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Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.

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Speaker 1: My guest today is Alan Hamile, both husband and business

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Speaker 1: partner of Susie Anne Summers, a television presenter and all

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Speaker 1: around marketing mabn, Alan, good to have you here. Thank you.

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Speaker 1: I'm delighted to be here. I love your letter. Thank you.

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Speaker 1: So how did you meet Susanne? Fifty years ago? Okay,

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Speaker 1: actually fifty two years ago. I moved to l A

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Speaker 1: from Canada, and in Canada we had no agents, no managers,

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Speaker 1: there was none of that. You'd get a call from

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Speaker 1: the network and they'd say, we're doing a show, do

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Speaker 1: you want to come in and talk to us? And

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Speaker 1: we'd go in and talk to them and they give

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Speaker 1: us a job. So when I came here, I didn't

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Speaker 1: know about managers and agents. So I called ABC and

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Speaker 1: I said, who's the head guy? They said Elton Rule.

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Speaker 1: I said, put me through, so he takes my call.

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Speaker 1: I said, I am Ellen Hammond. I did a lot

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Speaker 1: of TV in Canada, and I did a late night

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Speaker 1: satirical show for five years, out of Control. I said,

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Speaker 1: there's nothing like that in the States. There's no uh,

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Speaker 1: there's nothing. There's no that that was the week that

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Speaker 1: was there's no laughing, there's no Saturday Night Live, there's

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Speaker 1: none of that. I'd like to show you a three

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Speaker 1: and a half minute clip. He said, great, he said,

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Speaker 1: can you be here tomorrow afternoon? Yes, you're calling him

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Speaker 1: from Toronto from l A. I'm in l A, okay,

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Speaker 1: and I'm thinking, now what, I don't have a job. Okay,

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Speaker 1: I've got some money, but i have no job. So

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Speaker 1: the following day I go up there and he's got

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Speaker 1: his two programming people there and he said, okay, he said, there,

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Speaker 1: where's the clip? So I handed to him and he

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Speaker 1: hands it to some an assistant and they put it

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Speaker 1: up and they play it back and the clip is

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Speaker 1: me on my late night show in Canada called Nightcap,

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Speaker 1: interviewing a topless dancer in front of a live The

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Speaker 1: ins who's topless? And I'm interviewing her like man on

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Speaker 1: the streets. Okay, I'm not looking at her chest, no

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Speaker 1: lascivious remarks, just boring interviewer questions. So when it's all over,

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Speaker 1: they all looked at each other around the room like,

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Speaker 1: what the hell did we just see? Because the three

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Speaker 1: biggest shows in those days were my three Sons, Beverly Hillbillies,

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Speaker 1: and Green Acres. Okay, there was nothing else on. It

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Speaker 1: was all pablum. So they said, you know what, let's

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Speaker 1: do something together. So we negotiated a deal for me

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Speaker 1: to do a ninety minute comedy special, and they housed

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Speaker 1: me around the corner in the Hollywood Palace. I had

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Speaker 1: offices in the Hollywood Palace. Jerry Lewis doing his show

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Speaker 1: there yet, no, not that I was aware of anyway, Okay,

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Speaker 1: and I'm thinking, I'm at Hollywood and Vine. I can't

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Speaker 1: leave it, okay, And every day at lunchtime, I'd stand

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Speaker 1: at the corner of Hollywood and Divide and think, I'm

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Speaker 1: at Hollywood and Vine and my offices are in the

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Speaker 1: Hollywood Palace. Okay. Anyway, we do the show and nobody

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Speaker 1: knew who I was, so ABC said I was producing

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Speaker 1: it and also starring in it. ABC said, nobody knows

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Speaker 1: who you are, so you need a big time guest.

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Speaker 1: So I called Robert Wagner, who had this huge TV

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Speaker 1: series and I can't remember what it was called. How

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Speaker 1: did you know Robert Wagner? I didn't know Robert, okay,

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Speaker 1: but I was cooking cold calling everybody, so I said,

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Speaker 1: here's what I want you to do. He laughed. I said,

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Speaker 1: and here's the money. He said. Forget the money, he said,

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Speaker 1: I live in Palm Springs, just getting me the world's

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Speaker 1: greatest golf cart. I said, done. So we do the show,

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Speaker 1: and we're ten minutes into the show, and I said

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Speaker 1: to the audience, I said, you know, every big time

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Speaker 1: special needs a big time guest. We have ours, Laises

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Speaker 1: and gentleman Mr Robert Wagner. And you know the way

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Speaker 1: he looked, I mean handsome, okay, with the cuff links

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Speaker 1: and the perfect shirt and hair, everything perfect, right. He

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Speaker 1: walked out a huge applause and whistling from the women.

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Speaker 1: He goes to center stage. He takes a deep bow,

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Speaker 1: it goes like that, thanking the audience, then walks down

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Speaker 1: three steps into the audience, up the aisle and out

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Speaker 1: the front door over here, and I said, okay, now

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Speaker 1: that we've met our big star, we can carry on

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Speaker 1: with the rest of them. So the whole show is

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Speaker 1: like that. Okay, we took on everybody. It was a

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Speaker 1: satirical show, but like today, it would be no big deal.

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Speaker 1: But those people were screaming, and we took on everybody.

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Speaker 1: We took on the Catholics, the Protestants, the Jews, the Poles,

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Speaker 1: the little whiny. We took on everybody, and I got

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Speaker 1: death threats. My favorite death threat came from a guy

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Speaker 1: in Libertyville, Illinois, and I said, the name of where

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Speaker 1: you live is sort of the antithesis of this letter

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Speaker 1: you've written to me. You want to do me in? Okay?

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Speaker 1: Because I don't. I assumed I had the liberty of

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Speaker 1: free speech in this country. Okay. So he wrote me

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Speaker 1: back and there were only two words in his letter,

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Speaker 1: and the second word was you. Okay. So where were we? Okay?

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Speaker 1: So you had a one in that ninety minutes special? Okay?

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Speaker 1: So that special aired? Okay, and then what happened to results?

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Speaker 1: People freaked. It was the second highest rated special all year,

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Speaker 1: next to Tom Jones. Okay, what's ther word? In what year? Again?

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Speaker 1: And the uh it's on ABC? It aired in prime time?

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Speaker 1: When did it air prime time? So? Um? The show aired.

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Speaker 1: The switchboards for ABC lit up across the country. People

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Speaker 1: were furious because they've never seen anything. You have to

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Speaker 1: ask in light of you know, they always talk about censorship.

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Speaker 1: You had this crazy show. They let you wear it.

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Speaker 1: They didn't say, hey, this a little too edgy. Okay,

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Speaker 1: they said to me when the script was written, okay,

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Speaker 1: they said, you're never going to get this passed. What

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Speaker 1: was her name, Grace Johnson? I said, who's Grace Johnson.

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Speaker 1: She's in charge of standards and practices. We didn't have

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Speaker 1: that in Canada. I said, what, what are standards and practices?

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Speaker 1: She decides what is not going to make air. So

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Speaker 1: I called her, I said, would you have lunch with me?

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Speaker 1: And I took it to a little place on Vine Street,

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Speaker 1: a little French place I can't remember the name of it.

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Speaker 1: I ordered the best bottle of wine and we sat

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Speaker 1: there with the script all afternoon, eating and drinking wine,

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Speaker 1: and every time she turned a page she would go, okay,

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Speaker 1: my mother used to do that, and I thought, I'm

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Speaker 1: dead I'm dead meat. Okay. We get to the final

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Speaker 1: page and we've knocked off the entire bottle of wine,

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Speaker 1: and we're getting along and she closes the script and

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Speaker 1: she said, let's do this really okay. So we did it,

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Speaker 1: and so now it airs and you're getting negative feedback,

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Speaker 1: you're also getting good, good pet feedback, getting good feedback, right,

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Speaker 1: good feedback from people actually, you know a lot of

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Speaker 1: Brits wrote because British comedy The Goon Show with Peter

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Speaker 1: Sellers and Spike Man. I mean that's been I was

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Speaker 1: raised with that. Okay. In Canada is a Commonwealth country,

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Speaker 1: so I was used to satire. I love satire, but

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Speaker 1: this country had never experienced satire. So they were in shock. Okay.

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Speaker 1: They turned on ABC to see I don't know what

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Speaker 1: show we replaced, okay, but we replaced some show and

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Speaker 1: it was obviously nothing like this. So we got great ratings.

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Speaker 1: And the Miami ABC guy called me and he said,

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Speaker 1: I own the affiliate station in Miami. He said, we

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Speaker 1: love the show. He said, if I financed this series,

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Speaker 1: would you do it? I said of course. He said,

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Speaker 1: I'm going to come to to l A. I'm going

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Speaker 1: to meet with the top guys at ABC, and I'm

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Speaker 1: going to make a proposal. And the proposal was, uh,

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Speaker 1: Miami will pay for the production of the show the

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Speaker 1: network and have two free runs as long as the

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Speaker 1: Miami station owns the back end syndication rights. And ABC

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Speaker 1: said we wouldn't consider it. And that was that. Okay.

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Speaker 1: So getting back to where I met Suzanne, I get

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Speaker 1: a call from ABC right after that, saying, um, you

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Speaker 1: did a lot of on camera in Canada, right, I said, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I said, I did from nineteen fifty five until nineteen

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Speaker 1: from fifty five until sixty Okay, so in the ninety

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Speaker 1: minutes specially, you were not on camera. No, I was.

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Speaker 1: I was on for the whole show, That's what I think.

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Speaker 1: So they saw you. Yeah, I was the guy, right,

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Speaker 1: so they saw you. What was the question? Okay? The

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Speaker 1: question was, would you like to host a game show

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Speaker 1: in ABC? I said great, So I go on and

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Speaker 1: talk to them, and that was They had the Newlywed Game,

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Speaker 1: the Dating Game, and my show was called the Anniversary Game. Okay.

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Speaker 1: So it was this troika and they said, we don't

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Speaker 1: have any studios in l A. Would you mind shooting

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Speaker 1: in San Francisco. I said great, So I go to

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Speaker 1: San Francisco and I'm up there for a couple of weeks.

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Speaker 1: In pre production, we're laying out what the set looks

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Speaker 1: like and who the people are, and we're hiring you know,

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Speaker 1: production people, etcetera. And first day of production, I'm standing

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Speaker 1: on the stage at ABC in San Francisco and on

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Speaker 1: the other side of the stage I see the most

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Speaker 1: beautiful girl woman I've ever seen in my whole life.

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Speaker 1: And I'm thinking I have to go over there. So

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Speaker 1: I start walking across the stage and I'm not good

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Speaker 1: with come onlines. Okay, I always thought Hi. If I

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Speaker 1: say hi, I'm Alan Hamill, the bullshit light starts flashing. Okay.

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Speaker 1: So I get right up to her, and I still

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Speaker 1: don't know what I'm going to say. So I said,

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Speaker 1: would you mind getting me a cup of coffee? And

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Speaker 1: she did and we've been together ever since fifty years. Okay. Yeah, Uh,

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Speaker 1: there's so much there. The average person became aware of

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Speaker 1: Suzanne when she was in American Graffitian. Okay, but you

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Speaker 1: never got credit on the on the she she was

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Speaker 1: not credited on that movie. You could go through the credits,

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Speaker 1: you will not see the name Susanne. Was that intentional? No,

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Speaker 1: it was that she had. She mouthed I love you,

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Speaker 1: that was it. She was like an extra. She couldn't

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Speaker 1: even say it out loud. And George Lucas Lucas, who

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Speaker 1: had seen her a few days before um I had

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Speaker 1: cast her. And then she her agent called her and said,

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Speaker 1: you got this thing, and it's a small part, and

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Speaker 1: what is it, well, you have to say I love you.

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Speaker 1: So Suzanne stayed up all night practicing how to say

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Speaker 1: I love you, and when she got there, he said,

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Speaker 1: just mouth it. So she was not credited and was interesting.

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Speaker 1: After she she was on Three's Company, which was from

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Speaker 1: seventy seven on ABC ran American Graffiti, and they promoted

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Speaker 1: it by saying, American Graffiti starring Susante Summers. Okay, so

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Speaker 1: you meet your in sixty nine or what you meet

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Speaker 1: her in sixty eight? Okay? So what happens between sixty

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Speaker 1: eight and seventy three? For her UM, she she had

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Speaker 1: won a scholarship to Lone Mountain College. I think it

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Speaker 1: was a girl's college, Catholic girls college, and UM because

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Speaker 1: she had done Guys and Dolls in high school. And

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Speaker 1: you're old enough to remember Walter Winchell. Of course, Walter

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Speaker 1: Winchell turned up for this production. In this San Bruno

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Speaker 1: would just a little blue collar used to be a

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Speaker 1: blue collar town in northern California to see the production

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Speaker 1: because he was represented in Guys and Dolls by one

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Speaker 1: of the characters, and I can't remember which one it is.

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Speaker 1: After the show, he came up on stage. We have

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Speaker 1: a picture of this, and he walked up to Suzanne

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Speaker 1: and he said, quote, you're going somewhere, sister, And that's

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Speaker 1: how she got a scholarship to Lone Mountain College. But

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Speaker 1: the first year she was there, she got pregnant. And

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Speaker 1: Catholic girl gets pregnant. Okay, church didn't like it. We're

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Speaker 1: not we don't like you very much because you got

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Speaker 1: pregnant you weren't married. So she got married and within

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Speaker 1: a year she was divorced. And then I came along

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Speaker 1: and I had just gotten a divorce as well, and

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Speaker 1: we realized that this was not just a a dating situation.

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Speaker 1: I had never felt this way before. And she called

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Speaker 1: her mother that day and said the day we met

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Speaker 1: and said, I met the man, I'm going to marry. Okay,

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Speaker 1: So it was for real. I didn't know what I

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Speaker 1: was feeling. I just knew that this was serious, okay,

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Speaker 1: Because in Canada I had I had being on television

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Speaker 1: every day, I had access to a lot of attractive women,

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Speaker 1: and most of them didn't go anywhere. It was just

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Speaker 1: a I won't say what it was. It was just

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Speaker 1: a short relationship. This was very very serious for me,

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Speaker 1: and all they wanted to do was to be with

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Speaker 1: her constantly, So since we started living together in the

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Speaker 1: early seventies, I think around seventy. Okay, let's go back

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Speaker 1: to when you met her in sixty eight. What was

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Speaker 1: she doing every day? She was struggling. She Uh, she

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Speaker 1: her family were, except for her mother, Uh, we're all drunk,

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Speaker 1: serious alcoholics. She had been raised in a house with

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Speaker 1: a physically violent, crazed alcoholic father whose job was to

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Speaker 1: put cases of beer on box cars. And they didn't

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Speaker 1: have coffee breaks, they had beer brakes. And he'd come

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Speaker 1: home every night ship face and uh, you know, bang

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Speaker 1: down a few shots of whiskey and some more beer,

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Speaker 1: and then he would start to hunt down the family.

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Speaker 1: So the family, uh, he slept most nights in a

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Speaker 1: little closet. Suzanne, her two brothers, her sister, and her mother,

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Speaker 1: and they had a lock on the inside of the

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Speaker 1: closet so he couldn't get to them. And that's where

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Speaker 1: they slept most nights. And this went on for years.

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Speaker 1: And one night, Uh, Susanne, I guess was fifteen or

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Speaker 1: sixteen going to her first prom. Her mother aid her

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Speaker 1: dress and it was this beautiful dress. Susanne described it

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Speaker 1: to me, and she had it hanging in her room

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Speaker 1: so that she could lay in bed and look at

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Speaker 1: it and dream. And her father burst through the door

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Speaker 1: in the middle of the night, flipped on the light

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Speaker 1: and went right to the dress and ripped it up

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Speaker 1: and ripped it in half, and she started screaming and crying.

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Speaker 1: Her mother came in. What's going on here? The father

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Speaker 1: hit the mother in the breast. The mother went down.

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Speaker 1: Suzanne picked up her tennis rocket and heard her father

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Speaker 1: over the head and blood gushed out of his head.

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Speaker 1: They took him to emergency. When he came home, his

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Speaker 1: head was all bandaged up. From that time on. Um.

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Speaker 1: What Suzanne realized was her father was afraid of her,

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Speaker 1: because that was the first time anyone in the family

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Speaker 1: I have her fought back. Okay, so the family was

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Speaker 1: drunk for years. The father was this crazed, craze guy

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Speaker 1: who wanted to be my friend, and I had no

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Speaker 1: interest in being his friend. And the more I pushed

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Speaker 1: him away, the more he'd tried to be my friend.

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Speaker 1: And he was not stupid at all. He was he

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Speaker 1: was smart, and he was funny, funny guy. I think

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Speaker 1: that's where Suzanne got her comed againstincts. But it was

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Speaker 1: brutal growing up that way. And one day Suzanne Uh

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Speaker 1: said to announce to her family, one day, I'm going

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Speaker 1: to be a big star. This is when she was

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Speaker 1: in high school. I'm gonna be a big star, and

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Speaker 1: my mother is going to be sitting in the front row.

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Speaker 1: And guess what it happened. Opening at the MGM Grand

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Speaker 1: in Las Vegas for the first time, there's her mother

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Speaker 1: sitting in the front row. H Okay, what happened to

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Speaker 1: the rest of the kids in the family. They all

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Speaker 1: stopped drinking, including the father, really the mother. The mother

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Speaker 1: would clean up after the father every night. He had

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Speaker 1: this thing about going into the refrigerator and throwing food

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Speaker 1: all over the place, breaking dishes. Then he would pass

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Speaker 1: out and throw up on the floor with all the

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Speaker 1: broken dishes, and she would clean it up, clean him up,

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Speaker 1: and drag him off to bed. She went to Alanon

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Speaker 1: and alan On said, don't pick him up. Let him

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Speaker 1: wake up and realize what he had done. So she

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Speaker 1: started leaving him on the floor and that's when he

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Speaker 1: decided to go get sober. And her siblings are they

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Speaker 1: all okay today? Younger brother died when he was forty seven.

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Speaker 1: He was an alcoholic and a drug addict. And uh,

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Speaker 1: the seven children and gone okay, and the other siblings.

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Speaker 1: The other siblings are in great shape. Her older brother

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Speaker 1: has a carpeting business which he's owned for most of

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Speaker 1: his life. Uh. The sister married her childhood sweetheart, the

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Speaker 1: only man she's ever been with. They celebrated their fiftieth

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Speaker 1: anniversary about five years ago, I guess. And those two

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Speaker 1: have produced a family of fifty one people between children.

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Speaker 1: Grandchildren are s Bruno and great grandchildren. They lived down

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Speaker 1: the street in U. It's an upscale community, Hills Hills.

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Speaker 1: I don't know that anyway. They live in a And

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Speaker 1: to what degree when Susie had becomes successful, are they

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Speaker 1: asking her for money? Not that I'm aware of, Not

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Speaker 1: that I'm aware of. She had written a book, um,

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Speaker 1: I think it was a nineteen in the late eighties

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Speaker 1: called Keeping Secrets. And we had all read books about

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Speaker 1: written by famous people, uh, who talked about they're usually

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Speaker 1: their father being an alcoholic. Keeping Secrets was about Suzanne,

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Speaker 1: who didn't drink, but how it affected her because when

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Speaker 1: you're living with an alcoholic, you become as sick as

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Speaker 1: the alcoholic, even if you don't drink, and her her

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Speaker 1: thing was not drugs or alcohol. Her craziness was spending

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Speaker 1: money she didn't have, creating a crisis, because crises were

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Speaker 1: familiar for her. Okay, when you spend every night hiding

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Speaker 1: from your father in a closet as a crisis, you're

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Speaker 1: living in constant fear and terror. So she was most

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Speaker 1: comfortable that way. And she said to me one day,

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Speaker 1: I could tell the mood my father was in by

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Speaker 1: looking at the back of his head. And she said,

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Speaker 1: I would then behave as is. In other words, she

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Speaker 1: wouldn't behave the way she felt she wanted to behave.

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Speaker 1: She would behave in a way that was resonant with him.

