Speaker 1: Life not easy.
Speaker 2: That easy. You can't trust doc disease that every all
Speaker 2: mixed up. You can think my proctologist used to be
Speaker 2: a photographer. Hey, he took X ray told me to
Speaker 2: bend over and say cheese.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Amusing Jews, where we celebrate Jewish contributors and
Speaker 1: contributions to American popular culture. I'm Jonathan Friedman.
Speaker 3: And I'm Joey Angelfield.
Speaker 1: Producer engineer Mike Tomrn is working somewhere behind the scenes.
Speaker 1: Amusing Jews is a project of a Dot Javareem Congregation
Speaker 1: for Humanistic Judaism, the Jewish Museum of the American West,
Speaker 1: and Atheist United Studios. Hey, Joey. If there was ever
Speaker 1: a comedian who surpassed the one liner prowess of Henny
Speaker 1: young Man, it was Rodney Dangerfield, the disheveled, bug eyed
Speaker 1: curmudgeon who got no respect.
Speaker 3: We're happy to talk again with Michael Seth Starr, a
Speaker 3: prolific biographer whose books include Nothing Comes Easy The Life
Speaker 3: of Rodney Dangerfield. Michael, welcome back to Amusing Jews.
Speaker 4: Great to be back, Thanks for having me on.
Speaker 3: How did you first become aware of Rodney Dangerfield and
Speaker 3: what were your first impressions, it was the Tonight Show,
Speaker 3: tell you.
Speaker 2: The Truth on my wife, what I would never have
Speaker 2: secon now we got undressed. We can't stop laughing.
Speaker 4: I was probably, you know, in my early teens at
Speaker 4: that point and saw him with Johnny Carson and was
Speaker 4: just amazed at I thought Rickles, with his rapid fire
Speaker 4: delivery was was was, you know, one of a kind.
Speaker 4: But the dangerfield was right up there with him. I mean,
Speaker 4: just one after another one liners. One liner is very
Speaker 4: self deprecating, unlike Don Rickles, and and always his humor
Speaker 4: was was directed at himself sexual situation sometimes, but it
Speaker 4: was always with him as the loser.
Speaker 2: I got no sex life. Ten years ago, my put
Speaker 2: me on hold.
Speaker 4: And I was just amazed at how quick quickly his
Speaker 4: mind were and any anything that Carson brought up with him,
Speaker 4: he had a he had a joke for and and
Speaker 4: if it didn't hit, he had, you know, he would
Speaker 4: come up with something else. You know, five seconds later.
Speaker 4: His whole demeanor was you know, as you mentioned, bug eyed,
Speaker 4: and he was like moving around and he was mopping
Speaker 4: his brow and you know, I'll tell you know, it
Speaker 4: was fixing his tie. It was just something I'd never
Speaker 4: seen before, and he wasn't your typical stand up comedian
Speaker 4: at that time. It would just, you know, even on
Speaker 4: the Tonight Show, would come out, you know and just
Speaker 4: sort of stand stock still and look around. He was
Speaker 4: always in motion, herky, jerky and just obviously loving what
Speaker 4: he was doing. And Carson also was was you know,
Speaker 4: would fall off his chair laughing and again, like like
Speaker 4: Don Rickles, he was one of Carson's favorite guests on
Speaker 4: the Tonight Show.
Speaker 1: I was watching a lot of clips of him in
Speaker 1: preparation for this Inner You and You're right like rapid fire.
Speaker 1: He memorized so many of his jokes. It's kind of amazing.
Speaker 1: He had a joke for everything. As you're saying, I
Speaker 1: started to think that maybe that herky jerkiness between jokes
Speaker 1: that's ever so subtle might have been like him thinking
Speaker 1: about the next joke.
Speaker 4: He was ready for any situation, and he would sort
Speaker 4: of map them out on a board as to when
Speaker 4: he would tell what joke jokes he would tell when
Speaker 4: he when he came out to do a stand up
Speaker 4: jokes he would tell when he sat down on the
Speaker 4: couch before Johnny spoke to him, and then jokes he
Speaker 4: would tell as Johnny as the conversation began, So he did.
