Paar always had a streak of paranoia. In his 1962 paperback My Saber Is Bent, he wrote a chapter about a homosexual conspiracy: “There used to be a time when it looked like the Communists were taking over show business. Now it’s fairies. Just as there used to be no such thing as one Communist in a play or movie, now there is no such thing as one fairy . . . Wherever there is one you will find others. I just wish they would leave show business alone.”
Eleven years later he picked up the rant on Jack Paar Tonite, and the new gay rights movement addressed letters to The New York Times in protest: “One word that Paar himself seems addicted to is ‘fairy.’ We guess that those of us in the Gay movement he calls ‘amateur fairies’ will have to go on battling until ‘professionals’ like Paar are forced to shut their bigoted yaps.”
ABC vice president Tom Mackin said Paar was incapable of adjusting to the new America and “up to his old campaigns against marijuana, long hair and other manifestations of the sixties. He and his TV guests still used such terms as ‘fairies,’ ‘dykes’ and ‘fags.’ As the ratings plummeted, Paar called me several times to ask me what I thought of this program or that. I sensed that he did not want advice.” Paar quit the show voluntarily after six months, rather than wait for the inevitable cancellation. He said, “One of the reasons I left television was that I could not understand or appreciate the vogue for rock music and the dope culture which goes with this trash.”
The dyed sideburns of Danny Thomas, the pancake makeup of Milton Berle and the impending irrelevance of comedy’s giants culminated in the hollow orange hues of The Dean Martin Celebrity Roast. While it was fun to see an assemblage of comic celebrities in a perfectly kitschy time capsule, production values were so low it did a disservice to all involved. Greg Garrison produced the roasts, which aired in their Dean Martin Show time slots quickly and cheaply. When Don Rickles tore through the room the show sparkled, but more often than not it was a laugh-tracked marathon of inept delivery from the likes of Grizzly Adams, Spiro Agnew or Wilt Chamberlain. Dean Martin biographer Nick Tosches wrote, “Guests often delivered their lines to empty chairs or pretended spontaneous laughter at words that had been uttered in another state. As many as a thousand cut-and-paste edits were done to give each show the illusion that everyone was together in the same place at the same time.”
“Garrison would edit the show and put two straight lines in a row,” says Tom Dreesen, one of the youngest comedians to appear on the show. Footage of Jimmie Walker laughing randomly was edited into several episodes. Walker says, “He would have me sit there and laugh different laughs. I’d see the show later. Someone would do a terrible joke and he’d edit me in doing a huge laugh. That was Garrison. He said, ‘I don’t think you’re funny. The network thinks you’re funny so I’m putting you on, but I don’t give a shit.’” Kelly Monteith concurs: “There were no bones about it—he was the worst editor in the world. But Greg Garrison always said, ‘I can count on two fingers the number of letters I get about editing.’”
The Dean Martin Celebrity Roast did not resemble the Friars Club roasts on which it was based. The actual Friars roasts were closed affairs and far more profane than anything television allowed. Tonight Show writer Pat McCormick was a regular roaster. The language he used defies those that claim the old timers never used a four-letter word to get a laugh. At a roast of Red Buttons he joked, “Many of the people on this dais are great lovers. Red Buttons is not. For a good reason. His cock is so small his wife doesn’t know he’s fucking her except when she shrinks her cunt with Preparation H. Red is a weird, weird man. He’s not like other people. When’s the last time you attached four little boys’ cocks to a milking machine? How many of you have gotten blown from someone in an iron lung?” Even a traditional guy like Henny Youngman unleashed vicious language at the roasts: “Milton Berle couldn’t be here tonight,” said Youngman. “He’s at the dentist having an impacted cunt removed from his throat.”
A common topic at these profane roasts was Milton Berle’s large cock. “It was the ideal subject,” says elderly comedian Will Jordan. “Not the ones on TV, of course, but the real Friars roasts.” It was common gossip that Berle had the biggest schlong in showbiz. References to his dick became so common that Freddie Roman of the Friars Club quipped, “Milton Berle’s penis has become more popular than the rest of him.”