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Speaker 1: So to keep the cap on. Okay, but it never worked,

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Speaker 1: of course, Just to be clear, when she spent money

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Speaker 1: she didn't have. That was before she had money or

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Speaker 1: after she had money. No, before she had money. Okay,

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Speaker 1: I remember the book. So she has a child, she's

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Speaker 1: out of the college before she meets you. What is

325
00:20:40,359 --> 00:20:42,320
Speaker 1: she doing and how does she end up on the set?

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Speaker 1: She gets a call. She had a semi agent in California,

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Speaker 1: in San Francisco, and she got a call saying they're

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Speaker 1: looking for a prize model on this game show. She

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00:20:56,640 --> 00:20:58,720
Speaker 1: had never been on a TV studio in her life,

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Speaker 1: so she turned up. No one bothered giving her any direction,

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Speaker 1: Like when you open the refrigerator door, and you know,

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Speaker 1: you look at the camera with the red light. So

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00:21:07,359 --> 00:21:09,320
Speaker 1: she opened the refrigerator door, but she didn't look at

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Speaker 1: the camera with the red lights. So they fired her

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Speaker 1: the first day. You know what, It's good they fired

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Speaker 1: her because if they didn't fire her, I don't know whether.

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Speaker 1: I don't know whether we would have had an evolved relationship.

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Speaker 1: So it were evolved mentally or evolved into that it happened.

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00:21:32,200 --> 00:21:35,520
Speaker 1: I in all the years I did television in Canada,

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Speaker 1: I never messed around with any of the women who

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Speaker 1: worked with me. Ever, Uh, it was too dangerous and

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Speaker 1: what happens if it doesn't work out? Now you're see

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Speaker 1: him every day. Absolutely, So I never did that. So

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Speaker 1: would I have done that with Suzanne if she had

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Speaker 1: gotten the job and stayed on the show. Um, I

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Speaker 1: don't know. It was pretty pretty powerful action. Okay, so

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00:22:02,720 --> 00:22:09,080
Speaker 1: you become involved with Suzanne. It's an instant romance. Um. Now,

348
00:22:09,520 --> 00:22:12,679
Speaker 1: you had a long career where you were in front.

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Speaker 1: Did you immediately say to yourself, I'm gonna put her

350
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Speaker 1: in front. I kept going back to Canada to do

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Speaker 1: television after I moved here, and from nineteen nineteen seventy

352
00:22:26,800 --> 00:22:33,320
Speaker 1: four or five until I did the Alan Hamill Show,

353
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Speaker 1: which was like Carson. A matter of fact, the production

354
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Speaker 1: people we hired we stole from Carson because we wanted

355
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Speaker 1: Carson's roller decks, so I had every guest Carson ever had.

356
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Speaker 1: Um So I did that show and then her contract

357
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Speaker 1: with three Company was up in night, and uh so

358
00:22:57,880 --> 00:23:01,680
Speaker 1: it was time to renegotiate, which is normal in the industry. Okay,

359
00:23:01,960 --> 00:23:05,159
Speaker 1: how many years was the initial contract? Was? He was

360
00:23:05,240 --> 00:23:10,600
Speaker 1: five usually and was everybody else on five? Yes, but

361
00:23:10,720 --> 00:23:14,080
Speaker 1: they had renegoted. John and Joyce had already renegotiated because

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Speaker 1: they had hired them before Suzanne. So I go to

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Speaker 1: the negotiation and at ABC and the ABC lawyers there,

364
00:23:24,760 --> 00:23:28,960
Speaker 1: one of the producers is there and some other guy,

365
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Speaker 1: and within two minutes they told me she's fired. I said,

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Speaker 1: fired for asking for what She's fired. That was it.

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Speaker 1: There was no explanation, She's fired. So I got up

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Speaker 1: and I left. Okay, Then I discovered that Laverne and

369
00:23:49,800 --> 00:23:55,520
Speaker 1: Shirley had renegotiated their deal three weeks earlier, and it

370
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Speaker 1: was a monumental deal. I mean, without Laverne and Shirley,

371
00:24:00,000 --> 00:24:05,800
Speaker 1: there's no laverniture. Okay. So they scored big time, huge,

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Speaker 1: and the parent company of ABC and today, if if

373
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Speaker 1: they decided to do this at a board meeting, they

374
00:24:10,920 --> 00:24:14,960
Speaker 1: all be thrown in prison. The parent company of ABC decided,

375
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Speaker 1: we have to stop women from asking to be paid

376
00:24:18,080 --> 00:24:22,160
Speaker 1: parody with the men, So let's fire the biggest female

377
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Speaker 1: star in television. And no other woman will ever ask

378
00:24:25,920 --> 00:24:30,080
Speaker 1: to be paid parody with the men. So they did.

379
00:24:30,840 --> 00:24:33,119
Speaker 1: It was the dumbest, you know. I ran into a

380
00:24:33,160 --> 00:24:36,919
Speaker 1: guy from KATS, which is an independent distributor of TV shows,

381
00:24:37,560 --> 00:24:39,359
Speaker 1: at one of those conventions, and he said to me

382
00:24:40,520 --> 00:24:45,040
Speaker 1: her firing was known as the biggest self inflicted wound

383
00:24:45,280 --> 00:24:48,399
Speaker 1: in the history of television. He said, we know that

384
00:24:48,480 --> 00:24:52,080
Speaker 1: they lost over a billion in terms of license fees

385
00:24:52,119 --> 00:24:54,560
Speaker 1: and back end. He said, by the time this show

386
00:24:54,640 --> 00:24:58,040
Speaker 1: plays out, he said, will be more than that. Okay.

387
00:24:58,440 --> 00:25:01,879
Speaker 1: On the street, the word was that she asked for

388
00:25:01,960 --> 00:25:04,840
Speaker 1: too much. That wasn't a factor she actually asked for.

389
00:25:05,160 --> 00:25:08,840
Speaker 1: I actually asked for half of what men were making.

390
00:25:09,080 --> 00:25:11,280
Speaker 1: Whose shows were in the top twenty. Her show was

391
00:25:11,400 --> 00:25:15,160
Speaker 1: number one. She had the highest demographics. See what what

392
00:25:15,200 --> 00:25:18,199
Speaker 1: you're what you're saying to me right now is what

393
00:25:18,280 --> 00:25:22,520
Speaker 1: the pr company for the producers did. They destroyed her

394
00:25:22,560 --> 00:25:25,720
Speaker 1: after that, since she was this greedy bitch and she

395
00:25:26,320 --> 00:25:28,440
Speaker 1: didn't deserve to have the job, and we gave her

396
00:25:28,440 --> 00:25:32,120
Speaker 1: the job and all she wanted. She's a money grubber, etcetera, etcetera.

397
00:25:32,680 --> 00:25:35,120
Speaker 1: I asked for fifty percent of what the men were

398
00:25:35,160 --> 00:25:38,000
Speaker 1: making and a piece of the back end. Okay, it

399
00:25:38,000 --> 00:25:40,320
Speaker 1: wouldn't have mattered if I had asked for a nickel.

400
00:25:40,640 --> 00:25:44,400
Speaker 1: They had decided to fire Suzanne Summers, so it had

401
00:25:44,440 --> 00:25:48,760
Speaker 1: nothing to do. Nothing to do with my request for

402
00:25:48,800 --> 00:25:51,400
Speaker 1: a new contract, and nothing to do with that. They

403
00:25:51,400 --> 00:25:53,879
Speaker 1: had decided to fire her. And I had gotten a

404
00:25:53,960 --> 00:25:56,920
Speaker 1: call from someone who was with the parent company who

405
00:25:56,960 --> 00:25:59,840
Speaker 1: was a mutual friend, and he said, we're not have

406
00:26:00,040 --> 00:26:02,639
Speaker 1: in this conversation, he said. I came out of a

407
00:26:02,720 --> 00:26:07,200
Speaker 1: meeting and he said, they've decided to fire No, they've

408
00:26:07,200 --> 00:26:10,399
Speaker 1: decided to hang a nun in the marketplace. But the

409
00:26:10,480 --> 00:26:13,720
Speaker 1: Romans used to do right, They've decided to hang it

410
00:26:13,800 --> 00:26:16,480
Speaker 1: nun in the marketplace. And Suzanne Summers is going to

411
00:26:16,560 --> 00:26:19,919
Speaker 1: be it, okay, And I said, you're kidding. He said, no,

412
00:26:19,920 --> 00:26:22,800
Speaker 1: they're going to fire her. I said, are you kidding?

413
00:26:23,040 --> 00:26:26,920
Speaker 1: The greatest chemistry on television between Suzanne and John and

414
00:26:27,000 --> 00:26:30,960
Speaker 1: Joyce are gonna fire. They're gonna destroy this show. He said,

415
00:26:30,960 --> 00:26:34,359
Speaker 1: they're gonna fire her. He said, this decision is not

416
00:26:34,480 --> 00:26:38,800
Speaker 1: coming from creative people. It's coming from business people. They're

417
00:26:38,840 --> 00:26:41,360
Speaker 1: just looking at the bucks. That's all they care about there,

418
00:26:41,400 --> 00:26:45,200
Speaker 1: looking at the dollar signs. Okay, and that's how it happened. Okay,

419
00:26:45,240 --> 00:26:47,919
Speaker 1: let's go back. So you meet her in to what

420
00:26:48,119 --> 00:26:51,080
Speaker 1: degree you have your parallel career, To what degree are

421
00:26:51,119 --> 00:26:55,879
Speaker 1: you involved in her career. I'm not really involved in

422
00:26:55,920 --> 00:27:01,440
Speaker 1: her career at all. Um, she was trying to make

423
00:27:01,560 --> 00:27:06,600
Speaker 1: ends meet. I didn't know this. She kept it from me. Um.

424
00:27:06,640 --> 00:27:09,080
Speaker 1: I was spending four days a week in San Francisco.

425
00:27:09,760 --> 00:27:13,520
Speaker 1: She moved to Saslito, which of course is across the

426
00:27:13,520 --> 00:27:16,399
Speaker 1: Bay right to get away from I think, from her family,

427
00:27:17,880 --> 00:27:19,600
Speaker 1: and so I moved to So I was living in

428
00:27:19,680 --> 00:27:23,120
Speaker 1: a Japanese hotel in San Francisco, the Miyako. I moved

429
00:27:23,119 --> 00:27:26,800
Speaker 1: to Saslito and got myself a house boat. I thought,

430
00:27:26,840 --> 00:27:28,720
Speaker 1: if I'm going to live in of course you gotta

431
00:27:28,720 --> 00:27:31,080
Speaker 1: do it up right, I have to be on a houseboat, right.

432
00:27:31,800 --> 00:27:34,000
Speaker 1: So on one side of me, I had a surgeon,

433
00:27:34,200 --> 00:27:36,000
Speaker 1: and on the other side of me, I had a

434
00:27:36,119 --> 00:27:39,520
Speaker 1: drug dealer. So I knew if I had any health problems,

435
00:27:39,560 --> 00:27:42,159
Speaker 1: the guy's right next door, and I didn't have to

436
00:27:42,160 --> 00:27:44,320
Speaker 1: go into town to buy any drugs. The guy's right

437
00:27:44,359 --> 00:27:47,359
Speaker 1: next door on the other side, by the way, I

438
00:27:47,400 --> 00:27:54,600
Speaker 1: don't do drugs. Um. So every night, Um, she'd put

439
00:27:54,640 --> 00:27:58,919
Speaker 1: her son to bed, and the babysitter would come, and

440
00:27:59,000 --> 00:28:02,720
Speaker 1: she'd come to my house Voute and I'd cooked dinner

441
00:28:02,800 --> 00:28:07,440
Speaker 1: for her and Um we'd sit and watch the moon

442
00:28:07,560 --> 00:28:10,719
Speaker 1: come over the Golden Gate Bridge and it was just

443
00:28:10,800 --> 00:28:17,760
Speaker 1: this wonderful romance. It was like incredible, and I hated

444
00:28:17,760 --> 00:28:23,040
Speaker 1: being away from her, and so for the past let

445
00:28:23,040 --> 00:28:27,199
Speaker 1: me go back. She gets fired. I said to her,

446
00:28:27,240 --> 00:28:30,719
Speaker 1: I'm leaving my talk show and she said, don't do that.

447
00:28:30,800 --> 00:28:32,680
Speaker 1: She said, you'll miss it. I said, I've talked to

448
00:28:32,760 --> 00:28:36,080
Speaker 1: everybody I want to talk to. Okay, I'm ready. Okay,

449
00:28:36,080 --> 00:28:39,720
Speaker 1: I've been doing television for twenty five years. I'm really ready.

450
00:28:40,000 --> 00:28:41,640
Speaker 1: She said, what are you gonna do? I said, you

451
00:28:41,680 --> 00:28:44,240
Speaker 1: don't have an agent, you don't have a manager, you

452
00:28:44,360 --> 00:28:47,200
Speaker 1: have nobody. You don't know what you're doing. I said,

453
00:28:47,200 --> 00:28:51,400
Speaker 1: you're gonna give it away and you'll just fade. I said,

454
00:28:51,640 --> 00:28:54,440
Speaker 1: we're gonna make this work for us. I know how

455
00:28:54,480 --> 00:29:00,920
Speaker 1: to do this. Okay. That was and she spent a

456
00:29:01,000 --> 00:29:04,480
Speaker 1: year well before we go there, okay, just to lay

457
00:29:04,480 --> 00:29:07,160
Speaker 1: out the thing. How did she end up getting threes company?

458
00:29:07,560 --> 00:29:10,680
Speaker 1: She got a call from uh, actually from a woman

459
00:29:10,720 --> 00:29:16,239
Speaker 1: who worked for me in casting, who said, can I

460
00:29:16,320 --> 00:29:20,120
Speaker 1: work with Susanne? I said, yeah, sure, So she somehow

461
00:29:20,200 --> 00:29:24,000
Speaker 1: got a call and sent UH called Susanne and Suzanne

462
00:29:24,040 --> 00:29:27,240
Speaker 1: went in and Suzanne had done like eight or nine pilots,

463
00:29:27,600 --> 00:29:30,480
Speaker 1: none of which it's sold. And I used to joke

464
00:29:30,520 --> 00:29:32,360
Speaker 1: with her and said, anyone who does eight or nine

465
00:29:32,360 --> 00:29:36,680
Speaker 1: pilots must be a stewardess. By the way, we can't

466
00:29:36,720 --> 00:29:41,000
Speaker 1: use the word stewardess anything that light attendant. Now, okay.

467
00:29:41,040 --> 00:29:42,760
Speaker 1: I got a big discussion with something. They said someone

468
00:29:42,800 --> 00:29:45,760
Speaker 1: was from India. You know, they're South Asian. You know

469
00:29:45,880 --> 00:29:48,920
Speaker 1: the I go out of my way to be politically incorrect.

470
00:29:49,200 --> 00:29:52,840
Speaker 1: It pisces me off that someone should decide what my

471
00:29:53,000 --> 00:29:57,240
Speaker 1: language should be. Okay, there's something called the First Amendments

472
00:29:58,360 --> 00:30:01,880
Speaker 1: and it's the Freedom of Speech Amendments, and I exercise

473
00:30:01,960 --> 00:30:05,360
Speaker 1: it liberally. And the idea that you know, when the

474
00:30:05,360 --> 00:30:09,640
Speaker 1: Internet started, When the Internet started and I started emailing

475
00:30:09,760 --> 00:30:13,280
Speaker 1: in caps, I started getting people saying to me, why

476
00:30:13,280 --> 00:30:17,800
Speaker 1: are you yelling at? I said, who? Who? Excuse me?

477
00:30:18,400 --> 00:30:21,880
Speaker 1: Whose rule is that? Who decided that caps were yelling?

478
00:30:22,280 --> 00:30:25,000
Speaker 1: I said, I write in caps because I'm over forty

479
00:30:25,080 --> 00:30:27,560
Speaker 1: five and most of the people I deal with are

480
00:30:27,600 --> 00:30:31,480
Speaker 1: over forty five and they would appreciate reading caps rather

481
00:30:31,560 --> 00:30:35,400
Speaker 1: than lower case. Okay, they said, you're yelling. So I

482
00:30:35,440 --> 00:30:39,000
Speaker 1: never found out who made the rule. Somebody made the rule. Okay,

483
00:30:39,040 --> 00:30:42,240
Speaker 1: but I hate all that politically correct bullets. Okay, Okay,

484
00:30:42,360 --> 00:30:48,400
Speaker 1: let's go what but you can't say the N word? Right? No? Okay,

485
00:30:48,400 --> 00:30:50,960
Speaker 1: So but there are limits. There are limits. Well, it's

486
00:30:51,000 --> 00:30:53,360
Speaker 1: like you know, running into a theater yelling fire. Right,

487
00:30:53,400 --> 00:30:56,880
Speaker 1: it's the same deal. Okay, let's go back. How does

488
00:30:56,880 --> 00:31:00,000
Speaker 1: a nice Jewish boy from Canada end up on television

489
00:31:03,680 --> 00:31:05,760
Speaker 1: when I graduated? First of all, how do you know

490
00:31:05,800 --> 00:31:09,680
Speaker 1: I'm Jewish? First? Hamil's a Jewish name. Secondly, it's all

491
00:31:09,720 --> 00:31:14,800
Speaker 1: over online that you're Jewish, Jewish Jewish Holidays, so that's

492
00:31:14,800 --> 00:31:17,000
Speaker 1: another thing. You know. If I wasn't Jewish, I couldn't

493
00:31:17,000 --> 00:31:19,680
Speaker 1: say a nice Jewish boy. But I am, so I can't.

494
00:31:19,720 --> 00:31:21,120
Speaker 1: I thought I might have run into you with the

495
00:31:21,160 --> 00:31:26,760
Speaker 1: steam bath. Okay. Uh. I graduated from high school in

496
00:31:26,800 --> 00:31:32,080
Speaker 1: Canada when I was so let's see when I was eighteen.

497
00:31:33,480 --> 00:31:42,720
Speaker 1: Let's stop for a minute. We're in Canada and your

498
00:31:42,800 --> 00:31:46,120
Speaker 1: parents Canadian or they came from the Old Country. Both

499
00:31:46,280 --> 00:31:49,960
Speaker 1: they came from the Old Country and Canadian. Okay, where

500
00:31:49,960 --> 00:31:52,520
Speaker 1: did I come from? From Poland? My father came from

501
00:31:52,960 --> 00:31:56,360
Speaker 1: uh from Poland right after his bar mispre five it

502
00:31:56,400 --> 00:31:59,600
Speaker 1: was borne two. How many people have fathers who were

503
00:31:59,600 --> 00:32:05,080
Speaker 1: born and so he came over and in those days,

504
00:32:05,120 --> 00:32:09,080
Speaker 1: the federal would be immigrants wanted to live in New York, Philadelphia,

505
00:32:09,120 --> 00:32:13,120
Speaker 1: Boston or Chicago. So the federal government said, we will

506
00:32:13,200 --> 00:32:17,240
Speaker 1: give anybody a one way train ticket to anywhere else

507
00:32:17,400 --> 00:32:20,640
Speaker 1: in America other than those four cities. So my father

508
00:32:20,680 --> 00:32:25,240
Speaker 1: went to Texas to be a cowboy, and he loved it.

509
00:32:25,280 --> 00:32:27,880
Speaker 1: He lived in Austin, Texas for three years and just

510
00:32:28,600 --> 00:32:31,360
Speaker 1: always talked about the Texans, how polite they were, how

511
00:32:31,400 --> 00:32:34,080
Speaker 1: wonderful they were. And I don't know what he did.

512
00:32:34,080 --> 00:32:37,720
Speaker 1: He had some were some blue collar job there, and

513
00:32:37,720 --> 00:32:40,680
Speaker 1: he slept in a what he called a flophouse every night.

