“I was an up-and-coming professional comedian working in a tough nightclub in Florida. The place was jammed to see the Temptations; certainly not this unknown, opening act comedian with his subtle, Hebraic stylings.Moments before the show, Jackie Gleason stumbled in with two blondes, and was escorted to a table right in front, just a few feet from where I was about to go on. I didn’t know whether to burst out of my skin in excitement or quit right then and there. For what seemed an eternity, I thought back and recalled vividly just how much impact this colossal talent now wending his way through the crowd to cheers and applause had actually had on my psyche as a small boy. How would I ever be able to suck it up, and actually be able to entertain him, this comedy god? Impossible.
No one in the sold-out room seemed to matter. It was just me and Jackie, and I didn’t stand a chance. How I felt about me depended now completely on how he felt about me, just as it had depended on how other authority figures felt about me. I hadn’t yet developed enough confidence to really command the stage, and I was a jellyfish inside when the manager shoved me back to life and barked, ‘You’re on!’
I bombed so fast and decisively I probably made a whole host of legendary dead comics turn over and heckle me from their graves. Almost as if my performance dramatized how little I thought I deserved his recognition. My funny bone just vanished.
Then, to make matters worse, for whatever reasons swirling inside Mr. Gleason’s head that night, he thought it appropriate to come up on stage. Rod Serling couldn’t have scripted a more surreal, torturous moment for a relatively new comedian in the business. The place went wild, but of course not one shred of the excitement was for me.
Here was the icon who had provided so much strength as I floundered in the midst of a family that provided more questions than answers. Here was the guy who gave us our weekly dose of togetherness. Now he was taking away my stage, and in effect making it impossible to get the crowd on my side.
And I never did. In fact, it felt like an eternity for me. Gleason finally left the stage and took his seat to booming adulation, and left me out to dry.
God knows Gleason’s legendary drinking might have led to his behavior. Curiously, at one point I considered giving him a huge benefit of the doubt, that he was actually trying to help me. You know, famous comedian giving young comedian some credibility by joining him on stage. But I soon had no doubt that he wasn’t too concerned with how I went over. The first words he cockily spoke into the mic during this ‘Twilight Zone’ comedic nightmare, in his ever-familiar, grandiose fashion were ‘Here’s how you do it, my boy.’
Somehow I had to think that somewhere down deep he knew that what he’d done to that young comic was pretty rotten. What he did sucked.”
