Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today is Alan Hamile, both husband and business
Speaker 1: partner of Susie Anne Summers, a television presenter and all
Speaker 1: around marketing mabn, Alan, good to have you here. Thank you.
Speaker 1: I'm delighted to be here. I love your letter. Thank you.
Speaker 1: So how did you meet Susanne? Fifty years ago? Okay,
Speaker 1: actually fifty two years ago. I moved to l A
Speaker 1: from Canada, and in Canada we had no agents, no managers,
Speaker 1: there was none of that. You'd get a call from
Speaker 1: the network and they'd say, we're doing a show, do
Speaker 1: you want to come in and talk to us? And
Speaker 1: we'd go in and talk to them and they give
Speaker 1: us a job. So when I came here, I didn't
Speaker 1: know about managers and agents. So I called ABC and
Speaker 1: I said, who's the head guy? They said Elton Rule.
Speaker 1: I said, put me through, so he takes my call.
Speaker 1: I said, I am Ellen Hammond. I did a lot
Speaker 1: of TV in Canada, and I did a late night
Speaker 1: satirical show for five years, out of Control. I said,
Speaker 1: there's nothing like that in the States. There's no uh,
Speaker 1: there's nothing. There's no that that was the week that
Speaker 1: was there's no laughing, there's no Saturday Night Live, there's
Speaker 1: none of that. I'd like to show you a three
Speaker 1: and a half minute clip. He said, great, he said,
Speaker 1: can you be here tomorrow afternoon? Yes, you're calling him
Speaker 1: from Toronto from l A. I'm in l A, okay,
Speaker 1: and I'm thinking, now what, I don't have a job. Okay,
Speaker 1: I've got some money, but i have no job. So
Speaker 1: the following day I go up there and he's got
Speaker 1: his two programming people there and he said, okay, he said, there,
Speaker 1: where's the clip? So I handed to him and he
Speaker 1: hands it to some an assistant and they put it
Speaker 1: up and they play it back and the clip is
Speaker 1: me on my late night show in Canada called Nightcap,
Speaker 1: interviewing a topless dancer in front of a live The
Speaker 1: ins who's topless? And I'm interviewing her like man on
Speaker 1: the streets. Okay, I'm not looking at her chest, no
Speaker 1: lascivious remarks, just boring interviewer questions. So when it's all over,
Speaker 1: they all looked at each other around the room like,
Speaker 1: what the hell did we just see? Because the three
Speaker 1: biggest shows in those days were my three Sons, Beverly Hillbillies,
Speaker 1: and Green Acres. Okay, there was nothing else on. It
Speaker 1: was all pablum. So they said, you know what, let's
Speaker 1: do something together. So we negotiated a deal for me
Speaker 1: to do a ninety minute comedy special, and they housed
Speaker 1: me around the corner in the Hollywood Palace. I had
Speaker 1: offices in the Hollywood Palace. Jerry Lewis doing his show
Speaker 1: there yet, no, not that I was aware of anyway, Okay,
Speaker 1: and I'm thinking, I'm at Hollywood and Vine. I can't
Speaker 1: leave it, okay, And every day at lunchtime, I'd stand
Speaker 1: at the corner of Hollywood and Divide and think, I'm
Speaker 1: at Hollywood and Vine and my offices are in the
Speaker 1: Hollywood Palace. Okay. Anyway, we do the show and nobody
Speaker 1: knew who I was, so ABC said I was producing
Speaker 1: it and also starring in it. ABC said, nobody knows
Speaker 1: who you are, so you need a big time guest.
Speaker 1: So I called Robert Wagner, who had this huge TV
Speaker 1: series and I can't remember what it was called. How
Speaker 1: did you know Robert Wagner? I didn't know Robert, okay,
Speaker 1: but I was cooking cold calling everybody, so I said,
Speaker 1: here's what I want you to do. He laughed. I said,
Speaker 1: and here's the money. He said. Forget the money, he said,
Speaker 1: I live in Palm Springs, just getting me the world's
Speaker 1: greatest golf cart. I said, done. So we do the show,
Speaker 1: and we're ten minutes into the show, and I said
Speaker 1: to the audience, I said, you know, every big time
Speaker 1: special needs a big time guest. We have ours, Laises
Speaker 1: and gentleman Mr Robert Wagner. And you know the way
Speaker 1: he looked, I mean handsome, okay, with the cuff links
Speaker 1: and the perfect shirt and hair, everything perfect, right. He
Speaker 1: walked out a huge applause and whistling from the women.
Speaker 1: He goes to center stage. He takes a deep bow,
Speaker 1: it goes like that, thanking the audience, then walks down
Speaker 1: three steps into the audience, up the aisle and out
Speaker 1: the front door over here, and I said, okay, now
Speaker 1: that we've met our big star, we can carry on
Speaker 1: with the rest of them. So the whole show is
Speaker 1: like that. Okay, we took on everybody. It was a
Speaker 1: satirical show, but like today, it would be no big deal.
Speaker 1: But those people were screaming, and we took on everybody.
Speaker 1: We took on the Catholics, the Protestants, the Jews, the Poles,
Speaker 1: the little whiny. We took on everybody, and I got
Speaker 1: death threats. My favorite death threat came from a guy
Speaker 1: in Libertyville, Illinois, and I said, the name of where
Speaker 1: you live is sort of the antithesis of this letter
Speaker 1: you've written to me. You want to do me in? Okay?
Speaker 1: Because I don't. I assumed I had the liberty of
Speaker 1: free speech in this country. Okay. So he wrote me
Speaker 1: back and there were only two words in his letter,
Speaker 1: and the second word was you. Okay. So where were we? Okay?
Speaker 1: So you had a one in that ninety minutes special? Okay?
Speaker 1: So that special aired? Okay, and then what happened to results?
Speaker 1: People freaked. It was the second highest rated special all year,
Speaker 1: next to Tom Jones. Okay, what's ther word? In what year? Again?
Speaker 1: And the uh it's on ABC? It aired in prime time?
Speaker 1: When did it air prime time? So? Um? The show aired.
Speaker 1: The switchboards for ABC lit up across the country. People
Speaker 1: were furious because they've never seen anything. You have to
Speaker 1: ask in light of you know, they always talk about censorship.
Speaker 1: You had this crazy show. They let you wear it.
Speaker 1: They didn't say, hey, this a little too edgy. Okay,
Speaker 1: they said to me when the script was written, okay,
Speaker 1: they said, you're never going to get this passed. What
Speaker 1: was her name, Grace Johnson? I said, who's Grace Johnson.
Speaker 1: She's in charge of standards and practices. We didn't have
Speaker 1: that in Canada. I said, what, what are standards and practices?
Speaker 1: She decides what is not going to make air. So
Speaker 1: I called her, I said, would you have lunch with me?
Speaker 1: And I took it to a little place on Vine Street,
Speaker 1: a little French place I can't remember the name of it.
Speaker 1: I ordered the best bottle of wine and we sat
Speaker 1: there with the script all afternoon, eating and drinking wine,
Speaker 1: and every time she turned a page she would go, okay,
Speaker 1: my mother used to do that, and I thought, I'm
Speaker 1: dead I'm dead meat. Okay. We get to the final
Speaker 1: page and we've knocked off the entire bottle of wine,
Speaker 1: and we're getting along and she closes the script and
Speaker 1: she said, let's do this really okay. So we did it,
Speaker 1: and so now it airs and you're getting negative feedback,
Speaker 1: you're also getting good, good pet feedback, getting good feedback, right,
Speaker 1: good feedback from people actually, you know a lot of
Speaker 1: Brits wrote because British comedy The Goon Show with Peter
Speaker 1: Sellers and Spike Man. I mean that's been I was
Speaker 1: raised with that. Okay. In Canada is a Commonwealth country,
Speaker 1: so I was used to satire. I love satire, but
Speaker 1: this country had never experienced satire. So they were in shock. Okay.
Speaker 1: They turned on ABC to see I don't know what
Speaker 1: show we replaced, okay, but we replaced some show and
Speaker 1: it was obviously nothing like this. So we got great ratings.
Speaker 1: And the Miami ABC guy called me and he said,
Speaker 1: I own the affiliate station in Miami. He said, we
Speaker 1: love the show. He said, if I financed this series,
Speaker 1: would you do it? I said of course. He said,
Speaker 1: I'm going to come to to l A. I'm going
Speaker 1: to meet with the top guys at ABC, and I'm
Speaker 1: going to make a proposal. And the proposal was, uh,
Speaker 1: Miami will pay for the production of the show the
Speaker 1: network and have two free runs as long as the
Speaker 1: Miami station owns the back end syndication rights. And ABC
Speaker 1: said we wouldn't consider it. And that was that. Okay.
Speaker 1: So getting back to where I met Suzanne, I get
Speaker 1: a call from ABC right after that, saying, um, you
Speaker 1: did a lot of on camera in Canada, right, I said, yeah,
Speaker 1: I said, I did from nineteen fifty five until nineteen
Speaker 1: from fifty five until sixty Okay, so in the ninety
Speaker 1: minutes specially, you were not on camera. No, I was.
Speaker 1: I was on for the whole show, That's what I think.
Speaker 1: So they saw you. Yeah, I was the guy, right,
Speaker 1: so they saw you. What was the question? Okay? The
Speaker 1: question was, would you like to host a game show
Speaker 1: in ABC? I said great, So I go on and
Speaker 1: talk to them, and that was They had the Newlywed Game,
Speaker 1: the Dating Game, and my show was called the Anniversary Game. Okay.
Speaker 1: So it was this troika and they said, we don't
Speaker 1: have any studios in l A. Would you mind shooting
Speaker 1: in San Francisco. I said great, So I go to
Speaker 1: San Francisco and I'm up there for a couple of weeks.
Speaker 1: In pre production, we're laying out what the set looks
Speaker 1: like and who the people are, and we're hiring you know,
Speaker 1: production people, etcetera. And first day of production, I'm standing
Speaker 1: on the stage at ABC in San Francisco and on
Speaker 1: the other side of the stage I see the most
Speaker 1: beautiful girl woman I've ever seen in my whole life.
