights a week. That kind of grind.

Yeah. You know, Sally, you wanted to be a character. You always saw yourself as a character actress, and you certainly became that. Yeah. And we go back to the story I told you earlier about screaming at my mother on this pay phone, I'm a Pons girl, I'm a Pons girl. And then I went to the wardrobe fitting, and there was this really pretty girl in there.

And I said, hi, my name's Sally. What's your name? And she said, Carol. I said, hi, Carol. I said, I'm here because I'm doing a Pons commercial. What are you having fittings for? She said, a Pons commercial. I said, oh, Carol. I said, I'm here because I'm doing a Pons commercial. What are you having fittings for? She said, a Pons commercial. I said, oh, which one are you doing?

She said, I'm doing the one on the pirate ship. I said, so am I. And she said, oh, she said, so you're going to play my friend who asks me what I do to keep my skin so lovely. Oh, jeez. And I realized at that moment that I wasn't the Pons girl. You can see that pirate ship commercial on YouTube, by the way. So that day, walking back to the Hollywood Studio Club for Girls, I said to myself, Sally, you've just met Carol, and she's beautiful.

But Hollywood is very vain and cold. And when she's about 39, she'll be washed up and spit out because she's a beautiful girl and they won't want to use her when she's 40. But you're a character actor, so you can work until you're 97. So consider yourself lucky. And you've done everything. You've done song and dance. You've done sketch comedy. You've done sketch comedy you've done sitcoms and what a sitcom uh you know uh dramas features you've you know you've really you've run the gamut and yet if you don't have a series on at the moment when you walk down the street but people recognize you for me i get the condescending Descending sweetness. Oh, Sally. You're Sally Struthers, right? Yes.

Hi. Oh, we used to love you on TV. Uh-huh. So are you retired, dear? No, I haven't stopped working. Well, we don't see you. Well, I've been doing a lot of theater lately. Oh, all right.

But no tell. Well, I just did Gilmore Girls for seven years. Oh, well, we don't watch much TV. Well, if you don't watch much TV, why are you assuming I'm not on it? I mean, people just think if they don't see you just last week on something that you must be washed up or too old to work. I don't know what. And nowadays it's so weird. Like years ago, you could appear in a, that you, they could see the back of your head in a crowd scene for a second. And the next day, everybody would know who that person was. Now it's like you could star in a 10 series a night

and people will not know who you are. Exactly. Because they have too many choices. Yeah. It's a different world. I mean, I sit there with that remote and when I get up to like channel 789, I say, what am I doing? Go to bed, Sally. But there's so many choices now. Is it too hard? Go ahead, Sally. I'm sorry. It's just, there's too many choices now. Is it too hard for you? I heard you say when you're,'s just there's too many choices now. Is it too hard for you?

I heard you say if you come across all in the family, will you stay with it or is it hard for you to watch? Is it too emotional to see Gene and Carol? Yeah, I can't say that I watch a whole episode anymore. I get so immediately melancholy and missing my castmates who became like a family to me. And, you know, I'd never thought about it at that time, but actuary tables would have told me that I was going to outlive them. And it's just so shocking to have the writers gone and the cameramen are gone and most of the actors are gone. And it's just Norman Lear and Rob Reiner and me left. Weird.

Yeah, and a handful of writers. I've always wanted to ask you this, and I'm sure you've been asked a million times. Do you have a favorite moment from that show? Is it a moment with Jean? Is it a moment with Jean? I love the moment you brought up earlier about her trying to tell me about my wedding night. It's great. And she just played that so brilliantly.

I remember doing that with her, and it made it so easy to play the part I had to play in that particular episode. When you're working with an actor that is that good, it raises up what you do. And I had lots of favorite moments with Carol. I liked the moments where I got to be feisty and not nice. I liked pulling Carol's fingers apart until he yelled, Ow! That's great. I liked when Mike was trying to be nice to me, and I was overdue.

The baby was supposed to have arrived two or three weeks ago, and I'm overdue, and he's being sweet, and he's got his face right in my face, and they wrote a line for me to say, because just like Terry Thomas, Rob Reiner has a split between his two front teeth, and they had Gloria say to him, how long have you been parting your teeth in the middle? You know, I like the physical comedy, too, that you do. In the Women's Lib episode, you say, what am I, a wind-up toy? And you walk out on him as a wind-up toy. And in Battle of the Month, he comes down and is telling Gilbert,

he picks you up he's going to treat you like a child because you're you want to sleep on the couch and he lifts you up and you slap him across the face it's wonderful it's wonderful you know there wasn't a lot of physical comedy on the show but you did it very well i love the moment where gloria was giving birth and the and the uh ob gyn is, okay, now Gloria, just push. Push down, like pushing on the pedal of a car. And I said while I was grunting, I don't drive!

