Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Also media.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Oh my goodness, gracious gosh, golly, jeepers, it's Behind the Bastard.
It's a podcast about the worst people in all of history,
and today the worst people in all of history are
me and Sophie. Because even though this podcast has a
video version that some of you listen to, we're not
(00:26):
going to be on video this week, which will not
affect the vast majority of our listeners. And you're like,
why are you telling it to us because some people
watch this on YouTube and we're going video off. Why
because I look like shit today and.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
Feel like shit today being.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
I was going to say, you're just being sympathetic to me,
but yes, well.
Speaker 4 (00:46):
No, no, because I was the first one to go,
I'm not doing video time.
Speaker 5 (00:49):
I'm not doing video today, And then you joined my cause,
Andrew t our guest, are you feeling like shit today?
Speaker 6 (01:00):
I am.
Speaker 7 (01:02):
I am a little sleepy because I stayed up too
late watching TV. Yeah, we've got the epvpst Yeah. I
was watching Horses.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Are you a Slow Horses fan?
Speaker 6 (01:13):
You seem like you would be.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
I watched the first season of it, and I love
Commissioner Gordon or whatever that guy's real name is, and
he's lovely in it. I I'm kind of over spy shows.
Speaker 8 (01:27):
I guess I used to love them. I don't know.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
I guess I need to see. It's gotta be real
different for me to get super But I watched the
first season.
Speaker 6 (01:35):
It was fine. Yeah, it's not very different.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
I will say.
Speaker 7 (01:38):
I think what I thought was going to happen was
it's played as it's maybe going to be more of
a comedy, and then a pretty straight ahead spy show.
After the first bit.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Yeah, I was totally it's a different kind of spy thing.
But no, they're just doing spy stuff. They're just like
the underdogs, I guess. But by the end of the
season they're just like other spies.
Speaker 6 (01:57):
It's fine, it's fine, Yeah.
Speaker 7 (01:59):
They're they're they get they get into minimum regular dogs
and possibly overdog status pretty quickly.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
As a CIA agent myself, you know, I've just had
enough of that in my day job destroying the left
from within as an agent for you know, the Central
Intelligence whatever whatever. People on Twitter are saying this week, Andrew,
you would I.
Speaker 6 (02:24):
Will say, you would be.
Speaker 7 (02:28):
I mean, I guess it's like too on the nose
to have you be a spy. I think it would
just be too like it's more like Sophie obviously is
in the CIA.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
Sophie's definitely in the CIA. Well, yeah, of course, obviously.
There's never been any doubt in my mind about that.
Speaker 6 (02:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (02:43):
Why are we telling people about this?
Speaker 2 (02:45):
Because I'm I was a fan of the show burn
Notice I wasn't really, but I like Bruce Campbell, and
I feel like if you get burned because your spy
identity gets revealed, I might get to meet Bruce Campbell.
Speaker 8 (02:57):
I'm not really sure how this is gonna work.
Speaker 6 (02:58):
But I'll figure it out.
Speaker 8 (03:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
Yeah, Bruce, if you're listening, you want to have a beer,
you know, Yeah.
Speaker 8 (03:08):
Seems like a cool guy.
Speaker 7 (03:10):
I'm just saying, Sylvie, if Sylvie just had one job
instead of, you know, destroying the left from within.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
And as she's doing, absolutely just easy speaking of evil
people destroying something. How do you feel about stand up comedy?
Speaker 3 (03:27):
I wait? Have we not talked about this?
Speaker 6 (03:29):
I I we haven't.
Speaker 8 (03:31):
Actually I have.
Speaker 4 (03:32):
We have, which is why I was like when I
realized what the topic was, I was very excited.
Speaker 7 (03:38):
I mean, listen, I love plenty of stand up comedians. Yeah,
but I think the institution of stand up comedy is
so thoroughly poisoned by at best sort of reactionary like,
uh huh, why structure interesting?
Speaker 2 (03:59):
Interesting, It's interesting that stand up comedy, you know, as
valuable and influential as it is, and we all have
a lot of stand up comedy that we love and
this meant stuff to us. Yes, it has this weird
reactionary tinge that that feels like, oh, it's got to
be this modern thing. It couldn't be baked in. It
couldn't be that the literal inventor of stand up comedy
(04:20):
as a discipline was a fascist, could it.
Speaker 7 (04:24):
I listen, Robert, if you're gonna this is not only okay? Actually,
so the little tiny peak by the garden is. I
was having lunch with my friend and I told him
I had to leave because I had to be on
Behind the Bastards. And he was like, oh, like, what
prep do you do? And I was like, oh no, no, it.
Speaker 8 (04:42):
Is always that's not the idea.
Speaker 7 (04:45):
The guest comes in and I'm just like, I'm hit
with it. This is going to be by far. Not
that the other episodes I've been on have not been
illuminating and educational. I think this might be directly useful
to my life. O.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
Good, well, it's hurt for that because today did you
did you know there was a guy who invented stand
up comedy?
Speaker 3 (05:06):
Always want to ask, like a single.
Speaker 8 (05:08):
Guy who is credited as being a vogue.
Speaker 6 (05:10):
That is wild?
Speaker 8 (05:12):
It is wild, right?
Speaker 7 (05:13):
I would have assumed it would be like, you know,
apocryphally Aristotle or some shit like that.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
You know, there is there are different people, and obviously
things that are kind of in the dna of stand
up comedy have existed probably for as long as people
have like things we can be like, oh, you could
kind of see that as being But there is a
guy who invented what we recognize as stand up comedy,
where a guy walks up wearing like normal clothing on
(05:43):
stage and just starts telling funny stories, generally based on
observations about the world. Right, That is something a guy
came up with. And that motherfucker's name is Frank Faye
and we're going to talk about him today.
Speaker 3 (05:57):
This is amazing.
Speaker 7 (05:59):
I'll like, I'm listen. I've always thrilled to be here,
but this one is.
Speaker 6 (06:04):
Like, I I can't.
Speaker 7 (06:06):
I've never been able to articulate why I hate the
stand up comedy other than the vibe.
Speaker 6 (06:11):
So this is great.
Speaker 4 (06:12):
See that's how I feel about improv. But it's probably
because I've had to go to so many people's improv shows.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
Improv yeh, improv.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
Improv is actually evil. But the improv people know this.
This is not We're not We're not breaking for them.
Speaker 4 (06:25):
My dear friends know about my extreme loathing of improv,
and whenever it's brought up, they look at me and
they go, we won't talk about it because it's that bad.
Speaker 3 (06:33):
I love you.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
Stand upside a big. I've done stand up. It's had
a big influence on me. I loved Bill Hicks. I
still do. Yeah, a lot of his stuff has aged.
Well someone hasn't stand up to me.
Speaker 6 (06:45):
DNS. Yeah, I obviously can name it? Yeah, oh please?
Speaker 8 (06:49):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (06:50):
Yes? And can I can I improv trauma dump for
one second?
Speaker 8 (06:53):
Oh sure? Yeah.
Speaker 4 (06:56):
In my early twenties, I once had a boyfriend and
take me to say I have a special surprise for you,
and I'm thinking, oh, what could that be? I'm girly pop,
And then it was. He took me to a improv
show where we were the only people in the audience,
(07:16):
and it was no, and it and I.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
Hate it, and like I.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Was surprising, Yeah, it was bad. I feel like it
should be legal in that instance. I feel like it
should be legal to kill the people on stage, not
as not to be mean, not as an act of cruelty,
like that's just mercy, right, Like if you're performing improv
to an audience of two at a full theater, it's
just it's just kinder to die.
Speaker 4 (07:46):
And I just kept including us in the bits.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
Of course, of course they have no other idea.
Speaker 8 (07:51):
What a nightmare?
Speaker 6 (07:52):
What hell?
Speaker 4 (07:54):
It was almost as bad as the relationship.
Speaker 8 (07:56):
Hey, let's do it.
Speaker 7 (08:00):
No, I was gonna say, Sophy, I think it's reasonable,
especially I think if you've been single in your like
let's say twenties at any point in Los Angeles or
New York, and Prova is a weirdly big part of that. Yeah,
I think a lot more people think it's a good
date then it's not.
Speaker 4 (08:20):
It's a bad time.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
It's a bad time. And dating comedians also real mixed bag.
Let me tell you that that's just I've never done it.
I've been the comedian. But based on the experiences of
the women I've known of dated stand up comedians and me.
All Right, I think that's enough for the cold open,
(08:47):
and we're back. So we're talking about the inventor of
stand up comedy. He also invented being an mcuh like,
he's the first actual MC. This guy's crazy and fluid.
