Standup or Sitcom

"I'm so thrilled as I look around the room that I'm the biggest name here."
- Don Rickles

Did you catch the broadcast of “One Night Only: An All-Star Comedy Tribute to Don Rickles” on Spike TV? Taped a couple of nights before Rickles’ May 8 birthday, the extravaganza paraded a host of luminaries across the stage of New York City’s famed Apollo Theater to honor the 88-year-old comedian: Jerry Seinfeld, David Letterman, Jon Stewart, Regis Philbin, Brian Williams, Tracy Morgan, Johnny Depp (who aptly admitted, “I don’t know why I’m here”), Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro (whose awkward attempt at comic repartee elicited as many uncomfortable squirms as his performance in “The King of Comedy”), and surefire showstoppers Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. Funny taped segments were sent in by Bill Cosby, Eddie Murphy, Jimmy Kimmel, Ray Romano with Brad Garrett, and Bob Newhart, Rickles’ best friend of several years.

The fact that the event was airing on the Spike television network was the source of several droll barbs by the guests, including Tina Fey, who told Rickles, “What an honor this must be for you to have your birthday celebrated on Spike TV, just knowing that this will air between ‘Tattoo Nightmares’ and ‘The Hunt for Bigfoot.’ It’s what your mother dreamed of in the shtetl.”

The genuine highlights of the evening were hilarious clips of Don Rickles at his unleashed best, including appearances on “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson” (he appeared on “The Tonight Show,” either as Carson’s guest or as a guest-host, more than 100 times), on “The Dean Martin Celebrity Roast” specials, and at President Ronald Reagan’s second inaugural ball in 1985, which he considers the highlight of his career.

 

Don Rickles shares a laugh with "The Tonight Show" guest host Frank Sinatra.

Don Rickles was fittingly described as a “national treasure” and a “living legend,” in truth, an extant link to the cuckoo ring-a-ding heyday of the Rat Pack vis-à-vis his friendship with Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin. Jerry Seinfeld loftily included Rickles on his “Mount Rushmore of standup comedy,” alongside Richard Pryor, George Carlin, and Bill Cosby, while David Letterman offered a more down-to-earth perspective: “Don Rickles makes life more fun!”

 

U.S. Navy Seaman First Class Donald Rickles
poses beside his hero, proud pop Joseph Rickles.

In the Moviehouse, however, what this is not about is Don Rickles’ infamy as “Mr. Warmth” and “The Merchant of Venom.” Truth be told, Don Rickles originally wanted to be an actor. In 1948, two years after being honorably discharged from the Navy, he enrolled at the Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City.

He made his big screen debut as Navy Quartermaster First Class Ruby in the World War II drama “Run Silent, Run Deep” (1958) starring Clark Gable and Burt Lancaster as contentious submarine commanders. Frank Gorshin (best known for his manic portrayal of Gotham City menace The Riddler in the campy ‘60s TV series “Batman”) was originally slated for the role of Ruby but refused to fly to the screen test, opting to drive instead, only to end up in a traffic accident. Four days later, the hospitalized Gorshin discovered his role went to Don Rickles.

 

Don Rickles (right) tries not to upstage costars Burt Lancaster
and Clark Gable in "Run Silent, Run Deep" (1958).

“My nervous-seaman portrayal turned out to be realistic,” Rickles recalled in his 2007 memoir, Rickles’ Book. “I was afraid I’d forget my lines, so I hid them under my pillow in the submarine bunk so I could keep stealing peeks.” He remembered that his character was scared of getting blown up, “I was scared of drawing a blank. It amounted to the same thing.” The New York Times critic Bosley Crowther singled out Jack Warden, Don Rickles, and Joe Maross as “shipshape members of the crew.” The movie “proved to be a hit,” Rickles recalled. “I thought Hollywood was mine. That’s the kind of dummy I was.”

(It was frustration over the lack of acting gigs that led to Rickles touring the Borscht Belt of hotels and resorts in the Catskill Mountains of upstate New York as a comedian. His reputation as an insult comic was built on a knee-jerk reaction to hecklers in the audience.)

