Make 'Em Laugh, page 22
Paul Lynde: I don’t know what you got, but I got a sports shirt.
Peter Marshall: According to the French Chef, Julia Child, how much is a pinch?
Paul Lynde: Just enough to turn her on …
Peter Marshall: It is considered in bad taste to discuss two subjects at nudist camps. One is politics. What is the other?
Paul Lynde: Tape measures.
Peter Marshall: Paul, in the early days of Hollywood, who was usually found atop Tony, the Wonder Horse?
Paul Lynde: My Friend Flicka.
Peter Marshall: During the War of 1812, Captain Oliver Perry made the famous statement, “We have met the enemy and …” And what?
Paul Lynde: They are cute.
Peter Marshall: What is the name of the instrument with the light on the end that the doctor sticks in your ear?
Paul Lynde: Oh, a cigarette.
Peter Marshall: In one state, you can deduct five dollars from a traffic ticket if you show the officer … what?
Paul Lynde: A ten dollar bill.
Peter Marshall: It is the most abused and neglected part of your body—what is it?
Paul Lynde: Mine may be abused but it certainly isn’t neglected!
Peter Marshall: Elizabeth Taylor calls it “the Big One.” What is it?
Paul Lynde: They both look the same to me!
“I RANG THE BELL, DIDN’T I?”
REDD FOXX
Guy goes every day to the same diner, looks over the menu, and always orders the same thing: ham and eggs. Every day, the same thing: ham and eggs. Waitress decides to play a trick on him and scratches it from the menu. He comes in, she says, “You know that thing you like so much? I scratched it.” “Well, wash off your hand and get me some ham and eggs.”
–Redd Foxx
Redd Foxx was the most successful underground comic in history: “Redd Foxx sold millions of records before he even knew how to count to a million,” said Dick Gregory. In fact, he sold more than 10 million LPs–party records as they were called–to legions of fans who had never even seen him in person, his gruff, scotch-soaked voice beguiling them in the after-hours.
Laff of the party: Foxx at the Playboy Club; party album.
WHEN YOU WERE A KID, YOU HAD TO SNEAK HIS ALBUMS, BECAUSE YOUR FOLKS HID THEM. HE WAS VERY DANGEROUS IF YOU WANTED NOT TO GET A LICKIN’.
–Whoopi Goldberg
Comic Reynaldo Rey, a colleague of Foxx’s, was more charitable than Gregory: “You have a party, you had to play a Redd Foxx record—that was a part of the party. After the dancing and singing and right before getting totally drunk you played Redd Foxx.” Foxx’s own life was anything but a party.
He was born in 1922 as John Sanford in the ghetto of East St. Louis. His father walked out on the family, and his mother, who couldn’t contend with John and his brother, Fred Sanford, sent them out to a Catholic boys’ home in Chicago. He had little affection for anyone other than his brother and never forgave his mother for sending them away; according to Rey, years later, “when he made it big on television, she pops up and says, ‘Son!’ And he tells her, ‘Hey, get this bitch out of here.’” Sanford found himself playing in a washtub band on street corners and, while a teenager, ran away to Harlem, where he had trouble in mind. In Harlem, John Sanford got the nickname Red because of his hair color and light skin, and he later added another d. Sometimes he was called Chicago Red to differentiate him from his pal Detroit Red—Malcolm Little, the young Malcolm X. “They busted suds together, they worked in the chicken shack together,” said Rey. “They were the best of friends. Redd and Malcolm whored together, stole things, robbed and stole. They did all sorts of little things, but they never got caught.”
The fringes of showbiz beckoned. Redd cut a few rhythm and blues singles with Kenny Watts and his Jumpin’ Buddies and eventually got his comedy start introducing strippers at a Baltimore nightclub, throwing salty jokes in between his appearances. He changed his name, saying, “I’m a fox. I want to be named after the fox, the red fox,” and made his new name on the chitlin circuit and by recording his early party records—there would be fifty-two in all. By the late 1950s, he had built a following, an arsenal of jokes, and a point of view. “I work basic,” he said. “All I do is talk about what you do. If you don’t do it, I don’t talk about it.” Rey observed that “Redd took pride in using double entendres. When Redd first started in comedy he didn’t use profanity. He let your mind see the dirt, but he never cursed”:
A guy asks another guy, “How’s your love life?” Guy says, “Not so good, my wife cut me down to once a week.” The other guy says, “Well, it could be worse—there’s three other guys she cut out completely.”
