August 5, 2025 • 52 mins
Writing Legend, Arnie Kogen, talks with Jay and Jay’s son, Charlie, about his childhood, career, and what it’s like to be 91. Three generations of Kogens in one pod!
Bio: ARNIE KOGENComedy Writer/ TV ProducerHas written and/or produced for the Carol Burnett Show, The Tonight Show, Newhart, Mary Tyler Moore, Empty Nest, Mad TV, The Dean Martin Show, Sinbad, Donnie & Marie, The Jackson Five, Evening At The Improv, The Bob Newhart Show, Tim Conway, The New Dick Van Dyke Show, Candid Camera, Love, American Style, The Love Boat, The Golden Globes and contributed to The Academy Awards. Has also written comedy material for Phyllis Diller, Steve Lawrence & Eydie Gorme, Shelley Berman, Debbie Reynolds, Connie Stevens, Totie Fields, Jackie Vernon, Diana Ross, Flip Wilson, Ann Margret, Sammy Davis, Morty Gunty and Jerry Van Dyke.
For over five decades he has been one of the leading contributors to Mad Magazine. Kogen has won three Emmy Awards (seven nominations) and one Writers Guild Award (three nominations)
Bio: ARNIE KOGENComedy Writer/ TV ProducerHas written and/or produced for the Carol Burnett Show, The Tonight Show, Newhart, Mary Tyler Moore, Empty Nest, Mad TV, The Dean Martin Show, Sinbad, Donnie & Marie, The Jackson Five, Evening At The Improv, The Bob Newhart Show, Tim Conway, The New Dick Van Dyke Show, Candid Camera, Love, American Style, The Love Boat, The Golden Globes and contributed to The Academy Awards. Has also written comedy material for Phyllis Diller, Steve Lawrence & Eydie Gorme, Shelley Berman, Debbie Reynolds, Connie Stevens, Totie Fields, Jackie Vernon, Diana Ross, Flip Wilson, Ann Margret, Sammy Davis, Morty Gunty and Jerry Van Dyke.
For over five decades he has been one of the leading contributors to Mad Magazine. Kogen has won three Emmy Awards (seven nominations) and one Writers Guild Award (three nominations)
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Strawut Media.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Hi. I'm Arnie Cogan. I live with Jake Cogan for
over twenty years.
Speaker 3 (00:09):
It didn't work out.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
We had to let him go. Don't be alone with
Jake Cogan.
Speaker 4 (00:16):
Don't be alone with jj Cogan.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
Welcome to Don't be Alone with Jake Cogan. I'm your
cordial host, Jay Cogan, and I thank you for being here,
and I thank you for all the kind comments and
suggestions that you guys have been sending me, and please
feel free to send me more at dbawjk at gmail
dot com. Today we have a really interesting show for you.
It is something I've wanted to do for a very
(00:43):
long time. I have my father as our special guest.
My dad, Arnie Cogan, is a great comedy writer. He's
a three time Emmy winning comedy writer. He started writing
Mad Magazine and then wrote for variety shows, talk shows,
variety shows, then sitcoms. He's always been one of my here.
He punches up things I write. I tend to show
him things that I work on still because he's really
(01:06):
sharp and funny. But this will be more about personal
things and how he became the Arnie Cogan he is,
And for me it's fascinating because you know your dad
is your hero when you grow up. He's also your
person you're rebelling against, and you inherit many things from
your family that some of what you like and some
of what you don't like. And we'll talk about a
(01:27):
lot of those things and what he thinks of his
life and thinks of his influences. And I am lucky
to do this sitting with my son, Charlie Cogan, who
will be here. He is also a writer. He's a
singer songwriter, but also a good comedy writer. And so
the three generations of Cogan's will be here sitting at
(01:48):
the table interrogating my father, Arnie Cogan, and maybe we'll
all learn why Arnie Cogan is the way he is
right after.
Speaker 4 (01:55):
This Don't Be Alone with j Cogan.
Speaker 3 (02:04):
Dad, welcome to Don't Be Alone with Jay Cogan.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
Hey, thank you, and here with you.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
I'm here with Arnie Cogan and Charlie Coganlie. These are
three generations of Cogan's. This is a first in the
Don't Be Along with Jake Cogan history. Thanks for being
here and thanks for agreeing to do this. This is
kind of for me an opportunity to ask you questions
about things that I don't normally ask you about, and
(02:28):
just to have a recording, a recorded history of you.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
I mean, I thought you asked me everything up until no,
I have not asked you everything.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
And one of the you know, you're set the stage here.
You're ninety years old, just turned ninety one. Oh, just
turn ninety one?
Speaker 4 (02:42):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (02:43):
Where the hell he reads two year old?
Speaker 4 (02:45):
You luck?
Speaker 2 (02:45):
Ninety? You look not a day over ninety. I'm I'm
trying to look eighties three to get more work.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
So ninety one years old, So that's fantastic. We better
hurry and finish the podcast because we may not make
it as you can. So you are, you know, my dad, obviously,
and that's your biggest credit.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
But you also my biggest credit.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
Yes, you also have been a comedy writer for you know,
I don't know, seventy years whatever, A little lesson.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
I started in fifty late fifties, Yeah, late fifties. Yeah,
so I started when I was twenty early twenties, all right, Yeah,
so it's like seventy years.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
Yeah, stop calling me a liar.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
Too late.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
I'm going to Yeah, so let's just start with the beginning.
Give me a little bit of what you remember because
you have a great memory, usually about your childhood something. Yes,
let's talk about your childhood. What what is your first
memories of growing up in Brooklyn, New York.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
First memory ever was myself. My cousin Eugene is one
year younger than me in the high share er and
they gave him fish and he didn't like it, and
they said, then give it to Arnie. So I got
his used fish, right, my first memory ever. So that
was it. And I had a great childhood, I think.
And you know I mentioned.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
Doesn't sound great from the fish store. I gotta be honest.
Speaker 5 (04:05):
After the fish story, it was very us.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
It was the best childhood ever. I mentioned. I've had
a silly life, but a wonderful life. So we'll be
the judge. Let's get to the end. We here Brooklyn,
New York.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
What do you remember from your childhood of Brooklyn?
Speaker 2 (04:22):
Growing up in an apartment house on Ocean Parkway and Avenue. Oh,
and then we moved to King Sahway in Ocean Parkway.
I was there for fifteen years. I had a great childhood.
I played punch ball, stickball, all the Brooklyn things. What
the movies watched, comedy, shows and movies and radio shows,
and I was okay having fun, and I had a
(04:43):
bunch of kids, and we were we were the Comets.
We had an athletic club and we played bunch ball
and basketball.
Speaker 3 (04:49):
Go back to the comments. The comments were what age
did you join? The comments?
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Well, I kind of organized them. We're about twelve years old.
Speaker 3 (04:58):
You got jackets, other social athletic club. You called yourself
a social athletic club.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
There a whole bunch of them with different names. Comments
the blades, there were like fifty of them.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
And what's the difference between a social athletic club and
a gang?
Speaker 2 (05:11):
We had no knives? Okay, comment We didn't never not
go wait, we had carried pistols, but no knives.
Speaker 5 (05:17):
But like, did you like the hobnob with other social
athletic clubs?
Speaker 2 (05:23):
I told me, never the hobnob with anybody.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
Would it be any different if there were no comments?
Wouldn't you ask those same people to go play at basketball?
Speaker 2 (05:30):
You're probably right, there would be the same thing without
the jackets.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
What was the joy of the I guess I have.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
Been realizing it now, Jay, there was no joy at all.
So yeah, it was.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
It was.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
It was a nice, pleasant time. I got some home movies,
but there were no friendships that have lasted all the time.
I still don't not friendly with any of them now right,
I'm guessing most are dead. If they're not dead, they're
dying as we speak.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
So tell us about World War two, not all the battle,
but just what it means.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
You beat the Nazis, we beat the enemy. Uh. It
was a good time for me, not for America necessarily,
but I Uh, my mother was, as you know, you
live the right, little songs and stuff. She wrote songs
about the war and sending the soldiers on their way.
There was a draft board across the street from my house,
so I'd see parents crying, don't take my son, my kid.
(06:22):
I was kind of sad.
Speaker 4 (06:24):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
And there were parides going by an ocean parkway, and
my mother used to write these songs sending them off
to victory, and uh, you know, so it was lots
going on on my street. Right.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
But you were you were when the war started. You
were at six or seven, that's correct. And then when
the war ended, you were like twelve twelve years old, yeah, and.
Speaker 5 (06:43):
So eleven and a half, eleven.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
And a half, yeah, twenty five yes. And I remember, listen.
Speaker 5 (06:50):
If I were watching this podcast, I would be doing
the matter of like oh he said he.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
Was ninety one checkers here.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
But I mean, okay, So did you have a different
feeling about the war at the end.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
In the beginning, I was won, but you know what,
I was rooting for America all the way. I'd see
war movies.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
But did you know people were dying? Would you know
where people were dying?
Speaker 2 (07:11):
I know I had cousins George and Irving Goldstein. Oh,
and I kept saying to my mother one day coming home,
So I kept bothering her about that and.
Speaker 5 (07:21):
Shout out George and Irving Goldstein.
Speaker 3 (07:24):
And did they come home?
Speaker 2 (07:25):
They came home a lot, Yes, I did. And there
it was a major part of my life. World War two.
I liked war movies. Yeah, He's Little Dan. He's one
of my favorite movies. Not a war movie, but it's
a military movie, patriotic movie, patriotic movie. And so I
have pleasant memories, not of the war, but that time
my life was nice, a good time in my life.
Speaker 3 (07:48):
What was Papa Samla? What was your father?
Speaker 2 (07:50):
Like?
Speaker 3 (07:50):
I get to me he was a very austere guy,
like was didn't have a great sense of humor, was
kind of rough, had a kind of a thick accent
a little bit.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
I had a little thick accent from Russia and Ukraine.
He was kind of a quite but he was very
worried about business. His business was his life pretty much.
And as far as it's a humor, he had an
occasional he did have a dress as a humor. My
mother is you know, Pauline couldn't cook at all. My
mother was a horrible cook. I don't know if you
(08:19):
know it, Charlie, but she was a terrible cook. I know.
So that's what I had to grow up with, a
horrible cook. First week I loved her. It was crazy
about him bad cook. And then she made something and
then her mother, Ethel made something. She was not a
much better cook than my mother. And my father said, yeah,
two cooks. I thought that was pretty funny when he
says that. And I think there were one or two
(08:40):
other funny things that he said during our lifetime, but
not a lot, all right. And he said to me,
you know, later on he didn't care for my work,
my contribution to his business. But you can get into
that little well.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
I mean, so what feedback did you get from your
father when you were a kid. Before we get to
your work, but like when you're a kid, what did
he like about what you did or compliment you.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
You know, scolda and Charlie. He didn't compliment me a lot.
He was affectionate when I was younger, and they you know,
but he was so he was concerned about his business
and he was pleasant to be with. He didn't spank
me a lot. They were rough with my sister Phyllis
than they were with me.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
Why do you think.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
I don't know why. I don't know, but they kind
of left me alone to be myself, which whatever whatever
that was.
Speaker 3 (09:28):
So sister Phillis was the oldest child, so sometimes they're
six and a half years older than the older their kids. Yeah, so, okay,
but you worked for Papa Sam's your father. Your father made.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
Clothing, manufactured, children's were knitted, children's were so it was
a successful business when he started nineteen forty five of
forty four, and during the war years he did very well.
In the late forties, he did well early fifties, okay,
but not great. And he said, you're going to work
for me, and he hired me and I was paying
no attention to the business at all. I just he
(10:01):
manufactured these shirts. He get both the cloth, send them
up to upstate New York, Watertown, New York, and have
shirts made. They send shirts back to us. We followed
them and put them in boxes a dozen each, and
we try to sell them to major department store, you know.
(10:23):
And I was assalisman for a while. But I used
to work indoors a lot and move shirts around a
lot and bring them to the post office. And he
fired me twice once I wasn't paying attention. Once I
was singing too loud. I think it was a Tony
Bennetts song, and he said out, get out. And then
again he fired me a second time. I forgot why.
(10:45):
But we didn't cut it. I didn't make it, and
he had a liquidate his business. Eventually. I didn't help.
He had a liquidat And I tell the story about
when I went to look for a job after that,
and they said where'd you work before? I said, COG
and juven were and they said, can we call him
for a reference? I said, why about they calling him?
He's he's next asking yourself. He's right behind me. So
(11:07):
at the unemployment office, at them.
Speaker 5 (11:09):
Yes, being fired by your father is like, to me,
seems like a big deal. But I mean maybe to
you it was. But like I can't imagine A. I
can't imagine A working for you and B getting fired
by you.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
It was not. It was not a traumatic thing for me.
It didn't matter that much. And I would bring I
had no cars, so if I went to make out
with a girl and I had the key to the office,
I'd say, hey, you want to get together. We went
up to my dad's office on each nineteenth Street, and uh,
you know, we'd be together three or four. I was
on the on the material, on the cloth. So that
(11:45):
was my only place to hang out with women.
Speaker 3 (11:47):
The only place to make out was in your dad's office.
Speaker 5 (11:50):
Yes, and then that's that's a real turn on.
Speaker 3 (11:53):
I guess I know the kind of the kind of
gals is coming upstairs. I either come to I was
you met them, You met them, you would know.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
And once the police were guarding the players, there was
some burglaries. Hey up in the fifth floor. What's going on?
