The Comedians

by Kliph Nesteroff

  Bill Dana joined the NBC Writers Development Program with his partner Gene Wood. They were assigned to The Kate Smith Show, and Dana eventually blossomed into one of Steve Allen’s primary writers. Student Paul Keyes was assigned to a Kaye Ballard pilot and was placed on Jack Paar’s brand-new Tonight Show, eventually becoming head writer of The Dean Martin Show and Laugh-In. Despite the blossoming of students Woody Allen, Dana and Keyes, the network disbanded the development program after twenty-four months, disappointed with its results.

  After 161 episodes, NBC broke its successful Your Show of Shows into three separate pieces, believing it could have three successful shows by splitting up the ingredients. The three programs included The Imogene Coca Show, Caesar’s Hour and a series of dance-laden “spectaculars” produced by Max Liebman. The Imogene Coca Show debuted October 2, 1954, with no real premise. Lucille Kallen oversaw the variety show, which shifted to a sitcom format and then back to a variety show when things weren’t working. In an attempt to help the aimless program, Mel Brooks was hired, but he and Kallen did not get along. Brooks reportedly yelled at Kallen, “Don’t tell me what’s funny—just type.” Kallen refused to work with him and gave the network an ultimatum: “It’s either him or the rest of us.” It was all of them. Despite a supporting cast that included Bill Dana, Don Knotts and Hal March, The Imogene Coca Show was canceled. Coca said the network forced her into it: “I wanted my own show like a hole in the head.”

  Caesar’s Hour, on the other hand, was a success. It was a chance for Caesar’s gang to focus solely on comedy, without the interference of dance numbers. Additions like Larry Gelbart added to the legendary status of Caesar’s writers. Milt Kamen, a struggling stand-up comic, was hired as Caesar’s stand-in. Kamen brought a nebbish he’d met in the Mountains named Woody Allen to meet the group, and Allen was soon writing television specials for Caesar.

  Caesar’s Hour had three successful seasons. It ended in May 1957 when Caesar had a financial dispute with NBC and broke his seven-year contract. Gelbart claimed its demise was due to low ratings, in a factually inaccurate but amusing assessment: “Do you know the competition that finally knocked Sid off the air? The Lawrence Welk Show. Sid got into television on the ground floor, when television was new. In the early years, most of the TV sets were owned by affluent people, and affluent people tend to be the most educated people. By the time Lawrence Welk came around, a lot of far-less educated people owned sets. And these people would have much rather seen bubbles coming out of Lawrence Welk’s ass than Sid Caesar doing a takeoff on Rashomon.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Late Night

  NBC invented another important comedy franchise, one that introduced more stand-up comics to a national audience than any other. The influence of The Tonight Show cannot be overstated. The first three hosts—Steve Allen, Jack Paar and Johnny Carson—introduced America to everyone from Don Rickles to Nichols & May, Bill Maher to Roseanne. Almost every major comedian of the last sixty years cracked wise in its late night time slot.

  NBC’s development of late night television happened concurrently with the success of Berle and the rise of Caesar, but took longer to evolve. The very first late night show was called Broadway Open House. It debuted on NBC on May 29, 1950. “When it got to be ten or eleven o’clock at night, television just showed a test pattern,” says Broadway Open House bandleader Milton Delugg. “Pat Weaver of NBC decided he wanted to put entertainment on late at night.” It was the template for every late night show in the years that followed.

  A prop comic named Don “Creesh” Hornsby was hired to host Broadway Open House. In nightclubs he wore a crash helmet and doused his nightclub audience with dry ice from an extinguisher. As he sprayed patrons he told them, “Don’t worry, it won’t hurt you. It will only burn holes in your flesh.”

  NBC put Hornsby’s face on billboards, but by the time they were erected Hornsby was dead, a sudden victim of polio. The ­husband-and-wife radio team of Tex McCrary and Jinx Falkenburg were emergency replacements for the 11:30 slot. They hosted the very first episode of Broadway Open House, which Variety called “unfortunate” and “embarrassingly pedestrian.”

  NBC searched for yet another host, and this time settled on prolific comedian Jerry Lester. He was a favorite at major nightclubs and a regular in New York presentation houses. “He worked the Paramount, the Strand, the Roxy,” says his contemporary Van Harris. “They’d announce, ‘And now a surprise for you, ladies and gentlemen. Here is the star of our show, Jerry Lester . . . with the Ink Spots!’ Jerry would come down in a worn white dinner jacket with big blotches of ink all over it.”

