August 8, 1996: I found out from my sister that I'd be getting $15,000 from my dad's will

Thirty years ago today

            On Thursday I either busked or moved furniture. I heard from my sister that I was going to get about $15,000 from my father’s will once everything had been settled from his estate in around a month.

Dick Cavett

            On Sunday morning there were fewer bedbugs than usual so maybe the diatomaceous earth has taken its slow effect. 

            I found a picture of Boris Vian as a child and posted it on my Boris Vian Facebook page. 

            I worked out the chords for most of the first verse of “Shylock” by Serge Gainsbourg. I should have it done tomorrow and that will probably establish the pattern for the song. 

            I weighed 90.7 kilos before breakfast. 

            I played my Martin during song practice for the first of two out-of-tune sessions. 

            Around midday I did a thorough vacuuming of my bedroom and put fresh carpet tape around the edge of my futon and also around the edge of my mattress cover for hopefully double protection. 

            I weighed 92.2 kilos before lunch. I had peanut butter and five-year-old cheddar on saltines with a glass of lemonade. 

            I took a siesta and slept longer than I expected so it was too late to take a bike ride. 

            I weighed 92 kilos at 17:45, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the evening since July 21. 

            I made pizza on a slice of Rudolph’s sandwich bread with marinara, tomato pesto, three sliced souvlaki, and five-year-old cheddar while watching a 1974 interview of Carol Burnett by Dick Cavett.

            He introduces it by saying that when he first met Carol she inspired affection and he’s heard from others who have had the same experience. She never has a phony moment in real life. 

            Dick comes out and after the applause dies down he says, “Let’s hope this one gets on”. He’s referring to a previous show that was not aired because it was determined that there wasn’t enough balance of opinion. He disagrees and the audience cheers. He doesn’t know yet if this one will air because he’s not here now. “I appear to be here and to you at home I’m here but I’m actually somewhere else, which raises the question why you can hear me… I was gonna do 90 minutes with Carol Burnett but now I may have to do half the show with an unfunny woman.” 

            Carol Burnett has been called the United States’ female Charlie Chaplin. Dick says he doesn’t know anyone he likes better than Carol Burnett. 

            He says he had a list of 78 things to ask her but tore it up because he doesn’t want this to be a difficult evening for her. He asks, “How did you lose your virginity?” “When I was a nun in the Alps.” She says she was pure until she got married. “It’s only the second time I’ve ever asked that question” “Bette Davis you asked and she gave you the same answer. In fact she and I had the same fella.” 

            She talks about how she used to play Tarzan. Dick says he met Johnny Weismuller and it was one of the great thrills of his life. Dick says he saw his first movie back in Gibbon, Nebraska. He doesn’t remember what he saw but it had cowboys. He says he was taken by violence and even now he loves a violent movie. Carol says even Bambi makes her upset. He admits it’s a horrifying movie. Carol says she watched The Godfather with her hands over her eyes. Dick says he doesn’t like film violence if it looks too real. He saw a movie in which Eli Wallach had his teeth beaten out (That might be in The Good the Bad and the Ugly). Dick says that was a little much. Carol says she liked the westerns where you’d get shot and die but now it’s everything coming out. 

            Carol says everything seemed a little dirtier when she left the movie theatre as a child. 

            Carol says she has a tooth fetish. Every time she passes a sink she brushes them and so she hasn’t had a cavity in 12 years. 

            Carol says she has no theories about comedy but what makes people laugh is being surprised. The hardest thing is being a comedy writer for a variety show because they have to come up with 4 or 5 sketches for different characters. You can’t win em all. There are many times when we have to go out and do something none of us are in love with. 

            She sometimes doesn’t find her character until the day of taping and she’s wearing the costume because she works from the outside in. There’s an old lady she does called Stella Toddler and Carol was trying to find a voice for her. She went into the washroom on the second floor and sat in a cubicle to be alone and work on the voice. What she found was a low voice little bit like Gabby Hayes and she sat there talking for a while. When she came out there were three women just standing there. She left without washing her hands. 

            Carol lives in the old Betty Grable house. Betty was on her show in the first season and they invited her over. She walked through the house and got teary eyed. She was a wonderful person and never took her stardom that seriously.