 

Don Rickles and Ray Milland in "X: The Man with the X-ray Eyes" (1963)

In 1963, Rickles delivered an effectively nuanced performance as an avaricious carnival barker in the low-budget drive-in classic “X: The Man with the X-ray Eyes,” starring former Hollywood A-lister Ray Milland. “Some see it as an early masterpiece from director Roger Corman,” Rickles wrote in his memoir. “I saw it as a way to get to know Milland, an icon from the classic films of the forties and fifties. Milland was a classy guy.”

 

From 1964's "Muscle Beach Party," Don Rickles poses beside actor Rock Stevens
(better known as Peter Lupus, who costarred as Willy in the popular 1960s series
"Mission: Impossible" but is more beloved in the Moviehouse for his recurring role
in the cult 1982 comedy series "Police Squad!" as dimwitted Detective Norberg)

During the mid-1960s, Don Rickles, whose agent at the time was Jack Gilardi, Annette Funicello’s husband, found himself cast in a string of Annette-Frankie Avalon beach comedies: “Muscle Beach Party” (as bodybuilding trainer Jack Fanny), “Bikini Beach” (as Big Drag), “Pajama Party” (as Big Bang) and “Beach Blanket Bingo” (as Big Drop). “Back in the sixties,” Rickles observed in his autobiography, “beach flicks were America’s last gasp at innocence – before the protesters, the hippies and the whole counterculture thing. Besides, they’d shoot the entire picture in a couple of weeks…Not bad for great art.”  Rickles summed it up, “I played the schlub who didn’t understand the kids. I was the grumpy heavy. I got the laughs.”

Years later, at a state dinner in the White House, First Lady Barbara Bush complimented Rickles for his performance in “Run Silent, Run Deep,” adding, “But there’s one question I’ve always wanted to ask you, Don…Were things so bad that you had to do ‘Bikini Beach’ and ‘Beach Blanket Bingo’?”

Besides appearing in a number of dramatic series – including “The Twilight Zone,” “Wagon Train,” “The Wild Wild West,” “I Spy,” and “Run for Your Life” (which featured Rickles as a washed-up comedian who strangles a heckler) – there “was hardly a sixties sitcom I didn’t do,” he admitted in Rickles’ Book.

 

Frank Sutton (as Sgt. Carter) and Don Rickles compare
war stories on a 1965 episode of "Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C."

Recalling his appearance in 1965 on "The Andy Griffith Show," Don Rickles
wrote, "Don (Knotts') famous shakes cracked me up...
I couldn't do my lines, I was laughing too hard."

Probably not his proudest moment as an actor...Don Rickles portrays renegade
Indian Bald Eagle in a 1965 episode of "F Troop," a corny, slapstick sitcom
that could never be accused of political correctness in its depiction of
Native Americans. The show's writers orginally intended the Hekawi tribe
to be called the Fugawi (until network censors recalled the old "Where the
Fugawi?" joke). Playing on the myth that American Indians are actually
the 13th tribe of Israel, several members of the Hekawi were portrayed by
veteran Borscht Belt comedians utilizing classic Yiddish shtick.

Don Rickles poses with Don Adams in a publicity photo for a 1968 episode
of "Get Smart." In Rickles' Book, Rickles observed, "Certain guys I loved.
Certain guys I'll always love. Don Adams was one of those guys."  

The American sitcom was born on radio in the late 1920s and 1930s. Early favorites included “Amos ‘n’ Andy,” a continuation of stage vaudeville traditions, as well as “The Jack Benny Show” and “Blondie,” based on the newspaper comic strip. The earliest television situation comedies in the late 1940s were extensions of popular radio programs, like the aforementioned “The Jack Benny Show” and “The Burns and Allen Show.”

(Left) Jack Benny and guest Marilyn Monroe on "The Jack Benny Show";
(right) Gracie Allen and George Burns in "The Burns and Allen Show"

From the 1970s and beyond, the convention of throwing a standup comic into a situation comedy worked for a number of performers, among them Bob Newhart, Gabe Kaplan, Robin Williams, Bill Cosby, Roseanne Barr, Garry Shandling, Jerry Seinfeld, Tim Allen, Ray Romano, Kevin James, and Sarah Silverman. “However,” according to comedian and internet freelance writer Ramsey Ess, “this doesn’t work for everybody. For every massive hit starring a standup there are dozens that are canceled halfway through their first season.”