Fellow goes to a house of ill repute. Got both legs in a cast, both arms in a cast. Madam opens the door, takes one look at him: “What you want?” Man says, “I rang the bell, didn’t I?”
What’s got five hundred legs and a cherry? Two hundred fifty strippers and a Tom Collins.
Foxx didn’t crack the mainstream barrier until the mid-1960s with some television appearances on The Today Show and The Tonight Show, but his exposure was minimal compared with his popularity in the black community. He could keep up with the racial tensions of the time—“I don’t know why they say all negroes carry knives. We don’t all carry knives; I carry an ice pick”—but it was his language that kept him from crossing over. Foxx claimed the objections were overreactions: “I just say what people really say. People pretend they never say ‘shit’—when I slam your hand in my car door, you will.”
By 1970, Foxx had broken into Vegas, which was the right kind of venue for him, and became a favorite of the wee small hours crowd. He was also gaining a reputation for being as aggressive as his material. “I don’t have to be up here entertaining you. I could be in an alley with a blackjack waiting for one of you suckers,” he’d tell the crowd; he wasn’t kidding. “Redd carried a razor blade and a switchblade, and you better give him his money,” recalled writer and comedian Paul Mooney. “And he would always want you to put his money in a brown paper bag.” According to Reynaldo Rey:
You dummy! Foxx and Demond Wilson in Sanford and Son; the BBC’s Steptoe and Son with Harry H. Corbett and Wilfrid Brambell.
[Comedian] Slappy White and Redd were buddies. And so Slappy borrows five hundred dollars from Redd, and Redd said, “Okay now, Slappy, I want my money,” and Slappy cut out and didn’t pay Redd. So next week, Redd says, “Slappy, what about my money, man?” He says, “I’ll take care of you tonight, man.” But Slappy’s gone, he done, period. So, next week, we’re sitting in Redd’s dressing room. Redd always carried a gun, he had a pocket sewn into all of his pants and he kept a little derringer right there. So Slappy was seated across from Redd, and Redd took out his derringer, and he removed the bullet from the derringer, and he leaned over, popped Slappy in the forehead with that bullet. And he picked it up and reloaded it. And Slappy said, “What’s that all about, man?” And Redd said, “If you don’t pay me my money, the next one will be coming much faster.”
Foxx might have ended his days in a Vegas show room at two a.m.—or in the morgue at five a.m.—if fate hadn’t intervened in the person of All in the Family’s producer, Bud Yorkin, who had purchased the rights to a British sitcom about an ornery junk man and his son called Steptoe and Son. He and his partner, Norman Lear, were looking to transpose the show to an American venue, featuring an ethnic family; NBC was fine with that—just as long as the family wasn’t black. But Yorkin caught Foxx in the small role of a janitor in the film Cotton Comes to Harlem and brought him from Vegas to Hollywood to work on the pilot. According to Yorkin, Foxx was so eager to try a sitcom that he offered to remove his false teeth to play the part. In the end, all that was required was Foxx’s talent. When an NBC executive saw the live run-through of a pilot of the newly dubbed Sanford and Son, with Demond Wilson joining the cast as Foxx’s son, he ordered the show on the spot, even though the production staff had only weeks to complete the series before it aired.
After its debut at the beginning of 1972, Sanford and Son was a hit in the ratings, moving almost immediately to number two, right behind All in the Family, and just as it had for Phil Silvers, the sitcom form gave Foxx the perfect showcase for his crusty chicanery. Foxx didn’t have to reach far to play the cantankerous junk man—he even went back to his beloved brother to give Sanford and Son’s title character his family name. His colleagues from the old days were happy to see him triumph in the mainstream as Fred Sanford; said Reynaldo Rey, “That was Redd. A hankety ol’ man. But he would raise hell with you one minute and give you a hug the next minute.” To a younger generation of comedians, such as Tommy Davidson, the sight of Foxx on prime time in their living room was a revelation: “Fred Sanford represented every old black man that I know, who were the funniest people on earth. Redd showed that even though you come from a blue-collar background or you are an older African American person that you are just as endearing, as trustworthy, just as vulnerable, as any other human being.”