            Every Friday night at Hollywood High there was a dance and she’d go but only either dance with her girlfriend or play ping pong in the game room. The guys that did ask her to dance had pimples, bad breath and couldn’t keep time. 

            Carol loves chewing ice. 

            Carol and Dick sing “A Fine Romance” by Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields from the 1936 film Swing Time. The set rolls to the left while they are sitting on it and they step to centre stage. When they are done Carol says, “That was really terrible!” Then they sit down on the edge of the stage and Carol arranges her legs so it doesn’t expose too much. There is apparently a priest sitting in the audience and Carol asks, “Okay father?” They sing “Two Sleepy People” by Hoagy Carmichael and Frank Loesser from the 1938 film Thanks for the Memory. Afterwards Carol notices that Dick’s eyes are shining. She says he ought to do a musical but he’d need a little more rehearsal. Dick shows the tape of their earlier rehearsal of “A Fine Romance” and then Dick puts his hand on Carol’s back she moves it down to her hip. Then she throws her hip out of joint as she’s able to do. He says he’s never known another woman who could do that. Carol says, “You told me your wife can do that.” “Oh, that’s right.” They show an earlier part of the rehearsal when Carol first hears Dick sing and she cracks up. Carol explains she was laughing out of sheer joy. 

            Dick asks if she ever gets the actor’s dream of forgetting her lines and she has. She’s doing Six Rooms right now with Alan Alda. It’s a warm comedy about adultery. 

            Dick tells Carol she has some of the most beautiful legs he’s ever seen. 

            Carol says most of the people she knows in show business are happy and especially the big ones. James Stewart and Lucille Ball are terrific people. Dick says there are also some true swine. Carol says it attracts them. Dick asks her to name some of her favourite swine. She says Porky Pig. 

            Dick says Carol’s show is more like repertory theatre than most TV shows. 

            Carol says she had a wonderful year with her dad when he went on the wagon but even when he was drunk he was very kind. Her mother was a nasty drunk but she was funny. She only wishes they lived until she was making enough money to cure them. They both died at the age of 46. 

            Carol says the movie Pete and Tilly in which she starred with Walter Matthau was too serious. She was worried that since she and Walter were known as comic actors that they would be expecting the film to be a comedy. So she underplayed her character and felt very stiff. 

            Dick lets the audience ask questions. 

            Someone asks Carol if the parties she goes to are different now that she’s successful. She says the parties she went to in New York when she was starting out were in run down apartments. She doesn’t go to that many parties because she likes to spend time with her family but when she does go they’re usually in a big house and they play games like charades and treasure hunt and those are the most fun parties. 

            Someone asks her to do her Charo impersonation. 

            Someone asks if she got in trouble for imitating the Nixon family in a sketch. She says there wasn’t a lot to latch onto with the Nixons. She had more fun playing Lady Bird Johnson because she was an outgoing Texan. 

            Someone asks what she would do if she wasn’t in show business. She says she’d probably be a school teacher of the fourth, fifth, or sixth grades. A school teacher in the audience tells her not to do it.

            Someone asks about the earthquakes in California. She says the big one they had three years ago happened around sunrise. Carol headed for Erin’s room and she was 2 at the time, standing in her crib and holding on while the room was shaking and saying “Good morning mommy!” Carol picked her up to take her to the other room so they could all die together and Erin said, “I wanna wear my pink dress!”

            Carol says when she was a kid her closet was the bathroom shower rack because her grandmother was a packrat and even saved peanut butter jars in their one closet. If a guy came over and wanted to use the bathroom she’d tell him it was out of order and direct him to the Shell station. Her grandmother was messy and so they’d just sit in the hotel lobby. 

            Dick asks Carol what books were important to her as a kid. She says The Yearling. She also liked Grimm's Fairy Tales. 

            He asks what she would study if she went back to college and she answers music and dance. She says she’s terrified whenever she has to dance on her show. 

            Dick asks Carol what she likes about him. She says his sex appeal and his brains. 