I said, Which is I believe I'm the son of
the owner? Okay, okay, well, anyway.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
Weird pickup line you want to go make out on
some kids clothes.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
It was weird. It worked like one out of forty
five times.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
Yeah, right, at least I respect the forty five attempts.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
Do you like children's were? I got something to show.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
You, the story about working for your dad. Yes, that
I remember, is you spending an entire weekend, oh, sharpening
pencils and pasting them on the walls of every room
in the middle story.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
Thanks for reminding me. So there was never a pencil,
I said, Dad, we have a pencil. I don't have
a pencil. So one weekend I said, I'm want to
do something for my dad. To the office. I spent
a weekend in the office shoppening pencils, getting boxes, pasting
them on the walls, and shopping like one hundred pencils,
putting in different boxes. And so Monday morning came, I
(13:00):
said to my dad, look at this. Dad, now we
got pencils, looking all the walls and looking at the boxes.
He said, that's nice, But why don't we just carry
a pencil in our pockets?
Speaker 3 (13:12):
And if I could grab one and carry it around themselves.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
So I said, you know that's good too. I spent
a weekend just try to impress them. I think it
didn't quite work.
Speaker 3 (13:22):
What time, what point of your life did you consider
yourself funny?
Speaker 2 (13:26):
The joke was probably more important than a lot of stuff.
When I was dating and I had a choice of
making a joke or kissing your girl good night, I'd
make the joke, so the joke would come first. The
joke came first before I came right anyway, So the
joke is always important. I was not the funniest kid
in the school, although it may have been. I was
not the class clown when you were young.
Speaker 3 (13:47):
Who were your big comedy heroes?
Speaker 2 (13:50):
In a way? Jack Benny the radio show, Bob Hope movies.
I kind of liked ab it in Cassello. I liked
a lot of comedy movies. Trying to figure the other
movie stars. It was Hope and Danny K. I liked that.
I saw that movie. Yeah, the Secret Life Walt of
Many twenty eight times, sort of look fourteen times in
(14:13):
the Hazel and Pennsylvania. And I met Danny K years later.
I told him about it. He was born with it.
He didn't care for the story. Okay, no, he liked
this story.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
When was it that you thought a that you were
funny enough to maybe be professionally funny, And what did
you What was your first sale of any kind?
Speaker 2 (14:31):
First sale is easy. First sale ever was the Mad
magazine nineteen fifty nine, February, a story I had pitched
it a few times, and they said, we've Jerry I
Fuschow because Nick wasn't around then. Jorge Hughes said, we
can't use this now, maybe with some other stuff.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
Jerry Defusio was an editor of a Mad.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
Magazine when it says an editor and so he said,
you try all the imitation magazines. And at that time
there were like twenty of them, crazy thinking nuts. And
I went to one of them. Panic. I said, we
like to you have any other stuff? I said, yeah,
I do, I'll get some and I showed him eighteen pages.
He said, we want to buy all of it. I said, wow,
(15:08):
eighteen pages. His rate was twenty five dollars a page.
I said, that's the one that I make in a
month and two months. We can't pay you now. We'll
pay you six months from now when we have the money.
I said, no, I'm not sure about that. Well, you
can turn around and go to Mad magazine if you want.
With this. I went back to Mad and they bought
two of it. I didn't know that. They said, well,
looking all over it. Ten days later I got this
(15:28):
check in the mail, which was the biggest role of
my life, Mad Magazine check, which I should have copied
in xerox, but I cashed it. So that was my
first sale to Shortly after that, I sold to Morty Gunty.
You stand up comedian, don't be alone with.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
So? Okay, So you wrote for Mad Magazine, We're excited
to go? Did you tell your parents?
Speaker 1 (16:05):
Like?
Speaker 3 (16:05):
Who'd you tell?
Speaker 2 (16:06):
Like? I told everybody. I think they knew whoever knew
about Mad. My folks didn't know what Mad was. I
told a lot of people, you're married. I had not
yet been married. Nineteen fifty I for Mad Magazine, Marty
Gunty in marriage. Later that year, I got married to
your mom, right of all people.
Speaker 3 (16:23):
Right, thank you for that?
Speaker 2 (16:26):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (16:27):
So, okay, So, but did you tell her?
Speaker 2 (16:29):
Did?
Speaker 3 (16:29):
Were you friendly with her?
Speaker 2 (16:30):
When she's certainly? I told everybody. And then I was
still writing fifty nine, I was working. I was still
working for something he wasn't all of ready yet. I
was working for furniture company. Yeah, and I quit the
furniture company at that time. Al Felson, the editor of
Mad Magazine. I said, I quit the furniture company. He said,
you know, Annie, we can't keep you supplying you with
stuff with no guarantee here and that kind of thing.
(16:53):
I understand. It's freelance, and so I continued to write
for Mad magazine freelance. All the comedian is Tony Fields
and uh, you know Caskill Comics. I wrote more for
them before that. I wrote for Don Adams. He didn't
buy anything. But the thing I liked best was a
piece I wrote for him. He used to do a
thing called the a baseball umpire, school and a lawyer.
(17:16):
I don't even familiar with his early stuff. Yeah, very funny,
but I don't remember that. And I wrote a piece
to called the school Schoolroom Routine and the.
Speaker 3 (17:25):
School room Routine.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
Yeah not a teacher, I think. And I didn't then
Don Adams's style.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
You performed it or you wrote it for Donnal I.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
Wrote it for to him. When he didn't do it,
I did it right.
Speaker 3 (17:36):
Where did you perform this?
Speaker 2 (17:38):
I went to a bar in floppersh Avenue. It was
amateur nights, seven contestants. I came in eighth I believe
really not great reactor.
Speaker 3 (17:46):
Yes, why do you think it didn't go so good?
Speaker 2 (17:48):
I don't know, but I went well some months before
that when I met your mom at a party that
herb Astro. I went to a herb Astro party New
Ye's E party, didn't like it. I left that part
and went to a party in Brooklyn in a basement and
did the comedy routine and a very pretty girl in
a red dress was laughing loud. I got a number,
(18:09):
who's at Sue Hirsh. I dated her, be married about
a year and a half later.
Speaker 5 (18:14):
So, so were you when you did the comedy at
that party? This was a New Year's Eve party?
Speaker 2 (18:19):
Right, yes?
Speaker 5 (18:20):
But were you hired to do comedy?
Speaker 2 (18:22):
No money? I was just visiting as a guest.
Speaker 5 (18:25):
But what were you doing like like because my impression
was that you had a gig or like you had
like no.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
I used to do the second school yards I used
to I used to recite my routine that I wrote
in school yards wherever I could, And so I said,
I tried at the United basement.
Speaker 3 (18:41):
Did you think you were going to be a stand
up comedian?
Speaker 2 (18:43):
Maybe?
Speaker 3 (18:43):
Never didn't want to be so it's interesting that you're
willing to sort of do the bits even though you
didn't think.
Speaker 5 (18:48):
I did the travel to Boston for a bit.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
I wanted to thinking about the cent up comedies, thinking
about somehow I drifted into I was sort of a
drift or comedy writer. I had no idea what to
want to be a dish jockey for many years.
Speaker 3 (18:59):
Well, let's back up to drifter her what point were
you a drifter?
Speaker 2 (19:02):
I was always a drifter. I didn't know what I
wanted to be. I wanted to do something other than
be an insurance salesman or you know, on a store,
or be a clothing salesman, or be a dentist. I
don't want to be a normal thing. And I was
still working full time. I worked for Olivetti that year
at fifty nine. Also, I started to work for Olivetti
Underwood to Olivetti, a calculator company, and worked there for
(19:25):
four years.
Speaker 5 (19:26):
Typewriters too, Yeah, they told.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
Typewriters and calculators, yes you have one, Yes I have,
but you were I want to back, okay.
Speaker 3 (19:33):
But you were in the calculator section of it, or.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
Just both calculators, And the main thing was a calculator.
You had a place one calculator a day on trial
someplace in New York City in your area. Mine was
the East Village calculators That cost seven hundred books and
you had to sell three a month. That's twenty one
hundred bucks.
Speaker 5 (19:52):
So these are like industrial calculators. They're not like, yeah,
they're not like a T I eighty three or what.
Speaker 2 (19:59):
Okay, but it's like an enhanced satting machine. Yeah, multiplies,
you know. Yeah.
Speaker 5 (20:04):
So the whole is but for businesses and for yeah, yeah,
you're really good. You're B to B not B.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
Two C exactly good.
Speaker 5 (20:12):
Business people listening to this podcast.
Speaker 3 (20:15):
What was the hardest part about selling oli Eddy calculators
and typewriters.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
Uh, just the hostle. I had to go place to
place on leaving a trial. Leaving that trial machine was
the hardest, but placing it like getting office, Can I
leave this here? They didn't want it? Right, I said, uh,
you know, I would do whatever I could. I fall
in a lot. I just to fall into rooms.
Speaker 3 (20:36):
A lot while you were selling OLIVEDI.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
I had thirty five pound calculator on my hand. I'd fallen. Okay.
So now first it's the principal of salesmanship, Jay is
secure attention.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
Okay, well you did secure attention. I should Yeah, you've
spent your most of your life falling into.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
Rooms and then you did it. I didn't do it.
Speaker 3 (20:52):
It's because I thought I saw you do it. But
now now that you're older, you just fall. It's okay,
it's not it's not not the comedy he.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
Thought with a walker, play the walker.
Speaker 3 (21:05):
But I so that so that's where the falling started.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
That could have been.
Speaker 3 (21:08):
Do you think the sort of goofiness of falling did
that work as a sales technique? People say, Hey, I
like that guy who falls into the rooms.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
He got their attention. So I was able to place
a few trials that way. I did get their attention.
Speaker 3 (21:21):
Yes, I would have got my attention. I don't know
what would I I'm not sure. Would have been like
a sign that I should trust this guy?
Speaker 2 (21:27):
Yeah, you know you got to point to right, you're right,
but you're right.
Speaker 3 (21:31):
I would have gotten my attention.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
I also, but didn't. When I met the head of Olivetti,
he came around and the manager said, the head of
a Dino Olivetti is coming in. What his name was?
Speaker 3 (21:42):
Uh?
Speaker 2 (21:43):
Want you to give him a demonstration, each of you
give him a demonstration and get his attention, and give
him demonstration. So everyone said him, mister Olivetti, and here's
my here's the machines, the divisuma, he's a tractors. Here's
how it works. I walked up and said hello, mister Daletty,
and I kissed him on the neck. I kissed him
(22:04):
on the neck. Left he left. Also he left said
we got attention on show.
Speaker 3 (22:10):
That's hysterical, that's really funny.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
And then that night on the on the subway, Sue
was going home and these guys are talking to see
what Cogan did today? What are you? She's you're talking
about Ernie Cogan? You know what do you do? And
they told him the sorry that I kissed.
Speaker 3 (22:25):
Okay, so you did practical jokes, yes, your whole life, Yes,
certainly when you got older. What are you the greatest
what's your greatest hits? What are your greatest practical jokes?
Speaker 2 (22:36):
Rich area? For me, you know you know all of them.
You know all of them too, But I think for
you people listening to or watching, I've always been amused
and by shepherds, this occupation shepherd so I've done a
lot of shepherd stuff in my life, and so the
first major one I did, I think was the New
(22:59):
York Time. I'm a very stage conservative newspaper. Then maybe
now I'm not sure. I placed an ad and that
was called situations and wanted, not help, wanted but situations.
I said it had STATISTICI to stenographer account, who needs work?
So I placed that add to I needed work, shepherd
to ten fluck, handy, will not cry Wolf and put
(23:25):
my phone number sent to the New York Times. Next
day I got a phone call from you, Arnold Cogan. Yes,
this is New York Times. Oh hello, we can't place
the ad. Why not? You gotta name some well, you
gotta name something more specific. I said, shepherd to ten fluck.
That's specific. They said, well that's okay, but what is
this will not cry Wolf? I said, oh, that's the
(23:48):
term using the trade, meaning you'll do a good job,
won't kid around. They said, okay, we'll place it. They
placed it. I got it next they just seeing in
the paper.
Speaker 5 (23:57):
I don't think anyone at the New York Times that
ever met a check.
Speaker 3 (24:00):
No, they don't know chef.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
So next day that night, won't call you the guy
who placed the air for the shepherd. Yeah, I got
a farm in New Jersey, twenty eight acres forty three sheep.
I need help, I said. Oh. I got very frightened.
I've hurt my leg. I can't do it it with
my friend herb Astro. I had no idea. I got
very very petrified.
Speaker 5 (24:22):
That's so funny, So like he double crossed your prank.
That's awesome.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
When Grace Kelly got married, Grace Kelly, the actress.
Speaker 5 (24:30):
Do I remember Grace Kelly, Princess Grace.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
Of Monocco, she married the Prime Minister of Monaco, Prince Vannier,
Prince So she got married, big news all winter long,
all that spring, They're getting married. So I had decided
to have invitation printed it up to the wedding. Yeah,
and said mister and missus Kelly of Philadelphia announced the marriage.
(24:55):
Had daughter Grace Grace uh to Prince Vernier Monocho Go
April ninth, nineteen fifty six, Monte Carlo, Monaco. So and
so will and will not attend tissue paper response cards.
Everything said it out to like one hundred people, and
people were nuts sort of, and but the biggest story
was Mike Wise, who got the thing for me in Korea.
(25:18):
He was in the Army at the time.
Speaker 3 (25:20):
Yeah, he got one of Dad's fake invitation.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
Yeah, so he knew he recognized my handwriting, he knew
it's from me. Didn't tell anybody. Stars and Stripes. The
Army paper found out about it. The headline Soldier invited
to a wedding of Prince Vernier Grace Kelly and he's
not going. It turns out he made it his whole story.