Foxy grandpa: With acolytes Eddie Murphy and Richard Pryor in Harlem Nights (1989).
AUNT ESTHER: Fred Sanford, why is it every time I come over to your house you call me ugly?
FOXX: Because I’m not the type to lie.
Foxx proved less than endearing on the set. The troubles began before the taping of each episode. “He’d warm up the audience with all these jokes that were really for a stag party,” recalled Yorkin. “So I finally said, ‘That’s it, pal, you did your four warmups, no more. How are we gonna top one of your dirty jokes?’” Like W. C. Fields and Groucho Marx, Foxx had a deep distrust of his producers and tried to level the playing field the best way he knew how. Just when Sanford and Son was getting its highest ratings, Yorkin got a call from the stage manager:
“You better come down, Bud, because Redd wants to talk to you.” I went down to his dressing room and Redd said, “I don’t think I can go work today.” “What’s the problem, Redd?” He said, “Well, I think I’m getting an ulcer in my stomach.” I said, “Oh, really? What did the doctor say?” “The doctor said if I was making fifteen thousand dollars a week, I wouldn’t have to worry about eating the way I do, I wouldn’t have these ulcers. I need fifteen thousand dollars to make these ulcers go way.” Redd figured when he was ready to make a move, he’d make a move.
Production was shut down for five weeks while Yorkin and Foxx negotiated a new salary. Occasionally, Foxx and the producers could work together to a positive end. The show’s writers had all been white until, during the second season, at Foxx’s insistence, the producers called in two black stand-up comics, Richard Pryor and Paul Mooney. Foxx was also instrumental in bringing classic African American performers onto the show, including Slappy White and La Wanda Page, a notoriously ribald nightclub peformer, as his foil, Aunt Esther. Even Lena Home made a guest appearance.
HORNE: You paid to see Stormy Weather thirty-eight times?
FOXX: Naw, I only paid once. I went in on a Saturday matinee and came out on Wednesday.
Foxx also insisted on a more realistic depiction of the black community—especially in the use of the word nigger. Yorkin swallowed hard and allowed Foxx to say it to another character on the show. The next day, a phone call came from Stokely Carmichael, the former honorary prime minister of the Black Panthers. According to Yorkin, “Carmichael said, ‘That’s the best show I ever saw. We don’t call each other Afro-Americans, we call each other nigger—you said it there, and that’s exactly right.’”
By the time Sanford and Son wound down after five seasons, Foxx had achieved the kind of stardom afforded to only a precious few television personalities. However, for him it was a day late and $15,000 short: “I should have had this career twenty years ago—I’m the funniest man in show business.” Foxx made up for lost time, living in Las Vegas and Los Angeles and living large. “If he got a check for ten thousand dollars, he owed eleven thousand of it to somebody,” recalled one of his producers. By the time Eddie Murphy hired Foxx (and his other idol, Richard Pryor) to star with him in the 1989 film Harlem Nights, he was drowning in debt. The high-profile movie didn’t stop the Nevada branch of the IRS from calling him into their offices. When they asked him to account for the half-million-dollar salary he had earned from the picture, Foxx responded, “I gambled and drunk it all up.” Within the week, the FBI cleaned Foxx out, taking his house, his cars, his dogs, and according to Reynaldo Rey, “his soul, his heart. He was never the same after that.” Foxx joked to friends that he wanted to pay the government, “but I just wasn’t going to pay any more taxes to a white president—I’ll pay taxes when they have a black president.”
Eddie Murphy came to the rescue again, by offering a starring role to Foxx in a TV show that he produced called The Royal Family. Slowly, Foxx was climbing out of debt. “The last time I saw him, he was playing dollar poker with a bunch of retired old ladies in Vegas,” recalled comedian Robert Klein. “He had a gorgeous Asian wife who was rubbing his shoulders and bringing him Kahlúa.” One afternoon in 1991, on the set of The Royal Family, Foxx clutched his heart, as he had in nearly every episode of Sanford and Son when he threatened to join his beloved wife, Elizabeth, in heaven. The cast and crew thought it was a gag. It wasn’t. Redd Foxx was dead of a heart attack at age sixty-eight.