Although"Welcome Back, Kotter" (above) was a popular series for four seasons
(from 1975 to 1979) and made John Travolta a breakout star, Gabe Kaplan never
really looked comfortable as an actor. Years later, Kaplan seemed more at home
as a professional poker player and cohost of televised poker tournaments.

When it came to molding a sitcom to fit Don Rickles’ singular persona, the comedian once told a television producer, “My kind of humor is hard to put in a script. My voice isn’t easy to write for. I make it up as I go along. I never know what I’m going to say next. I’m best when I go out there cold. You can’t do that in a sitcom.”

Don Rickles cracks up guest Lorne Greene on the first "The Don Rickles Show."

Nevertheless, in 1972, four years after “The Don Rickles Show” - a variety program pairing Rickles’ putdown patter with the skewed comedy of six-foot seven-inch sidekick Pat McCormick – lasted all of one season, he was cast in a situation comedy coincidentally called “The Don Rickles Show,” starring as an acerbic advertising executive. According to Ramsey Ess, “Sitcom wife Louise Sorel continutes the tradition of the young, attractive female…married to the older, not classically good-looking male…” Erin Moran, best known as Joanie Cunningham on “Happy Days,” portrayed the couple’s daughter.

Network TV tries to domesticate Don Rickles in the second
"The Don Rickles Show," costarring Louise Sorel.

Each episode began with the star warming up the studio audience, seated in bleachers. “They’re calling it ‘The Don Rickles Show,’” he would say. “Know why? If anything goes wrong, I get the blame.” In Rickles’ Book, he wrote, “Long story short: In 1972, ‘The Don Rickles Show’ hits the airwaves. Long story even shorter: In 1972, ‘The Don Rickles Show’ is canceled. Two years later, a certified public accountant starts up his own sitcom. Ever hear of ‘The Bob Newhart Show’?”

Don Rickles was certainly not alone among standup comics who marched to the rimshot of a different drummer and found themselves courted by network suits for an ill-fitting sitcom. Phyllis Diller was a housewife with five children who started her comedy career in the mid-1950s as the host of a 15-minute program on local Oakland, California, television, appropriately titled “The Homely Friendmaker,” leading to her enduring persona of a cynical, tousle-haired hausfrau in a frumpy housedress, a characterization that predated Roseanne Barr’s depiction of a working-class “domestic goddess” by three decades.

“The Pruitts of Southampton” (aka “The Phyllis Diller Show”) was an attempt in 1966 to transform the star into a TV comedienne like Lucille Ball. The weak premise flip-flopped the setup behind “The Beverly Hillbillies,” depicting an incredibly wealthy family suddenly cleaned out by the IRS who vainly struggle to maintain their grandiose lifestyle in a posh Long Island neighborhood. The series lasted one season.

"Saving Grace" star Brett Butler poses with costar Dave Thomas.

Brett Butler, a Montgomery, Alabama-born standup comic who started out on television as a performer and writer on Dolly Parton’s shortlived 1987 variety series “Dolly,” was cast in 1993 as a redneck version of Roseanne’s blue-collar “domestic goddess” in the ABC series “Grace Under Fire,” playing a recovering alcoholic and single mother raising three children in a small Missouri town.  Although the sitcom was initially highly rated, productions eventually suffered from Butler’s contentious and erratic behavior, stemming from substance abuse and sojourns in and out of rehab, until ultimately, she was dismissed from the show in the fifth season.

The year 1994 saw the premiere of “All-American Girl,” a sitcom inspired by the standup routines of Margaret Cho (above), who co-created the series and starred as an American woman at odds with her traditional Korean parents. Cho, an outspoken supporter of women’s rights and LGBT rights who was born into a Korean family in San Francisco, bases much of her comedy material on hot-button topics concerning racism and sexuality.