He said, I know both Prince Varnier and Grace Kelly.
Grace is a natural kid. I never think I never
(25:43):
thought she'd married the Prince. She workships athletes. And he said,
and I've been to the area world before. I'm going
to Hong Kong instead. Soldier turned down. So anyway, Soldier Sady.
He posted a series on cities Hong Kong. PFC Michael
Wise turned down the wedding Kelly to visit All Kong.
When he went to Hong Kong, he got the key
(26:04):
to the city. The Mayor of Freedom was the key
to the city. You turned on the wedding, Thank you welcome.
Speaker 3 (26:10):
I would fall into rooms like I've come to visit
you at work, yes, and fall into rooms too.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
Sometimes I will work, sometimes not.
Speaker 3 (26:17):
Sometimes the interrupted the flow. I didn't know what was
going on, so people could be working. It's an actual
place of work, so you'd be falling into a room
I did, and you disturb people.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
I did the same thing. I was in a U
Patrion and Tars's and buzz Cooh and were working together
in a room open door. I fell in and they
just looked at me and said, what what's going on?
I'm sorry, guys.
Speaker 3 (26:40):
Right, if you're taking a big risk from falling into
a room and you get no reaction, it sucks. Sometimes
it work, sucks, sometimes it works, where it worked more
often than not.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
Sixty four I wrote for Canada Camera A lot of
stuff you're hearing now was that kind of stuff?
Speaker 5 (26:54):
I love work forgetting.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
I did a shepherd thing. I did a bowling gall
of where you a bowl a ball in the pins,
smashed it with zillion pieces and a catch a reaction.
What the how'd that? I did a coffee shop where
they charged you not by the menu price, but sixty
cents a minute, so the fast you eat unless you
unless you pay so they catch up on. I had
(27:21):
a thing where you traveler was going to Connecticut and
the sign said Connecticut closed the whole stay. So you
want to turn around and go to Massachusetts you can. No,
I want to go right to Connette. No, no, no,
please though, So I did a lot of funny stuff.
I enjoyed sitting in that room and a lot of
people who I knew. Pat McCormick wrote for Canada Camera.
John Rivers wrote for Turtle toob Bron for Canada Camera.
(27:45):
A lot of well known writers vroote for Canada Camera.
Speaker 3 (27:49):
So so what year you were in nine sixties?
Speaker 2 (27:51):
This is sixty That was sixty three, sixty four, sixty five.
I wrote for Canda Camera again and the Less Crane Shows.
Fame was a talk show with Les Crane, good looking
up from San Francisco. He had a shotgun Mike, kind
of hot, trendy, and I didn't know much comedy. For him.
I wrote intros, interviewed guests. Then I got I was
(28:12):
telling Tony Fields, you know, I'd love to do the
Gleason Show. Marvin Monks, who wrote for her, was doing Gleason.
I eventually was called down to do Fly Down to Florida,
Jackie Gleason's so I won a break. So I flew
down there, and it turns out there were fourteen writers there.
Ron Clark is one of them, Turned Toby another and
of one of many writers that they flew down. I
was there for like four weeks and I didn't write
(28:34):
any monologue.
Speaker 3 (28:35):
Is it good money? Is it? Or he's just getting
good for me?
Speaker 2 (28:38):
It was good because it was better than what I
was making. I made more per month then than I
was writing for Olivetti and Oliveddi and Comedy. So I
made about fifteen thousand a year, which pretty good.
Speaker 3 (28:50):
At this point. You had two children going to yeah yeah,
me and my sister.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
Yeah. But I made more money there than I used
to make with the other stuff. And then next year
Johnny Carson to show read my stuff. I said, wow,
I interviewed. I met with Johnny himself and the producer Stark,
I believe, And while I was talking to him, he
was doing the golf swing and he had read my
stuff and he talked to me a bit, and then
(29:14):
like he must have liked enough of it, they hired me.
And I'm very excited about that.
Speaker 3 (29:19):
The huge development. How did you feel like like you're
at that point when you got the Tonight Show was
that like the big big time.
Speaker 2 (29:26):
I was huge, it was huge. I was very excited
and then disappointed six months later when they did not
pick up my option because I think he liked my
stuff and they were using stuff and I was not happy.
And so that end of sixty six, first half of
sixty seven, I was looking for work. I was still
doing Mad magazine and stand up comics and uh special material,
(29:48):
but not working on a show. And I moved to
What's to California to look for work. While I was
in California, John Carson, other Tonight Show called me and said,
we want you back. Can you make it? I said,
I loved We want you to back, and those wars
we want you back were thrilling to me. They want
me back, and I went back Tonight Show and I
worked together. I then worked for the next thirty years.
Speaker 3 (30:09):
Do you know much what why they let you go
and why they want you to back?
Speaker 2 (30:13):
No explanation, no no word, no word. And then I
think they felt bad from you know, the staff felt
bad that I was leaving, and that time I wasn't
the main monologue writers Red Weinberger and David Lloyd and
later on Marshall Brickman came along, so I did monologue
and carn action and so forth.
Speaker 3 (30:33):
But I mean, it's interesting. Most of the time. They're
not sentimental. Most shows, it is not sentimental.
Speaker 2 (30:38):
If they fire somebody, they never got it, never got
word from anybody. Maybe I'll find out this week why
they did that.
Speaker 3 (30:45):
Maybe you stopped falling into rooms.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay.
Speaker 3 (30:49):
So then you worked at the Tonight Show for a
little while, and then at what point did you get
the job to move to Hollywood?
Speaker 2 (30:54):
Pretty soon I got Tonight Show in sixty seven, early
sixty eight. I had met at Garrison trip to sixty
seven we watch you for a summer show. I said,
I'm not going to do a summer show out of here.
Garrison and Harry Crane, those people fan out about me,
maybe through Stevin Dye, maybe through whoever recommended me, and
(31:15):
Dean Martin Cook Show said we want you. That was
a very exciting, right. We moved. We picked up and
left Chief said Bay and moved to California.
Speaker 3 (31:24):
And that was kind of a dream of yours. They
always have come to California.
Speaker 1 (31:27):
Yeah, yeah, loving my dream.
Speaker 4 (31:40):
Don't be alone.
Speaker 3 (31:48):
So what was your greatest professional achievement.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
I got to say part of the carbern Neche, I think, yeah,
Carbernicch Tonight's show, the Burnicht show sketch where I wrote
this thing called the Pale.
Speaker 3 (32:01):
I wrote it.
Speaker 2 (32:02):
I had this idea and I wrote along with a
partner of mine, Ray Jessel, And you know, I'm gonna
describe this sketch, but it was a funny. It was
a sketch about Harvey Carman and Kerbournet. And the turns
out the therapist caused the problem for the patient. She
didn't know this, but.
Speaker 3 (32:19):
Spoiler forever shrink and complaining about this bully who used
to steal her pale.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
Yeah, yeah, and then he was a bully. He was,
he was a bully, and he was my sandbox. At
some point he said, and here's the lion, lovely, I said,
was this pale blue? Yes? Did have Daisy Dunck on
one side of his on on the other side. Yes,
you're fats of Fleischmann. You got my pale? Know you're pale.
(32:47):
Got you're paid with twenty five years ago. If you
don't give me my pale right now, I'm gonna go
with that room of one hundred dollars an hour patients
and tell him you did pp in the sandbox, right, uh,
And he said she's not to walk to the doors.
Hold on a second, opens the little desk drawer and
pulls out a pail and said here you own, and
she said, okay, hold it. This is my paal. This
(33:10):
is the Leonora Wine guardens pail. Well that's the all
I've got, and then I want my pail. I don't
have your pail. And then he started to back up
towards a closet and he started to guard the closet,
but she pushed them away, opened the door. Twelve million
pails fall out, so she finally found a pail. The
(33:33):
guy got my pails, tried to skip out, and then
simply turned around to him and said she's hold hold
on a second. Went back to him, just do this,
and he opened his desk drawer and pulled out a
tiny shovel and gave it to it. So had like
four endings. I love this sketch, and Carol loved her also.
And I never told you this, but in run Through
(33:54):
that week used applause, big reaction, and Gary Belkin said,
nobody wright who wrote that nobody writes it's funny. I
remember that line. Nobody, nobody writes it's funny, and I'm
happy with that. You know, that's very nice. That may
have been it.
Speaker 3 (34:08):
What was your biggest show? Was this disappointment?
Speaker 2 (34:10):
Hmm, good question, Jay. I'd have to get back there
on that. I don't know.
Speaker 3 (34:19):
There's no getting back to me. It's here, is now
or never?
Speaker 2 (34:23):
Was it?
Speaker 3 (34:23):
Was it the soupy sales movie?
Speaker 1 (34:25):
Was it?
Speaker 2 (34:25):
Oh? Yeah, okay, I forget that. I wrote a sooper
sales movie. I know about this, okay. Anyway, I had
no right after the lest Crane Show. I had no
idea what I was doing. Obviously from the film. You see,
they called me. Marty Ingle had told eleven towards the
producer about this writer. He found me and he hired me.
(34:45):
He didn't say, showby sample to your work because I did.
He wouldn't have hired me because I had. There was
and now ladies and gentlemen, Lua Liisa intro to the singer.
That's all he would have seen. So I punched up
stuff on an exist. The script written by a professional writer,
Art Arthur was nice guy and a good writer. Good credits,
(35:07):
and this movie is a mess. You know, super Sales
was flying around and he had I got caught in
an ionization machine and he could fly. That's basically the story.
And tab Hunter said it was the worst movie he's
ever been in his life. And I've seen pretty bad
tap Hunter movie, yeah, and I've seen bad tap Hunter movie.
(35:27):
This is worse. So that was my biggest Yeah, And
I'm sorry, Soupie you are around anymore, but I apologize.
I should have done better, but I did the best
I could.
Speaker 3 (35:36):
Who were your favorite co workers, like comedy co workers?
And what did what did? What did they do for you?
Speaker 2 (35:42):
And what did did.
Speaker 3 (35:43):
Anyone one of them mentor you or teach you?
Speaker 2 (35:46):
There was so many along, you know, they always say
along the way, he couldn't have done alone, and I couldn't.
There some many people to help me and work with me.
Pat McCormick, he's got to be way up there. I
worked with him a number of times still on the
show called The Funny Side, and I was teamed with
him for a while, and a thrill one of them
was we worked together on the segment. We had various
(36:07):
hosts coming in. At one point Jack Benny came in
to do the lighter side, the funny side of finance.
So Patrick Cormack and I would sit and write for
Jack Benny, who I loved, and I was working with
a writer who was crazy about that was very exciting
along the way. McCormick had so many bridge in lines,
(36:28):
a great he could craft a great joke.
Speaker 5 (36:31):
You know who he was, Yeah, you've talked about him.
Speaker 2 (36:33):
Yeah. He said things like I think this is his line.
So many sheep, so little time. He said he wants
a room, then a and dressing room with orson Wells
and checked his underwear. It says one size fits romania.
He had on the Tonight Show after a series of earthquakes,
(36:56):
and he was writing Tonight Show at the time. I
think I was also a time with him. But he
wrote the joke after the series of series of after quakes,
after shocks, he said the state of California has now
been declared a ride.
Speaker 5 (37:10):
He would have thrived in like the meme format.
Speaker 3 (37:13):
Yes, memes tweets. Yeah, yeah, it's very very good.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
Like one line, it's good, brilliant, one line, incredible mind,
very funny stuff.
Speaker 5 (37:25):
I feel like I would I would see so many sheeps,
so little time on my Instagram. Who have any comics?
Now do you enjoy?
Speaker 2 (37:35):
I still like Seinfelder three runs of Seinfeld and Steve Martin.
Speaker 5 (37:40):
I still like you ever watch like John Mulaney. I
like Mullilany.
Speaker 2 (37:45):
I like Mullany. Some stuff doesn't work, but most of
the stuff works very well for me. Yes, I like Mlaney.
Speaker 5 (37:52):
Do you ever have punchlines? I think of Mark normand
do you ever watch him?
Speaker 2 (37:57):
No? Okay, I mean like I like Conan a lot.
Cona's funny and silly.
Speaker 3 (38:02):
Both you you have always seen, at least as far
as I can tell as being your son. To you,
the world is interesting. As a comedy writer, you have
to see the subtleties of human endeavors and human nature.
But as a person, you like the world black and white,
like you really like, like there's right and the wrong,
or there's a good way in a bad way, like
(38:23):
it seems at odds it does at odds with it.
Speaker 2 (38:26):
And I'm different than a lot of my friends who are. Yeah,
I do, and you know I do feel strong the
right and wrong. And that's that. If somebody goes in
and twelve guys rob a jewelry store, they shouldn't be
doing that got to you know, if people are are
leaving it double even double park in that car, right,
you don't do that. You don't look double parking, leave
(38:46):
it alone, right, it's wrong. You know.
Speaker 3 (38:48):
The other day, we were in a bank yesterday and
Chase Chase Bank, and you wanted to get your credit
limit where extended. And we were there for like, I know,
twenty minutes trying to figure it out, and at a
certain point they said, wait, it's it's not incredibly they're
trance to be able to use your mobile app. There's
a limit to how much the checks can be, and
he's getting checks that are worth way more than what
(39:08):
he's allowed to do, and so he has a long
way he has to come into the bank, and he
was trying to get it extended so that he could
use the mobile app for these big checks, and they said, no,
we can't, we can't. And at the end of the meeting,
you grabbed a bunch of pens and you handed them
to me, which was the most unlike any token thing
I've ever seen in my life, Like you want to
(39:30):
take the pens as revenge, like revenge from the bank. Yes,
you're you're still you're stole two pens.