That's funny. Just little moments like that are my favorite moments. Babette is also such a wonderful character. And of course, I've watched these episodes dozens of times, had no idea that you were doing Ruth Gordon or that you were paying homage to Ruth Gordon. Now I'll watch them differently.

And she's kind of a delightfully randy character, too. She and Maury have a sex life that you'd love to peek in on. Yeah. Including the episode where she says that last night, Maury, you'll love this, Gilbert, Maury was dressed as a howler monkey. Let me tell you about my first day on the set. I landed that job to play the next-door neighbor to the two leads on the show, to

Lorelei and Rory. And I am doing a musical in Las Vegas, and so I have to fly in on the last plane out that night out of Vegas to L.A. So I got home at about one in the morning and I got three hours of sleep and had to be at Warner Brothers by 5 30 a.m. And I'm just out of it. I'm just slap happy. And they're putting makeup on me and somebody comes and says

you have to come down get in the golf cart. We're going to take you down to where the set is for Lorelei's backyard. And you'll shoot the scene with your husband. And so I get in the golf cart. I'm only half made up. And the director comes over, introduces himself to me and says, have you met your husband yet? I said, no, I haven't. So this very tall man is walking toward me. He said, you met your husband yet? I said, no, I haven't. So this very tall man is walking toward me. He said, this is your husband. And he said, Ted, this is Sally. Sally, this is

Ted. I said, very nice to meet you. So we ran the scene for the director and the crew so they can decide how to light it. And then they said, sit in these two lawn chairs here and we'll either excuse you in a minute to go back to makeup or we might want you to run the scene again so we're making small talk Ted and I and I told him how I had been in Vegas the night before and how tired I was and he says I was hiking in Mexico and my cell phone went off and my agent said you got to get back here you got this part in the show I said oh you must be so tired too so we were quiet and quiet. And then he said, So how are things in Portland? And I looked at him and I said, What? He said, How are things with your

family and friends in Portland? And I said, Well, how did you know that I'm from Portland? And he just had this big, you know, Cheshire Cat grin on his face, and I said, wait a minute. I said, they sent me the script in Vegas with the cast list, and I read your name, and I thought, no, it couldn't be, but you are? And he shook his head, and he said, uh-huh. And I said, so you're Ted Rooney, son of Ed Rooney, my high school math teacher. How about that?

And he says, yeah. So I said, so you grew up in Portland too? He says, yes. So I said, you went to Grant High School too? He says, yeah. I said, oh my God. And then he said, what no one wants to hear. He says, but I'm younger than you.

I wasn't in your class. It was a nice moment for a while. I said, but you're tall and skinny and you look older and I'm short and have a round fat face and I will look younger than I am for the rest of my life. So there you go. That's a fun coincidence. If you hang around in this business long enough, things like that happen. Yeah. Sally.

Yeah. What is that? It's just my phone. Holy smoke, I don't know what I thought that was. Some alarm on your pants or something. No, that's not my pants alarm. Pants alarm sounds more like a siren. You want to answer that?

Should we put this down? No, that's okay. I'm afraid if we put it down, we'll pick it up again. Oh, this is going to be good. What with this one here and the two palms. Oh boy, Maury's eyes are going to pop out of his head. Why? Does he find plants particularly startling? I'll make it a jungle.

A jungle? With a bedroom. Oh, enough said. Hey, is that your inside phone? Yeah, I'll call him back. Oh, so anyway, I got this negligee with sort of a snake pattern on. Oh, boy, is this heavy. It is. It is.

I'm sorry, darling. I wasn't hoping that you would lug this with me. I was planning on asking Christopher. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I haven't seen him much lately. Oh, well, his work keeps him busy. Yeah, well, what's he do? Something with computers?

Very mysterious. Yeah, he's a man of mystery. Oh, you know who's a man of mystery? Maury. After decades in the bedroom, who would have thought that the idea of dressing up like a howler monkey would be such a turn-on?

Right, I'm gonna get this. Gilbert, we can't get you to do legitimate theater huh we can't entice you what what if you and can you and sally tour it in the in the gin game oh my god the closest i ever came to doing actual theater was uh they had like a week of the Rocky Horror Show, and they were having like different celebrity guest narrators. So I did that for a week, and I thought, that's all the work I want to do. So it ain't going to happen, huh?

No. We had Jason Alexander on the show. We kicked the idea around of Gilbert and Jason doing the Sunshine Boys. Oh, my God. Everyone would pay to see that. Come on, Gil. Be the hottest ticket in town. And someone else told me I'd be a good Willie Loman, which that I would have to think about.

You would have to do it using your Carol O'Connor voice, though. Yes. Last question from a listener before we let you go home, Sally, and you've been wonderful. Ed Marcus, does she have any funny stories, and again, this speaks to your versatility, about playing Pebbles Flintstone with the original cast, with the great Mel Blanc and Alan Reid?