  Lester had a glib persona, a toothy smile and a fast mind, all of which served him well in television variety. He’d been fired from a previous variety show, Cavalcade of Stars, for spitting on the stage. Producer Joseph Cates said, “He came out to do a monologue. He tells a joke. It doesn’t work. He tells another joke. It doesn’t work. He says, ‘You know what I think of the writer of that? Thpt.’ He spits. ‘That’s too good for him—thpt, thpt, thpt.’ Two days later, the president of the drug chain which owned the show said, ‘Look, we don’t interfere with how you do the show, but spitting on the runway is not appropriate.’” The following episode Lester swaggered onstage and told viewers about the comment. “You know what I think of the people who told me that? Thpt, thpt, thpt.” Lester was promptly fired.

  But the brief spell proved Lester knew how to host a television show. It was a talent few comedians possessed in 1950. With the sudden death of Hornsby and the on-air drudgery of Tex and Jinx, an unemployed Lester was a natural choice. They tried him out for three nights. “He did anything that came to his mind,” said his wife, Alice. “He wrecked the place. He jumped up and down on the couch like a monkey. He poked fun at the cameraman. He kidded everybody in the audience and kidded the show. He just had himself a good time. The next day they made a deal.”

  Lester was signed as the permanent host, but five nights a week was an enormous workload. At Lester’s insistence, NBC divided it between two comedians. Lester hosted Tuesday, Thursday and Friday while Morey Amsterdam hosted Monday and Wednesday. It aired only on New York flagship WNBT, which later became WNBC. “He did it one night and I did it the next night,” said Amsterdam. “It wasn’t like the late-night shows now where they have guests. It was like a little stock company stuck together with spit.”

  “We started off alone and Jerry later hired writers,” says Delugg. “Initially [the script] was like: Jerry opens door. Delugg walks out wearing accordion and says something.” Eventually NBC hired Cal Howard, a former gagman from Disney cartoons, to write sketch outlines. To supply him with nightclub material, Lester hired a freelancer—a future star of comedy records, Allan Sherman. As the first late night show, it enjoyed favorable ratings, but Delugg admits there was a specific reason. “We were such a hit—but nobody stopped to think that the real reason we were a hit was that we were the only thing on.”

  Airing live as it did, it was difficult to procure a studio audience at nighttime. “The toughest part was getting a studio audience from eleven to twelve at night,” said Amsterdam. “I went down to the Greyhound Bus Company. They had all these tours of New York and I said, ‘As you go around in the nighttime, ask the people in the buses if they would like to see a television show.’”

  A buxom sidekick was hired, and it made Broadway Open House a sensation. Virginia Egnor, also known as Jennie Lewis, adopted the stage moniker Dagmar. Lester had worked with her in nightclubs and hired her as a comic foil. “Boy, was she stacked,” says Delugg. They devised a joke to introduce her to viewers.

  Delugg: Jerry, this is the new chick with the band. She’s going to sing with us.

  Lester: How does she sound?

  Delugg: Who cares!

  Broadway Open House exceeded expectations. Naysayers said nobody would watch television at a late hour, but it became a star program on the NBC
roster. And it enamored future comedians, including a kid in Morningside Heights. “I never missed Broadway Open House,” said George Carlin. “That one really got my attention.”

  Lester took advantage of his sudden success, demanding a higher salary and a better time slot. NBC gave him a raise, but negotiations broke down when he demanded a prime-time show. NBC gave him a daytime radio program as placation. Such fringe benefits didn’t sit well with Amsterdam, who didn’t get the preferential treatment. Feeling slighted, Amsterdam quit, and a number of ­comics—Ben Blue, George Conley, Wally Cox, Mickey Deems, Lenny Kent and Hal March—got their first television exposure filling in.

  Lester’s demands were his downfall. He and his business manager tried to sign supporting players to secondary contracts and insisted on a percentage of Dagmar’s personal appearance fees. When Dagmar failed to go along, Lester fired her and replaced her with another blonde—Barbara Nichols. And then NBC went and did the same thing, firing Lester on May 25, 1951. “Jerry Lester did a terrible thing,” says his friend Shecky Greene. “He tried to make demands on NBC and they just plucked him out. His show was one of the forerunners of all of that late night shit, but his ego got the best of him.”