Speaker 2 (39:37):
I was wrong, but I'm glad I did it.
Speaker 3 (39:39):
But you didn't steal them. They're for people to take.
They for the customers. So you were literally taking the
pens the customers should have and taking and we're going
to take these and go. And that was the most
I've ever seen you sort of violate any kind of principle.
Speaker 2 (39:53):
At Jegger's, I've been that pennots crazy.
Speaker 5 (39:56):
Yeah, because I know you're very strange, because yeah, you're
famously very like staunch about like, yes, if you like,
I don't know, if you get a little bit of
extra change, you'll you'll give them back.
Speaker 2 (40:09):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (40:10):
I remember once we drove back to a store to
give them change.
Speaker 2 (40:14):
Yes, then I did it right at the store. That
was the right thing to do.
Speaker 3 (40:17):
What is what is the hardest part about being ninety one.
Speaker 2 (40:22):
Mornings? No, psychologically I think about it a little bit.
I want to get through the day and I want
to and I don't know. It's good questions day. And
I can't get around occasionally, I can't drive the car,
I have trouble walking, I can't play basketball, I can't
(40:43):
do the physical stuff I used to do. Right, that's
the hardest part. I can't go to the I can't
get up and go to a movie. I can't get
up and drive someplace.
Speaker 3 (40:51):
Can go to a movie. You can go to a movie.
Speaker 2 (40:54):
Not easy. I mean, if you want to go to
a movie, movie, it's just a rougher time. Yeah, I
want to go to a restaurant with friends, right, it's
a I can't just say, okay, we'll see you Thursday night.
I have to plan it out. I got it. Where
are we going? What's the parking light? Is there a
handicap parking? What's it?
Speaker 3 (41:09):
You don't need handicap parking.
Speaker 2 (41:11):
You can. You can go to a dinner. It's a
much tougher time arranging a dinner appointment with people now
that I'm in the shape I'm in now it is.
I gotta getting on a plane. I can't get on
a plane, can't go anywhere, can't fly anywhere.
Speaker 3 (41:25):
You know you could, you could, not difficult, but you could.
With difficulty, you know, right, it'd be hard.
Speaker 2 (41:31):
It is hard. So I missed that. Yeah, I missed
that a lot.
Speaker 3 (41:35):
What's the best part about being ninety one?
Speaker 2 (41:38):
Not having to go anywhere? I don't know if there
is a good part about being ninety one. The fact
that I am ninety one is a good part. That
I made it, and I think about it, and I've
gone past whatever I would think i'd live to. I'd
be gone beyond that part. You know. I used to
read the the The old joke was red the obituaries.
(42:01):
If you're not in it, it's okay, right, it's a
good day.
Speaker 3 (42:03):
Right.
Speaker 2 (42:04):
It's the fact that I hit ninety one is a
good thing. I think, what.
Speaker 3 (42:08):
Would you tell somebody who wants to be a creative
person wants to live a creative life, but is afraid
they won't succeed.
Speaker 2 (42:14):
I'd say give it a shot. Definitely try it and
see if you're working it works for you.
Speaker 3 (42:19):
If you don't long how long should you wait? We're
gonna try a week and a half.
Speaker 2 (42:22):
Yeah, no, I say give it, you know, give it
a It depends on the age of the person. If
guys like nineteen years old and wants to be a
comedy writer and I really want, I said give it,
give it a couple of years, give it two, three years,
try it out. See you work, you make you're good.
If you're good, it's going to work. If guy's talented,
If the guys can write funny, he'll work.
Speaker 3 (42:43):
I think how much of it is confidence good?
Speaker 2 (42:45):
Part of it is confidence is good. More of it
is luck right who you I know, who you can
hook up with. If you could get that first deal
or first job and they like you work, you'll keep working.
But it's a lot of luck. It'll be luck out
with the right right show to write people around you.
If you have friends that are doing this, you know,
and you're good, you're talented, and you're gifted. I think
(43:06):
you're gonna work.
Speaker 3 (43:07):
But to have that, but to have somebody give you
that shot the first time, don't you have to exude
a certain amount of confidence even if you don't have it,
you need to.
Speaker 2 (43:17):
It helps you to have confidence. But just you know,
the guys that you've been with writers out in the
room that may not have to comment, They quietly sit there.
And maybe Neil Simon may have been one of those
guys that's quietly sit there right brilliantly and handing their
paperwork right, and they're funny.
Speaker 5 (43:31):
If I have a question that's like just totally unrelated,
if you had to be one age forever, oh like
good like which of those ninety one years is like
the year that you would be willing to live for
the rest of your life.
Speaker 2 (43:43):
Eight half was like, no, no, I would say thirty one.
Speaker 5 (43:51):
So that would be like around nineteen sixty five.
Speaker 2 (43:53):
Yeah, well, well, I mean yeah, yeah, right, yeah, not
that sixty five is a great year.
Speaker 5 (43:58):
But yeah, that's a good action to me.
Speaker 2 (44:00):
You're still young enough, energy physically okay, more than okay, yeah,
and your mind is vibrant, I think, and it's good
aged to be thirty one.
Speaker 5 (44:10):
We talked about this a second ago, but and then
you kind of had sort of an answer, but not really.
Speaker 3 (44:16):
I don't know.
Speaker 5 (44:17):
That sounds like me a little Yeah, this is the
time to do the moment of joy a moment job
at ninety one? What what do you live for?
Speaker 2 (44:30):
Have one day following another of plus a pleasant day?
Right now in my life, I want a pleasant day
from you know, venerous. No, it's a year of the
rest of my life, you know, the rest of my
time here. I want nice, I want to be happy,
I want to left, I want some fun and yeah
that's it.
Speaker 5 (44:49):
What does that look like to you now?
Speaker 2 (44:52):
Like? What is what is ending up doing a little reading,
doing a little stuff in my computer and watching some
shows at night. Maybe having doesn't evolve people A lot
doesn't involve a lot of socializing.
Speaker 3 (45:04):
What about like hitting a breakfast with friends or that
kind of thing.
Speaker 2 (45:07):
I'd love Bruktor the friends of his not too uncomfortable.
I forgot to drive someplace and drive to to Hanga
in a bus or a car, get a lifted, get
a ride, get a special. I don't want too much work.
I don't want to work hard.
Speaker 3 (45:24):
The moment of joy a different, different moment of enjoy.
Speaker 4 (45:26):
Question, a moment of joy?
Speaker 3 (45:33):
If you wanted to feel true joy in your life
in a moment, to get your head in that great space? Uh,
how do you do that? How would you do that?
Would you turn on Yankee Little Dandy or or court Chester?
Or would you look at the sunset?
Speaker 2 (45:48):
Or would you go both those things? I would do
both of them, Thou that would last for not a
whole day, That would not a whole day.
Speaker 3 (45:53):
A moment moment. It's a moment of joy. It's not
a lifetime of joy.
Speaker 2 (45:57):
Doodle Daddy would do it for me. Suns that would
do it all. Oh, I've got the skin condition right.
The Sunday Morning show we have every every Sunday morning
and moment of nature at a very end, too short
for me. I want more of that. I like that
is the moment of nature where they cut to a
burder a mountain And is.
Speaker 3 (46:14):
Your very favorite food? Cast role? What's your very favorite.
Speaker 2 (46:18):
I like castrole and don't have enough of it, right, But.
Speaker 3 (46:20):
What's your very favorite food? If you had last meal,
last meal.
Speaker 2 (46:23):
I would I would tell you a heart healthy salad.
Speaker 3 (46:28):
Terrible, the worst last meal of all time.
Speaker 5 (46:32):
I've heard that joke before, and I fully was not expected.
Speaker 2 (46:36):
It's good.
Speaker 3 (46:37):
How do you want to be remembered.
Speaker 2 (46:39):
If you can? I take as a nice guy, a
funny guy. Uh gee, it was great. Good to be
around Arnie. I'm missing me. They were left with Arnie
and uh, what a terrific guy he was. I'd like,
you know, I'd like to think that what a nice
guy Arnie was. Okay, that's shame not around anymore.
Speaker 3 (47:01):
I think people will feel that way some day, some day.
So yeah, you're you're definitely a nice guy. You're known.
You know, people told me maybe they're painting up rose
of your picture because you're my dad. But people who
have worked with you are always telling me what a
wonderful experience it was to work with you, and what
a nice guy you were, and how not a lot
(47:21):
of you didn't have a lot of ego. It wasn't
a lot of gamesmanship. People felt that you were warm
and kind and generous and funny but above all funny.
Speaker 2 (47:31):
You know, So that's that's perfict. No good to know
what questions you have for us, Charlie to you, where
do I funk up? What did I do wrong?
Speaker 3 (47:42):
It's hard to suck up as a grandparent.
Speaker 5 (47:44):
Yeah, I mean maybe I did, so where you fucked up?
Speaker 2 (47:49):
Now? I didn't.
Speaker 5 (47:51):
I actually was not playing on saying the word fuck. Okay,
we're a safe space, yes, but I don't think you did.
I mean, like I think, if anything, I think like
I don't know. Sometimes I think your idea of like
what was funny or like what was entertaining when I
was like three or four years old was not what
I thought was funnier and taking like when I was
(48:13):
a kid. I feel like you would like sort of
toy with me about like random stuff, like I think
like my mom tells a story about like when she
was trying to teach me like plural nouns and like
I would be like, she'd be like one car, and
then I'd be like two cars, like whatever. But then
I think you were like one goose, two geese or whatever,
like and then or like or like or I said
(48:35):
gooses and then you're like, no, it's actually geese.
Speaker 2 (48:37):
Like I don't know.
Speaker 5 (48:38):
I think maybe, like I mean, I was maybe too
young to fully understand what was going on, but I
think sometimes that was your tendency rather than to just
like be silly and have fun, Like like you were
being silly and having fun in your own way, but
it wasn't necessarily with me, like at least at that
young age. But I think now now that I'm older,
like I said, I think we certainly can like relate more.
(49:00):
And I think I was just always kind of an
inquisitive kid, and like I always was curious about your life.
And you're like, oh, yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (49:08):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (49:10):
I didn't when you're growing up. I didn't teach you
how to ride a bike. I did, I don't think
I did. Maybe not. I didn't think you to drive
a car. I didn't do all these dad things with you. Right,
do you resent that? Is that?
Speaker 3 (49:24):
Where were you what were you doing? What were you
busy doing working? I guess I don't know. I mean
you did spend some time with me as I was
learners permit time, but not a lot. But Mom was
much more of the driver. He taught me how to
drive bicycle. I think you were involved in helping me
(49:46):
learn to ride a bicycle maybe, but not much. You
weren't around a lot.
Speaker 2 (49:51):
I mean, that's the thing.
Speaker 3 (49:51):
You weren't around a lot. Was I was a kid,
and it was And is your question.
Speaker 2 (49:58):
Felt maybe I missed something I didn't do a d
that you were.
Speaker 3 (50:01):
You probably did miss scar stuff.
Speaker 2 (50:03):
Jake. Can I help you to your size project? Right?
I remember I.
Speaker 3 (50:07):
Would never ask you to help me with my science.
It's not something of a possibility.
Speaker 2 (50:12):
But I know.
Speaker 3 (50:12):
I mean, listen, you guys were young parents, and you
were out a lot, and I was left home alone
a lot. And that's okay, that's just how it was.
One of the things one of the reasons I was
probably too involved in this guy's life is his response
to your absence in my life, and so like, I
was probably spent not enough time letting him make his
own mistakes alone.
Speaker 5 (50:33):
Actually, that was when you asked the question, like, where
did I fuck up? I thought, that's like I was
thinking about, like what did Like My first thought was, like,
what did he pass on.
Speaker 3 (50:42):
To me that made your life miserable?
Speaker 2 (50:43):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (50:44):
Yeah, that's good, good connections.
Speaker 5 (50:46):
Yeah, but I yeah, I think you were a little
I mean, like, but I don't think if it wasn't
just you, it was also Mom.
Speaker 3 (50:51):
Well I know, but I'm just saying to me. I tried.
I really do try to keep a distance and give
him space. But I don't think I'm great at it.
Oh honestly, I don't, but I'm trying to be.
Speaker 5 (51:01):
I think you, I think you think you're better at
it than you are. And I think I think Mom
is not good at it, but she knows she's not.
Speaker 3 (51:06):
Right at it. I try to be like, give give
a space.
Speaker 5 (51:09):
But that's fine anyway.
Speaker 3 (51:11):
But I've enjoyed my childhood, and thank you for my
life and my childhood.
Speaker 2 (51:16):
I love having you in our family.
Speaker 3 (51:18):
Well, I like being in the family, and I really
appreciate you being a dad and being a great model
of a person.
Speaker 2 (51:24):
I had a great time. I mean, like it's over,
Like died twenty minutes ago. No, I I was terrific.
Speaker 3 (51:29):
We still have the car ride back home, but no,
it was great.
Speaker 2 (51:33):
I mean, I can't think of a better combination.
Speaker 5 (51:36):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (51:37):
Growing up you were terrific. I mean the things that
you did and the spirits that we had, and the
you know and and your your your gift for comedy
worked out perfectly with me. You might have to pick
a kid to do something. I would pick your kids.
Speaker 3 (51:52):
When I was born. Did you hold me up and
say this, someday this boy will have a podcast?
