An Interview with Jack Carter - Part Nine

Kliph Nesteroff: Did you know Joe E. Brown?

Jack Carter: God, no! He was a big movie star. Are you kidding? I was just a kid when he was a star in Hollywood. I didn't know anybody out here. When I came here during the war years I met everybody through Morey Amsterdam. Morey took me to Ann Sheridan's house. She was married to the actor George Brent then. Whenever Morey got hired to write for a big star he took me along. He took me to Metro. He took me everywhere. And he had people over to his house. Morey loved the Dead End Kids. We were all close. The Bowery Boys... I got to mostly know Huntz Hall and Gabe Dell. Huntz Hall was a close friend. Huntz was married to a sweet girl named Anderson. He lived on Hayworth Avenue in Hollywood and then married a terrible lady from New York. She once attacked my wife in a bank because she was wearing a fur coat. Oh my God, a terrible girl. Huntz was notorious for having this great, big, schlong.

Kliph Nesteroff: (laughs)

Jack Carter: Huntz Hall and Milton Berle and Forrest Tucker. They said the three of them should get together, braid it and make a challah. Berle was notorious for the big schlong, but Huntz had a massive one too.

Kliph Nesteroff: I never heard that about Huntz Hall.

Jack Carter: Yeah, very few people know about Huntz Hall's big schlong (laughs). We hung out together. The Dead End Kids were red hot then, y'know. I really befriended Huntz. The others... well, Bernie Punsly became a doctor... and then the little guy with the hat...

Kliph Nesteroff: Leo Gorcey.

Jack Carter: Yeah, he thought he was king of the shit house.

Kliph Nesteroff: You started in show business shortly before you joined the army, right? You met Morey Amsterdam before you were in the service...

Jack Carter: Yeah. We were up in Vancouver, British Columbia. I think I met him at a gig in Yakima, Washington and we went to Vancouver to do this bill together. Morey and I went boating with some guy early in the morning and I fell asleep on the boat. This was around 1942 or so, I guess. We worked in Vancouver at that theater. The Beacon?

Kliph Nesteroff: Yeah.

Jack Carter: It's old town now, isn't it? That area? 

Kliph Nesteroff: Yeah, it's the poor neighborhood today.

Jack Carter: God, I went to the best restaurant for Chinese in Vancouver with that columnist Jack Wasserman. He took us. And that guy Webster. He's not alive anymore, is he? Jack Webster?

Kliph Nesteroff: No.

Jack Carter: The Scotsman? He was a sweet man. He loved me. God, I loved performing at The Cave. I used to do radio shows at that station a few blocks to the left of the club. It was upstairs.

Kliph Nesteroff: CKNW.

Jack Carter: Yeah, big interviews. Everybody listened to it and phoned in. It was a big deal. Every night after my show we'd go to The Penthouse, which was run by that Canadian mafia family - Rocky and Joe Phillipone. Great food! I got a mickey there (laughs) after I sat with some hood's girl. I was supposed to go to Los Angeles the next day for a big thing, but I was finished. Two days I laid in bed tossing and turning and throwing up. And I remember another night at the Hotel Georgia when I had a big fight with my wife and she locked me out. I was naked in the hallway with nothing but an umbrella.

Kliph Nesteroff: (laughs)

Jack Carter: She was going to leave me. We had a big fight, but she stayed. They gave me a nice suite there. I guess the club paid for it. That bar used to jump in the Georgia Hotel. Wow! That bar was packed. Every night you could... it was a real pick-up bar, y'know. Of course, I didn't know from that. There were a lot of Vancouver sports figures that hung out there. My big joke during their football season - when the... what are some of the names of the teams?

Kliph Nesteroff: The B.C. Lions...

Jack Carter: Yeah, my joke was when the lion roars - the ala wets!      

Kliph Nesteroff: I'm pretty sure you're the only American comedian who did CFL material. 

Jack Carter: "You can be sure that when the lion roars - the ala wets!" The Alouettes were the Montreal football team, right?

Kliph Nesteroff: Right.

Jack Carter: Yeah, that was one of the jokes I did when I played The Cave. I played Vancouver every year so I had a lot of local stuff. There was a guy named Oil Can Harry, right? He had a club there. And there was another room that used smaller performers called The Essex.

Kliph Nesteroff: The guy that used to book the Cave left to open his own supperclub. A guy named Isy Walters. He had Lenny Bruce deported from Canada after his only show there.

