Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast - 146. Jamie Farr

Episode Date: March 13, 2017

Gilbert and Frank chat with veteran character actor Jamie Farr, who looks back on 60+ years of showbiz memories, including sharing the big and small screen with legends Bob Hope, Doris Day, Sidney Poitier, Danny Kaye and Ed Wynn. Also, Jamie tours with Red Skelton, takes a class with Clint Eastwood, runs afoul of Joey Bishop and borrows a frock from Ginger Rogers. PLUS: "Murder Can Hurt You"! "Who's Minding the Mint?"! The mad genius of Chuck Barris! Lenny Bruce inspires Klinger! And the greatest prime-time lineup in TV history!  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

That's the sound of unaged whiskey transforming into Jack Daniel's Tennessee whiskey in Lynchburg, Tennessee. Around 1860, Nearest Green taught Jack Daniel how to filter whiskey through charcoal for a smoother taste, one drop at a time. This is one of many sounds in Tennessee with a story to tell. To hear them in person, plan your trip at tnvacation.com. Tennessee sounds perfect. This episode is brought to you by FX's The Bear on Disney+. In Season 3, Carmi and his crew are aiming for the ultimate restaurant accolade, a Michelin star.

With Golden Globe and Emmy wins, the show starring Jeremy Allen White, Io Debrey, and Maddie Matheson is ready to heat up screens once again. All new episodes of FX's The Bear are streaming June 27, only on Disney+. Hi, this is Gilbert Gottfried, and this is Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast with my co-host, Frank Santopadre. And we're once again recording at Nutmeg with our engineer Frank Furtarosa. Our guest this week is one of the most likable, most recognized,

and most popular actors of the last seven decades. He's been in iconic films like The Blackboard Jungle, Tora Tora Tora, The Greatest Story Ever Told, Heavy Traffic, Cannonball Run, Scrooge, The Gong Show Movie, and two favorites of this podcast, with Six You Get Egg Roll and Who's Minding the Mint. His memorable TV roles are too numerous to list, but what the hell? My Three Sons, The Andy Griffith Show, The Flying Nun, Love American Style, I Dream of Jeannie,

F Troop, Get Smart, Barnaby Jones, The Night Stalker, Mad About You, and Family Guy to just name a few. And he's featured in a TV movie we've discussed at length on this show, Murder Can Hurt You. Along with his journey, he's shared the screen with a dazzling array of talent, including Sidney Poitier, Doris Day, Lucille Ball, Charlton Heston, Burt Reynolds, Dean Martin, Roger Moore, Danny Kaye, Sammy Davis Jr., and yes, John MacGyver, as well as our former guest, and this is just a few of them, Dick Van Dyke, John Beiner, Jessica Walter, Carl Reiner, Marvin Kaplan, and Marty Allen. But with all of his many appearances and achievements, he'll forever be beloved to audiences all over the world as the conniving but endearing Max Klinger on what many consider to be the greatest half-hour comedy in television history, MASH.

Please welcome to the show a versatile actor who's played everything from a hippie to an apostle and a man red skeleton once called a doctor of comedy the pride of toledo ohio jamie farr wow i tell you i didn't realize he did all this you know what gilbert yeah i'm big for your show. I shouldn't even be on this show. I didn't realize he did all those things. I haven't worked, you know, since then, but that's okay. Jamie, welcome. Thank you, Frank. Thank you, Gilbert.

Thanks for being here. Now, we got to go to the most important topic that we were discussing before we got on the air. What is that? Yeah. I don't even care about mash. I do. I do. I've got to go to the mailbox

and see if a residual's in there. I haven't had any fresh money in a long time, Gilbert. I've got to get the old residuals. Yeah. What is it that you wanted to talk about? That you...

A quote from you is Jews have been very good to you. to talk about. That you, a quote from you is, Jews have been very good to you. They have indeed. As I told you before we actually went on the air, you know, I have a lot of my Lebanese friends back in my hometown in Toledo. And every time I go back to visit them, they say, please say hello to our cousins in California.

Because as you probably know, Abraham and Hagar, they say, please say hello to our cousins in California, because as you probably know, Abraham and Hagar, the Egyptian, had the first Arab, which was Ishmael. So we are cousins, my friend. There you go. Cousin Jamie. Cousin Gilbert. This is Cousin Jamala. Well, you know, all the people that helped me in this business, of course, were my first movie, as you know, was Blackboard Jungle. Sure. And Pandro S. Berman was the producer of that show. He had done all the big movies with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers at RKO and moved over to MGM. And Richard Brooks, whose real name, I I think was Sax, who was from Philadelphia. And he was the screenplay writer from Ivan Hunter's book, Blackboard Jungle,

and also the director of the movie. And so I actually auditioned, took a screen test and won the part. My first agent was Burt Marks, who was Sam Marks's brother. Burt Marks was an agent. He handled Tom Drake and a few other actors at MGM. And, of course, Samuel Marks had produced National Velvet and discovered Elizabeth Taylor and did a lot of the other things at MGM. Weren't you also repped at one point by the legendary Meyer Mishkin?

Oh, Meyer was my favorite. Meyer attended my wife's. Also Marvin Kaplan's agent. Yes. Yeah. Marvin Kaplan, that great story. Marvin goes in to see Meyer. Meyer was a tiny, short little man. He had a very high voice and he talked like this. And Marvin Kaplan, I hope the audience knows who Marvin is. We had him on this show. Oh, he was wonderful. Marvin came in and he goes, Meyer, you know, I haven't been working lately. And Maya says, well, Marvin, you're special. And Marvin looked at him, he says,

Maya, nobody should be this special. Now, when you first got the part as Max Klinger on MASH, was that written like just as like a one shot? It was. Yeah, there was just about five or six lines on the show. I think the title of the show is Chief Surgeon Who. And Larry Gelbart had created this character. It came from a story that he had read about, oh, I can't think of the wonderful comedian. Oh, Lenny Bruce. Lenny Bruce. Lenny Bruce, yeah. Who was in the Coast Guard, yeah. And they usually, they had dress of the day, which was either your, you know, your class A uniforms or your fatigues. Well, when they said dress of the day,

he showed up wearing a dress trying to get out of the Coast Guard. Larry Gelbart had read that. And so he said, hey, let's create this character, which was a one day thing that I came on. And he made the character's name Clinger after a childhood friend of his that he had in Chicago. He lived in Chicago. And Larry Gelbart's father was Harry Gelbart. And he was a haircutter, a barber in Beverly Hills to all the comedians. The Ritz brothers, Milton Berle and Danny Thomas. And Danny Thomas was Lebanese. He came from the city of Toledo, Ohio.

Danny's real name was Amos Jacob. And he took what Danny did was take his youngest brother's name, Danny, and his oldest brother's name, Thomas, and put the two names together to become Danny Thomas. So Larry decided, hey, well, let me tell you the backstory of this. So Harry Gelbart's telling Danny Thomas that his son, Larry Gelbart, who's a student at Fairfax High School here in Los Angeles, which is the Jewish high school in the area there. And he says, my son is a wonderful writer, comedy writer. You got to read some of his material. So Danny said, all right, let me see some of it. And Danny liked it. And he bought the material from Larry Gelbart, who was a student, yet a high school student at Fairfax High. And that's why I think the payback was to make me, Klinger, Lebanese,

to pay back Danny Thomas for buying the material that he had sold him when he was in high school. Anyway, there was only a few lines. They didn't know how to play it. And the gentleman who was directing it, E.W. Swackhammer was his name. And I'd worked for him at Columbia Studios, Screen Gems. I forgot the TV show. And Gene Reynolds, they told me, they didn't know how this character was to be played. When I walked into the trailer where they had this wax uniform hanging up and the high heels,

I thought I was dressing with an actress. He says, he says no no those are yours because I hadn't seen the script I didn't know what I was doing and I only got the script when I when I came out dressed in this wax outfit with the woman's army corps that's what that stands for WAC woman's army corps and these huge high heels and like hairy bow legs and everybody on the set was laughing and so so they said, here's the lines. So then Gene and Larry left. Gene Reynolds, the producer, and Larry Gilbert, the creator of the character and the producer of the show left. And E.W. Swackhammer had me playing it gay. And so I did the first scenes that way. And I didn't know what I was doing, you know, with the show. And I left and I went home. And the next day I get a phone call from my agent. He says, Jamie, don't get upset now, but they want you to come back. They really can't have this character played like that. So I said, oh, I let Gene down.