514
00:32:41,320 --> 00:32:43,120
Speaker 1: And he said I had to sleep on my boots,

515
00:32:43,120 --> 00:32:47,080
Speaker 1: otherwise someone would have stolen them. Okay. And I said,

516
00:32:47,120 --> 00:32:49,560
Speaker 1: so how did if where did you eat? If you

517
00:32:49,560 --> 00:32:52,800
Speaker 1: didn't have a kitchen? He said, there was a brewery

518
00:32:52,960 --> 00:32:55,160
Speaker 1: and for a nickel, they would give you a big

519
00:32:55,200 --> 00:32:58,640
Speaker 1: stein of beer, and then they'd lay out all these

520
00:32:58,760 --> 00:33:04,360
Speaker 1: uh lunch things, breads and and sliced meats and pickles

521
00:33:04,360 --> 00:33:07,120
Speaker 1: and things. He said, I didn't drink beer, so I

522
00:33:07,120 --> 00:33:09,640
Speaker 1: would take my stinn of beer and I'd sell it

523
00:33:09,680 --> 00:33:12,480
Speaker 1: to somebody else for three cents, and then I would eat.

524
00:33:12,760 --> 00:33:14,320
Speaker 1: And he said I would have one meal a day,

525
00:33:14,320 --> 00:33:16,560
Speaker 1: and that would that would be it. Okay. My mother

526
00:33:16,640 --> 00:33:20,880
Speaker 1: came over after World War One, and the two of them,

527
00:33:21,120 --> 00:33:25,080
Speaker 1: My mother had a job. He's in Texas. When does

528
00:33:25,120 --> 00:33:28,280
Speaker 1: he leave Texas for Toronto? He leoh, a good, good question.

529
00:33:28,480 --> 00:33:34,840
Speaker 1: Leaves Texas in nineteen oh eight or nine because one

530
00:33:34,840 --> 00:33:37,120
Speaker 1: of his brothers had moved to Chicago so he goes

531
00:33:37,160 --> 00:33:40,640
Speaker 1: to Chicago. My father gets a job working in a

532
00:33:40,680 --> 00:33:47,200
Speaker 1: sweatshop making pockets Taylor not a tailor, an operator, the operators,

533
00:33:49,240 --> 00:33:52,880
Speaker 1: and within a week they go on strike. So my

534
00:33:52,960 --> 00:33:55,120
Speaker 1: father doesn't know what a strike is. So I didn't

535
00:33:55,120 --> 00:33:58,239
Speaker 1: have strikes in Poland. Okay, they killed you. So they

536
00:33:58,280 --> 00:34:00,480
Speaker 1: go on strike and he's standing there and of a sudden,

537
00:34:00,520 --> 00:34:03,320
Speaker 1: a cop on horseback rides in, clubs him over the

538
00:34:03,360 --> 00:34:06,880
Speaker 1: head and blinds him in his right eye. That's when

539
00:34:06,960 --> 00:34:09,960
Speaker 1: my father decided, I'm getting out of this country. So

540
00:34:10,040 --> 00:34:13,520
Speaker 1: he moves to Toronto. If youn't know anybody interropted. He

541
00:34:13,560 --> 00:34:17,880
Speaker 1: had a sister living there, no a brother, another brother.

542
00:34:18,560 --> 00:34:22,680
Speaker 1: She moves to Toronto and loves living in Toronto. And

543
00:34:22,719 --> 00:34:26,960
Speaker 1: then World War One happens and he gets, you know,

544
00:34:27,000 --> 00:34:29,360
Speaker 1: sucked into the military and he says to the recruiter,

545
00:34:29,400 --> 00:34:31,160
Speaker 1: but I'm blind in my right eye, and he said,

546
00:34:31,200 --> 00:34:34,279
Speaker 1: so you'll shoot with your left eye. And I mean

547
00:34:34,320 --> 00:34:36,280
Speaker 1: even today they don't know how many people they lost

548
00:34:36,280 --> 00:34:38,160
Speaker 1: in World War One. It was like by the pound.

549
00:34:38,760 --> 00:34:42,000
Speaker 1: They just kept loading guys onto ships and sending him overseas.

550
00:34:43,239 --> 00:34:46,000
Speaker 1: So then my parents met. My mother's first job was

551
00:34:46,239 --> 00:34:49,879
Speaker 1: scrubbing floors in the train station, and my father got

552
00:34:49,880 --> 00:34:55,920
Speaker 1: another job making pockets, which was his lifelong job. And

553
00:34:56,200 --> 00:35:00,560
Speaker 1: my father was the most honest, purest man I've ever

554
00:35:00,640 --> 00:35:03,120
Speaker 1: met in my whole life. And I learned that less

555
00:35:03,120 --> 00:35:05,560
Speaker 1: in the hard way. When I was about fifteen or sixteen,

556
00:35:05,600 --> 00:35:09,480
Speaker 1: I had a date, one of my first dates, okay,

557
00:35:09,520 --> 00:35:14,680
Speaker 1: with Molly, and then Susie came along, and I really

558
00:35:14,719 --> 00:35:17,400
Speaker 1: wanted to go out with Susie. So I made a

559
00:35:17,480 --> 00:35:20,920
Speaker 1: date with Susie. But I had to give I had

560
00:35:20,960 --> 00:35:23,799
Speaker 1: to give Molly a reason why I wasn't available. So

561
00:35:23,840 --> 00:35:26,839
Speaker 1: I said to my dad, so if Molly calls, tell

562
00:35:26,880 --> 00:35:30,520
Speaker 1: her blah blah blah blah blah blah. And I left

563
00:35:30,520 --> 00:35:32,239
Speaker 1: and I went out with Susie. When I came home,

564
00:35:32,719 --> 00:35:35,879
Speaker 1: I asked my dad. I said, did uh Molly called?

565
00:35:35,880 --> 00:35:38,560
Speaker 1: He said yeah. I said, would you tell her? He said,

566
00:35:38,560 --> 00:35:43,000
Speaker 1: I told you were out with Susie. That's what I realized.

567
00:35:43,120 --> 00:35:48,160
Speaker 1: My father was not capable of lying okay and uh.

568
00:35:48,200 --> 00:35:54,400
Speaker 1: He was a functional literate. He would spend his days reading, reading, reading, reading.

569
00:35:54,560 --> 00:35:58,279
Speaker 1: He couldn't write. He could barely sign his name. So

570
00:35:58,400 --> 00:36:02,120
Speaker 1: my mother did everything. And my mother like most immigrants,

571
00:36:02,160 --> 00:36:06,000
Speaker 1: round a boarding house and which they bought the house

572
00:36:06,160 --> 00:36:12,280
Speaker 1: in uh Boon the twenties, I can't remember when. And

573
00:36:12,480 --> 00:36:14,920
Speaker 1: it was a little house, but we there were seventeen

574
00:36:14,960 --> 00:36:20,400
Speaker 1: people living there, okay, one toilet. We had eight Chinese brothers.

575
00:36:20,480 --> 00:36:23,759
Speaker 1: Four had been born in Hawaii for in China. We

576
00:36:23,880 --> 00:36:27,879
Speaker 1: had Reverend Johnny saw the Linda Scottish minister. We had

577
00:36:28,000 --> 00:36:31,719
Speaker 1: Eric de Luz, a trinidaddy and artists. We had Van

578
00:36:31,560 --> 00:36:35,799
Speaker 1: van Alphin who was a Dutch cartographer. We had a

579
00:36:35,800 --> 00:36:39,880
Speaker 1: blind alcoholic trumpet player. We had Harry Lando, a Jewish taylor.

580
00:36:40,000 --> 00:36:45,080
Speaker 1: And we had Bill Monger, a British engineer, plus my sister,

581
00:36:45,200 --> 00:36:48,920
Speaker 1: myself and my two parents. And I slept in the

582
00:36:49,040 --> 00:36:51,440
Speaker 1: dining room with my parents. Stilla was eight years old.

583
00:36:51,880 --> 00:36:54,839
Speaker 1: Never had my own room. Okay. Oh. We had one

584
00:36:54,840 --> 00:36:59,560
Speaker 1: other guy, Oka Chukka Johnny, who was a Nigerian prince

585
00:37:00,200 --> 00:37:02,920
Speaker 1: who was going to the University of Toronto medical school.

586
00:37:03,840 --> 00:37:06,800
Speaker 1: And I loved living with him. He had this great

587
00:37:07,440 --> 00:37:13,960
Speaker 1: barrel laugh and we were we just we were good together, okay.

588
00:37:14,160 --> 00:37:18,960
Speaker 1: And he was a great farter. In the middle of

589
00:37:19,000 --> 00:37:24,160
Speaker 1: the night, I'd be awakened, okay, I'd wake up, and

590
00:37:24,160 --> 00:37:26,680
Speaker 1: I'd say okay. He would call him okay, okay, are

591
00:37:26,719 --> 00:37:31,120
Speaker 1: you kidding and he'd say well, and he had he

592
00:37:31,239 --> 00:37:35,800
Speaker 1: had a great laugh. He um. He'd go to Nigeria

593
00:37:35,880 --> 00:37:40,040
Speaker 1: every summer for vacation, come back with a big bag,

594
00:37:40,360 --> 00:37:44,320
Speaker 1: canvas bag filled with twigs, and the twigs were about

595
00:37:44,360 --> 00:37:47,080
Speaker 1: four or five inches long. And that's how he brushed

596
00:37:47,080 --> 00:37:49,440
Speaker 1: his teeth. And he'd hold a twig in his mouth

597
00:37:49,560 --> 00:37:52,000
Speaker 1: till it softened up, and then he'd brush his teeth

598
00:37:52,040 --> 00:37:55,239
Speaker 1: with it. And he had the greatest teeth in the world. Okay,

599
00:37:55,440 --> 00:38:02,440
Speaker 1: so there's something wrong with our favorite Okay. Uh So anyway, um,

600
00:38:02,440 --> 00:38:05,760
Speaker 1: where were you graduate from high school? Graduate from high school?

601
00:38:05,800 --> 00:38:11,760
Speaker 1: Everybody in my family as a doctor, everybody except my father. Um.

602
00:38:11,880 --> 00:38:17,520
Speaker 1: And because all their parents came from the Old country

603
00:38:17,960 --> 00:38:21,040
Speaker 1: and the most respected man in the village was the doctor.

604
00:38:21,560 --> 00:38:24,120
Speaker 1: So when they got to Canada, they said to their sons,

605
00:38:24,680 --> 00:38:27,080
Speaker 1: you're going to be a doctor. If you're not going

606
00:38:27,120 --> 00:38:28,600
Speaker 1: to be a doctor, you're going to be a lawyer.

607
00:38:29,520 --> 00:38:33,120
Speaker 1: And if you're a loser, you'll be an accountant. Okay,

608
00:38:33,280 --> 00:38:35,719
Speaker 1: so they all became doctors. If that's why I became

609
00:38:35,719 --> 00:38:42,319
Speaker 1: a lawyer, Okay, is it doctrinated from you know, consciousness exactly. Yeah.

610
00:38:42,640 --> 00:38:44,920
Speaker 1: So I didn't want to become a doctor because Okay,

611
00:38:45,200 --> 00:38:47,080
Speaker 1: who was going to the medical school, would take me

612
00:38:47,120 --> 00:38:49,879
Speaker 1: to the lab, okay at night where he was experimented

613
00:38:49,960 --> 00:38:53,719
Speaker 1: on rabbits and rats and things, and the smell in

614
00:38:53,760 --> 00:38:57,880
Speaker 1: the lab was horrendous, and I couldn't stand blood, looking

615
00:38:57,880 --> 00:39:00,640
Speaker 1: at blood. And he'd open up a rat and show

616
00:39:00,680 --> 00:39:03,359
Speaker 1: me the rests heart beating inside, and I think, I

617
00:39:03,400 --> 00:39:05,520
Speaker 1: can't do this. I can't, So I'm not going to

618
00:39:05,560 --> 00:39:09,360
Speaker 1: become a doctor. Okay. So I graduated from high school.

619
00:39:09,360 --> 00:39:11,279
Speaker 1: I don't want I'm gonna do. I don't know where

620
00:39:11,280 --> 00:39:13,680
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go, what I'm gonna do, And I had

621
00:39:13,760 --> 00:39:19,120
Speaker 1: had I've always worked. My first job was when I

622
00:39:19,160 --> 00:39:22,680
Speaker 1: was six. I worked at the campus gross Steria across

623
00:39:22,719 --> 00:39:26,239
Speaker 1: the street from our house on Saturdays, and I was

624
00:39:26,280 --> 00:39:30,520
Speaker 1: in charge of opening the door for the shoppers and

625
00:39:30,520 --> 00:39:32,960
Speaker 1: I made it. I made a buck a day. That

626
00:39:33,120 --> 00:39:37,000
Speaker 1: was a lot of money. But my favorite job I

627
00:39:37,040 --> 00:39:40,160
Speaker 1: worked for the Canadian National Railway from the time I

628
00:39:40,200 --> 00:39:43,560
Speaker 1: was thirteen to the time I was seventeen. I was

629
00:39:43,600 --> 00:39:48,880
Speaker 1: a newsy Okay, what does the news he do well.

630
00:39:48,920 --> 00:39:51,040
Speaker 1: I would walk up and down the aisle of the train,

631
00:39:51,080 --> 00:39:53,040
Speaker 1: and some of these trains were like two miles long.

632
00:39:53,520 --> 00:39:56,400
Speaker 1: I'd have a basket on this arm, and i'd have

633
00:39:56,480 --> 00:40:00,800
Speaker 1: a case of cokes on this arm. In those days,

634
00:40:01,320 --> 00:40:06,279
Speaker 1: coke cases were made out of solid wood and bottles.

635
00:40:06,440 --> 00:40:10,839
Speaker 1: Of course. Okay, this arm, I'm right handed. To this day,

636
00:40:10,920 --> 00:40:14,520
Speaker 1: my left arm is stronger than my right arm. Okay.

637
00:40:14,600 --> 00:40:17,520
Speaker 1: And i'd walked down the island, I'd say cigarettes, matches,

638
00:40:17,600 --> 00:40:22,160
Speaker 1: chocolate bars, chewing gum, peanuts, biscuits and oranges, novelty, contraceptives, pillows,

639
00:40:22,160 --> 00:40:28,400
Speaker 1: and comic books. Did you okay, did you sell any newspapers? No? No,

640
00:40:28,600 --> 00:40:32,360
Speaker 1: there's no money in selling newspapers, right, So I was

641
00:40:32,480 --> 00:40:37,839
Speaker 1: making three fifty four hundred dollars a week cash. And

642
00:40:37,920 --> 00:40:42,600
Speaker 1: this was in let's see there, you say this was

643
00:40:42,880 --> 00:40:46,960
Speaker 1: in the early fifties. My father was making twenty five

644
00:40:47,000 --> 00:40:51,120
Speaker 1: dollars a week, okay, making pockets. Most people were making

645
00:40:53,120 --> 00:40:57,560
Speaker 1: bucks a week. Okay, So I started buying custom suits. Okay,

646
00:40:57,560 --> 00:40:59,920
Speaker 1: we're just to know. Were you that good at new

647
00:41:00,120 --> 00:41:04,120
Speaker 1: z all newsies make that kind of money? No, well,

648
00:41:04,160 --> 00:41:06,600
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't know what other newsies were making.

649
00:41:07,239 --> 00:41:10,040
Speaker 1: I was really good at it. And I was a kid, okay,

650
00:41:10,040 --> 00:41:12,200
Speaker 1: who doesn't want to help a kid. I didn't have

651
00:41:12,239 --> 00:41:14,240
Speaker 1: to say to people I'm working my way through anything.

652
00:41:14,360 --> 00:41:18,280
Speaker 1: I just I was a kid, okay. And uh so

653
00:41:18,800 --> 00:41:21,040
Speaker 1: they bought they bought from me. And the night before

654
00:41:21,920 --> 00:41:24,799
Speaker 1: I would go on the train, i'd go to the

655
00:41:24,840 --> 00:41:29,160
Speaker 1: butcher and I'd have him cut slices of ham for me.

656
00:41:29,480 --> 00:41:31,120
Speaker 1: So he cut a slice of ham and hands me

657
00:41:31,160 --> 00:41:33,600
Speaker 1: and say, is this thin enough? I hold it up

658
00:41:33,600 --> 00:41:35,799
Speaker 1: to the light and if I couldn't see the light

659
00:41:35,880 --> 00:41:38,080
Speaker 1: through the ham, I'd say, no, no, it's got to

660
00:41:38,160 --> 00:41:41,360
Speaker 1: be thinner than that. So I would get a hundred

661
00:41:41,400 --> 00:41:44,520
Speaker 1: and fifty slices of ham. I think a hundred and

662
00:41:44,520 --> 00:41:48,880
Speaker 1: fifty slices, maybe a pound. I'd buy a white bread.

663
00:41:49,600 --> 00:41:51,520
Speaker 1: It was the only time whitebread ever made us way

664
00:41:51,560 --> 00:41:55,799
Speaker 1: into my house, okay. And I would make ham sandwiches

665
00:41:55,840 --> 00:41:58,120
Speaker 1: and ham and cheese sandwiches, and I would sell him

666
00:41:58,160 --> 00:42:02,480
Speaker 1: for thirty five cents and forty On the train, okay,

667
00:42:03,320 --> 00:42:07,520
Speaker 1: I would rent pillows, little baby pillows going west and

668
00:42:07,560 --> 00:42:11,520
Speaker 1: then coming east, I turned the the cases inside out

669
00:42:11,520 --> 00:42:13,880
Speaker 1: and rent them. On the way back, I'd rent comic

670
00:42:13,920 --> 00:42:19,520
Speaker 1: books for a nickel. Uh. The novelty contraceptives, Okay, there

671
00:42:19,520 --> 00:42:21,680
Speaker 1: were three of them. I had the French tickler. You

672
00:42:21,680 --> 00:42:24,400
Speaker 1: can only imagine what that is. I had the alligator,

673
00:42:24,440 --> 00:42:26,800
Speaker 1: you can only imagine what that is. And the third

674
00:42:26,840 --> 00:42:32,240
Speaker 1: one was and the clown face what was that? Okay?

675
00:42:32,280 --> 00:42:35,680
Speaker 1: It was a condom with a clown faces again okay.

676
00:42:35,920 --> 00:42:39,400
Speaker 1: And those I could saw those day and night. It

677
00:42:39,480 --> 00:42:43,920
Speaker 1: was amazing, mainly to young men, young soldiers going home,

678
00:42:44,120 --> 00:42:46,480
Speaker 1: you know, on vacation, to see their girlfriends or their

679
00:42:46,480 --> 00:42:50,160
Speaker 1: wives or whatever. And they would always buy all my

680
00:42:50,400 --> 00:42:54,239
Speaker 1: novelty contraceptives. And I would buy them in Winnipeg for

681
00:42:56,520 --> 00:42:59,439
Speaker 1: I think i'd get three of them, three of them

682
00:42:59,440 --> 00:43:02,920
Speaker 1: in a pack, for thirty cents, and I could sell

683
00:43:03,000 --> 00:43:07,160
Speaker 1: them for anywhere between a dollar and four dollars. Okay.

684
00:43:07,440 --> 00:43:11,040
Speaker 1: When you got on the train Toronto, where did it go? Okay?

685
00:43:11,080 --> 00:43:13,360
Speaker 1: In the summertime, I'd go a cross country. I'd go

686
00:43:13,480 --> 00:43:17,640
Speaker 1: Toronto Vancouver, and we stopped in Winnipeg overnight and I'd

687
00:43:17,640 --> 00:43:20,719
Speaker 1: stay in this hotel next to the train station. It

688
00:43:20,840 --> 00:43:23,960
Speaker 1: was two dollars and fifty cents a night, and there

689
00:43:24,000 --> 00:43:27,560
Speaker 1: was no toilet no bath, no toilet, no shower. There

690
00:43:27,600 --> 00:43:30,839
Speaker 1: was only a sink, and I wouldn't use the sink

691
00:43:30,880 --> 00:43:32,640
Speaker 1: because I knew that every guy who stayed there pete

692
00:43:32,640 --> 00:43:34,799
Speaker 1: in the sink. Okay, so you have to go down

693
00:43:34,800 --> 00:43:36,759
Speaker 1: the hall to get a shower, and you know, use

694
00:43:36,800 --> 00:43:42,760
Speaker 1: the let um. On weekends when I was going to school,

695
00:43:43,320 --> 00:43:50,800
Speaker 1: I would use short halls to Toronto, Attawa, Toronto, Montreal, Toronto, Muskoka, Gravenhurst, etcetera.

