Transcript: TV's New Old Ideas

Rob Long on Hollywood's sentimental for . . . the money of yesterday

This is Rob Long with Martini Shot for The Ankler.

An old friend of mine was once hired to write jokes for the great comedian Jackie Gleason. This was in the late 1960s, when Gleason’s television career was waning but he was still top-lining nightclubs in Miami Beach. Writing for him was, as they used to say, a “choice gig.”

So my friend takes the train from Manhattan to Miami Beach, and along the way he writes a stack of Jackie Gleason-sounding material. By the time he arrives at Gleason’s hotel, the Fontainebleau in Miami Beach, he has a solid sheaf of jokes. He meets Gleason’s manager in the lobby who quickly scans the material as he escorts my friend up in the elevator.  

“These are pretty good,” he says. “Fresh. I like it.”

They get to the penthouse, introductions are made, and Gleason — in a silk bathrobe and a highball — puts on his reading glasses and sits down to read the material.  

He reads it all very carefully and without any reaction. He gets to the last page, reads that, and then sits quietly for a moment in silence. Then he begins to read it all again, very carefully and without reaction. My friend and the manager stand there, awkwardly.

Finally, Jackie Gleason puts down the material, removes his glasses, and looks up.  

“The hell is this?” he asks.  

The manager nervously replies that this is some new material — “Remember, Jackie? You said you wanted some new stuff, some fresh stuff, for the road?” — and that this was the young writer they had hired to deliver it — “He’s the best, Jackie, young and plugged into that scene, funny cock-eyed take on the world, Jackie, the best.” 

Gleason looks utterly baffled. He taps the pages in his lap. “I don’t know this material,” he says. “It’s new. It’s new material.”

He pronounces the word “new” as one might pronounce the word “fecal.”