I let Larry down. I came back and he said, well, how would you play this, Jamie? How would you play it? I said, well, why don't you play him straight and let everybody else make comments about him, that this is his uniform that he has. Let him have a cigar and let him talk. I said, nobody's ever played a character in a woman's dress before where he's played it straight. Usually it's Amy, which the movie that they did that, shoot, I can't think of all the names of it. What's that? Once in Love with Amy. Oh, Charlie's Aunt. Charlie's Aunt, thank you.

Yeah, yeah. And I can't remember the name, but I can't sing either. At any rate, so any of the shows, you know, Jack Benny, if he dressed up, everybody would talk in a falsetto, some like it hot. Some like it hot, yeah. They all did it, but this way, guys were in a dress, and he played it absolutely straight a falsetto, some like it hot. Some like it hot, yeah. They all did it. But this way, guys were in a dress, and he played it absolutely straight.

They said, well, try it. So I did it. They apparently liked it because I did six more shows that first year. And the second year, when they got picked up, I did 12 shows out of the 20-some shows that we did. And then the third year is when they put me under contract. Did you have any idea what a goldmine that would turn into for you? No, I had none whatsoever.

You know, you knew that the show was going to be canceled after the first year. You knew that, didn't you? That was on Sunday night opposite the wonderful world of Disney, and our ratings were just terrible. I think we were number 59 out of 65 shows. And Bill Paley, who was the chairman of the network, was going to cancel the show.

And his wife, Babe Paley, said, no, no, don't cancel it. It's a great show. We just need to move it to another time spot. So he says, okay, let's try it. And that's when Bill Paley moved the greatest night in the history of television. Oh, yeah. Saturday night. Saturday night lineup on CBS that had all in the family. Mash, Mary Tyler Moore, Bob Newhart and the Carol Burnett show. Nobody went out. They did the tickets for Broadway theater went down.

Restaurants went down in terms of people going out to eat. theater went down, restaurants went down in terms of people going out to eat. And they also, beside the Nielsen rating, would know when the commercials went on how many people were watching television because the water level when they went to use the bathroom would drop in all the cities. So that was another Nielsen rating. And correct me if I'm wrong, Jamie, but Klinger also had a little bit of Yossarian in him, too, from Catch-22. Yes, exactly right. Yes, indeed, he did. Right. Well, you know what I used to like to think of is that I was kind of the visual part of what verbally Hawkeye, Trapper John, and BJ would say in the show. I was the visual placard, you know, the anti-war personality. I would parade around showing my distaste for being there while these guys spoke eloquently about not wanting to be there.

Did they give you clothes that were worn by famous stars? Oh, yes, most certainly. They were Betty Grable, Alice Faye, Dame May Whitty. Here's one of my favorite stories. I love it. One of the outfits I had on was one that Ginger Rogers had worn in one of the movies that she had done. And it was a scene that I had done with Kelly Nakahara, Nurse Kelly on the show. And we did something like I was supposed to be Ginger Rogers and she was supposed to be Fred Astaire. We were doing cheek to cheek.

Well, the show aired and a couple of weeks later, I'm in the 20th Century Fox commissary where we shot the show at 20th Century Fox. And Ginger Rogers was there doing a love boat for Aaron Spelling. And she saw me and came over to the table. She said, you know, Jamie, I saw you in one of my outfits that I wore with Fred Astaire. She said, you know, that dress looked a hell of a lot better on you than it did on me. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. What are you doing? I was, uh... Can't a guy have a washing set without somebody biting him on the neck? Biting who?

I was biting you. No, you weren't. You were biting me. Clinger, what are you doing in here? Just borrowing a little of your shampoo, Major. It's wartime. We all gotta help each other. No, we don't. You get out of here, you pervert. Pervert? Who bit who, Major?

Out! Now, I have to ask you about a movie that I saw as a kid, and I've talked about a number of times on the show, and that was Who's Minding the Mint. Oh, yeah. Howard Morris. I thought you were going to go to Blackboard Jungle. Who's Minding the Mint is late in my career. Blackboard Jungle is the first one.

Rock Around the Clock, Bill Haley and the Cobblers. Yeah. Who's Minding the Myth was a very, very funny movie. And it's, I think Leonard Maltin said it's really one of the secret movies, you know, that are out there that people don't realize. What a great cast, Jim Hutton, Dorothy Provine, Walter Brennan, Victor Buono, Milton Berle, Jack Guilford, Joey Bishop. It was just a wonderful, wonderful cast. And Howie liked me very much. And I hadn't been working. And he said, I think Jamie can play this part. It's Italian. He'll have to speak authentic Italian. And he went to the head of the studio and he brought me to him and he says, I swear, if Jamie says he can talk Italian and he says he can do it, believe me, he can do it. So the guy said, oh, okay, give him the part.

So that was the first time I got co-starring billing in any movie that I had done. And I still remember some of the dialogue. They have to do something for me on the Spazzatura truck. They have to do it. I thought that they were policemen, but it was really a garbage truck. Spazzatura in Italian is a garbage truck. That is a fun movie. I spoke all Italian in the movie. And, oh, I worked with Milton.

I've worked with Milton so many times. You know, all the comics you mentioned. I've worked with Milton Berle, Carl Reiner, Danny Kaye, Red Skelton, Bob Hope. The Bob Hope special that we did was he's having a big Super Bowl party at his house, and he invites all the comedians, the Ritz brothers, Don Rickles, Marty Allen, and everybody to see the Super Bowl. No, no, that's a different one. Oh.

No, this is a different one. So the gag is that Milton Berle and I show up at the party wearing the same dress. That was the gag. You met, you and Howard Morris were friends for a long time. And do I have this right? You met him on the Danny Kaye show? The Danny Kaye show. At the first year, Harvey Korman and I were the two second bananas with Danny Kaye. We had all the Sid Caesar writers. We had Herbie Baker, Sheldon Keller, Mel Tolkien.

And I was the Howie Morris character, and Harvey Korman was the Carl Reiner character. We did so many takeoffs. It was one of the fun times I've had doing any of the shows. I've had doing any of the shows. And the guest stars we had on, Art Carney and Glynis John, and I'm trying to think of Terry. We had John Mills, Terry Thomas. Sure.

Yeah. We had some great, one of the sketches we did, we did a parody on The Great Escape. And Harvey and I were the two Nazis in the thing. Harvey had the, he was like the Otto Preminger, and I was his German sergeant, and I had this helmet on, and the only thing that stopped the helmet from going onto my shoulders was my nose. I mean, that's how big the helmet was. And so I would be blowing the whistle, you know, I would always blow the whistle, and Harvey would go, not in my ear, you wiener schnitzel.

He says, OK, you're escaping days are over. We have a barbed wire fence, machine guns out there and landmines and a great big mean doggy in the yard. So you're escaping days are over. And he turns out the lights and he goes, oh, and one more thing. He turns on the lights and everybody's gone. They've all escaped in the compound. Harvey's payoff line was he yells out the window, sick him, doggie, sick him. That is a great impression of Harvey Korman doing a German. And what was Harvey Korman like off camera? Oh, he was an absolute delight. I know you saw Tim Conway and him breaking up all the time on the Carol Burnett show, especially

Harvey with Tim. But I used to break up with Harvey. We did so many takeoffs on that show. We did the one, we did a takeoff on the student prints called the Student Dentist. And one of the songs was, it's great to be in Heidelberg. Well, that wonderful place is Heidelberg. So how come we're not in Heidelberg? And we'd take Danny around on our shoulders, and he'd be hitting these big lights that were all over the place. We did a takeoff on the Three Musketeers that was absolutely wonderful. And Danny was probably

of all the comedians that I worked with was his last name was Kaminsky, right? Danny Kaminsky, I think. Anyway, he was probably the most talented, sing, dance, did all the shtick and sketches and everything else. And he was really an absolute brilliant performer. There's a part in the book about Danny Kaye, though, that he was, if I may say, he was a little threatened by Art Carney. You talk about him, how he, well, of course, he was famous for upstaging people. Yeah, exactly. Actually, he wasn't very friendly to Howie Morris either, nor to Glynis Johns, who was his co-star in one of the great movies, comedy movies of all time, The Court Jester, with the pestle, with the vessel, and the dragon, with the flagon,

and all that other stuff. But, yeah, he wasn't very friendly to any of the people that were on the show, and he was very demanding. And so, yeah, he wasn't the most pleasant person. And I think part of his contract, he actually had the CBS built a penthouse apartment for him over the CBS studios on Beverly and Fairfax. And they even put a Chinese kitchen in there because he was a great Chinese cook. And he was also a pilot. He could fly his own airplane. At that time, I also think he was one of the co-owners of the Seattle Mariners, the baseball team. He loved baseball. And so one of the deals in the contract that his wife, Sylvia Fine, couldn't be within a 10-mile radius of CBS.