696
00:43:51,760 --> 00:43:54,080
Speaker 1: But I love the summers and I got to see

697
00:43:54,120 --> 00:43:57,960
Speaker 1: the country. Okay. I got all the way from Vancouver,

698
00:43:58,120 --> 00:44:01,759
Speaker 1: all the way to Newfoundland, and most Canadians have never

699
00:44:01,760 --> 00:44:04,920
Speaker 1: been east of Montreal. East of Montreal is Nova Scotia,

700
00:44:04,960 --> 00:44:08,719
Speaker 1: New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland. Most Canadians have

701
00:44:08,840 --> 00:44:13,000
Speaker 1: never been there, which is a travesty because some of

702
00:44:13,040 --> 00:44:17,080
Speaker 1: the most beautiful country on the planet is there, and

703
00:44:17,120 --> 00:44:21,279
Speaker 1: the people are incredible. People in Newfoundland incredible. Newfoundland is

704
00:44:21,320 --> 00:44:24,240
Speaker 1: closer to Ireland than it is to the rest of Canada.

705
00:44:24,360 --> 00:44:28,160
Speaker 1: That's how far east it is. As I remember being

706
00:44:28,160 --> 00:44:32,200
Speaker 1: at the turn of the millennium and it's like a

707
00:44:32,280 --> 00:44:35,440
Speaker 1: half hour, you know, It's like, you know, that's how

708
00:44:35,480 --> 00:44:41,479
Speaker 1: they're celebrating what's going on? Yeah, Well, in uh Nova

709
00:44:41,480 --> 00:44:45,920
Speaker 1: Scotia's like to drink and they have a rome called screech.

710
00:44:46,719 --> 00:44:48,480
Speaker 1: And if you go to Nova Scotia, you go into

711
00:44:48,480 --> 00:44:52,200
Speaker 1: one of their saloons. Uh, you can be screeched. What

712
00:44:52,280 --> 00:44:54,800
Speaker 1: does that mean? Well, first of all, you buy everyone

713
00:44:54,840 --> 00:44:58,080
Speaker 1: in the saloon a drink a shot of screech. Okay,

714
00:44:58,080 --> 00:45:04,040
Speaker 1: it's this awful, awful roum right. Uh. So for you

715
00:45:04,120 --> 00:45:07,160
Speaker 1: to be screeched by the bartender, you have to kiss

716
00:45:07,200 --> 00:45:12,120
Speaker 1: a cod a real codfish, on the lips, and then

717
00:45:12,440 --> 00:45:16,400
Speaker 1: you bang down a shot of screech. Everyone applauds, and

718
00:45:16,440 --> 00:45:20,840
Speaker 1: then they give you a certificate saying you've been screwed. Okay,

719
00:45:20,920 --> 00:45:24,160
Speaker 1: so you're selling stuff on the train. Uh. You continue

720
00:45:24,200 --> 00:45:26,680
Speaker 1: to go to school and you start your show business career. No,

721
00:45:27,400 --> 00:45:30,640
Speaker 1: I continue, No, I wasn't in show business then. I

722
00:45:30,680 --> 00:45:33,800
Speaker 1: was between the ages of thirteen and seventeen. Okay, so

723
00:45:33,880 --> 00:45:35,520
Speaker 1: you graduate from high school, then what do you do

724
00:45:35,719 --> 00:45:37,920
Speaker 1: When I'm eighteen, I don't know what I'm gonna do.

725
00:45:38,360 --> 00:45:43,160
Speaker 1: And one of the guys in my class says to me, um,

726
00:45:43,239 --> 00:45:44,560
Speaker 1: what are you gonna do? And I said, I have

727
00:45:44,640 --> 00:45:47,800
Speaker 1: no idea I don't know. I'm not going to be

728
00:45:47,840 --> 00:45:50,680
Speaker 1: a doctor. I know that. He said, you gotta figure

729
00:45:50,680 --> 00:45:52,640
Speaker 1: out what you're gonna do. He said, you're not gonna

730
00:45:52,640 --> 00:45:56,240
Speaker 1: go work. I said no. He said, you know Ryerson

731
00:45:58,200 --> 00:46:02,120
Speaker 1: Ryerson University in Toronto. Uh, they have a radio and

732
00:46:02,160 --> 00:46:05,759
Speaker 1: television arts course, and you have a nice voice. He said,

733
00:46:05,760 --> 00:46:08,879
Speaker 1: why don't you go down an audition. That's what I did.

734
00:46:09,480 --> 00:46:13,360
Speaker 1: I walked in. I saw TV cameras. I thought studios

735
00:46:13,440 --> 00:46:16,640
Speaker 1: like this, and I thought, I'm home. This is perfect

736
00:46:16,680 --> 00:46:23,399
Speaker 1: for me. Okay, So, uh, I went there for one year.

737
00:46:23,520 --> 00:46:29,040
Speaker 1: I want a scholarship and uh writing a midterm exam

738
00:46:29,080 --> 00:46:32,520
Speaker 1: in year two. The professor comes up to me and

739
00:46:32,520 --> 00:46:35,480
Speaker 1: he puts a little post it on the on the

740
00:46:35,560 --> 00:46:40,879
Speaker 1: table with a name and an address. He said, they're

741
00:46:40,880 --> 00:46:45,520
Speaker 1: auditioning at the CBC Radio network for someone to host

742
00:46:45,680 --> 00:46:48,400
Speaker 1: a daily three hour classical music show. I think you

743
00:46:48,440 --> 00:46:52,200
Speaker 1: could get it. I said, oh great. He said, put

744
00:46:52,200 --> 00:46:56,239
Speaker 1: down your pencil and just quietly leave the room. I

745
00:46:56,360 --> 00:47:00,319
Speaker 1: told them you'd be there in twenty minutes. So, as

746
00:47:00,360 --> 00:47:02,200
Speaker 1: far as I know, my mid term exam is still

747
00:47:02,239 --> 00:47:07,200
Speaker 1: sitting on a desk somewhere. You know Ryerson, UM that

748
00:47:07,360 --> 00:47:10,320
Speaker 1: was my first job in show business, which I hosted

749
00:47:10,320 --> 00:47:12,839
Speaker 1: that show for five years. I loved doing it, and

750
00:47:12,920 --> 00:47:15,520
Speaker 1: I had studied at the Royal Conservatory of Music. I

751
00:47:15,520 --> 00:47:17,520
Speaker 1: think my mother decided I was going to be a

752
00:47:17,520 --> 00:47:23,200
Speaker 1: concert pianist like all Jewish mothers, okay um. And that's

753
00:47:23,200 --> 00:47:25,600
Speaker 1: how I got the job, actually, because the audition was

754
00:47:25,640 --> 00:47:28,360
Speaker 1: a little tricky, like they had words in there that

755
00:47:28,480 --> 00:47:31,120
Speaker 1: unless you knew how to pronounce them, you would not

756
00:47:31,200 --> 00:47:37,319
Speaker 1: pronounce like divor Jack. There's no it's devor ac, which

757
00:47:37,400 --> 00:47:40,360
Speaker 1: is the incorrect way of pronouncing it. Right. So I nailed.

758
00:47:40,400 --> 00:47:44,160
Speaker 1: I nailed the audition, got the job, and they sent

759
00:47:44,239 --> 00:47:47,000
Speaker 1: me to Windsor, Ontario, which is across the river from Detroit,

760
00:47:48,120 --> 00:47:51,239
Speaker 1: and I my first year I made three thousand, three

761
00:47:51,360 --> 00:47:55,160
Speaker 1: hundred dollars okay, and I'm thinking I made a lot

762
00:47:55,200 --> 00:48:00,040
Speaker 1: more money working on the trainer, right. So then I

763
00:48:00,040 --> 00:48:05,759
Speaker 1: started doing commercials in Detroit for Chrysler and uh So

764
00:48:05,880 --> 00:48:08,040
Speaker 1: in nineteen so I was there. I went there in

765
00:48:08,080 --> 00:48:14,960
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty five, and in nineteen fifty six, along with

766
00:48:15,000 --> 00:48:18,839
Speaker 1: my my three thousand, three hundred dollar money I got

767
00:48:18,880 --> 00:48:23,080
Speaker 1: from the CBC, I made twenty five thousand dollars doing commercials.

768
00:48:23,520 --> 00:48:25,000
Speaker 1: So I call it, Who do you call when you

769
00:48:25,040 --> 00:48:28,520
Speaker 1: make twenty dollars? Your mother? So I called my mother.

770
00:48:28,600 --> 00:48:31,440
Speaker 1: I said, guess what I made twenty five thousand dollars,

771
00:48:31,640 --> 00:48:33,719
Speaker 1: And without taking a breash, he said, and how much

772
00:48:33,719 --> 00:48:39,799
Speaker 1: have you saved? So that was the beginning. I stayed

773
00:48:39,840 --> 00:48:42,279
Speaker 1: in Windsor for five years. Did you say any did

774
00:48:42,320 --> 00:48:44,440
Speaker 1: you blow it? No? I blew it. I blow it

775
00:48:44,480 --> 00:48:47,279
Speaker 1: was it was making custom suits. I was going to

776
00:48:47,320 --> 00:48:50,840
Speaker 1: the New York Custom New York Custom Shirt Shop or

777
00:48:50,840 --> 00:48:54,280
Speaker 1: whatever was called, having custom shirts made with my initials

778
00:48:54,280 --> 00:48:58,120
Speaker 1: on the sleeve. Uh. I was wearing black silk stockings

779
00:48:58,200 --> 00:49:01,439
Speaker 1: with garters, not guarter belts. But you know, just below

780
00:49:01,480 --> 00:49:05,960
Speaker 1: the knee. I don't know who that person is. Okay.

781
00:49:06,000 --> 00:49:07,560
Speaker 1: Even today I look back on it and I see

782
00:49:07,600 --> 00:49:12,480
Speaker 1: pictures of myself and I'm thinking, what were you thinking?

783
00:49:13,560 --> 00:49:15,720
Speaker 1: Who did you think you were then? And the answer

784
00:49:15,840 --> 00:49:19,040
Speaker 1: is I don't know, okay. So then I moved to

785
00:49:19,040 --> 00:49:22,080
Speaker 1: Toronto in nineteen sixty. Back to Toronto in nineteen sixty

786
00:49:22,320 --> 00:49:26,719
Speaker 1: as a classical DJ. Well I gave up the After

787
00:49:26,800 --> 00:49:29,920
Speaker 1: five years, I gave up the classical DJ job and

788
00:49:29,960 --> 00:49:33,440
Speaker 1: I moved into TV at the CBC in Toronto, and

789
00:49:33,480 --> 00:49:38,440
Speaker 1: I was in TV there from from sixty to sixty

790
00:49:38,640 --> 00:49:41,279
Speaker 1: eight when I moved here. Okay, how does one make

791
00:49:41,280 --> 00:49:46,080
Speaker 1: the transition from radio to TV? How do you make

792
00:49:46,120 --> 00:49:52,000
Speaker 1: the transition? Well, I'll can tell you. Um, while I

793
00:49:52,080 --> 00:49:57,239
Speaker 1: was in Windsor in nineteen early sixty there was a

794
00:49:57,320 --> 00:50:02,040
Speaker 1: store called the Metropolitan and they had a terrible gas

795
00:50:02,080 --> 00:50:07,480
Speaker 1: explosion in the store. There were people, uh, there were fatalities,

796
00:50:08,000 --> 00:50:11,759
Speaker 1: people wounded, and it blew all the stuff from the

797
00:50:11,840 --> 00:50:15,520
Speaker 1: store out into the street. And the radio station was

798
00:50:15,560 --> 00:50:18,000
Speaker 1: half a block away. So I was the first guy

799
00:50:18,080 --> 00:50:23,320
Speaker 1: on the scene doing reports, right, And what was tragic

800
00:50:23,480 --> 00:50:28,800
Speaker 1: was everything was covered in dust and you you you,

801
00:50:29,239 --> 00:50:32,280
Speaker 1: I thought I saw a baby. It wasn't a baby,

802
00:50:32,280 --> 00:50:36,880
Speaker 1: it was a doll. And the it was filled with people,

803
00:50:37,280 --> 00:50:41,279
Speaker 1: people who were really badly wounded. So I started doing

804
00:50:41,360 --> 00:50:45,680
Speaker 1: reports and next thing, I'm doing reports for Toronto as well,

805
00:50:46,160 --> 00:50:49,520
Speaker 1: and I'm doing some reports for American outlets as well.

806
00:50:50,520 --> 00:50:52,600
Speaker 1: And I got a call from Toronto saying we have

807
00:50:52,600 --> 00:50:55,560
Speaker 1: an opening, and he said, she said, we rarely have

808
00:50:55,640 --> 00:50:57,440
Speaker 1: an opening. She said, we'd like you to come and

809
00:50:57,520 --> 00:50:59,840
Speaker 1: join us. So I went moved to Toronto and I

810
00:50:59,840 --> 00:51:04,160
Speaker 1: went into TV, and at first you're doing what, pardon,

811
00:51:04,560 --> 00:51:07,560
Speaker 1: what is your role? At first in television? The first

812
00:51:07,760 --> 00:51:13,440
Speaker 1: role was sitting in a booth every night for hours saying,

813
00:51:14,280 --> 00:51:19,360
Speaker 1: this is the CBC television network. That was it. What

814
00:51:19,560 --> 00:51:22,000
Speaker 1: did that evolve? It was the next step. The next

815
00:51:22,000 --> 00:51:29,120
Speaker 1: step was doing commercials, live commercials on a primetime music show.

816
00:51:30,680 --> 00:51:34,400
Speaker 1: And once I did that, that was became like my showcase. Okay,

817
00:51:34,480 --> 00:51:37,080
Speaker 1: and then I started getting calls and I by the

818
00:51:37,120 --> 00:51:42,560
Speaker 1: time I finished television in Canada, I had done close

819
00:51:42,600 --> 00:51:46,000
Speaker 1: to four thousand hours of network okay, just very quickly.

820
00:51:46,320 --> 00:51:48,719
Speaker 1: So you're doing commercials. What's the next step? What do

821
00:51:48,760 --> 00:51:50,719
Speaker 1: you do to ultimately work your way up to the

822
00:51:50,880 --> 00:51:55,160
Speaker 1: Johnny Carson esque talk show? I just did a lot

823
00:51:55,200 --> 00:51:59,360
Speaker 1: of shows I did. I did a My first series

824
00:51:59,520 --> 00:52:02,200
Speaker 1: was a show called Razzle Dazzle. It was a kids

825
00:52:02,200 --> 00:52:04,879
Speaker 1: show that was on every day on the network, every

826
00:52:04,920 --> 00:52:07,719
Speaker 1: day for half an hour. It was live. I did

827
00:52:07,719 --> 00:52:10,960
Speaker 1: that for five years. The host I was the one

828
00:52:11,000 --> 00:52:12,880
Speaker 1: of the hosts and one of the players, one of

829
00:52:12,880 --> 00:52:17,919
Speaker 1: the Then I did a simultaneously. I did the show

830
00:52:17,960 --> 00:52:21,399
Speaker 1: called Nightcap, which was the satirical show, and that ran

831
00:52:21,440 --> 00:52:28,040
Speaker 1: for five years. Um I did the commentary at the

832
00:52:28,239 --> 00:52:32,960
Speaker 1: Tokyo Olympics in X four. I did the commentary in

833
00:52:33,400 --> 00:52:39,560
Speaker 1: early six eight at the Mexican Olympics. I did a

834
00:52:39,600 --> 00:52:43,880
Speaker 1: show called cine Club, which was a show about short

835
00:52:43,960 --> 00:52:49,080
Speaker 1: film festival films. I did a show called on the Scene,

836
00:52:49,840 --> 00:52:53,440
Speaker 1: which was a show where we'd go to a different venue,

837
00:52:53,440 --> 00:52:56,759
Speaker 1: a different location or a different city every week. And

838
00:52:56,840 --> 00:53:01,920
Speaker 1: I created a show called Sports Date that specialized in

839
00:53:02,080 --> 00:53:05,720
Speaker 1: sports that we're not on TV. No baseball, no football,

840
00:53:05,800 --> 00:53:08,279
Speaker 1: no hockey, like why World of Sports in America. We

841
00:53:08,280 --> 00:53:11,840
Speaker 1: we did ballooning over the Alps, we did Thailand boxing,

842
00:53:12,239 --> 00:53:15,160
Speaker 1: we did skydiving in Ava, through in British Columbia. We

843
00:53:15,200 --> 00:53:19,560
Speaker 1: did all the off So then I created the the

844
00:53:19,719 --> 00:53:26,240
Speaker 1: Canadian International Deep Canadian International Invitational Deep Sea Fishing Tournament

845
00:53:27,000 --> 00:53:31,640
Speaker 1: in the Bahamas, Okay, and we invited the heads of

846
00:53:31,680 --> 00:53:35,600
Speaker 1: all five oil companies and they loved coming. And we

847
00:53:35,680 --> 00:53:38,040
Speaker 1: had hats and we had little medals, and we had

848
00:53:38,080 --> 00:53:40,239
Speaker 1: the whole thing. And it was all to get the

849
00:53:40,239 --> 00:53:45,600
Speaker 1: hell out of Toronto, Okay, right right right, as far

850
00:53:45,640 --> 00:53:48,520
Speaker 1: as I know, that thing may still be running. Okay.

851
00:53:48,880 --> 00:54:01,320
Speaker 1: Key to your success was, or is wow, my mother. Okay,

852
00:54:01,440 --> 00:54:07,719
Speaker 1: explain a little bit further. My mother, Um, it was

853
00:54:07,920 --> 00:54:11,160
Speaker 1: very smart. So she ran a boarding house. Right when

854
00:54:11,160 --> 00:54:16,880
Speaker 1: she died, she was a millionaire from the boarding house. Um.

855
00:54:16,880 --> 00:54:19,080
Speaker 1: She believed in me no matter what I wanted to do.

856
00:54:19,640 --> 00:54:21,760
Speaker 1: When I told her when I was thirteen years old,

857
00:54:22,239 --> 00:54:25,920
Speaker 1: I'm getting a job on the railroad and I'm going

858
00:54:26,000 --> 00:54:30,000
Speaker 1: to be traveling all over the country, she said, great, Okay. Uh.

859
00:54:30,520 --> 00:54:33,080
Speaker 1: How many mothers would say to their thirteen year old,

860
00:54:33,800 --> 00:54:38,120
Speaker 1: especially today. None. So whatever I wanted to do, she

861
00:54:38,239 --> 00:54:42,200
Speaker 1: was behind me all the way. She encouraged me. When

862
00:54:42,200 --> 00:54:48,480
Speaker 1: I won a scholarship, she turned up. Um. So I

863
00:54:49,480 --> 00:54:56,640
Speaker 1: have to believe that my both my parents heavily influenced

864
00:54:56,640 --> 00:55:00,080
Speaker 1: my life. My father because of his purity and his

865
00:55:00,200 --> 00:55:05,880
Speaker 1: honesty and his loyalty. Um. And I suffer from some

866
00:55:05,960 --> 00:55:11,319
Speaker 1: of those diseases myself. But my mother just, uh, you

867
00:55:11,360 --> 00:55:14,120
Speaker 1: can whatever, you can do it, whatever you want to do.

868
00:55:14,480 --> 00:55:16,520
Speaker 1: But I've I've also been in Los Angeles, i e.

