Berle was fresh off his stint at Nicky Blair’s Carnival when he hosted Texaco Star Theater for the first time in June 1948. William Morris heavily promoted the debut episode. “Just as radio carried acts cradled in the vaudeville tradition, Texaco Star Theater [will be] the Palace of television,” read the press release. “The sixty-minute program will be laid out like a vaudeville bill and will be paced by the emcees much as Frank Fay used to emcee the yesteryear two-a-day bills at the Palace on Broadway.”
The premiere was a success. “Parlaying the best in camera techniques with sock [effective] trouping in the best tradition of old Palace days on Broadway, Milton Berle socked over his standard nitery-stage routine and brought to his emcee role one of the best showmanship lifts yet given a television show,” wrote Variety. Initially the program rotated hosts. Berle took a turn once a month, along with Jack Carter, Morey Amsterdam and mimic Georgie Price. He was hired permanently in the fall. The program was packaged in a new way. Agent Lou Weiss explained, “In 1948, [William Morris] made the deal with Berle. We also got someone we represented to book the show, a producer, writers and talent to put on the show. That’s a package. The whole concept of an agent changed in those years. An agent used to be a guy in a derby with a cigar. All of a sudden an agent’s input and his knowledge of the business was needed.”
Berle’s ratings were big, although with countrywide coaxial cable not yet synched, twenty-four cities in the East saw the program live, while everyone else viewed a fourteen-day-old kinescope. Every Tuesday night at eight o’clock, America was transfixed by two different episodes. The Detroit waterworks offered the best indicator of Berle’s popularity. The city’s water reservoir dropped to alarming levels at nine o’clock every Tuesday. Technicians couldn’t deduce why until a strong-bladdered comedy fan explained the phenomenon.
A classic Joe E. Lewis joke made the rounds at the time. Lewis first told the joke in 1947 at the expense of Berle’s radio show and adjusted it for the television age: “Milton Berle is responsible for the sale of more television sets than any other performer . . . I know I sold mine and my brother sold his.”
Production meetings were held every Wednesday, and they were an ordeal. Berle had a paranoid fear of cold drafts. Every window was sealed at his request, intensifying the cigar smoke. He rejected every idea his staff pitched, sending writers and producers into a panic. “He had Hal Collins following him around with a gag file,” said comedy writer Charlie Isaacs. “He started inserting old jokes [into the script]. Berle didn’t use his judgment, didn’t understand he was ruining the next couple of jokes.”
Show folk were fascinated by Berle rehearsals. They’d sit on the Studio 6B bleachers at Rockefeller Center and watch Berle berate his coworkers. Berle’s rehearsal uniform was a gray sweatsuit, a towel around his neck and a whistle he blew frequently to stop an act or stagehand: a gym coach on a rampage. “For a reporter, the afternoon preceding the show afforded a fascinating study of a man who knew he was the top dog,” wrote columnist Earl Wilson.
“The rehearsals became a Broadway institution, and all sorts of people managed to get in. With a cigar in his kisser, Berle would show a chorus girl how to wiggle or explain to great tap dancer Bill Robinson how to deliver a joke.” Phil Silvers said rehearsing with Berle was like “being stuck in an air raid with a paper hat.” Berle’s guest stars always had difficulty. The Three Stooges appeared on one episode. “With all due respect to Milton’s talent, I guess I’m spoiled,” said Moe Howard. “I don’t like being on the receiving end of slapstick. Especially since Berle came across with a slap in one routine which cracked my front tooth.”
Jack Carter was doing a show for NBC at the time. Of his guests he says, “I got Basil Rathbone, I got David Niven, I got William Bendix. I got everybody that ran away from the Berle show. Milton would abuse them, manhandle them, and they’d quit. The Morris office would call us, ‘Would you like to have David Niven? He’s in town.’ ‘He’s not in town—he came in to do Berle and he walked!’”
The reputation made Berle defensive. “That whistle got me bad publicity throughout the business. The word that went around was that Berle had no respect for other performers, he treated them like circus animals with himself as the trainer blowing his whistle. That’s a lot of crap! I used that whistle for one very good reason: to save my voice. But nobody ever thought of that, or even bothered to ask me why.” Director Greg Garrison was hired midway through the show’s run. He was one of the few willing to bully back. “Milton is a coward. I took the whistle away from Milton the day I started.”