  Broadway Open House revealed an untapped late night audience. NBC executive Pat Weaver wrote a memo expressing further late night intentions, a more ambitious network-wide version of the Broadway Open House format: “We have plans for a strip show [five shows a week] late at night, shot on an ad-lib basis as in the early radio days . . . We’ll run for an hour with fun and songs and jollity and featured unrehearsed gimmicks. The idea will be that after ten or eleven at night, a lot of people will still want to see something funny.” The memo is often used as evidence that Weaver created The Tonight Show, although program hosts Steve Allen and Jack Paar both disputed that claim. “He didn’t invent programs,” said Paar, “but wrote great memos.”

  Steve Allen, a horn-rimmed jazz fan with a gift for wordplay, got his showbiz experience out west, doing a regional radio program called Smile Time with announcer Wendell Noble. Inspired by Henry Morgan, the two men satirized radio advertising:

  When you cross the street at a busy corner against the red light—do you get that run-down feeling? When somebody slugs you—do you wake up feeling sluggish? When you lose your grocery list or your laundry list—do you get that listless feeling? Then you ought to try Ovaldeen! Believe it or not, folks, before I drank Ovaldeen, I had circles under my eyes. After drinking it for six weeks—I’ve got ovals under my eyes.

  After five years Steve Allen was at the top of his radio market. NBC put his name on its short list of potential Tonight Show hosts along with Jack Carter and Alan Young. Knickerbocker Beer was the first sponsor, and it favored Steve Allen. The original Tonight Show debuted as the Knickerbocker Beer Show on WNBT and was renamed The Steve Allen Show thirteen weeks later.

  The early production staff forced ideas on Allen against his will. Allen fired producer Johnny Sterns after yelling, “Don’t tell me what’s funny!” NBC hired regional producer Bill Harbach as a replacement. “I was directing cooking shows,” says Harbach. “They told me, ‘The new guy is not getting along with the producer. We think you can handle him.’ My first show—at the end of it Steve said, ‘I would like to read a letter. It’s from a bigot.’ Lena Horne had been on the show a couple weeks earlier and at the end of her number he kissed her on the cheek and said, ‘Please come back again, you’re marvelous.’ He reads this unbelievable letter on live television: ‘How dare you kiss this nigger.’ He reads the letter exactly as it was written, with all the awful words. It went on and on. The audience was silent and my mouth was wide open. There was dead silence. He looked at the camera and took his glasses off. He said, ‘If anybody happens to know who wrote this letter—he didn’t have the guts to sign his name—find him a doctor. He’s the sickest man in America.’ The house came down with applause. I fell in love with Steve Allen that night.”

  The first broadcast on a national basis under the name The Tonight Show was September 27, 1954. The guests were Wally Cox and Willie Mays. The advertising buildup was enormous. It received added publicity when shortly before the network debut Allen was threatened by the Mob.

  Allen was scheduled to host a WNBT special about the influence of organized crime. Threatening phone calls started coming in that said if Allen named names, he would pay the price. Milton Berle’s Mob-connected manager, Irving Gray, phoned Allen directly and demanded the deletion of several references. Allen complied and names were changed to “Mister X.” During a broadcast a few nights later, Allen’s studio was bombarded with stink bombs.

  The opening week of The Tonight Show had no further controversy. Those who watched were surprised by Allen’s casual, improvised confidence, and The Tonight Show grew into a successful late night franchise, primarily because of his ability. After two profitable years of late night television, NBC gave Allen a Sunday night prime-time program. Allen was hosting The Tonight Show five nights a week for 90 minutes (in some regions it ran 105 minutes, although the extra 15 minutes were mostly advertising). NBC convinced Allen to do an hour-long scripted variety show to compete with Ed Sullivan. Allen explained the reason for taking on an even greater workload. “I’d have six million people watching The Tonight Show and on Sunday night I’d have thirty million watching. Also, the money was five times bigger in prime time, which had a lot to do with it.”