There are several variants of the most famous of the Berle genital jokes. It took place at the Luxor bathhouse in New York, where a gent yelled, “Hey, Berle, I hear you got a big one! I’m willing to bet cash money that mine is bigger than yours!” The punch line supposedly came from Berle’s friend, who witnessed this aggravation: “Go ahead, Milton. Just take out enough to win.”
“I wrote jokes for a lot of the Friars Club roasts,” said comedy writer Alan Zweibel. “I learned early on that he was the guy with the big dick, one of the biggest in show business. So I started writing big-dick jokes about him for these Friars roasts.” Zweibel approached Berle backstage at NBC. “For years I was writing jokes about your dick,” he told him. “I wrote all these jokes about your cock and now I’m talking to you—I feel like there’s some violation or something here.” Berle said, “You mean you’ve never seen it? Would you like to?” Zweibel remembered, “He parts his bathrobe and he just takes out this—this anaconda. He lays it on the table and I’m looking into this thing. I’m looking into the head of Milton Berle’s dick. It was like a pepperoni.”
You’d never know it from The Dean Martin Celebrity Roast, but television comedy matured significantly at the start of the bellbottom decade. All in the Family loosened restrictions, bringing social comment into the sitcom world for the first time. Had it not succeeded, the floodgate might not have been opened. When initially pitched, All in the Family was considered too salacious to air. Two separate pilots were shelved at the end of the 1960s, but two years later executives felt the time was right. The sitcom that pitted the bigoted, conservative father Archie Bunker (Carroll O’Connor) against his liberal, hippie son-in-law Michael “Meathead” Stivic (Rob Reiner) initially polarized critics. Variety couldn’t even agree with itself. Its daily edition called All in the Family “a one-joke show and a sick joke at that.” But its weekend edition raved, “This is the best TV comedy since the original Honeymooners, the best casting since Sgt. Bilko’s squad. Relative to the rest of primetime TV, the show [has] shocking bite.”
African American comedians were prevalent on television for the first time in the early 1970s. Flip Wilson became the first African American comedian to star in his own network variety program when The Flip Wilson Show premiered on NBC in September 1970. Nat King Cole and Sammy Davis Jr. had attempted their own variety programs several years earlier, but were quickly canceled when neither was able to find a sponsor. By 1970 Black activism was having an effect, and white corporations made an attempt to appease the voices of protest.
Flip Wilson was considered a “nonthreatening” personality for white America to consume. Much of The Flip Wilson Show’s comedy would have been right at home on Milton Berle’s old Texaco program, with its broad sketches and Wilson often dressed in drag. Members of Wilson’s writing staff included veterans of I Love Lucy and The Jack Benny Program, giving the show a conservative grounding. It was probably necessary, as Wilson’s offstage cocaine habit made him unpredictable, and the same could be said of the two youngest members of his writing staff—Richard Pryor and George Carlin. Pryor admired Wilson, but hated that the show was defanged to ensure broad success. According to Flip Wilson biographer Kevin Cook, “Pryor dismissed his boss as a token, hooting with derision when Flip played celebrity golf tournaments.”
The Flip Wilson Show made its star a wealthy man. Wilson and his manager, Monte Kay, invested some of that dough in their own record label, Little David. Their first two releases were comedy records, by Franklyn Ajaye and George Carlin. Kay’s daughter said Wilson “loved to help people who he thought were outside the mainst
ream. That’s why he named the company Little David. It was always the little guys’ rights he wanted to fight for.” It also helped offset the conservative route of the television show. Little David released two of the most influential comedy records ever recorded, Class Clown and FM & AM, both featuring stark language by George Carlin. “It’s an opportunity for George to feel freer as an artist,” said Wilson.