869
00:55:16,680 --> 00:55:20,160
Speaker 1: Hollywood for so long to know that there are certain

870
00:55:20,239 --> 00:55:22,880
Speaker 1: stripes of people, usually people who can't fit into the

871
00:55:22,880 --> 00:55:25,759
Speaker 1: regular world, who have certain skills that allow things to

872
00:55:25,800 --> 00:55:28,600
Speaker 1: go forward, whether it be the gift of gab or

873
00:55:28,920 --> 00:55:32,480
Speaker 1: creativity in terms of making up shows or something. What

874
00:55:32,640 --> 00:55:36,440
Speaker 1: skills do you believe helped you in that area? Okay,

875
00:55:36,640 --> 00:55:39,680
Speaker 1: I've I've always had the gift for gap and I

876
00:55:39,719 --> 00:55:42,400
Speaker 1: think it happened when I worked on the trains, Okay,

877
00:55:42,400 --> 00:55:44,479
Speaker 1: because aside from just running up and down the train,

878
00:55:45,040 --> 00:55:48,160
Speaker 1: you know, selling stuff, I talk to people. I talked

879
00:55:48,160 --> 00:55:50,560
Speaker 1: to adults. You know, when kids talk to adults, they

880
00:55:50,600 --> 00:55:54,840
Speaker 1: yet to be adult. And I think that that helped

881
00:55:54,840 --> 00:55:58,120
Speaker 1: me a lot in my life and in my business.

882
00:55:59,320 --> 00:56:06,520
Speaker 1: Um I am somewhat introverted normally. Uh When Susanne and

883
00:56:06,600 --> 00:56:09,919
Speaker 1: I go out to a big party, I usually find

884
00:56:09,960 --> 00:56:13,280
Speaker 1: a nice quiet place at the bar, and she loves

885
00:56:13,320 --> 00:56:16,239
Speaker 1: working the room and I just kind of hang out

886
00:56:16,239 --> 00:56:18,000
Speaker 1: at the bar and I don't care if anyone talks

887
00:56:18,040 --> 00:56:21,359
Speaker 1: to me or not. And Susanne has given up saying

888
00:56:21,400 --> 00:56:26,160
Speaker 1: why don't you talk to people? I said, I'd rather

889
00:56:26,280 --> 00:56:33,560
Speaker 1: just stand here and watch people. Okay, And uh so

890
00:56:34,160 --> 00:56:36,360
Speaker 1: the answer is, I don't know. In front of a camera,

891
00:56:36,400 --> 00:56:39,680
Speaker 1: I'm not introverted at all. Okay, I'm I'm right out there.

892
00:56:40,520 --> 00:56:46,400
Speaker 1: I love performing, um or, I loved past tense performing

893
00:56:47,600 --> 00:56:51,560
Speaker 1: and today Susanne and I do uh two or three

894
00:56:51,600 --> 00:56:54,719
Speaker 1: Facebook live shows every week. Well before we get there,

895
00:56:54,760 --> 00:56:59,360
Speaker 1: let's clean up the past where we can after threes company. Okay,

896
00:56:59,719 --> 00:57:03,640
Speaker 1: So thank working for the CBC. Even when you hit

897
00:57:03,680 --> 00:57:06,840
Speaker 1: the ceiling with a nightly talk show, it's not that lucrative.

898
00:57:08,280 --> 00:57:11,400
Speaker 1: It was pretty lucrative. It was when I left the

899
00:57:11,400 --> 00:57:16,880
Speaker 1: CBC in um the first month I was living in

900
00:57:17,000 --> 00:57:18,840
Speaker 1: l A. I get a call from the CBC saying,

901
00:57:19,920 --> 00:57:22,600
Speaker 1: we're doing a new show on Saturday night, called in person.

902
00:57:22,720 --> 00:57:24,960
Speaker 1: We'd love you to host it. And I said, I'm

903
00:57:25,000 --> 00:57:26,520
Speaker 1: living in l A now and they said, so you'll

904
00:57:26,560 --> 00:57:28,800
Speaker 1: fly back. We'll shoot you know, two or three shows

905
00:57:28,840 --> 00:57:30,439
Speaker 1: at one time, and it won't be a big deal.

906
00:57:30,520 --> 00:57:34,360
Speaker 1: I said, okay. I said, just pay me what I

907
00:57:34,400 --> 00:57:36,720
Speaker 1: made the last year at the CBC, and they said,

908
00:57:36,720 --> 00:57:39,680
Speaker 1: it's not a problem. I get a call back three

909
00:57:39,760 --> 00:57:43,320
Speaker 1: days later and the guy says to me, we can't

910
00:57:43,320 --> 00:57:45,920
Speaker 1: pay you what you made last year. I said, but

911
00:57:45,960 --> 00:57:48,760
Speaker 1: you paid me what I made last year. Yeah, but

912
00:57:48,800 --> 00:57:51,479
Speaker 1: we can't just pay you you earned it. I said,

913
00:57:51,960 --> 00:57:53,680
Speaker 1: well I'm going to earn it again. You want me

914
00:57:53,720 --> 00:57:56,040
Speaker 1: to do the show? No, but you did so many

915
00:57:56,080 --> 00:58:00,080
Speaker 1: shows that you you you made four times and more

916
00:58:00,080 --> 00:58:03,840
Speaker 1: than the president of the CBC, I said, but my

917
00:58:04,040 --> 00:58:09,720
Speaker 1: ratings are better than the president of the CBC. Okay, anyway,

918
00:58:09,720 --> 00:58:12,040
Speaker 1: he said, Okay, we're gonna figure this out. So they did.

919
00:58:12,120 --> 00:58:15,480
Speaker 1: I made. I made. I made a hundred and sixty

920
00:58:15,480 --> 00:58:20,040
Speaker 1: thousand dollars and that was a nineteen sixty seven. Okay,

921
00:58:20,120 --> 00:58:22,000
Speaker 1: a lot of money, A lot of money. I think

922
00:58:22,040 --> 00:58:24,000
Speaker 1: you know. Baseball players they were lucky, were making a

923
00:58:24,040 --> 00:58:27,920
Speaker 1: hundred yeah, and hockey players are making eight thousands. Okay,

924
00:58:28,080 --> 00:58:30,000
Speaker 1: do you play hockey or you a hockey fan? I

925
00:58:30,000 --> 00:58:33,400
Speaker 1: played hockey every day of my life, okay, every day

926
00:58:33,400 --> 00:58:36,680
Speaker 1: of my life. And the only fist fights I ever

927
00:58:36,720 --> 00:58:38,800
Speaker 1: got into were on the ice, so no one ever

928
00:58:38,840 --> 00:58:41,560
Speaker 1: got hurt. You don't get hurt fighting when you're on ice.

929
00:58:42,440 --> 00:58:44,560
Speaker 1: But I played every day, every single day. I love

930
00:58:44,600 --> 00:58:49,680
Speaker 1: playing hockey. And uh I gave up hockey when I

931
00:58:49,720 --> 00:58:53,760
Speaker 1: started working. So there's a bunch of crazy Canadians who

932
00:58:53,760 --> 00:58:58,360
Speaker 1: live here, okay. And I get a call probably once

933
00:58:58,360 --> 00:59:01,480
Speaker 1: a month and they say, okay, we need one more on,

934
00:59:01,600 --> 00:59:04,760
Speaker 1: we need look forward. So said, we're it's go next

935
00:59:04,800 --> 00:59:08,000
Speaker 1: week at the blah blah, and I say, are you

936
00:59:08,120 --> 00:59:14,040
Speaker 1: freaking crazy hockey? I'm an old guy one body checking

937
00:59:14,320 --> 00:59:16,800
Speaker 1: in the hospital. No, no no, but we don't body check.

938
00:59:16,880 --> 00:59:19,760
Speaker 1: I said, don't tell me that. You guys get out

939
00:59:19,760 --> 00:59:22,600
Speaker 1: on the ice and you think you're eighteen again. Okay,

940
00:59:22,760 --> 00:59:25,400
Speaker 1: and you forget the rule about no body checking and

941
00:59:25,440 --> 00:59:29,360
Speaker 1: your body checking. He said, well it happens. Okay. So

942
00:59:29,400 --> 00:59:33,000
Speaker 1: I run into Gratzu Wayne Gretzky one night at a

943
00:59:33,080 --> 00:59:35,840
Speaker 1: party and the two of us are standing at the bar,

944
00:59:36,760 --> 00:59:38,960
Speaker 1: and I said to him, I tell him the story

945
00:59:38,960 --> 00:59:42,160
Speaker 1: about the crazy Canadians. He said, I get the same call.

946
00:59:44,040 --> 00:59:46,400
Speaker 1: I said, what do you say? He said, are you see?

947
00:59:46,640 --> 00:59:49,680
Speaker 1: Are you serious? Are you freaking crazy? You think I'm

948
00:59:49,720 --> 00:59:54,080
Speaker 1: gonna come out and play hockey with you guys? Okay,

949
00:59:54,480 --> 00:59:57,480
Speaker 1: So you have your nightly talk show in the seventies.

950
00:59:58,240 --> 00:59:59,960
Speaker 1: That the last time you're in front of the camera,

951
01:00:03,200 --> 01:00:07,080
Speaker 1: in front of a network camera. Yeah, the last time

952
01:00:07,120 --> 01:00:12,640
Speaker 1: I did a series. Okay, but we're now doing a

953
01:00:12,680 --> 01:00:14,640
Speaker 1: different kind of show. Okay, but let's before I told

954
01:00:14,680 --> 01:00:19,840
Speaker 1: that first secade. Okay. So you meet Suzanne in at

955
01:00:19,880 --> 01:00:22,880
Speaker 1: what point do you get married? We get married in

956
01:00:23,200 --> 01:00:26,000
Speaker 1: seventy seven, when she got hired for three company. I said, Okay,

957
01:00:26,040 --> 01:00:29,440
Speaker 1: you finally got a job, so let's get married. Okay,

958
01:00:29,640 --> 01:00:32,520
Speaker 1: so I'll tell you something interesting about her first paycheck,

959
01:00:33,120 --> 01:00:35,760
Speaker 1: which was not big, okay, but she had never had

960
01:00:35,760 --> 01:00:45,120
Speaker 1: a paycheck okay. So she was supporting her. So I

961
01:00:45,200 --> 01:00:47,200
Speaker 1: was paying all the bills. And I didn't have any

962
01:00:47,240 --> 01:00:51,600
Speaker 1: money either, okay, because when I got my divorce, I

963
01:00:51,680 --> 01:00:55,040
Speaker 1: did not want life to change for my two children.

964
01:00:55,480 --> 01:00:59,720
Speaker 1: They were going to school and uh West Brent, Brent

965
01:00:59,840 --> 01:01:03,560
Speaker 1: was i'mwhere private school. I didn't want their life to change,

966
01:01:03,880 --> 01:01:06,680
Speaker 1: so I simply left. All I took was my car

967
01:01:06,840 --> 01:01:12,640
Speaker 1: with me, Okay. I rented an apartment um in Beverly

968
01:01:12,720 --> 01:01:17,320
Speaker 1: Hills for two hundred dollars a month, and it was

969
01:01:17,400 --> 01:01:23,040
Speaker 1: this terrible, crummy one bedroom. One bedroom was like a

970
01:01:23,080 --> 01:01:27,400
Speaker 1: little bigger than this desk. But it was my place.

971
01:01:28,080 --> 01:01:31,160
Speaker 1: And that's where Susanna and I started living together. We'd

972
01:01:31,200 --> 01:01:35,440
Speaker 1: been essentially living together before that. She'd come to l

973
01:01:35,480 --> 01:01:37,760
Speaker 1: A and I was living with a buddy of mine

974
01:01:37,760 --> 01:01:40,400
Speaker 1: and bell Air and I'd go to to San Francisco

975
01:01:40,440 --> 01:01:44,960
Speaker 1: to Sasolito, etcetera. But we officially started living together in

976
01:01:45,800 --> 01:01:54,840
Speaker 1: seventy early seventy. Sometimes uh so I'm so depressed after

977
01:01:54,960 --> 01:01:58,840
Speaker 1: leaving my wife. What was the motivation for leaving your wife?

978
01:01:59,000 --> 01:02:01,120
Speaker 1: I only knew her for two weeks before we got married.

979
01:02:01,120 --> 01:02:03,560
Speaker 1: We shouldn't have gotten married. Okay. We got married when

980
01:02:03,560 --> 01:02:05,840
Speaker 1: I was twenty or twenty and how long did that last?

981
01:02:05,880 --> 01:02:09,200
Speaker 1: Ten years? But I was away. I think I created

982
01:02:09,240 --> 01:02:12,080
Speaker 1: those shows for the CBC to get me out of town.

983
01:02:13,480 --> 01:02:15,360
Speaker 1: It's not that I just I didn't dislike her. I

984
01:02:15,360 --> 01:02:17,920
Speaker 1: really liked her a lot. She was a very talented

985
01:02:18,040 --> 01:02:23,680
Speaker 1: artist and a lot of humor, et cetera. But I

986
01:02:23,720 --> 01:02:28,320
Speaker 1: wasn't in love with her. We should have just been friends. Okay,

987
01:02:28,800 --> 01:02:31,480
Speaker 1: So it wasn't this terrible, awful thing. It's just that

988
01:02:31,520 --> 01:02:33,919
Speaker 1: we just kind of grew apart and it was kind

989
01:02:33,920 --> 01:02:38,720
Speaker 1: of natural to had a divorce. Uh. So I walked

990
01:02:38,720 --> 01:02:42,120
Speaker 1: away with my car. I didn't take any money. I

991
01:02:42,120 --> 01:02:47,360
Speaker 1: didn't take I took nothing, and I rent this crummy apartment.

992
01:02:47,440 --> 01:02:52,960
Speaker 1: And I'm really depressed, really depressed, And for a good

993
01:02:53,160 --> 01:02:57,160
Speaker 1: year and a half two years, I didn't answer the phone,

994
01:02:58,080 --> 01:03:02,240
Speaker 1: I didn't open a letter. I didn't want to see anybody.

995
01:03:02,800 --> 01:03:09,640
Speaker 1: I was depressed and humiliated. Um I knew how my

996
01:03:09,720 --> 01:03:14,920
Speaker 1: mother felt about it because she told me, she said,

997
01:03:15,360 --> 01:03:18,280
Speaker 1: nice boys don't leave their wives because no one in

998
01:03:18,280 --> 01:03:21,960
Speaker 1: the family had ever gotten a divorce, even though they shouldn't.

999
01:03:21,960 --> 01:03:25,000
Speaker 1: They should have gotten a divorce. I mean, my parents

1000
01:03:25,000 --> 01:03:28,240
Speaker 1: were together for sixty three years. They should have you

1001
01:03:28,440 --> 01:03:33,400
Speaker 1: gotten a divorce twenty years earlier. Um, but no one,

1002
01:03:33,440 --> 01:03:36,960
Speaker 1: just no one did that, of course. Okay, So one

1003
01:03:37,000 --> 01:03:42,960
Speaker 1: day I come home to my crummy two apartments and

1004
01:03:43,000 --> 01:03:48,280
Speaker 1: I walked in and uh, I had an aquarium with

1005
01:03:48,320 --> 01:03:53,920
Speaker 1: guppies aquarium. So I said, he is, where's my aquarium?

1006
01:03:53,960 --> 01:03:57,400
Speaker 1: And she said I had to sell it. I said why.

1007
01:03:57,560 --> 01:03:59,880
Speaker 1: She said, to pay the rent. But who's saying that

1008
01:04:01,600 --> 01:04:04,200
Speaker 1: I had to sell your aquarium to pay the rent?

1009
01:04:05,240 --> 01:04:07,560
Speaker 1: I said, we who. No one's going to pay you

1010
01:04:07,640 --> 01:04:10,360
Speaker 1: two hundred dollars for that crummy little look. She said,

1011
01:04:10,720 --> 01:04:14,480
Speaker 1: I also sold your clothes. I said, you sold my clothes.

1012
01:04:15,400 --> 01:04:21,120
Speaker 1: She said, You've never been poor, have you? I said no.

1013
01:04:22,240 --> 01:04:25,280
Speaker 1: Even when I was living with my parents and I

1014
01:04:25,360 --> 01:04:28,600
Speaker 1: was poor, I didn't realize I was poor because we

1015
01:04:28,640 --> 01:04:32,640
Speaker 1: had everything. Okay, I said, so, no, I've never been poor.

1016
01:04:32,720 --> 01:04:35,360
Speaker 1: She said, well I have. She said, when you're poor,

1017
01:04:35,880 --> 01:04:38,880
Speaker 1: you sell your stuff. And then when you have money,

1018
01:04:39,280 --> 01:04:43,520
Speaker 1: you buy more stuff. I said, Okay, So suddenly I

1019
01:04:43,600 --> 01:04:48,440
Speaker 1: had very few clothes. I actually had quite a wonderful wardrobe. Okay,

1020
01:04:48,560 --> 01:04:51,320
Speaker 1: I had kashmere suits in the pants lined in silk.

1021
01:04:52,000 --> 01:04:57,680
Speaker 1: I had wrapped around overcoats made out of camel whatever

1022
01:04:57,720 --> 01:05:01,320
Speaker 1: they call it, camel hair. That was all gone. So

1023
01:05:01,360 --> 01:05:04,600
Speaker 1: there are guys walking around l a your clothes and

1024
01:05:04,640 --> 01:05:07,760
Speaker 1: if they look into their inside pocket, they'll see my name.

1025
01:05:08,800 --> 01:05:10,760
Speaker 1: I'll see my name and the date that it was.

1026
01:05:10,920 --> 01:05:12,560
Speaker 1: It was mad it made for me. These are all

1027
01:05:12,600 --> 01:05:14,880
Speaker 1: custom clothes. Yeah, so how did you get out of

1028
01:05:14,880 --> 01:05:17,040
Speaker 1: the rut? Out of the depression. So after a year

1029
01:05:17,040 --> 01:05:22,840
Speaker 1: and a half or two years, I'm in the bathroom

1030
01:05:22,920 --> 01:05:29,160
Speaker 1: and uh, really feeling terrible about myself because I'm thinking,

1031
01:05:29,320 --> 01:05:32,440
Speaker 1: this isn't me. I just feel awful and I've never

1032
01:05:32,480 --> 01:05:34,840
Speaker 1: been depressed in my whole life, and I'm really depressed.

1033
01:05:34,880 --> 01:05:38,720
Speaker 1: I'm not suicidal, but I just feel like crap. I

1034
01:05:38,760 --> 01:05:41,920
Speaker 1: feel like I'm useless, and I feel badly because I

1035
01:05:42,000 --> 01:05:47,440
Speaker 1: left my children. So I'm in the bathroom and I

1036
01:05:47,480 --> 01:05:52,960
Speaker 1: look around. There's no toilet paper. It's going to get

1037
01:05:53,000 --> 01:05:59,400
Speaker 1: a little graphic. All that was in the bathroom was

1038
01:05:59,440 --> 01:06:03,480
Speaker 1: the nash Old geographic. Okay, have you ever used a

1039
01:06:03,560 --> 01:06:06,920
Speaker 1: page out of the Nationals? Can't imagine it? The page

1040
01:06:07,040 --> 01:06:11,439
Speaker 1: is this thick, it's also shiny that paper. Okay. So

1041
01:06:12,480 --> 01:06:16,120
Speaker 1: I thought, okay, I finally hit the wall. This is it.

1042
01:06:16,160 --> 01:06:21,080
Speaker 1: So I call a commercial agency called Abraham's rubil Off

1043
01:06:21,480 --> 01:06:24,320
Speaker 1: and so they do commercially. Said, they have people and

1044
01:06:24,320 --> 01:06:28,560
Speaker 1: they send them out to do commercials. And I talked

1045
01:06:28,560 --> 01:06:33,800
Speaker 1: to U Neil Noel rubil Off and he said, oh,

1046
01:06:33,840 --> 01:06:35,360
Speaker 1: come on down. So I go down there and we

1047
01:06:35,480 --> 01:06:38,200
Speaker 1: talk and what do you do in Canada to television?

1048
01:06:38,240 --> 01:06:40,280
Speaker 1: Blah blah blah. I said, okay, said I'll send you out.

1049
01:06:41,520 --> 01:06:45,120
Speaker 1: So I was in those days. Well, I won't get

1050
01:06:45,160 --> 01:06:48,280
Speaker 1: to this. He sends me out to audition for a

1051
01:06:48,320 --> 01:06:53,360
Speaker 1: company called Household Finance. I don't even know, h okay,

1052
01:06:53,360 --> 01:06:55,800
Speaker 1: I don't know if they're still around, I don't know. Okay.