Speaker 4: So I can see that, as you say, Jonathan, that
Speaker 4: he he could could have been thinking about the next thing,
Speaker 4: but he did have it in his own mind, sort
Speaker 4: of worked out how he was going to come across,
Speaker 4: and he took it. He took it very seriously, particularly
Speaker 4: the Tonight Show. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think even to this day that's really the highlight
Speaker 1: reel is primarily from the Tonight Show.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm not surprising that surprising.
Speaker 1: Dangerfield's perseverance stood out to you while you were researching
Speaker 1: the book. How did he finally break out in his forties?
Speaker 4: I think perseverance is the perfect way to describe him.
Speaker 4: We can get into this a little bit more in depth,
Speaker 4: but you know, he started out as a sort of
Speaker 4: a stand up comics Slash MC and the Cat Skills,
Speaker 4: and then he came to New York, he had changed
Speaker 4: his name. He basically was a stand up comic from
Speaker 4: roughly nineteen forty to nineteen fifty and it never quite
Speaker 4: worked out for him in that phase of his career.
Speaker 4: And he had gotten married around nineteen fifty to a
Speaker 4: singer named Joyce Indig, who he met in the clubs,
Speaker 4: and I think he realized at that point his career
Speaker 4: was sort of he was sort of in neutral as
Speaker 4: a comic in an MC. He got some write ups,
Speaker 4: but not many. He maybe made a couple of hundred
Speaker 4: bucks on the weekend, always writing jokes. But he decided
Speaker 4: to completely shift gears, drop out of show business and
Speaker 4: for the next decade, from the ninth from about ran
Speaker 4: nineteen fifty to fifty one to the early sixties, he
Speaker 4: became a paint and the luminium siding salesman a year
Speaker 4: in northern New Jersey and not far from where I
Speaker 4: live actually. And but he so perseverance in the sense
Speaker 4: that he oh, he even when he was selling paint,
Speaker 4: which he called the color his his quot was, you know,
Speaker 4: it's very was a very colorless business, and and we
Speaker 4: was selling aluminum siding. He was a He was a
Speaker 4: funny salesman, but he was he kept on writing jokes.
Speaker 4: He was contented. Even when he wasn't on stage performing,
Speaker 4: he was writing jokes. So I think he always had
Speaker 4: it in the back of his mind that if the
Speaker 4: businessman life did not work out, he would return to
Speaker 4: the clubs. And that is exactly what he did in
Speaker 4: nineteen sixty sixty one, still working his day job, but
Speaker 4: east himself back before live audiences in small to medium
Speaker 4: sized clubs in the New York area for the most part,
Speaker 4: in that early second phase of his career.
Speaker 1: You have some great pictures of him as a younger,
Speaker 1: kind of failed comic in the book as well, where
Speaker 1: he looks pretty conventional, almost dapper. And then maybe it
Speaker 1: took the aluminum siding and the you know, being a
Speaker 1: working man to sort of reinvent himself as the working
Speaker 1: man's comic, because he's very authentic in the way that
Speaker 1: he presents himself as a disheveled every man who's you know,
Speaker 1: kind of miserable.
Speaker 4: There was sort of the early shots of him when
Speaker 4: he was known as Jack Roy, which we'll talk about.
Speaker 4: You know, yeah, there was sort of like you know,
Speaker 4: posed glamour shots. You know, his hair was slicked back,
Speaker 4: and you know, you know, he was a handsome guy,
Speaker 4: and you know he was, you know, the one of
Speaker 4: those looking like that and the typical glossies that you
Speaker 4: had that that entertainers, singers, dancers, comics at that point
Speaker 4: had to hitch themselves around and and and his his
Speaker 4: image certainly changed when he when he when he came
Speaker 4: back the second time around, when he went from Jack
Speaker 4: Roy to Rodney Dangerfield, his mode of dress changed, and
Speaker 4: his whole his whole physical milieu, I guess is what
Speaker 4: you could call it, was adapted to that persona uh
Speaker 4: you know, and and that on stage personality.
