TV Urban Legends Revealed #31
This is the thirty-first in a series of examinations of legends about television and the people involved in TV and whether they are true or false.
Click here to view an archive of the previous TV urban legends.
This week is a special theme week – all legends about stand-up comedians who spent a lot of time on television!
Let’s begin!
TV LEGEND: Jackie Mason gave Ed Sullivan the “finger” on the Ed Sullivan Show.
STATUS: False
Jackie Mason became a stand-up comedian in the late 1950s/early 1960s, after deciding to no longer be a rabbi.
He made a few notable appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show, likely THE biggest platform for up and coming performers at the time.
Mason was so popular that within the next year or so, Sullivan booked him to a five-year agreement that he would appear X amount of times on the program for $45,000.
In any event, in October of 1964, while making his twelfth appearance on the program, Mason and Sullivan’s relationship changed…for the worse.
On the night of the program (which ran from 8pm to 9pm), President Johnson was giving a speech at 8:30 PM.
The show decided to keep filming, with the intent of just cutting back into the performance (you know, “We return to your regularly scheduled program, already in progress”).
The show began airing again at roughly 8:50.
Sullivan was quite nervous about the show going over time, so he began to motion to Mason that he needed to wrap things up. Putting up two fingers to denote that there was two minutes left and then one finger to note that time was up and he had to get off of the stage.
Mason was irritated, thinking Sullivan was just trying to yank him because he was not doing particularly well.
So Mason then began to work the finger signs into his performance – telling the audience, “So we’re talking with fingers now” and he began to do manic finger movements to great applause from the audience.
Once he came off of the stage, Sullivan was livid.
He felt that Mason had just given him “the finger” on national television!
He fired Mason and terminated their contract.
Mason was undeterred, and sued Sullivan for $3 million dollars in a libel suit. The case went to trial and the court in New York viewed the footage and agreed that Mason had NOT, in actuality, given Sullivan the finger.
Sullivan, to his credit, apologized and brought Mason back on to the show in 1966 to apologize. Mason made a few more appearances on the show before it finished its run.
Mason has always claimed that even though he “won,” he still “lost” because people did not usually treat those who clashed with Ed Sullivan all that well.
But hey, Mason’s still performing now, over forty years since the incident, so things couldn’t have been TOO bad!
TV LEGEND: Dick Gregory received almost 50,000 votes in the 1968 Presidential Election.
STATUS: True
Yesterday’s legend about Gracie Allen’s run for President reminded me of a similar story about the comedian Dick Gregory.
Dick Gregory became a stand-up comedian in the late 1950s, when black comedians were only then starting to get some attention from the national television market.
Gregory began appearing on various talk shows in the early 1960s doing his act and became a popular national comedian.
Gregory used this fame to become more of a political figure. This really took off when he released his 1964 book, Nigger: An Autobiography, to great commercial and critical acclaim (it sold roughly ten million copies!!!).
Gregory became a major figure in the civil rights movement, as well as various other movements that he supported, such as the legalization of certain drugs.
In 1967, he unsuccessfully ran for the office of the Mayor of Chicago.
In 1968, Gregory ran as a write-in candidate for the President of the United States.
And amazingly enough, unlike Gracie Allen, people actually DID vote for Gregory.
He won a remarkable 47,097 votes!
Gregory, now in his late 70s, is mostly retired, but he still occasionally shows up as a guest on various talk shows (mostly radio programs). He spoke at the funeral for the musician James Brown, who he was friends with.
That’s an amazing turnout for a write-in candidate, something Gregory will always have as a legacy.
TV LEGEND: Gallagher sued his brother over the use of their last name in his brother’s act.
STATUS: True
Gallagher (born Leo Gallagher) is one of the most recognizable stand-up comedians around.
He was especially popular in the 1980s, where his manic energy, his prop-based jokes and, of course, his “Sledge-O-Matic” (where he would crush things with a sledge hammer) made him a household name.
He recorded specials for Showtime pretty much every year from 1981-1987.
Gallagher specials were part of the early lifeblood of Comedy Central (or whatever it was called when it first started – Comedy Network? Something like that).
As long as we’re talking about write-in candidates for offices, back in 2003 when California had its recall election (that Arnold Schwarzenegger ultimately won), Gallagher ran and came in 16th out of 135 candidates with 5,466 votes.