Jack Carter: Yeah, Isy. That's the name. He and my friend Sid Golden who lived way out by the airport... they were part of this hip, rich, Jewish hierarchy that used to go nightclubbing in Vancouver. They'd always be there Friday and Saturday with twenty people back when I was red hot. Hy's Steakhouse was across the street. 

Kliph Nesteroff:  For that gig at the Beacon back in 1942 with Morey Amsterdam, you're billed as: "Jack Carter: International Comedian." And the two movies that were playing when you were there was a comedy starring Hugh Herbert and the horror film Black Dragons with Bela Lugosi. This was before you went into the army? How many gigs were you doing?

Jack Carter: Well, after that I was working San Francisco at The 365 Club. I was a big hit there and that's when I got drafted. I flew all the way back to Brooklyn and they sent me to San Antonio, Texas. Fort something. There was an air field there called Randolph Field, but I was in the Army. I forget the name of my base.



Lew Ayres was in my company. He was a conscientious objector so they put him in the medics or something. San Antonio was beautiful back then, but it pissed me off that I had to leave San Francisco in the middle of this good engagement. I remember Tony Martin came to see me. He was an officer at the naval base there in San Francisco. There was a scandal and they decommissioned him and made him a private. It was a scandal about his getting special treatment because he was a famous singer. Private Al Morris - that was his real name. But he came to see me and he was nuts about this girl singer Betty Black. I had a great photo of he and I and Betty and someone else. I gave the picture to someone and they never gave it back to me. It used to be in that pile right there. Son of a bitch! 

Kliph Nesteroff: He had an early TV show too - The Tony Martin Show - a 15 minute thing. 

Jack Carter: He's a strange guy. You've got to get to know him. Not a nice man. Very snappy, very edgy, kind of always angry. I played golf with him at Hillcrest. He hit a shot this far from the flag and he got mad because it wasn't on this side of the flag. 

Kliph Nesteroff: A lot of the old singers seem to be angry or difficult.

Jack Carter: Yeah, big temperaments. No one more so than Sinatra, of course. Sinatra was his own special breed. He wanted to be a gangster. He was dying to be tough. He'd punch out anybody.

Kliph Nesteroff: Maybe it was an ego thing because the singer was always in the headline position and the comic was always the opener...

Jack Carter: Yeah, that's true. 

Kliph Nesteroff: Maybe the ego was inflated by their billing.

Jack Carter: Jerry Vale is easy going. He can get kind of pushy. And he's cheap too. Very cheap. He tried to steal a lottery ticket from my wife. He tried to claim it was his, but they were her numbers and she won. He wanted to claim it. We were with Ed Sullivan too - a whole bunch of us. Terrible. Luckily she played the same numbers all of the time, so she could just rattle them off from memory. But they're okay and we talk to the Vales all the time. They used to be friendly with the Norm Crosbys, but that friendship ended. Crosby turned out to be a real asshole and a real joke thief. He'll steal your act blind.

Kliph Nesteroff: Really?

Jack Carter: Norm Crosby and I were friends for a long time, but he is a joke thief and he stole a ton of material from me and many others. He got up in temple once and started to do one of my stories. I stopped him. He's a reciter. He has no actual funny bone, but he knows how to put jokes together and blend them and do a half hour. He was always an opening act, never a headliner. Never in your life will you meet someone who says they're a Norm Crosby fan, y'know.

Kliph Nesteroff: Eddie Fisher was notoriously moody back in the day. You guested on his television show in 1958.

Jack Carter: Yeah, after The Jack Carter Show was canceled I signed with Freddie Fields and he got me all kinds of guest shots on TV and big money too. Freddie Fields got me the biggest money of any agent I ever had. He got me a lot of work and I did programs like Garry Moore...

Kliph Nesteroff: What do you remember about The Garry Moore Show?

Jack Carter: I was doing fine until I had a fight with one of his writers in the early sixties - Woody Allen. We did a talk show, a panel together, and he disrespected somebody. I jumped into the conversation and attacked him back and we were trading lines. We were never friendly again. I used to go see him do his jazz thing in New York and he wouldn't even talk to me. I did Garry Moore five or six times. I did The Perry Como Show and Perry turned on me. He didn't like the song I was doing. It was an Irish-themed show and I sang that line, "I'm the only Italian in MacNamara's Band." He thought I wrote that and told me it was in bad taste.

Kliph Nesteroff: (laughs)

Jack Carter: Como never used me again. I couldn't believe it. What a moron! He thought I had put that in there to make fun of Italians! That's the way it went down and I never did the Como show again. Nick Vanoff was a gopher on that show at the time, just working as a stooge.