Speaker 3: Enjoying the show click like and subscribe. Dangerfield was chronically
Speaker 3: miserable adding authenticity to his self deprecating jokes. Was that
Speaker 3: a secret to a success?
Speaker 4: I think so. He had a very very unhappy childhood.
Speaker 4: His fire was a vaudevillian Phil Cohen, but he took
Speaker 4: the stage name of Phil Roy and he he toured
Speaker 4: the vaudeville circuit with his brother, Rodney's uncle, and they
Speaker 4: called themselves Roy and Arthur, and they were they were
Speaker 4: actually fair to middlingly successful as a vaudeville team. They
Speaker 4: met Charlie Chaplin and they performed some big names. But
Speaker 4: that being said, Rodney never he was Rodney was born
Speaker 4: Jacob Cohen. Jacob never saw his father, He saw him
Speaker 4: maybe twice a year. That his father was always on
Speaker 4: the road. Didn't have the greatest marriage with Rodney's mother,
Speaker 4: who was a very very cold woman didn't show Rodney
Speaker 4: really any love or attention, so he really was on
Speaker 4: his own. I mean, he he, he. There's some quotes
Speaker 4: from him in the book where he talks about seeing
Speaker 4: his father for maybe two hours, you know, for a
Speaker 4: visit once a year or twice a year, and they
Speaker 4: did go to maybe to Coney Island or into Manhattan.
Speaker 4: His father would buy him an ice cream, but they
Speaker 4: didn't talk much. So he didn't really have a father.
Speaker 4: And his mother was not the stereotypical Jewish mother doating
Speaker 4: on him and smothering him and both during his career.
Speaker 1: She was.
Speaker 4: The complete opposite of that very very cold woman. They
Speaker 4: had a very icy relationship. So he was on his own,
Speaker 4: and I think he used comedy just as sort of
Speaker 4: an escape outlet for his pretty miserable childhood. I mean,
Speaker 4: it wasn't it wasn't miserable in the fact that they
Speaker 4: were dirt poor or he didn't have a roofover said
Speaker 4: he did, but there was no love there, and I
Speaker 4: think he was sort of always looking for that love
Speaker 4: through his life. Throughout his life, and I think he
Speaker 4: found the love that he needed from an audience and
Speaker 4: from performing in front of people and a live audience
Speaker 4: when they gave him the love that he didn't get
Speaker 4: from his parents. And he was an only child, so
Speaker 4: he didn't have any siblings, and yeah, I'm sorry, I
Speaker 4: take that back. You had an older sister. I'm sorry.
Speaker 4: I had an older sister who he was not close to,
Speaker 4: so even that he didn't really have a relationship. She
Speaker 4: was four or five years older than he was. So
Speaker 4: I think he found his true calling on stage and
Speaker 4: the love that he needed he found by getting laughs
Speaker 4: through with an audience. I mean, the fact that we're
Speaker 4: talking about Rodney Yingelfield today just a testament to how
Speaker 4: popular he remains to this day, and how popular he
Speaker 4: was in his time, and how he even though he
Speaker 4: was an older comic, he appealed to it's funny, it's interesting,
Speaker 4: interesting dynamic. We appealed to a young audience as well
Speaker 4: as people his own age was. He came up in
Speaker 4: a time of rebelliousness, and his comedy was sort of
Speaker 4: he was sort of a comedy somebody wanted. Somebody in
Speaker 4: the book I don't forget who it was, labeled him
Speaker 4: as a rock and roll comic. Like the first he was.
Speaker 4: He was a rebel in his own way, and Uh
Speaker 4: sort of an icon to a generation at a time
Speaker 4: when you would think an older man, UH, an older
Speaker 4: white guy coming up as a stand up comic who
Speaker 4: was nearing fifty, would be considered an anachronism, but he was.