Speaker 4 (09:00):
Guy's a nightmare.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
Yeah, Frank Fay. Yes, he's also a bigot, an abusive spouse,
and an American fascist activist par excellence, so trifactor. He's
everything you know. Joe Rogan before Joe Rogan, Joe Rogan.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
Yeah, ce comedian fascist, Ye.
Speaker 8 (09:18):
Did it all. He did it all. He's killed Tony.
He's Joe Rogan.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
He's everybody you know, he's everybody.
Speaker 8 (09:23):
So heyo, I'm.
Speaker 4 (09:25):
Gonna I'm sorry, I'm gonna hao a lot of Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
No, that's that's great, that's great. Born Francis Anthony Donner
or perhaps donar do na. It's either do in an
er or do o in ar. There's both on some
documents and I anyway, what it doesn't really matter. H
Born Francis Anthony Donor on November seventeenth, eighteen ninety one,
(09:47):
in San Francisco, California, A His parents were what you
might call small time traveling performers. Also is a note
in an episode recently, someone called me out for mispronouncing
Nevada because I called it as like a joke. Doesn't
even fuck you, it's a bit go to hell, I say,
Nevada Wright fuck off.
Speaker 8 (10:08):
Anyway.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
His mother, Mary was a stage actress at the start
of her career. His father, William, was a poet and
also just about everything else. These people are like theater kids, right,
They're protos. They're er theater kids, you know, so much
so that they like travel around doing theater with like
a traveling group to make a living, a bad living.
Speaker 8 (10:31):
They're not doing well.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
So.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
His father was a lyric poet who prior to meeting
his mom, who was a stage actor, his dad had
been like a poet and a conductor on the Southern
Pacific Railroad. He'd fought Indians, he'd prospected in a mine.
But it was as an actor and a comedian that
he came to be known as Chicago Billy Fay. Now again,
(10:53):
that's like not I think the name he's born under.
I think it's a stage name that he adopts, although
it's a little unclear to me at any rate. Frank
starts his you know, he and his wife get together
and they start traveling around this like traveling vaudeville show.
And we'll talk about vaudeville, but basically it's a traveling
variety show, right, and they're performing doing different kinds of bits,
going all around the country while their little boy is
(11:16):
a small child. And because everybody has to like do
something to contribute to the company that they're keeping, he
starts performing as a very little kid. Right, he's maybe
four years old at the at the oldest when he
starts performing on stage.
Speaker 6 (11:35):
First child Labor got worked into this.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
Oh yeah, no, they don't give a shit at this. No,
because we're getting factories. This is like nice standards. Yeah,
you know, early late eighteen hundreds, child Labor. His first
stage role is as a potato bug in the play
Babes in Toyland, and his biographers all suggest that he
changed his name from Francis Donner to Frank Fan because
(12:00):
it read better on a marquee at some point in
his childhood. I don't think that's true. The scant genealogical
evidence I can find from wiki tree suggests his father
was born as William Faye, although his dad may have
taken that name because we know that he was born
as Donner, So it's a little unclear. Did his dad
adopt Faye as a stage name, and so Frank started
(12:22):
using Faye as a stage name. His mom's last name
was Tynan. I don't really know. Everyone seems to say
he picked the name Frank Faye, but it really does
look like his dad did, and he just decided to
take the dast name his dad did. But I don't
have like stronger evidence on it than that.
Speaker 7 (12:40):
I mean, I feel like tracking down Carney's real names
is going to be perpetually tough.
Speaker 8 (12:45):
Yeah, yeah, who cares? Right?
Speaker 2 (12:47):
I always do my best with this sort of thing,
But these are fucking Carnes.
Speaker 8 (12:51):
Who knows what their real names were? No, he had
birth er tip.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
Poor people don't have b in eighteen ninety one, Like,
there's no record of these people.
Speaker 6 (13:00):
Everyone's an alias.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
You think these fuckers got social Security cards? So the
family sprint Frank's childhood crisscrossing the nation as part of
a fairly popular vaudeville act. Now I mentioned that earlier.
Let's talk about what vaudeville was. Do you know anything
about vaudeville? Andrew.
Speaker 7 (13:18):
I mean, I guess I'm realizing now most of my
knowledge of Vaudeville almost certainly comes from looney.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
Tunes, right, looty tunes and maybe some families Seth Macfarland's
obsessed with it, so it winds up in.
Speaker 8 (13:31):
All of his shit too.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
Yeah, Vaudeville was the number one form of entertainment from
like the late eighteen hundreds and up to the early
nineteen hundreds in the US, like during kind of like
the Victorian era and a little laughter, Like Vaudeville is
the big all over the West, and it had started
about fifty years before Frank's birth, so we're talking in
(13:53):
like the mid eighteen early like the eighteen forties, eighteen fifties.
It started in France, and it originally kind of like
a comedy act and like pretty focused on comedic performances,
but it changes through in the UK. There's some like
they introduce kind of more stage elements and people start
(14:14):
like adding like one act plays or like they'll do
like scenes from famous plays, so you'll do like a
little bit of Shakespeare or something, you know, just the
good bits somebody like Mark Antony's funeral oration or whatever.
And by the time it's migrated to the US. It's everything, right,
It's almost it's essentially kind of like a quasi circus
style act right, yeah, and probably the closest modern equivalent
(14:38):
to what Vaudeville was when it kind of hits its
height in the US and the late eighteen hundreds would
be like the modern late night show or maybe to
be more accurate, like late night in like the era.
Speaker 8 (14:49):
Of Johnny Carson. Right, Yeah, it's height.
Speaker 6 (14:51):
Yeah, got like a little bit of everything.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
It's a little bit of everything. There's not like a
main host most of the time. Like sometimes there will
be a guy and it's him and he'll like come
on and introduce the act, but he's not like the
draw in the way like.
Speaker 6 (15:02):
Carson was or like Colberry's you know, right, soon to.
Speaker 8 (15:05):
Be late show.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
Right, but it is like a late night show and
that you've got a bunch of different things, a little bit,
as you said, a little bit of everything. So you'll
have comedians coming up and like doing skits, right, so
they'll pipe under the face or whatever. You'll have actors
do bits of plays. Sometimes you'll have one act full
one act plays performed. You'll have musicians come on and
do songs in between acts, you'll have stunts, you'll have
(15:28):
trained animals. There's a little bit of like even like
a morning show, right, that kind of there's some of
that DNA in there. Right, there's like you could like
fucking the view is in the line of descent from Vaudeville, right, right,
Like you know what, it.
Speaker 7 (15:41):
Also sounds like a little bit there's a little bit
of like just America's got talent, right.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
Yes, absolutely, yeah, yeah, this is like this is the
primordial ooze from wherein like almost all modern entertainment kind
of comes out of is Vaudeville, right, And yeah, by
the time it hits the and it's different in every
country in the West, but by the time it hits
the US, it's become it's it's kind of hard to
tell where circus ends in Vaudeville begins sometimes, right, and
(16:08):
there are like circuses that are like Vaudeville basically. Right,
there's a lot of Saturday Night Live, you know, or
a lot of Vaudeville DNA in Saturday Night Live. Right,
Because often these comedies skits do kind of lean political too. Now,
there's a lot of racism baked into vaudeville in the US,
because one major popular thing in vaudeville are in the US.
(16:29):
I mean, I'm sure this happened in Europe too, but
it's particularly the US. Thing are minstrel shows, right am
I N S t R E L. I've run onto
zoomers who don't understand. You think I'm talking about menstruation,
very different thing, that would be a really different show.
This is minstrel shows. Are white people dressing in blackface
and pretending to be racist caricatures of black Americans. Right,
(16:53):
It's just super racist. That's all we need to say
about it.
Speaker 8 (16:56):
Right now.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
The best thing I can say for young Frank is
that I don't think he performed in any of these.
Maybe he did right as a kid. There's a decent
chance he wound up doing something like just because everyone
does a little bit of everything. But I don't find
any of that written in his backstory. Instead, he's really
drawn from a young age to dramatic acting, which which
separates him. His father is a comedic actor. And Frank
(17:18):
really likes doing Shakespeare, you know, from as soon as
he can. He's doing every Shakespeare. When they're doing these
segments from Shakespeare, plays. He estimates that by the time
he was fifteen, he had performed in pieces of every
single one of the Bard's dramatic plays besides Titus Andronicus,
which I'm guessing is because a bunch of drunk yokels
in the eighteen nineties or nineteen oh five don't really
(17:39):
want to see Titus fucking Andronicus. Yeah, let's get drug
on moonshine and watch fucking Titus Andronicus.
Speaker 6 (17:47):
Oh man, none of us can read, but sure sounds foreign.
Don't like it.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
Yeah, Now we know vanishingly little about his early life
outside of a stage career, what his parents were like.