They didn't want her anywhere around. That's interesting. Yeah. And you know who one of the writers was? It was Paul Mazursky, who I'd done Blackboard Jungle with. He and Larry Tucker were writing together. I think this was before they did The Monkees. And they were two of the writers on the show.

We had great writers. And it was a wonderful first year. And I got let go because they decided they wanted to bring in a female star to be like, I guess, Imogene Coca. And they brought in Joyce Van Patten. So I got let go. But I certainly enjoyed all those sketches that we did. It was a wonderful year of comedy.

Well, now we're going to destroy whatever entertainment value was in this show by breaking for a commercial. OK, let's get to Blackboard Jungle. Yeah, we jump around here, Jamie. Too far back. I don't remember. I took the screen test. I didn't take it with Glenn Ford. I took it with James Drury. James Drury was a sort of semi-contract player at MGM at that time.

He later did the Virginian, as you know. And I won the part. And I got the role in Blackboard Jungle, playing Santini. He was the, you know, not quite all there. He was very slow-witted and so forth. And of course, that was Paul Mazursky's first movie, Vic Morrow's first movie, John Ehrman's first movie, who later became a big director. Yep. I think he did Roots and then also did some feature films. That was Sidney's probably maybe his second or third movie that he did. I'm trying to think of, that was Rafael Campos' first movie.

Vic Morrow, too. Yeah, Vic Morrow, of course. And so did the movie. And the Rock Around the Clock had been on a record that they had done, that Bill Haley had done, but it was the B side of the record. And it had never really gone anywhere. The other side was. And so Richard Brooks went to Glenn's house and he asked Peter Ford,

who was a teenager then, he says, I picked some of these songs out. Which one do you think I should use for the opening of the show? And Peter Ford picked Rock Around the Clock, Bill Haley, in the comments. And that's what brought rock and roll in. It wasn't Elvis Presley. It was Rock Around the Clock from the movie Blackboard Jungle. And the kids, when that movie started in the theater at the Lowe's State in New York, got up in the aisles and started dancing to the music.

And that's what made Bill Haley in the aisles and started dancing to the music. And that's what made Bill Haley in the comments and brought in rock and roll. All because Glenn Ford's son picked it out. Picked it out, right. And so now I'm living in a small apartment. I only made like 350 bucks for the week. And I think I worked four weeks on the show and I couldn't get another job then and I needed some work. I needed to get work and I wasn't getting any. And Jackie Joseph, the actress, her mom, Belle Joseph, worked for a chinchilla farm in Burbank.

And Jackie's mom was so good to everybody. The guys that hadn't made it yet was James Colburn and Robert Vaughn. We were all hungry actors. We could always find food at Jackie's house because of Belle. She was a bookkeeper there. And I said, Belle, I really need a job. I don't have a job. I've got to get some money to pay my rent and everything else.

She said, Jamie, the only thing they got at the chinchilla farm is you'd have to clean out the droppings in the chinchilla dropping pants and be a janitor. So I said, I'll take it. So here I do, Blackboard Jungle, right? I go see myself at the Pantages Theater, and now I'm working at a chinchilla farm cleaning chinchilla droppings. But here's the great story of this. I was also taking acting lessons from Jack Coslin. He had a theater on Cole Avenue. And in that class was Clint Eastwood, who was cleaning swimming pools at the time. This is long before he got, you know, Rawhide or any of the other shows. Nick Adams, Irish McCullough, who later went on to do Sheena the Jungle Queen. And of course, Nick, you know, did The Rebel

and did a lot of other movies, Rebel Without a Cause and a lot of other. But we were all in that same class together. And every time I see Clint, I always say, hey, Clint, whatever the hell happened to you? You used to clean swimming pools. And Richard Brooks was an intimidating figure, wasn't he? Oh, yeah. He was the perfect Neanderthal man he had a

butch haircut and he uh it'd be cold out he'd have a seersucker shirt on and uh he smoked a pipe and he had corduroy pants on and he'd uh he would talk to everybody uh uh if you didn't like what you were doing he'd say get my gun i want to shoot this man i want to shoot him give me my gun you know richard brooks you know we say in cold blood and yeah and he did that stay with the money richard gear oh i'm looking for mr good boy yeah but i think he i think he wrote key lorgo did lord jim he did lord jim uh he did the other movie that the one he did uh with uh rock hud Poitier, the one that takes place in Africa. The, yeah.

Oh, he also did The Last Hunt with Robert Taylor and Lloyd Nolan and Stuart Granger. He was a great director, but very intimidating. Getting to one actor who you mentioned, who now sadly is just remembered as the guy who died tragically during Twilight Zone. Vic Morrow. You talked about Vic Morrow?

Yeah. Vic Morrow was always like a scary, tough guy in the movies. What was he like? Yeah, he had that Marlon Brando, you know, actor's studio thing. Vic was pretty much what you saw in the movie that he did. And he was a wonderful actor. I think he did a Western after that at MGM. MGM really liked him and started to use him. And later he did a series Combat for one of my buddies that I grew up with back in Toledo, a Greek kid by the name of George Fennedy, his wife, Catherine Matthews, and I were in kindergarten together back there. George Fennedy wound up producing Combat and directing a lot of those because also his brother, Andy Fennedy, who was also from the Toledo area, came out here and became a writer and producer,

did The Rebel, did Rebel with Nick Adams, did Branded with Chuck Connors, and did the movie Chisholm. He wrote that and produced that with John Wayne. So it was a lot of nepotism going out here from my little neighborhood, north end neighborhood in Toledo, Ohio. What kind of guy was Vic? North End neighborhood in Toledo, Ohio. What kind of guy was Vic? Vic was pretty much, he was very quiet. He didn't say very much.

Of course, you know, on that set, you had to be quiet. I mean, Richard Bush was a stickler. If his camera was on you, he would make sure that your eye vision, looking at the camera angle, that everybody cleared out all the way in the studio on the soundstage so that you couldn't see anybody. That way you were just seeing the actor playing the role that you were doing opposite. Glenn was a lot of fun, actually. He was more fun.

Sidney was pretty serious, too. And so was Missouri. Everybody was. I mean, it was our first movie. I mean, it wasn't Sidney's first movie, too. And so was Missouri. Everybody was. I mean, it was our first movie, you know. So, I mean, it wasn't Sidney's first movie, but we were all very nervous. And it was a hard-hitting movie, you know. It was that first time. Actually, Louis B. Mayer didn't want to do it.

It was Dori Sherry's project because, you know, Louis B. Mayer liked doing all the musicals, and he didn't want to do that kind of film. And actually, I think it was Claire Booth Luce, was that her name? She came out in Time Magazine or something and said this is not respective of our school systems here in the United States.

He got a lot of flack for doing that movie. You are now listening to Rock Around the Clock. This is the theme music from MGM's sensational new picture, Blackboard Jungle. Many people said the story could not, must not, dared not be shown. The picture already has the movie and book world gasping. Blackboard Jungle deals with an explosive subject, The teenage terror in the schools It is the frankest, the toughest, the most realistic film since On the Waterfront It is fiction, but fiction torn from big city modern savagery What an eclectic cast, I mean, Mazursky and Poitier

Louis Calhoun Louis Calhoun, what a great actor. Oh, and Anne Francis. Anne Francis and you and Morrow. Margaret Hayes, Maggie Hayes. Oh, it was a wonderful cast, yeah. And as I said, a lot of people got their start in that movie. Years later, the Academy had a showing showing the screening of the the academy uh

the oscars and they asked me to be the host of the evening and uh i'm trying to think of uh his uh the uh it was dory sherry's nephew who was the assistant director who later became a producer uh i think he did the the Shaft with, was it? Richard Roundtree. Richard Roundtree. Yeah, exactly. I'm trying to remember his name. He was a wonderful, anyway, he was there.

And I got to co-host the evening with Richard Brooks, Pandro S. Berman, and here I'm standing up. I had this small part in this movie. And now I had all the MASH cast there. And they had a fresh print of the movie, and they screened it at the Academy. And it was really a thrill for me. And I got some wonderful pictures of all of us.