Ernest Lehman was assigned by Cosmopolitan magazine to profile the behind-the-scenes workings. He chronicled Berle’s bombastic abuse of stagehands, writers and his brother-producer, Frank. Lehman submitted it to his managing editor, only to be told there was no way they could run it; it was too salacious and potentially slanderous. Lehman changed all the names and published it as fiction. Cosmo ran it as a short story titled “The Comedian.” Five years later Rod Serling adapted it for a Playhouse 90 teleplay starring Mickey Rooney, directed by John Frankenheimer. The relationship between Rooney and Mel Torme, playing the brother-producer, was its darkest piece of business. Everyone in the industry knew it was based on Milton and his browbeaten brother.
Years later Milton excused the behavior that had been the basis for the drama. “I was under pressure. I adored my brother Frank. He was my manager, and before you know it, we got into an argument up at the rehearsal studio and I forgot it was my brother. He pushed me and I pushed him back and I hit him with a left hook and knocked him down. I just went berserk. Under pressure, pressure, pressure. Then all the newspapers—just like today—the dirt comes up. They’re there right away. ‘Did you and your brother have a fistfight?’ Everyone tried to say no. But it was obvious.”
Mike Kirk of the Kudner advertising agency had the job of implementing the sponsors’ wishes and added to the anxiety. Kirk was considered “arrogant, demanding and hard to please.” One of his primary chores was ensuring that no Communist, suspected or otherwise, was in any way associated with the show. Every guest star had to be vetted by Kirk. This vetting sometimes extended to the rejection of Black guests for fear it would upset sponsors in the Deep South.
Texaco integrated its advertising into the Berle variety format, blurring the line between commercials and entertainment for the first time. The man doing the advertisements, Sid Stone, became a star. Stone used the defunct vaudeville template of “comic pitchman.” It was based on vaudevillian Charles Kenna, a onetime vendor with a fast comic patter, who became a sensation at Hammerstein’s Theatre. Kenna knockoffs became popular and he had to place full-page ads in trade papers: “Please let me know what stuff of mine you are using, so I won’t have to follow you in with the same material.—Charles Kenna, Comedy Pitchman.” When Kenna died his material was up for grabs. W. C. Fields claimed Kenna’s catchphrase, “Go away, boy, you bother me,” and Sid Stone adapted Kenna’s act for Texaco Star Theater. With his sleeves rolled up, Stone gesticulated and exclaimed, “Tell you what I’m gonna do, folks,” giving a fast yammer about Texaco products. A 1951 episode had Stone give his spiel to a young Mel Brooks in an uncredited walk-on.
Berle’s first three years on the air were his most triumphant. By 1951 there was talk that New York City would erect a statue in his honor. Fred Allen joked to a friend, “It will be the first time people shit on a statue.”
Milton Berle frequently opened his shows in drag, wearing a dress, blonde wig and grotesque makeup. Cross-dressing became a trademark of Texaco Star Theater. Berle learned it from the experts. “Jackie Miles, Lenny Kent and Milton Berle were some of the better comedians who visited the she-hes to get first-hand information on their swish characterizations,” said Joey Adams. Frequenting New York’s gay nightclub scene, Berle co-opted the approach. “I got the idea from the annual drag balls they used to have at a place called the Rockland Palace. The gay guys
would work for months on the fancy dresses they showed up in. It was a wild evening and people would come from all over the city, not to take part, but to watch. I first realized there was humor, if you played it right, in playing gay.”
While Berle became a national icon for cross-dressing, less famous performers were persecuted for the same reason. LAPD vice squads were arresting drag performers like Ray Bourbon while Berle was being idolized for the same thing. Berle hit the cover of Time magazine while Bourbon was in prison for “impersonating a woman.”
Berle was on the air for seven and a half seasons, his popularity diminishing as the rest of early television improved. The competing comedian who surpassed his ratings was Phil Silvers. The two comics had known each other for years. Berle’s mother insisted her teenage son hang out with Silvers, whom she believed would be a good influence. Their first time together, Silvers took Berle to a whorehouse to lose his virginity.
The Phil Silvers Show premiered on Tuesday nights at 8:30, up against the second half of the Berle show. The first several episodes were ignored. Then CBS put The Phil Silvers Show head-to-head with Berle at 8, and Silvers stripped Berle of his Mr. Television appellation. “We reached twenty-three million,” said Silvers. “Knocked Berle off the air.” Berle returned home after his final broadcast and stared into space. He sat in his darkened living room all night. “I felt drained, finished, washed up and terribly tired. To end up axed, out . . . I was really working my way down to the depths.”