Speaker 1: And I'm thinking I have to go over there. So
Speaker 1: I start walking across the stage and I'm not good
Speaker 1: with come onlines. Okay, I always thought Hi. If I
Speaker 1: say hi, I'm Alan Hamill, the bullshit light starts flashing. Okay.
Speaker 1: So I get right up to her, and I still
Speaker 1: don't know what I'm going to say. So I said,
Speaker 1: would you mind getting me a cup of coffee? And
Speaker 1: she did and we've been together ever since fifty years. Okay. Yeah, Uh,
Speaker 1: there's so much there. The average person became aware of
Speaker 1: Suzanne when she was in American Graffitian. Okay, but you
Speaker 1: never got credit on the on the she she was
Speaker 1: not credited on that movie. You could go through the credits,
Speaker 1: you will not see the name Susanne. Was that intentional? No,
Speaker 1: it was that she had. She mouthed I love you,
Speaker 1: that was it. She was like an extra. She couldn't
Speaker 1: even say it out loud. And George Lucas Lucas, who
Speaker 1: had seen her a few days before um I had
Speaker 1: cast her. And then she her agent called her and said,
Speaker 1: you got this thing, and it's a small part, and
Speaker 1: what is it, well, you have to say I love you.
Speaker 1: So Suzanne stayed up all night practicing how to say
Speaker 1: I love you, and when she got there, he said,
Speaker 1: just mouth it. So she was not credited and was interesting.
Speaker 1: After she she was on Three's Company, which was from
Speaker 1: seventy seven on ABC ran American Graffiti, and they promoted
Speaker 1: it by saying, American Graffiti starring Susante Summers. Okay, so
Speaker 1: you meet your in sixty nine or what you meet
Speaker 1: her in sixty eight? Okay? So what happens between sixty
Speaker 1: eight and seventy three? For her UM, she she had
Speaker 1: won a scholarship to Lone Mountain College. I think it
Speaker 1: was a girl's college, Catholic girls college, and UM because
Speaker 1: she had done Guys and Dolls in high school. And
Speaker 1: you're old enough to remember Walter Winchell. Of course, Walter
Speaker 1: Winchell turned up for this production. In this San Bruno
Speaker 1: would just a little blue collar used to be a
Speaker 1: blue collar town in northern California to see the production
Speaker 1: because he was represented in Guys and Dolls by one
Speaker 1: of the characters, and I can't remember which one it is.
Speaker 1: After the show, he came up on stage. We have
Speaker 1: a picture of this, and he walked up to Suzanne
Speaker 1: and he said, quote, you're going somewhere, sister, And that's
Speaker 1: how she got a scholarship to Lone Mountain College. But
Speaker 1: the first year she was there, she got pregnant. And
Speaker 1: Catholic girl gets pregnant. Okay, church didn't like it. We're
Speaker 1: not we don't like you very much because you got
Speaker 1: pregnant you weren't married. So she got married and within
Speaker 1: a year she was divorced. And then I came along
Speaker 1: and I had just gotten a divorce as well, and
Speaker 1: we realized that this was not just a a dating situation.
Speaker 1: I had never felt this way before. And she called
Speaker 1: her mother that day and said the day we met
Speaker 1: and said, I met the man, I'm going to marry. Okay,
Speaker 1: So it was for real. I didn't know what I
Speaker 1: was feeling. I just knew that this was serious, okay,
Speaker 1: Because in Canada I had I had being on television
Speaker 1: every day, I had access to a lot of attractive women,
Speaker 1: and most of them didn't go anywhere. It was just
Speaker 1: a I won't say what it was. It was just
Speaker 1: a short relationship. This was very very serious for me,
Speaker 1: and all they wanted to do was to be with
Speaker 1: her constantly, So since we started living together in the
Speaker 1: early seventies, I think around seventy. Okay, let's go back
Speaker 1: to when you met her in sixty eight. What was
Speaker 1: she doing every day? She was struggling. She Uh, she
Speaker 1: her family were, except for her mother, Uh, we're all drunk,
Speaker 1: serious alcoholics. She had been raised in a house with
Speaker 1: a physically violent, crazed alcoholic father whose job was to
Speaker 1: put cases of beer on box cars. And they didn't
Speaker 1: have coffee breaks, they had beer brakes. And he'd come
Speaker 1: home every night ship face and uh, you know, bang
Speaker 1: down a few shots of whiskey and some more beer,
Speaker 1: and then he would start to hunt down the family.
Speaker 1: So the family, uh, he slept most nights in a
Speaker 1: little closet. Suzanne, her two brothers, her sister, and her mother,
Speaker 1: and they had a lock on the inside of the
Speaker 1: closet so he couldn't get to them. And that's where
Speaker 1: they slept most nights. And this went on for years.
Speaker 1: And one night, Uh, Susanne, I guess was fifteen or
Speaker 1: sixteen going to her first prom. Her mother aid her
Speaker 1: dress and it was this beautiful dress. Susanne described it
Speaker 1: to me, and she had it hanging in her room
Speaker 1: so that she could lay in bed and look at
Speaker 1: it and dream. And her father burst through the door
Speaker 1: in the middle of the night, flipped on the light
Speaker 1: and went right to the dress and ripped it up
Speaker 1: and ripped it in half, and she started screaming and crying.
Speaker 1: Her mother came in. What's going on here? The father
Speaker 1: hit the mother in the breast. The mother went down.
Speaker 1: Suzanne picked up her tennis rocket and heard her father
Speaker 1: over the head and blood gushed out of his head.
Speaker 1: They took him to emergency. When he came home, his
Speaker 1: head was all bandaged up. From that time on. Um.
Speaker 1: What Suzanne realized was her father was afraid of her,
Speaker 1: because that was the first time anyone in the family
Speaker 1: I have her fought back. Okay, so the family was
Speaker 1: drunk for years. The father was this crazed, craze guy
Speaker 1: who wanted to be my friend, and I had no
Speaker 1: interest in being his friend. And the more I pushed
Speaker 1: him away, the more he'd tried to be my friend.
Speaker 1: And he was not stupid at all. He was he
Speaker 1: was smart, and he was funny, funny guy. I think
Speaker 1: that's where Suzanne got her comed againstincts. But it was
Speaker 1: brutal growing up that way. And one day Suzanne Uh
Speaker 1: said to announce to her family, one day, I'm going
Speaker 1: to be a big star. This is when she was
Speaker 1: in high school. I'm gonna be a big star, and
Speaker 1: my mother is going to be sitting in the front row.
Speaker 1: And guess what it happened. Opening at the MGM Grand
Speaker 1: in Las Vegas for the first time, there's her mother
Speaker 1: sitting in the front row. H Okay, what happened to
Speaker 1: the rest of the kids in the family. They all
Speaker 1: stopped drinking, including the father, really the mother. The mother
Speaker 1: would clean up after the father every night. He had
Speaker 1: this thing about going into the refrigerator and throwing food
Speaker 1: all over the place, breaking dishes. Then he would pass
Speaker 1: out and throw up on the floor with all the
Speaker 1: broken dishes, and she would clean it up, clean him up,
Speaker 1: and drag him off to bed. She went to Alanon
Speaker 1: and alan On said, don't pick him up. Let him
Speaker 1: wake up and realize what he had done. So she
Speaker 1: started leaving him on the floor and that's when he
Speaker 1: decided to go get sober. And her siblings are they
Speaker 1: all okay today? Younger brother died when he was forty seven.
Speaker 1: He was an alcoholic and a drug addict. And uh,
Speaker 1: the seven children and gone okay, and the other siblings.
Speaker 1: The other siblings are in great shape. Her older brother
Speaker 1: has a carpeting business which he's owned for most of
Speaker 1: his life. Uh. The sister married her childhood sweetheart, the
Speaker 1: only man she's ever been with. They celebrated their fiftieth
Speaker 1: anniversary about five years ago, I guess. And those two
Speaker 1: have produced a family of fifty one people between children.
Speaker 1: Grandchildren are s Bruno and great grandchildren. They lived down
Speaker 1: the street in U. It's an upscale community, Hills Hills.
Speaker 1: I don't know that anyway. They live in a And
Speaker 1: to what degree when Susie had becomes successful, are they
Speaker 1: asking her for money? Not that I'm aware of, Not
Speaker 1: that I'm aware of. She had written a book, um,
Speaker 1: I think it was a nineteen in the late eighties
Speaker 1: called Keeping Secrets. And we had all read books about
Speaker 1: written by famous people, uh, who talked about they're usually
Speaker 1: their father being an alcoholic. Keeping Secrets was about Suzanne,
Speaker 1: who didn't drink, but how it affected her because when
Speaker 1: you're living with an alcoholic, you become as sick as
Speaker 1: the alcoholic, even if you don't drink, and her her
Speaker 1: thing was not drugs or alcohol. Her craziness was spending
Speaker 1: money she didn't have, creating a crisis, because crises were
Speaker 1: familiar for her. Okay, when you spend every night hiding
Speaker 1: from your father in a closet as a crisis, you're
Speaker 1: living in constant fear and terror. So she was most
Speaker 1: comfortable that way. And she said to me one day,
Speaker 1: I could tell the mood my father was in by
Speaker 1: looking at the back of his head. And she said,
Speaker 1: I would then behave as is. In other words, she
Speaker 1: wouldn't behave the way she felt she wanted to behave.
Speaker 1: She would behave in a way that was resonant with him.
Speaker 1: So to keep the cap on. Okay, but it never worked,
Speaker 1: of course, Just to be clear, when she spent money
Speaker 1: she didn't have. That was before she had money or
Speaker 1: after she had money. No, before she had money. Okay,
Speaker 1: I remember the book. So she has a child, she's
Speaker 1: out of the college before she meets you. What is
Speaker 1: she doing and how does she end up on the set?