I'm gonna guess he got abused at least the normal
amount physically, right, it'd be weird if he's just assuming
we wouldn't know about it. Yeah, but not enough that
like he said anything about it, or that it was
a particular like although again, he has no dedicated biographers really,
(18:16):
so it may just be that this was also a
time when men didn't talk about the shit that happened
to them as kids, especially guys like Frankie Fay. What
we do know is that he never spends much time
in school. At best, he has maybe a fifth grade education.
And I don't even know if he would really be
accurate to say he had a fifth grade education, Like
it said that he never made it past the fifth grade.
They're traveling constantly. He has odd classes, but he's a
(18:39):
very smart kid, and he teaches himself to read and write. Again,
he has basically all of Shakespeare's dramas memorized his whole life. Right,
So this is a smart kid, and this is a
kid probably didn't really need much in the way of
formal education. He's an autodid act, right. He also there's
not I mean, there are theater schools, but he doesn't
benefit from that. He is living in an around these
(19:00):
actors and performers, and he learns from them and from
just his own. He's got instincts, he learns how to perform.
So he's basically his whole childhood is theater school.
Speaker 8 (19:11):
Right.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
As he gets closer to being an adult, his ambition again.
He wants to be a serious actor. He wants to
be a stage actor somewhere like Broadway, you know, performing
trotting the boards. But this is not to be, and
years later he would blame his failure to break through
as a serious actor on the fact that he was
a redhead.
Speaker 8 (19:30):
Quote.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
For that reason, neither the public nor then managers take
me seriously when I claim that would be a great
dramatic actor, and I think this is actually true, like
that just like, no, you're a redhead. That's funny, Like
it's funny. You need to be a fucking clown, Like
nobody wants to see a redhead. Be fucking Mark Antony.
Get out of here, get like accept it your comedy.
(19:56):
So as he grows into a young adult, you know,
he kind of splits from family. It's unclear a little
bit exactly when, but he like he goes off on
his own. He tries to make it. He's not initially
successful because you know, and he flits around different shows,
traveling shows, stage shows, just doing the only thing he
knows how to do. He does try his luck as
a boxer, which is weirdly common for like comedians of
(20:20):
this era, a lot of the great first generation of
comedians also had box because it's like, god, yeah, if
you're if you're if you're in the same performing in
the same kind of places. It's also where they do
bare knuckle boxing. Right, Yeah, we'll see if you're good
at it.
Speaker 7 (20:33):
It's Robert, it is crazy to learn that the fucking
jiu jitsu freak stand up. You guys also have a
historical presence, long, long and proud history.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
He was not good at it, by his own recollection quote,
I was a pugilist at one time, and what a ham.
I was so poor that I myself realized I was
no good. And when a boxer knows he is no good,
he is terrible. Yeah, which is like, yeah, that's that's
pretty true. When the guys with head injuries for a
living know that they can't they're not good boxers.
Speaker 7 (21:05):
Well, it's like like whatever ego it takes to put
you in the ring is usually a thing.
Speaker 6 (21:10):
That keeps you from leaving nine.
Speaker 7 (21:13):
Yeah, if you have it and you're like nah.
Speaker 8 (21:17):
Nah, I do you know what else sucks? Andrew?
Speaker 6 (21:21):
Oh hit me?
Speaker 2 (21:23):
Not buying the products and services that support this podcast.
In fact, if you're not buying these products and services,
like I don't believe in simulation theory, but you're a
simulation of a real person because real people buy from
our sponsors.
Speaker 8 (21:39):
Is this a good idea? Sophie? Does the audience like it?
When I do this?
Speaker 3 (21:42):
I don't really care at this point, fuck them, I.
Speaker 8 (21:45):
Love you, goodbye, and we're back.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
So he's a bad boxer, but the experience does seem
to have left a mark on him for the rest
of his professional career, even after he makes it big.
Frank Fay will carry a set of boxing gloves with
him from theater to theater and like put them up
in his you know, office is the wrong word his
like powder room or whatever, to remind him of his origins, right,
Like it's like a this is something that like leaves
(22:14):
an impact on him, maybe just because of the head injuries.
Speaker 8 (22:16):
I don't know.
Speaker 7 (22:16):
Yeah, the only impact, Yeah, the eternal impact.
Speaker 2 (22:21):
So he tries next to make and he's probably in
his late teens, maybe young adult, maybe eighteen nineteen at
his point, he tries to make a name for himself
as a ballad singer. Next and you can find I'm
not going to play you his old time as singing.
But he has a nice singing voice, right, He's known
for having a nice singing voice. It sounds weird to
us because he sings in a way that people really
don't these days. But like he was, he was considered
(22:42):
very good and for a time, he teamed up with
another balladier, but the act ran into a problem, which
is that people don't like ballads and they didn't want
to hear his ballads. So he broke up the act.
And the next thing he does is he gets together
with an older performer and named John Dire, and Dire
is a vaudeville comedian like Frank's father had been. The
(23:05):
way Frank would later tell it, like he'd been pigeonholed
because of his hair color. And this is just him
like bowing wearily to the inevitable because he needs money. Like,
I guess this is the thing I'm destined to do.
I can't do better than comedy. This guy Johnny wants
to take Manders wing. I'll try it now. One of
my sources for these episodes is the book The Comedians,
which is a history of American comedy by Cliff Nesterhoff,
(23:28):
and it does a good job of describing what a
miserable existence this act was for Frank at first. Quote,
veteran comic Johnny Dyer goaded Fay into showbiz while regularly
hustling him in billiards. Dyer wrote an act in which
Fay wore baggy pants, roller skates, and a fake nose,
circling Dire as he made wisecracks. The eight minute performance
ended with face pants tearing in half. It was a
(23:49):
kind of humiliation Faye vowed never to repeat. And again,
comedy is very primitive at this point. You know, we
haven't really invented the joke bra for since yet, So
it is shit like this cant s rept open.
Speaker 7 (24:07):
I mean, look, I was argued, there's a plenty of
shit that's not materially better than that that you could
find on TikTok today.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
Again the aforementioned well, I'm not gonna who needs to
shit on various cartoons on television, you know which ones
I'm mentioning. So basically every credible source agrees that Fay
hated this act and fucking wants to kill himself the
whole time. He's doing this right, he is embarrassed about
performing with Dire for the rest of his life. He
wouldn't quite deny he'd ever worked with the guy, but
(24:36):
he clearly like this is a thing of deep shame
for him. And the primary lasting consequence of this period
working with Dire seems to be that Frank Fay develops
an almost pathological hatred for comedians who wear outlandish outfits
or use props, which is the only kind of comedy
at this period of time. Right, there are no comedians
(24:56):
who just show up in their clothes and like tell jokes.
They're all wearing costumes, they're always using props, they're nearly
always with other comedians. They're usually doing skits, right, And
part of the joke is, look at hit he's a
man and woman's clothing, you know, or he's got face
paint on, he's dressed as a black man. Right, Like,
those are the jokes, right, Like, it's a whole world
of carrot tops and gallaghers basically, except for they don't
(25:20):
even have the courage to be carrot topper Gallagher alone.
Speaker 8 (25:22):
They've always got to have other guys on.
Speaker 6 (25:24):
Right.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
It's just you know, that's that's it's primitive. We haven't
invented being funny.
Speaker 6 (25:30):
I have to say. The thing that is bumming me
out is I do.
Speaker 7 (25:34):
Very much sympathize with the guy in comedy who fucking
hates comedy.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
Of course, of course, I mean like, look, you can't
be a good comedian unless you hate yourself. We all know, yes, right,
we all know, and everyone else and everyone else around you.
There's Bill Burr being the one exception, being the only
stand up comedian to be emotionally healthy. I think just
because he's in a he's the only stand up comedian
to be happily married and stay a stand up comedian, right. Yes,
(26:07):
Victoria Wilson, who is his wife, who will talk about
later's biographer, not his, but who is the closest he
has to a real biographer, because she's a good biographer
and he's a big part of her life. She writes
that he had already developed an obsession by kind of
the point that he's working with dire near the end
of that time, with what he considered smart comedy, right,
(26:28):
which is what he wants to be doing. And one
of his idols is a guy named Wilson Misner. Misner
was a playwright and a general performer who was also
a severe opium addict and an adventurer as well as
like an entertainer. He had and he's not really he's
not performing in front of normal audiences. But he gets
(26:48):
invited to the Lambs Club, which is this like social
club and restaurant in New York, and he's like, yeah,
he writes plays and other stuff, and sometimes he'll deliver
monologues at the Lambs Club that are like kind of funny. Right,
And this again, this isn't a standard performance. He's not
like selling tickets. He's just like coming up because he's
a guy who's known for other things, and he'll give
(27:09):
some like little monologues and they're kind of funny, and
Fay really likes it, right, And Fay really thinks that
he's smart and really together. And there's some other guys
doing kind of similar things where it's not quite stand
up because the purpose isn't they're there for like an event,
and they're just kind of like showing up to open
this like benefit or whatever. They're not really like a
(27:29):
normal performance. But he sees he gets from this the
ida that like this is actually kind of a good idea,
just a guy coming up and like talking to the
audience and being funny. Right right, Yeah, now these are
not weird.