Speaker 4: It was the exact opposite. He was like a breath
Speaker 4: of fresh air. And because he was doing things on
Speaker 4: stage and talking about things, and his delivery and his
Speaker 4: one liners were just so brilliant that it was just
Speaker 4: like wow, Like where did this guy come from? You know?
Speaker 4: And that's kind of like it was almost like where
Speaker 4: this guy come from? Because he wasn't well known before
Speaker 4: what he really did hit big on the Ed Sullivan Show.
Speaker 4: He really was almost you know, that overnight success story.
Speaker 4: That one appearance in nineteen sixty seven put him on
Speaker 4: the road to start him.
Speaker 1: It's interesting that you're mentioning his rebelliousness because on the
Speaker 1: one hand, he was hip and rock and roll and
Speaker 1: all this things you're saying. But also one of the
Speaker 1: reasons why I think other comics couldn't really imitate him
Speaker 1: is that his format, his medium was actually very old fashioned.
Speaker 1: The one liner, which was not what comics were doing
Speaker 1: in the stream of consciousness, you know, seventies and eighties
Speaker 1: and all that sort of thing. So he was kind
Speaker 1: of like a throwback and a throw forward at the
Speaker 1: same time.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, no, it's a good point. I mean, yes,
Speaker 4: he was the sort of the penultimate stand up comic.
Speaker 4: He was up there, you know, fire and off lines
Speaker 4: left and right. Unlike Rickles, who didn't tell joke but
Speaker 4: just picked on, you know, picked on people in the
Speaker 4: audience and and and picked on Johnny Carson whoever he
Speaker 4: was with, Ron didn't really do that. I mean, he
Speaker 4: he he he. He was sort of like a Henny
Speaker 4: young Man on on on acid. You know. It's like
Speaker 4: with these one liners that you figure, wow, you know
Speaker 4: I was when I was born, I was so that
Speaker 4: I was the doctors. The doctor slapped my mother, then
Speaker 4: he slapped the nurse a good measure. You know. I'm
Speaker 4: not in Rodney's voice, you know, but uh, just these
Speaker 4: these he would paint these pictures. And I talked about
Speaker 4: this a little bit in the book, like he knew
Speaker 4: he only had like a certain number of lines to
Speaker 4: sort of make a little story out of something, and
Speaker 4: and you know, and he did that, and you know,
Speaker 4: maybe you know, three or four or five lines where
Speaker 4: he would it was it was it was the setup
Speaker 4: and then the payoff. But you have an image in
Speaker 4: your head, like when when he was talking about this,
Speaker 4: whether it was you know, talking making fun of his
Speaker 4: wife or or you know she writ you know, or
Speaker 4: making fun of himself in a sexual situation, or making
Speaker 4: fun of his own looks, making fun of him his
Speaker 4: relationship with this psychiatrist. So he sort of painted a
Speaker 4: word picture in not so many words, which was a
Speaker 4: brilliant device and not easy to do. And I think
Speaker 4: he had such a quick silver mind and came up
Speaker 4: with all you know, he had trunk several trunks worth
Speaker 4: of jokes that he would just come up with off
Speaker 4: the top of his head. And and you know, well
Speaker 4: they all great, know, I mean, who can be that
Speaker 4: great all the time, But the large portion of them
Speaker 4: were pretty good.
Speaker 1: And he started writing jokes obsessively in his youth, right.