So the guy is still pretty famous.
That fame was at issue when his younger brother Ron came to him in the early 1990s with a business proposition/favor.
Ron would do small venues under his name, but doing his older brother Leo’s act, including the Sledge-O-Matic. And since Ron and Leo look similar, it would be like a sort of “almost Gallagher” act.
Since both of their last names ARE Gallagher, it would be true – and since Leo did mostly big venues, Ron doing small ones shouldn’t affect him.
Leo agreed to help his brother out and said yes.
For a couple of years, Ron did it just like his brother asked, but after awhile, he began to blur the lines and began touring as “Gallagher Too” (occasionally misspelled Gallagher Two).
Some times, if you looked at the billing for the show, you would have no idea that this WASN’T the “real” Gallagher.
Leo figured that the best way to stop this was to tell his brother to cease using the “Sledge-O-Matic” bit.
But his brother ignored him and in 2000, Leo actually sued Ron for Trademark Violations and False Advertising.
The court agreed with Leo (obviously) and an injunction was issued preventing Ron from touring as Gallagher.
As you might imagine, this has not made Leo very popular with the rest of his family.
Ron continues to tour doing his own act.
Isn’t that just the saddest damned thing?
Okay, that’s it for this week!
Feel free (heck, I implore you!) to write in with your suggestions for future installments! My e-mail address is bcronin@legendsrevealed.com
I believe Comedy Central was first known as the Comedy Channel.
I thought there were two cable channels that merged to become Comedy Central. I also seem to recall one of them initially being named CTV (for Comedy Television), but it got in trouble with the Canadian network of the same name, and had to change it. (Which is kinda ironic these days, since CTV owns “The Comedy Network” in Canada.)
I think the first sentence of the Gallagher item (“Gallagher … is one of the most recognizable stand-up comedians around.”)is sadder than the family troubles.
If my memory is working correctly, there were two channels: “Comedy Channel”, and “Ha!” The former had a bigger focus on stand-up, while the latter was more tv shows. The two channels merged, and was first called Comedy Network, before it was changed to Comedy Central (probably because of CTV.)
Went to see Gallagher (Leo Gallagher) recently in Virginia. I was way too young to see him during his peak and was a bit curious. He doesn’t do the Sledge-o-matic or any of his other prop-comedy anymore. I assume part of the reason is his age, as it probably is strenuous activity to swing that mallet around. However, when you build a rep around smashing watermelons, that’s what people expect to see. He claimed that his act had “evolved” beyond such low-brow humor and was now more “cerebral”. Unfortunately, the crowd was not particularly receptive to his new brand of humor … observational humor.
I heard an interview with Gallagher not too long ago. When the audience asked questions he seemed half pissed/half joking when he refused to answer any questions about the watermelon. He said that was 1 of 2 questions he refuses to talk about with his brother likely being the other.
He mentioned that he had 2 heart attacks so that might explain the lack of fruit smashing. He also claimed that The Joker’s giant revolver from 1989 Batman was stolen from his routine.
An interesting sidelight to Dick Gregory’s 1968 Presidential campaign was that he issued “dollar bills” with his face replacing George Washington’s to promote his candidacy (another interesting note was that his running mate was Mark Lane, of “Rush to Judgment” fame). Unfortunately, since they were the same dimensions as an actual dollar bill, people were using them in change machines to get $1 worth of change for free. So I believe the Treasury Department confiscated them. I happen to have one, though… if I can find it, I will scan it and post it.
Very cool, Jim! It’d be really neat to see that!
If anyone wants to know why Gallagher has lost his popularity, they should check out the interview he did with The Onion’s AV Club or some of the YouTube videos of him heckling other comics. The man is a seriously unlikeable and completely self-unaware ass. That one interview caused enough of a stir that he actually became newsworthy again for a hot minute.
Seems like I read an interview with Gallagher last year where he said he still does the fruit smashing if the venue he’s booked in allows it. A lot of comedy clubs won’t let him do it because of the clean up or being afraid of lawsuits if somebody claims to be injured.
Showtime was the cable network he was on back in the 80′s, he’s pretty bitter that they stopped airing his specials. He seemed pretty bitter about a lot of things actually.
[...] Also: Jackie Mason made a career out of telling the world his career was destroyed by a “gesture.” [...]