  The Steve Allen Show premiered June 24, 1956. There would be several different programs in the coming years with that exact same name, but this initial series was by far his most significant. It featured a cast of recurring sketch comedy players who became, if not household names, at least household faces. Among the Mighty Allen Players were the son of a Club 18 comic—Pat Harrington Jr.; a product of the NBC Writers Development Program—Bill Dana; a former Bowery Boy actor—Gabe Dell; an actor who attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts with Don Rickles—Tom Poston; one of radio’s early Henry Morgan rip-offs—Dayton Allen; and the elastic faces of Louis Nye and Don Knotts.

  Bill Dana got Knotts the job. “Don and I had done little bits with Hal March on The Imogene Coca Show. I was walking through Times Square and here comes Don Knotts looking sad. I said, ‘What’s wrong?’ He said, ‘Oh, I can’t do anything. I’m going back to Morgantown, West Virginia, and get a good job.’ I said, ‘What are you talking about? I’m writing this show and Steve would love you!’ I physically took him to our rehearsal at Dance Players Studio. He went in and did his nervous man routine. Steve loved him and he was on his way.”

  The Steve Allen Show required actual scripting, as opposed to the mostly improvised Tonight Show. When the workload started overwhelming him, Allen vacated The Tonight Show on Mondays and Tuesdays. A number of people took his place twice a week, among them cartoonist Al Capp, Dick Van Dyke, Ernie Kovacs and Betty White. In January 1957 Allen left The Tonight Show altogether to focus on his Sunday night program. NBC offered the permanent job to Ernie Kovacs, but he turned it down. Rather than search for another comedian to continue with the established, successful template, NBC revamped the format and renamed it Tonight! America After Dark. In a matter of weeks the successful Tonight Show franchise was run straight into the ground.

  Tonight! America After Dark had an altogether different premise, promising to show “the nightly glamor” of American cities as moderated by a top showbiz columnist in each town. Syndicated newsmen Paul Coates, Bob Considine, Hy Gardner, Irv Kupcinet and Earl Wilson took turns, in the words of one review, “looking ill at ease and nerved up to a point of embarrassment.” Earl Wilson interviewed George Gobel and Joan Crawford from the Beverly Hilton in the first episode while Bob Considine bored viewers with a report about a baby born at midnight. The only notable moment was a Hy Gardner interview with Dean Martin, in which Dino spoke of the fresh Martin & Lewis split: “What I’d say about Lewis, [the tabloid] Confidential wouldn’t print.”

 
Earl Wilson admitted Tonight! America After Dark was “a disaster from the first, eventually nicknamed America in the Dark. We undertook stunts and we tried to be different. One night I went to an all-night beauty parlor and got my hair dyed red just to show what Broadway actresses go through. All our gruesome mistakes were there—live—to be winced at and ridiculed by millions.”

  NBC affiliates dropped the show en masse after five brutal months. So awful was Tonight! America After Dark that Variety speculated it would spell the end of late night programming altogether. Comedy writer Walter Kempley said, “America After Dark was so bad viewers went next door to turn it off.”

  The man who made The Tonight Show an entity was Steve Allen. But the man who turned The Tonight Show into a talk show was Jack Paar. He emerged from the ashes of Tonight! America After Dark and was arguably the most important tastemaker in comedy in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

  Paar was an unlikely guy to have influence. He started as a low-key comedian, a talker who was similar onstage and off. He cited Frank Fay as his biggest inspiration. “I met and became friendly with Frank Fay. Unlike the baggy pants comedians, he wore a dark suit with a carnation on stage, and he had a most imperial manner. Fay was known as a ‘talking gentleman’; he just stood quietly and said the most outrageous things. I used him as my model.”

  Paar got his start as a war comedian like Johnny Burke and Harvey Stone. Stationed in the Pacific with fellow showbiz types Hy Averback and Hans Conried, Paar wore his uniform and stammered army jokes at field hospitals. Over the course of the war he honed his craft, and an embedded journalist from Esquire took notice. The write-up jump-started Paar’s postwar career:

  This Jack Paar was not a USO entertainer—he was just a G.I. himself. He was part of one of these Special Service units made up exclusively of G.I. talent. They went on month after month, untouted, unheralded, like the foot-slogging infantry itself, doing a job that had to be done, making men laugh in some of the most laugh-proof places in the world. Jack Paar was a comic in one of those troupes.