Speaker 4: I think he said he started writing jokes when he
Speaker 4: was about fifteen, which would have put him in you know,
Speaker 4: high school or you know, the nineteen tenth grade, and
Speaker 4: just kept at it all the time. And even when
Speaker 4: he in that decade of him as a salesman, he
Speaker 4: was selling jokes every once in a while, and he
Speaker 4: sold few jokes to Joey Bishop and some other Phil
Speaker 4: Foster and some other comics. So he always sort of
Speaker 4: kept his yep, he kept his toe in the comedy waters,
Speaker 4: even when he was off the ship, off the beach
Speaker 4: and you know, doing something different, But he always kept
Speaker 4: his his toe in the water and it served him
Speaker 4: in good stead when he decided to to make a
Speaker 4: second stab at a career in comedy, and you know
Speaker 4: that in turn, he had the persona which led to many,
Speaker 4: many more television appearances. You know, Mike Douglas, MERV Griffin,
Speaker 4: the Joe and Joey Bishop had a talk show. He
Speaker 4: was on Carson of course Byana Shore. I mean, everybody
Speaker 4: who had a talk show wanted to have Rodney on.
Speaker 4: And he did make one a movie that not many
Speaker 4: people know about. It was really his first movie called
Speaker 4: The Projectionist, which came out in nineteen seventy. It was
Speaker 4: a very very low budget sort of dramaedy drama slash
Speaker 4: comedy that was shot on a shoe string in Manhattan
Speaker 4: about a projectionist played by Chuck McCann, who was a
Speaker 4: very good comic. He played the projectionist in a movie.
Speaker 4: Theater projected all his thoughts. He became different characters in
Speaker 4: different movies, saving you know, the girl in distress and
Speaker 4: that sort of thing, and Rodney in the movie played
Speaker 4: the really abrasive theater manager.
Speaker 5: I'm happy with your attitudes and your appearances. Coppets are
Speaker 5: constantly a mess. I find numerous candy represents, cigarette butts
Speaker 5: on the floor.
Speaker 2: Remember, dirt is our enemy. Also, there's a lack of
Speaker 2: pride in your uniform. Shoes and are polished. Were a face?
Speaker 2: What are you afraid of a razor?
Speaker 4: The movie opened and closed very quickly. It was you know,
Speaker 4: showed in drive in theaters and became a little bit
Speaker 4: of a cult movie. Once Rodney became a very big
Speaker 4: star and was re released on television several times. But
Speaker 4: that was his entree into movies, and then he did
Speaker 4: to make another movie. For about a decade, he was
Speaker 4: busy doing a stand up comedy. He opened his own club, Dangerfields,
Speaker 4: and he's sixty first Street in Manhattan because he wanted to.
Speaker 4: He was living in New York and he wanted He
Speaker 4: had been divorced by this time, divorced, remarried, and then
Speaker 4: divorced the same woman. So he opened his club because
Speaker 4: he wanted to be close to his two children and
Speaker 4: you didn't want to travel all that much. And the
Speaker 4: comedy club, which became a really big success.
Speaker 2: And was.
Speaker 4: Its lifespan was great. I mean it they closed it.
Speaker 4: It closed it in COVID. I mean it was from
Speaker 4: nineteen sixty nine through two thousand, sorry, through twenty twenty.
Speaker 5: It was.
Speaker 4: It was a functioning, very popular comedy club. So you know,
Speaker 4: kudos to him for doing that. He opened He opened
Speaker 4: it at a time where there weren't that many comedy
Speaker 4: clubs in Manhattan, you know, the big comedy boom with
Speaker 4: the big comedy in front of the brick wall with
Speaker 4: the microphone. That hadn't happened yet. It did shortly thereafter
Speaker 4: catch Rising Star and those sorts of clubs the Comedy Store.
Speaker 4: But Rodney was one of the first to do that,
Speaker 4: and he performed at his own club in the beginning
Speaker 4: six seven times a week, and then he cut back
Speaker 4: once he became too popular. But the club itself stayed
Speaker 4: open and fostered a lot of careers and was a
Speaker 4: very well known place to see and be seen, which
Speaker 4: is a long winded way of saying that he had
Speaker 4: the he had this, he had the TV appearances, he
Speaker 4: had the comedy Club. Then he had the movies Caddy Shack,
Speaker 4: which which you know was was a box office bonanza
Speaker 4: and uh, such a classic for for a lot of people.
Speaker 4: What is really it was really his first co starring role.