1053
01:06:56,840 --> 01:06:59,040
Speaker 1: So I walk in, I do the audition. There are

1054
01:06:59,040 --> 01:07:02,480
Speaker 1: these eight guys from the agency sitting around the conference table.

1055
01:07:02,520 --> 01:07:05,520
Speaker 1: I do the audition and the guy in sharde says

1056
01:07:05,560 --> 01:07:09,920
Speaker 1: to me, you sure sound like the right guy, but

1057
01:07:10,040 --> 01:07:12,400
Speaker 1: you don't look like the right guy. And I said,

1058
01:07:12,400 --> 01:07:15,040
Speaker 1: what are you talking about? He said, go down the hall,

1059
01:07:15,080 --> 01:07:17,640
Speaker 1: there's a bathroom, look at yourself in the mirror, and

1060
01:07:17,720 --> 01:07:20,280
Speaker 1: ask yourself the question, would you borrow money from a

1061
01:07:20,280 --> 01:07:24,640
Speaker 1: guy who looks like this? So I came back. I said,

1062
01:07:24,640 --> 01:07:28,880
Speaker 1: you're right, because during the time I was depressed, I

1063
01:07:28,960 --> 01:07:34,800
Speaker 1: stopped dressing and I was wearing funky jeans, work boots,

1064
01:07:35,720 --> 01:07:41,480
Speaker 1: um denim jacket, some kind of funky shirt. I had

1065
01:07:41,520 --> 01:07:45,920
Speaker 1: a big natural I had a mustache, I had a beard,

1066
01:07:46,040 --> 01:07:50,200
Speaker 1: a small beard, going, etcetera. I said, I agree with you.

1067
01:07:50,280 --> 01:07:52,439
Speaker 1: I said I would not borrow money from a guy

1068
01:07:52,480 --> 01:07:54,800
Speaker 1: who looks like me. I said, are you guys here tomorrow?

1069
01:07:54,840 --> 01:07:57,400
Speaker 1: And they said yeah. I said, can I come back? Yes?

1070
01:07:59,000 --> 01:08:02,400
Speaker 1: So next morning I turn up at eight o'clock for

1071
01:08:02,400 --> 01:08:05,320
Speaker 1: an eight thirty meeting, and at eight thirty, these all

1072
01:08:05,360 --> 01:08:07,280
Speaker 1: eight guys walk in. They walk right by me. They

1073
01:08:07,280 --> 01:08:10,880
Speaker 1: didn't they didn't recognize me. Right, I walked in and

1074
01:08:10,920 --> 01:08:14,320
Speaker 1: they said, you got the job. I had a haircut,

1075
01:08:14,440 --> 01:08:16,920
Speaker 1: I shaved, I put on a suit with a shirt

1076
01:08:16,960 --> 01:08:19,639
Speaker 1: and a tie, and I looked like a guy you'd

1077
01:08:19,640 --> 01:08:23,200
Speaker 1: borrow money from. So I did three national spots. I

1078
01:08:23,200 --> 01:08:25,800
Speaker 1: mean fifty thou dollars, which was a lot of money

1079
01:08:25,840 --> 01:08:28,519
Speaker 1: when you have no money, even if you have money,

1080
01:08:28,520 --> 01:08:32,439
Speaker 1: fifty thou dollars a lot of money. And then I

1081
01:08:33,760 --> 01:08:37,280
Speaker 1: started doing a lot of commercials voiceovers and I really

1082
01:08:37,360 --> 01:08:40,600
Speaker 1: enjoyed it. It was easy money and I didn't have

1083
01:08:40,680 --> 01:08:43,559
Speaker 1: to get dressed for you know, any voiceovers. They called

1084
01:08:43,560 --> 01:08:45,320
Speaker 1: me to turn up and I shoot, you do a

1085
01:08:45,360 --> 01:08:53,160
Speaker 1: couple of commercials. And then in nineteen nineteen seventy three,

1086
01:08:53,240 --> 01:08:59,600
Speaker 1: maybe seventy three, Um, I get a call to audition

1087
01:09:00,040 --> 01:09:07,920
Speaker 1: war a supermarket called Alphabeta. Of course, and uh, they

1088
01:09:07,920 --> 01:09:12,360
Speaker 1: also want Susanne to audition. And no one's ever heard

1089
01:09:12,360 --> 01:09:15,360
Speaker 1: of Suzanne Summers in nineteen seventy three, right, So the

1090
01:09:15,360 --> 01:09:20,040
Speaker 1: two of us audition as a as a couple. I

1091
01:09:20,120 --> 01:09:25,640
Speaker 1: get the job, she doesn't. So I did thousands of

1092
01:09:25,720 --> 01:09:32,559
Speaker 1: commercials TV and radio for Alphabeta from nineteen seventy three,

1093
01:09:32,680 --> 01:09:38,559
Speaker 1: I think to night and or nineteen seventy nine maybe,

1094
01:09:39,920 --> 01:09:46,080
Speaker 1: and uh, I actually I didn't get sick of doing them.

1095
01:09:46,080 --> 01:09:51,439
Speaker 1: But it was like I became the Alphabeta man and

1096
01:09:51,560 --> 01:09:55,200
Speaker 1: the the the tagline at every commercial was tell a friend,

1097
01:09:56,200 --> 01:09:57,760
Speaker 1: and wherever I had to go at people would say

1098
01:09:57,760 --> 01:10:01,960
Speaker 1: tell a friend, and I'd go, like the first time

1099
01:10:02,000 --> 01:10:07,400
Speaker 1: I heard it, So it's now no, okay, Susanna and I.

1100
01:10:08,240 --> 01:10:12,679
Speaker 1: It's now and Susanne and I are on a red

1101
01:10:12,680 --> 01:10:17,000
Speaker 1: eye to New York for a meeting and she just

1102
01:10:17,040 --> 01:10:23,320
Speaker 1: finished shooting Three's company and she's tired. We get on

1103
01:10:23,360 --> 01:10:30,920
Speaker 1: the plane and we start arguing about nothing, and then

1104
01:10:30,960 --> 01:10:33,719
Speaker 1: we stopped talking to each other. And now we're sitting

1105
01:10:33,720 --> 01:10:35,680
Speaker 1: beside each other. We're flying to New York and we're

1106
01:10:35,680 --> 01:10:38,840
Speaker 1: not talking. We get to New York, we get into

1107
01:10:38,920 --> 01:10:44,639
Speaker 1: the car, the driver to take us to this meeting.

1108
01:10:46,320 --> 01:10:49,760
Speaker 1: We get to the building, and instead of pushing the

1109
01:10:49,880 --> 01:10:54,360
Speaker 1: express elevator that goes to the floor, I pushed the

1110
01:10:54,360 --> 01:10:58,679
Speaker 1: one that goes to three. Okay, now we're not talking

1111
01:10:58,720 --> 01:11:00,439
Speaker 1: to each other. Okay. We get on the elevator. We

1112
01:11:00,479 --> 01:11:03,200
Speaker 1: get as far away from one another as possible. The

1113
01:11:03,280 --> 01:11:08,000
Speaker 1: door opens on the second floor and a guy gets on.

1114
01:11:08,320 --> 01:11:14,400
Speaker 1: He looks at Suzanne, looks at me, smiles and says,

1115
01:11:15,600 --> 01:11:22,160
Speaker 1: and I said, fuck you, okay, And I was surprised

1116
01:11:22,160 --> 01:11:26,040
Speaker 1: that I said that, but I was piste off at Susanne.

1117
01:11:26,840 --> 01:11:31,519
Speaker 1: We weren't talking. There was this anger thing. Now the

1118
01:11:31,560 --> 01:11:35,080
Speaker 1: guy that I said that too. I felt so badly afterwards.

1119
01:11:35,320 --> 01:11:38,240
Speaker 1: I wish I could apologize to him. He couldn't wait

1120
01:11:38,280 --> 01:11:43,120
Speaker 1: to get off the elevator because Mr happy that he'd

1121
01:11:43,120 --> 01:11:48,680
Speaker 1: seemed to tons of commercials. Okay, suddenly he's trapped in

1122
01:11:48,720 --> 01:11:55,479
Speaker 1: this steel room with this lunatic okay, who's yelling at him? Anyway,

1123
01:11:55,479 --> 01:11:58,040
Speaker 1: he gets off, Susanne and I looked at each other.

1124
01:11:58,360 --> 01:12:02,759
Speaker 1: We started laughing. I realized, what are we fighting about?

1125
01:12:02,760 --> 01:12:08,080
Speaker 1: It so stupid? Okay. So and by the way, from

1126
01:12:08,120 --> 01:12:11,040
Speaker 1: the time she was fired, which was when I left

1127
01:12:11,040 --> 01:12:18,240
Speaker 1: my talk show two today, because we're in business together.

1128
01:12:19,800 --> 01:12:24,799
Speaker 1: We have not spent one night apart in over forty years,

1129
01:12:25,960 --> 01:12:31,120
Speaker 1: and we're together twenty four hours a day. Wow, that's amazing. Okay,

1130
01:12:31,160 --> 01:12:35,360
Speaker 1: let's start there. She gets fired, what's your plan, because

1131
01:12:35,360 --> 01:12:37,040
Speaker 1: you do reinvent her and you have a lot of

1132
01:12:37,040 --> 01:12:39,720
Speaker 1: business enterprises. What was your What were your thoughts at

1133
01:12:39,720 --> 01:12:43,439
Speaker 1: the time? And I had no business enterprises. Um, I

1134
01:12:43,479 --> 01:12:46,000
Speaker 1: didn't have a plan, but I knew I could come

1135
01:12:46,080 --> 01:12:49,759
Speaker 1: up with a plan, which I did. So we're talking,

1136
01:12:49,840 --> 01:12:51,439
Speaker 1: and you know what we're gonna do and where we're

1137
01:12:51,439 --> 01:12:53,160
Speaker 1: gonna do it, and how we're gonna do it and

1138
01:12:53,560 --> 01:12:56,720
Speaker 1: the three company people were ignorant about branding because I

1139
01:12:56,760 --> 01:13:00,839
Speaker 1: went to them and I said, we should brand Chrissy Snow. Okay,

1140
01:13:01,040 --> 01:13:03,960
Speaker 1: we should brand the like the hair thing and the

1141
01:13:04,680 --> 01:13:07,479
Speaker 1: hot pants and the boots and the and there should

1142
01:13:07,520 --> 01:13:11,160
Speaker 1: be a Saturday Morning animated cartoon, you know, the Adventures

1143
01:13:11,200 --> 01:13:14,240
Speaker 1: of Chrissie's. And they say, all we care about is

1144
01:13:14,280 --> 01:13:16,960
Speaker 1: the show. We don't care about anything else. I said,

1145
01:13:17,680 --> 01:13:20,200
Speaker 1: but don't you understand this brings more audience in, it

1146
01:13:20,240 --> 01:13:23,280
Speaker 1: brings more loyalty to No, we don't care about that, okay.

1147
01:13:24,720 --> 01:13:26,879
Speaker 1: So one of the things that I talked to Susanna

1148
01:13:26,880 --> 01:13:30,000
Speaker 1: about was branding, and branding was a fairly new word

1149
01:13:30,240 --> 01:13:35,680
Speaker 1: in there weren't too many people branded. I said, everybody

1150
01:13:35,720 --> 01:13:39,040
Speaker 1: knows who you are. I said, the firing, in one

1151
01:13:39,080 --> 01:13:43,160
Speaker 1: sense was really good because it puts you on every

1152
01:13:43,160 --> 01:13:47,360
Speaker 1: newspaper in the country and talk show and interviews. And

1153
01:13:47,400 --> 01:13:50,920
Speaker 1: I said, that's all they're talking about is ABC fires

1154
01:13:51,000 --> 01:13:54,719
Speaker 1: Chrissie Snow from Three's Company. I said, so we're starting

1155
01:13:54,760 --> 01:13:58,120
Speaker 1: off by the fact that you are extremely well known

1156
01:14:00,280 --> 01:14:03,120
Speaker 1: and will globally be well known as well, because the

1157
01:14:03,160 --> 01:14:08,639
Speaker 1: show ran in like a hundred and thirty countries. So

1158
01:14:08,920 --> 01:14:13,479
Speaker 1: she said, you know, um, I did guys and Dolls

1159
01:14:13,520 --> 01:14:17,200
Speaker 1: in high school and I really enjoyed it. She said,

1160
01:14:17,640 --> 01:14:19,760
Speaker 1: I'd like to do a show in Las Vegas. So

1161
01:14:19,800 --> 01:14:25,040
Speaker 1: it was her idea, her idea. Yeah, So I said, uh, jokingly,

1162
01:14:25,640 --> 01:14:28,960
Speaker 1: can you sing? And she try to try to hit me.

1163
01:14:29,960 --> 01:14:32,320
Speaker 1: So I go to Vegas. I go to the Sahara Hotel.

1164
01:14:33,560 --> 01:14:37,800
Speaker 1: They offered two weeks big money. Went cold once again,

1165
01:14:37,840 --> 01:14:42,560
Speaker 1: no agent, no nobody else. I go to the Riviera

1166
01:14:43,160 --> 01:14:45,920
Speaker 1: two weeks big money, and I realized, oh, that's the

1167
01:14:46,000 --> 01:14:49,559
Speaker 1: format for big TV stars because they don't think they're

1168
01:14:49,560 --> 01:14:53,680
Speaker 1: gonna last longer than two weeks. So the Mob was

1169
01:14:53,720 --> 01:14:57,440
Speaker 1: still running Vegas. Then okay, they were just beginning to transition,

1170
01:14:57,479 --> 01:15:00,120
Speaker 1: but the Mob was still in charge. So I go

1171
01:15:00,160 --> 01:15:05,240
Speaker 1: to the MGM Grant and the president's name is Bernie Rothkoff.

1172
01:15:05,439 --> 01:15:10,400
Speaker 1: Bernie Rothkoff was the nephew of Modalitz. Modlitz was head

1173
01:15:10,439 --> 01:15:16,800
Speaker 1: of the the Cleveland Mob okay Jewish Mob. So uh,

1174
01:15:17,240 --> 01:15:21,280
Speaker 1: I bypassed the entertainment director. I learned from my first

1175
01:15:21,479 --> 01:15:25,759
Speaker 1: sale to ABC, go right to the top. I'm total

1176
01:15:25,800 --> 01:15:28,400
Speaker 1: believer in that the first who can say yesterday. That's right.

1177
01:15:28,479 --> 01:15:31,200
Speaker 1: And they may say that's not me. You have to

1178
01:15:31,240 --> 01:15:34,800
Speaker 1: talk to Fred. But why go to Fred first? Okay?

1179
01:15:36,080 --> 01:15:39,639
Speaker 1: So I walk into Bernie Rothkoff's office and it's huge.

1180
01:15:40,280 --> 01:15:44,840
Speaker 1: It's he's fifty feet away from I'm not kidding. There's

1181
01:15:44,880 --> 01:15:47,880
Speaker 1: no furniture, okay, other than he had a little desk

1182
01:15:48,040 --> 01:15:51,840
Speaker 1: probably three or four ft wide, and he's sitting in

1183
01:15:51,840 --> 01:15:54,479
Speaker 1: one chair there and there's one chair on the other side.

1184
01:15:54,560 --> 01:15:57,920
Speaker 1: That's it. There's no art on the wall, there's nothing.

1185
01:15:58,880 --> 01:16:01,680
Speaker 1: So and he's writing. He doesn't even look up. He's

1186
01:16:01,720 --> 01:16:06,120
Speaker 1: writing something and this is like I'm walking to the

1187
01:16:06,360 --> 01:16:10,439
Speaker 1: death chamber, and without looking up, he says, what do

1188
01:16:10,479 --> 01:16:13,479
Speaker 1: you want? And at that moment I realized he's like

1189
01:16:13,520 --> 01:16:17,480
Speaker 1: all my uncle's he's they're all a tough, tough talking guy,

1190
01:16:17,720 --> 01:16:20,479
Speaker 1: heart of gold. Okay. So I said, I want a

1191
01:16:20,479 --> 01:16:22,720
Speaker 1: two year deal for Susanne Summers and I don't care

1192
01:16:22,760 --> 01:16:25,760
Speaker 1: what the money is. So he puts the pencil down

1193
01:16:25,760 --> 01:16:27,240
Speaker 1: and he said, why do you want a two year deal?

1194
01:16:27,680 --> 01:16:30,040
Speaker 1: I said, I told him about the Sahara and the river.

1195
01:16:30,200 --> 01:16:32,200
Speaker 1: I said, I don't want to come here with two weeks.

1196
01:16:32,240 --> 01:16:34,120
Speaker 1: I said, it's a waste of time. I said, I

1197
01:16:34,160 --> 01:16:36,360
Speaker 1: don't know if she's going to succeed in two weeks.

1198
01:16:36,400 --> 01:16:38,280
Speaker 1: So that's where I want a two year deal, because

1199
01:16:38,280 --> 01:16:42,320
Speaker 1: everything she does, she succeeds. Okay, you ever watched Threees Company?

1200
01:16:42,360 --> 01:16:44,720
Speaker 1: He said, I love threes Company? He said, okay, did

1201
01:16:44,760 --> 01:16:47,920
Speaker 1: she succeed? He said yes. I said, so two year deal.

1202
01:16:47,960 --> 01:16:49,599
Speaker 1: What have he got to lose? He said, no, one's

1203
01:16:49,600 --> 01:16:52,960
Speaker 1: got a two year deal. He said, I've got Dolly.

1204
01:16:53,160 --> 01:16:55,920
Speaker 1: He named all this all the stars he's got got

1205
01:16:56,040 --> 01:16:58,679
Speaker 1: cause I got love. I said, they have six weeks,

1206
01:16:58,880 --> 01:17:01,360
Speaker 1: a six month, six eight months deals. He said, no

1207
01:17:01,360 --> 01:17:03,160
Speaker 1: one is. I've never heard of a two year deal.

1208
01:17:03,760 --> 01:17:06,519
Speaker 1: He gives me a two year deal and the money

1209
01:17:06,600 --> 01:17:10,120
Speaker 1: was more than I was asking threes Company for. So

1210
01:17:10,160 --> 01:17:11,920
Speaker 1: now we got to put a show together and we've

1211
01:17:11,960 --> 01:17:14,240
Speaker 1: never done it, and she's never been on stage other

1212
01:17:14,280 --> 01:17:20,519
Speaker 1: than in high school for guys and dolls, and uh

1213
01:17:20,880 --> 01:17:23,559
Speaker 1: so I bring in some of the people I had

1214
01:17:23,600 --> 01:17:27,040
Speaker 1: worked with in Canada, and one of them in particular,

1215
01:17:27,160 --> 01:17:29,800
Speaker 1: who was a buddy of mine in Toronto, and he

1216
01:17:29,840 --> 01:17:32,960
Speaker 1: became a head of comedy at NBC and he and

1217
01:17:33,000 --> 01:17:35,840
Speaker 1: his partner produced a lot of big variety shows when

1218
01:17:35,920 --> 01:17:41,559
Speaker 1: variety was big in this country. Sali Wilson and So

1219
01:17:41,600 --> 01:17:44,000
Speaker 1: I told So, I said, we got this deal. I said,

1220
01:17:44,560 --> 01:17:47,600
Speaker 1: you know, I want you to help us out, he

1221
01:17:47,680 --> 01:17:50,760
Speaker 1: said with pleasure. So he took charge. He became the

1222
01:17:50,800 --> 01:17:54,800
Speaker 1: producer of the original show, and he brought in the choreographer,

1223
01:17:55,360 --> 01:17:57,919
Speaker 1: He cast all the singers, he cast all the dancers.

1224
01:17:57,960 --> 01:18:01,040
Speaker 1: I said, don't even think about what it's gonna cost.