Yeah, oh, my God. So lots of funny stories. Two that come to mind were that Jay North, who played Dennis the Menace on TV, was now a young man and he was playing Bam Bam and I was his Pebbles. And he was very easy to make blush. So when the sound was rolling in the sound booth and we were all having to say our lines, when I didn't have to be talking but he had to say bam-bam lines, I would reach over and grab his behind. And he would turn –

You goosed Dennis the Menace. He turned fuchsia every time. He couldn't handle it. Now I would be sued and my career would be over. You can't do that anymore. Different times. Yeah, and Mel Blanc. I was leaving Hanna-Barbera once

and we were pulling out of the parking lot at the same time and I beeped at him and he rolled his window down. He says, yeah. And I said, why does it say KMIT on your on your license plate what does that stand for it's standard I think it was German it's standard for Kishmir Ein Tuchus fantastic I thought it was a radio station. Wonderful. Sally, we have to thank our mutual friend, John Shuck.

Oh, I love Johnny Shuck. He's so talented and he's so funny and he was the best Daddy Warbucks I have ever worked with. He's so elegant on stage and darling and he has the most wonderful wife who's a great artist harrison shuck and yes and he's he's a great man we love john yeah he did this show a couple of months ago and uh he was like a duck to water he was the perfect guest yeah i i can believe that yeah and we'll thank Pamela Sharp, too, who helped us put this together, and our friends Lan Romo and Aristotle Acevedo. And thank you, Sally, too, for all the things you've done for children over the decades.

It's important. Well, my family taught me that you always give back. You always help others. That's the only way you can get through life is to help others. And it was a great lesson. Well, you put yourself out there for a very, very long time and you changed a lot of lives for the better. It was my joy. So bravo for that. The first and only time I went to Italy about 20 years ago with my friends Sugar and Margaret, they said, you're having a really wonderful time, aren't you?

And I said, yeah, I don't have to feed anybody here. Everybody in Italy is very well fed. I said, I have only been to remote and shoddy outposts where you get covered in flies and children are crying. And I said, this is a unique experience for me to go to a country that's beautiful and no one's starving. It was my first experience. Oh, and you worked in Russia.

I did. I made it. Oh, is that the Harry Morgan thing? Harry Morgan and I went to Russia to make a special about the Leningrad Ice Show. Oh, my God. That was so amazing to be with all those Russian people. And it was, you know, very scary because they were watching us and our rooms were bugged. And, and we, we just felt like we were being watched all the time. And

I was with my Japanese hairdresser and, and he, he starts having conversations with people. And he tried to talk to this Russian taxi cab driver. And I said, Hawk, don't, don't even bother you. Your English is broken and you have this very thick Japanese dialect and the man doesn't speak a word of English. He doesn't know what you're talking about. He says, by the time we get to Ice Paris, I know everything about this man. And so he says to the man pointing at him, you have any babies? And he rocks his arm like he has babies. And the man goes, man goes da da he holds up two fingers and hakuto turns to me in the back seat and says see he has two babies he says you have

girl baby or boy baby and hawk touches his breasts and then his groin and then makes the baby sign again and the guy says one girl baby and he grabs his own breasts one boy baby and he grabs his own crotch side hawk says see he has son and daughter. He says, I find out. By the time we got the ice palace, we knew what the score was on the ice hockey game he was listening to. Hawk knew everything because he was fearless talking to this Russian man. On the other hand, my husband and I in our room were saying things as we were picking up every tchotchke in the room and looking for the bugs that were recording. Were you being bugged for real?

Oh, yeah. We were saying, oh, I just love Russia, don't you? And we were winking at each other. Didn't we have a great dinner last night? Meanwhile, we were looking under the bed, looking at the sofa. It was scary. And when we would leave our room and come back, they made it obvious they'd been through our room.

Wow. It was scary. Gilbert, I'm impressed by your research. It was scary. Gilbert, I'm impressed by your research. And we were filming us walking along outside in Leningrad, and people just kept passing by. We had a camera crew, and, you know, we were dressed differently.

And I said to our guide one day, whose name was Vladimir, but they pronounce it Vladimir. I said, Vladimir, why aren't people stopping in America? If you're filming and people stop and watch, he says, aren't, I said, aren't they interested? He says, it is not that they are not interested. It is that they are not allowed to be interested. They must not stop. Whoa.

I was like, what? You all live this way? Wow. I couldn't live here. Your career has taken you everywhere. Yeah. What a bizarre adventure. And Gilbert,

where did you find that tidbit? Uh, you got- Did Shuck call you? Who? Did Shuck, John Shuck call you? Sally, John Shuck, John Shuck call you? Sally, John wrote, John sent me an email and said, don't forget to ask her some of the people,

about some of the people she dated. Oh! I think he meant Elvis. I think, yeah. Pat McCormick was a surprise bonus. Yeah. I dated some unusual people, Andy Williams and... And, um...