Criticized by a network executive for her round face, Cho shed weight so rapidly that her kidneys failed. While the American-Asian community protested the series’ racial stereotyping, Cho was variously told by producers that she was “too Asian” and “not Asian enough.” Despite the presence of A-list guest stars Oprah Winfrey, Quentin Tarantino (whom Cho briefly dated), and, among others, Jack Black, “All-American Girl” was canceled after 19 episodes. Cho subsequently became addicted to drugs and alcohol, culminating in a drunken performance at a Louisiana college where she was booed off the stage. In 2008, she starred in the shortlived reality show-sitcom hybrid “The Cho Show” on VH1, featuring her real-life, scene-stealing parents.

Undoubtedly one of the most controversial female insult comics, Lisa Lampanelli once worked as a journalist for Hit Parader, as a copy editor at Popular Mechanics magazine, and as an assistant editor at Rolling Stone magazine. She was a fact checker and chief of research at Spy magazine before starting her career as a standup. She would explain she abandoned journalism for comedy for the pay raise and because “I get to say the n-word on stage.” Her profanity-riddled material, slurring minorities, celebrities, and homosexuals (although she, like Margaret Cho, avidly supports the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender community), earned her the nickname “Queen of Mean.”

A boisterous, foul-mouthed fixture on Comedy Central’s celebrity roasts, Lisa Lampanelli, along with Blue Collar Comedy Tour buddies Jeff Foxworthy, Bill Engvall, and Larry the Cable Guy, as well as Dave Thomas (who costarred with Brett Butler on “Grace Under Fire”) and Samantha Bee (best known as a correspondent on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show”), provided her voice for the 2013 not-for-kids animated series “Bounty Hunters” on the CMT (Country Music Television) network.

The cast of the second "The Jeff Foxworthy Show": G.W. Bailey, Foxworthy,
Jonathan Lipnicki (best known as the annoyingly precocious son of Renee
Zellweger in "Jerry Maguire"), Ann Cusack, older sister of actors Joan
and John Cusack, and (in the tire swing) Haley Joel Osment

Speaking of Jeff Foxworthy, two different networks tried to adapt his standup persona to consecutive sitcoms, both called “The Jeff Foxworthy Show.” The first “Jeff Foxworthy Show,” which tried to de-redneck-tify the comedian by setting the show in Bloomington, Indiana, premiered on ABC in 1995 and was promptly canceled after one season. In 1996, NBC picked up “The Jeff Foxworthy Show” and relocated the setting to a fictional town in Georgia, jettisoning all the original costars except for Haley Joel Osment (“The Sixth Sense”), who continued his role as Foxworthy’s son, and adding Bill Engvall. The revamped series was canceled after a single season. Foxworthy had better luck on TV hosting the game shows “Are You Smarter Than a 5^th Grader?”, “The American Bible Challenge,” and “The American Baking Competition.”

Probably one of the unlikeliest of subjects for a sitcom, Andy Kaufman disliked being labeled a comedian, preferring instead “song-and-dance man,” although he could have been best described as a performance artist – eschewing the jokes and anecdotes of traditional comedy in favor of ruses, pranks, and deadpan routines that twisted definitions of humor and tested audience acceptance.

The producers of the hit TV sitcom “Taxi” (1978-1982) must have noticed something special in Kaufman when he was cast as the garage mechanic, Latka Gavras (above), a gentle, lovable, but odd immigrant from an undefined Eastern European country (inspired by Kaufman’s stage character “Foreign Man”). Kaufman grew weary of the wide-eyed, babe-in-the-woods gag, and, feeling he had lost creative control of the character, pressed the show’s writers to give Latka a multiple personality disorder, leading to his persona as the smooth-talking, chauvinistic lounge lizard called Vic Ferrari.

Another comedian who challenged audiences and perplexed network suits, Chris Elliott, the son of Bob Elliott (from the famous radio-television comedy team Bob and Ray), first came to light in the mid-1980s as a writer on NBC’s “Late Night with David Letterman.” He frequently appeared on-camera in various quirky cameos: “The Guy Under the Seats,” “The Fugitive Guy,” “The Conspiracy Guy,” “The Panicky Guy,” and, among others, “Marlon Brando.”