Speaker 2 (51:57):
I said nothing like that, all right, A right, pap.
Speaker 3 (52:00):
Well, thank you for being here.
Speaker 2 (52:01):
I've learned more a little bit more about you.
Speaker 3 (52:04):
Sure, and we've learned about you. Thank you, Charlie Cogin
for being here. Charlie, and thank you. Thank you don't
be alone with j cogain audience for being here. And uh,
I appreciate you watching and listening. And if you have
any questions or comments for me or my family, write
them to dB A w j k at gmail dot com.
And uh, spend some time with people you love, sit
(52:26):
down in front of them and talk with him.
Speaker 5 (52:28):
It's it's worthwhile, preferably with cameras. Rightly.
Speaker 2 (52:31):
One more thing I would I would have liked to
have been. I haven't heard the tape, but a little
wittier this afternoon. But well, we're not going back, okay.
You have to live with what you have, okay, all right.
Speaker 3 (52:43):
All right and uh and and thanks for being here,
and thank you for being here, and we'll see you
next time.
Speaker 4 (52:48):
Don't be alone with Ja.
Strawut Media.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Hi. I'm Arnie Cogan. I live with Jake Cogan for
over twenty years.
Speaker 3 (00:09):
It didn't work out.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
We had to let him go. Don't be alone with
Jake Cogan.
Speaker 4 (00:16):
Don't be alone with jj Cogan.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
Welcome to Don't be Alone with Jake Cogan. I'm your
cordial host, Jay Cogan, and I thank you for being here,
and I thank you for all the kind comments and
suggestions that you guys have been sending me, and please
feel free to send me more at dbawjk at gmail
dot com. Today we have a really interesting show for you.
It is something I've wanted to do for a very
(00:43):
long time. I have my father as our special guest.
My dad, Arnie Cogan, is a great comedy writer. He's
a three time Emmy winning comedy writer. He started writing
Mad Magazine and then wrote for variety shows, talk shows,
variety shows, then sitcoms. He's always been one of my here.
He punches up things I write. I tend to show
him things that I work on still because he's really
(01:06):
sharp and funny. But this will be more about personal
things and how he became the Arnie Cogan he is,
And for me it's fascinating because you know your dad
is your hero when you grow up. He's also your
person you're rebelling against, and you inherit many things from
your family that some of what you like and some
of what you don't like. And we'll talk about a
(01:27):
lot of those things and what he thinks of his
life and thinks of his influences. And I am lucky
to do this sitting with my son, Charlie Cogan, who
will be here. He is also a writer. He's a
singer songwriter, but also a good comedy writer. And so
the three generations of Cogan's will be here sitting at
(01:48):
the table interrogating my father, Arnie Cogan, and maybe we'll
all learn why Arnie Cogan is the way he is
right after.
Speaker 4 (01:55):
This Don't Be Alone with j Cogan.
Speaker 3 (02:04):
Dad, welcome to Don't Be Alone with Jay Cogan.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
Hey, thank you, and here with you.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
I'm here with Arnie Cogan and Charlie Coganlie. These are
three generations of Cogan's. This is a first in the
Don't Be Along with Jake Cogan history. Thanks for being
here and thanks for agreeing to do this. This is
kind of for me an opportunity to ask you questions
about things that I don't normally ask you about, and
(02:28):
just to have a recording, a recorded history of you.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
I mean, I thought you asked me everything up until no,
I have not asked you everything.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
And one of the you know, you're set the stage here.
You're ninety years old, just turned ninety one. Oh, just
turn ninety one?
Speaker 4 (02:42):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (02:43):
Where the hell he reads two year old?
Speaker 4 (02:45):
You luck?
Speaker 2 (02:45):
Ninety? You look not a day over ninety. I'm I'm
trying to look eighties three to get more work.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
So ninety one years old, So that's fantastic. We better
hurry and finish the podcast because we may not make
it as you can. So you are, you know, my dad, obviously,
and that's your biggest credit.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
But you also my biggest credit.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
Yes, you also have been a comedy writer for you know,
I don't know, seventy years whatever, A little lesson.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
I started in fifty late fifties, Yeah, late fifties. Yeah,
so I started when I was twenty early twenties, all right, Yeah,
so it's like seventy years.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
Yeah, stop calling me a liar.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
Too late.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
I'm going to Yeah, so let's just start with the beginning.
Give me a little bit of what you remember because
you have a great memory, usually about your childhood something. Yes,
let's talk about your childhood. What what is your first
memories of growing up in Brooklyn, New York.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
First memory ever was myself. My cousin Eugene is one
year younger than me in the high share er and
they gave him fish and he didn't like it, and
they said, then give it to Arnie. So I got
his used fish, right, my first memory ever. So that
was it. And I had a great childhood, I think.
And you know I mentioned.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
Doesn't sound great from the fish store. I gotta be honest.
Speaker 5 (04:05):
After the fish story, it was very us.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
It was the best childhood ever. I mentioned. I've had
a silly life, but a wonderful life. So we'll be
the judge. Let's get to the end. We here Brooklyn,
New York.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
What do you remember from your childhood of Brooklyn?
Speaker 2 (04:22):
Growing up in an apartment house on Ocean Parkway and Avenue. Oh,
and then we moved to King Sahway in Ocean Parkway.
I was there for fifteen years. I had a great childhood.
I played punch ball, stickball, all the Brooklyn things. What
the movies watched, comedy, shows and movies and radio shows,
and I was okay having fun, and I had a
(04:43):
bunch of kids, and we were we were the Comets.
We had an athletic club and we played bunch ball
and basketball.
Speaker 3 (04:49):
Go back to the comments. The comments were what age
did you join? The comments?
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Well, I kind of organized them. We're about twelve years old.
Speaker 3 (04:58):
You got jackets, other social athletic club. You called yourself
a social athletic club.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
There a whole bunch of them with different names. Comments
the blades, there were like fifty of them.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
And what's the difference between a social athletic club and
a gang?
Speaker 2 (05:11):
We had no knives? Okay, comment We didn't never not
go wait, we had carried pistols, but no knives.
Speaker 5 (05:17):
But like, did you like the hobnob with other social
athletic clubs?
Speaker 2 (05:23):
I told me, never the hobnob with anybody.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
Would it be any different if there were no comments?
Wouldn't you ask those same people to go play at basketball?
Speaker 2 (05:30):
You're probably right, there would be the same thing without
the jackets.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
What was the joy of the I guess I have.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
Been realizing it now, Jay, there was no joy at all.
So yeah, it was.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
It was.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
It was a nice, pleasant time. I got some home movies,
but there were no friendships that have lasted all the time.
I still don't not friendly with any of them now right,
I'm guessing most are dead. If they're not dead, they're
dying as we speak.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
So tell us about World War two, not all the battle,
but just what it means.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
You beat the Nazis, we beat the enemy. Uh. It
was a good time for me, not for America necessarily,
but I Uh, my mother was, as you know, you
live the right, little songs and stuff. She wrote songs
about the war and sending the soldiers on their way.
There was a draft board across the street from my house,
so I'd see parents crying, don't take my son, my kid.
(06:22):
I was kind of sad.
Speaker 4 (06:24):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
And there were parides going by an ocean parkway, and
my mother used to write these songs sending them off
to victory, and uh, you know, so it was lots
going on on my street. Right.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
But you were you were when the war started. You
were at six or seven, that's correct. And then when
the war ended, you were like twelve twelve years old, yeah, and.
Speaker 5 (06:43):
So eleven and a half, eleven.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
And a half, yeah, twenty five yes. And I remember, listen.
Speaker 5 (06:50):
If I were watching this podcast, I would be doing
the matter of like oh he said he.
Speaker 2 (06:54):
Was ninety one checkers here.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
But I mean, okay, So did you have a different
feeling about the war at the end.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
In the beginning, I was won, but you know what,
I was rooting for America all the way. I'd see
war movies.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
But did you know people were dying? Would you know
where people were dying?
Speaker 2 (07:11):
I know I had cousins George and Irving Goldstein. Oh,
and I kept saying to my mother one day coming home,
So I kept bothering her about that and.
Speaker 5 (07:21):
Shout out George and Irving Goldstein.
Speaker 3 (07:24):
And did they come home?
Speaker 2 (07:25):
They came home a lot, Yes, I did. And there
it was a major part of my life. World War two.
I liked war movies. Yeah, He's Little Dan. He's one
of my favorite movies. Not a war movie, but it's
a military movie, patriotic movie, patriotic movie. And so I
have pleasant memories, not of the war, but that time
my life was nice, a good time in my life.
Speaker 3 (07:48):
What was Papa Samla? What was your father?
Speaker 2 (07:50):
Like?
Speaker 3 (07:50):
I get to me he was a very austere guy,
like was didn't have a great sense of humor, was
kind of rough, had a kind of a thick accent
a little bit.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
I had a little thick accent from Russia and Ukraine.
He was kind of a quite but he was very
worried about business. His business was his life pretty much.
And as far as it's a humor, he had an
occasional he did have a dress as a humor. My
mother is you know, Pauline couldn't cook at all. My
mother was a horrible cook. I don't know if you
(08:19):
know it, Charlie, but she was a terrible cook. I know.
So that's what I had to grow up with, a
horrible cook. First week I loved her. It was crazy
about him bad cook. And then she made something and
then her mother, Ethel made something. She was not a
much better cook than my mother. And my father said, yeah,
two cooks. I thought that was pretty funny when he
says that. And I think there were one or two
(08:40):
other funny things that he said during our lifetime, but
not a lot, all right. And he said to me,
you know, later on he didn't care for my work,
my contribution to his business. But you can get into
that little well.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
I mean, so what feedback did you get from your
father when you were a kid. Before we get to
your work, but like when you're a kid, what did
he like about what you did or compliment you.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
You know, scolda and Charlie. He didn't compliment me a lot.
He was affectionate when I was younger, and they you know,
but he was so he was concerned about his business
and he was pleasant to be with. He didn't spank
me a lot. They were rough with my sister Phyllis
than they were with me.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
Why do you think.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
I don't know why. I don't know, but they kind
of left me alone to be myself, which whatever whatever
that was.
Speaker 3 (09:28):
So sister Phillis was the oldest child, so sometimes they're
six and a half years older than the older their kids. Yeah, so, okay,
but you worked for Papa Sam's your father. Your father made.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
Clothing, manufactured, children's were knitted, children's were so it was
a successful business when he started nineteen forty five of
forty four, and during the war years he did very well.
In the late forties, he did well early fifties, okay,
but not great. And he said, you're going to work
for me, and he hired me and I was paying
no attention to the business at all. I just he
(10:01):
manufactured these shirts. He get both the cloth, send them
up to upstate New York, Watertown, New York, and have
shirts made. They send shirts back to us. We followed
them and put them in boxes a dozen each, and
we try to sell them to major department store, you know.
(10:23):
And I was assalisman for a while. But I used
to work indoors a lot and move shirts around a
lot and bring them to the post office. And he
fired me twice once I wasn't paying attention. Once I
was singing too loud. I think it was a Tony
Bennetts song, and he said out, get out. And then
again he fired me a second time. I forgot why.
(10:45):
But we didn't cut it. I didn't make it, and
he had a liquidate his business. Eventually. I didn't help.
He had a liquidat And I tell the story about
when I went to look for a job after that,
and they said where'd you work before? I said, COG
and juven were and they said, can we call him
for a reference? I said, why about they calling him?
He's he's next asking yourself. He's right behind me. So
(11:07):
at the unemployment office, at them.
Speaker 5 (11:09):
Yes, being fired by your father is like, to me,
seems like a big deal. But I mean maybe to
you it was. But like I can't imagine A. I
can't imagine A working for you and B getting fired
by you.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
It was not. It was not a traumatic thing for me.
It didn't matter that much. And I would bring I
had no cars, so if I went to make out
with a girl and I had the key to the office,
I'd say, hey, you want to get together. We went
up to my dad's office on each nineteenth Street, and uh,
you know, we'd be together three or four. I was
on the on the material, on the cloth. So that
(11:45):
was my only place to hang out with women.
Speaker 3 (11:47):
The only place to make out was in your dad's office.
Speaker 5 (11:50):
Yes, and then that's that's a real turn on.
Speaker 3 (11:53):
I guess I know the kind of the kind of
gals is coming upstairs. I either come to I was
you met them, You met them, you would know.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
And once the police were guarding the players, there was
some burglaries. Hey up in the fifth floor. What's going on?
I said, Which is I believe I'm the son of
the owner? Okay, okay, well, anyway.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
Weird pickup line you want to go make out on
some kids clothes.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
It was weird. It worked like one out of forty
five times.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
Yeah, right, at least I respect the forty five attempts.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
Do you like children's were? I got something to show.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
You, the story about working for your dad. Yes, that
I remember, is you spending an entire weekend, oh, sharpening
pencils and pasting them on the walls of every room
in the middle story.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
Thanks for reminding me. So there was never a pencil,
I said, Dad, we have a pencil. I don't have
a pencil. So one weekend I said, I'm want to
do something for my dad. To the office. I spent
a weekend in the office shoppening pencils, getting boxes, pasting
them on the walls, and shopping like one hundred pencils,
putting in different boxes. And so Monday morning came, I
(13:00):
said to my dad, look at this. Dad, now we
got pencils, looking all the walls and looking at the boxes.
He said, that's nice, But why don't we just carry
a pencil in our pockets?
Speaker 3 (13:12):
And if I could grab one and carry it around themselves.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
So I said, you know that's good too. I spent
a weekend just try to impress them. I think it
didn't quite work.