1225
01:18:01,080 --> 01:18:04,160
Speaker 1: Whatever it's costs, we're fine, I said, just do just

1226
01:18:04,320 --> 01:18:07,400
Speaker 1: do a great show. So we had projection, we had everything,

1227
01:18:07,479 --> 01:18:12,040
Speaker 1: because I wanted all this there so that Suzanne's not,

1228
01:18:12,320 --> 01:18:17,320
Speaker 1: you know, naked on stage all by herself. So we

1229
01:18:17,360 --> 01:18:20,960
Speaker 1: opened and her opening theme music is playing in Susanna

1230
01:18:20,960 --> 01:18:23,200
Speaker 1: and I were standing in the wings and it's time

1231
01:18:23,200 --> 01:18:25,400
Speaker 1: for her to go on, and she's not going on.

1232
01:18:25,920 --> 01:18:29,040
Speaker 1: So I put my foot on her rear end and

1233
01:18:29,120 --> 01:18:34,120
Speaker 1: gently pushed her out on stage. Okay, And when she

1234
01:18:34,200 --> 01:18:36,640
Speaker 1: got on stage, when she was out there, she was

1235
01:18:36,760 --> 01:18:39,960
Speaker 1: very comfortable. She loved it. It was a great show.

1236
01:18:40,240 --> 01:18:43,760
Speaker 1: We were sold out and we I think we were

1237
01:18:43,800 --> 01:18:47,120
Speaker 1: at the MGM for a week or two weeks, and

1238
01:18:47,160 --> 01:18:52,040
Speaker 1: that was the beginning of Vegas. She became UH Female

1239
01:18:52,120 --> 01:18:54,880
Speaker 1: Entertainer of the Year one year we live. We lived

1240
01:18:54,920 --> 01:18:58,599
Speaker 1: in Vegas for ten years and we worked in Vegas

1241
01:18:58,680 --> 01:19:01,600
Speaker 1: for thirty five weeks a year. She still holds the

1242
01:19:01,640 --> 01:19:03,880
Speaker 1: record for selling the most tickets over a two and

1243
01:19:03,920 --> 01:19:06,439
Speaker 1: a half year period. For two and a half years

1244
01:19:06,439 --> 01:19:08,439
Speaker 1: we were at the Las Vegas Hilton. We had a

1245
01:19:08,479 --> 01:19:11,600
Speaker 1: gigantic show there, cast of sixty people. It was the

1246
01:19:11,640 --> 01:19:16,880
Speaker 1: Mula Rouge, and she wound up starring in the Mula Rouge. Strangely,

1247
01:19:16,920 --> 01:19:20,719
Speaker 1: I get a call from the president of the Hilton,

1248
01:19:20,920 --> 01:19:24,000
Speaker 1: Henry Lewin, who was a German jew who had run

1249
01:19:24,040 --> 01:19:26,719
Speaker 1: for his life, you know, during the war and spent

1250
01:19:26,760 --> 01:19:32,360
Speaker 1: the war years in China. And he called me and said, Allen,

1251
01:19:33,439 --> 01:19:36,040
Speaker 1: I have this show and I want to do as

1252
01:19:36,040 --> 01:19:39,040
Speaker 1: an accent. He said, I have this show and I'm

1253
01:19:39,040 --> 01:19:43,760
Speaker 1: paying these guys in Paris UH a lot of money

1254
01:19:43,800 --> 01:19:47,040
Speaker 1: and royalties. Every single week he said, we have more

1255
01:19:47,080 --> 01:19:49,720
Speaker 1: people on stage than we have in the audience of night.

1256
01:19:50,760 --> 01:19:52,840
Speaker 1: He said, would you and Suzanne come and look at it?

1257
01:19:52,920 --> 01:19:54,760
Speaker 1: So that night we go look at the show. I

1258
01:19:54,800 --> 01:19:57,719
Speaker 1: love big. I love big production shows in Vegas. Okay

1259
01:19:58,120 --> 01:20:02,120
Speaker 1: to any production show. Beautiful girls with feathers and you know,

1260
01:20:02,360 --> 01:20:05,720
Speaker 1: a lot of music and dancing. I love that, so,

1261
01:20:05,760 --> 01:20:08,880
Speaker 1: I said, Henry, Henry lewin was I said, Henry, it's

1262
01:20:08,880 --> 01:20:11,320
Speaker 1: it's a beautiful show. He said, I know, I know.

1263
01:20:11,479 --> 01:20:14,360
Speaker 1: He said, but what's wrong? I said, you don't have

1264
01:20:14,400 --> 01:20:17,080
Speaker 1: an anchor. I said, there are two other shows in

1265
01:20:17,160 --> 01:20:20,839
Speaker 1: Vegas that have French names. I said, nobody knows what

1266
01:20:20,880 --> 01:20:23,160
Speaker 1: those the shows are. They It's like, what's the move

1267
01:20:23,200 --> 01:20:26,960
Speaker 1: long Route? What is it? Okay? I said, here's what

1268
01:20:27,040 --> 01:20:32,320
Speaker 1: I suggest. Suzanne opens the show, she does her act

1269
01:20:32,320 --> 01:20:37,040
Speaker 1: in the middle of the show, and she closes the show. Okay,

1270
01:20:37,320 --> 01:20:40,439
Speaker 1: we will do that. If you promised to do this,

1271
01:20:40,720 --> 01:20:42,599
Speaker 1: he said, I'll do whatever you want me to do.

1272
01:20:42,960 --> 01:20:45,920
Speaker 1: I said, you have to buy every available billboard in

1273
01:20:46,000 --> 01:20:49,840
Speaker 1: Las Vegas. You have to buy every available billboard in

1274
01:20:49,880 --> 01:20:55,320
Speaker 1: the feeder cities, Okay, Phoenix, Burbank, l A, et cetera.

1275
01:20:56,400 --> 01:21:01,879
Speaker 1: I will produce to video commercials and several radio spots.

1276
01:21:02,200 --> 01:21:05,000
Speaker 1: I will give you photo ready art to use in print.

1277
01:21:05,640 --> 01:21:09,240
Speaker 1: You have to just forget about what it's costing and

1278
01:21:09,320 --> 01:21:11,400
Speaker 1: just lay it on. And if you do that, I

1279
01:21:11,439 --> 01:21:15,679
Speaker 1: promise we will succeed. So that was I can't remember

1280
01:21:15,680 --> 01:21:20,040
Speaker 1: what month it was. Two months later, we opened eight

1281
01:21:20,280 --> 01:21:22,600
Speaker 1: hundred seats at the Las Vegas Hilton. I was a

1282
01:21:22,600 --> 01:21:25,560
Speaker 1: little worried, okay because the night we were there to

1283
01:21:25,560 --> 01:21:28,080
Speaker 1: watch the moon law Rouse that were probably maybe a

1284
01:21:28,120 --> 01:21:32,679
Speaker 1: hundred people. And it's off the strip. Okay, it's off

1285
01:21:32,680 --> 01:21:35,320
Speaker 1: the strip, so we don't even have the benefit of

1286
01:21:35,320 --> 01:21:38,960
Speaker 1: people walking by. So I gave him a picture, a

1287
01:21:38,960 --> 01:21:42,400
Speaker 1: head shot of Suzanne sexy head shot. I said, put

1288
01:21:42,439 --> 01:21:46,479
Speaker 1: this on your on the the what do they call it, yeah,

1289
01:21:46,479 --> 01:21:51,280
Speaker 1: the Marquis. Okay, we opened, were sold out. It was

1290
01:21:51,320 --> 01:21:58,080
Speaker 1: the first time the the balcony had people sitting in

1291
01:21:58,160 --> 01:22:02,200
Speaker 1: it since Elvis was there in the sixties. Okay, they

1292
01:22:02,200 --> 01:22:06,200
Speaker 1: were storing lighting equipment in the balcony. So we sold

1293
01:22:06,240 --> 01:22:11,840
Speaker 1: out to two hour shows every night, seven nights a week.

1294
01:22:12,240 --> 01:22:16,160
Speaker 1: Those were the days when Vegas hotels provided entertainment every

1295
01:22:16,240 --> 01:22:22,240
Speaker 1: night of the week. After year and a half or two,

1296
01:22:23,400 --> 01:22:26,559
Speaker 1: and we're still selling out like crazy. I said to

1297
01:22:26,600 --> 01:22:29,559
Speaker 1: Henry lew And we gotta have a day off. And

1298
01:22:29,600 --> 01:22:32,800
Speaker 1: he said, Allan, is it money. I said, it's not

1299
01:22:32,920 --> 01:22:36,240
Speaker 1: the money. I said, we're happy with everything, with everything.

1300
01:22:36,840 --> 01:22:38,960
Speaker 1: I said, it's not that at all. I said she

1301
01:22:39,040 --> 01:22:46,280
Speaker 1: needs a day off just to lay in bed. He said, okay, okay, Monday.

1302
01:22:46,320 --> 01:22:51,320
Speaker 1: So that started all the hotels only doing shows Thursday, Friday, Saturday,

1303
01:22:51,320 --> 01:22:54,479
Speaker 1: and sometimes Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Okay, it broke. The

1304
01:22:54,520 --> 01:22:58,800
Speaker 1: seven day rule was an unofficial rule. So we did

1305
01:22:58,840 --> 01:23:00,400
Speaker 1: that for two and a half It's You and a

1306
01:23:00,439 --> 01:23:05,360
Speaker 1: half years and sold gazillions of tickets, and that established

1307
01:23:05,360 --> 01:23:10,040
Speaker 1: her as a headliner in Las Vegas, and we started

1308
01:23:10,040 --> 01:23:13,200
Speaker 1: playing theaters around the country and that got old after

1309
01:23:13,280 --> 01:23:17,080
Speaker 1: a while. You know, one playing nighters and you finished

1310
01:23:17,080 --> 01:23:19,519
Speaker 1: doing the show and you're eating crap on the road.

1311
01:23:20,240 --> 01:23:24,760
Speaker 1: By the way, that's another conversation. All the people, all

1312
01:23:24,800 --> 01:23:27,080
Speaker 1: the entertainers who have been on the road all their life,

1313
01:23:27,240 --> 01:23:31,280
Speaker 1: okay forty fifty years. I don't know if you've noticed

1314
01:23:31,400 --> 01:23:36,040
Speaker 1: or not, but they all have dementia or Alzheimer's. And

1315
01:23:36,080 --> 01:23:41,519
Speaker 1: why because they're doing nighters. They get to the venue,

1316
01:23:41,800 --> 01:23:45,960
Speaker 1: they're nervous, so not eating. They do a sound check, rehearsal,

1317
01:23:46,800 --> 01:23:49,519
Speaker 1: they do the show. Eleven o'clock at night, they say

1318
01:23:49,600 --> 01:23:53,519
Speaker 1: to the the road manager, go get some food. So

1319
01:23:53,640 --> 01:23:56,280
Speaker 1: what's open? You know, what's open at eleven o'clock at

1320
01:23:56,360 --> 01:24:01,799
Speaker 1: night if you're lucky, because he brings back crap food

1321
01:24:02,040 --> 01:24:05,920
Speaker 1: that's it's sprayed with poison and who knows what else.

1322
01:24:06,560 --> 01:24:08,719
Speaker 1: And that's what these people have been eating for forty

1323
01:24:08,760 --> 01:24:14,080
Speaker 1: and fifty years, and I believe it's the food. Okay,

1324
01:24:14,120 --> 01:24:18,840
Speaker 1: how does the thigh master happen? Get a call from

1325
01:24:18,840 --> 01:24:24,200
Speaker 1: a guy I casually knew in Toronto and he says

1326
01:24:24,240 --> 01:24:28,200
Speaker 1: to me, and he's part of a film development company.

1327
01:24:29,840 --> 01:24:32,320
Speaker 1: There are three of them. He said, I got this

1328
01:24:33,160 --> 01:24:36,200
Speaker 1: exercise device. He said, I don't know what to do

1329
01:24:36,280 --> 01:24:38,600
Speaker 1: with it. He said, I want you to take a

1330
01:24:38,600 --> 01:24:40,160
Speaker 1: look at it. So he comes to what we're living in,

1331
01:24:40,160 --> 01:24:44,360
Speaker 1: Palm Spring. He comes to Palm Springs and it's called

1332
01:24:44,520 --> 01:24:48,160
Speaker 1: a V Toner because it's shaped leg and it's an

1333
01:24:48,240 --> 01:24:51,840
Speaker 1: upper body workout. It's not for thighs, its upper body.

1334
01:24:52,160 --> 01:24:53,840
Speaker 1: And the idea is if you use it for your

1335
01:24:53,920 --> 01:24:56,479
Speaker 1: upper body, your upper body will be shaped like a

1336
01:24:56,560 --> 01:24:59,360
Speaker 1: V as well. So it's called a v Toner and

1337
01:24:59,360 --> 01:25:03,920
Speaker 1: it was invented by a Swedish doctor and it's Swedish looking,

1338
01:25:04,200 --> 01:25:09,040
Speaker 1: kind of gray, has a gray utility, sort of looked

1339
01:25:09,080 --> 01:25:11,799
Speaker 1: to it, and it'd been around for fifteen or twenty

1340
01:25:11,880 --> 01:25:16,479
Speaker 1: years and they couldn't sell a unit. So Suzanne takes it,

1341
01:25:16,520 --> 01:25:19,920
Speaker 1: puts it between ear thighs and started squeezing it and

1342
01:25:19,960 --> 01:25:22,479
Speaker 1: says to the guy, is this good for thighs? And

1343
01:25:22,520 --> 01:25:26,000
Speaker 1: he says yeah, but it's an upper body. She said, okay,

1344
01:25:26,280 --> 01:25:30,439
Speaker 1: leave it with us. So during the next two weeks

1345
01:25:30,960 --> 01:25:34,200
Speaker 1: we came up with the name. Suzanne says it was her,

1346
01:25:34,280 --> 01:25:38,720
Speaker 1: I said it was me um, and we changed the

1347
01:25:38,760 --> 01:25:42,639
Speaker 1: color combination so it had a red knob and blue handles,

1348
01:25:44,240 --> 01:25:50,080
Speaker 1: and we shot the commercial and the commerce you a

1349
01:25:50,080 --> 01:25:53,759
Speaker 1: little flaccid. The results were a little flaccid. We weren't

1350
01:25:53,760 --> 01:25:57,280
Speaker 1: losing money, but we weren't making the money we thought

1351
01:25:57,320 --> 01:26:01,840
Speaker 1: we were going to make kah, So we had to

1352
01:26:01,880 --> 01:26:06,799
Speaker 1: figure out what do we do next? So we added

1353
01:26:07,040 --> 01:26:14,320
Speaker 1: three pages called Susanne Summers Helpful Hints for Healthy Eating

1354
01:26:16,479 --> 01:26:19,160
Speaker 1: as a premium and I took off like a rocket.

1355
01:26:19,360 --> 01:26:22,120
Speaker 1: What do you why do you think that was people

1356
01:26:22,200 --> 01:26:28,720
Speaker 1: like getting free stuff? Yeah, okay, so most people who

1357
01:26:28,760 --> 01:26:31,720
Speaker 1: have a heyday on TV, certainly at that time, I

1358
01:26:31,800 --> 01:26:35,280
Speaker 1: want to get back on weekly TV. What was your

1359
01:26:35,280 --> 01:26:39,760
Speaker 1: feeling about that about me getting back? Well, she had

1360
01:26:39,800 --> 01:26:43,120
Speaker 1: done most people don't even think think about this. She's

1361
01:26:43,120 --> 01:26:46,679
Speaker 1: done two hit series. Three's Company. Then she did seven

1362
01:26:46,760 --> 01:26:50,400
Speaker 1: years with Patrick Duffy on Step by Step seven years.

1363
01:26:50,520 --> 01:26:53,880
Speaker 1: That's a that's a hit TV show. She did Candy

1364
01:26:54,000 --> 01:26:58,320
Speaker 1: Camera for two years. I believe she did a she

1365
01:26:58,400 --> 01:27:05,800
Speaker 1: did the first um, the first time they produced a

1366
01:27:05,920 --> 01:27:10,479
Speaker 1: virgin sitcom for syndication. Usually it goes to the network

1367
01:27:10,520 --> 01:27:15,320
Speaker 1: and then so they decided, Lorimar decided, let's produce a

1368
01:27:15,400 --> 01:27:19,800
Speaker 1: sitcom for syndication before it goes to They'll never go

1369
01:27:19,880 --> 01:27:23,240
Speaker 1: to a network. Right. It was called She's the Sheriff,

1370
01:27:23,280 --> 01:27:26,599
Speaker 1: and Susanne was the sheriff, of course, and she she

1371
01:27:26,640 --> 01:27:28,280
Speaker 1: did not like doing the show. I said, why why

1372
01:27:28,280 --> 01:27:29,800
Speaker 1: don't you like doing the show? She's I don't like

1373
01:27:29,880 --> 01:27:33,320
Speaker 1: what I have to wear. I said, okay, okay, but

1374
01:27:33,360 --> 01:27:35,120
Speaker 1: they're paying you every week, right, She's yeah, but I

1375
01:27:35,160 --> 01:27:38,599
Speaker 1: don't like Okay. So that show ran for I think

1376
01:27:38,760 --> 01:27:42,000
Speaker 1: a year, maybe two years, I can't remember. So she's

1377
01:27:42,000 --> 01:27:44,800
Speaker 1: done a lot of TV, A lot of TV. We

1378
01:27:44,880 --> 01:27:49,519
Speaker 1: did music specials for CBS, a lot of guest starring

1379
01:27:49,560 --> 01:27:55,240
Speaker 1: on music specials with Paul Anka and you know, John Wayne, etcetera.

1380
01:27:55,320 --> 01:27:58,760
Speaker 1: So a lot of television. Does she want to go

1381
01:27:58,800 --> 01:28:03,599
Speaker 1: back to TV? Um? I think if she went back

1382
01:28:03,640 --> 01:28:08,719
Speaker 1: to TV, it wouldn't be to do a sitcom because

1383
01:28:08,760 --> 01:28:13,320
Speaker 1: it's never going to be as good as what she's done. Uh.

1384
01:28:13,640 --> 01:28:19,240
Speaker 1: She would probably go back to do a talk variety

1385
01:28:19,320 --> 01:28:23,320
Speaker 1: show remember those of course, Okay merv Griffin, and you

1386
01:28:23,360 --> 01:28:28,600
Speaker 1: know she'd go back for that. She'd probably said, well,

1387
01:28:28,640 --> 01:28:32,160
Speaker 1: let's do it out of Palm Springs. Okay, so we

1388
01:28:32,280 --> 01:28:35,120
Speaker 1: do it out of Palm Springs. But what we're doing

1389
01:28:35,240 --> 01:28:41,280
Speaker 1: right now is um. She was on the shopping channel

1390
01:28:41,439 --> 01:28:46,240
Speaker 1: HSN for seventeen years, one of the top vendors, and

1391
01:28:46,360 --> 01:28:49,720
Speaker 1: we started with jewelry, then we went to fashion, then

1392
01:28:49,720 --> 01:28:52,720
Speaker 1: we went to small kitchen appliances, then we went to

1393
01:28:52,840 --> 01:28:56,320
Speaker 1: organic food, then we went to audio video, then we

1394
01:28:56,360 --> 01:28:59,880
Speaker 1: went to publishing. Uh, and then we went to candy

1395
01:28:59,880 --> 01:29:04,719
Speaker 1: and chocolate, and then we went to bedding. I'm probably

1396
01:29:04,760 --> 01:29:11,120
Speaker 1: missing okay, but I had. Your memory is phenomenal, um.

1397
01:29:11,160 --> 01:29:13,000
Speaker 1: And she was one of the top vendors and they

1398
01:29:13,040 --> 01:29:16,920
Speaker 1: referred to her as the Queen of TV shopping Okay,

1399
01:29:17,240 --> 01:29:23,439
Speaker 1: seventeen years. So then she started writing these books and

1400
01:29:23,560 --> 01:29:25,599
Speaker 1: she wrote her first book was seventy three She wrote

1401
01:29:25,600 --> 01:29:30,880
Speaker 1: a book of poetry called touch Me and Uh. That's

1402
01:29:30,880 --> 01:29:35,200
Speaker 1: the story in itself. She came down to audition for

1403
01:29:35,280 --> 01:29:38,320
Speaker 1: the Dom Delawis Show and she had a call back,

1404
01:29:38,520 --> 01:29:41,920
Speaker 1: so she went to the commissary at NBC to wait

1405
01:29:42,120 --> 01:29:44,760
Speaker 1: to be called back. It was mid afternoon. She was

1406
01:29:44,800 --> 01:29:48,519
Speaker 1: the only one in there in watch Johnny Carson, and

1407
01:29:48,560 --> 01:29:51,320
Speaker 1: she thinks, oh my god, there's Johnny Carson. Oh my god,

1408
01:29:51,400 --> 01:29:54,639
Speaker 1: Johnny Carson is coming over to me. So he comes

1409
01:29:54,680 --> 01:29:56,559
Speaker 1: over to her and says, hey, little lady, what are

1410
01:29:56,560 --> 01:29:59,320
Speaker 1: you doing here. I'm here for Don Delawi. He said, Oh,

1411
01:29:59,360 --> 01:30:00,840
Speaker 1: he's a friend of my and I hope you get it.