            Dick Cavett attended Yale University where he majored in drama and met his future wife Carrie Nye. He played in and directed plays on the campus radio station. He acted with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 1956. He made his TV debut on Sgt. Bilko in 1959. Dick and Carrie married in 1964 and were together until she died 42 years later. He was too short to land lead roles in shows. He started as a stand up comic and then became a writer on The Tonight Show first for Jack Paar and then Johnny Carson. he also wrote for Merv Griffin. He starred in the movie Thayer of West Point. The Dick Cavett Show ran from 1968 to 1974 on ABC and then one more year on CBS. He earned the reputation as a thinking man’s talk show host. His show was third in ratings behind Johnny Carson and Merv Griffin but for a late night talk show he was considered second to Carson. He was famous for attracting guests that hated appearing on talk shows like Katherine Hepburn, Laurence Olivier, and Marlon Brando. He often paired guests with opposing views like Jim Brown and Lester Maddox. He hosted Saturday Night Live in 1976. His PBS Dick Cavett Show ran from 1977 to 1982. His USA network Dick Cavett Show ran from 1985 to 1986. His CNBC Dick Cavett Show ran from 1989 to 1996. He was nominated for ten Emmy Awards and won three. His book Brief Encounters was published in 2014. He later wrote a regular column for The New York Times. He speaks fluent German and is an agnostic.

August 7, 1996: My feature at the Art Bar reading series was one week away

Thirty years ago today

            On Wednesday I rehearsed with Brian Haddon at my place for our gig next week at the Art Bar reading series. Later that evening I went to said series at the Csarda Hungarian Restaurant on Elm Street to perform on the open stage. The host, Pierre Labbé reminded me that I needed to provide copies of one of my poem for the audience to read while I was performing. I was already working on a unique way to do that.

Lucie Arnaz

            On Saturday morning before bed I put fresh double sided carpet tape around my mattress. I didn’t notice any bedbugs on me overnight and didn’t find many when I searched after yoga besides the ones that got stuck on the tape. 

            I published my translation of “L'enfance de bonnot” (Bonnot’s Childhood) on my Christian’s Translations blog without music, since no one has posted the audio online. 

            I worked out the chords for the chorus and part of the first verse of “Shylock” by Serge Gainsbourg. 

            I weighed 90.8 kilos before breakfast. 

            I played my Kramer during song practice for the last of two sessions and it stayed in tune most of the time. 

            Around midday I rode down to No Frills where there was only one bag of Canadian cherries left. I got that, a Canadian watermelon, a basket of Canadian peaches, a pack of Mexican raspberries, some bananas, a pack of five-year-old cheddar, a pack of chicken legs, a pack of two T-bone steaks, a jar of marinara, three bags of skim milk, a jug of orange juice, two containers of skyr, a bag of wedge fries, and a bag of Miss Vickie’s chips. 

            I weighed 91.45 kilos at 14:15. I had peanut butter and five-year-old cheddar on saltines with a glass of lemonade. 

            I took a siesta and got up too late to take a bike ride downtown. 

            I weighed 91.7 kilos at 17:25. 

            I was still about five days behind in my journal and worked on getting caught up. 

            I grilled eight souvlaki. I made pizza on a slice of Rudolph’s sandwich bread with the last of my rosée tomato sauce, tomato pesto, three sliced souvlaki, and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a glass of Creemore lager while watching a 1971 episode of The Dick Cavett Show with guests, Dr. Ferdie Pacheco, Lucy Arnaz, Carol Burnett, and Lucille Ball. 

            In his monologue Dick says he was distracted on his show last night partly because he was going to the Ali-Frasier fight after the show, but also because a guy in the audience kept shouting “Down in front!” “and he was talking to me!” Dick says hello to his orchestra leader and drummer Bobby Rosengarden. He says Robert does the audience warmup, which no one ever sees on TV. Dick says the fight was exciting. He went with his wife who does not like to go out in public with him because she hears too much of “Ooh it’s you!” But he says he can’t help it because when he sees a celebrity he always goes, “Ooh it’s you!” He says he doesn’t normally like going to sports events because he always gets glared at for not standing for the national anthem when he is standing. Ali and Frasier were paid $2.5 million each for the fight. That comes down to $926 a second. The Apollo 14 crew was at the fight. The news referred to them as “Our gutsy fly guys”, The New York Times called them “Lunar explorers”, but The Village Voice called them “Three who spaced out with a single capsule”. 