Speaker 3 (13:22):
What time, what point of your life did you consider
yourself funny?
Speaker 2 (13:26):
The joke was probably more important than a lot of stuff.
When I was dating and I had a choice of
making a joke or kissing your girl good night, I'd
make the joke, so the joke would come first. The
joke came first before I came right anyway, So the
joke is always important. I was not the funniest kid
in the school, although it may have been. I was
not the class clown when you were young.
Speaker 3 (13:47):
Who were your big comedy heroes?
Speaker 2 (13:50):
In a way? Jack Benny the radio show, Bob Hope movies.
I kind of liked ab it in Cassello. I liked
a lot of comedy movies. Trying to figure the other
movie stars. It was Hope and Danny K. I liked that.
I saw that movie. Yeah, the Secret Life Walt of
Many twenty eight times, sort of look fourteen times in
(14:13):
the Hazel and Pennsylvania. And I met Danny K years later.
I told him about it. He was born with it.
He didn't care for the story. Okay, no, he liked
this story.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
When was it that you thought a that you were
funny enough to maybe be professionally funny, And what did
you What was your first sale of any kind?
Speaker 2 (14:31):
First sale is easy. First sale ever was the Mad
magazine nineteen fifty nine, February, a story I had pitched
it a few times, and they said, we've Jerry I
Fuschow because Nick wasn't around then. Jorge Hughes said, we
can't use this now, maybe with some other stuff.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
Jerry Defusio was an editor of a Mad.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
Magazine when it says an editor and so he said,
you try all the imitation magazines. And at that time
there were like twenty of them, crazy thinking nuts. And
I went to one of them. Panic. I said, we
like to you have any other stuff? I said, yeah,
I do, I'll get some and I showed him eighteen pages.
He said, we want to buy all of it. I said, wow,
(15:08):
eighteen pages. His rate was twenty five dollars a page.
I said, that's the one that I make in a
month and two months. We can't pay you now. We'll
pay you six months from now when we have the money.
I said, no, I'm not sure about that. Well, you
can turn around and go to Mad magazine if you want.
With this. I went back to Mad and they bought
two of it. I didn't know that. They said, well,
looking all over it. Ten days later I got this
(15:28):
check in the mail, which was the biggest role of
my life, Mad Magazine check, which I should have copied
in xerox, but I cashed it. So that was my
first sale to Shortly after that, I sold to Morty Gunty.
You stand up comedian, don't be alone with.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
So? Okay, So you wrote for Mad Magazine, We're excited
to go? Did you tell your parents?
Speaker 1 (16:05):
Like?
Speaker 3 (16:05):
Who'd you tell?
Speaker 2 (16:06):
Like? I told everybody. I think they knew whoever knew
about Mad. My folks didn't know what Mad was. I
told a lot of people, you're married. I had not
yet been married. Nineteen fifty I for Mad Magazine, Marty
Gunty in marriage. Later that year, I got married to
your mom, right of all people.
Speaker 3 (16:23):
Right, thank you for that?
Speaker 2 (16:26):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (16:27):
So, okay, So, but did you tell her?
Speaker 2 (16:29):
Did?
Speaker 3 (16:29):
Were you friendly with her?
Speaker 2 (16:30):
When she's certainly? I told everybody. And then I was
still writing fifty nine, I was working. I was still
working for something he wasn't all of ready yet. I
was working for furniture company. Yeah, and I quit the
furniture company at that time. Al Felson, the editor of
Mad Magazine. I said, I quit the furniture company. He said,
you know, Annie, we can't keep you supplying you with
stuff with no guarantee here and that kind of thing.
(16:53):
I understand. It's freelance, and so I continued to write
for Mad magazine freelance. All the comedian is Tony Fields
and uh, you know Caskill Comics. I wrote more for
them before that. I wrote for Don Adams. He didn't
buy anything. But the thing I liked best was a
piece I wrote for him. He used to do a
thing called the a baseball umpire, school and a lawyer.
(17:16):
I don't even familiar with his early stuff. Yeah, very funny,
but I don't remember that. And I wrote a piece
to called the school Schoolroom Routine and the.
Speaker 3 (17:25):
School room Routine.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
Yeah not a teacher, I think. And I didn't then
Don Adams's style.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
You performed it or you wrote it for Donnal I.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
Wrote it for to him. When he didn't do it,
I did it right.
Speaker 3 (17:36):
Where did you perform this?
Speaker 2 (17:38):
I went to a bar in floppersh Avenue. It was
amateur nights, seven contestants. I came in eighth I believe
really not great reactor.
Speaker 3 (17:46):
Yes, why do you think it didn't go so good?
Speaker 2 (17:48):
I don't know, but I went well some months before
that when I met your mom at a party that
herb Astro. I went to a herb Astro party New
Ye's E party, didn't like it. I left that part
and went to a party in Brooklyn in a basement and
did the comedy routine and a very pretty girl in
a red dress was laughing loud. I got a number,
(18:09):
who's at Sue Hirsh. I dated her, be married about
a year and a half later.
Speaker 5 (18:14):
So, so were you when you did the comedy at
that party? This was a New Year's Eve party?
Speaker 2 (18:19):
Right, yes?
Speaker 5 (18:20):
But were you hired to do comedy?
Speaker 2 (18:22):
No money? I was just visiting as a guest.
Speaker 5 (18:25):
But what were you doing like like because my impression
was that you had a gig or like you had
like no.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
I used to do the second school yards I used
to I used to recite my routine that I wrote
in school yards wherever I could, And so I said,
I tried at the United basement.
Speaker 3 (18:41):
Did you think you were going to be a stand
up comedian?
Speaker 2 (18:43):
Maybe?
Speaker 3 (18:43):
Never didn't want to be so it's interesting that you're
willing to sort of do the bits even though you
didn't think.
Speaker 5 (18:48):
I did the travel to Boston for a bit.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
I wanted to thinking about the cent up comedies, thinking
about somehow I drifted into I was sort of a
drift or comedy writer. I had no idea what to
want to be a dish jockey for many years.
Speaker 3 (18:59):
Well, let's back up to drifter her what point were
you a drifter?
Speaker 2 (19:02):
I was always a drifter. I didn't know what I
wanted to be. I wanted to do something other than
be an insurance salesman or you know, on a store,
or be a clothing salesman, or be a dentist. I
don't want to be a normal thing. And I was
still working full time. I worked for Olivetti that year
at fifty nine. Also, I started to work for Olivetti
Underwood to Olivetti, a calculator company, and worked there for
(19:25):
four years.
Speaker 5 (19:26):
Typewriters too, Yeah, they told.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
Typewriters and calculators, yes you have one, Yes I have,
but you were I want to back, okay.
Speaker 3 (19:33):
But you were in the calculator section of it, or.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
Just both calculators, And the main thing was a calculator.
You had a place one calculator a day on trial
someplace in New York City in your area. Mine was
the East Village calculators That cost seven hundred books and
you had to sell three a month. That's twenty one
hundred bucks.
Speaker 5 (19:52):
So these are like industrial calculators. They're not like, yeah,
they're not like a T I eighty three or what.
Speaker 2 (19:59):
Okay, but it's like an enhanced satting machine. Yeah, multiplies,
you know. Yeah.
Speaker 5 (20:04):
So the whole is but for businesses and for yeah, yeah,
you're really good. You're B to B not B.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
Two C exactly good.
Speaker 5 (20:12):
Business people listening to this podcast.
Speaker 3 (20:15):
What was the hardest part about selling oli Eddy calculators
and typewriters.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
Uh, just the hostle. I had to go place to
place on leaving a trial. Leaving that trial machine was
the hardest, but placing it like getting office, Can I
leave this here? They didn't want it? Right, I said, uh,
you know, I would do whatever I could. I fall
in a lot. I just to fall into rooms.
Speaker 3 (20:36):
A lot while you were selling OLIVEDI.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
I had thirty five pound calculator on my hand. I'd fallen. Okay.
So now first it's the principal of salesmanship, Jay is
secure attention.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
Okay, well you did secure attention. I should Yeah, you've
spent your most of your life falling into.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
Rooms and then you did it. I didn't do it.
Speaker 3 (20:52):
It's because I thought I saw you do it. But
now now that you're older, you just fall. It's okay,
it's not it's not not the comedy he.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
Thought with a walker, play the walker.
Speaker 3 (21:05):
But I so that so that's where the falling started.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
That could have been.
Speaker 3 (21:08):
Do you think the sort of goofiness of falling did
that work as a sales technique? People say, Hey, I
like that guy who falls into the rooms.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
He got their attention. So I was able to place
a few trials that way. I did get their attention.
Speaker 3 (21:21):
Yes, I would have got my attention. I don't know
what would I I'm not sure. Would have been like
a sign that I should trust this guy?
Speaker 2 (21:27):
Yeah, you know you got to point to right, you're right,
but you're right.
Speaker 3 (21:31):
I would have gotten my attention.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
I also, but didn't. When I met the head of Olivetti,
he came around and the manager said, the head of
a Dino Olivetti is coming in. What his name was?
Speaker 3 (21:42):
Uh?
Speaker 2 (21:43):
Want you to give him a demonstration, each of you
give him a demonstration and get his attention, and give
him demonstration. So everyone said him, mister Olivetti, and here's
my here's the machines, the divisuma, he's a tractors. Here's
how it works. I walked up and said hello, mister Daletty,
and I kissed him on the neck. I kissed him
(22:04):
on the neck. Left he left. Also he left said
we got attention on show.
Speaker 3 (22:10):
That's hysterical, that's really funny.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
And then that night on the on the subway, Sue
was going home and these guys are talking to see
what Cogan did today? What are you? She's you're talking
about Ernie Cogan? You know what do you do? And
they told him the sorry that I kissed.
Speaker 3 (22:25):
Okay, so you did practical jokes, yes, your whole life, Yes,
certainly when you got older. What are you the greatest
what's your greatest hits? What are your greatest practical jokes?
Speaker 2 (22:36):
Rich area? For me, you know you know all of them.
You know all of them too, But I think for
you people listening to or watching, I've always been amused
and by shepherds, this occupation shepherd so I've done a
lot of shepherd stuff in my life, and so the
first major one I did, I think was the New
(22:59):
York Time. I'm a very stage conservative newspaper. Then maybe
now I'm not sure. I placed an ad and that
was called situations and wanted, not help, wanted but situations.
I said it had STATISTICI to stenographer account, who needs work?
So I placed that add to I needed work, shepherd
to ten fluck, handy, will not cry Wolf and put
(23:25):
my phone number sent to the New York Times. Next
day I got a phone call from you, Arnold Cogan. Yes,
this is New York Times. Oh hello, we can't place
the ad. Why not? You gotta name some well, you
gotta name something more specific. I said, shepherd to ten fluck.
That's specific. They said, well that's okay, but what is
this will not cry Wolf? I said, oh, that's the
(23:48):
term using the trade, meaning you'll do a good job,
won't kid around. They said, okay, we'll place it. They
placed it. I got it next they just seeing in
the paper.
Speaker 5 (23:57):
I don't think anyone at the New York Times that
ever met a check.
Speaker 3 (24:00):
No, they don't know chef.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
So next day that night, won't call you the guy
who placed the air for the shepherd. Yeah, I got
a farm in New Jersey, twenty eight acres forty three sheep.
I need help, I said. Oh. I got very frightened.
I've hurt my leg. I can't do it it with
my friend herb Astro. I had no idea. I got
very very petrified.
Speaker 5 (24:22):
That's so funny, So like he double crossed your prank.
That's awesome.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
When Grace Kelly got married, Grace Kelly, the actress.
Speaker 5 (24:30):
Do I remember Grace Kelly, Princess Grace.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
Of Monocco, she married the Prime Minister of Monaco, Prince Vannier,
Prince So she got married, big news all winter long,
all that spring, They're getting married. So I had decided
to have invitation printed it up to the wedding. Yeah,
and said mister and missus Kelly of Philadelphia announced the marriage.
(24:55):
Had daughter Grace Grace uh to Prince Vernier Monocho Go
April ninth, nineteen fifty six, Monte Carlo, Monaco. So and
so will and will not attend tissue paper response cards.
Everything said it out to like one hundred people, and
people were nuts sort of, and but the biggest story
was Mike Wise, who got the thing for me in Korea.
(25:18):
He was in the Army at the time.
Speaker 3 (25:20):
Yeah, he got one of Dad's fake invitation.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
Yeah, so he knew he recognized my handwriting, he knew
it's from me. Didn't tell anybody. Stars and Stripes. The
Army paper found out about it. The headline Soldier invited
to a wedding of Prince Vernier Grace Kelly and he's
not going. It turns out he made it his whole story.
He said, I know both Prince Varnier and Grace Kelly.
Grace is a natural kid. I never think I never
(25:43):
thought she'd married the Prince. She workships athletes. And he said,
and I've been to the area world before. I'm going
to Hong Kong instead. Soldier turned down. So anyway, Soldier Sady.
He posted a series on cities Hong Kong. PFC Michael
Wise turned down the wedding Kelly to visit All Kong.
When he went to Hong Kong, he got the key
(26:04):
to the city. The Mayor of Freedom was the key
to the city. You turned on the wedding, Thank you welcome.
Speaker 3 (26:10):
I would fall into rooms like I've come to visit
you at work, yes, and fall into rooms too.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
Sometimes I will work, sometimes not.
Speaker 3 (26:17):
Sometimes the interrupted the flow. I didn't know what was
going on, so people could be working. It's an actual
place of work, so you'd be falling into a room
I did, and you disturb people.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
I did the same thing. I was in a U
Patrion and Tars's and buzz Cooh and were working together
in a room open door. I fell in and they
just looked at me and said, what what's going on?