Speaker 1: She gets a call. She had a semi agent in California,
Speaker 1: in San Francisco, and she got a call saying they're
Speaker 1: looking for a prize model on this game show. She
Speaker 1: had never been on a TV studio in her life,
Speaker 1: so she turned up. No one bothered giving her any direction,
Speaker 1: Like when you open the refrigerator door, and you know,
Speaker 1: you look at the camera with the red light. So
Speaker 1: she opened the refrigerator door, but she didn't look at
Speaker 1: the camera with the red lights. So they fired her
Speaker 1: the first day. You know what, It's good they fired
Speaker 1: her because if they didn't fire her, I don't know whether.
Speaker 1: I don't know whether we would have had an evolved relationship.
Speaker 1: So it were evolved mentally or evolved into that it happened.
Speaker 1: I in all the years I did television in Canada,
Speaker 1: I never messed around with any of the women who
Speaker 1: worked with me. Ever, Uh, it was too dangerous and
Speaker 1: what happens if it doesn't work out? Now you're see
Speaker 1: him every day. Absolutely, So I never did that. So
Speaker 1: would I have done that with Suzanne if she had
Speaker 1: gotten the job and stayed on the show. Um, I
Speaker 1: don't know. It was pretty pretty powerful action. Okay, so
Speaker 1: you become involved with Suzanne. It's an instant romance. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: you had a long career where you were in front.
Speaker 1: Did you immediately say to yourself, I'm gonna put her
Speaker 1: in front. I kept going back to Canada to do
Speaker 1: television after I moved here, and from nineteen nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: four or five until I did the Alan Hamill Show,
Speaker 1: which was like Carson. A matter of fact, the production
Speaker 1: people we hired we stole from Carson because we wanted
Speaker 1: Carson's roller decks, so I had every guest Carson ever had.
Speaker 1: Um So I did that show and then her contract
Speaker 1: with three Company was up in night, and uh so
Speaker 1: it was time to renegotiate, which is normal in the industry. Okay,
Speaker 1: how many years was the initial contract? Was? He was
Speaker 1: five usually and was everybody else on five? Yes, but
Speaker 1: they had renegoted. John and Joyce had already renegotiated because
Speaker 1: they had hired them before Suzanne. So I go to
Speaker 1: the negotiation and at ABC and the ABC lawyers there,
Speaker 1: one of the producers is there and some other guy,
Speaker 1: and within two minutes they told me she's fired. I said,
Speaker 1: fired for asking for what She's fired. That was it.
Speaker 1: There was no explanation, She's fired. So I got up
Speaker 1: and I left. Okay, Then I discovered that Laverne and
Speaker 1: Shirley had renegotiated their deal three weeks earlier, and it
Speaker 1: was a monumental deal. I mean, without Laverne and Shirley,
Speaker 1: there's no laverniture. Okay. So they scored big time, huge,
Speaker 1: and the parent company of ABC and today, if if
Speaker 1: they decided to do this at a board meeting, they
Speaker 1: all be thrown in prison. The parent company of ABC decided,
Speaker 1: we have to stop women from asking to be paid
Speaker 1: parody with the men, So let's fire the biggest female
Speaker 1: star in television. And no other woman will ever ask
Speaker 1: to be paid parody with the men. So they did.
Speaker 1: It was the dumbest, you know. I ran into a
Speaker 1: guy from KATS, which is an independent distributor of TV shows,
Speaker 1: at one of those conventions, and he said to me
Speaker 1: her firing was known as the biggest self inflicted wound
Speaker 1: in the history of television. He said, we know that
Speaker 1: they lost over a billion in terms of license fees
Speaker 1: and back end. He said, by the time this show
Speaker 1: plays out, he said, will be more than that. Okay.
Speaker 1: On the street, the word was that she asked for
Speaker 1: too much. That wasn't a factor she actually asked for.
Speaker 1: I actually asked for half of what men were making.
Speaker 1: Whose shows were in the top twenty. Her show was
Speaker 1: number one. She had the highest demographics. See what what
Speaker 1: you're what you're saying to me right now is what
Speaker 1: the pr company for the producers did. They destroyed her
Speaker 1: after that, since she was this greedy bitch and she
Speaker 1: didn't deserve to have the job, and we gave her
Speaker 1: the job and all she wanted. She's a money grubber, etcetera, etcetera.
Speaker 1: I asked for fifty percent of what the men were
Speaker 1: making and a piece of the back end. Okay, it
Speaker 1: wouldn't have mattered if I had asked for a nickel.
Speaker 1: They had decided to fire Suzanne Summers, so it had
Speaker 1: nothing to do. Nothing to do with my request for
Speaker 1: a new contract, and nothing to do with that. They
Speaker 1: had decided to fire her. And I had gotten a
Speaker 1: call from someone who was with the parent company who
Speaker 1: was a mutual friend, and he said, we're not have
Speaker 1: in this conversation, he said. I came out of a
Speaker 1: meeting and he said, they've decided to fire No, they've
Speaker 1: decided to hang a nun in the marketplace. But the
Speaker 1: Romans used to do right, They've decided to hang it
Speaker 1: nun in the marketplace. And Suzanne Summers is going to
Speaker 1: be it, okay, And I said, you're kidding. He said, no,
Speaker 1: they're going to fire her. I said, are you kidding?
Speaker 1: The greatest chemistry on television between Suzanne and John and
Speaker 1: Joyce are gonna fire. They're gonna destroy this show. He said,
Speaker 1: they're gonna fire her. He said, this decision is not
Speaker 1: coming from creative people. It's coming from business people. They're
Speaker 1: just looking at the bucks. That's all they care about there,
Speaker 1: looking at the dollar signs. Okay, and that's how it happened. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's go back. So you meet her in to what
Speaker 1: degree you have your parallel career, To what degree are
Speaker 1: you involved in her career. I'm not really involved in
Speaker 1: her career at all. Um, she was trying to make
Speaker 1: ends meet. I didn't know this. She kept it from me. Um.
Speaker 1: I was spending four days a week in San Francisco.
Speaker 1: She moved to Saslito, which of course is across the
Speaker 1: Bay right to get away from I think, from her family,
Speaker 1: and so I moved to So I was living in
Speaker 1: a Japanese hotel in San Francisco, the Miyako. I moved
Speaker 1: to Saslito and got myself a house boat. I thought,
Speaker 1: if I'm going to live in of course you gotta
Speaker 1: do it up right, I have to be on a houseboat, right.
Speaker 1: So on one side of me, I had a surgeon,
Speaker 1: and on the other side of me, I had a
Speaker 1: drug dealer. So I knew if I had any health problems,
Speaker 1: the guy's right next door, and I didn't have to
Speaker 1: go into town to buy any drugs. The guy's right
Speaker 1: next door on the other side, by the way, I
Speaker 1: don't do drugs. Um. So every night, Um, she'd put
Speaker 1: her son to bed, and the babysitter would come, and
Speaker 1: she'd come to my house Voute and I'd cooked dinner
Speaker 1: for her and Um we'd sit and watch the moon
Speaker 1: come over the Golden Gate Bridge and it was just
Speaker 1: this wonderful romance. It was like incredible, and I hated
Speaker 1: being away from her, and so for the past let
Speaker 1: me go back. She gets fired. I said to her,
Speaker 1: I'm leaving my talk show and she said, don't do that.
Speaker 1: She said, you'll miss it. I said, I've talked to
Speaker 1: everybody I want to talk to. Okay, I'm ready. Okay,
Speaker 1: I've been doing television for twenty five years. I'm really ready.
Speaker 1: She said, what are you gonna do? I said, you
Speaker 1: don't have an agent, you don't have a manager, you
Speaker 1: have nobody. You don't know what you're doing. I said,
Speaker 1: you're gonna give it away and you'll just fade. I said,
Speaker 1: we're gonna make this work for us. I know how
Speaker 1: to do this. Okay. That was and she spent a
Speaker 1: year well before we go there, okay, just to lay
Speaker 1: out the thing. How did she end up getting threes company?
Speaker 1: She got a call from uh, actually from a woman
Speaker 1: who worked for me in casting, who said, can I
Speaker 1: work with Susanne? I said, yeah, sure, So she somehow
Speaker 1: got a call and sent UH called Susanne and Suzanne
Speaker 1: went in and Suzanne had done like eight or nine pilots,
Speaker 1: none of which it's sold. And I used to joke
Speaker 1: with her and said, anyone who does eight or nine
Speaker 1: pilots must be a stewardess. By the way, we can't
Speaker 1: use the word stewardess anything that light attendant. Now, okay.
Speaker 1: I got a big discussion with something. They said someone
Speaker 1: was from India. You know, they're South Asian. You know
Speaker 1: the I go out of my way to be politically incorrect.
Speaker 1: It pisces me off that someone should decide what my
Speaker 1: language should be. Okay, there's something called the First Amendments
Speaker 1: and it's the Freedom of Speech Amendments, and I exercise
Speaker 1: it liberally. And the idea that you know, when the
Speaker 1: Internet started, When the Internet started and I started emailing
Speaker 1: in caps, I started getting people saying to me, why
Speaker 1: are you yelling at? I said, who? Who? Excuse me?
Speaker 1: Whose rule is that? Who decided that caps were yelling?
Speaker 1: I said, I write in caps because I'm over forty
Speaker 1: five and most of the people I deal with are
Speaker 1: over forty five and they would appreciate reading caps rather
Speaker 1: than lower case. Okay, they said, you're yelling. So I
Speaker 1: never found out who made the rule. Somebody made the rule. Okay,
Speaker 1: but I hate all that politically correct bullets. Okay, Okay,
Speaker 1: let's go what but you can't say the N word? Right? No? Okay,
Speaker 1: So but there are limits. There are limits. Well, it's
Speaker 1: like you know, running into a theater yelling fire. Right,
Speaker 1: it's the same deal. Okay, let's go back. How does
Speaker 1: a nice Jewish boy from Canada end up on television
Speaker 1: when I graduated? First of all, how do you know
Speaker 1: I'm Jewish? First? Hamil's a Jewish name. Secondly, it's all
Speaker 1: over online that you're Jewish, Jewish Jewish Holidays, so that's
Speaker 1: another thing. You know. If I wasn't Jewish, I couldn't
Speaker 1: say a nice Jewish boy. But I am, so I can't.
