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doin' beautifully. "Burning Settlers' Homes," everybody passed.
"Imitating a Coyote," everybody passed. "Sneaking Quietly
Through the Woods," everybody passed, except Limping Ox.
However, Limping Ox is being fitted with a pair of corrective
moccasins . . .
I received a smoke signal from headquarters today. Actually I
didn't receive the signal. They smoke-signaled me but I was out,
so I returned their signal later. The smoke signal is: there'll be a
massacre tonight at nine o'clock. We meet down by the bonfire,
dance around a little, and move out. This'll be the fourth straight
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night we've attacked the fort. However, tonight it will not be as
easy as before: tonight there will be SOLDIERS in the fort!
Okay, uniform. This is a FORMAL massacre. You want your
Class A summer loincloth. Two green stripes over the eye, no
feather. Arms are blue, legs are red, chest is optional. What's
that, Prancing Antelope? No, you can't put any purple on your
eyelids. Hey, ain't you the one with the beads? I told youse—get
outta line!
I can't say it was edgy, socially significant, daring, risky or anything else that the pot-smoking rebel outsider aspired to. But it
worked.
The Merv G r i f f i n Show was different from other network shows in
that it was syndicated, so while it wasn't fundamentally "freer" than
any other variety-style TV show, the burden of approval of things
didn't weigh entirely on the producer and production staff—it was
also on a group of stations that wouldn't receive it until two weeks
later. There was less panic and pressure. The staff were more relaxed.
Merv wasn't as much an overlord of his domain as Paar or Carson
were of theirs. And the Little Theater on West 44th Street where it
was shot for its first few years was very congenial; all those friendly
vibes of live performance had survived. A warmer atmosphere than
the cold, technical ambience of a TV studio, a warmth which could
be perceived as freedom. At least the freedom to fail a little or screw
up in some way that could be turned back into comedy.
Everyone was vying for the G r i f f i n "interview"—the first step in
getting on the show, when you'd go in and tell the producer or the
booker (like the legendary Tom O'Malley) what you wanted to do if
you got it.
Richard Pryor and I were pretty much contemporaneous at the
Go Go. But Richard got his G r i f f i n interview first, in early '65. I
hadn't been seen yet. After Richie's interview, Tom O'Malley came
in to see me and I got an interview scheduled. By the time I did
the interview, Richard had done his first Merv. By the time I did
mine, Richard had done two. And so on. I always had this lag time
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with Richie—a week or a month or some unit of time behind his
professional development. It went on for years, through albums and
Grammys and specials until I finally overtook him in the Heart Attack 500.
The Merv Griffin Show was my big breakthrough, that odd little
syndicated talk show whose host everyone discounted or made fun
of. All that happened afterward flowed from that one appearance. It
was in July '65. I did "The Indian Sergeant." And it killed. I didn't
win the big prize: being invited to sit on the couch with Merv. But
that would come in due course. Needless to say, Richie had already
made it to the couch.
Right after the show they told me that they wanted me to do three
more. I didn't have anything else prepared. Fragmentary media
spoofs were rambling around in my act, none of them five to six minutes long. I was going to have my work cut out. Just as with school
assignments when I was a kid, I put it off and put it off. Invariably
I wound up the day before a show going down from our sixth-floor
apartment—which we'd finally escaped to the year before—to my
mother s second-floor apartment. I'd sit at the kitchen table where
I'd done my homework a few years before and write the next day's
piece. I would take the two minutes I already had and build it up
into five or six. It was nerve-racking because there was no chance to
test this new stuff on anybody, outside of myself. I did always trust
myself to know the difference between something that would work
for me and something that wouldn't. I was wrong a lot but my average was pretty good.
One media piece I'd been fooling with was a takeoff of a Top 40
deejay. It got to be a comedy cliche later but at the time no one had
really done it. And it came from my own experience. I did it on my
second Merv and it wasn't hard to expand, because all I had to do
was add a few more stupid names for bands and more stupid song
titles . . . Here's Willie West on Wonderful WINO, all this of course
done at breakneck speed:
Hi there, kids. Welcome to the Willie West Show here on
W-W-W-W-W-W-W-W-W-I-I-I-I-I-I-N-N-N-N-N-O-O-O-O-
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O-O-O-OJ Wonderful WINO RADIO-O-O-O-O! Welcome-
to-the-WiUie-Wesi-Show-here-in-the-wonderful-West-If-it's-a
weird-one-it's-best-Willie-West-with-the-hundred-and-one-
wild-and-woolly-wedges-of-WAX! Right here on Wonderful
WINO-O-O!
1750 on your dial! Just above the police calls, kids! We got stacks
and stacks of wax and wax, we're gonna pick and click the oldies-
but-goldies, the newies-but-gooeys. We got the Top 700 records
right here on Wonderful WINO-O-O-O!!!!