Speaker 4: We we discount the Projectionist and we we look at
Speaker 4: Caddy Shack and he didn't even know how to when
Speaker 4: he when he first got there and he was shooting
Speaker 4: his scenes. And this is in the book too, He
Speaker 4: didn't really know how to act in front of a
Speaker 4: movie camera. And and he didn't he expected like he
Speaker 4: would do his lines and nobody would laugh, and he would,
Speaker 4: you know, say well, well what's going on?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 4: And Harold Ramis, the director, had to pull him aside
Speaker 4: and say, you know, there's no laughing on a movie set,
Speaker 4: you know where he just just be you save the
Speaker 4: lines and you'll be great. And he was. And he
Speaker 4: adapted very quickly as stands of the of the movie. Now, Yeah,
Speaker 4: so that was that was a biggie in his career. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and I would say that he was he was sixty
Speaker 4: already when Caddyshack hit, and that opened up a lot
Speaker 4: of doors for him in Hollywood that hadn't closed previously.
Speaker 4: And so he went on to make Easy Money, which
Speaker 4: did okay. It was it critically, It did okay at
Speaker 4: the box office. It was critically, it did okay too,
Speaker 4: you know, and the sort of people liked it, some
Speaker 4: people didn't like it. That was with Joe Peshick.
Speaker 5: That's the greatest love in the world. Your kids. You
Speaker 5: can't beat it, all right. That's why you do things
Speaker 5: for your kids. That's love with your kid. Hey see
Speaker 5: what I mean? With his kid, that's love, you know
Speaker 5: what I mean? Look where he loves the kid there
Speaker 5: has bounced him on his knees. Look at that. That's love, baby,
Speaker 5: I look at that.
Speaker 4: Think a right, hear what's going on.
Speaker 1: I'm sitting here minding my business.
Speaker 4: He jumped on my lackey. All right, everybody calmed down us.
Speaker 4: Some identifications are And then he had Back to School,
Speaker 4: which was his biggest movie financially for him, critically and
Speaker 4: at the box office. That movie made a lot of
Speaker 4: money and really for a time put him near the
Speaker 4: top of the heap. It's his his his career in Hollywood.
Speaker 4: He was. He was hot as a pistol for a while,
Speaker 4: not a not a not a whole very long time,
Speaker 4: because once he started making a lot of money per movie,
Speaker 4: he became less picky, and eventually the movies you know,
Speaker 4: were like straight to video and Lady Bugs and five
Speaker 4: Tenors or four ten movies that people probably never even
Speaker 4: heard of for a good reason. But he was making
Speaker 4: money hand over fist and he was very interested in
Speaker 4: doing that at that point. And so his Starbardy. He
Speaker 4: met Natural Born Killers, which was another great movie he
Speaker 4: was in. It was an Oliver Stone movie, and there
Speaker 4: was Rodney had a cameo in that. It was very
Speaker 4: violent and gory and bloody, and he had a cameo
Speaker 4: in a scene with Julian Lewis and Woody Harrelson where
Speaker 4: he played sort of a father, the real loud who's
Speaker 4: like molesting who's molesting his daughter and beating his wife.
Speaker 4: And you have to see the movie to get the
Speaker 4: context of it, because Rodney scene was shot as a
Speaker 4: Oliverstone shot. Rodney seen a sort of a parody of
Speaker 4: an I Love Lucy episode smack in the middle of
Speaker 4: this horrifically glory, nasty movie. You know, there there was
Speaker 4: this homage to I Love Weird, homage to I Love
Speaker 4: Lucy twisted omarsh I Love Lucy with Rodney. But he
Speaker 4: was very good in that movie, and there was some
Speaker 4: talk early on he might get nominated for an Oscar
Speaker 4: as a as a supporting actor. He didn't, but there
Speaker 4: was some talk. So he could always look at that
Speaker 4: and be proud of that as far as his movie
Speaker 4: resume was concerned. But but you know the good the
Speaker 4: interesting thing is they wouldn't let him in. He applied
Speaker 4: for membership because to be a member of the Academy
Speaker 4: of Boarts and Sciences Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and
Speaker 4: they denied him because it gave some bs excuse. You know,
Speaker 4: when you do more work, then we'll re evaluate this.