Speaker 1: I thought I might have run into you with the
Speaker 1: steam bath. Okay. Uh. I graduated from high school in
Speaker 1: Canada when I was so let's see when I was eighteen.
Speaker 1: Let's stop for a minute. We're in Canada and your
Speaker 1: parents Canadian or they came from the Old Country. Both
Speaker 1: they came from the Old Country and Canadian. Okay, where
Speaker 1: did I come from? From Poland? My father came from
Speaker 1: uh from Poland right after his bar mispre five it
Speaker 1: was borne two. How many people have fathers who were
Speaker 1: born and so he came over and in those days,
Speaker 1: the federal would be immigrants wanted to live in New York, Philadelphia,
Speaker 1: Boston or Chicago. So the federal government said, we will
Speaker 1: give anybody a one way train ticket to anywhere else
Speaker 1: in America other than those four cities. So my father
Speaker 1: went to Texas to be a cowboy, and he loved it.
Speaker 1: He lived in Austin, Texas for three years and just
Speaker 1: always talked about the Texans, how polite they were, how
Speaker 1: wonderful they were. And I don't know what he did.
Speaker 1: He had some were some blue collar job there, and
Speaker 1: he slept in a what he called a flophouse every night.
Speaker 1: And he said I had to sleep on my boots,
Speaker 1: otherwise someone would have stolen them. Okay. And I said,
Speaker 1: so how did if where did you eat? If you
Speaker 1: didn't have a kitchen? He said, there was a brewery
Speaker 1: and for a nickel, they would give you a big
Speaker 1: stein of beer, and then they'd lay out all these
Speaker 1: uh lunch things, breads and and sliced meats and pickles
Speaker 1: and things. He said, I didn't drink beer, so I
Speaker 1: would take my stinn of beer and I'd sell it
Speaker 1: to somebody else for three cents, and then I would eat.
Speaker 1: And he said I would have one meal a day,
Speaker 1: and that would that would be it. Okay. My mother
Speaker 1: came over after World War One, and the two of them,
Speaker 1: My mother had a job. He's in Texas. When does
Speaker 1: he leave Texas for Toronto? He leoh, a good, good question.
Speaker 1: Leaves Texas in nineteen oh eight or nine because one
Speaker 1: of his brothers had moved to Chicago so he goes
Speaker 1: to Chicago. My father gets a job working in a
Speaker 1: sweatshop making pockets Taylor not a tailor, an operator, the operators,
Speaker 1: and within a week they go on strike. So my
Speaker 1: father doesn't know what a strike is. So I didn't
Speaker 1: have strikes in Poland. Okay, they killed you. So they
Speaker 1: go on strike and he's standing there and of a sudden,
Speaker 1: a cop on horseback rides in, clubs him over the
Speaker 1: head and blinds him in his right eye. That's when
Speaker 1: my father decided, I'm getting out of this country. So
Speaker 1: he moves to Toronto. If youn't know anybody interropted. He
Speaker 1: had a sister living there, no a brother, another brother.
Speaker 1: She moves to Toronto and loves living in Toronto. And
Speaker 1: then World War One happens and he gets, you know,
Speaker 1: sucked into the military and he says to the recruiter,
Speaker 1: but I'm blind in my right eye, and he said,
Speaker 1: so you'll shoot with your left eye. And I mean
Speaker 1: even today they don't know how many people they lost
Speaker 1: in World War One. It was like by the pound.
Speaker 1: They just kept loading guys onto ships and sending him overseas.
Speaker 1: So then my parents met. My mother's first job was
Speaker 1: scrubbing floors in the train station, and my father got
Speaker 1: another job making pockets, which was his lifelong job. And
Speaker 1: my father was the most honest, purest man I've ever
Speaker 1: met in my whole life. And I learned that less
Speaker 1: in the hard way. When I was about fifteen or sixteen,
Speaker 1: I had a date, one of my first dates, okay,
Speaker 1: with Molly, and then Susie came along, and I really
Speaker 1: wanted to go out with Susie. So I made a
Speaker 1: date with Susie. But I had to give I had
Speaker 1: to give Molly a reason why I wasn't available. So
Speaker 1: I said to my dad, so if Molly calls, tell
Speaker 1: her blah blah blah blah blah blah. And I left
Speaker 1: and I went out with Susie. When I came home,
Speaker 1: I asked my dad. I said, did uh Molly called?
Speaker 1: He said yeah. I said, would you tell her? He said,
Speaker 1: I told you were out with Susie. That's what I realized.
Speaker 1: My father was not capable of lying okay and uh.
Speaker 1: He was a functional literate. He would spend his days reading, reading, reading, reading.
Speaker 1: He couldn't write. He could barely sign his name. So
Speaker 1: my mother did everything. And my mother like most immigrants,
Speaker 1: round a boarding house and which they bought the house
Speaker 1: in uh Boon the twenties, I can't remember when. And
Speaker 1: it was a little house, but we there were seventeen
Speaker 1: people living there, okay, one toilet. We had eight Chinese brothers.
Speaker 1: Four had been born in Hawaii for in China. We
Speaker 1: had Reverend Johnny saw the Linda Scottish minister. We had
Speaker 1: Eric de Luz, a trinidaddy and artists. We had Van
Speaker 1: van Alphin who was a Dutch cartographer. We had a
Speaker 1: blind alcoholic trumpet player. We had Harry Lando, a Jewish taylor.
Speaker 1: And we had Bill Monger, a British engineer, plus my sister,
Speaker 1: myself and my two parents. And I slept in the
Speaker 1: dining room with my parents. Stilla was eight years old.
Speaker 1: Never had my own room. Okay. Oh. We had one
Speaker 1: other guy, Oka Chukka Johnny, who was a Nigerian prince
Speaker 1: who was going to the University of Toronto medical school.
Speaker 1: And I loved living with him. He had this great
Speaker 1: barrel laugh and we were we just we were good together, okay.
Speaker 1: And he was a great farter. In the middle of
Speaker 1: the night, I'd be awakened, okay, I'd wake up, and
Speaker 1: I'd say okay. He would call him okay, okay, are
Speaker 1: you kidding and he'd say well, and he had he
Speaker 1: had a great laugh. He um. He'd go to Nigeria
Speaker 1: every summer for vacation, come back with a big bag,
Speaker 1: canvas bag filled with twigs, and the twigs were about
Speaker 1: four or five inches long. And that's how he brushed
Speaker 1: his teeth. And he'd hold a twig in his mouth
Speaker 1: till it softened up, and then he'd brush his teeth
Speaker 1: with it. And he had the greatest teeth in the world. Okay,
Speaker 1: so there's something wrong with our favorite Okay. Uh So anyway, um,
Speaker 1: where were you graduate from high school? Graduate from high school?
Speaker 1: Everybody in my family as a doctor, everybody except my father. Um.
Speaker 1: And because all their parents came from the Old country
Speaker 1: and the most respected man in the village was the doctor.
Speaker 1: So when they got to Canada, they said to their sons,
Speaker 1: you're going to be a doctor. If you're not going
Speaker 1: to be a doctor, you're going to be a lawyer.
Speaker 1: And if you're a loser, you'll be an accountant. Okay,
Speaker 1: so they all became doctors. If that's why I became
Speaker 1: a lawyer, Okay, is it doctrinated from you know, consciousness exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I didn't want to become a doctor because Okay,
Speaker 1: who was going to the medical school, would take me
Speaker 1: to the lab, okay at night where he was experimented
Speaker 1: on rabbits and rats and things, and the smell in
Speaker 1: the lab was horrendous, and I couldn't stand blood, looking
Speaker 1: at blood. And he'd open up a rat and show
Speaker 1: me the rests heart beating inside, and I think, I
Speaker 1: can't do this. I can't, So I'm not going to
Speaker 1: become a doctor. Okay. So I graduated from high school.
Speaker 1: I don't want I'm gonna do. I don't know where
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go, what I'm gonna do, And I had
Speaker 1: had I've always worked. My first job was when I
Speaker 1: was six. I worked at the campus gross Steria across
Speaker 1: the street from our house on Saturdays, and I was
Speaker 1: in charge of opening the door for the shoppers and
Speaker 1: I made it. I made a buck a day. That
Speaker 1: was a lot of money. But my favorite job I
Speaker 1: worked for the Canadian National Railway from the time I
Speaker 1: was thirteen to the time I was seventeen. I was
Speaker 1: a newsy Okay, what does the news he do well.
Speaker 1: I would walk up and down the aisle of the train,
Speaker 1: and some of these trains were like two miles long.
Speaker 1: I'd have a basket on this arm, and i'd have
Speaker 1: a case of cokes on this arm. In those days,
Speaker 1: coke cases were made out of solid wood and bottles.
Speaker 1: Of course. Okay, this arm, I'm right handed. To this day,
Speaker 1: my left arm is stronger than my right arm. Okay.
Speaker 1: And i'd walked down the island, I'd say cigarettes, matches,
Speaker 1: chocolate bars, chewing gum, peanuts, biscuits and oranges, novelty, contraceptives, pillows,
Speaker 1: and comic books. Did you okay, did you sell any newspapers? No? No,
Speaker 1: there's no money in selling newspapers, right, So I was
Speaker 1: making three fifty four hundred dollars a week cash. And
Speaker 1: this was in let's see there, you say this was
Speaker 1: in the early fifties. My father was making twenty five
Speaker 1: dollars a week, okay, making pockets. Most people were making
Speaker 1: bucks a week. Okay, So I started buying custom suits. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're just to know. Were you that good at new
Speaker 1: z all newsies make that kind of money? No, well,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't know what other newsies were making.
Speaker 1: I was really good at it. And I was a kid, okay,
Speaker 1: who doesn't want to help a kid. I didn't have
Speaker 1: to say to people I'm working my way through anything.
Speaker 1: I just I was a kid, okay. And uh so
Speaker 1: they bought they bought from me. And the night before
Speaker 1: I would go on the train, i'd go to the
Speaker 1: butcher and I'd have him cut slices of ham for me.