We, of course, had aged since that time. Glenn had aged, and Anne Francis, and Sidney wasn't there. Vic wasn't there. Paul Mazurski was there. And I think Rafael was think Raphael was there. Raphael Campos was a beautiful night. Wonderful night. And you had a jumping around again,

a great quote about Doris Day. If you remember it, I don't remember. I, I Doris, we did Doris Day's last movie was six. You get egg roll. Bill Christopher, who did Doris Day's last movie was Six You Get Egg Roll. Bill Christopher, who later played Father Mulcahy in MASH, we were together as two hippies in that movie.

And that was Doris's last movie. Brian Keith, Barbara Hershey. Oh, my goodness. It was wonderful. Does George Carlin turn up in that one? George Carlin, that's right. George was, before he became the George Carlin that we all have a memory of it. Stuff, stuff in your closet and stuff here all over the place.

He was a pretty much like a standup comic. And my wife, Joy, and I had just gotten married. I was 1963. I forgot when we did with Six, You Get Egg Roll. But my house in Studio City was about a couple blocks from the studio where we shot. It was the Old Republic Studios.

It's CBS Studios now on Radford. So at the end of the day shooting, if I wasn't working and George was, he'd pop by our house on Laurel Terrace Drive in Studio City with a six pack of beer. And we'd sit there and talk. This was long before he became, you know, as famous as he became. Sure.

And, yeah, it was a lot of fun being with George Carlin and having a couple beers with him. Yeah, I remember the quote you said on a TV show about Doris Day was, if you didn't love Doris Day, there was something wrong with your heart. That's right. You know, we did a special for her. She's a wonderful animal lover. She has that hotel in Carmel where you can bring your animals. And this was a documentary that they did. And they came to my house and I said, I would love to talk about Doris Day. And I'm on the documentary, in the documentary, they released it. And I mean, who can't remember

in the man who knew too much, K. Sarasov going through that. Of course. She factors into one of the stories in the book, Jamie, too, because you're talking about when you were making The Blackboard Jungle, there was a pinch me moment of realizing I was a kid in Toledo watching Doris Day movies. And now I'm on the lot. Well, the MGM lot. Well, what it was is I was watching the Gene Kelly singing in the rain movie at the Lowe's Valentine in Toledo, Ohio. singing in the rain movie at the Lowe's Valentine in Toledo, Ohio. And a year later, I'm on the MGM lot making a movie. And there's Doris Day with Jimmy Cagney doing Love Me or Leave Me. I mean, let me tell you something. When we weren't shooting, I think we forgot the stage number that we were on.

We might have been on stage 17 at the MGM lot. We'd run all over the lot going to visit, you know, other areas. lot. We'd run all over the lot going to visit, you know, other areas. I saw Gene Kelly doing, oh, let's see, the movie he did with Michael Kidd and Dan Daly. It's always fair weather. Yep, yep. And we got on the lot, we got on that soundstage to watch him. How exciting that was. I forgot, I might have been, was Minnelli the director of that? I'm not sure who directed that. I want to say it's Stanley Donnan.

Stanley Donnan. You're absolutely right. Oh, can I tell you a story? Yeah. I'm directing a MASH episode. I'm directing a MASH episode. It's the first directing I had ever done, okay? I forgot what year it is.

And who comes to visit Larry Gelbert but Stanley Donnan? Wow. And he's watching me direct, and I'm going, what? How embarrassing this is. I got Stanley Donnan watching me direct the scene on a MASH episode. He's still with us. He lives about 20 blocks from here. What a great director. And, of course, you know, he did a couple of those movies with Gene Kelly

when Gene Kelly was alone out at Columbia, the one he did with Rita Hayworth and Phil Silvers. And gosh, I love Phil Silvers. He was a great comic. I used to see him at the commissary all the time. I never worked with him, but he was just an absolutely brilliant comic. Did you talk to Phil Silvers? Oh, yeah. Oh, gosh, yeah. It was a lot of fun. Well, you know, we were so popular. Our show was when Harry Morgan and the rest of us would show up at the commissary. Dolly Parton was shooting nine to five. She came over to talk to Harry and me. She says, Mr. Farr, Mr. Morgan, I just want you to know I'm a big fan of you. Can you imagine Dolly Parton coming over and

Mr. Farr and Mr. Morgan? Oh, my goodness. We had people coming over and talking to Abe Lasfogel, who was the head of the William Morris office. He'd come into the commissary, and he'd sit with Harry Morgan and me in the commissary, and we went with the William Morris office, and he'd pick up the check. He just loved the show so much. Prince Charles came to the set and would watch us shoot. We had President Ford and Henry Kissinger on the lot and on the set. We actually got them to get into a baseball pool that we had. And Henry Kissinger won. And he's the one we had to convince to get into the pool.

It was a $5 pool. And he won 50 bucks, and we gave him the check. We sent it to him. We had so many big people, famous people come to our set to watch us shoot. It was really remarkable. Jumping around as we do, Jamie, and for a minute, I'm just going to plug your book, which you wrote a while back, Just Far Fun. Okay, can I tell you the title that it was going to be? Go ahead.

It was going to be So Far with Two R's So Good. And guess what? Burgess Meredith came out with his biography, and he called it So Far with One R's So Good. So I had to come up with another title, and I came up with Just Far Fun. I want to pay you a compliment, if I may. I read a lot of memoirs for this podcast, and I've probably read 100. We've had, well, 150 guests or something like that at this point. Your book

is not only a page-turner, but I was telling Gil, it's just full of Hollywood anecdotes. Like the Cecil B. DeMille story and the Ralph Bellamy story. I'll let you tell Gilbert the story about Ralph Bellamy doing the smoking tobacco. Oh, you're talking about when he did Man Against Crime in New York City. Yeah. Yeah. He told me, he said, you know, the entire budget, I guess this was probably in the 50s.

The entire budget was like $5,000. That included Ralph's salary as well. And they did it live. And so, well, can I tell you, before I tell you the one about where it was for Camel Cigarettes, which was the sponsor of the show. Yeah, but let me go to another one that he that he tells the same. It's a man against crime. And so he's doing the show. And there's the wrap up at the end of the show. Ralph's supposed to come into this hotel room to get the guy who's the murderer.

But the guy who played the murderer forgot that he was supposed to be in that scene. And he wasn't in the in the room when Ralph opens the door to the into the hotel room to accuse him of the crime. So, Ralph, I had to ad lib this. This is on the air. It's live. He goes, oh, I know. I know you're outside. I know you're on the ledge and he opens window, and he does the whole thing about saying, and I know you're the murderer, and I know you're the guy who did this whole thing. And there's nobody there. The guy had gone home.

Ralph had to cover it because he had to do both sides of the dialogue, do the exposition on that. So that was one of the things that happened. The other one was at the end of the show, he always lit a camel cigarette with a Zippo lighter, and he would take, they didn't have the filters on it, it was just the tobacco. So at the end, he lights this one cigarette, and he takes a big, deep drag on it, and what happened, some of the tobacco, loose tobacco, got into the back of his throat. Now he's got to start talking to tell you that. Be sure to get. Can we send them, you know, to our service?

Well, what happened? The tobacco got stuck. He can't cough. I mean, it's a cigarette and they're doing it. So as he goes on, he has to read the dialogue as quickly as he could. But his voice kept getting higher and higher and higher and higher. And he was talking like that. So be sure to watch our show this week. We're Camel Cigarettes. Are we into black? A pro's pro. Yeah, exactly.

Yo, he was, what a great actor he was. And of course he was dear friends with Harry Morgan. Can I tell you another Ralph Bellamy story? Yes, please. I was just going to say they're all in the book. Yeah, well, he's doing one of the horror films, you know, like The Wolfman with Claude Rains. Oh, sure. And he's got this director that I think he was Hungarian. He had the puttees on and the boots on. George Wagner with two Gs. Could be. Yeah, it could have been. George Wagner with two Gs.

Could be. Yeah, it could have been. Anyway, they're not shooting right now. And the director's talking, I think, to Evelyn Anchors. And he's got the megaphone. And he's saying, all right, all right, now here's the scene now. And Ralph and Claude Rains are listening to this. And he says, now remember, the Wolfman is chasing your father through the woods. The Frankenstein monster is after your mother.

And Dracula is after your boyfriend. And I want to get the feeling in this shot. I want to get the feeling in this shot that you're fed up with it all. You're just fed up with it all. That was his direction. Claude Raine and Ralph Bellamy, they said they almost fell into the water that was there at the thing

when he heard him giving that direction. Get your fed up with it all. And I heard that for years after that, whenever Ralph Bellamy and Claude Rains would run into each other, their greeting would always be to each other, so are you fed up yet? I don't know.