Real-life father and son Bob Elliott and Chris Elliott costar in "Get a Life."

For two seasons, from 1990 to 1992, Elliott starred in the Fox sitcom “Get a Life,” playing a 30-year-old paperboy who lives in an apartment above his parents’ garage. Dad and mom were portrayed by real-life pop Bob Elliott and Elinor Donahue (a sitcom veteran of “Father Knows Best,” “The Andy Griffith Show,” and “The Odd Couple”). A number of Fox muckety-mucks regarded Chris’ character as insane and disdained the series as too disturbing (Elliott would be repeatedly killed during the series) but allowed the show to continue.

Even more off-the-wall was Chris Elliott’s starring role as U.S. Marshal Monsanto in “Eagleheart” (above), which aired in 15-minute episodes on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim from 2011 to 2014. Produced by Conan O’Brien’s production company, Conaco, the outrageous parody of prime-time fodder like “Walker, Texas Ranger” became a cult favorite for its surrealistic non sequiturs, blood-spattered action and gruesome deaths played for slapstick laughs.

Comedian Andy Dick (like Lisa Lampanelli, a familiar face on Comedy Central roasts) started his comedy career in 1992 on the Fox network’s “The Ben Stiller Show,” alongside Janeane Garofalo and Bob Odenkirk. He subsequently became as well known for his controversial behavior as for his eccentric performances, amassing a prodigious rap sheet including arrests for drug possession, substance abuse, indecent exposure, public urination, and sexual battery, to name but a handful.

The cast of "Get Smart" 1995: Andy Dick, Elaine Hendrix, Don Adams, Barbara Feldon

In the who-the-hell-asked-for-it 1995 reboot of the classic ‘60s spy spoof “Get Smart” (originally created by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry), Andy Dick was cast as Zach Smart, the bumbling son of Maxwell Smart (Don Adams), now the Chief of the counterintelligence agency CONTROL, and his congresswoman-wife, the former Agent 99 (Barbara Feldon). After seven miserable episodes, Dick ducked out to avoid the series’ inevitable cancellation and took up the more satisfying role of the awkward, pratfall-prone reporter Matthew Brock on the NBC sitcom “NewsRadio,” from 1995 to 1999.

As a standup comedian, Andrew Dice Clay (born Andrew Clay Silverstein) started out doing impressions of John Travolta and Jerry Lewis as “The Nutty Professor.” His stint as a regular at The Comedy Store in Los Angeles led to a number of acting jobs on TV (“M*A*S*H,” “Diff’rent Strokes”) and in movies (“Pretty in Pink,” “Casual Sex?”). He had a recurring role as mobster Max Goldman on the serialized television drama “Crime Story,” starring Dennis Farina. Before his starring role in the 1990 “rock ‘n’ roll detective” action flick “The Adventures of Ford Fairlane,” Clay had turned his focus back to standup, creating the “Dice” character, a foul-mouthed, misogynistic, racist insult-comic in a designer leather jacket.

Andrew Clay and Cathy Moriarty pose with
their "Bless This House" sitcom family.

In 1995, Andrew Clay, minus the “Dice,” tried to clean up his image – to a degree – as a lazy, sarcastic father and husband in the CBS sitcom “Bless This House,” costarring Cathy Moriarty (best known for her breakthrough role as Vickie LaMotta in “Raging Bull”). The show, which was canceled mid-season after 16 episodes, would be ranked by TV Guide in 2002 as #48 on a list of the 50 Worst Shows of All Time. In the shortlived 1997 sitcom “Hitz” on the now-defunct UPN. Clay (with “Dice” back in place) starred as a sleazy record industry executive, not unlike his former standup persona. The New York Times’ Caryn James called it “relentlessly unfunny,” while Entertainment Weekly’s Ken Tucker rated it as one of the worst series of the year, writing, “Unable to read a line so that the words will cohere as a sentence, (Clay) still gets work as a professional misogynist.” “Hitz” was canceled after ten episodes.

The two sides of Andrew Dice Clay: (left) the misogynistic poster child as
the "Dice Man," (right) the voice of the cute patriarch in ads for Sprint.