Speaker 7 (27:42):
Yeah, they're they're kind of just like little speeches.
Speaker 8 (27:45):
Yeah exactly.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
And they're not written. They're spontaneous acts of wit, right,
They're just by guys who happen to be funny, and
Fay admires these men terribly, he said, of his idols,
and he's talking about Missner and a couple of other guys.
None of them there's a lot of out online quote.
They never went after anyone. But if you got in
their way or try to outsmart them, Lord to help you,
you were dead right. Because they're kind of talking with
(28:07):
the audience and stuff, and that that's really noteworthy because
one of the things about Fay is from an early
point in his career, he doesn't just see comedy as
a way to earn a living or a thing that's
meant to.
Speaker 8 (28:17):
Make people laugh.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
Comedy is always also for him a tool to attack
and damage people he doesn't like, right. That's a big
part of what draws him to comedy. And the greatest
thing he admires about Misner and some of these other
guys that he's kind of taking out his idols is
the way they can cut an enemy down to size
and do it with ease, right, The way that they can,
you know, tear into somebody and hurt them.
Speaker 8 (28:40):
Right. He really is drawn to that, which.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
Gives you an idea of the kind of Yeah, he
didn't care about punching up or down.
Speaker 8 (28:48):
He just likes to punch.
Speaker 7 (28:50):
Yeah, yeah, I mean that kind of guy always likes
punching down right, right.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
God, So for two years he struggles to get by,
as you know, with with Dyer as the kind of
comedian that he's come to hate. Right where he's wearing
these pants that rip, he's like fucking roller skating around.
It's making him. He's miserable. He sees his colleagues, who
are other types of comedians, clinging to these props, which
he sees is like totems that symbolize a lack of
(29:18):
confidence in their own comedic skills. Right, if you need
to dress up, if you need another actor on stagey, like,
if you need these, these are crutches. Right, So he
doesn't immediately start taking to the stage. What he starts
doing is backstage, in between acts. He starts just talking
shit to the people around him about the bad acts
on stage, right and speaking his mind about them. And
(29:39):
he's funny and like his colleagues backstage are like laughing
as he's shit talking other performers, and he comes to like, fuck,
maybe this could work. Maybe maybe I'm just funny and
I could just get up and be funny in front
of an audience. Right, So he's taken from these experiences
and from these early idea idols of his this very
simple idea that a comedy performance doesn't have to have
(30:02):
pies in the face or any of this physical comedy shit.
It could be you could just have a man get
on stage wearing normal clothing and talking about how he
feels to an audience.
Speaker 7 (30:14):
Right, because even like the court jester had like a
dumb hat.
Speaker 8 (30:18):
They's got a dumb hat.
Speaker 2 (30:19):
And again there's still even court jesters usually had other
people or like, you know, they're right, there's other shit
they're doing.
Speaker 8 (30:24):
There's props.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
It seems like an obvious idea that just like a
guy would get up it'd be funny. But this is
kind of revolutionary and it's a big risk, right. People
don't even think about this as the idea that you
would get up alone without just naked, basically to try
to make an audience entertained, is wild the people. In
an article for WFMU's Beware of the Blog, comedy historian
Cliff nester Off summarizes just how wild the idea of
(30:49):
a stage comedian without props was at the time. Quote,
even those without gimmicks rarely appeared on stage alone. Comedians
had their punchlines set up by another person, a straight man.
To be a comedian miant, you perform without the help
of a costume or an instrument or another guy. A
comedian without a prop can't click, said actor Wesley Ruggles.
I learned that back in the days when I pushed
props around for Charlie Chaplin great pantomimes that he is.
(31:12):
Chaplin realizes the necessity of props. So again, even like
Charlie Chaplin best in the business, right, he's fucking Charlie Chaplin.
People still know who he is today, got to be
played by Robert Downey Junior has to have props and
other people he's got. He can't keep an audience on
his own, right, And so it's ballsy what Fay's about
to do. And around nineteen fifteen or sixteen, we don't
(31:33):
know exactly, he makes his first performances where he is
just coming on stage wearing a professional tailored tuxedo, which
to us is not normal clothing but is pretty normal
formal wear for the time. Right for like a nightclub
where he the guy plays, he's performing. It's what like
the people in the audience are wearing. Right, So he's
dressed more or less the way a man would be dressed.
And he shows up on stage. He's got no straight man,
(31:55):
he's got no props, and he's just performing alone. He's talking,
and he starts performing under a stage name the nut Monologuist, right,
which means like he's the crazy mob. He's delivering nutty monologues. Right,
he's talking about the crazy aspects of modern society. In
other words, it's stand up right now, the term doesn't
exist yet and it doesn't get coined for him. We
(32:17):
don't really know exactly why we call it stand up comedy.
There's one plausible theory, the most plausible theory probably comes
from and this is a guy. Think Cliff Nesteroff interviewed
a dude who's very old when Cliff talked to him,
who had been a minor comedian. He comes a little
bit after Frankie Face. So he's a guy like around
the twenties. He's performing, right, is when this guy starts,
(32:38):
and this guy says, the term stand up comedy came
from mob lingo, right, because the first big venues the
nightclubs and the casinos, especially since like what becomes stand
up is being invented during prohibition. Largely they're all owned
by the mob. Right, So everyone who is an entertainer
is it to some extent working for organized crime, you know,
(32:58):
even if they're not involved in other ass spects of it.
And within the mob, the term stand up guy means something.
It means you're a man. You can be counted on. Right,
If you're a stand up guy, we like, we can,
we can count on you to keep a secret, to
go to prison for us, right to do, to do
whatever it whack somebody like. That's a stand up guy, right.
And a stand up comedian is a comedian you can
(33:21):
trust to deliver their act in the allotted time and
to not go over even by a minute, right, Because
most of these acts are at casinos. There's gambling, and
the act is there because people you know, it'll keep
people there longer. But if you go over for every
second you go over time, people aren't back at the
tables gambling.
Speaker 6 (33:41):
Right.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
So a stand up comedian means I can trust this
guy to hit his time. Right, He's not gonna he's
gonna do no more and no less than what we want, right.
So that's the likeliest term I've heard for a stand
up comedian. Obviously, it could just be because they're usually
standing there, but they're standing up, so is every perform
I think that sounds really credible. Right, Well, there's no
(34:03):
way to know for sure, but it makes sense to
me if that's the case. The term I bring this
up now, But the term stand up comedian, I think
nineteen forty six, forty seven is really the first time
people start using it, So it doesn't people aren't.
Speaker 8 (34:15):
Calling it yet.
Speaker 2 (34:16):
Right, I'm getting ahead of myself because again, Frank is
the only guy doing this at this point, and he's
going under the stage name the nut Monologuist.
Speaker 1 (34:23):
Right.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
He's talking, he's lampooning daily life and pop culture and
a way that we'd see is very modern, and he's
not really writing bits, right, he's kind of performing a
new thing every time he goes up.
Speaker 8 (34:34):
He's really good on the fly.
Speaker 2 (34:36):
He's just sort of like living his life and making
notes about shit during the day and then coming up
on stage and like joking about them. And he would
tell people that, in his opinion, the only thing you
needed to do to make this is what he says
about how to make good comedy quote, all anyone has
to do is stand in the subway station and watch people. Right,
he's inventing observational.
Speaker 8 (34:57):
Comedy as a discipline.
Speaker 2 (34:58):
Again, people have like made oaks about daily life forever
as long as there have been people in daily life, right,
But he is inventing it as like a discipline, right,
where he's like being, no, all you gotta do is
go out in the world, watch people, find out what's funny,
find a funny way to talk about it, and then
go talk about it.
Speaker 4 (35:12):
Right.
Speaker 2 (35:12):
It doesn't have to be some sort of like you know,
big elaborate bit with a pie, right right, right.
Speaker 7 (35:18):
It doesn't have to be a tortured setup. No, that's so.
Speaker 2 (35:22):
And in fact, it's people find regular life funny, you know,
like right, yeah.
Speaker 7 (35:30):
It's also nice to learn that all you know, not
that I guess this wasn't clear and not that obviously
like crowd work in that business has not always been part.
Speaker 6 (35:38):
Of this type of act. But yeah, that's it.
Speaker 7 (35:42):
Or just speaking exteporaneously, and even if you're not necessarily
the funniest, you're funnier than everyone else in the room.
Speaker 8 (35:49):
Yeah, that's all it takes. That's it.