That could be it. You could be having me now, my friend, but maybe that's the true story. No, no, I read that. That was there for years afterwards. You know, young people, I can't believe I'm saying this, young people today do not know the expression, the Bellamy.

Oh, yeah. Ralph Bellamy was always played the guy that didn't get. That's right. Yeah. Cary Grant always won. Yeah. In His Girl Friday, that's one of the other movies that he did. And then what was the one he did? The Frank Capra one.

Oh, shoot. I can't think of it. Bellamy. Yeah. Well, he did a couple of the, of the,

the movies that he, yeah. And it, where he played the guy that doesn't get the girl. So what happened after you take, just take us back. You know, we jumping around like crazy here,

but take us back to what happened after the blackboard jungle. You were, you're working on the chinchilla. Oh, I i'm still on the chinchilla farm what was the next i'm still making 50 bucks a week i made 50 bucks a week on the when i was doing mr robertson 50 bucks a week when i was cleaning chinchilla dropping pads you see what it's all show business right yeah why get out of show business what What happened was that, uh, uh, what happened was that Craig Stevens, who I'd done, uh, Mr. Roberts with was going to do a pilot at CBS with Alan Hale, Jr., Richard Jekyll and Lola Albright. And it was a Navy thing called

the mighty old. And, uh, there was a character in it character in it by the name of Schnorkel. It was a guy with a big nose that could smell anything. And they said, hey, I got just the guy for you. You know, I did Mr. Roberts with him, Jamie Farr. Well, at that time, it was Jameel Farah. That was my name that I had before I changed it to Jamie Farr. And I changed it because everybody would call me Schlamiel. So I decided to change it to Jamie Farr. And I changed it because everybody would call me schlamiel. So I decided to change it to Jamie. Then they called me Jaime. So you can win. So at any rate, so they brought me in. I got the part. And actually, Jack Prince, who I had seen as a kid at the Paramount Theater in Toledo, Ohio, he had this W.K. role of Nicely Nicely in the road company of Guys and Dolls, which Jack Jones's dad was doing, Alan Jones.

Wow. Alan Alda's father, Robert Alda, was doing it on Broadway. And I got to see Jack Prince of that. And here I am. He's playing Cookie to my snorkel in this pilot called The Mighty O. in this pilot called The Mighty O. Well, the thing didn't sell, but Sherwood Schwartz, who is Red Skelton's head writer, saw the pilot and they were looking for some new characters for Red. And they said, hey, we don't have a service character for him. Why don't we have this Red Skelton play Cookie in the show? And we'll bring this kid in and have him play snorkel to Red Skeleton's cookie.

So what happened was I wound up, at first I had to meet Red. The producer, Cecil Barker, took me up to Red's house. He had the old May Company mansion. The people, the May family had owned it, and Red owned the house. And he drove me up there. I went through these iron gates, And he drove me up there. I went through these iron gates and Red opens the door and he's got a toucan bird on his arm. And he's in a Japanese kimono. And he takes a look at my nose and he says, when your mother was pregnant, was she frightened by an anteater? Now, you were. Go ahead.

You were also. Anyway, what happened was he took a liking to me and I did the show and I actually showed up in the show. He finds a baby that he wants to adopt and it's a it's a Korean baby. And we stop in San Francisco to adopt the baby. But they say you have to be married. So what they did is they dressed me up as his wife. So that was the first time I had done anything in drag like that. And he brings me into Olin Soule, who's the person who's got the adoption papers. And I'm supposed to be convincing him that I'm Red's wife. Well, Red broke up. It became a terrific relationship.

And they kept bringing me back to do the skeleton show. I wrapped that one up fast for you. Now, you are also jumping all over the place, a regular on the gong show. Okay, the gong show. We like to jump decades here, Jamie. No, I know. Yeah. Okay. What happened was we were up in San Francisco when they were starting to sell MASH into syndication, and Chuck Beres had just sold the nighttime version of the gong show with Gary Owens. And we had heard about it. Nobody knew what the show was about. And then they decided to try it on the network with John. John, I can't think of his last name. He did.

That's incredible. John Davidson. No, not John Davidson. John Barber. John Barber. John Barber was going to be the host of the daytime version on NBC. And Chuck was producing it. And the first three guests on the show was Joanne Worley, Jack Cassidy and me.

And they had Milton DeLug in the band and Milton DeLug in the band who were in these carny outfits. They had the straw hats and these weird jackets on in that. And John Barber was the host of the show. And they, I mean, listen, Jack Cassidy, Joanne Worley and Jamie Farr, you know, we're

not Clifton Fadiman. We're not people who are producers and the thing. We're fellow actors and we're supposed to be making comments about the acts that they had on. John Barber was looking for another Mario Lanza. He didn't realize what the show was about and we weren't allowed to do anything. So we did the first couple of shows and then we took a break. You know, they did five in a day. So Chuck comes into my dressing room. He says, Jamie, what's wrong with the show? I said, Chuck, you know, if you got crap, wrap it in a nice package. I said, first of all, why don't you get the guys out of the carny outfit and put them in tuxedos? Have like the Joanne Worley, the lady on the panel, panel being a beautiful evening gown and the guys in tuxedos. And we watching a guy crack eggs on his head, dog the opposite way. He says, yeah,

you're right. What a great idea. So but John Barber never got it. He never got the what the show was about. And that's when Chuck took over and started doing his routine with the show, and it became, you know, crazy time. And so that's how that all happened. Later on, they kept trying to do the gong show without Chuck and without our panel, but the panel got weirder than the people that they were bringing on, so they lost what the show was about, which is to have fun, the panel having fun with the characters. Go ahead, Gil.

How did Chuck Barris used to introduce you? Oh, various other ways. He'd do some nose jokes or whatever the heck it is. It was J.P. Morgan who was the dangerous one. She was always like, you'd see me trying to fight her off at the gong with an act or something. A lot of times I would try to fight her up because she was trying to expose her bosom. I was just going to ask about that. And the time I wasn't there, she actually did it. And oh my goodness, standards and practices came out. It was usually Artie Johnson, JP, and me were the favorites that they had.

And then there was the famous Popsicle twins that they had. Oh, classic. You remember that one? Yeah. Where they erotically licked popsicles in the thing. And oh my gosh, the audience went crazy. I tell you, I think JP's famous line that she said on the show is that's how she got started in the business or something. I don't know. Because I think Chuck Barrett used

to introduce you as he of large nose. Probably, you know, all those kind of things that he did. One of the shows that we did, John Dorsey was the director of it, and we could do anything on that show and get away with it. Artie and I and JP got tired of Chuck clapping his hands and telling those terrible jokes that he read off the cue cards. And this was spontaneous. We asked the prop people, do you have any duct tape and rope? And they said, yeah. And so when we came out of commercial, we actually got up. Now, John Dorsey, the director, didn't know what we were going to do. And Chuck didn't know what we were going to do. We grabbed Chuck, tied him up, put duct tape on his mouth and threw him backstage and then took over the show.

And I clapped my hands. Artie would read the cue cards. J.P. would do something else. And John Dorsey would cut back to Chuck trying to get out of the ropes and duct tape. That was all spontaneous, was totally ad lib. He would do something else. And John Dorsey would cut back to Chuck trying to get out of the ropes and the duct tape. That was all spontaneous. It was totally ad lib. It was really one of the funniest shows we'd ever done. And what was Artie Johnson like to work with? Oh, Artie was a lot of fun.

He's such a wonderful – the things that he did on Laugh-In, the Dirty Old Man with the Walnettos with Lily Tomlin, all the other – the German character that he did. All those people on Laugh-In were just terrific. Actually, we got some of the writers from them later to come on to our mash. You know, John Rappaport and I think Jim Mulligan and a couple of other Laugh-In writers joined our group. They were wonderful comedians. There's a story in the book about, is it Chuck Barris?

They scrawled something in a men's room. You know what I'm referring to? Stop me before I create again. Oh, okay. Okay, yeah. Because he was great. Because of all these shows that were pouring out of him. Yes, yes, yes.

There was one time I was was I forgot where I was. I was in I think I was in the I was in Canada. I think it was with my wife. I was doing a show, a stage show up there. And it was a Monday or a day off. And my wife was visiting and we were out having lunch. And a woman who had had too many drinks in the room. She loved MASH, but she also loved the gong show. And she pulls her blouse down in front of my wife and everybody in there thinks she had too many drinks. And she said, would you sign my brassiere? And I said, ma'am, I write bigger than that. Speaking, since you brought up game shows, you not only were on so many game shows like Super Password and you were on even the Magnificent Marble Machine, which we've talked about on this show. That was Heater Quigley and Goodson Todd and Chuck Beres,

all the big people at the game shows. You did every game show. You did Stumpers. You did, which ones am I forgetting? You did Hollywood Squares. You did Stumpers. You did, which ones am I forgetting? You did Hollywood Squares. You did Match Game. Can I tell you, one day I actually did, I did 20 game shows in two days, okay?