How about that? Gil, do you want to... Since Sally's impressed by your Carol O'Connor impression, do you and Sally want to take us out on a couple of bars of the theme song? What do you think? Okay. Cheat away, Glenn Miller plays Songs that make the hit parade

Guys like us we had it made Those were the days And you knew when you were then Girls were girls and men were men

Mister we could use a man like Herbert Hoover again. Didn't need no welfare state. Everybody pulled his weight. She rolled the sour red grate. Those were the days. I can die now. That was so great, Gilbert.

We could do a show. We could do a two-person show. We could get booked like once a month And go somewhere and do an evening With Gilbert Gottfried and Sally Struthers And we could tell stories Come on Gilbert

Come on you can't refuse that offer Only if you do most of it And I have two lines in it We will return To Gilbert Gottfried's amazing lines in it. We will return to Gilbert Gottfried's amazing, colossal podcast, but first, a word from our sponsor.

Sally, you are a sport. This is a great episode. We'll probably cut it into two parts because there's so much gold here. Oh, well, I'd be flattered and we could talk to you for hours and hours and hours well anytime you need me back because everyone else has said no and and you know another thing that was different about you every single actress who's worked with Elvis will say, they'll give the answer, oh yeah, women were throwing themselves at him, but no, I didn't do anything with Elvis. Oh yeah. I was such bullshit.

I did. Sally's an open book. Yeah. I'm telling you, that's when he started down the slippery slope of drugs. And we would stay up until the sun was coming up. And then it was time to go to sleep. And then he would have to take something to sleep. They were called Placidils. They were big, maroon-looking pills. And he'd say one for me, and then he'd say one for you. And he'd put it in my mouth.

Wow. Yeah. Sally, you've got to write a memoir. I know. I really do. You really, really do. Or a one-woman show. Maybe Gilbert can come on and be a little comic relief.

I would love that. I have a one-woman show that I've trotted out a few times. It's called Life is Short and So Am I. Love it. I love it. Thank you. Thank you for the decades of entertainment on behalf of all of our listeners. Thank you, Frank.

Thank you, Gilbert. Thank you, Land, Aristotle. Thank you, Land and Aristotle. I thought, what? I'm supposed to get to the sound studio, call from my car, and ask for someone named Land. And I get Land on the phone. And then Land says, I'm sending Aristotle out to get you. But I thought he said aerosol.

So I thought, I'm dealing with land and aerosol. Land is very impressed that you played Dolly Levy. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I loved doing that. I did the Hello Dolly tour. I loved it. I was the oldest one on the tour. I was the only one that never missed a show.

You think Gilbert could play, jokes aside, he talked about Willie Loman before, you think Gilbert could play, jokes aside, he talked about Willie Loman before, do you think Gilbert could play a dramatic role? Absolutely, and he would blow everyone away because when you have the gift of being funny, which Gilbert, I know, was born with, and so was I, inside are the deepest feelings and maybe more drama than most people have been through. And when you tap into that, you are heartbreaking. How about that? Yeah.

How about that, Gilbert? Wow. Gilbert, the bar has been set. Jeez. I still say you should do the gin game with Sally or love letters. Oh, my God. Love letters. Oh, my God. Yes. I still say you should do the gin game with Sally or love letters oh my god love letters oh my god yes oh I'm gonna call you

every week and beg now you know you don't have to learn anything Gilbert it's all read you get to read it oh that's one good thing to an audience and could I be off every other show And could I be off every other show? Sally, it was lovely to meet you.

Thank you. Thank you so much. It was a great evening. And a gift for us, really. Our listeners will go crazy. They'll love this one. It was a pleasure to meet your beautiful wife. I heard your kids in the background.

I'm remembering when my 42-year-old daughter was 12 and 13, and those were fun times. Enjoy your kids while they're young, because when they get older, they won't speak to you. You know, you know. I'm not sure they speak to him now. Yes. They know better.

So this has been Gilbert Gottfried's amazing colossal podcast with my co-host, Frank Santopadre. And we've been talking to the terrific Sally Struthers. Look at that crowd up ahead. Listen and hear that brass harmony growing. Look at that crowd up ahead Listen and hear that brass harmony growing Look at that crowd up ahead Pardon me if my old spirit is showing All of those lights

over there seem to be telling me where I'm going When the whistles blow and the cymbals crash and the sparklers light the sky I'm gonna raise the roof

I'm gonna carry on give me an old trombone give me an old baton before the parade passes by I'm gonna raise the roof, I'm gonna carry on Give me an old trombone, give me an old baton, before the parade passes by.