Now the big rockin' sound of that great new group from
England—The KANSAS CITY BOYS! With-"MY BABY'S
DEAD"!!!!
"Brrrding-ding Brrrding-ding-ding-ding-ding . . . My baby's
DEAD!! DE-EH-EH-AAAAUD! Got hit by a TRAIN! Big
'ol train, diddle-do-do-do. I'm gonna GIT that train diddle-do-
do-do!U"
Another big romantic ballad and ya heard it right here on
Wonderful Wl-bulletin-bulletin-bulletin-bulletin-bulletin-
bulletin-buUetin-bulletin -bulletin-bulletin-bulletin-bulletin . . .
The SUN did not COME UP this morning!! HUGE CRACKS
have appeared in the EARTH'S SURFACE!! BIG ROCKS
are falling out of the SKY!! Details later on Action Central
News/
Hey, kids, TWO INAROW, a big double play here on the Weird
Willie West Show. This is brand new, hasn't even been released
yet but it's NUMBER ONE on the charts this week and moving
higher all the time . . . Next week it'll be a GOLDEN OLDIE!
We got some dedications! This goes out to .. . Red Louie, Spike
Choochoo, Spanish Annan, Dirty Mary, Baby Carlos, Peewee,
Junior, Toots, Baboo Spot, Greasy Creep and Woozie Mush, our
pick to make you sick . . . JENNY!
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Eeeee-eeeee-eeeee-eeeee-doe-doe-eeeee-eeeee-eeeee-bum bada
loop-bum-badda boop dada-doot bum-badaloop-badaloop-
badaloop badaloop blip - h I ip-blip-blip-hlip-h lip-blip-blip blip-
blip-blip-blip-blip-blip-blip-blip-blip—JENNYM
After the fourth show, the Griffin people were sufficiently impressed that t
hey said, "We'd like you to do a cycle of thirteen." A
nice ring to that; almost like the thirteen-show cycle of a series. A
mixed blessing, though. The first four were hard enough to find
material for—what the fuck will I do for thirteen?
On the other hand it was a great opportunity. The first thing I
did was repeat "The Indian Sergeant." Merv really loved that. Then
I was able to repeat a couple of others. I took a bunch of TV commercials and made a whole TV commercials routine. Then I rewrote "Wonderful WINO" with different jokes, same character, and
added News, Sports and Weather. Somewhere in here A1 Sleet, the
Hippy-Dippy Weatherman, made his debut. But "The Indian Sergeant" was a mother lode: I eventually came up with a Columbus
Sergeant, a Sergeant on the Pinta, a Robin Hood Sergeant, a Santa
Claus Sergeant. I was learning early a basic rule of television: repeat,
repeat, repeat. Find variations, but stick to the successful format.
There was a certain secret tension. Now I had to forget all of those
pieces with some adventure and risk to them: the stuff I'd been showing off to my coffeehouse friends. Mr. Anal hated to let things go.
But for now and the foreseeable future they had to be abandoned.
They weren't going to work where I was going.
My fondest memories of sixties television are the Griffin shows.
Although it was a television show like any other, it had a little something more. The thrilling thing about Merv's show was that it was
on Broadway, 44th Street between Broadway and Eighth no less,
in the heart of the theater district, when that heart still beat strong
and steady. The Little Theater was right next to Sardi's, where I was
happy to find Hirschfelds of my heroes Danny Kaye and Jack Lemmon, whom I would one day join on those beige walls. More important they served great creamed spinach. Just like the good old
Automat.
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When you grow up in New York and you collect autographs as a
boy, you know where all the stage doors are. Broadway is the center, the mecca, true magnetic north. Though I didn't aspire to be
a Broadway actor, Broadway was the symbolic pinnacle of what I
wanted to be and belong to. Broadway was where I first found out
that guys actually stood up in front of people to make them laugh.
(In this case between features at the Capitol Theatre or the Strand.)
Wonderful to be back downtown in those same streets I'd once
haunted, running from stage door to stage door searching for autographs, but now with some level of acceptance, invited to be, however briefly, on the inside looking out.
Hello, Dolly! with Carol Channing was next door. (The first time
around when she was a mere forty-three.) Sammy Davis Jr. was
across the street, in Golden Boy. On Broadway.
After fighting against it for so long, I felt the wind at my back and
the road rising to meet me.
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INSIDE EVERY SILVER LINING
THERE'S A DARK CLOUD
George, right, with Mike Douglas
(Photo of The Mike Douglas Sfiow courtesy of C B S Television Distribution)
I'm sitting in a brightly lit pink and white gazebo in a drab
medium-sized studio in Philadelphia. It's much too early in
the day. Mike Douglas is also sitting in the gazebo, watching
his guests the Andrews Sisters, musical (and sexual) icons of World
War II, belting out one of their close-harmony boogie-woogie hits.
Not the kind of thing you want to hear at eleven in the morning, but
for the audience of plump, blue-haired matrons this shit is sacred.