I went to NBC to do Hollywood Squares. And yeah, I think it was, I think Hollywood Squares was NBC. Yeah. Um, anyway, I did those shows. And as I was coming out, you did five in a day, Ruthie Goldberg, who was the casting director of the gong show said, Jamie, somebody didn't show up. Can you do five of the gong shows? She says, we got your tuxedo. So I said, okay. So I'd done five Hollywood squares and then I'd done five gong shows. The next day I was supposed to do my five gong shows with him on Sunday. So I do my five gong shows. I'm coming out and somebody didn't show up at Hollywood squares. So he said, would you do Hollywood

squares? I said, sure. I'll do what Vincent Price does. He used to bring, he used to bring a jacket, a blazer and five different tie changes. Cause you know, a blazer looks like a blazer. So he didn't have to make the five change. He would change his ties. So I said, OK, give me five ties. I'll put a blazer on. I did five Hollywood squares. That's 20 game shows in two days. I did. And you created some. I don't think people know that you created game shows. You developed game shows for a time. I developed game shows with a friend of mine, a wonderful, wonderful actor who actually was from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and went to high school with Leslie Nielsen and Robert Goulet. His name was Eddie Carroll. He

passed away. He was my partner. And the irony of it is later on, he used to do the, I do a one-man show of Jack Benny and he was wonderful. He did try to remember the title of the show that he did. And then, ironically enough, later, I did the one-man George Burns show. That's right. Of course, as you know, Jack Benny and George Burns were dear friends. Eddie Carroll, who's now Jack Benny, and now I'm doing George Burns, Say Goodnight Gracie. I had the talk, and I had the cigar, and I sm smacked my lips and I did all the things that George Burns did. And at the beginning of the show, he says, you know,

I don't know where I am, but it feels like nothing's ever happened here and nothing ever will. I'm in Buffalo. Was Jack Carter the host of one of your game show pilots? Yes, we did that in Palm Springs. Jack used to call my buddy a certain name. He'd call us two Jewish names that were not complimentary. You said in the book?

Jack was a funny man, but he was very, very difficult to get along with. Rest his soul. He was a very, very funny man. but he was very, very difficult to get along with. Rest his soul. He was a very, very funny man. What was the two names? I'm trying to remember what they are. I can't. I was probably Schmucko and, you know, something else. I get the impression from reading your book, Jamie,

that you weren't wild about Joey Bishop either. Joey was kind of tough. He was... We've heard from other people. When we did the movie, yeah, when we did the movie, Who's Minding the Mint, Joey, of course, was one of the rat pack, worked with Frank Sinatra and Peter Lawford. I had worked with Peter Lawford years before he was doing a TV series called Dear Phoebe. And that was one of my first jobs that I got in the industry, along with Blackboard Jungle. And it was in those days, a lot of the shows were by one sponsor. I think Campbell's Soup was the sponsor of Dear Phoebe. And so and then, of course, you know,

we worked with Dino and Sammy and everything else. And this is the movie where I had to speak Italian and how he wanted me to come into the room, and he was going to have the camera just follow me from one person to the other to explain in Italian that the money has gone off, you know, and I need somebody. And Joey, of course, is my cousin. He's the one that brings me into the caper. And Joey's not in the room at the time. He's trying to get some ink off of his face that he had gotten

when they were trying to print money in the room at the time. He's trying to get some ink off of his face that he had gotten when they were trying to get print money in the mint. And so I had to go to Victor Bono, Walter Brennan, Dorothy Provine, Jack Guilford, Milton Berle, and everybody explaining to him. And finally, come on, Joey comes out. And I finally, I have one line to Joey. And Joey comes to me, actually. And he comes to me, and I have ready to give my one line out because we're only doing this in one take we're not doing any any cover shots at all and Joey stops the thing he says hey you're standing in my key light so and now I have to do the whole thing all over again going to everybody everybody again and we get to, we come out to do the thing. And again, he stops the camera. All I had was one line to him, credevo la polizia. And he stops it again.

He was doing it on purpose. And finally, Howie Morris said, you know, Joey, you're not working with the rat pack. And he says, the next one I'm going to print. Don't you dare, don't you dare cut this. So he, uh, we got to the thing and I made sure that nobody was in anybody's key light or anything else. And finally got the line out, but he really wasn't very nice, uh, at that point that, uh, those are gotta rest his soul. He, he passed on, but you know, those are cheap tricks that you do in the business when you don't care for somebody and you pull those those stunts on people. That's really tough. It's funny doing a show like this. And I was just saying with Gil that we've done probably 150, 160 guests and the same people.

You know, we've heard from more than one person about Joey Bishop. We've heard from more than one person about Danny Kaye being difficult. With Johnny Carson, you read my story about Johnny Carson. The Carson stuff in your book, too, was a bit surprising. Did Danny Kaye hit you in the hand during a sketch and almost break your hand? He did. He did break my hand. It was a sketch.

I think we were doing a sketch on Viva Zapata, and he took his hat off. It had a big buckle on the thing. And he started, you know how he used to hit somebody like that. I think we were doing a sketch on Viva Zapata, and he took his hat off. It had a big buckle on the thing. And he started, you know, how he used to hit somebody like that. And he hit my hand several times with the buckle. And at the time, I didn't realize it. This was in rehearsal. So they finally took me down to the CBS nurse's office like that.

And what had happened is, yeah, he had broken one of my knuckles on my hand, and I had to, you know, I still did the show. Yeah, he wasn't very considerate. He was brilliant, a brilliant performer, absolutely brilliant. I would tell you that he was absolutely, as an audience, he was one of my favorite performers. Everything he did, Sacred Life of Walter Mitty, Hans Christian Andersen, brilliant, brilliant actor. And sing, dance, he did sacred life of walter middy hans christian anderson brilliant brilliant actor and sing dance did you know in white christmas look at the dancing steps that he did sure yeah he was absolutely wonderful but not very considerate yeah that's what we hear that he that he didn't uh he didn't like other people getting the laugh that's that's kind of what we how could you dislike art carney i mean art is one of the sweetest men in the world.

How could you dislike Art Carney? Right. This is impossible for me to believe. He was a sweet man. Tell us about, since we brought Marvin up, tell us about the Chicago Teddy Bears. Oh, the Chicago Teddy Bears. That originally was High Averback that was directing. From F Troop.

F Troop, which is how I got my part on MASH, because I played a stand-up comic Indian on that, which Gene Reynolds directed. They gave me all of Henny Youngman's jokes, but they made them Indians jokes. Take my wife, please. Take my squaw, please, and all that kind of stuff. And Gene remembered me so that when Larry came up with this character,

Clinger, Gene said, let's get Jamie, you know, to do the thing. But High was the producer and director of the Chicago Teddy Bears, which was a comedy takeoff on The Untouchables. And that was a great cast. What a cast. John Banner was in that. Art Matrano. Art Matrano was in it.

Mickey Shaughnessy. Oh, Mike Mazurky. Yes, Mike Mazurky. I'm trying to think of who the female lead was in that one. It was a terrific cast. Dean Jones. Dean Jones, of course. He was the star of the show, yes.

Anyway, the show sold, and we went on Friday nights on CBS against some of the bigger shows that NBC had. But what happened was, oh, gosh, Richard Thorpe, Jerry Thorpe's son. Richard Thorpe was a big director at MGM. Jerry Thorpe later did a lot of TV things. And so he became the producer of the show. And I think Bullock and Allen, Harvey Bullock and Ray Allen were the writers. They were big supporters of mine.

Whatever something was going on, they would write something for me in it. And for some reason, Art Matrano was a bit difficult on the show to work with. He was trying to really be the star of the show. I mean, he was the Frank Nitti character, but it was Dean Jones who was the star of the show to work with. He was trying to really be the star of the show. I mean, he was the Frank Nitti character, but it was Dean Jones who was the star of the show. And there was a lot of problems on that show. It lasted, I think, only 10 shows. We were supposed to do 13, and we were getting killed in the ratings.

Well, what an ambitious show. Yeah. And the production design, you know. Oh, everything was great in it, yeah. It's what an ambitious show. Yeah. And the production design and the, you know. Oh, everything was great in it. Yeah. It's a shame it didn't go. And Marvin. Dean was a sweetheart.