Just before joining the Wilson program, Richard Pryor had been stewing in Berkeley, California, studying Black culture and reconsidering his act. Collaborator Paul Mooney called him “the new Richard. Born in Berkeley, midwifed by Malcolm X and Marvin Gaye.” A film crew captured Pryor’s new style during a late night session at the Improv. Gone was the aping of Bill Cosby, replaced with a degree of honesty that made the audience uncomfortable. Pryor told the brutal story of servicing an adult pervert when he was a child and acted out traumatic memories of winos, drug addicts and neighborhood prostitutes. He channeled a variety of bleak, true-to-life characters, revealing subconscious fears and obsessions, entering realms not previously explored by a stand-up comedian.
Previously verboten subject matter was acceptable to a new generation of comedy fans. Likewise, attitudes toward drug use had drastically changed. When Redd Foxx guested on The Flip Wilson Show, he joined Pryor and Wilson as they hotboxed the greenroom and snorted lines. Such behavior was out in the open at the television networks and rumored to have even been written into production budgets. “No talking about those times would be complete without talking about grass and coke,” said sitcom writer Treva Silverman. “Pretty much every comedy writer I knew at that time was always smoking dope—always, always, always. And we would get complaints, ‘Listen, guys, smoke your dope, but it shouldn’t be in the corridors when guests come in.’ I remember hearing that somebody only hired their assistant if they could really roll up a joint.”
Norman Lear, riding the success of All in the Family, hired Redd Foxx for his new sitcom Sanford and Son. The show proved successful enough that Foxx felt secure flaunting his habits, snorting cocaine at the weekly table read. Contemporaries joked about Foxx’s vice the way others joked about Dean Martin’s drinking. Comedian Stu Gilliam cracked, “Redd was born with a silver spoon in his nose.”
Drug use did not harm his popularity. His gruff character Fred Sanford was charming, disarming and lovable. Movie legend James Cagney said, “That Redd Foxx on Sanford and Son—he’s amazing. I love him.” Elvis Presley was a fan and showered Foxx with thousands of dollars’ worth of gold medallions and rings. Tommy Chong said Redd Foxx was “in my opinion, the greatest comic of all time. I believe Redd was the role model who everyone in the business has to try to follow.”
Foxx’s behavior was accepted because he was beloved. But Demond Wilson, who played his son on Sanford and Son, was repulsed, and together they were a volatile combination. “He [Wilson] was one of the most evil actors I have ever worked with,” said director Alan Rafkin, adding “Both men carried guns . . . they would get stoned and start to play with their guns. I was scared someone was going to get killed.”
Foxx used his television power to land jobs for elderly Chitlin’ Circuit comedians who’d never quite made it. Former members of the Dooto Records roster like Dave Turner and Billy Allyn received their first television credits on Sanford and Son after years in the business. “He looked after his old friends,” said Sanford and Son producer Saul Turteltaub. “He would come into the studio with some guy and say, ‘Put him in the show, Turtle.’ And we would put him in the show. There were a lot of guys from the old days . . . and they were all good.”
Many of the Black comedians Foxx used—Skillet & Leroy, Reynaldo Rey, the memorable LaWanda Page—recorded for the 1970s comedy label Laff Records, a small Los Angeles outfit specializing in African American comedians. No other company cranked out as many comedy LPs during the 1970s. While much of its content was undeniably amateurish, it documented a subculture most comedy fans were unaware existed.
Its founder, Lou Drozen, ran a jewelry store in downtown Los Angeles and frequently dealt with vinyl record rack jobbers—hustlers who placed merchandise on racks near store counters, cheap items meant for impulse buys and sold on consignment. “This guy kept coming in and pestering me, trying to convince me to display his product,” said Drozen. “Finally I set up a consignment deal just to get rid of him. But it turned out that those records could sell. So I figured, here was a way a guy could make some money.” Drozen read the fine print and visited the vinyl headquarters. He negotiated a percentage deal and was furnished with overstock. So profitable was the venture, Drozen abandoned the jewelry trade altogether and became a full-time rack jobber. The items that sold best were the risqué comedy records of Belle Barth. Drozen decided to go a step further and started his own record label, with Barth as his first client.