Speaker 4: But I did, I don't, I don't. They didn't take
Speaker 4: him seriously as an actor son, and he was really
Speaker 4: pissed off of that and he vowed never to join
Speaker 4: and he never did.
Speaker 3: How did Jacob Cohen land on Rodney Dangerfield As a
Speaker 3: stage name.
Speaker 4: He went through several iterations. He was Jacob Cohen until
Speaker 4: he was nineteen, and then he was Jack Roy from
Speaker 4: the age of nineteen to about forty forty one. It
Speaker 4: was Jack roy when he was selling a ludum ciding
Speaker 4: a paint, and then when he decided to make his
Speaker 4: entrance back into the land of stand up comedy. He
Speaker 4: when he was booked into his first club, he asked
Speaker 4: the club owner because he had played the club before
Speaker 4: when he was known as Jack roy and he was
Speaker 4: sort of nervous that people would would if it was
Speaker 4: advertised as Jack. If he was advertised as Jack Royd
Speaker 4: before his appearance, people might have seen him in that
Speaker 4: club and they would say, yeah, you know, he's stunk.
Speaker 4: You know, we don't want to see him. So he
Speaker 4: basically asked the club owner to, you know, pick a
Speaker 4: name because he had to be advertised in weeks ahead
Speaker 4: in the newspaper. And the club owner picked the name
Speaker 4: of Rodney Dangerfield, which seemingly came out of nowhere, but
Speaker 4: really didn't. There was a there was and Jack the
Speaker 4: Jack Benny radio program. There was a Jack Benny had
Speaker 4: a character named Rodney Dangerfield who was a cowboy. I
Speaker 4: don't know where he got the name from.
Speaker 6: Get a load of that fellas Jack Benny's Christmas party
Speaker 6: last Thursday was one of the outstanding events of the
Speaker 6: Beverly Hill Social seasons. Whoa and I'm Love President with
Speaker 6: Rodney Dingerfield. The cowboys are Bonnie Galla Bugg and Haven,
Speaker 6: Rodney's leading lady.
Speaker 4: Remember there was an episode of The Adventures the the
Speaker 4: Enters of Ozzie and Harriet where Ricky Nelson took the
Speaker 4: name for whatever in the episode, took the name of
Speaker 4: Rodney Dangerfield. He was playing a character in an episode.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, only she doesn't know it's me. She's got
Speaker 4: a blind date with Rodney Dangerfield. Came out of nowhere,
Speaker 4: I suppose you know, for this, because nobody ever heard
Speaker 4: of it before. But so he became Brdney Dangerfield and
Speaker 4: he was moderately successful in the beginning, so he kept
Speaker 4: the name and that's it. He eventually legally changed his name,
Speaker 4: but he was he was. He was Jacob Cohen for
Speaker 4: a long time, and then he was Jack Roy for
Speaker 4: a long time until he finally changed his name. His
Speaker 4: his his two children used the last name Roy. They
Speaker 4: didn't go by Dangerfield. So yeah, I mean, that's that's
Speaker 4: how he That's how Jacob Cohen became Rodney Danefield. It
Speaker 4: was it was kind of like a lizard shedding its
Speaker 4: skin for these three different names, and that's that's the
Speaker 4: Rodney that we all know and love.
Speaker 1: It's interesting when I was a kid and I got
Speaker 1: into the history of comedy, I had a Golden Age
Speaker 1: of comedy themed bar Mitzvah party, That's how into it
Speaker 1: I was. But I remember like seeing Rodney Dangerfield and
Speaker 1: his name and just assuming that was his given surname
Speaker 1: and that it was a Jewish name like Cohen, of
Speaker 1: course is much more Jewish, but even Dangerfield has like
Speaker 1: a Jewish sensibility about it, you know.