Speaker 1: So he cut a slice of ham and hands me
Speaker 1: and say, is this thin enough? I hold it up
Speaker 1: to the light and if I couldn't see the light
Speaker 1: through the ham, I'd say, no, no, it's got to
Speaker 1: be thinner than that. So I would get a hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty slices of ham. I think a hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty slices, maybe a pound. I'd buy a white bread.
Speaker 1: It was the only time whitebread ever made us way
Speaker 1: into my house, okay. And I would make ham sandwiches
Speaker 1: and ham and cheese sandwiches, and I would sell him
Speaker 1: for thirty five cents and forty On the train, okay,
Speaker 1: I would rent pillows, little baby pillows going west and
Speaker 1: then coming east, I turned the the cases inside out
Speaker 1: and rent them. On the way back, I'd rent comic
Speaker 1: books for a nickel. Uh. The novelty contraceptives, Okay, there
Speaker 1: were three of them. I had the French tickler. You
Speaker 1: can only imagine what that is. I had the alligator,
Speaker 1: you can only imagine what that is. And the third
Speaker 1: one was and the clown face what was that? Okay?
Speaker 1: It was a condom with a clown faces again okay.
Speaker 1: And those I could saw those day and night. It
Speaker 1: was amazing, mainly to young men, young soldiers going home,
Speaker 1: you know, on vacation, to see their girlfriends or their
Speaker 1: wives or whatever. And they would always buy all my
Speaker 1: novelty contraceptives. And I would buy them in Winnipeg for
Speaker 1: I think i'd get three of them, three of them
Speaker 1: in a pack, for thirty cents, and I could sell
Speaker 1: them for anywhere between a dollar and four dollars. Okay.
Speaker 1: When you got on the train Toronto, where did it go? Okay?
Speaker 1: In the summertime, I'd go a cross country. I'd go
Speaker 1: Toronto Vancouver, and we stopped in Winnipeg overnight and I'd
Speaker 1: stay in this hotel next to the train station. It
Speaker 1: was two dollars and fifty cents a night, and there
Speaker 1: was no toilet no bath, no toilet, no shower. There
Speaker 1: was only a sink, and I wouldn't use the sink
Speaker 1: because I knew that every guy who stayed there pete
Speaker 1: in the sink. Okay, so you have to go down
Speaker 1: the hall to get a shower, and you know, use
Speaker 1: the let um. On weekends when I was going to school,
Speaker 1: I would use short halls to Toronto, Attawa, Toronto, Montreal, Toronto, Muskoka, Gravenhurst, etcetera.
Speaker 1: But I love the summers and I got to see
Speaker 1: the country. Okay. I got all the way from Vancouver,
Speaker 1: all the way to Newfoundland, and most Canadians have never
Speaker 1: been east of Montreal. East of Montreal is Nova Scotia,
Speaker 1: New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland. Most Canadians have
Speaker 1: never been there, which is a travesty because some of
Speaker 1: the most beautiful country on the planet is there, and
Speaker 1: the people are incredible. People in Newfoundland incredible. Newfoundland is
Speaker 1: closer to Ireland than it is to the rest of Canada.
Speaker 1: That's how far east it is. As I remember being
Speaker 1: at the turn of the millennium and it's like a
Speaker 1: half hour, you know, It's like, you know, that's how
Speaker 1: they're celebrating what's going on? Yeah, Well, in uh Nova
Speaker 1: Scotia's like to drink and they have a rome called screech.
Speaker 1: And if you go to Nova Scotia, you go into
Speaker 1: one of their saloons. Uh, you can be screeched. What
Speaker 1: does that mean? Well, first of all, you buy everyone
Speaker 1: in the saloon a drink a shot of screech. Okay,
Speaker 1: it's this awful, awful roum right. Uh. So for you
Speaker 1: to be screeched by the bartender, you have to kiss
Speaker 1: a cod a real codfish, on the lips, and then
Speaker 1: you bang down a shot of screech. Everyone applauds, and
Speaker 1: then they give you a certificate saying you've been screwed. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you're selling stuff on the train. Uh. You continue
Speaker 1: to go to school and you start your show business career. No,
Speaker 1: I continue, No, I wasn't in show business then. I
Speaker 1: was between the ages of thirteen and seventeen. Okay, so
Speaker 1: you graduate from high school, then what do you do
Speaker 1: When I'm eighteen, I don't know what I'm gonna do.
Speaker 1: And one of the guys in my class says to me, um,
Speaker 1: what are you gonna do? And I said, I have
Speaker 1: no idea I don't know. I'm not going to be
Speaker 1: a doctor. I know that. He said, you gotta figure
Speaker 1: out what you're gonna do. He said, you're not gonna
Speaker 1: go work. I said no. He said, you know Ryerson
Speaker 1: Ryerson University in Toronto. Uh, they have a radio and
Speaker 1: television arts course, and you have a nice voice. He said,
Speaker 1: why don't you go down an audition. That's what I did.
Speaker 1: I walked in. I saw TV cameras. I thought studios
Speaker 1: like this, and I thought, I'm home. This is perfect
Speaker 1: for me. Okay, So, uh, I went there for one year.
Speaker 1: I want a scholarship and uh writing a midterm exam
Speaker 1: in year two. The professor comes up to me and
Speaker 1: he puts a little post it on the on the
Speaker 1: table with a name and an address. He said, they're
Speaker 1: auditioning at the CBC Radio network for someone to host
Speaker 1: a daily three hour classical music show. I think you
Speaker 1: could get it. I said, oh great. He said, put
Speaker 1: down your pencil and just quietly leave the room. I
Speaker 1: told them you'd be there in twenty minutes. So, as
Speaker 1: far as I know, my mid term exam is still
Speaker 1: sitting on a desk somewhere. You know Ryerson, UM that
Speaker 1: was my first job in show business, which I hosted
Speaker 1: that show for five years. I loved doing it, and
Speaker 1: I had studied at the Royal Conservatory of Music. I
Speaker 1: think my mother decided I was going to be a
Speaker 1: concert pianist like all Jewish mothers, okay um. And that's
Speaker 1: how I got the job, actually, because the audition was
Speaker 1: a little tricky, like they had words in there that
Speaker 1: unless you knew how to pronounce them, you would not
Speaker 1: pronounce like divor Jack. There's no it's devor ac, which
Speaker 1: is the incorrect way of pronouncing it. Right. So I nailed.
Speaker 1: I nailed the audition, got the job, and they sent
Speaker 1: me to Windsor, Ontario, which is across the river from Detroit,
Speaker 1: and I my first year I made three thousand, three
Speaker 1: hundred dollars okay, and I'm thinking I made a lot
Speaker 1: more money working on the trainer, right. So then I
Speaker 1: started doing commercials in Detroit for Chrysler and uh So
Speaker 1: in nineteen so I was there. I went there in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty five, and in nineteen fifty six, along with
Speaker 1: my my three thousand, three hundred dollar money I got
Speaker 1: from the CBC, I made twenty five thousand dollars doing commercials.
Speaker 1: So I call it, Who do you call when you
Speaker 1: make twenty dollars? Your mother? So I called my mother.
Speaker 1: I said, guess what I made twenty five thousand dollars,
Speaker 1: And without taking a breash, he said, and how much
Speaker 1: have you saved? So that was the beginning. I stayed
Speaker 1: in Windsor for five years. Did you say any did
Speaker 1: you blow it? No? I blew it. I blow it
Speaker 1: was it was making custom suits. I was going to
Speaker 1: the New York Custom New York Custom Shirt Shop or
Speaker 1: whatever was called, having custom shirts made with my initials
Speaker 1: on the sleeve. Uh. I was wearing black silk stockings
Speaker 1: with garters, not guarter belts. But you know, just below
Speaker 1: the knee. I don't know who that person is. Okay.
Speaker 1: Even today I look back on it and I see
Speaker 1: pictures of myself and I'm thinking, what were you thinking?
Speaker 1: Who did you think you were then? And the answer
Speaker 1: is I don't know, okay. So then I moved to
Speaker 1: Toronto in nineteen sixty. Back to Toronto in nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: as a classical DJ. Well I gave up the After
Speaker 1: five years, I gave up the classical DJ job and
Speaker 1: I moved into TV at the CBC in Toronto, and
Speaker 1: I was in TV there from from sixty to sixty
Speaker 1: eight when I moved here. Okay, how does one make
Speaker 1: the transition from radio to TV? How do you make
Speaker 1: the transition? Well, I'll can tell you. Um, while I
Speaker 1: was in Windsor in nineteen early sixty there was a
Speaker 1: store called the Metropolitan and they had a terrible gas
Speaker 1: explosion in the store. There were people, uh, there were fatalities,
Speaker 1: people wounded, and it blew all the stuff from the
Speaker 1: store out into the street. And the radio station was
Speaker 1: half a block away. So I was the first guy
Speaker 1: on the scene doing reports, right, And what was tragic
Speaker 1: was everything was covered in dust and you you you,
Speaker 1: I thought I saw a baby. It wasn't a baby,
Speaker 1: it was a doll. And the it was filled with people,
Speaker 1: people who were really badly wounded. So I started doing
Speaker 1: reports and next thing, I'm doing reports for Toronto as well,
Speaker 1: and I'm doing some reports for American outlets as well.
Speaker 1: And I got a call from Toronto saying we have
Speaker 1: an opening, and he said, she said, we rarely have
Speaker 1: an opening. She said, we'd like you to come and
Speaker 1: join us. So I went moved to Toronto and I
Speaker 1: went into TV, and at first you're doing what, pardon,
Speaker 1: what is your role? At first in television? The first
Speaker 1: role was sitting in a booth every night for hours saying,
Speaker 1: this is the CBC television network. That was it. What
Speaker 1: did that evolve? It was the next step. The next
Speaker 1: step was doing commercials, live commercials on a primetime music show.