Speaker 2 (35:53):
So Victoria Wilson writes quote on stage, Fay talked about
things people did that were recognizable. He would talk about
his uncle the stringsaver who was working his way up
to rope, or his aunt Agatha a paper bag put
her aware everyone knows string savers and paper bag put
hers away. If they would remark, that's why those people
are funny to the rest of us. Talk about those
people and everyone laughs. Take the mustache fixer. You've seen
(36:15):
him twist his mustache for half an hour or so
at the end of that time, and it looks worse
than ever. But because you have seen the mustache fixtures,
you laugh when I talk about it. That's all there
is to being funny, you know.
Speaker 6 (36:25):
Oh my god, Like he's literally.
Speaker 2 (36:27):
Like yeah, yeah, like this is there's a direct line
between that and like, you know, black people walk like this,
White people walk like this. This guy like you know,
observational comedy, right, you know, like that's that's what we're
seeing here.
Speaker 8 (36:40):
So yeah, cool.
Speaker 3 (36:41):
Stuff, truly, Yeah, I mean, and it does make sense.
Speaker 7 (36:46):
I don't you know, what I think I'm realizing I'm
picturing is fucking probably like a sketch from like History
of the World part.
Speaker 6 (36:53):
One where it's just like a Roman doing this, right. Yeah,
someone had to invent this.
Speaker 2 (36:57):
Yor someone had to invent that in again, you know,
pieces of this for forever, but this is he's inventing
it as a profession. Yeah, and this is this is
going to I mean, there's not really any debate among
comedy historians or the first generation of comedians that comes
after him that Frank Faye is the guy who started this. Right,
Every major stand up comedian from what most people know of,
(37:20):
like the first generation of stand up comedians, credits him.
Milton Burle says that seeing Frank Fay made him immediately
put away his props and completely change his performance after
seeing Faye for the first time. Right, Burle is like,
I became a stand up comedian because of seeing Frank Faye. Right,
Like he was the guy and everyone has at least
heard of Milton Burle. Right, He's famous for both being
(37:42):
one of the first stand up comedians, writing a bunch
of joke books, and having a comedically huge dick.
Speaker 6 (37:49):
As opposed to be like Frank, I don't think that.
Speaker 2 (37:52):
Oh yeah, hung like fucking god like crazy dick, crazy
dick hu Hung like Willem dafoely large now another one
of Frank Fay's biggest fans, and like a guy who
will say Frank Fay. As soon as I saw him,
I knew that's what I wanted to be. He completely
inspired how I did comedy? Was Bob Hope? Right, If
(38:12):
you know anything about comedy, you know what a big
deal that is? Right? If Eugenz maybe haven't heard of
this guy. Bob Hope was the most famous comedian on
earth for like fucking half a century.
Speaker 6 (38:21):
Right.
Speaker 2 (38:22):
He lived to be one hundred, and he spent eighty
years as a stage performer, Like he is crazy big
as a comedian. He was also a boxer at one point,
although weirdly enough, I didn't know this about Bob Hope.
Unlike Frank Faye, he was pretty good. He had a
professional record of five wins and one loss, so oh,
kind of surprising.
Speaker 8 (38:43):
Bob Hope good boxer.
Speaker 3 (38:45):
I mean, yeah, I guess it's just a.
Speaker 7 (38:48):
Certain type of man that is that loves about these things.
Speaker 2 (38:52):
Sure, getting in the ring and proving yourself. Now, Over
the course of his remarkable career, Bob Hope hosted the
Oscars nineteen, which is more than anyone else ever did,
or probably ever will. He also did more than fifty
tours for the USO, which is the organization that has
performances for US military personnel around the world. He starts
in World War Two and he continues up to Desert Storm.
(39:14):
In short, he's one of the most influential and well
known performers in history. He has a massive impact on
stand up comedy and how it becomes a profession, and
the fact that he is like Frank Fay was my model,
and not only that, he's like Frank Faye was the
best stand up comedian I ever knew, you know, Like
that's how Bob Hope described him. Decades later, he called
Faye the most economical comedian he ever watched. He said
(39:38):
that he had quote complete audience control. So again, Bob Hope,
eighty years of experience in this is like the best
I ever saw on stage was Frank Fay.
Speaker 6 (39:47):
That is genuinely yeah so wild.
Speaker 2 (39:50):
Yeah yeah, Like that's a bit if you know anything
about comedy, that's a really big deal.
Speaker 6 (39:54):
Yeah yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:55):
And I'm not idolized, And I think Bob Hope was a
great person, but like he's undeniably a massive figure in
comedy yeah.
Speaker 6 (40:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (40:03):
Here's how Victoria Wilson describes Hope's recollections of a particularly
impactful set by Fay. Quote Hope safe one time alone
on quote a darkened stage with the spotlight on him
for the longest time.
Speaker 8 (40:15):
Faye just stood there.
Speaker 2 (40:16):
He said absolutely nothing, and he did absolutely nothing. Then
he said, I think I'll go play the piano. He
walked slowly across the stage to the other side. As
he got there, the spot which had followed him showed
a piano with a stool and a fellow sitting on it.
Frank just looked at it and then just as slowly
walked back to exactly where he had been standing. There's
somebody there. That was the whole thing set Hope. But
(40:38):
it was one of the funniest acts I ever saw.
And you have to just like imagine like, yeah, it's
all presence, right, it's performance, it's timing, you know, it's
the way he does it. We've all know comedy like
that where it's like if you described the bit, you don't.
Speaker 8 (40:50):
Get you see it.
Speaker 2 (40:51):
It's amazing, right, Yeah, So there's an extent like there's
not videos of his early stand up performances obviously, Yeah,
I have to trust that, like all of the guys
who were the funniest people of that Milton Berle and
Bopa are all like, yeah, Frank Fay was fucking amazing,
So I assume he really was, Like I have no
reason to doubt this. Almost everyone agrees that his greatest
(41:13):
strength was that he has this unique understanding of how
to use his hands. And obviously, if you're a performer,
what do I do with my hands?
Speaker 8 (41:21):
Is like the.
Speaker 2 (41:21):
Quintessential question performer stage performers have to ask, right, like,
what the fuck do I do with my hands?
Speaker 7 (41:28):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (41:28):
Right, There's this inherent awkwardness there, which is a big
part of why props and costumes had been such crutches
for comedic actors.
Speaker 8 (41:35):
You gotta have something to do with.
Speaker 2 (41:36):
Your hands, right, right, right, right, of course, right, like
even fuck it, like Robin Williams and his water bottles. Right,
you can see it, like people need something, you know,
Frank never did. George Burns, who was another great famous
comedian in his own right, declared to Johnny Carson that quote,
Frank Fay had the best hands in show business. Another
colleague later recalled, he could give you an inferiority complex,
(41:57):
just watching him light his cigarette, right, because just he's
just he just effortlessly funny. And it's again this kind
of thing I can't describe. You just have to trust
that these people are not They have no reason to
lie about this, right he must have been. Now he's
also a dynamic performer, and it doesn't hurt that he's
considered handsome. Trave S d, author of the Travelanche blog
(42:19):
and a modern vaudeville performer and historian, describes him as
looking like Ralph Findes. You can just that one for yourself.
Sophie can pull up a picture of him. Raye, Oh,
come on, fuck it.
Speaker 1 (42:30):
I like, I don't know, he's handsome, get his name.
Speaker 2 (42:34):
Yes, I'm mixed about him because he's got good stances
on Gaza, but he's a transphobe. He's like a real
mixed real mixed bag there. I didn't know, so half
fuck you. I like his performances. He's good in everything.
He's never been bad in anything. He's an amazing actor.
But ew, yeah, well whatever, you know, how many how
many you can call him, how many how many great
(42:57):
actors don't have something about him that's like right, Like
I just rewatched Tropic Thunder with some friends Tom Cruise
kills and that he's also Tom Cruise.
Speaker 8 (43:04):
What do you gotta do?
Speaker 6 (43:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (43:08):
The final stage to Frank's stage presence is his walk.
Frank Fay developed a trademark gait described by Travesty as
quote distinct swishy and almost effeminate. Right, he has a
lot of like lady like gestures, particularly the way he walks,
which are we might say today he's kind of like
acting as if he's like a stereotypical, like the way
(43:30):
like gay people were portrayed in like a lot of
eighties ninety Like, that's how we might we might describe
it today they describe it as efeminate. Then, if you've
ever seen Bob Hope walk on stage, that weird walk
he had when he's got like his golf club on,
Bob Hope is doing and admits that his entire walk
is based on Frank Fay. So if you've ever seen
a Bob Hope performance, that's what he's doing. He's doing
a Frank Fay.