Kliph Nesteroff: You appeared on The Bob Crosby Show.

Jack Carter: Yes. Bob was on my show a couple of times as well. He was great and we did a thing with his brother Bing, a set of three sketches. Ben Starr wrote it and Ben is still around. He's brilliant. He was my great writer on The Jack Carter Show in 1950. He would stay over the weekend for the live broadcast so I had someone with me in case of trouble. The other writers didn't give a shit. Ben Starr, I still see him. He's still funny.

Kliph Nesteroff: Let's talk about Judy Garland. You did some stuff with her.

Jack Carter: Yes, people have mentioned that appearance to me a lot - The Judy Garland Show. They've been replaying them, I guess. People said there's one where Judy and I are mirroring each other and doing impressions. Mel Torme was the songwriter on that program. He wrote her special material. He never got paid. They stiffed him or something. Begleman and Fields charged tremendous amounts of money to CBS during that series. CBS built a yellow brick walkway for Judy and they built things for her in her home. They had all the [CBS] workmen do it and got away with murder. And then they stole all her money. Whatever deal they made, they kept it all and gave her shit. 



Kliph Nesteroff: You did an episode of The Hollywood Palace with Judy.

Jack Carter: Yeah, Roy Gerber booked that show. The producers were Bill Harbach and Nick Vanoff and they liked me. I think I did five of them.

Kliph Nesteroff: You did the episode in which they reunited The Nicholas Brothers.

Jack Carter: Oh, I loved them. All of those great Black dance teams. I loved The Step Brothers and was very friendly with them. And then there were The Clark Brothers, but they moved to England and I used to see them there. The Nicholas Brothers though - there was nobody like them.

Kliph Nesteroff: Nobody liked them!?

Jack Carter: Who?

Kliph Nesteroff: The Nicholas Brothers.

Jack Carter: Who said that?

Kliph Nesteroff: I thought you just said that.

Jack Carter: No, I said there was nobody like them!

Kliph Nesteroff: Oh!

Jack Carter: No, are you kidding? The Nicholas Brothers? They were the kings! With the knee drops and the splits and the leaps? Any movie they were in - like Sunrise Serenade with Glenn Miller and Sonja Henje - they did that number where they slide down the steps.

Kliph Nesteroff: They could stop any show.

Jack Carter: Yes, and they did. Yeah. The little guy was the real hoofer. Fayard, the older one, was more classic. And the real classic dancers were the ones that Fred Astaire took so much of his style from - John Bubbles.

Kliph Nesteroff: Buck and Bubbles.

Jack Carter: Buck and Bubbles, yes. Buck was the funny little one who did the "Negro jokes." They were the first ones to do real racial jokes.

Kliph Nesteroff: You did an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

Jack Carter: Yes. I loved doing that. I became friendly with the lady who produced it. Howard Morris was in that episode. He was Sid Caesar's stooge when we were both on NBC. The actress was Dorothy Malone or someone like that and she had to slap me in the scene. I said, "Slap me. Don't pull your punch. Make it look real. I can take it." Well, she hit me and knocked me out cold! She gave me a shot with her fist. She didn't do it open handed. She closed (laughs) her fist. A pretty blonde actress.



I forget what I played, but I was thrilled to do it. I did a lot of dramatic shows like CBS Playhouse. I did this episode called The Runaway Bus about a guy who steals a bus and drives to Florida to get away from it all. It had good actors like Wallace Ford and that other guy who was hot for a while... Oh, I can't think of his name now. He never became a big star, but he was a good actor. I did the anthology shows and some 1950s science fiction programs. It was tough because I wasn't known as a dramatic actor, so to convince William Morris to go after those things for me - that was tough.

Kliph Nesteroff: I saw you in a sci-fi show called Tales of Tomorrow - about a flying saucer.

Jack Carter: Yeah. Later on I did an Amazing Stories that Spielberg produced. Tobe Hooper directed it and Dick Shawn was on with me. 

Kliph Nesteroff: Hitchcock didn't have any real involvement with that show of his - just lent his name and did the wraparounds.

Jack Carter: Just the name. That girl was his producer - forget her name. An older woman.

Kliph Nesteroff: You did two episodes of Batman with Adam West.

Jack Carter: Yeah, I played Hot Rod Harry. I get more mail than anything else asking for signed pictures of Hot Rod Harry. They invite me to these things out by the airport where poor souls sign autographs. BarBara Luna wrote me a letter, "Please come to the convention. Shecky was here and he loved it." Well, Shecky can go demean himself for ten bucks a pop, but I can't do it. A lot of people do it and they come home with a couple thousand.