Speaker 1: And once I did that, that was became like my showcase. Okay,
Speaker 1: and then I started getting calls and I by the
Speaker 1: time I finished television in Canada, I had done close
Speaker 1: to four thousand hours of network okay, just very quickly.
Speaker 1: So you're doing commercials. What's the next step? What do
Speaker 1: you do to ultimately work your way up to the
Speaker 1: Johnny Carson esque talk show? I just did a lot
Speaker 1: of shows I did. I did a My first series
Speaker 1: was a show called Razzle Dazzle. It was a kids
Speaker 1: show that was on every day on the network, every
Speaker 1: day for half an hour. It was live. I did
Speaker 1: that for five years. The host I was the one
Speaker 1: of the hosts and one of the players, one of
Speaker 1: the Then I did a simultaneously. I did the show
Speaker 1: called Nightcap, which was the satirical show, and that ran
Speaker 1: for five years. Um I did the commentary at the
Speaker 1: Tokyo Olympics in X four. I did the commentary in
Speaker 1: early six eight at the Mexican Olympics. I did a
Speaker 1: show called cine Club, which was a show about short
Speaker 1: film festival films. I did a show called on the Scene,
Speaker 1: which was a show where we'd go to a different venue,
Speaker 1: a different location or a different city every week. And
Speaker 1: I created a show called Sports Date that specialized in
Speaker 1: sports that we're not on TV. No baseball, no football,
Speaker 1: no hockey, like why World of Sports in America. We
Speaker 1: we did ballooning over the Alps, we did Thailand boxing,
Speaker 1: we did skydiving in Ava, through in British Columbia. We
Speaker 1: did all the off So then I created the the
Speaker 1: Canadian International Deep Canadian International Invitational Deep Sea Fishing Tournament
Speaker 1: in the Bahamas, Okay, and we invited the heads of
Speaker 1: all five oil companies and they loved coming. And we
Speaker 1: had hats and we had little medals, and we had
Speaker 1: the whole thing. And it was all to get the
Speaker 1: hell out of Toronto, Okay, right right right, as far
Speaker 1: as I know, that thing may still be running. Okay.
Speaker 1: Key to your success was, or is wow, my mother. Okay,
Speaker 1: explain a little bit further. My mother, Um, it was
Speaker 1: very smart. So she ran a boarding house. Right when
Speaker 1: she died, she was a millionaire from the boarding house. Um.
Speaker 1: She believed in me no matter what I wanted to do.
Speaker 1: When I told her when I was thirteen years old,
Speaker 1: I'm getting a job on the railroad and I'm going
Speaker 1: to be traveling all over the country, she said, great, Okay. Uh.
Speaker 1: How many mothers would say to their thirteen year old,
Speaker 1: especially today. None. So whatever I wanted to do, she
Speaker 1: was behind me all the way. She encouraged me. When
Speaker 1: I won a scholarship, she turned up. Um. So I
Speaker 1: have to believe that my both my parents heavily influenced
Speaker 1: my life. My father because of his purity and his
Speaker 1: honesty and his loyalty. Um. And I suffer from some
Speaker 1: of those diseases myself. But my mother just, uh, you
Speaker 1: can whatever, you can do it, whatever you want to do.
Speaker 1: But I've I've also been in Los Angeles, i e.
Speaker 1: Hollywood for so long to know that there are certain
Speaker 1: stripes of people, usually people who can't fit into the
Speaker 1: regular world, who have certain skills that allow things to
Speaker 1: go forward, whether it be the gift of gab or
Speaker 1: creativity in terms of making up shows or something. What
Speaker 1: skills do you believe helped you in that area? Okay,
Speaker 1: I've I've always had the gift for gap and I
Speaker 1: think it happened when I worked on the trains, Okay,
Speaker 1: because aside from just running up and down the train,
Speaker 1: you know, selling stuff, I talk to people. I talked
Speaker 1: to adults. You know, when kids talk to adults, they
Speaker 1: yet to be adult. And I think that that helped
Speaker 1: me a lot in my life and in my business.
Speaker 1: Um I am somewhat introverted normally. Uh When Susanne and
Speaker 1: I go out to a big party, I usually find
Speaker 1: a nice quiet place at the bar, and she loves
Speaker 1: working the room and I just kind of hang out
Speaker 1: at the bar and I don't care if anyone talks
Speaker 1: to me or not. And Susanne has given up saying
Speaker 1: why don't you talk to people? I said, I'd rather
Speaker 1: just stand here and watch people. Okay, And uh so
Speaker 1: the answer is, I don't know. In front of a camera,
Speaker 1: I'm not introverted at all. Okay, I'm I'm right out there.
Speaker 1: I love performing, um or, I loved past tense performing
Speaker 1: and today Susanne and I do uh two or three
Speaker 1: Facebook live shows every week. Well before we get there,
Speaker 1: let's clean up the past where we can after threes company. Okay,
Speaker 1: So thank working for the CBC. Even when you hit
Speaker 1: the ceiling with a nightly talk show, it's not that lucrative.
Speaker 1: It was pretty lucrative. It was when I left the
Speaker 1: CBC in um the first month I was living in
Speaker 1: l A. I get a call from the CBC saying,
Speaker 1: we're doing a new show on Saturday night, called in person.
Speaker 1: We'd love you to host it. And I said, I'm
Speaker 1: living in l A now and they said, so you'll
Speaker 1: fly back. We'll shoot you know, two or three shows
Speaker 1: at one time, and it won't be a big deal.
Speaker 1: I said, okay. I said, just pay me what I
Speaker 1: made the last year at the CBC, and they said,
Speaker 1: it's not a problem. I get a call back three
Speaker 1: days later and the guy says to me, we can't
Speaker 1: pay you what you made last year. I said, but
Speaker 1: you paid me what I made last year. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: we can't just pay you you earned it. I said,
Speaker 1: well I'm going to earn it again. You want me
Speaker 1: to do the show? No, but you did so many
Speaker 1: shows that you you you made four times and more
Speaker 1: than the president of the CBC, I said, but my
Speaker 1: ratings are better than the president of the CBC. Okay, anyway,
Speaker 1: he said, Okay, we're gonna figure this out. So they did.
Speaker 1: I made. I made. I made a hundred and sixty
Speaker 1: thousand dollars and that was a nineteen sixty seven. Okay,
Speaker 1: a lot of money, A lot of money. I think
Speaker 1: you know. Baseball players they were lucky, were making a
Speaker 1: hundred yeah, and hockey players are making eight thousands. Okay,
Speaker 1: do you play hockey or you a hockey fan? I
Speaker 1: played hockey every day of my life, okay, every day
Speaker 1: of my life. And the only fist fights I ever
Speaker 1: got into were on the ice, so no one ever
Speaker 1: got hurt. You don't get hurt fighting when you're on ice.
Speaker 1: But I played every day, every single day. I love
Speaker 1: playing hockey. And uh I gave up hockey when I
Speaker 1: started working. So there's a bunch of crazy Canadians who
Speaker 1: live here, okay. And I get a call probably once
Speaker 1: a month and they say, okay, we need one more on,
Speaker 1: we need look forward. So said, we're it's go next
Speaker 1: week at the blah blah, and I say, are you
Speaker 1: freaking crazy hockey? I'm an old guy one body checking
Speaker 1: in the hospital. No, no no, but we don't body check.
Speaker 1: I said, don't tell me that. You guys get out
Speaker 1: on the ice and you think you're eighteen again. Okay,
Speaker 1: and you forget the rule about no body checking and
Speaker 1: your body checking. He said, well it happens. Okay. So
Speaker 1: I run into Gratzu Wayne Gretzky one night at a
Speaker 1: party and the two of us are standing at the bar,
Speaker 1: and I said to him, I tell him the story
Speaker 1: about the crazy Canadians. He said, I get the same call.
Speaker 1: I said, what do you say? He said, are you see?
Speaker 1: Are you serious? Are you freaking crazy? You think I'm
Speaker 1: gonna come out and play hockey with you guys? Okay,
Speaker 1: So you have your nightly talk show in the seventies.
Speaker 1: That the last time you're in front of the camera,
Speaker 1: in front of a network camera. Yeah, the last time
Speaker 1: I did a series. Okay, but we're now doing a
Speaker 1: different kind of show. Okay, but let's before I told
Speaker 1: that first secade. Okay. So you meet Suzanne in at
Speaker 1: what point do you get married? We get married in
Speaker 1: seventy seven, when she got hired for three company. I said, Okay,
Speaker 1: you finally got a job, so let's get married. Okay,
Speaker 1: so I'll tell you something interesting about her first paycheck,
Speaker 1: which was not big, okay, but she had never had
Speaker 1: a paycheck okay. So she was supporting her. So I
Speaker 1: was paying all the bills. And I didn't have any
Speaker 1: money either, okay, because when I got my divorce, I
Speaker 1: did not want life to change for my two children.
Speaker 1: They were going to school and uh West Brent, Brent
Speaker 1: was i'mwhere private school. I didn't want their life to change,
Speaker 1: so I simply left. All I took was my car
Speaker 1: with me, Okay. I rented an apartment um in Beverly
Speaker 1: Hills for two hundred dollars a month, and it was
Speaker 1: this terrible, crummy one bedroom. One bedroom was like a
Speaker 1: little bigger than this desk. But it was my place.
Speaker 1: And that's where Susanna and I started living together. We'd
Speaker 1: been essentially living together before that. She'd come to l
Speaker 1: A and I was living with a buddy of mine
Speaker 1: and bell Air and I'd go to to San Francisco
Speaker 1: to Sasolito, etcetera. But we officially started living together in
Speaker 1: seventy early seventy. Sometimes uh so I'm so depressed after
Speaker 1: leaving my wife. What was the motivation for leaving your wife?
Speaker 1: I only knew her for two weeks before we got married.
Speaker 1: We shouldn't have gotten married. Okay. We got married when
Speaker 1: I was twenty or twenty and how long did that last?
Speaker 1: Ten years? But I was away. I think I created
Speaker 1: those shows for the CBC to get me out of town.