Speaker 7 (43:52):
I guess that's also theater, right, because it's it's like
it's like hippie because you're like, you know, you need
to be seen and the movements are.
Speaker 6 (44:01):
Yeah, that's so weird.
Speaker 2 (44:02):
But that's also we see it now as like, well
that's a theater thing. No one else is doing this.
He starts this and everyone copies him, right like this
particularly like kind of affectation is so common and so
copied by the people who come after him that they
get their own nickname wristwatch comedians, because he would often
like do this kind of like wristwatch, like with his
hands or looking at his fingers that way, like checking
(44:24):
his nails. Milton Burle explained he always worked a little effeminate.
He had a hot cheur about him, but he talked
to his audience in a way that made them feel
like he was told that what he was talking about
could happen to them. He never did jokes in which
he was the butt, right, which is also interesting to me.
He does not have a sense of humor about himself,
right sure.
Speaker 7 (44:44):
Oh weird, weird, weird how that threat has just carried
through it?
Speaker 2 (44:49):
Yeah, yeah, right, Like that's always the biggest I would say,
like the biggest fucking like red flag of any kind
of comedian is like can they laugh at themselves? Yeah?
You know, like I can you know theoretically. Obviously, there's
nothing funny about me. I'm a very serious, you know,
journalist who does only serious journalism. I don't just write
(45:11):
about random assholes on the internet using other people's work.
Speaker 8 (45:14):
That would be fucked up.
Speaker 2 (45:15):
Hey, so Fay was this is a huge hit. He
starts around like nineteen I think maybe nineteen fifteen or sixteen.
It's a little unclear to me when he starts doing
the nut on All August Act. But by nineteen eighteen
he's a major star. Right, So in a very short
period of time, he went from no one is doing
this too, this is the biggest thing in vaudeville, right,
(45:36):
is this specific motherfucker? He's got immediately people trying to
copy him, right, But nobody's as good as Frank Fay. Now,
during this period of time when vaudeville still rules entertainment,
we're talking nineteen eighteen, the absolute peak of success for
a performer in the vaudeville world is getting to play
The Palace, which is a legendary venue in New York City.
(45:57):
I think it still exists. I don't know if it's
under the same name, but the Palace is like the
that's that's that's headlining Saturday Night Live in this area, right,
or Madison Square Garden, which I also think exists, but
like the same thing. If you're a comedian today, you
can sell at Madison Square Garden. That's the top of
stand up comedy. Basically, I don't think there's really anything
bigger than doing that. Right now, The Palace is that
(46:19):
in this era. Frank gets booked there for the first
time in nineteen nineteen and he sells out multiple days
worth of shows. A huge act at the time might
expect to run for a week at the Palace, doing
two shows a day. So this is, by the way,
an exhausting pace, right. You talk to any modern stand
up doing two shows a day like you're fucking draining yourself.
(46:40):
So if you can do a week and sell out
a week worth of two a days at the Palace,
you're a major success. In nineteen twenty five, Phase sells
out ten straight weeks in a row. Eventually his longest
spree is going to be sixteen straight weeks. No one
will ever equal or exceed this, right, Like, this is
the best anyone ever does at this Now, when he's
(47:04):
not performing at the Palace, he starts in nineteen nineteen
doing sets, and right when he's at the Palace, he's
part of like a larger show, but like he's the
centerpiece of it.
Speaker 8 (47:13):
Right.
Speaker 2 (47:13):
Him doing these like ten or fifteen minute sets is
like and he's coming on for other stuff too, like
that's the reason people are there. And he starts, you know,
after he's settling out the palace doing what like a
long set for a comedian would be like ten or
fifteen minutes, he starts doing these sets. There are more
than twenty minutes at a time a half hour. Right,
we're closing in on what we now consider to be
(47:33):
like a normal full not like a tight five, but
like a full kind of like you know, Netflix special, right,
Like we're not there, we're not in an hour yet,
but like at that period of time doing a twenty
or thirty minute set.
Speaker 8 (47:43):
Is like wild.
Speaker 2 (47:44):
People aren't just aren't doing that on their own. You're
alone on stage for that much time.
Speaker 8 (47:48):
Right.
Speaker 2 (47:49):
So again, at first, he's kind of he's he's headlining,
he's the big guy, but there's multiple things going on.
But he starts experimenting pretty early on with something new
as Cliff Off rights. It was at that venue Frank
Fay not only became a bonafide celebrity, but also pioneered
the idea of an MC. For several years, Vaudeville used
only painted placards with the name of each act to
(48:11):
announce who was coming to stage. Faye changed this common practice,
becoming one of the first people to actually MC a show.
His role as an introducer and extroducer was another revolutionary
shift and stand up he wasn't just introducing but entertaining
as he did show. If the previous act bombed, he
warmed the crowd back up, and if the momentum was good,
he just kept the show going. Abel Green, editor of
(48:32):
the trade paper Variety, said Faye pioneered the MC and
made him important and this people had done this before.
He's not the first MC, but he's the first really
good one because he's like he recked. He's not just
I'm not just there to say and now coming up,
I am there to notice how the audience didn't like
that one, or like I need to get this guy
off early, or I need to start telling some jokes
that were not planned because that went so badly, or
(48:55):
I can tell this next guy's kind of nervous. I
want to like build him up a little bit, I know,
to get the crowd moving so that they'll be happy,
Like no one had really done that before. And he
is the guy who kind of he creates being an
MC really in the modern sense, like he's now invented
stand up com in very short order, stand up comedy
and being an MC, like those are the two things
Frank Fay gets credited for making.
Speaker 6 (49:17):
Huh, I guess I I that, I mean, it makes sense.
Speaker 7 (49:21):
I guess I would have assumed there was Like again,
I'm realizing all my knowledge of showbiz pre I don't
know fucking ninety four is basically I guess I would
have assumed there was like a ring leader, like like
in a circus type deal.
Speaker 2 (49:39):
Yeah, and there'd been ring leaders in circuses in the UK.
There had been performances that had guys kind of trying
to do this. Yeah, But Frank, a big thing is
like previously it had been me. The most you do
is you'd have a guy come up to introduce everybody,
and he'd have like a set at the beginning at
the end. Again, the fact that he's doing inner stittle
bits and that he's kind of paying attention to how
is the audience doing what do I need to like change?
Speaker 7 (50:00):
Yeah?
Speaker 8 (50:00):
Do I need to do?
Speaker 2 (50:01):
I need to like pull this guy back from the brink.
And by doing this, he's making himself in a way
that even like circus ring leaders won't. He's the center
of the show. And so he's also created kind of
being like that a late night host, right, like this
is this is this is the proto Johnny Carson too, Right, this.
Speaker 7 (50:17):
Is his show and this is his you know, he's
putting it on with these folks.
Speaker 2 (50:22):
Right, even though he's not on stage all the time
for every act, he's all he's there in between acts, right,
And that's that is like it's really interesting that he
created both.
Speaker 8 (50:29):
Of those things. Right.
Speaker 2 (50:33):
So this point, by the mid twenties, Fay is arguably
the biggest performer in New York. He's definitely the biggest
performer in New York City, and he might he's probably
one of the three or four biggest stars of any
kind in the country, right at least top ten, he's
up there.
Speaker 8 (50:45):
He's massive.
Speaker 2 (50:46):
First off, movies not nearly as big a thing as
they're going to become very soon.
Speaker 8 (50:51):
There's starting.
Speaker 2 (50:51):
Movies are not nothing, right, obviously, the twenties is when
film is really getting its legs under it. But this
is a period of time in which you are a bit.
If you're a big live performer, you could be bigger
than the biggest movie stars. And he's up there with
the biggest movie stars at least, right, And he's touring
basically fifty two weeks a year, right, he's going. He's
(51:13):
doing a lot of performing in New York, but he's
traveling all around and everywhere he goes he sells out shows.
He is at least equivalent to a guy like Charlie Chaplin, right,
like very much. So you know, we don't remember him
now as well, but at this point in time, it
would be fair to say he's about at that level.
Speaker 8 (51:28):
And success goes to his head.
Speaker 2 (51:31):
Immediately, right, this guy becomes famous and successful as a comedian,
and he becomes a crooked evil monster right away, obviously,
you know.
Speaker 7 (51:44):
And I guess they were always kind of you know,
the capacity for crooked evil monster. Yes, I mean, I
guess that's the open question. Is it in us all
or is it just in these dickheads that gets express?
Speaker 8 (51:55):
Yeah? Is it just bad?
Speaker 2 (51:57):
You know, it's just if you're job is to be
worshiped by a crowd of people. Yeah, it's easy to
whind Robert.
Speaker 8 (52:08):
Kind of narcissistic.
Speaker 2 (52:10):
Yeah, obviously I've never made a mistake ever. I like,
I can't actually be wrong. Everyone knows that, and you know.