Kliph Nesteroff: You gotta pay the bills, I guess. A lot of people live high on the hog when they're famous, but it doesn't really last...

Jack Carter: [snoring]

Kliph Nesteroff: Jack?

[Jack is asleep]

An Interview with Bernie Kopell - Part Two

Kliph Nesteroff: Some of the people that appeared on Get Smart whom I've interviewed - like Dick Gautier and Pete Barbutti - have nothing good to say about Don Adams. You worked with Don Adams frequently on Get Smart in what is arguably your most famous role.

Bernie Kopell: My experience, Kliph... you gotta get over that spelling, K-l-i-p-h... Jesus...

Kliph Nesteroff: (laughs)

Bernie Kopell: My experience with him was like a little bit of heaven. He was responsive to me. He liked that I helped set him up. We played off each other. This was the total opposite of my experience with Danny Kaye. The way those others describe their experience with Don Adams was sort of how I felt about Danny Kaye. Danny Kaye was a virtuoso on the stage but... We were in a sketch together on The Danny Kaye Show. He was a hero coming down from the hills of Mexico to help the villagers and I played one of his helpers.

I got a big laugh with my line at our first rehearsal in front of an audience. I did not know that it was against the law on The Danny Kaye Show for anyone to get a big laugh other than Danny Kaye. I felt something that seemed like an icepick in my forearm. He was grabbing me. I said, "Danny, what the hell?" I looked at him and he had blood in his eyes. His idea was: "You set me up - and then I get the laugh." It continued that way until I was ultimately fired. 

Danny Kaye's background was as a tummler. My parents saw him when they were on their honeymoon in White Roe Lake in 1932. He was a kid there and he was a tummler whose job was to amuse the guests and do shows on Saturday nights. Later when this kid grew up to be the star of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, he was a God in our home. When I started working with him I could barely speak because he was so huge in the minds of my parents. As a child I had done his shtick, pantomiming to records. But he turned out to be a very unpleasant human being and it was very uncomfortable.

Danny Kaye was embraced by the British royalty and he had a "special" relationship with maybe the greatest living actor - Laurence Olivier. I was shocked to discover he was all a facade. He was just unpleasant. There was a little girl named Donna Butterworth and Danny had a scene with her. He was doing that Pied Piper character and she was sitting on his knee. He was doing those jokes, "My nose is like the Holland Tunnel. You enter here and exit in New Jersey." The scene is over, the light goes off, they go to commercial, and he goes, "You little cunt." She was a child! It was astonishing that he would behave this way - but that was Danny Kaye.

Kliph Nesteroff: How did you get the news that you'd been fired?

Bernie Kopell: Another sketch came up and I did my Latino accent. He didn't like it and he had me removed from the show. It didn't stop my career any. I went right from there and joined The Steve Allen Show. I refer to it as The Secret Steve Allen Show because maybe three people saw that series. "Shhhh.... Bernie's on The Steve Allen Show... don't tell anybody."

Kliph Nesteroff: (laughs) During your time on The Danny Kaye Show was Paul Mazursky one of the writers?

Bernie Kopell: Yes, Paul Mazursky and Larry Tucker were a writing team on that program. Their big claim to fame was the movie I Love You, Alice B. Toklas and then Bob & Ted & Carol & Alice. Paul Mazursky went on to become a major filmmaker, but I'm not sure what happened to Larry Tucker. Larry was immensely fat and he used to tell all kinds of fat jokes. "I don't want to say I'm fat but my vaccination had a three day reign." 

Kliph Nesteroff: You're also in a Danny Kaye film called The Man From the Diner's Club.

Bernie Kopell: Well, I just had a small bit and didn't actually have any scenes with him. Frank Tashlin directed it. I played a Western Union guy, but there's nothing to report on that. I rode a bicycle, delivered a Western Union message, and that was it. 

Kliph Nesteroff: Now back to that sorta obscure incarnation of The Steve Allen Show. Years ago I interviewed a guy named Don Sherman.

Bernie Kopell: Yeah, Don Sherman and I came on that show at the same time. He was a New Yawk - Bronx type guy and a stand-up who worked cruise ships for years. I was a sketch guy on that show. Steve Allen's associate producer was Dick Brill. He would throw these great parties with his beautiful, elegant wife Patricia in their home. I would do things I thought were funny at their parties. One time Dick wanted me to meet Edward Mulhare from The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. It was a cocktail party with noise, noise, noise, clinking glasses and music. Edward was across the room and Dick yells, "Edward Mulhare! I want you to meet Bernie Kopell!" Mulhare can't really hear us and yelled back, "Barnacle Bill!?" 