Clay appeared as himself in the eighth and final season of the HBO series “Entourage,” and in 2013, he delivered an understated, critically acclaimed performance as Cate Blanchett’s blue-collar brother-in-law Augie in writer-director Woody Allen’s “Blue Jasmine.” Recently, Andrew Dice Clay has never been so adorable as the ethnic voice of a hamster, the patriarch of an odd clan in a series of unfathomable commercials for Sprint’s “framily” packages.

Longtime standup pals Norm Macdonald and Artie Lange share
the big screen with Don Rickles in the 1998 comedy"Dirty Work,"
co-written by Macdonald and directed by Bob Saget.

Norm Macdonald, a comic with an ever-present, all-knowing smirk, was writing for the sitcom “Roseanne” when producer Lorne Michaels hired him to anchor Weekend Update on NBC’s “Saturday Night Live,” from 1995 to 1998. Typical of Macdonald’s deadpan news reportage came in the wake of the announcement of Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley’s divorce: “She’s more of a stay-at-home type, and he’s more of a homosexual pedophile.” Macdonald’s repeated on-air references to O.J. Simpson as a wife-murderer eventually irked Don Ohlmeyer, president of NBC’s west coast division and a personal friend of Simpson’s, to the degree that he demanded Macdonald be fired. Publicly, the reason for the dismissal was that Macdonald was simply “not funny.”

For three seasons, from 1999 to 2001, Macdonald starred in the ABC sitcom “The Norm Show” (above), as a former NHL hockey player banned from the sport for life because of gambling and tax evasion and sentenced to community service as a social worker. The series featured Laurie Metcalf (Roseanne’s kid sister on “Roseanne”), Nikki Cox (“Unhappily Ever After”), Max Wright (the flustered dad on “ALF”), Faith Ford (a five-time Emmy Award nominee for “Murphy Brown”), and fellow standup comic Artie Lange. A 2003 sitcom on Fox, “A Minute with Stan Hooper,” which found a watered-down Macdonald as a New York City newspaper columnist who relocates his family to Wisconsin for a job as a television commentator (think of a small-town version of “60 Minutes’” Andy Rooney), was canceled after a mere six episodes.

Louis C.K., an often caustic, always fiercely independent comic, was initially discouraged by a less than spectacular impact on the emerging standup scene in Boston in the mid-1980s, but, in his own words, “Failure is the road to becoming a great comedian.” In 2006, Louis created “Lucky Louie” (above), a situation comedy that aired on HBO for one season. He portrayed a husband and a father of a four-year-old daughter, an unsophisticated working-class family with more than a passing resemblance to the families in Norman Lear’s classic sitcoms, starting with “All in the Family.”

Twenty-five years after struggling behind the mike in Boston comedy clubs, Louis C.K. achieved greatness in 2010 as the creator, star, writer, director, and sometimes editor of the critically lauded FX network series “Louie,” a fictionalized take on his real life as a comedian and divorced father of two daughters.

Sam Kinison (above), one of the most politically incorrect, misogynistic geniuses who ever screamed and stomped across the standup stage, was the son of a Pentecostal preacher. As a youth, Sam followed in his father’s footsteps as a fervid tent-show evangelist, whose impassioned sermons carried over to his rabid fire-and-brimstone rants as a comedian. (Kinison’s car license plate read “EX REV.”) His breakthrough as a standup came in a 1984 HBO special hosted by Rodney Dangerfield.

In 1985, Kinison made his acting debut in a lurid, post-apocalyptic biker flick titled “Savage Dawn,” starring Lance Henriksen, George Kennedy, William Forsythe, Richard Lynch, and Karen Black (“I could suck-start a Harley!”). Sam played a small-town barber and born-again Christian who gets his throat slit when he serenades a biker named Zero with “Amazing Grace.” Years later, Henriksen (best known for his role as Bishop the android in “Aliens”) remarked, “That was one of those f***ing movies, man…I mean, anything with the word ‘savage’ in the title…it’s got problems.”