Speaker 8 (52:19):
Who else can't be wrong?
Speaker 3 (52:20):
Wow, so good at your job.
Speaker 2 (52:23):
This podcast sponsored by little Miss Little Miss can't be wrong.
That's a song, right, I don't remember which song that is? Anyway,
We're done.
Speaker 6 (52:31):
That Spin Doctors?
Speaker 8 (52:32):
Is that the spin doctors? Who knows? Who cares? Who adds?
We're back.
Speaker 2 (52:42):
I remain having never made a mistake in my entire life.
All my pronunciations are right. I've never fucked up a
factor or anything like that, obviously, just like Frank Fay
because this is Behind the Heroes, a podcast about men
who never do bad things. So Frank is hugely successful
now and once he's a star, his first instinct is
(53:05):
to use his newfound position of power and influence to mock,
to ride, and belittle his less powerful colleagues because it's
fun to him and he likes being cruel. One of
his peers is Bert Laar, who you probably don't know
my name unless you're a real film nerd. He is
a at this point a comedic actor. He will become
a movie star, and he is best known today because
(53:25):
he's the Cowardly Lion and the Wizard of Oz movie. Right.
It's like pretty successful guy, right, you know, like people
still watch that fucker today, you know.
Speaker 8 (53:33):
And he's pretty popular.
Speaker 2 (53:34):
And well liked as a live performer at the time.
But he's the kind of comedian who wears silly costumes
as part of his act, and so Fay fucking hates him.
Both men often performed in the same shows, and when
passing Laar and the Wings, Fay developed to have it
of asking, well, well, well, what's the low comic up
to today?
Speaker 3 (53:51):
And he did this.
Speaker 2 (53:52):
He would do this right as Lara was going upstage,
and his goal was to make him upset and sabotage
his act, right. He he doesn't just I mentioned how
he'll like try to set people up for success or
like bring people back. He also will try to fuck
people over if he.
Speaker 8 (54:08):
Doesn't like them, right.
Speaker 6 (54:09):
He knows how to work performers' confidences.
Speaker 2 (54:12):
Right, And some of it is like he knows that
if he makes someone perform badly, then he can come
in and save it.
Speaker 8 (54:17):
And look better. Right.
Speaker 2 (54:18):
He's a big fan of undermining his fellow performers, and
one thing he likes about him seeing is that it
provides him with subtle opportunities to insult people he doesn't
like and destroy their careers when they're trying to get
them off the ground. Victoria Wilson explains quote, he would
simply introduce the act by saying, with a slight smile
and a soft voice, the next gentleman is very very popular.
They say that he's very funny. Then he would raise
(54:40):
an eyebrow. The act didn't have a chance with the audience.
Speaker 8 (54:44):
Right.
Speaker 2 (54:44):
He's just so good at this that he can just
destroy your career with like raising an eyebrow. Like I mean, yeah,
he just does this for fun. If he gets bad
vibes from somebody, he'll just ruin them as a bit
to laugh at their failure. Fay develops a reputation as
a man who likes watching people suffer, and when he
destroys someone's career on stage, he'll do it with a
(55:06):
smile on his face. I probably don't need to say this,
but he has particularly abusive to his female colleagues. Obviously
a man in stand up comedy being abusive to women. Wow,
he's another pioneer. Luis Kay's got this guy's photo and
(55:26):
a lock it over his heart. One performance he put
together during his vaudeville period, which may have been the
first he may have also mad like this performance he
does maybe the first stooge act ever involved him telling
the audience that he needed volunteers to do a card trick,
and then he'd bring up a trio of his performers
who were hidden amongst the audience, including volunteers. And one
of those performers was a woman who worked for him
(55:47):
named Patsy Kelly. So he's having them up, come up
to do card tricks to them, right, And these ringers
that he brings up, they're all dressed like shit. They
look like they haven't like showered, they're in bad clothes.
They're meant to look like yokels, right, so that fake
can make fun of them as he's like walking them
through these card tricks, right, And he is especially cruel
to Kelly. One of the things he would do when
(56:08):
she would come to stage, she'd ask her, good heavens,
where have you been? And he'd have her respond to
the beauty parlor so he could say I can see
they didn't wait on you, you know, like just to
shit on her appearance after making her dress up badly,
like he's making her do these lines. He really likes
insulting her appearance on stage. Kelly and her two colleagues
made up FaZe Stock Company. They were the pinch hitters
(56:29):
that he could bring on for any sketcher bit that
he needed someone else for. And she recalls his tutelages
being valuable, like she learns a lot from him, while
also admitting that he could be cruel, As Wilson recounts,
he didn't want her to wear makeup. He would yell
at her on stage. He fired her weekly. Fay never
had a script and would just spring lines on me.
Speaker 8 (56:48):
She said.
Speaker 2 (56:48):
He might start talking about anything from Paris to presidents.
It always seemed to me that I was standing on
the stage with my hand out waiting for my cue
to drop. I lived with my chin because my knees
were helpless. So, like, you don't know what to expect
with him, but he's always just going to be mean
and insult your appearance if you're like he just he
really gets off on the cruelty thing he loves to
(57:08):
punch down.
Speaker 7 (57:10):
Now, yeah, I mean it is also I mean this
is basically an improv troop also right right?
Speaker 2 (57:18):
Oh god, So Faye helps to pioneer being a huge
asshole celebrity too. During one performance at the Orpheum in Brooklyn,
shortly after his career gets big, he does like he's
like four minutes late to the show because he's fixing
his tie in the green room and he can't get
it right, and so the stage manager runs back and like,
the audience is like really pissed off, like what the fuck,
(57:38):
when are you going to get on? You have to
hit your mark right, and he's like the audience is
getting frustrated, and Face snaps back let them wait, And
this does not go over well. The booking office cancels
the rest of his scheduled performances and finds him one
hundred dollars, but Fate doesn't give a shit. He is
in demand everywhere and he has completely lost his mind
as a result of that and the sheer amount of
(57:59):
money flying him from all sides. At the height of
his days doing the Palace, he's taking home eighteen thousand
dollars a week in the twenties. Oh my god, Like,
that's that's a crazy amount of money. That's like three
hundred grand a week right when he's performing at the Palace.
(58:19):
So he starts to become a narcissist before each if
he hadn't been one previously, he gets more before each perform.
Speaker 6 (58:27):
It gets to come out freely right.
Speaker 2 (58:29):
Like there's nothing holding it back anymore. Before each performance,
he would look into the mirror in his dressing room
and ask loudly who do I love? Before answering me,
It's just he's the He's just the most that guy
he could possibly be.
Speaker 6 (58:47):
I mean, you guys, didn't hear Robert's pre show warm up?
But you know who? Do I hate?
Speaker 7 (58:53):
Me?
Speaker 2 (58:56):
So he quickly drops the name he'd started his act under,
the Monologust and starts demanding people call him one of
several nicknames. And all of these are nicknames he's given himself.
Nobody gives themselves cool nicknames. And his nicknames are the
Great Phasey, the King of Vaudeville, or just the King,
the Great Fay and Broadway's favorite Son. And he makes
(59:18):
people call him that and introduce him that way.
Speaker 4 (59:20):
There's only one king, and his name is Lebron James.
Speaker 2 (59:25):
You're right, You're right, Lebron James, who sung some of
you know, my favorite rock and roll songs. Obviously suspicious minds.
Just a great musician, Lebron James. Not as good at
dunking as Elvis Presley, but you know, a fine, fine performer.
Speaker 4 (59:40):
So it's good we're not filming right now.
Speaker 8 (59:44):
Now.
Speaker 2 (59:45):
The thing about like, it's obvious to everyone that he
has a massive ego and that these are names he's
given himself, but audiences love it because his ego works
with the character he's performing. His character is this sarcastic,
mocking figure who's smarter than everyone and above it all right,
So it does kind of fit with who he's performing as.
It's just that the people don't necessarily realize that's also
(01:00:06):
the real Frank. And the real Frank is not just
a narcissist and not just a bully, but racist as fuck.
Particularly I assume he was racist against black people, but
we don't really get a lot about I don't really
get much of that in the history. He hates Jewish people.
He is the anti Semites, anti Semite, right, Milton Burrell,
(01:00:29):
obviously I just said, is a great foundational American comic.
He's up there with Bob Hope in terms of guys
who influenced the development of the vocation. And he is
an obsessive fan of Frank. Fay patterns his whole early
career in Frank's image, and Frank gets really angry about
this because Milton Burle is Jewish. Now, the other thing
is that Frank is really scared about having his act plagiarized, right,
(01:00:51):
And it is a common fear of the business then
and today, and as a result, because comedians don't want
to get plagiarized, it's considered bad form to watch a
call league from the wings before going on yourself.