He was a, what? Dean passed away also. Yeah, recently. He's just a sweet, sweet man. Yeah. Anything else? Yeah. Another actor I always loved was Jack Guilford.

Jack was the most wonderful actor. I mean, save the tiger. Isn't he great in that? Oh, you like that movie. Yes. You've talked about it a lot. Yeah. Yeah.

Jack, of course, was on Broadway, you know, and the funny thing happened on the way to the forum, which Larry Gelbart had written. What a wonderful, wonderful comedian he was and a wonderful actor. And, of course, you know, he was blacklisted for many, many years because he was part of the gang in New York City that was accused of being a communist. So it was a pleasure working with Jack. He and his wife were two of the sweetest people.

You couldn't find a nicer person in your lifetime than Jack Guilford and Howie Morris respected him just as we all did on the show. Norman Maurer, who is the producer of that show, was married to Moe Howard's daughter. There you go. Of the Three Stooges. Yeah. And Moe was actually on the set a couple of times and they actually, when they got their star in the Hollywood Walk of Fame, they invited me there and somebody did a book on the Three Stooges and they asked me to write the foreword to it. So I did, cause I used to love them as a kid. I mean, they were violent as could be, but absolutely funny. I got to, I got to know Mo and I got to know, uh, I didn't know Curly. I didn't know Shemp, but I got to know Larry, Larry Fine, because I was in

New York when I was doing Guys in Dows and he was living there and his sister used to call me all the time. And I got to know one of my favorite comedians was Joey Besser. Oh, we love him. He was on the Joey Bishop show. Oh, I saw him in a movie, Hey Rookie, when I was a kid at the Little Neighborhood Theater in Toledo, Ohio. And he was in the Army, and he was doing all those things, pinching the sergeant. Oh, I'll give you such a slap. I'll give you, oh, for goodness sake, stop.

And he'd give you a pinch or anything like that. You know how terrible Harry Cohen was to them. He was just miserable. Well, that's the famous Red Skelton line. You know, when Harry Cohen died, he had a thousand people at his funeral. And Red Skelton said, you see, you give the people what they want and they'll show up. There's an odd story in the book about Red Skelton being a bit of a joker and projecting. You know what I'm talking about? Yes. He used to rent a hotel room and he'd get porno films and show them against the wall in an alley and get the reaction from people watching.

Project them out the window. Out the window. I heard a story about Ritz Skelton that during rehearsals, he would get really obscene. he would get really obscene. It was the dirty hour and every executive at CPS would have the dirty hour. Yeah, I got the good fortune. I worked with Errol Flynn on that. Peter Lorre, George Raft, Boris Karloff, Jane Mansfield. Gosh, I'm trying to remember all of them that i uh that i had the pleasure of uh of working with

on the show it was uh it was a lot of fun and of course they all loved red he he was one of the sweetest men and one of the most giving comedians uh uh ever uh he he wasn't like uh you know joey bishop or johnny carson or danny k he allowed you to get laughs on that and i heard as was as did jack benny you know i mean that jack benny always let, Jack Benny was usually the brunt of the joke. So. I heard. Yes, I'm sorry. Like during the rehearsal, he'd be really obscene and disgusting.

And then when they were filming, he would like kind of do like stuff that looks like he was. Yeah, you're absolutely right. He'd go right to the edge, you know, and he goes, no, I better not say that. And the guys in the booth would be,

would be laughing. That was a Seymour Burns was the director and Pappy Cunningham was the changer. And Willie doll was the stage manager. And when red passed away, red was married three times. He was married to Edna, the first wife who got him the contract at MGM at NBC. They got divorced. Then he married Georgia

Davis. Georgia Davis was, she had red hair. She was little Red. He was big Red. And they had two children, Valentina and Richard Skelton. And that's when Richard Skelton passed away at 12 years old of leukemia. And so I was with Red, and then I got drafted into the U.S. Army and went to Korea and Japan after I'd been in New York City. And Red got me from the State Department and got me VIP status. And we flew on a United nations airplane from Tokyo, uh, from Tachikawa, Japan to Seoul, Korea,

and entertain the troops all the way up to the 38th parallel. And when, when, well, what happened was when, when red was leaving to go back to America, he said, you come and see me because when you try to get your career started again,

it's going to be very difficult. And, uh, I want to And I want to make sure that you're looked after. So Red left and went back. And I'll tell you that story then. What happened though, Georgia, later, Georgia had committed suicide on the same day that Richard Skelton, their son, passed away. So Red would only have one day of mourning. And then Red married Lothian. Lothian was the daughter of Greg, the great cinematographer that did Citizen Kane. Oh, Greg Toland. Greg Toland, Lothian Toland. And that was the person.

So when Red passed away, Lothian called me and she said, would you be one of the pallbearers for Red? And so I was Bob Hope, Milton Berle, me, and Willie Dahl, the stage manager. I told you, we were the pallbearers. He's buried at the same place that Jack Benny and George Burns are in Glendale at Forest Lawn Cemetery in a crypt there. I should tell you the story. Actually, when I got out of the army and started to try to get my career going, I couldn't get it. I couldn't get a job. My dad passed away. They were living in, they had moved from Toledo to Arizona, Phoenix, Arizona. So I was going to have to quit and go home to support my mom. We didn't have any money. And I went to say goodbye

to Red at CBS. And he says, no, no, you're not going anywhere. That's when you got the quote. You're a doctor of comedy, just like I am. He pulled out some big hundred dollar bills, took some off. He says, send that home to your mom. He says, you're under contract to me as of right now. And I'll see you up at the house at Bel Air tomorrow morning. So that's what I was with Red for a whole year. Did his show, Did the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas with him. I did all of the McKenzie Machine sound effects for all of his sketches that he did. The little old man watching the parade. Oh, yeah, sure.

And any of the other things because he knew my comedy timing. I could do that for him. I actually wasn't on stage with him. But what I did is I was part of the production of the shows. We played the Chez Paris in Chicago, the Fountain Blue Hotel in Miami Beach, the Moulin Rouge in Los Angeles. It was a great year I had with Red. I learned an awful lot from him. Oh, and we can't leave out a TV movie we've discussed several times. Oh, I almost forgot. Murder Can Hurt You.

That was, yeah, Aaron Spelling. That was a takeoff on the one that Neil Simon had done. Oh, Murder by Death. With all the great stars, yeah. We had Victor Buono was supposed to be a member of Ironside. Oh, sure, sure. And you and John Beiner were Starsky and Hutch. Yeah, Starsky and Hutch.

But Victor Bono's name was Ironsides with Raymond Burr. His name in the show was Iron Bottom. Right. And Burr Young was Palumbo instead of Columbo. of right what a cast and he had uh when you open this closet he had nothing but dirty raincoats in the uh in the in the closet and marty allen marty allen was uh uh he was uh stavros oh he was uh right he was uh gavin mcleod's uh gavin mcleod yeah gavin mLeod instead of Kojak was No Jack. And John Beiner was Stutzke, I think.

You were Stutzke. No, I was Stutzke. He was Hatch. Hatch. Yeah, it's Hatch. And I'm trying to remember. Oh, Connie Stevens was Sergeant Pepper. Oh, she was Angie Dickinson. Sergeant Saul.

Sergeant Saul. Yeah, instead of Pepper. I'm trying to remember who else was in it. Tony Danza, I think, was in it. He was, instead of Beretta, he was something else. It was a lot of fun. That was a really funny, funny movie. I think you can pick it up on YouTube someplace.

Yeah, yeah. It's fun. Come in, Rabbit 3. Stutzky, Hatch, where are you? You sure you dropped your sunglasses down there, Stutzky? I'm sure. There's plenty more where they came from. Whatever you say.

Oh. I think your Zinky's beeping. Oh, get it, will you, Hatch? I'm wet. Oh, sure. Hey, I'm wet, too. Yeah, and not too bright. Hey, Fred, throw me a Zinky, will you?

You're going to kill yourself with this junk. Stop nagging. I'm trying to cut down. Want to help me look for my Zinky? Sure. You want to talk about MASH or you want to tell us about Ed Wynn? Oh, Ed Wynn. I love Ed Wynn.