Redd Foxx has his own epitath; he said it at the end of every club date and it summed him up better than anything:
FOXX: Hope you had some fun. If anyone has been offended by any thing I said, I want you to know from the bottom of my heart—I don’t give a shit.
“LAST GIRL BEFORE FREEWAY”
JOAN RIVERS
I’m Jewish. I don’t work out. If God had wanted us to bend over, he would have put diamonds on the floor.
–Joan Rivers
As the Second World War was winding down, little Joan Molinsky was spending her summer at Camp Kinni Kinnic in the woods of Vermont. The camp director sent a letter home to her parents: “Joan is a born leader, but you have got to watch her. She could become either another Truman–or a Hitler.” All Joanie wanted was to play Snow White in the camp play. She got cast as Dopey. Something inside her swore she would never be dopey again.
Can we talk? Rivers as a great conversationalist: on her show, and on others’ (Johnny Carson).
The road from Joan Molinsky, Dopey, to Joan Rivers, one of the savviest, sharpest, and most successful comedians in showbiz, began in 1933, in Larchmont, New York, a largely Jewish town in suburban Westchester. Her upper-middle-class parents had her whole future mapped out for her: respectable Jewish summer camp, respectable Jewish values, and, God willing, a respectable Jewish husband. Joan had other ideas: “I didn’t start out to be a comedian. I wanted to be an actress and I fell into the comedy because I was funny at the office and I found that was a way to make a little money, waiting to be an actress.” The straitlaced Molinskys were horrified at Joan’s decision and told their daughter that showbiz was filled with prostitutes and drug peddlers—certainly not the place for their nice Barnard-educated daughter.
A struggling acting career was all that seemed in the cards for Joan in the late 1950s. “I had no woman that I grew up watching saying, ‘I’d like to do that,’” she said about her comedy aspirations. “But very early on, while I was still in college, someone brought me to see Lenny Bruce. And it was absolutely an epiphany for me, because he absolutely said what everyone thought.” Despite her parents’ protestations and embarrassment, Rivers persisted as a comedian. No matter how crummy the joint she played, she still saw herself as a nice Ivy League graduate: black dress, a string of pearls, nicely done hairdo. “It was a very tough road in those days, especially for women, because if you were at all attractive, you weren’t supposed to be funny. I had to come onstage and look like a nice girl but still do jokes, and I didn’t know where to go.”
In the beginning, she went wherever her “sleazo” agent sent her—often to the Catskills, because she owned a beat-up Buick and could drive the talent back and forth to the city. Her driving skills may have been better than her discretion at that point; one night, after playing a gig on the borscht belt, she recounted, “I came out after one of these black singers and they had applauded him so amazingly, I said, ‘I’m so glad you loved my husband.’ Well, I could have just gone home right there.”
But home in Larchmont, where she was still living with her parents, was no bargain, either. As a change of pace, she took a gig in Chicago in 1962 with Second City, the groundbreaking improvisation troupe that was the darling of the city’s intelligentsia. Still, Rivers felt that the company’s high level of literary and cultural allusions had little to do with her own experience and personality. “So I told the truth about my life and I spoke things that they gasped at,” she said. When she returned to New York, she tapped into her own frustrating past and projected a disappointing future:
MY MOTHER IS DESPERATE FOR ME TO GET MARRIED. OUTSIDE OUR HOUSE SHE PUT A SIGN: “LAST GIRL BEFORE FREEWAY.”
Rivers said, “People would just go, ‘What, is that true?’” They didn’t know what to think of me.” Maybe not, but they still enjoyed her as she worked her way up the ladder from appearances with Jack Paar to The Ed Sullivan Show to a long-awaited debut on the New York-based Tonight Show in 1965. “They brought me on the Carson show as a girl writer—they couldn’t say I was a comedian—and at the very end of the evening he said to me on camera, ‘You’re gonna be a star.’ And that changed my whole life.” She began appealing to a cadre of women in the audience who understood the contemporary anxiety of trying to make themselves and their families or husbands both happy at the same time. “I was very lucky because I was the only woman at that time coming up. [The other comedians of my generation] had our own voices and our own things to say. None of us wanted to say, ‘My mother-in-law,’ because we didn’t have a mother-in-law.”