In the 1940s Phil Silvers was a Hollywood regular. He was under contract to Fox, where he appeared as a comic sidekick in a succession of musicals. Eventually he found work behind the scenes at MGM as a backlot tutor with friend Rags Ragland, and he performed a nightclub act at Slapsy Maxie’s on Wilshire Boulevard. He returned to New York, starring in Broadway productions High Button Shoes and Top Banana, and was a made man at Lindy’s. He was a major star—without major fame. Variety called him “one of the most likeable comics in show biz and one who has always been more highly regarded by the trade than by the general public.” He was an insular draw, playing Friars roasts and AGVA fund-raisers, but his life changed forever when he played the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on February 6, 1954. Silvers brought down the house that night, and CBS executive Hubbell Robinson Jr. was among those in attendance. He immediately entered negotiations with Silvers.
Alternately known as You’ll Never Get Rich and its shorthand, Sgt. Bilko, The Phil Silvers Show featured a sitcom protagonist unlike any other on 1950s television. Nat Hiken, a former radio writer for both Berle and Fred Allen, created the Bilko program. Hiken had just left Martha Raye’s variety show, where he had hired marble-mouthed pugs like Rocky Graziano to deliver comedy lines. Poor cue card reading and inept acting became the comedy, and Hiken’s inept cast members became stars. Throughout his career he spun gold from the mugs of Rocky Graziano; his manager, Jack Healy; lowlife comedians Maurice Gosfield, Joe E. Ross and B. S. Pully; and even Jake “Raging Bull” LaMotta—all unlikely comedy talents.
Hiken put together a $30,000 pilot and screened it for Robinson, who was “immensely impressed.” Jack Benny tried to talk Silvers out of it. “Don’t get into that TV trap. They’re going to be after you for television, that’s the wave of the future, but it’s a drain. Stay in theater.” Silvers arranged a screening of the pilot for Benny, who immediately changed his mind and concluded, “He’s going to be the new big guy.”
Sgt. Bilko led a platoon of sweaty, disheveled slobs whose military mandate was to avoid work. Bilko was a scheming con man who voraciously gambled, aggressively womanized and compulsively lied. He was the only sitcom protagonist of the decade embodying such flaws. For those tired by domestic 1950s comedies like Father Knows Best or Ozzie and Harriet, it was a revelation. “Most of those family shows [of the 1950s] sickened me,” said sitcom writer Everett Greenbaum. “My Little Margie was stupid. Father Knows Best and Danny Thomas with that sermon at the end. These shows represented American life in a dishonest way.” With its cynicism and selfishness, The Phil Silvers Show was the antithesis of competing sitcoms. It was an archetype not seen again for many years. “My all-time favorite show is Bilko,” said Curb Your Enthusiasm creator Larry David. “Sgt. Bilko holds up. It’s just a hilarious show—starring a bald man with glasses, by the way.”
Buddy Hackett was cast in The Phil Silvers Show, but landed a role in Lunatics and Lovers on Broadway simultaneously. Actor Harvey Lembeck took his place. Small-time comedians Mickey Freeman, Jimmy Little, Allan Melvin and Billy Sands joined the initial cast, while Silvers hired his former vaudeville pal Herbie Faye in a supporting role. Silvers said he learned everything about comedy from Faye. “He nursed me along. Cajoled me, taught me the fundamentals of stage comedy [and I] became more creative.”
There was one supporting player who upstaged all of them, and he was a typical Hiken casting choice. Maurice Gosfield had a great look and questionable ability. He had knocked about show business for years without success. When Gosfield auditioned for the Bilko show he presented a litany of credits that could not be verified. His inability to deliver lines with conviction, let alone proper pronunciation, made it clear the résumé was fraudulent. The role of sloppy Private Doberman was intended for Maurice Brenner, a distinctive actor with Coke-bottle glasses, but when Gosfield walked in wearing a suit covered in stains, Hiken gave him the part. Essentially playing himself, Gosfield got laughs as a larger-than-life buffoon. His Bilko colleagues were shocked when he was nominated for—and won—an Emmy Award. “He began to have delusions,” said Silvers. “He did not realize that the situations in which he worked, plus the sharp lines provided by Nat and the other writers, made him funny.” Instead Gosfield gloated, “Without me, the Bilko show would be nothing.”