Yeah, people can find out about MASH, but Ed Wynn was like the father to Red Skelton. That Red Skelton was like the father to me. And I love telling this story. There's a little boy. He's in Vincennes, Indiana, and he's selling newspapers. And he's really energetically selling these newspapers. And a gentleman in a Homburg hat and a three-piece suit comes by. And he says, young man, he says, boy, you're really trying to sell these newspapers. Why are

you trying to do that? He says, well, sir, he says, my favorite comedian is playing at the Pantheon Theater here in Vincennes, Indiana. And he says, if I sell all my papers, I'll have enough money to buy a ticket. The man says, well, he says, I'll be happy to do that. Let me take all of those newspapers. Here's the money for it. And he says, incidentally, I know the stage door manager there.

He said, I'm going to give you a little card, sign your name. He says, how would you like to meet Ed Wynn backstage? Oh, he said, that would be just great, sir. He says, okay, you give that card. Good luck to you. So the little boy goes to the theater and he sees Ed Wynn on stage, who's the perfect fool, has the glasses on and the thing.

And he's got, he's riding his piano bicycle across the thing. He's got his 11 foot pole that you wouldn't touch somebody with a 10 foot pole and doing all those kind of gags the little boy comes backstage after the show's over and he gives the card to the stage door manager he says oh yes he says yes mr win's waiting for you go into the that dressing room over there with the star on it so the little boy knocks on the door and the voice says come in and the little boy opens the door and there in front of the mirror taking off his makeup is the man in the Homburg hat, three-piece suit who bought all the newspapers from him. It was Ed Wynn

and the little boy is Richard Red Skelton. That's how they met and that's a true story. And later when Ed Wynn got the part in Requiem for a Heavyweight on the Playhouse 90, win, got the part in Requiem for a Heavyweight on the Playhouse 90. Red was next door at the Red Skelton soundstage and had to go over and tell Ed that he could do that part in there because Ed was so frightened to death of trying to do a serious role in a thing. And it was Red that went over and encouraged him to do the play. And I got to work with Ed on The Greatest Story Ever Told. So it was a wonderful. And he gave me three words. He said, Jamie, when you're in this business, I'm going to give you three words and you must live by these three words. I said, what are they, Mr. Wynn? He says, save your money. You got to have go screw yourself money when somebody offers

you a part and you don't want to do it. Go screw yourself money. And can you do an Ed Wynn imitation for us? Well, Ed Wynn, the silliest thing I ever saw. He says, I used to, let me see, I would be making this thing. I'd put some salt in there and some pepper in there and I'd taste it. Oh, you know what? It needs more salt. Oh, you know what? It needs more pepper. You know what? It needs more salt. You know what? It needs more pepper. He says, what are you making? He says, salt and pepper. There's a lot of people giving you advice in the book. Richard Brooks used to say, stay with the money. Stay with the money. Stay with the money. And Steve McQueen gave you advice

too that you didn't take. No, what was that? I don't remember that. Don't forget to take your asshole pills. Oh, that was, I might have been, was that Steve McQueen or was that Burt Reynolds? Okay, according to the book. I'm trying to remember, yeah. Yeah.

You know, I work with so many people. You know, you have a conglomerate of people. Max von Sydow, who is Ingmar Bergman's great actor in Sweden, and I'm working with him. Then I work with Milton Berle. And some of these, I mean, what a career. Not bad. To have the people that you work with.

William Holden, I did the first miniseries, which was The Blue Knight with Bill Holden. And he's the one that actually helped me get my raise at 20th Century Fox. I wasn't making very much money at that time. And we were doing the show and he says, Jamie, he says, let me tell you something. We had a lot of problems with Harry Cohn at Columbia when Glenn Ford and I were there.

He says, what you got to do, you got to just be careful that you don't hold a gun to them. And I thought, Hey, what a great idea. So I got a prop gun from the mash department and I went over to the guy, the money guy's name, his name was Beckman. I'm trying to remember his first name. And I kicked open the door where he was and I held the gun at him. He said, listen, you SOB, this is the way the deal is going to go.

And he says, you're crazy, you're crazy. He ducked under the desk. Anyway, we met, and I got my raise from Mr. Beckman thing after William Holden told me what to do. Not bad for a kid from Toledo, Jamie, that you wind up working. You're in a John Wayne movie. You're working with Von Cedow. Every comedian, every major comedian.

It's been a wonderful life, quoting James Stewart and Frank Capra. So, yeah. And now, listen, I'm with Gilbert and you. And let me tell you, may I say something to you? And I say this again from my heart. What an honor to be part of all the personalities that you have interviewed. Thank you for selecting me. I do appreciate it.

Oh, of course. Thank you. You're the perfect guest. And we could talk about MASH forever. I've got cards on it here that we won't get to. And like you say, people can find out about MASH anywhere. Oh, yeah, that's easy. Tell us about your pal, William Christopher.

Bill was absolutely one of the most wonderful people I have ever met and one of the brightest people. He would be on the set when we weren't shooting, and he would be studying Homeric Greek. And we all said, who the hell are you going to talk to? He was a great traveler. He and his wife, Barbaraara uh loved to travel they've gone to practically every country in the world uh bill uh the matter of fact uh barbara his widow

is uh going to be having a memorial for uh bill in april uh i don't want to date this podcast no it'll we'll put it up in plenty of time. We're all going to be coming in. Alan will be coming in from New York, and Loretta will be coming in from New York. And, of course, Mike Farrell and I are out here in California. And those that are left, you know, we lost. The first one we lost was McLean Stevenson.

Then I think we lost Larry Linville, who was Major Burns. Right. McLean was Henry Blake, Colonel Blake. We lost Harry Morgan. And Wayne Rogers last year. And Wayne was the last one that left, yes, that we lost. As a matter of fact, I was at Wayne's Memorial, and at the memorial was another dear friend of mine who we just lost, Mike Connors. I just heard from his daughter that they're having a memorial for Mike in March. Mike was a wonderful guy, just a delight. I met Mike when his name was Touch Connors, and he was doing a show called Tightrope, and it was over at CBS on the skeleton set that I met Mike. That has to be 1950s, and then we lost Bill. Bill

had cancer. It wasn't cancer of his lungs, but it was cancer somewhere else, and we thought it was in remission, and the cancer moved to his lungs and he was gone very, very quickly. What a, what a very sweet, sweet man. We all, we call him our beloved Bill. Underrated actor. And you guys toured in The Odd Couple together? Yes, we did. Yeah. He was, he was Felix and I was Oscar naturally, you know, and we had a great time. We did, we did one nighters, bus and truck kind of thing that we did. And Barbara would join us on the bus. And then my wife, Joy, would come in and join us on the bus.

It was a lot of fun. It was such a pleasure to work with him. And I can't let anybody leave who's worked with Milton Perl. Uh-oh. Watch it, James. Do you know what I'm going to ask you? No, I have not seen it. I did not see it.

But I heard he just took out enough to win. Wait a minute. That's the old joke. He worked with Forrest Tucker, too. Yeah, worked with Forrest Tucker. These are all inside jokes jokes so let's keep them that way Jamie maybe we zip it up now maybe we could sell a couple of books because I tell you the book is fun uh just far fun and it's well you know it's out of print oh is it out of print well

I got it on Amazon pretty easily yeah but it is out of print And I do have some here at the house, but I'm a big believer in my church. I'm Eastern Orthodox. Danny Thomas was a Maronite these books and do a thing that we're doing right now with an audience and then sell the books to them and all the proceeds go to our church. You should. Yeah, that's what I'm going to do. The book's not only fun and full of anecdotes, but it's inspirational because it's really the story of... The St. Jude story, yeah, that I have. Yeah, the St. Jude story, the Capra, the Frank Capra letter. We can't tell that it's too long. There's so much in there for anybody that... Yeah, we didn't talk about Carl Reiner or Dick Van Dyke.

That's why we got to have you back. Oh, yeah. Okay, you got a deal. We'll have you back. The book was inspiring as well as funny, and it was really a pleasure to read. Thank you very, very much. And again, I'm so honored to be a part of all the people that you've talked to. And I will turn, let's see, in July, July the 1st, I'll turn 83.

So I've been in the business now for 64 years as a professional. So a lot of fun. Jamil, you've done good. Yeah, thank you. Alan Alda's first name is Alfonso. We used to call him Alfonso. They used to call me Jamil.'ve done good yeah thank you Alan Alda's first name is Alfonso we used to call him Alfonso they used to call me Jamil Alfonso

DeBruzzo that's right I should start wrapping up this is Gilbert Godfrey this has been Gilbert Godfrey's amazing colossal podcast with my co-host Frank Santo Padre and our guest today has been the wonderful jamie farr thank you very much bye-bye bye-bye © BF-WATCH TV 2021