Anyway, Dick walks me through the party and says, "Come on, I want you to meet Steve Allen's writers, Mike Marmer and Stan Burns." I went up and performed my pilot character and I did this character - Schwartz, the Richest Man in the World. I ended up doing it on the show. Steve Allen was the straight man: "It's been brooded about, Richest Man in the World, that you help out people less fortunate than yourself. Can you tell me who these people are?" I said, "Yes, they are all the people much less fortunate than myself like the Vanderbilts and the Astors and the Rockefellers." After I did that shtick Mike Marmer and Stan Burns started writing all kinds of things for me. Mike was a drinker and a smoker. Stan was a health nut who would lift weights and if he wanted to mix it up he would vacuum his home.

Kliph Nesteroff: (laughs) 

Bernie Kopell: These guys were marvelous writers. They invented a character for me - Japan's Foremost Comedian. It was tremendous fun to do The Steve Allen Show because he was so welcoming. Steve would sometimes cackle right in the middle of a sketch. I asked him one time, "Steve, that line wasn't that funny. Why were you laughing?" He said, "I know it wasn't that funny, but you should hear the show going on in my head." He was a renaissance man. When he wasn't on camera he'd be talking into a tape recorder or playing the vibraphone. He was the most incredibly talented human being.

Kliph Nesteroff: Gabe Dell was on that series.

Bernie Kopell: Gabe Dell did the best Bela Lugosi of all time. He always came to work riding his motorcycle. He was a delightful guy. I sort of stole his Bela Lugosi later on. I think he died from some kind of drug situation. 

Kliph Nesteroff: How long did that version of The Steve Allen Show last?

Bernie Kopell: Well, I did thirty episodes and we did two 90-minute shows each week. We taped both of them in one evening. Steve regenerated himself in between by lying on a slant board. It was a delight. We taped it at Vine and La Mirada. We'd cross the street and go to Durando's, the only watering hole in the area. It was run by Dottie Durando and she liked to imbibe. Mr. Durando, a couple years earlier, bounced a rowdy customer who then later returned with a gun. The guy fired two shots and one went through Mr. Durando's heart, killing him instantly.



The other bullet went into the carpet. Dottie Durando, in her cups, would show off the hole in the carpet. Donn Trenner was the bandleader on that program and the band had people like Herb Ellis and Jack Sheldon. Donn Trenner would come in after everyone ordered and take a sample from your plate and a sample from the next person's plate. Nobody ever saw Donn Trenner order a meal. He only ate other people's food.



Leonard Stern had written for Steve Allen for years. He was now working on Get Smart. He called me one day and said, "Can you do a German accent?" I didn't know so I just said, "Yes, of course." You just want to accept that offer before they change their mind. Well, who wrote my first episode of Get Smart but my friends Mike Marmer and Stan Burns. They created this brilliant episode, my first, called A Spy for a Spy.



Right at the same time I heard from Jerry Davis who was producing the Marlo Thomas program. He invited me for lunch at Hal's Studio Cafe. This was the commissary where everyone ate at Desilu-Cahuenga. Jerry Davis was the Cary Grant of comedy writers. He wasn't that great of a writer, but he was great company and he dressed beautifully.



He was always on a subtle prowl for the ladies. It was always delightful to be with Jerry Davis. We had lunch and I was about to leave. He goes, "No, no, don't go yet. Bernie, before you leave, let's go visit Stage 8." That was where they were taping That Girl with Marlo Thomas.  



His idea was to get me to meet Marlo Thomas and the writers on That Girl. He had me do my shtick for them. That was a surprise and - boom - I was immediately cast as Jerry Bauman. So now I was thinking, "Do I have to make a choice? Do I have to choose between Siegfried on Get Smart and Jerry Bauman on That Girl?" I was confused as to what to do. But then I thought - maybe I can get away with doing both. I got very friendly with the second assistant director who made up the schedules. If I was scheduled for Tuesday and Thursday on Get Smart I would tell the A.D. I was only available Monday, Wednesday and Friday for That Girl. So I got to do both of them for five years. I never had a conflict with either one, although it was a very schizophrenic time for me. I was doing both those shows every week, but it was wonderful to have that work.