Drozen’s second act was the African American comedy team Skillet & Leroy, regulars at the York Club at Florence and Western. To Drozen’s surprise, they far outsold Barth. He returned to the York Club and signed all the Black comics who played there, unveiling Laff’s new “soul comedy policy.”
Legendary rhythm and blues disc jockey Johnny Otis acted as a Drozen scout, suggesting comedians south of Adams Boulevard. Laff went on a signing frenzy. For most comics the terms were unfavorable, but no other record label would hire these raunchy acts geared to an African American demographic.
As the business grew, Lou Drozen recruited his son David to help out. Together they documented an immense underground circuit of African American comedians who would otherwise have been forgotten. They made a point of securing distribution in cities with large Black populations. Laff product flooded Chicago, Philadelphia, Oakland and the District of Columbia. Obscure comedians who played South Los Angeles—Chester Calhoun, Tina Dixon, Booty Green, Jimmy “The Funky Tramp” Lynch, Potts & Panzy, Sonny & Pepper, Baby Seal, Wild Man Steve—became obscure stars in obscure neighborhoods. It was a fascinating, parallel world of stand-up that never made it to television or radio.
The cover art of Laff Records was unforgettable. Comic book talk bubbles crowded the space above comedians posing in sexually suggestive manners. A record by ventriloquist Richard Stanfield showed his Afro-headed dummy with eyes closed in ecstasy, a woman going down on him.
One Laff comedian whose material superseded the cover art was Richard Pryor. Craps (After Hours) was Richard Pryor’s second album and his first for Lou Drozen. Pryor’s contract didn’t have the best of terms, and it became a contentious issue when the 1971 LP sold a million copies. “When we signed Richard Pryor we gave him an advance of five thousand dollars,” said David Drozen. “He had to have it or otherwise he was going to get killed. He said, ‘If I don’t get this I’m going to die.’ He owed his drug people.”
Pryor’s career was experiencing a breakthrough, and Lou Drozen took the credit. “We believe our album was instrumental in Pryor’s success. The album Craps (After Hours) helped show the world Pryor’s comic genius. Since that time, we have released six albums featuring Richard Pryor and additional material is in the can, although Pryor is no longer signed to Laff.”
Pryor sought an injunction in August 1975 to halt all sales of Laff albums derived from his recordings. The label was cashing in on its surplus of Pryor outtakes, hocking it as new material. By then Pryor was signed to Warner Bros., and he was angered when one of the Laff releases was nominated for a Grammy.
Perhaps there had been chicanery, but Laff had the upper hand: Pryor had signed off on the deal years earlier, when he was either too high or too desperate to consider the implications of the contract. “I still had a lot of Richard Pryor tape and continued to buy tape,” said David Drozen. “While he was working road gigs club owners would record those performances and, with his permission, for extra money they gave him to buy white powder, they sold me those tapes.” Drozen sometimes bought recordings from Pryor’s drug dealer directly. “In the middle of the cof
fee table was a pile of cocaine and a gun. After we’d negotiate an amount we would leave for the bank with his gun in a paper bag. That’s how many of those albums came to be. Every time Warner Bros. would release a movie or a Richard Pryor album, I would release one and market it on the heels of their release.”
Drugs-for-records explained the Pryor problem, but not the other unauthorized Laff releases. In 1978 Laff released one of its albums by a white comedian—A Day at the Races by Shecky Greene. “I went to sue them,” says Greene. “It wasn’t authorized at all. He was a guy who, for years and years, stole money from the Black performers. He made millions and millions from Black artists. I didn’t win anything with the lawsuit, but I got back a lot of the records that he had. He still sold it.”
“Lou Drozen was a real hustler,” says comedian Steve Rossi, who did a Laff pressing with African American comedian Slappy White. “He offered us three hundred dollars and they made a fortune because he never gave an honest shake.”
In Laff’s defense, the majority of its roster was nowhere near the level of a Richard Pryor or Shecky Greene and never would have been signed by any other label. Most of the comedians on Laff Records were grateful to have the chance.
The Comedians Page 35