Gosfield became close friends with second-season cast member Joe E. Ross. It made sense that they bonded. Both were uneducated comedians, slobs with a lowbrow sensibility. Hiken cast Ross as a mess hall cook with appalling hygiene. He stole scenes with his guttural catchphrase, “Ooh! Ooh! Ooh!” He used it as a delay tactic while trying to remember his lines. The success of The Phil Silvers Show gave Ross an expendable income and he became a darling of the prostitutes he patronized. “He was married eight times and they were all ex-hookers,” says comedian Hank Garrett. “The one I knew was number eight. He introduced her as his dialogue coach.”
Ross and Gosfield decided to cash in on their television popularity and form a comedy team. The Ed Sullivan Show was their first and last booking. Silvers watched the performance. “Their sketch was painful. Not a laugh. Monday, Ross eased himself into the rehearsal hall, embarrassed. He received an enthusiastic phone call from Doberman, ‘Baby, we’re the talk of the town!’ Gosfield never accepted the realities.”
The Phil Silvers Show was critically acclaimed. The rare voices of dissent complained about its distracting laugh track. One review griped, “Someone apparently didn’t have much confidence in the ability of the material and cast antics to get the required reaction from viewers, so the show played off to the irritating accompaniment of an unnecessary titter track.” Other detractors were members of the armed forces. The Veterans of Foreign Wars blamed The Phil Silvers Show for President Eisenhower’s intention to slash veterans’ benefits: “[The president] has been overly influenced by the weekly television program poking fun at the Army starring comedian Phil Silvers. May we express the hope that the armed forces are not being measured by the platoon of characters commanded by Sgt. Bilko.”
Bilko the character loved to gamble. When he lost money the laugh track cackled, but in real life Silvers suffered the same addiction, and it was calamitous. “He was a terrible insomniac and he gambled all the time,” said Bilko writer Aaron Ruben. “That ruined his life. He would come in around seven A.M. for makeup, purple bags under his eyes. I felt sorry for him. His head would be slumping down. Then, ‘Okay, Phil, we’re ready for you,’ and the guy who a moment ago looked
like he was near death, the face, the eyes, and the teeth would light up as if he had just been plugged in. When they said, ‘Okay, cut,’ he would just flop down again.” Like many of his generation, Silvers battled an undiagnosed anxiety disorder. Cramps, headaches and stomachaches overwhelmed him. Silvers lamented, “People don’t understand the special kind of hell a comic goes through.”
Nat Hiken himself was exhausted. He wrote most of the series by himself while overseeing ancillary Bilko projects: paperbacks, comic books and a brief talk show spin-off hosted by Harvey Lembeck in New York with Allan Melvin and Maurice Gosfield as sidekicks. Hiken explained, “I’m getting out. It doesn’t come easy any more and the fun is gone.” He hired new writers to take over the workload. Arnie Rosen, Coleman Jacoby, Billy Friedberg, Leonard Stern and Tony Webster worked to emulate the Hiken style. Rosen and Jacoby had just finished the screenplay for The Joker Is Wild, a biopic based on the autobiography of Joe E. Lewis. Stern had just left Universal, where he and Lenny Bruce were punching up screenplays. Hiken met with Carl Reiner and offered him a job as chief director of The Phil Silvers Show, but Reiner chose to remain with Sid Caesar.
The Phil Silvers Show aired for four seasons with a cynical tone unlike that of any other sitcom. Jack Benny made a callback to the “TV trap” after The Phil Silvers Show won Best Comedy, Best Actor, Best Directing and Best Writing at the 1956 Emmys. He sent Silvers a telegram: “You son of a bitch, you wouldn’t listen to me.”
Berle was TV’s first comedy star and Silvers reached the top of the sitcom heap, but it was Sid Caesar who brought a new dimension to television. Myron Kirb was head of the television division for the Kudner advertising agency. He had closed the Berle deal and was looking to keep NBC’s momentum going. Kirb entertained clients at the Tamiment Resort, a progressive version of the Catskills near the New York–Pennsylvania border. On a weekly basis it presented elaborate revues produced by “the Ziegfeld of the Borscht Belt,” Max Liebman.
The Comedians Page 13