I'm sorry, guys.
Speaker 3 (26:40):
Right, if you're taking a big risk from falling into
a room and you get no reaction, it sucks. Sometimes
it work, sucks, sometimes it works, where it worked more
often than not.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
Sixty four I wrote for Canada Camera A lot of
stuff you're hearing now was that kind of stuff?
Speaker 5 (26:54):
I love work forgetting.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
I did a shepherd thing. I did a bowling gall
of where you a bowl a ball in the pins,
smashed it with zillion pieces and a catch a reaction.
What the how'd that? I did a coffee shop where
they charged you not by the menu price, but sixty
cents a minute, so the fast you eat unless you
unless you pay so they catch up on. I had
(27:21):
a thing where you traveler was going to Connecticut and
the sign said Connecticut closed the whole stay. So you
want to turn around and go to Massachusetts you can. No,
I want to go right to Connette. No, no, no,
please though, So I did a lot of funny stuff.
I enjoyed sitting in that room and a lot of
people who I knew. Pat McCormick wrote for Canada Camera.
John Rivers wrote for Turtle toob Bron for Canada Camera.
(27:45):
A lot of well known writers vroote for Canada Camera.
Speaker 3 (27:49):
So so what year you were in nine sixties?
Speaker 2 (27:51):
This is sixty That was sixty three, sixty four, sixty five.
I wrote for Canda Camera again and the Less Crane Shows.
Fame was a talk show with Les Crane, good looking
up from San Francisco. He had a shotgun Mike, kind
of hot, trendy, and I didn't know much comedy. For him.
I wrote intros, interviewed guests. Then I got I was
(28:12):
telling Tony Fields, you know, I'd love to do the
Gleason Show. Marvin Monks, who wrote for her, was doing Gleason.
I eventually was called down to do Fly Down to Florida,
Jackie Gleason's so I won a break. So I flew
down there, and it turns out there were fourteen writers there.
Ron Clark is one of them, Turned Toby another and
of one of many writers that they flew down. I
was there for like four weeks and I didn't write
(28:34):
any monologue.
Speaker 3 (28:35):
Is it good money? Is it? Or he's just getting
good for me?
Speaker 2 (28:38):
It was good because it was better than what I
was making. I made more per month then than I
was writing for Olivetti and Oliveddi and Comedy. So I
made about fifteen thousand a year, which pretty good.
Speaker 3 (28:50):
At this point. You had two children going to yeah yeah,
me and my sister.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
Yeah. But I made more money there than I used
to make with the other stuff. And then next year
Johnny Carson to show read my stuff. I said, wow,
I interviewed. I met with Johnny himself and the producer Stark,
I believe, And while I was talking to him, he
was doing the golf swing and he had read my
stuff and he talked to me a bit, and then
(29:14):
like he must have liked enough of it, they hired me.
And I'm very excited about that.
Speaker 3 (29:19):
The huge development. How did you feel like like you're
at that point when you got the Tonight Show was
that like the big big time.
Speaker 2 (29:26):
I was huge, it was huge. I was very excited
and then disappointed six months later when they did not
pick up my option because I think he liked my
stuff and they were using stuff and I was not happy.
And so that end of sixty six, first half of
sixty seven, I was looking for work. I was still
doing Mad magazine and stand up comics and uh special material,
(29:48):
but not working on a show. And I moved to
What's to California to look for work. While I was
in California, John Carson, other Tonight Show called me and said,
we want you back. Can you make it? I said,
I loved We want you to back, and those wars
we want you back were thrilling to me. They want
me back, and I went back Tonight Show and I
worked together. I then worked for the next thirty years.
Speaker 3 (30:09):
Do you know much what why they let you go
and why they want you to back?
Speaker 2 (30:13):
No explanation, no no word, no word. And then I
think they felt bad from you know, the staff felt
bad that I was leaving, and that time I wasn't
the main monologue writers Red Weinberger and David Lloyd and
later on Marshall Brickman came along, so I did monologue
and carn action and so forth.
Speaker 3 (30:33):
But I mean, it's interesting. Most of the time. They're
not sentimental. Most shows, it is not sentimental.
Speaker 2 (30:38):
If they fire somebody, they never got it, never got
word from anybody. Maybe I'll find out this week why
they did that.
Speaker 3 (30:45):
Maybe you stopped falling into rooms.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay.
Speaker 3 (30:49):
So then you worked at the Tonight Show for a
little while, and then at what point did you get
the job to move to Hollywood?
Speaker 2 (30:54):
Pretty soon I got Tonight Show in sixty seven, early
sixty eight. I had met at Garrison trip to sixty
seven we watch you for a summer show. I said,
I'm not going to do a summer show out of here.
Garrison and Harry Crane, those people fan out about me,
maybe through Stevin Dye, maybe through whoever recommended me, and
(31:15):
Dean Martin Cook Show said we want you. That was
a very exciting, right. We moved. We picked up and
left Chief said Bay and moved to California.
Speaker 3 (31:24):
And that was kind of a dream of yours. They
always have come to California.
Speaker 1 (31:27):
Yeah, yeah, loving my dream.
Speaker 4 (31:40):
Don't be alone.
Speaker 3 (31:48):
So what was your greatest professional achievement.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
I got to say part of the carbern Neche, I think, yeah,
Carbernicch Tonight's show, the Burnicht show sketch where I wrote
this thing called the Pale.
Speaker 3 (32:01):
I wrote it.
Speaker 2 (32:02):
I had this idea and I wrote along with a
partner of mine, Ray Jessel, And you know, I'm gonna
describe this sketch, but it was a funny. It was
a sketch about Harvey Carman and Kerbournet. And the turns
out the therapist caused the problem for the patient. She
didn't know this, but.
Speaker 3 (32:19):
Spoiler forever shrink and complaining about this bully who used
to steal her pale.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
Yeah, yeah, and then he was a bully. He was,
he was a bully, and he was my sandbox. At
some point he said, and here's the lion, lovely, I said,
was this pale blue? Yes? Did have Daisy Dunck on
one side of his on on the other side. Yes,
you're fats of Fleischmann. You got my pale? Know you're pale.
(32:47):
Got you're paid with twenty five years ago. If you
don't give me my pale right now, I'm gonna go
with that room of one hundred dollars an hour patients
and tell him you did pp in the sandbox, right, uh,
And he said she's not to walk to the doors.
Hold on a second, opens the little desk drawer and
pulls out a pail and said here you own, and
she said, okay, hold it. This is my paal. This
(33:10):
is the Leonora Wine guardens pail. Well that's the all
I've got, and then I want my pail. I don't
have your pail. And then he started to back up
towards a closet and he started to guard the closet,
but she pushed them away, opened the door. Twelve million
pails fall out, so she finally found a pail. The
(33:33):
guy got my pails, tried to skip out, and then
simply turned around to him and said she's hold hold
on a second. Went back to him, just do this,
and he opened his desk drawer and pulled out a
tiny shovel and gave it to it. So had like
four endings. I love this sketch, and Carol loved her also.
And I never told you this, but in run Through
(33:54):
that week used applause, big reaction, and Gary Belkin said,
nobody wright who wrote that nobody writes it's funny. I
remember that line. Nobody, nobody writes it's funny, and I'm
happy with that. You know, that's very nice. That may
have been it.
Speaker 3 (34:08):
What was your biggest show? Was this disappointment?
Speaker 2 (34:10):
Hmm, good question, Jay. I'd have to get back there
on that. I don't know.
Speaker 3 (34:19):
There's no getting back to me. It's here, is now
or never?
Speaker 2 (34:23):
Was it?
Speaker 3 (34:23):
Was it the soupy sales movie?
Speaker 1 (34:25):
Was it?
Speaker 2 (34:25):
Oh? Yeah, okay, I forget that. I wrote a sooper
sales movie. I know about this, okay. Anyway, I had
no right after the lest Crane Show. I had no
idea what I was doing. Obviously from the film. You see,
they called me. Marty Ingle had told eleven towards the
producer about this writer. He found me and he hired me.
(34:45):
He didn't say, showby sample to your work because I did.
He wouldn't have hired me because I had. There was
and now ladies and gentlemen, Lua Liisa intro to the singer.
That's all he would have seen. So I punched up
stuff on an exist. The script written by a professional writer,
Art Arthur was nice guy and a good writer. Good credits,
(35:07):
and this movie is a mess. You know, super Sales
was flying around and he had I got caught in
an ionization machine and he could fly. That's basically the story.
And tab Hunter said it was the worst movie he's
ever been in his life. And I've seen pretty bad
tap Hunter movie, yeah, and I've seen bad tap Hunter movie.
(35:27):
This is worse. So that was my biggest Yeah, And
I'm sorry, Soupie you are around anymore, but I apologize.
I should have done better, but I did the best
I could.
Speaker 3 (35:36):
Who were your favorite co workers, like comedy co workers?
And what did what did? What did they do for you?
Speaker 2 (35:42):
And what did did.
Speaker 3 (35:43):
Anyone one of them mentor you or teach you?
Speaker 2 (35:46):
There was so many along, you know, they always say
along the way, he couldn't have done alone, and I couldn't.
There some many people to help me and work with me.
Pat McCormick, he's got to be way up there. I
worked with him a number of times still on the
show called The Funny Side, and I was teamed with
him for a while, and a thrill one of them
was we worked together on the segment. We had various
(36:07):
hosts coming in. At one point Jack Benny came in
to do the lighter side, the funny side of finance.
So Patrick Cormack and I would sit and write for
Jack Benny, who I loved, and I was working with
a writer who was crazy about that was very exciting
along the way. McCormick had so many bridge in lines,
(36:28):
a great he could craft a great joke.
Speaker 5 (36:31):
You know who he was, Yeah, you've talked about him.
Speaker 2 (36:33):
Yeah. He said things like I think this is his line.
So many sheep, so little time. He said he wants
a room, then a and dressing room with orson Wells
and checked his underwear. It says one size fits romania.
He had on the Tonight Show after a series of earthquakes,
(36:56):
and he was writing Tonight Show at the time. I
think I was also a time with him. But he
wrote the joke after the series of series of after quakes,
after shocks, he said the state of California has now
been declared a ride.
Speaker 5 (37:10):
He would have thrived in like the meme format.
Speaker 3 (37:13):
Yes, memes tweets. Yeah, yeah, it's very very good.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
Like one line, it's good, brilliant, one line, incredible mind,
very funny stuff.
Speaker 5 (37:25):
I feel like I would I would see so many sheeps,
so little time on my Instagram. Who have any comics?
Now do you enjoy?
Speaker 2 (37:35):
I still like Seinfelder three runs of Seinfeld and Steve Martin.
Speaker 5 (37:40):
I still like you ever watch like John Mulaney. I
like Mullilany.
Speaker 2 (37:45):
I like Mullany. Some stuff doesn't work, but most of
the stuff works very well for me. Yes, I like Mlaney.
Speaker 5 (37:52):
Do you ever have punchlines? I think of Mark normand
do you ever watch him?
Speaker 2 (37:57):
No? Okay, I mean like I like Conan a lot.
Cona's funny and silly.
Speaker 3 (38:02):
Both you you have always seen, at least as far
as I can tell as being your son. To you,
the world is interesting. As a comedy writer, you have
to see the subtleties of human endeavors and human nature.
But as a person, you like the world black and white,
like you really like, like there's right and the wrong,
or there's a good way in a bad way, like
(38:23):
it seems at odds it does at odds with it.
Speaker 2 (38:26):
And I'm different than a lot of my friends who are. Yeah,
I do, and you know I do feel strong the
right and wrong. And that's that. If somebody goes in
and twelve guys rob a jewelry store, they shouldn't be
doing that got to you know, if people are are
leaving it double even double park in that car, right,
you don't do that. You don't look double parking, leave
(38:46):
it alone, right, it's wrong. You know.
Speaker 3 (38:48):
The other day, we were in a bank yesterday and
Chase Chase Bank, and you wanted to get your credit
limit where extended. And we were there for like, I know,
twenty minutes trying to figure it out, and at a
certain point they said, wait, it's it's not incredibly they're
trance to be able to use your mobile app. There's
a limit to how much the checks can be, and
he's getting checks that are worth way more than what
(39:08):
he's allowed to do, and so he has a long
way he has to come into the bank, and he
was trying to get it extended so that he could
use the mobile app for these big checks, and they said, no,
we can't, we can't. And at the end of the meeting,
you grabbed a bunch of pens and you handed them
to me, which was the most unlike any token thing
I've ever seen in my life, Like you want to
(39:30):
take the pens as revenge, like revenge from the bank. Yes,
you're you're still you're stole two pens.
Speaker 2 (39:37):
I was wrong, but I'm glad I did it.
Speaker 3 (39:39):
But you didn't steal them. They're for people to take.
They for the customers. So you were literally taking the
pens the customers should have and taking and we're going
to take these and go. And that was the most
I've ever seen you sort of violate any kind of principle.
Speaker 2 (39:53):
At Jegger's, I've been that pennots crazy.
Speaker 5 (39:56):
Yeah, because I know you're very strange, because yeah, you're
famously very like staunch about like, yes, if you like,
I don't know, if you get a little bit of
extra change, you'll you'll give them back.
Speaker 2 (40:09):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (40:10):
I remember once we drove back to a store to
give them change.
Speaker 2 (40:14):
Yes, then I did it right at the store. That
was the right thing to do.
Speaker 3 (40:17):
What is what is the hardest part about being ninety one.