            Dick’s first guest is Dr. Ferdie Pacheco, Muhammed Ali’s personal physician. Dick asks if Ali had a broken jaw as everybody thought. Ferdie says he could see how people would think that since one side of his face was twice the size of the other. He says Ali was x-rayed and he had no fracture but just a collection of blood from the left hook that blew a blood vessel when it dropped him. He says he’ll be okay in five or six days. He says it was the best fight he’s ever seen in his 12 years of being a physician for boxers. It was an even fight until the knockout. Dick refers to Ali as Clay sometimes and Ferdie admits the name change is confusing. Dick asks about Ali’s diet and Ferdie says before a fight he’ll have a steak and a salad. Ferdie had to leave to be on Howard Cosell’s show. 

            Lucie Arnaz plays Lucille Ball’s daughter on Here’s Lucy and she is Lucille Ball’s daughter. Lucie comes out, shakes Dicks hand very quickly and sits down immediately. She says she didn’t want to stand next to him for too long, which is reference to the fact that she’s much taller than he is. She’s 1.75 meters tall while Dick is 1.69 meters tall. She says at 14 she was taller than the boys her age. Now at 19 she likes being tall because tall people can wear a wider variety of clothes than shorter people. 

            She says her time at Beverly Hills Catholic School was one of the worst times of her life. High school nuns are different than grammar school nuns because they are real people. but grammar school nuns are recruited from the army. They drag you by the ear, slap you around, and call you dirty names. She learned some terrific language from grammar school nuns. 

           She didn’t think of her parents as stars. But once she was thirteen she wanted them to introduce her to the stars but she never got to meet Paul Newman or Marlon Brando. She only met Wally Cox. She says she can’t really say what it’s like to be Lucille Ball’s daughter because she has nothing to compare it to. The president’s daughter can answer that question because she hasn’t always been the president’s daughter. 

            She says they had an extra garage that wasn’t being used and so she turned it into a theatre. Her mother had a guy from the studio come over and build a little stage for her and I assume her brother Desi. They had a microphone and a little box office. They put on Bye Bye Birdie when she was 11 and she played Ann-Margret’s character. Dick says Ann-Margret got mad at him when he had her as a guest. She was promoting C.C. and Company and showed a clip. Dick asked if a lot of money was riding on the picture. Ann said, “I’ve never seen you in a movie” and Dick responded “What a coincidence”. Lucy says, “I knew there was something I liked about you.” 

            Carol Burnett comes out. This is the first time she and Dick have met. Carol tells the story of how when she was a girl she pretended to be twins. There was a boy named Asher Washowski who lived in her building. Carol was 9 or 10. Asher used to sit in the lobby and read comic books. Carol lived in the apartment that was right off the lobby. Carol told Asher she was expecting her twin sister Karen from Canada. She told him she was going to the store but Karen would be coming in shortly and asked him to direct her to the apartment. He said he would and then Carol left the building, ran around and crawled into her apartment window, changed clothes, got a suitcase and crawled back out the window and walked in the lobby to say, “Hello, my name is Karen. Can you tell me where Carol Burnett lives?” Asher pointed and she knocked on the door. Her grandmother let her in, then Carol changed clothes again and crawled back out the window to come into the lobby and ask Asher if her sister had arrived yet. This went on for six days until she was exhausted. She suggests that it’s possible that Asher was putting her on and was just watching to see how long she could keep it up. Carol tells Dick that she’s actually triplets and she’s not actually Carol there tonight. 

            Her grandmother used to make capes and masks out of pillowcases and dye them black for Carol and her girlfriend. Then they would hang around the Bank of America looking for robbers. Carol used to go see the Nyoka Queen of the Jungle serials. She loved Flash Gordon and wanted to be an astronaut. Then she wanted to be a journalist and be Brenda Starr and fall in love with a man who had a patch over his eye. Carol says the other day her 4 year old daughter Jodie told the plumber that her mother was Juliet Prouse and she was married to Ray Charles. Carol says there was a hill where they’d play jungle and they’d mark off where the quicksand was and they’d have ropes to swing over it but if you touched it you had to pretend you were sinking and you’d die for that afternoon. Dick says he wishes he’d known her as a kid. 

            She tells the story of her benefactor who leant her the $1000 to go to New York. She said she wasn’t the only one he’d helped and it wasn’t only show business people. Dick tells Carol he finds her terribly attractive. She waves her hand in his face to check his vision. 

            Lucille Ball took over a television studio in a year when it lost over $65,000. Six years later she sold it for $17 million. 