Sitting next to Mike is Jimmy Dean, himself an icon of whitebread wholesomeness and down-home values, and next to him,
Mike's cohost, George Carlin.
As middle sister, Maxene, hits a high note, Jimmy leans over to
me and says under his breath: "I bet that old Maxene's cooze hangs
down like a sock."
The Mike Douglas Show in Philadelphia was a kind of extra
added bonus to Merv. If you did Merv you did Mike. Mike Douglas
was one of the top-rated daytime shows. Both were syndicated by
Westinghouse: both had staggered play dates that might be a week
later in one city and a week earlier in another. So both were pretty
good exposure.
Mike was a nice enough guy: like Merv an ex-big-band singer.
And because the ladies who came in from the suburbs to catch the
show before lunch loved him so much, anyone he brought out had
to be okay. If you were reasonably affable and clever and got through
your stuff, you could get them to go: "Oh, he's a nice boy too."
Even so the show's central emotion was fear. I'd like to think it
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was bred by Mike's producer—a fat, loud, brash twentysomething
named Roger Ailes who laughed at anything you said, funny or
not—but, as I was learning fast, fear was the driving force of TV.
Especially variety TV.
I'd take the train from New York to Philadelphia, and the whole
way down, I'd be second-guessing myself over the piece I planned to
do, wondering if this should come before that, trying to think of new
jokes. Fearful of the constant threat: going into the sewer.
I did eight Mervs before I sat down at the panel. On Mike Doug-
las, you sat in the gazebo—his version of the panel—from the very
first show. Right from the beginning I hated the scripted sociability
of people sitting together, pretending to know stuff about one another, the fraudulent showbiz chitchat that went on in these conversations.
For comics it was especially hard. It was your job to keep people
chuckling along. But you had no control over the phony setups.
You had jokes ready and the host was supposed to ask you the right
question, so you'd come back with your joke and bring the house
down. But it was always nerve-racking, because you knew he'd get
the setup wrong, which more often than not he did. And your hard
work would go in the sewer.
Mike Douglas was daytime TV, which multiplied the opportunities for embarrassment. There'd be some activity you had to get
physically involved in: an exercise lady or a juggler or a cooking segment. Once when I was cohost, Ailes sprang on me: "For tomorrow's
cooking thing, we want you to have a recipe. We'll have all of the
ingredients for it. You show Mike how to cook it."
I come up with—a jelly bean omelet. I'm thinking: "Boy, there's
two things that don't go together. This will be REALLY humorous."
Next day I'm cooking and the egg mixture's half done and Mike's
nodding along, pretending to be real serious. And I say: "Now in
goes our filling: JELLY BEANS!" I'm expecting a nice laugh and
then wing it from there. But Mike's still nodding, concentrating on
the jelly bean omelet. Committing the details to memory so he can
make one himself. Into the sewer again.
I hated that—being compromised, embarrassed, humiliated.
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INSIDE EVERY SILVER LINING THERE'S A DARK CLOUD
This loss of dignity and control. But hey, it's still only Stage Two:
grin and bear it.
With all the exposure, things began to happen fast. In October
'65 I was booked into Basin Street East, a place I could only have
dreamed about six months earlier: my first big-time nightclub as a
single with real momentum. I opened for the Tijuana Brass, who
were white-hot, just beginning to crest. It was thrilling to discover
that even though the place was packed with people who'd come to
see Herb Alpert and his Brass, I could get them quiet and get their
attention and even pull some laughs out of them. I did a really good
job. I had a good act. I could handle a room of people who hadn't
come to see me.
Bob Banner caught me at Basin Street. Banner was a long, lanky
country-boy type from Texas who'd been cleaning up in New York
as a producer. Among other things, he'd produced Candid Camera
and discovered Carol Burnett and Dom DeLuise. He put me on
The jimmy Dean Show, an ABC primetime show he also produced. I
did it in January '66 and they liked it so much they immediately had
me back for another.
Next up was the Drake Hotel in Chicago, the far end of the spectrum from the Wells Street, folkie-hippie Chicago I knew. Very
chichi, very snooty room where the comics had to wear tuxedos.
My opening night I was standing behind a pillar in the middle of
the room waiting for my announcement to go on and some large
woman with far too many diamonds tapped my arm and told me to
bring her some water. I said: "I will, as soon as I finish my act."
Bob Banner was soon back with an offer to be a regular and a
writer on the Kraft Summer Music Hall, a summer replacement series in the Andy Williams slot. It was to star the new white-bread
heartthrob singing sensation John Davidson. Since it started taping
in April, I was needed in March 1966. In L.A. We closed down our
tiny sixth-floor apartment, gave my mother the key and the three of
us headed to California. Where we would stay for more than thirty
years.
On Kraft Summer Music Hall I was the "house comic." I appeared on every show. Other regulars included the King Cousins,
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who were an offshoot of the King Family, and a singing duo: Jackie