Speaker 1: It's not that I just I didn't dislike her. I
Speaker 1: really liked her a lot. She was a very talented
Speaker 1: artist and a lot of humor, et cetera. But I
Speaker 1: wasn't in love with her. We should have just been friends. Okay,
Speaker 1: So it wasn't this terrible, awful thing. It's just that
Speaker 1: we just kind of grew apart and it was kind
Speaker 1: of natural to had a divorce. Uh. So I walked
Speaker 1: away with my car. I didn't take any money. I
Speaker 1: didn't take I took nothing, and I rent this crummy apartment.
Speaker 1: And I'm really depressed, really depressed, And for a good
Speaker 1: year and a half two years, I didn't answer the phone,
Speaker 1: I didn't open a letter. I didn't want to see anybody.
Speaker 1: I was depressed and humiliated. Um I knew how my
Speaker 1: mother felt about it because she told me, she said,
Speaker 1: nice boys don't leave their wives because no one in
Speaker 1: the family had ever gotten a divorce, even though they shouldn't.
Speaker 1: They should have gotten a divorce. I mean, my parents
Speaker 1: were together for sixty three years. They should have you
Speaker 1: gotten a divorce twenty years earlier. Um, but no one,
Speaker 1: just no one did that, of course. Okay, So one
Speaker 1: day I come home to my crummy two apartments and
Speaker 1: I walked in and uh, I had an aquarium with
Speaker 1: guppies aquarium. So I said, he is, where's my aquarium?
Speaker 1: And she said I had to sell it. I said why.
Speaker 1: She said, to pay the rent. But who's saying that
Speaker 1: I had to sell your aquarium to pay the rent?
Speaker 1: I said, we who. No one's going to pay you
Speaker 1: two hundred dollars for that crummy little look. She said,
Speaker 1: I also sold your clothes. I said, you sold my clothes.
Speaker 1: She said, You've never been poor, have you? I said no.
Speaker 1: Even when I was living with my parents and I
Speaker 1: was poor, I didn't realize I was poor because we
Speaker 1: had everything. Okay, I said, so, no, I've never been poor.
Speaker 1: She said, well I have. She said, when you're poor,
Speaker 1: you sell your stuff. And then when you have money,
Speaker 1: you buy more stuff. I said, Okay, So suddenly I
Speaker 1: had very few clothes. I actually had quite a wonderful wardrobe. Okay,
Speaker 1: I had kashmere suits in the pants lined in silk.
Speaker 1: I had wrapped around overcoats made out of camel whatever
Speaker 1: they call it, camel hair. That was all gone. So
Speaker 1: there are guys walking around l a your clothes and
Speaker 1: if they look into their inside pocket, they'll see my name.
Speaker 1: I'll see my name and the date that it was.
Speaker 1: It was mad it made for me. These are all
Speaker 1: custom clothes. Yeah, so how did you get out of
Speaker 1: the rut? Out of the depression. So after a year
Speaker 1: and a half or two years, I'm in the bathroom
Speaker 1: and uh, really feeling terrible about myself because I'm thinking,
Speaker 1: this isn't me. I just feel awful and I've never
Speaker 1: been depressed in my whole life, and I'm really depressed.
Speaker 1: I'm not suicidal, but I just feel like crap. I
Speaker 1: feel like I'm useless, and I feel badly because I
Speaker 1: left my children. So I'm in the bathroom and I
Speaker 1: look around. There's no toilet paper. It's going to get
Speaker 1: a little graphic. All that was in the bathroom was
Speaker 1: the nash Old geographic. Okay, have you ever used a
Speaker 1: page out of the Nationals? Can't imagine it? The page
Speaker 1: is this thick, it's also shiny that paper. Okay. So
Speaker 1: I thought, okay, I finally hit the wall. This is it.
Speaker 1: So I call a commercial agency called Abraham's rubil Off
Speaker 1: and so they do commercially. Said, they have people and
Speaker 1: they send them out to do commercials. And I talked
Speaker 1: to U Neil Noel rubil Off and he said, oh,
Speaker 1: come on down. So I go down there and we
Speaker 1: talk and what do you do in Canada to television?
Speaker 1: Blah blah blah. I said, okay, said I'll send you out.
Speaker 1: So I was in those days. Well, I won't get
Speaker 1: to this. He sends me out to audition for a
Speaker 1: company called Household Finance. I don't even know, h okay,
Speaker 1: I don't know if they're still around, I don't know. Okay.
Speaker 1: So I walk in, I do the audition. There are
Speaker 1: these eight guys from the agency sitting around the conference table.
Speaker 1: I do the audition and the guy in sharde says
Speaker 1: to me, you sure sound like the right guy, but
Speaker 1: you don't look like the right guy. And I said,
Speaker 1: what are you talking about? He said, go down the hall,
Speaker 1: there's a bathroom, look at yourself in the mirror, and
Speaker 1: ask yourself the question, would you borrow money from a
Speaker 1: guy who looks like this? So I came back. I said,
Speaker 1: you're right, because during the time I was depressed, I
Speaker 1: stopped dressing and I was wearing funky jeans, work boots,
Speaker 1: um denim jacket, some kind of funky shirt. I had
Speaker 1: a big natural I had a mustache, I had a beard,
Speaker 1: a small beard, going, etcetera. I said, I agree with you.
Speaker 1: I said I would not borrow money from a guy
Speaker 1: who looks like me. I said, are you guys here tomorrow?
Speaker 1: And they said yeah. I said, can I come back? Yes?
Speaker 1: So next morning I turn up at eight o'clock for
Speaker 1: an eight thirty meeting, and at eight thirty, these all
Speaker 1: eight guys walk in. They walk right by me. They
Speaker 1: didn't they didn't recognize me. Right, I walked in and
Speaker 1: they said, you got the job. I had a haircut,
Speaker 1: I shaved, I put on a suit with a shirt
Speaker 1: and a tie, and I looked like a guy you'd
Speaker 1: borrow money from. So I did three national spots. I
Speaker 1: mean fifty thou dollars, which was a lot of money
Speaker 1: when you have no money, even if you have money,
Speaker 1: fifty thou dollars a lot of money. And then I
Speaker 1: started doing a lot of commercials voiceovers and I really
Speaker 1: enjoyed it. It was easy money and I didn't have
Speaker 1: to get dressed for you know, any voiceovers. They called
Speaker 1: me to turn up and I shoot, you do a
Speaker 1: couple of commercials. And then in nineteen nineteen seventy three,
Speaker 1: maybe seventy three, Um, I get a call to audition
Speaker 1: war a supermarket called Alphabeta. Of course, and uh, they
Speaker 1: also want Susanne to audition. And no one's ever heard
Speaker 1: of Suzanne Summers in nineteen seventy three, right, So the
Speaker 1: two of us audition as a as a couple. I
Speaker 1: get the job, she doesn't. So I did thousands of
Speaker 1: commercials TV and radio for Alphabeta from nineteen seventy three,
Speaker 1: I think to night and or nineteen seventy nine maybe,
Speaker 1: and uh, I actually I didn't get sick of doing them.
Speaker 1: But it was like I became the Alphabeta man and
Speaker 1: the the the tagline at every commercial was tell a friend,
Speaker 1: and wherever I had to go at people would say
Speaker 1: tell a friend, and I'd go, like the first time
Speaker 1: I heard it, So it's now no, okay, Susanna and I.
Speaker 1: It's now and Susanne and I are on a red
Speaker 1: eye to New York for a meeting and she just
Speaker 1: finished shooting Three's company and she's tired. We get on
Speaker 1: the plane and we start arguing about nothing, and then
Speaker 1: we stopped talking to each other. And now we're sitting
Speaker 1: beside each other. We're flying to New York and we're
Speaker 1: not talking. We get to New York, we get into
Speaker 1: the car, the driver to take us to this meeting.
Speaker 1: We get to the building, and instead of pushing the
Speaker 1: express elevator that goes to the floor, I pushed the
Speaker 1: one that goes to three. Okay, now we're not talking
Speaker 1: to each other. Okay. We get on the elevator. We
Speaker 1: get as far away from one another as possible. The
Speaker 1: door opens on the second floor and a guy gets on.
Speaker 1: He looks at Suzanne, looks at me, smiles and says,
Speaker 1: and I said, fuck you, okay, And I was surprised
Speaker 1: that I said that, but I was piste off at Susanne.
Speaker 1: We weren't talking. There was this anger thing. Now the
Speaker 1: guy that I said that too. I felt so badly afterwards.
Speaker 1: I wish I could apologize to him. He couldn't wait
Speaker 1: to get off the elevator because Mr happy that he'd
Speaker 1: seemed to tons of commercials. Okay, suddenly he's trapped in
Speaker 1: this steel room with this lunatic okay, who's yelling at him? Anyway,
Speaker 1: he gets off, Susanne and I looked at each other.
Speaker 1: We started laughing. I realized, what are we fighting about?
Speaker 1: It so stupid? Okay. So and by the way, from
Speaker 1: the time she was fired, which was when I left
Speaker 1: my talk show two today, because we're in business together.
Speaker 1: We have not spent one night apart in over forty years,
Speaker 1: and we're together twenty four hours a day. Wow, that's amazing. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's start there. She gets fired, what's your plan, because
Speaker 1: you do reinvent her and you have a lot of
Speaker 1: business enterprises. What was your What were your thoughts at
Speaker 1: the time? And I had no business enterprises. Um, I
Speaker 1: didn't have a plan, but I knew I could come
Speaker 1: up with a plan, which I did. So we're talking,
Speaker 1: and you know what we're gonna do and where we're
Speaker 1: gonna do it, and how we're gonna do it and
Speaker 1: the three company people were ignorant about branding because I
Speaker 1: went to them and I said, we should brand Chrissy Snow. Okay,
Speaker 1: we should brand the like the hair thing and the
Speaker 1: hot pants and the boots and the and there should
Speaker 1: be a Saturday Morning animated cartoon, you know, the Adventures
Speaker 1: of Chrissie's. And they say, all we care about is
Speaker 1: the show. We don't care about anything else. I said,
Speaker 1: but don't you understand this brings more audience in, it
Speaker 1: brings more loyalty to No, we don't care about that, okay.