The following year, Sam Kinison had a brief but unforgettable cameo in the Rodney Dangerfield comedy “Back to School” (below) as an intense college professor and Vietnam War veteran: “Well, thank you, Mr. Helper…I was up to my knees in rice paddies with guns that didn’t work!”

Rodney Dangerfield, whose acting career didn't take off until he was 59 with
a scene-stealing role in 1980's "Caddyshack," was never bitten by the sitcom bug,
although he guest-starred on a number of sitcoms, including "Suddenly Susan,"
"The Simpsons," "Home Improvement," and "George Lopez."

After guest spots on the TV series “Married…with Children” and “Tales from the Crypt,” Kinison landed a costarring role in 1991 in the Fox sitcom “Charlie Hoover,” with Tim Matheson (“Animal House”) as a nerdish accountant and Sam as the 12-inch-tall figment of Matheson’s psyche, an inner voice screaming for justice. (The premise foreshadowed the 1995-1995 Fox sitcom “Unhappily Ever After,” which featured the voice of comedian Bobcat Goldthwait as a smoking, drinking plush toy rabbit that serves as the husband’s alter ego.) “Charlie Hoover” was canceled after seven episodes. A year later, on April 10, 1992, Sam Kinison died from injuries suffered in a head-on collision on a highway west of Needles, California.

Sam Kinison as Tim Matheson's Lilliputian conscience in "Charlie Hoover"

Before his untimely death, Sam Kinison was said to be interested in starring in a film called “Atuk,” a fish-out-of-water comedy about an Inuit hunter adapting to life in a modern city. Based on the 1963 novel The Incomparable Atuk by Mordecai Richler, author of The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz and the Jacob Two-Two children’s books, the as yet unfilmed script, which satirizes racism, materialism, and popular culture, has become the stuff of urban legend in Hollywood, blamed for a paranormal curse which has killed all the actors who ever showed an interest in the lead role, including, besides Kinison, John Belushi, John Candy, and Chris Farley.

Adam McKay (the writer-director of Will Faerrell comedies “Anchorman,” “Talladega Nights,” “Step Brothers,” “The Other Guys,” and “Anchorman 2”) once pitched a screenplay titled “Eskimo in New York” to Ferrell, who has repeatedly maintained it would not be a good movie and refused to be a part of it.

As alluded to at the onset of this sinuous trek through the Moviehouse, Robin Williams – a onetime protégé of sorts of John Houseman in the Advanced Program at the Julliard School for performing arts -was one of the select comedians to successfully reinvent himself as a sitcom star, in the 1978 to 1982 series “Mork & Mindy.” Thirty years later, the Academy Award-winning actor returned to situation comedy, as a Chicago advertising executive, in “The Crazy Ones,” costarring Sarah Michelle Gellar.

Robin Williams in "Mork & Mindy" (left) and in "The Crazy Ones" (right)

“The Crazy Ones,” which received mixed to average reviews, was canceled in 2014 after one season. Morgan Jeffrey, writing for the British entertainment website Digital Spy, commented that Williams “can’t resist falling back on his old bag of tricks…cartoon voices, gurning, rambling wordplay.” Ross Bonaime of the digital magazine Paste noted, “I don’t know how it does it, but ‘The Crazy Ones’ continues to be one of the most boring comedies with one of the most amazing casts on the air today.”

A recurring theme here is the failure of network executives and television producers to successfully tailor a continuing situation comedy to fit a standup comic’s particular (if not peculiar) material, delivery, and personality. Which brings us all the way back to Don Rickles.

Don Rickles told his "Kelly's Heroes" costar Clint Eastwood, "You'd be
great, Clint, if you'd ever learn to talk normal and stop whispering."

On the big screen, one of Don Rickles’ most popular roles was as a scheming supply sergeant called “Crapgame” in the 1970 World War II comedy “Kelly’s Heroes,” starring Clint Eastwood, Telly Savalas, Donald Sutherland, and Carroll O’Connor. “They told me the shoot would take three weeks,” Rickles reminisced in his autobiography. “It took six weeks.” Rickles thought, “Maybe this would do wonders for my acting career. Didn’t exactly happen that way. My next role was in a film called ‘The Love Machine.’”