Speaker 8 (01:01:02):
Right.
Speaker 2 (01:01:03):
People do this all the time, but it's considered bad
form by some performers, and Faye is one of them.
And so one night, while performing, Fay catches Burle watching,
and so he calls to a stage hand and tells
him get that little jew bastard out of the wings.
So this happens a couple of times, you know, they're
on at the same shows, and Fay gets angry and
(01:01:23):
angrier at Burl, and eventually Fay shouts directly at Burle
using the k slur for Jewish people, like really goes
to like very racist to Milton Burle, right, basically, stop
stealing from me, you slur now Burle again admires Fay tremendously.
He's patterned his career off of this man, but he's
(01:01:45):
not going to take this racism lying down. Milton Burrell
later related after he calls Fay calls me slair. I
waited until he had finished for the night.
Speaker 8 (01:01:53):
I was ready for him.
Speaker 2 (01:01:54):
As he cut around behind some flats on his way
to the dressing room, I had picked up a stage brace.
They're made of wooden metal and they used to hold
the scenery together. And as he went by me, I
reached out and spun him around. Before he knew it
was happening, I hit him right across his face with
the brace. It ripped his nose apart. He has to
go to the hospital. Milton Burle hits him with a
board with metal on it in the face.
Speaker 3 (01:02:16):
Also, it's it's like kind of.
Speaker 7 (01:02:20):
Amazing to be like, I'm doing this because I am,
on some level still such a big fan.
Speaker 2 (01:02:27):
Yeah, I'm a huge fan, but I am going to
beat you in the face with a board.
Speaker 7 (01:02:32):
Yeah, this is like divorcing the artists from the art
harder than anyone's ever done.
Speaker 8 (01:02:37):
And honestly makes me like Milton Burle a lot more.
Speaker 2 (01:02:40):
I didn't have an opinion on him before this, but
that's pretty cool.
Speaker 8 (01:02:45):
Now.
Speaker 2 (01:02:46):
Fay is not just a bigot. He is the kind
of biggot who feels no compunction against dropping slurs in public.
He loves droppings in public at social events.
Speaker 7 (01:02:57):
I do feel like it's probably worth like being like,
it's also like what what like.
Speaker 6 (01:03:03):
When would this be like the twenties the.
Speaker 8 (01:03:05):
Third Yeah, we're in the like the mid twenties.
Speaker 6 (01:03:07):
So he's not like super unique.
Speaker 8 (01:03:09):
No no, no, no, no, no.
Speaker 7 (01:03:11):
If anything, even the stuff that you've quoted probably soft
all things, because I.
Speaker 2 (01:03:16):
Say that, let's wait, let's let's hold on call, I
gets soft for the period, right. Comedian Milt joseph Berg,
who you might guess is a Jewish man, one of
Frank's contemporaries, later claimed quote Fay referred to other comedians
as jew bastards, and this regularly, Like so this is
like a common thing to him. He says this socially
(01:03:37):
at like parties and stuff. Yeah, this regularly leads to
fist fights. In fact, one of the things Faye is
most known for is getting into fights all the time
with Jewish performers because he calls them slurs. Right now,
let's be fair to Fay. He gets into fist fights
with a lot of people. It's not just Jewish performers.
He loves punching people.
Speaker 7 (01:03:59):
And you know what, to be even more fair, we
already know even he knows he's not a good.
Speaker 2 (01:04:03):
Box Even he knows he's not a good boxer. Now,
Fay is also a chainsmoker. He lights up regularly throughout
his act. He's like a proto Dennis Leary in that
or you know, Dennis Lee is stealing from fucking u
Bill Hicks.
Speaker 8 (01:04:19):
But he's one of these guys. Right.
Speaker 2 (01:04:20):
So once he gets rich and famous, he buys a
gold cigarette case which he would bring on stage so
everyone could see it when he lights up. And during
one performance when he's backstage, there's a no smoking sign
because of a fire codes because like it's a dangerous
building to have anything light in, and they don't want
to kill everyone in the venue because it's the fucking
twenties and it's such a threat that the venue had
(01:04:40):
hired a firefighter to make sure people follow the rules.
And the firefighter sees Frank light up, and the firefighter's like,
hey man, and calls him the f slur right, you know,
just because it's the twenties, and Frank punches him in
the face, like this firefighter. But my favorite punch related
Frank face story happened on stage during a performance, and
(01:05:03):
this is such a good story to end this episode on.
One of Frank's very few friends was Bert Wheeler, and
Wheeler was one half of a popular comedic duo called
Wheeler and Woolsey. Now Bert admired Faye and described it
as having the fastest mind in the business, but he
also knew that his friend had a cruel side and
that whenever Fay brought a performer on stage with him,
it was to mock them. And so Wheeler doesn't want
(01:05:25):
to be on stage with his friend necessarily because he
knows he's going to get insulted really badly. So one
night Wheeler gets the feeling that Fay is going to
bring him on stage to like do this and is like,
he begs his friend. He's like, hey man, don't bring
me up after I finish my act. I just I
really don't need this today, right, Like I just I
don't want to be laughed at in the way that
I'm going to be laughed at if you bring me
(01:05:46):
on stage. Victoria Wilson describes what happens next. Fay honored
Wheeler's plea until one important performance a matinee when the
talent bookers were in the audience with stopwatches in hand
to time the laughs. Wheeler finished his act to great
applause and left the stage. Fay came on as he
had throughout the show, and called Wheeler back on stage.
For whatever reason, Faye began to talk to the audience
(01:06:07):
at Wheeler's expense. Faye was calm controlled. He's spoke in
his soft, easy, slow delivery with his dead pan stare.
Wheeler's still on the stage, unable to think of anything
that he could say to equal her top fase sarcasm. Finally,
Wheeler said, Frank, you're a very funny man, but I
predict I'm going to get the biggest laugh ever heard
at the palace. Fay said, oh, really, Bert, how are
(01:06:27):
you going to do that? Wheeler pulled back and hit
Faye in the face. The audience laughed. Think this was
part of the act. That's a pretty good joke I listen.
Speaker 7 (01:06:40):
Especially given who the stand ups are these days, I
would love to see more of this.
Speaker 2 (01:06:45):
There's a lot of stand up comedians I want to
get to see hit on the face in the face on stage. Right. Yeah, So,
I think at this point we've established that this guy's
both innovative and groundbreaking and also an abusive dick and
a racist. But Frank Fay is about to be so
much more. In part two, we're going to talk about
his marriage to his wife, a woman you may know,
(01:07:05):
Barbara Stanwick, and these two are going to embark on
a relationship so abusive and poisonous that it would become
a piece of Hollywood history. This is like the archetypal, toxic,
abusive Hollywood relationship, Frank Fay and Barbara Stanwick. The movie
A Star Is Born is based off of their abusive relationship. Right,
(01:07:26):
so that's going to be cool.
Speaker 6 (01:07:28):
Can't wait, can't wait, can't wait, can't wait? What a
table set?
Speaker 2 (01:07:32):
How you feeling, Andrew T I feel I am as
as it happens on behind the bastards, I am fighting
myself at least in part one, more sympathetic in general
than I thought I was going to be.
Speaker 7 (01:07:49):
And typically that is I guess how biographies work. No
one starts out as an evil child, so I get it.
Speaker 2 (01:07:54):
Well, and it's like he's a racist and he's abusive
so far, but he hasn't done this is not behind
the bastard's level stuff quite yet?
Speaker 3 (01:08:01):
Right like this is like, this is honestly feels he's.
Speaker 8 (01:08:04):
Just kind of an asshole. I wouldn't just do an
episode and a guy who's a dick.
Speaker 7 (01:08:08):
He doesn't even seem that transgressive. Yeah, for like the
twe this is. Yeah, he wouldn't be canceled today.
Speaker 2 (01:08:15):
Yeah, right like right like today he would be a
popular right wing comedian who we would be annoyed by.
Speaker 8 (01:08:20):
But I would not do an.
Speaker 2 (01:08:21):
Episode on Yes, we're getting to the stuff that's like
behind the bastards worthy, right, can't wait? But before we
get to that, why don't we get to your pluckables?
Speaker 6 (01:08:35):
Oh? I don't know, still doing Yo? Is this racist?
Speaker 7 (01:08:38):
We have a premium show called yokh we Live. I
don't know that's it. I'm around Hey Andrew on places.
Speaker 2 (01:08:45):
He all right, everybody, this has been behind the bastards.
I've been Robert Evans come back in Part two, where
we are going to hear some real fucked up shit
about a guy who sucked.
Speaker 1 (01:09:01):
Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website Coolzonemedia
dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 4 (01:09:14):
Behind the Bastards is now available on YouTube, new episodes
every Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to our channel YouTube dot
com slash at Behind the Bastards