Speaker 2 (40:22):
Mornings? No, psychologically I think about it a little bit.
I want to get through the day and I want
to and I don't know. It's good questions day. And
I can't get around occasionally, I can't drive the car,
I have trouble walking, I can't play basketball, I can't
(40:43):
do the physical stuff I used to do. Right, that's
the hardest part. I can't go to the I can't
get up and go to a movie. I can't get
up and drive someplace.
Speaker 3 (40:51):
Can go to a movie. You can go to a movie.
Speaker 2 (40:54):
Not easy. I mean, if you want to go to
a movie, movie, it's just a rougher time. Yeah, I
want to go to a restaurant with friends, right, it's
a I can't just say, okay, we'll see you Thursday night.
I have to plan it out. I got it. Where
are we going? What's the parking light? Is there a
handicap parking? What's it?
Speaker 3 (41:09):
You don't need handicap parking.
Speaker 2 (41:11):
You can. You can go to a dinner. It's a
much tougher time arranging a dinner appointment with people now
that I'm in the shape I'm in now it is.
I gotta getting on a plane. I can't get on
a plane, can't go anywhere, can't fly anywhere.
Speaker 3 (41:25):
You know you could, you could, not difficult, but you could.
With difficulty, you know, right, it'd be hard.
Speaker 2 (41:31):
It is hard. So I missed that. Yeah, I missed
that a lot.
Speaker 3 (41:35):
What's the best part about being ninety one?
Speaker 2 (41:38):
Not having to go anywhere? I don't know if there
is a good part about being ninety one. The fact
that I am ninety one is a good part. That
I made it, and I think about it, and I've
gone past whatever I would think i'd live to. I'd
be gone beyond that part. You know. I used to
read the the The old joke was red the obituaries.
(42:01):
If you're not in it, it's okay, right, it's a
good day.
Speaker 3 (42:03):
Right.
Speaker 2 (42:04):
It's the fact that I hit ninety one is a
good thing. I think, what.
Speaker 3 (42:08):
Would you tell somebody who wants to be a creative
person wants to live a creative life, but is afraid
they won't succeed.
Speaker 2 (42:14):
I'd say give it a shot. Definitely try it and
see if you're working it works for you.
Speaker 3 (42:19):
If you don't long how long should you wait? We're
gonna try a week and a half.
Speaker 2 (42:22):
Yeah, no, I say give it, you know, give it
a It depends on the age of the person. If
guys like nineteen years old and wants to be a
comedy writer and I really want, I said give it,
give it a couple of years, give it two, three years,
try it out. See you work, you make you're good.
If you're good, it's going to work. If guy's talented,
If the guys can write funny, he'll work.
Speaker 3 (42:43):
I think how much of it is confidence good?
Speaker 2 (42:45):
Part of it is confidence is good. More of it
is luck right who you I know, who you can
hook up with. If you could get that first deal
or first job and they like you work, you'll keep working.
But it's a lot of luck. It'll be luck out
with the right right show to write people around you.
If you have friends that are doing this, you know,
and you're good, you're talented, and you're gifted. I think
(43:06):
you're gonna work.
Speaker 3 (43:07):
But to have that, but to have somebody give you
that shot the first time, don't you have to exude
a certain amount of confidence even if you don't have it,
you need to.
Speaker 2 (43:17):
It helps you to have confidence. But just you know,
the guys that you've been with writers out in the
room that may not have to comment, They quietly sit there.
And maybe Neil Simon may have been one of those
guys that's quietly sit there right brilliantly and handing their
paperwork right, and they're funny.
Speaker 5 (43:31):
If I have a question that's like just totally unrelated,
if you had to be one age forever, oh like
good like which of those ninety one years is like
the year that you would be willing to live for
the rest of your life.
Speaker 2 (43:43):
Eight half was like, no, no, I would say thirty one.
Speaker 5 (43:51):
So that would be like around nineteen sixty five.
Speaker 2 (43:53):
Yeah, well, well, I mean yeah, yeah, right, yeah, not
that sixty five is a great year.
Speaker 5 (43:58):
But yeah, that's a good action to me.
Speaker 2 (44:00):
You're still young enough, energy physically okay, more than okay, yeah,
and your mind is vibrant, I think, and it's good
aged to be thirty one.
Speaker 5 (44:10):
We talked about this a second ago, but and then
you kind of had sort of an answer, but not really.
Speaker 3 (44:16):
I don't know.
Speaker 5 (44:17):
That sounds like me a little Yeah, this is the
time to do the moment of joy a moment job
at ninety one? What what do you live for?
Speaker 2 (44:30):
Have one day following another of plus a pleasant day?
Right now in my life, I want a pleasant day
from you know, venerous. No, it's a year of the
rest of my life, you know, the rest of my
time here. I want nice, I want to be happy,
I want to left, I want some fun and yeah
that's it.
Speaker 5 (44:49):
What does that look like to you now?
Speaker 2 (44:52):
Like? What is what is ending up doing a little reading,
doing a little stuff in my computer and watching some
shows at night. Maybe having doesn't evolve people A lot
doesn't involve a lot of socializing.
Speaker 3 (45:04):
What about like hitting a breakfast with friends or that
kind of thing.
Speaker 2 (45:07):
I'd love Bruktor the friends of his not too uncomfortable.
I forgot to drive someplace and drive to to Hanga
in a bus or a car, get a lifted, get
a ride, get a special. I don't want too much work.
I don't want to work hard.
Speaker 3 (45:24):
The moment of joy a different, different moment of enjoy.
Speaker 4 (45:26):
Question, a moment of joy?
Speaker 3 (45:33):
If you wanted to feel true joy in your life
in a moment, to get your head in that great space? Uh,
how do you do that? How would you do that?
Would you turn on Yankee Little Dandy or or court Chester?
Or would you look at the sunset?
Speaker 2 (45:48):
Or would you go both those things? I would do
both of them, Thou that would last for not a
whole day, That would not a whole day.
Speaker 3 (45:53):
A moment moment. It's a moment of joy. It's not
a lifetime of joy.
Speaker 2 (45:57):
Doodle Daddy would do it for me. Suns that would
do it all. Oh, I've got the skin condition right.
The Sunday Morning show we have every every Sunday morning
and moment of nature at a very end, too short
for me. I want more of that. I like that
is the moment of nature where they cut to a
burder a mountain And is.
Speaker 3 (46:14):
Your very favorite food? Cast role? What's your very favorite.
Speaker 2 (46:18):
I like castrole and don't have enough of it, right, But.
Speaker 3 (46:20):
What's your very favorite food? If you had last meal,
last meal.
Speaker 2 (46:23):
I would I would tell you a heart healthy salad.
Speaker 3 (46:28):
Terrible, the worst last meal of all time.
Speaker 5 (46:32):
I've heard that joke before, and I fully was not expected.
Speaker 2 (46:36):
It's good.
Speaker 3 (46:37):
How do you want to be remembered.
Speaker 2 (46:39):
If you can? I take as a nice guy, a
funny guy. Uh gee, it was great. Good to be
around Arnie. I'm missing me. They were left with Arnie
and uh, what a terrific guy he was. I'd like,
you know, I'd like to think that what a nice
guy Arnie was. Okay, that's shame not around anymore.
Speaker 3 (47:01):
I think people will feel that way some day, some day.
So yeah, you're you're definitely a nice guy. You're known.
You know, people told me maybe they're painting up rose
of your picture because you're my dad. But people who
have worked with you are always telling me what a
wonderful experience it was to work with you, and what
a nice guy you were, and how not a lot
(47:21):
of you didn't have a lot of ego. It wasn't
a lot of gamesmanship. People felt that you were warm
and kind and generous and funny but above all funny.
Speaker 2 (47:31):
You know, So that's that's perfict. No good to know
what questions you have for us, Charlie to you, where
do I funk up? What did I do wrong?
Speaker 3 (47:42):
It's hard to suck up as a grandparent.
Speaker 5 (47:44):
Yeah, I mean maybe I did, so where you fucked up?
Speaker 2 (47:49):
Now? I didn't.
Speaker 5 (47:51):
I actually was not playing on saying the word fuck. Okay,
we're a safe space, yes, but I don't think you did.
I mean, like I think, if anything, I think like
I don't know. Sometimes I think your idea of like
what was funny or like what was entertaining when I
was like three or four years old was not what
I thought was funnier and taking like when I was
(48:13):
a kid. I feel like you would like sort of
toy with me about like random stuff, like I think
like my mom tells a story about like when she
was trying to teach me like plural nouns and like
I would be like, she'd be like one car, and
then I'd be like two cars, like whatever. But then
I think you were like one goose, two geese or whatever,
like and then or like or like or I said
(48:35):
gooses and then you're like, no, it's actually geese.
Speaker 2 (48:37):
Like I don't know.
Speaker 5 (48:38):
I think maybe, like I mean, I was maybe too
young to fully understand what was going on, but I
think sometimes that was your tendency rather than to just
like be silly and have fun, Like like you were
being silly and having fun in your own way, but
it wasn't necessarily with me, like at least at that
young age. But I think now now that I'm older,
like I said, I think we certainly can like relate more.
(49:00):
And I think I was just always kind of an
inquisitive kid, and like I always was curious about your life.
And you're like, oh, yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (49:08):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (49:10):
I didn't when you're growing up. I didn't teach you
how to ride a bike. I did, I don't think
I did. Maybe not. I didn't think you to drive
a car. I didn't do all these dad things with you. Right,
do you resent that? Is that?
Speaker 3 (49:24):
Where were you what were you doing? What were you
busy doing working? I guess I don't know. I mean
you did spend some time with me as I was
learners permit time, but not a lot. But Mom was
much more of the driver. He taught me how to
drive bicycle. I think you were involved in helping me
(49:46):
learn to ride a bicycle maybe, but not much. You
weren't around a lot.
Speaker 2 (49:51):
I mean, that's the thing.
Speaker 3 (49:51):
You weren't around a lot. Was I was a kid,
and it was And is your question.
Speaker 2 (49:58):
Felt maybe I missed something I didn't do a d
that you were.
Speaker 3 (50:01):
You probably did miss scar stuff.
Speaker 2 (50:03):
Jake. Can I help you to your size project? Right?
I remember I.
Speaker 3 (50:07):
Would never ask you to help me with my science.
It's not something of a possibility.
Speaker 2 (50:12):
But I know.
Speaker 3 (50:12):
I mean, listen, you guys were young parents, and you
were out a lot, and I was left home alone
a lot. And that's okay, that's just how it was.
One of the things one of the reasons I was
probably too involved in this guy's life is his response
to your absence in my life, and so like, I
was probably spent not enough time letting him make his
own mistakes alone.
Speaker 5 (50:33):
Actually, that was when you asked the question, like, where
did I fuck up? I thought, that's like I was
thinking about, like what did Like My first thought was, like,
what did he pass on.
Speaker 3 (50:42):
To me that made your life miserable?
Speaker 2 (50:43):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (50:44):
Yeah, that's good, good connections.
Speaker 5 (50:46):
Yeah, but I yeah, I think you were a little
I mean, like, but I don't think if it wasn't
just you, it was also Mom.
Speaker 3 (50:51):
Well I know, but I'm just saying to me. I tried.
I really do try to keep a distance and give
him space. But I don't think I'm great at it.
Oh honestly, I don't, but I'm trying to be.
Speaker 5 (51:01):
I think you, I think you think you're better at
it than you are. And I think I think Mom
is not good at it, but she knows she's not.
Speaker 3 (51:06):
Right at it. I try to be like, give give
a space.
Speaker 5 (51:09):
But that's fine anyway.
Speaker 3 (51:11):
But I've enjoyed my childhood, and thank you for my
life and my childhood.
Speaker 2 (51:16):
I love having you in our family.
Speaker 3 (51:18):
Well, I like being in the family, and I really
appreciate you being a dad and being a great model
of a person.
Speaker 2 (51:24):
I had a great time. I mean, like it's over,
Like died twenty minutes ago. No, I I was terrific.
Speaker 3 (51:29):
We still have the car ride back home, but no,
it was great.
Speaker 2 (51:33):
I mean, I can't think of a better combination.
Speaker 5 (51:36):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (51:37):
Growing up you were terrific. I mean the things that
you did and the spirits that we had, and the
you know and and your your your gift for comedy
worked out perfectly with me. You might have to pick
a kid to do something. I would pick your kids.
Speaker 3 (51:52):
When I was born. Did you hold me up and
say this, someday this boy will have a podcast?
Speaker 2 (51:57):
I said nothing like that, all right, A right, pap.
Speaker 3 (52:00):
Well, thank you for being here.
Speaker 2 (52:01):
I've learned more a little bit more about you.
Speaker 3 (52:04):
Sure, and we've learned about you. Thank you, Charlie Cogin
for being here. Charlie, and thank you. Thank you don't
be alone with j cogain audience for being here. And uh,
I appreciate you watching and listening. And if you have
any questions or comments for me or my family, write
them to dB A w j k at gmail dot com.
And uh, spend some time with people you love, sit
(52:26):
down in front of them and talk with him.
Speaker 5 (52:28):
It's it's worthwhile, preferably with cameras. Rightly.
Speaker 2 (52:31):
One more thing I would I would have liked to
have been. I haven't heard the tape, but a little
wittier this afternoon. But well, we're not going back, okay.
You have to live with what you have, okay, all right.
Speaker 3 (52:43):
All right and uh and and thanks for being here,
and thank you for being here, and we'll see you
next time.
Speaker 4 (52:48):
Don't be alone with Ja.
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