            Dick asks her to recount how she was fired by Ziegfeld. She says she’s never told the story before. When she came to New York at 16 all she wanted to do was get into vaudeville. She never got an agent or got near any building that had anything to do with vaudeville. Then she ran into some girls who were going to a cattle call at the Ziegfeld Theatre for a third road show of Rio Rita. Lucy got the job and kept it for five days of rehearsal until they culled her and several other girls out. She had already written home and told everybody that she was a Ziegfeld Girl. She was crying outside the theatre after all the other girls had left. Henry Sharp, Ziegfeld’s right hand man came out and told her it was ridiculous to cry because there are other jobs. Then he left and she followed him for two blocks while still sobbing. He told her to stop following him because she might get him arrested. So she walked away and thought that she had to kill herself. She saw a big limousine and thought getting hit by it would be a classy way to die so she tried to throw herself in front of it. But it stopped, so she got up and went home. Dick says, “If that car had been going faster I’d be talking to an empty chair.” Lucie says, “Two empty chairs!” Dick asks, “Were you Lucille Ball then?” “You don’t think I’d choose that name! After that I changed my name to Diane Belmont. But when she used to play act as a girl she was Madeline from The Light of the Western Stars by Zane Gray. 

            Lucy went to the John Murray Anderson Robert Milton Dramatic School in New York. Bette Davis was a star pupil there. They wrote Lucy’s mother a letter and told her she was wasting her money. So Lucy went back to Jamestown, New York. Once she ran away without permission and three blocks away her mother showed up with a packed lunch and an umbrella for her. Lucy couldn’t find a way in to show business and so finally she became a model and a good one. But sometimes she still had to go into coffee shops and find a booth where someone had left a half a donut and nickel tip. She’d steal the nickel to buy a coffee to have with the donut. 

            She once read a script where it said they were looking for a “Lucille Ball type”. She said that was a thrill and she didn’t even care if she got the part. 

           Dick asks if she’s ever wanted to do drama and she says no but her daughter points out that she was in The Big Street with Henry Fonda. Carol says she’s never wanted to do drama but she did later on. 

            Lucille says any woman who works has guilt about not being with her family. When she started I Love Lucy she was six months pregnant with Lucie. Carol says she spends more time at home than she does working. The earliest she has to be in is 11:00 but that’s only on taping day. She usually reports in at 13:00 but gets there earlier to do her exercise class with a group at CBS. She home every day by 17:30 with the exception of orchestra rehearsal. She has weekends and summers off and another week off every fourth or fifth week. 

            Dick asks Lucie if she wants to marry someone in show business. She says she’s engaged to someone who’s producing and she thinks it’s great because you’re both doing something you both understand. 

            Dick gives his guests a chance to ask him anything they want. Carol asks him his measurements. Lucie asks if he can cook and Dick says he made a stew once that would knock her hat off. Lucie says it’s a real turn on when a man can cook. 

            Dick says that Sigmund Freud said that in his 60 years of study he still doesn’t understand women. Carol says Sig was mixed up. Dick asks if she was acquainted with him. She says, “No but he tried”. 

            Dick says he was mentioned in the book The Sensuous Man (In it Terry Garret lists Dick as one of the top 10 sexy men). They ask for Dick’s middle name and he’s embarrassed to say but finally tells them it’s Alva. 

            Dick asks Lucille if she’d change anything about herself if she could. She says she’d like her hair to be naturally red and not mousy brown. 

            The three women agree on being attracted to Paul Newman and they says it’s those blue eyes.

            Carol tells Lucille that she’d love for her three girls to grow up like Lucie. Lucille tells Dick she thinks her son could take a few lessons from him. 

            It was Desi Arnaz who wanted their daughter to be named Lucie. She made her professional acting debut at the age of 12 on an episode of The Lucy Show. She made her film debut in 1977 in Billie Jack Goes to Washington. She made her Broadway debut in 1979 in They’re Playing Our Song. Lucie Arnaz co-starred in the 1980 adaptation of The Jazz Singer starring Neil Diamond (for which she was nominated for a Golden Globe Award). She co-starred in 119 episodes of Here’s Lucy. She starred in the short-lived sitcom The Lucie Arnaz Show, based on the British sitcom Agony. She later said it was a depressing experience. She starred in Second Thoughts, Smoking Non Smoking. She won an Emmy Award in 1993 for her documentary Lucy and Desi: a Home Movie. She and her brother only own the rights to Here’s Lucy of all their mother’s shows.