Speaker 4: I suppose, yeah, I suppose you could look at it
Speaker 4: that way. But he wasn't, you know, he he unlike
Speaker 4: let's say, Woody Allen in his stand up comedy, Rodney
Speaker 4: never like you know, yes, he was Jewish, of course,
Speaker 4: but he he didn't. His spiel and his stick wasn't
Speaker 4: really that much around Jewish kind of humor, like as
Speaker 4: was Woody Allen or Robert Klein for instance, Uh, Jackie Mason.
Speaker 4: He was sort of an Rodney was the everyman of
Speaker 4: the the you know, the self deprecating every man who
Speaker 4: sort of transcended religion or or or you know, a
Speaker 4: certain feeling.
Speaker 3: In his comedy, Joan Rivers eulogized Dangerfield, saying, Rodney will
Speaker 3: always represent what it feels like for all of us
Speaker 3: to crave a little respect. Is this maybe why he
Speaker 3: has remained so revered.
Speaker 4: I think so. I think in the no respect line,
Speaker 4: Jack Benny called it one of them. He told Rodner,
Speaker 4: you have one of the greatest catchphrases in the history
Speaker 4: of comedy, because, let's face it, everybody feels disrespected at
Speaker 4: one point or another, you know, uh, in in in
Speaker 4: their lives. And people could identify with the put upon
Speaker 4: guy who you know was was you know, nothing ever,
Speaker 4: nothing ever worked out, you know, uh uh nothing comes easy.
Speaker 4: The title of the book was that was before Rodney
Speaker 4: adopted the no respect line. He often used that line nothing,
Speaker 4: you know, nothing comes easy, and and people could relate
Speaker 4: to that, and uh it just stuck to them, uh
Speaker 4: through his act. And I think that's why he's he
Speaker 4: He is so revered because of that no respect line.
Speaker 4: And everybody feels a little bit of that at one
Speaker 4: point or another in their lives. You know, I didn't
Speaker 4: get the respect I deserve or I'm not appreciated, that
Speaker 4: sort of thing, And and I mean, let's face it, it
Speaker 4: is one of the greatest people. You know, no respect.
Speaker 4: You know you people still use it to this day,
Speaker 4: you know, or in describing something or you know, they'll say,
Speaker 4: you know, like Rodney Gingerfield, I get no respect, or
Speaker 4: you know that baseball player you know gets no respector
Speaker 4: so it's it's it's sort of an ubiquitous that's phrase
Speaker 4: that that has become part of our lexicon, and I
Speaker 4: think it will be for for for a very very
Speaker 4: long time.
Speaker 1: I've even heard it used as the Rodney Dangerfield treatment,
Speaker 1: not even saying no respect, but when somebody isn't getting respect,
Speaker 1: you say, he's getting the Rodney Dangerfield treatment, right.
Speaker 4: Right, Yeah, And people know you don't have to say
Speaker 4: no respect. They they know what you mean, and they
Speaker 4: think of Rodney. It pops the abrupt, but to Rodney
Speaker 4: probably pops into their head and and and with with
Speaker 4: the you know, with that no respect tagline. So yeah,
Speaker 4: I mean, it's just, uh, it is one of those
Speaker 4: phrases that that he he said he I think the
Speaker 4: most he told several iterations of the story of how
Speaker 4: he came to use it, but I think the most believable,
Speaker 4: the most believable. One was he was working in a
Speaker 4: comedy club and there were two mobbed up wise guys
Speaker 4: talking about how they got no respect from somebody else.
Speaker 4: And he heard that and he used it and it
Speaker 4: was and people loved it, and and then that just
Speaker 4: became his calling card by the rest of his life.
Speaker 1: Well we respect you, Michael. Thanks so much for joining us.
Speaker 4: Now, thanks for having me on. This was great. Always
Speaker 4: love to talk about comedy and everything else and uh
Speaker 4: I really enjoyed it.
Speaker 1: And to our audience. Now back to your regularly scheduled live.
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Speaker 5: M