In an attempt to find a TV sitcom “fit” for one of comedy’s “irregulars,” Don Rickles was cast in the lead role as a U.S. Navy Chief Petty Officer in the service comedy “C.P.O. Sharkey,” which aired on NBC from 1976 to 1978. Rickles noted, “I still worried that it was hard – if not impossible – to write for me, but writers were eager to prove me wrong.” He ended up liking the character. “He was a crazy Navy chief tailored after my own craziness,” he wrote. “The audience liked him enough to keep him around for a couple of years.”

"C.P.O. Sharkey" star Don Rickles sizes up
6' 7" costar Peter Isacksen. 

Although he admitted, “I can hardly call it landmark television,” the sitcom’s greatest moment came when Rickles, who had accidentally broken Johnny Carson’s treasured cigarette box as a guest host on “The Tonight Show,” was confronted by Carson during a taping of “C.P.O. Sharkey” in front of a studio audience.

Don Rickles: "Ladies and gentlemen, Johnny Carson!"
Johnny Carson: "They know who I am!"

In the fall of 1993, the Fox network, home of television’s most dysfunctional sitcom families – from “Married…with Children” to ‘Unhappily Ever After” and “The Simpsons” to “Family Guy” – cast Don Rickles as an abrasive used car salesman and father of a Manhattan psychologist, played by angst-ridden comic Richard Lewis, in “Daddy Dearest.” The pilot episode was riddled with anti-gay, anti-Arab, anti-Japanese, and anti-everyone else gags, prompting one reviewer to observe that the program “plumbs new depths for crudeness, even by Fox standards, breathtaking as this is.” Rickles responded to the overwhelming criticism by explaining, “Hey, it’s only a joke. My whole act is making fun of people. It’s not just one group. It’s everybody.”

Don Rickles and Richard Lewis in "Daddy Dearest"...By this time,
standup comic Lewis was a veteran of three sitcoms: "Harry," starring
 Alan Arkin, "Anything But Love," costarring Jamie Lee Curtis, and
"Hiller and Diller," with Lewis and Kevin Nealon as comedy writers.

Richard Lewis said, “I’ve been a standup comedian for almost 25 years. I never would be part of a show unless it was, one, funny, and two, would serve a purpose. I’m a firm believer in freedom of speech…Don’s perspective is, ‘Hey, man, we are all the same. Can we just get along in the same boat?’ His humor is not mean-spirited…it’s not an attempt to separate people…His character is someone who’s old-fashioned…from another generation…not racist.” Rickles’ final word on the series, which lasted two months before cancellation, was, “I don’t get into that political correctness stuff. Funny is funny…You can’t please everybody.”

In Rickles' Book, Don Rickles wrote, " 'Could you ask Bob to speak more clearly?'
I said to Marty. I heard someone in the crew sarcastically whisper, 'Lots of luck.' "

“Daddy Dearest” closed the door on the television career of Don Rickles, who subsequently returned triumphantly, to a degree, to the silver screen. Cast as Robert De Niro’s stone-faced pit boss in 1995’s “Casino,” Rickles recalled the “gig” as “great.” He wrote, “Big deal for me: De Niro runs the casino and I’m his number-one man. I’m with him night and day.” Rickles remembered, “I was excited to be working with all these Academy Award winners…And because Vegas had been my territory for many decades, I felt comfortable on the set.” When director Martin Scorsese approached Rickles for the role, the filmmaker told him, “I see you more as a presence rather than a talker.” Rickles thought, “That’s a twist. A silent Rickles. But will the world buy it?”

Rickles was certainly not at a loss for words in the three “Toy Story” movies (not to mention a number of film shorts) as the sarcastic, kvetching Mr. Potato Head. “I became a hero to a whole generation of children,” he observed in Rickles’ Book. “My own grandchildren aren’t impressed that I’ve played Vegas for fifty years, but they are impressed that their Pop-Pop is Mr. Potato Head.”

For years, Don Rickles' traditional entrance theme has
been the Spanish bullfighter anthem "The Great Manolete
(La Virgen de la Macarena)." He said, "I always
pictured myself facing the audience as a matador."