August 6, 1996: A cop saw my guitar and decided I wasn't a crook

Thirty years ago today 

            On Tuesday night as always I hosted my Orgasmic Alphabet Orgy writers open stage in the Art Bar of the Gladstone Hotel. Afterwards we went for coffee at the Country Style donut shop across the street. At one point a cop came in and said he’d thought that I resembled somebody they were after but then he saw my guitar case and decided I couldn’t be a crook.

August 5, 1996: Brian and I rehearsed for next week's feature

Thirty years ago today

            On Monday Brian Haddon came over to my place and we rehearsed for my August 14 feature at the Artbar reading series.

Gale Gordon

            On Friday morning I went to bed after 2:30 because I had dozed off earlier as usual while trying to write my journal. With all the cleaning up I had to do after supper and the meticulous tooth and gum maintenance I do these days I had no choice but to stay up until those things were done. Even after going to bed I was awake for a while and despite the carpet tape that circled my mattress there were still a few bedbugs that got through. It was interesting that while I was lying there the ones that I killed one after the other took the same route up the right side of my stomach. There were fewer bedbugs than usual on the walls when I checked later and a few more had gotten caught on the tape. 

            After yoga I finished translating “L'enfance de bonnot” (Bonnot’s Childhood). Since no one has posted the audio there are no chords to work out. 

            I worked out the chords for the intro and half the chorus of “Shylock” by Serge Gainsbourg. 

            I weighed 91.15 kilos before breakfast. 

            I played my Kramer during song practice for the first of two sessions and it stayed in tune pretty much the whole time. 

            Around midday I used my new vacuum cleaner for the first time to clean my futon. 

            I weighed 92.65 kilos before lunch, which is an early afternoon record high since I’ve been weighing myself. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. 

            I weighed 91.65 kilos at 18:05. 

            I was still several days behind in my journal and worked on getting caught up. I had a potato with gravy and a piece of roast pork while watching a short YouTube biography of Carol Burnett on Let Me Know, a 1972 appearance of Carol on Johnny Carson and a 1976 appearance along with Lucille Ball, Valerie Harper , and Gale Gordon on The Dinah Show. 

            From Let Me Know: 

            In 1956 Carol co-starred with Buddy Hackett on the sitcom Stanley, which only lasted one season. After it was canceled she became popular on the New York cabaret circuit and in 1960 was nominated for a Tony for her performance in Once Upon a Mattress. She won her second Emmy for her Carnegie Hall special with Julie Andrews. The Carol Burnett Show picked up 23 Emmy Awards during its 11 year run. Carol performed in the play Six Rooms, She was Sesame Street’s first famous guest, and co-starred with Rock Hudson in I Do I Do. She appeared in The Four Seasons, Annie, and Noises Off. She became a regular panelist on Password Plus. In 2001 she married the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra’s principle drummer Brian Miller. After her daughter Carrie died she wrote a memoir called Carrie and Me, the recording of which won a Grammy Award. She continues to perform her one-woman Q and A show.

            Johnny Carson says he’s admired Carol Burnett ever since The Garry Moore Show. He remembers a sketch he did with her on a lifeboat when he guested on the show. Carol says it was 1961. She says they did another sketch in which she played Scarlett O’Hara and Johnny played Rhett Butler. He says, “Then you did Once Upon a Mattress.” “You mean the play?” “That might have been good for you too.” “That’s how it all started”. Carol says the great thing about Once Upon a Mattress is that it appeals to children but there is also some adult humour in it as well. She says the original play has a couple that are expecting a child out of wedlock but in the first TV adaptation they had them be secretly married. Seven years later on the second TV adaptation they brought it back to the original unmarried situation. Johnny talks about how until recently, even in motion pictures they couldn’t show a married couple in bed together. Carol says if they were in the same bed they had to have one foot on the floor whatever good that would do. 

            Johnny asks if during Carol’s questions from the audience segment if she ever gets any real zingers that throw her. Carol says they do about 12 minutes and then edit. She says one woman asked what they polish the stage floor with and Carol told her that was too personal. 