1412
01:30:01,200 --> 01:30:04,320
Speaker 1: She didn't have an eight by ten. She hands him

1413
01:30:04,360 --> 01:30:09,280
Speaker 1: her book of poetry, so he takes it. That was Wednesday, Friday.

1414
01:30:09,600 --> 01:30:15,600
Speaker 1: She's on the Tonight Show having purchased address with a

1415
01:30:15,640 --> 01:30:20,800
Speaker 1: bad check. Okay. Carson loved her because she was a

1416
01:30:20,840 --> 01:30:24,479
Speaker 1: small town girl, totally open. I mean he would say

1417
01:30:24,479 --> 01:30:26,160
Speaker 1: to her, when did you get to town? She'd say

1418
01:30:26,320 --> 01:30:31,680
Speaker 1: this afternoon okay. Um. So he had her on I

1419
01:30:31,680 --> 01:30:35,519
Speaker 1: don't know every month. He loved having her on. And

1420
01:30:36,000 --> 01:30:42,599
Speaker 1: um so from that Fred Silverman, so Freddie was head

1421
01:30:42,600 --> 01:30:46,960
Speaker 1: of NBC, there were no They didn't have committees then

1422
01:30:47,000 --> 01:30:48,680
Speaker 1: to decide if they're going to do a show or not.

1423
01:30:49,080 --> 01:30:52,160
Speaker 1: Now it's by committee because no one wants to, you know,

1424
01:30:52,479 --> 01:30:56,080
Speaker 1: get be responsible. Yeah, but they all take credit from

1425
01:30:56,080 --> 01:31:00,840
Speaker 1: a win. Right. So Fred had watched Suzanne on the

1426
01:31:00,880 --> 01:31:04,679
Speaker 1: Tonight Show often. They had done two pilots with two

1427
01:31:04,680 --> 01:31:08,240
Speaker 1: other Chrissie Snows that did not test well. So he

1428
01:31:08,320 --> 01:31:14,240
Speaker 1: said to the producer producers, I've got the girl. So

1429
01:31:14,320 --> 01:31:17,519
Speaker 1: they called Suzanne, and Suzanne said, you know, and I

1430
01:31:17,560 --> 01:31:20,000
Speaker 1: did a bunch of pilots and none of them sold.

1431
01:31:20,040 --> 01:31:23,479
Speaker 1: I think I'm done. I'm going to teach cooking. Okay,

1432
01:31:23,600 --> 01:31:26,120
Speaker 1: now he's coming for this one, lad. Okay. So she

1433
01:31:26,200 --> 01:31:29,160
Speaker 1: goes in not caring if she gets the job, which

1434
01:31:29,200 --> 01:31:31,439
Speaker 1: of course is the best way to get the job, right.

1435
01:31:32,520 --> 01:31:34,720
Speaker 1: And she gets home, the phone rings, you got it

1436
01:31:34,800 --> 01:31:40,160
Speaker 1: and we start Monday, Monday, Monday, Okay, not with a pilot.

1437
01:31:40,680 --> 01:31:45,479
Speaker 1: We're in production Monday, and the first order was for

1438
01:31:45,520 --> 01:31:48,920
Speaker 1: six shows, which was normal in those days. Okay. She

1439
01:31:49,040 --> 01:31:53,160
Speaker 1: walks in to the room where they're all sitting around

1440
01:31:53,160 --> 01:31:55,479
Speaker 1: the cast and the producers and the writers are sitting

1441
01:31:55,520 --> 01:31:59,640
Speaker 1: around for a table read and she's never been to

1442
01:31:59,720 --> 01:32:04,160
Speaker 1: a tape will read. She's never done done anything right.

1443
01:32:04,800 --> 01:32:08,120
Speaker 1: So the first thing she announces to everybody, Okay, this

1444
01:32:08,200 --> 01:32:12,040
Speaker 1: is a small town girl speaking. I've never had an

1445
01:32:12,080 --> 01:32:18,320
Speaker 1: acting lesson, and I I'm not quite sure what I'm doing,

1446
01:32:19,200 --> 01:32:23,960
Speaker 1: but I learned fast. All the professionals were sitting around

1447
01:32:23,960 --> 01:32:27,960
Speaker 1: and I'm sure they were thinking, what this is one

1448
01:32:28,000 --> 01:32:31,240
Speaker 1: of the three stars of the show who's never had

1449
01:32:31,280 --> 01:32:34,680
Speaker 1: an acting lesson and doesn't know what she's doing. Okay,

1450
01:32:34,800 --> 01:32:39,680
Speaker 1: but that was her honesty. I'm just telling you. I'm

1451
01:32:39,720 --> 01:32:45,280
Speaker 1: telling you people who I am. Okay. So the first

1452
01:32:45,320 --> 01:32:47,400
Speaker 1: she doesn't like the first year of threees company, she said,

1453
01:32:47,439 --> 01:32:50,720
Speaker 1: I didn't hit it okay, but by the second year,

1454
01:32:51,120 --> 01:32:54,320
Speaker 1: she was hitting it out of the park. She got that.

1455
01:32:54,800 --> 01:32:59,280
Speaker 1: She I said, it's very hard to be a likable

1456
01:32:59,520 --> 01:33:04,479
Speaker 1: dumb because most dumb lawns are irritating. She said, I

1457
01:33:04,600 --> 01:33:08,240
Speaker 1: created a moral box for this character, and in the

1458
01:33:08,280 --> 01:33:12,200
Speaker 1: moral box, I don't lie ever, and I'm never going

1459
01:33:12,280 --> 01:33:17,560
Speaker 1: to steal anyone's husband or boyfriend. That's my moral box. Okay.

1460
01:33:17,760 --> 01:33:23,000
Speaker 1: Always tell the truth, never come on to anybody's guy, okay.

1461
01:33:23,240 --> 01:33:26,040
Speaker 1: And that's why people love that character. Okay. So but

1462
01:33:26,160 --> 01:33:27,639
Speaker 1: now that you were saying a couple of times, you're

1463
01:33:27,640 --> 01:33:33,719
Speaker 1: doing Facebook shows. So we have a we have about

1464
01:33:33,720 --> 01:33:36,960
Speaker 1: a thousand products that we've all of which we've developed

1465
01:33:37,360 --> 01:33:43,400
Speaker 1: over the years. We have Susanna Organics, which is and

1466
01:33:43,439 --> 01:33:46,040
Speaker 1: by the way, Susanna Organics came out of you know,

1467
01:33:46,120 --> 01:33:50,360
Speaker 1: for every downside, there's an upside. The downside was twenty

1468
01:33:50,520 --> 01:33:52,679
Speaker 1: or twenty one years ago, she was diagnosed with breast

1469
01:33:52,720 --> 01:33:58,360
Speaker 1: cancer and she couldn't figure out why she would host

1470
01:33:58,600 --> 01:34:03,160
Speaker 1: this terrible disease. And she realized it was because she

1471
01:34:03,360 --> 01:34:09,200
Speaker 1: was staying up late at night writing, Uh, she was eating. Uh,

1472
01:34:09,479 --> 01:34:12,040
Speaker 1: you know when you're doing when you're doing a TV show,

1473
01:34:12,320 --> 01:34:15,519
Speaker 1: there's the craft table cross service. I call it the

1474
01:34:15,560 --> 01:34:19,600
Speaker 1: crap table, okay, because there's orange things there. There are

1475
01:34:19,680 --> 01:34:22,479
Speaker 1: no natural foods other than oranges that I know of

1476
01:34:22,720 --> 01:34:26,439
Speaker 1: that they're covered in orange powder. And you're a little nervous.

1477
01:34:26,560 --> 01:34:28,559
Speaker 1: Every time you go by, you grab something and just

1478
01:34:28,600 --> 01:34:30,960
Speaker 1: throw it in your mouth. And then if they serve,

1479
01:34:31,280 --> 01:34:35,080
Speaker 1: you know, lunch, it's not with a gourmet food. It's

1480
01:34:35,160 --> 01:34:38,360
Speaker 1: the cheapest food they could find. Right, So she figured

1481
01:34:38,720 --> 01:34:41,519
Speaker 1: a part of it was staying up late not getting

1482
01:34:41,640 --> 01:34:47,400
Speaker 1: enough sleep, uh, being too busy and not being aware

1483
01:34:47,439 --> 01:34:50,760
Speaker 1: of the food I was eating. So she decided to

1484
01:34:50,880 --> 01:34:56,120
Speaker 1: change her life and ultimately my life, and uh, get

1485
01:34:56,120 --> 01:34:59,160
Speaker 1: all the toxins out of our life. Okay. We got

1486
01:34:59,280 --> 01:35:02,120
Speaker 1: rid of all the stuff in our house for cleaning,

1487
01:35:02,640 --> 01:35:08,160
Speaker 1: which is poison. We created a home cleaning system that

1488
01:35:08,280 --> 01:35:11,120
Speaker 1: you could drink. It tastes awful, but you could drink

1489
01:35:11,120 --> 01:35:15,840
Speaker 1: it okay, and it works incredible. We created Susanne Organics.

1490
01:35:16,600 --> 01:35:22,320
Speaker 1: It's uh organic skincare, organic hair care, organic cosmetics. Okay,

1491
01:35:22,360 --> 01:35:26,639
Speaker 1: because when you see the the stuff that you buy

1492
01:35:26,760 --> 01:35:30,880
Speaker 1: commercially for skin care and hair care, you wouldn't want

1493
01:35:30,880 --> 01:35:34,400
Speaker 1: to go anywhere near it. Okay. So on your Facebook

1494
01:35:34,439 --> 01:35:37,920
Speaker 1: live show, do you promote these products? Absolutely? So what

1495
01:35:37,960 --> 01:35:42,240
Speaker 1: we do is it's like a reality show. Oh. A

1496
01:35:42,280 --> 01:35:45,080
Speaker 1: few years ago, John Feldheimer, who's a dear friend of

1497
01:35:45,080 --> 01:35:48,519
Speaker 1: ours who runs a lions Gate, he said, I want

1498
01:35:48,560 --> 01:35:50,679
Speaker 1: to do a reality show with you and Sudan. We said,

1499
01:35:50,680 --> 01:35:52,599
Speaker 1: but we don't argue, we don't fight. We're not like

1500
01:35:52,680 --> 01:35:55,200
Speaker 1: you know, all these reality shows they kick the crap

1501
01:35:55,240 --> 01:35:57,040
Speaker 1: out of each other. Okay, and that's the show, and

1502
01:35:57,120 --> 01:35:58,880
Speaker 1: we don't do that. He said, that's why I want

1503
01:35:58,880 --> 01:36:00,160
Speaker 1: to do it with you guys. I know you so

1504
01:36:00,280 --> 01:36:02,800
Speaker 1: well and you don't argue, but you have this great,

1505
01:36:02,840 --> 01:36:06,520
Speaker 1: loving relationship. That's what I want. So I said, okay,

1506
01:36:07,000 --> 01:36:09,240
Speaker 1: So for three days we had two guys with big

1507
01:36:09,280 --> 01:36:12,280
Speaker 1: cameras like this following us around. I called John. I said,

1508
01:36:12,520 --> 01:36:16,360
Speaker 1: I can't do this, Okay, I said, I there are

1509
01:36:16,360 --> 01:36:17,760
Speaker 1: things that I want to do that I can't do

1510
01:36:17,800 --> 01:36:19,599
Speaker 1: because I know it's going to be on camera. I said,

1511
01:36:19,760 --> 01:36:22,000
Speaker 1: and even though you know we we have the final

1512
01:36:22,880 --> 01:36:27,240
Speaker 1: look in terms of it, I said, we can't do this. Okay,

1513
01:36:27,280 --> 01:36:30,559
Speaker 1: we can't do it least I understand. So what we

1514
01:36:30,640 --> 01:36:33,160
Speaker 1: do now with Facebook Live and we simulcast on I

1515
01:36:33,280 --> 01:36:37,559
Speaker 1: g TV, Instagram, and we're on our way to another

1516
01:36:38,280 --> 01:36:42,040
Speaker 1: nine or ten digital platforms. We've been doing this for

1517
01:36:42,080 --> 01:36:46,120
Speaker 1: about a year and a half. We've archived about a

1518
01:36:46,160 --> 01:36:49,040
Speaker 1: hundred hours which you can You can go to Suzanne

1519
01:36:49,080 --> 01:36:52,200
Speaker 1: Summers Facebook and you'll see them all there. There's no

1520
01:36:52,280 --> 01:36:55,519
Speaker 1: script Susanne and I don't discuss what we're gonna do.

1521
01:36:56,000 --> 01:36:59,080
Speaker 1: The only thing that we plan ahead is what products

1522
01:36:59,080 --> 01:37:02,200
Speaker 1: are we going to be selling and how much are

1523
01:37:02,240 --> 01:37:06,800
Speaker 1: we charging? Okay, we discount our products like crazy. How

1524
01:37:06,920 --> 01:37:11,200
Speaker 1: lucrative is it? Well, it depends on your definition of lucrative.

1525
01:37:11,479 --> 01:37:14,280
Speaker 1: I mean everything is relative, you know. But okay, how

1526
01:37:14,280 --> 01:37:21,080
Speaker 1: long are the shows, like between forty and to an

1527
01:37:21,120 --> 01:37:24,200
Speaker 1: hour show? What is the range of the lowest amount

1528
01:37:24,240 --> 01:37:30,200
Speaker 1: of gross product you could sell to the top. I

1529
01:37:30,240 --> 01:37:33,479
Speaker 1: don't know how to answer that question. Um, most of

1530
01:37:33,479 --> 01:37:37,599
Speaker 1: the show is Suzanne and I or if our families

1531
01:37:37,640 --> 01:37:43,760
Speaker 1: there are families on just goofing around. Um, I'm the

1532
01:37:43,800 --> 01:37:48,560
Speaker 1: bad boy, okay, I say things that we know. The

1533
01:37:48,600 --> 01:37:52,559
Speaker 1: audience goes, oh did you hear what Allan said? And

1534
01:37:52,760 --> 01:37:54,720
Speaker 1: I'm not making it up? Who I happened to be?

1535
01:37:54,840 --> 01:37:58,160
Speaker 1: I like being a bad boy? Okay. So we have

1536
01:37:58,240 --> 01:38:03,320
Speaker 1: fun doing these shows, and we market not all of

1537
01:38:03,320 --> 01:38:07,160
Speaker 1: our products. Um, like we did a show with a

1538
01:38:07,240 --> 01:38:13,640
Speaker 1: thime master a few weeks ago, and I mean we

1539
01:38:13,760 --> 01:38:17,599
Speaker 1: keep a good supply of thime masters. Okay. So when

1540
01:38:17,640 --> 01:38:21,679
Speaker 1: you email, you always emailed with me with marketing wisdom.

1541
01:38:21,720 --> 01:38:24,200
Speaker 1: So as you look at and you talked about branding earlier.

1542
01:38:24,720 --> 01:38:27,040
Speaker 1: So what are a couple of lessons you can tell

1543
01:38:27,080 --> 01:38:30,679
Speaker 1: my audience in terms of selling their products. But first

1544
01:38:30,680 --> 01:38:35,439
Speaker 1: of all, you have to believe in your products. The

1545
01:38:35,520 --> 01:38:40,639
Speaker 1: first aside from my experience on the train, I got

1546
01:38:40,680 --> 01:38:45,280
Speaker 1: a job selling food freezer plans in Canada. That's like

1547
01:38:45,360 --> 01:38:49,880
Speaker 1: selling you know, ice to the Eskimos. Really uh. And

1548
01:38:50,000 --> 01:38:53,479
Speaker 1: the sales manager said to me, I don't care if

1549
01:38:53,520 --> 01:38:56,720
Speaker 1: you like the food freezer plan or not. Okay, I

1550
01:38:56,760 --> 01:38:58,479
Speaker 1: said no, no, he said, I don't care if you

1551
01:38:58,560 --> 01:39:01,160
Speaker 1: like it or not. He said, you have to talk

1552
01:39:01,240 --> 01:39:05,120
Speaker 1: yourself into believing that you love it. If you can

1553
01:39:05,160 --> 01:39:08,160
Speaker 1: believe that you love it, you can then get anyone

1554
01:39:08,280 --> 01:39:11,920
Speaker 1: to love it. Okay. So I said, okay. So that

1555
01:39:12,000 --> 01:39:16,120
Speaker 1: was my first lesson in marketing to people that may

1556
01:39:16,120 --> 01:39:20,799
Speaker 1: not want to buy anything. So with all the products

1557
01:39:20,800 --> 01:39:22,720
Speaker 1: we have, we developed all of them ourselves. So there

1558
01:39:22,760 --> 01:39:24,680
Speaker 1: are no products there where someone comes to us and

1559
01:39:24,720 --> 01:39:29,200
Speaker 1: says other than thy master. That happened in the eighties. Um.

1560
01:39:29,280 --> 01:39:32,240
Speaker 1: We we created all these products. Okay. We we have

1561
01:39:32,280 --> 01:39:35,200
Speaker 1: a formulator. We do it all ourselves. We have a

1562
01:39:35,200 --> 01:39:42,040
Speaker 1: team of four that runs our digital programs. Uh. Soon

1563
01:39:42,080 --> 01:39:44,679
Speaker 1: we're gonna get into the podcast business. We've been avoiding

1564
01:39:44,680 --> 01:39:48,679
Speaker 1: it for a long time, but it's time okay. Uh.

1565
01:39:48,720 --> 01:39:53,320
Speaker 1: And we sell our products. Um. We don't spend a

1566
01:39:53,320 --> 01:39:55,680
Speaker 1: lot of time during the hour. During the hour, it's

1567
01:39:55,680 --> 01:39:59,840
Speaker 1: mostly goofing around and every so often and we try

1568
01:39:59,880 --> 01:40:03,360
Speaker 1: to make it look homemade. There's nothing slick. There are

1569
01:40:03,840 --> 01:40:06,400
Speaker 1: so in other words, let's assume I'm watching your Facebook

1570
01:40:06,439 --> 01:40:10,439
Speaker 1: live show. Where do I buy it from Susanne Summers

1571
01:40:10,479 --> 01:40:15,639
Speaker 1: dot com? So you're driving everybody to Suzanne Summers. Yeah, okay,

1572
01:40:15,840 --> 01:40:18,599
Speaker 1: we could go out for hours. You're you know, your

1573
01:40:18,640 --> 01:40:22,000
Speaker 1: incredible rack and tour. You've been listening to Alan Hamlet.

1574
01:40:22,040 --> 01:40:24,599
Speaker 1: We could listen all day telling his stories, you know,

1575
01:40:25,040 --> 01:40:28,639
Speaker 1: just about Canada, never mind threes Company. Thanks so much

1576
01:40:28,640 --> 01:40:31,640
Speaker 1: for being here and informing my guests what's going on

1577
01:40:31,640 --> 01:40:33,439
Speaker 1: in the Billy of the Beast. Well, thank you for

1578
01:40:33,479 --> 01:40:36,840
Speaker 1: inviting me. This is my first podcast. Well it's not

1579
01:40:36,880 --> 01:40:39,760
Speaker 1: your first time around the block talking Alan. Thanks so much.

1580
01:40:39,840 --> 01:40:42,400
Speaker 1: Thank you. Until next time, This is Bob Left six