            At that point the audio for that file was gone so I moved on to the Dinah Show. Dinah Shore says they are celebrating the 25th anniversary of television with her special guest Lucille Ball. I think it jumps forward to the couch where she’s already been talking with Lucy and Valerie Harper for a while. Lucy didn’t know Dinah was bringing out her friend Carol Burnett and she is very excited when she hears her name. Carol says there aren’t too many people she’d wear high heels and socks for but she did it for Lucy. Carol first met Lucy on May 12, 1959. They opened Once Upon a Mattress off Broadway and Lucy came to see it on the second night. Carol says she was doing her makeup and when she was told Lucille Ball is in the audience she got lipstick all over her face. After the show Lucy came backstage and they talked for an hour. 

            Lucy gave Carol a baby shower when she was pregnant with her second daughter and the husbands came. Carol says she’d been pregnant for two years and Lucy said, “Maybe it’ll happen if I give you a baby shower”. Lucy’s husband Gary Morton opened all the baby gifts and hilariously insulted each one. Carol went into labour the next day. Dinah says Lucy’s house is the cleanest she’s ever seen. 

            They show a few clips from The Lucy Show of Gale Gordon getting wet in various episodes. Lucy says they became superstitious about it and decided that a show couldn’t be a success unless Gale got wet. Dinah surprises Lucy again by bringing Gale Gordon out. He and Lucy embrace. He says it was always Lucy’s idea for him to get wet but it was worth it to see the look on her face. Lucy says on one show he was in the Colorado River and it was so cold he couldn’t say his lines. Lucy’s nickname for Gale was “Old Soggy Crotch”. He says he’s probably the only person who can’t enjoy a swim now unless he puts on wet bathing trunks first. 

            Gale first worked with Lucy on her radio show My Favourite Husband. When it got reshaped into the TV show I Love Lucy she wanted Gale to play Fred Mertz but while she was pregnant with Lucy, Gale was cast on the show Our Miss Brooks. Dinah says that George Burns said that he could do physical comedy with Lucy that he could never do with Gracie Allen. Carol says you’re not a performer until you’ve had at least one pie in the face. Dinah says she’s never had a pie in the face. 

            Dinah asks Lucy what's the most physical thing she ever did in a performance. She says she went down a real fireman’s pole fast and her heels went right up through her head. Dinah says she did that too and it hurts. Lucy says the most wear and tear she ever suffered was when she was in the water with the porpoises for 45 minutes at Marineland. She says after forty minutes the porpoises were complaining to their trainer about the skit. She says they don’t bite but they poke you with their long, hard snouts and she got it right across the kidneys. 

            Dinah asks Gale if he’s ever wanted to get even with Lucy. He says, “Funny your should ask” and then reaches behind the couch for a spritzer bottle. Lucy shouts, “Oh no!” then stands up an backs away. She sits on Carol and Valerie’s laps but he just says, “All right, all three!” But then he fires and sprays himself. It was obviously staged that way ahead of time. 

            Gale Gordon studied acting under Richard Bennet and began his professional career at the age of 17. He started as a radio actor and met his future wife Virginia when they were both performing on Death Valley Days. They married in 1937 and were together for 58 years until she died. He was the first actor to play Flash Gordon, on the radio series The Amazing Interplanetary Adventures of Flash Gordon. He played Mayor LaTrivia on the radio sitcom Fibber McGee and Molly. He played Rumson Bullard on the spin-off The Great Gildersleeve. He played The Octopus on Speed Gibson. He starred in The Casebook of Gregory Hood. In 1950 he starred in Granby’s Green Acres, which was the basis for the later TV series Green Acres. He co-starred on The Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show. On television he starred in the sitcom The Box Brothers. He co-starred in Sally, Our Miss Brooks, The Lucy Show, Here’s Lucy, Life With Lucy, and Dennis the Menace, He played the landlord on The Danny Thomas Show. He co-starred in Here Come the Nelsons, Don’t Give Up the Ship, The 30 Foot Bride of Candy Rock, Sergeant Deadhead, and The Burbs. Even in his senior years he could do cartwheels. He wrote Nursery Rhymes for Hollywood Babies and Leaves from the Story Tree. He bought 150 acres in Borrego Springs, California where he built much of his house and his art studio. He built and restored his own furniture. He became one of the only commercial carob farmers in the US.