Speaker 1: So one of the things that I talked to Susanna
Speaker 1: about was branding, and branding was a fairly new word
Speaker 1: in there weren't too many people branded. I said, everybody
Speaker 1: knows who you are. I said, the firing, in one
Speaker 1: sense was really good because it puts you on every
Speaker 1: newspaper in the country and talk show and interviews. And
Speaker 1: I said, that's all they're talking about is ABC fires
Speaker 1: Chrissie Snow from Three's Company. I said, so we're starting
Speaker 1: off by the fact that you are extremely well known
Speaker 1: and will globally be well known as well, because the
Speaker 1: show ran in like a hundred and thirty countries. So
Speaker 1: she said, you know, um, I did guys and Dolls
Speaker 1: in high school and I really enjoyed it. She said,
Speaker 1: I'd like to do a show in Las Vegas. So
Speaker 1: it was her idea, her idea. Yeah, So I said, uh, jokingly,
Speaker 1: can you sing? And she try to try to hit me.
Speaker 1: So I go to Vegas. I go to the Sahara Hotel.
Speaker 1: They offered two weeks big money. Went cold once again,
Speaker 1: no agent, no nobody else. I go to the Riviera
Speaker 1: two weeks big money, and I realized, oh, that's the
Speaker 1: format for big TV stars because they don't think they're
Speaker 1: gonna last longer than two weeks. So the Mob was
Speaker 1: still running Vegas. Then okay, they were just beginning to transition,
Speaker 1: but the Mob was still in charge. So I go
Speaker 1: to the MGM Grant and the president's name is Bernie Rothkoff.
Speaker 1: Bernie Rothkoff was the nephew of Modalitz. Modlitz was head
Speaker 1: of the the Cleveland Mob okay Jewish Mob. So uh,
Speaker 1: I bypassed the entertainment director. I learned from my first
Speaker 1: sale to ABC, go right to the top. I'm total
Speaker 1: believer in that the first who can say yesterday. That's right.
Speaker 1: And they may say that's not me. You have to
Speaker 1: talk to Fred. But why go to Fred first? Okay?
Speaker 1: So I walk into Bernie Rothkoff's office and it's huge.
Speaker 1: It's he's fifty feet away from I'm not kidding. There's
Speaker 1: no furniture, okay, other than he had a little desk
Speaker 1: probably three or four ft wide, and he's sitting in
Speaker 1: one chair there and there's one chair on the other side.
Speaker 1: That's it. There's no art on the wall, there's nothing.
Speaker 1: So and he's writing. He doesn't even look up. He's
Speaker 1: writing something and this is like I'm walking to the
Speaker 1: death chamber, and without looking up, he says, what do
Speaker 1: you want? And at that moment I realized he's like
Speaker 1: all my uncle's he's they're all a tough, tough talking guy,
Speaker 1: heart of gold. Okay. So I said, I want a
Speaker 1: two year deal for Susanne Summers and I don't care
Speaker 1: what the money is. So he puts the pencil down
Speaker 1: and he said, why do you want a two year deal?
Speaker 1: I said, I told him about the Sahara and the river.
Speaker 1: I said, I don't want to come here with two weeks.
Speaker 1: I said, it's a waste of time. I said, I
Speaker 1: don't know if she's going to succeed in two weeks.
Speaker 1: So that's where I want a two year deal, because
Speaker 1: everything she does, she succeeds. Okay, you ever watched Threees Company?
Speaker 1: He said, I love threes Company? He said, okay, did
Speaker 1: she succeed? He said yes. I said, so two year deal.
Speaker 1: What have he got to lose? He said, no, one's
Speaker 1: got a two year deal. He said, I've got Dolly.
Speaker 1: He named all this all the stars he's got got
Speaker 1: cause I got love. I said, they have six weeks,
Speaker 1: a six month, six eight months deals. He said, no
Speaker 1: one is. I've never heard of a two year deal.
Speaker 1: He gives me a two year deal and the money
Speaker 1: was more than I was asking threes Company for. So
Speaker 1: now we got to put a show together and we've
Speaker 1: never done it, and she's never been on stage other
Speaker 1: than in high school for guys and dolls, and uh
Speaker 1: so I bring in some of the people I had
Speaker 1: worked with in Canada, and one of them in particular,
Speaker 1: who was a buddy of mine in Toronto, and he
Speaker 1: became a head of comedy at NBC and he and
Speaker 1: his partner produced a lot of big variety shows when
Speaker 1: variety was big in this country. Sali Wilson and So
Speaker 1: I told So, I said, we got this deal. I said,
Speaker 1: you know, I want you to help us out, he
Speaker 1: said with pleasure. So he took charge. He became the
Speaker 1: producer of the original show, and he brought in the choreographer,
Speaker 1: He cast all the singers, he cast all the dancers.
Speaker 1: I said, don't even think about what it's gonna cost.
Speaker 1: Whatever it's costs, we're fine, I said, just do just
Speaker 1: do a great show. So we had projection, we had everything,
Speaker 1: because I wanted all this there so that Suzanne's not,
Speaker 1: you know, naked on stage all by herself. So we
Speaker 1: opened and her opening theme music is playing in Susanna
Speaker 1: and I were standing in the wings and it's time
Speaker 1: for her to go on, and she's not going on.
Speaker 1: So I put my foot on her rear end and
Speaker 1: gently pushed her out on stage. Okay, And when she
Speaker 1: got on stage, when she was out there, she was
Speaker 1: very comfortable. She loved it. It was a great show.
Speaker 1: We were sold out and we I think we were
Speaker 1: at the MGM for a week or two weeks, and
Speaker 1: that was the beginning of Vegas. She became UH Female
Speaker 1: Entertainer of the Year one year we live. We lived
Speaker 1: in Vegas for ten years and we worked in Vegas
Speaker 1: for thirty five weeks a year. She still holds the
Speaker 1: record for selling the most tickets over a two and
Speaker 1: a half year period. For two and a half years
Speaker 1: we were at the Las Vegas Hilton. We had a
Speaker 1: gigantic show there, cast of sixty people. It was the
Speaker 1: Mula Rouge, and she wound up starring in the Mula Rouge. Strangely,
Speaker 1: I get a call from the president of the Hilton,
Speaker 1: Henry Lewin, who was a German jew who had run
Speaker 1: for his life, you know, during the war and spent
Speaker 1: the war years in China. And he called me and said, Allen,
Speaker 1: I have this show and I want to do as
Speaker 1: an accent. He said, I have this show and I'm
Speaker 1: paying these guys in Paris UH a lot of money
Speaker 1: and royalties. Every single week he said, we have more
Speaker 1: people on stage than we have in the audience of night.
Speaker 1: He said, would you and Suzanne come and look at it?
Speaker 1: So that night we go look at the show. I
Speaker 1: love big. I love big production shows in Vegas. Okay
Speaker 1: to any production show. Beautiful girls with feathers and you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of music and dancing. I love that, so,
Speaker 1: I said, Henry, Henry lewin was I said, Henry, it's
Speaker 1: it's a beautiful show. He said, I know, I know.
Speaker 1: He said, but what's wrong? I said, you don't have
Speaker 1: an anchor. I said, there are two other shows in
Speaker 1: Vegas that have French names. I said, nobody knows what
Speaker 1: those the shows are. They It's like, what's the move
Speaker 1: long Route? What is it? Okay? I said, here's what
Speaker 1: I suggest. Suzanne opens the show, she does her act
Speaker 1: in the middle of the show, and she closes the show. Okay,
Speaker 1: we will do that. If you promised to do this,
Speaker 1: he said, I'll do whatever you want me to do.
Speaker 1: I said, you have to buy every available billboard in
Speaker 1: Las Vegas. You have to buy every available billboard in
Speaker 1: the feeder cities, Okay, Phoenix, Burbank, l A, et cetera.
Speaker 1: I will produce to video commercials and several radio spots.
Speaker 1: I will give you photo ready art to use in print.
Speaker 1: You have to just forget about what it's costing and
Speaker 1: just lay it on. And if you do that, I
Speaker 1: promise we will succeed. So that was I can't remember
Speaker 1: what month it was. Two months later, we opened eight
Speaker 1: hundred seats at the Las Vegas Hilton. I was a
Speaker 1: little worried, okay because the night we were there to
Speaker 1: watch the moon law Rouse that were probably maybe a
Speaker 1: hundred people. And it's off the strip. Okay, it's off
Speaker 1: the strip, so we don't even have the benefit of
Speaker 1: people walking by. So I gave him a picture, a
Speaker 1: head shot of Suzanne sexy head shot. I said, put
Speaker 1: this on your on the the what do they call it, yeah,
Speaker 1: the Marquis. Okay, we opened, were sold out. It was
Speaker 1: the first time the the balcony had people sitting in
Speaker 1: it since Elvis was there in the sixties. Okay, they
Speaker 1: were storing lighting equipment in the balcony. So we sold
Speaker 1: out to two hour shows every night, seven nights a week.
Speaker 1: Those were the days when Vegas hotels provided entertainment every
Speaker 1: night of the week. After year and a half or two,
Speaker 1: and we're still selling out like crazy. I said to
Speaker 1: Henry lew And we gotta have a day off. And
Speaker 1: he said, Allan, is it money. I said, it's not
Speaker 1: the money. I said, we're happy with everything, with everything.
Speaker 1: I said, it's not that at all. I said she
Speaker 1: needs a day off just to lay in bed. He said, okay, okay, Monday.
Speaker 1: So that started all the hotels only doing shows Thursday, Friday, Saturday,
Speaker 1: and sometimes Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Okay, it broke. The
Speaker 1: seven day rule was an unofficial rule. So we did
Speaker 1: that for two and a half It's You and a
Speaker 1: half years and sold gazillions of tickets, and that established
Speaker 1: her as a headliner in Las Vegas, and we started
Speaker 1: playing theaters around the country and that got old after
Speaker 1: a while. You know, one playing nighters and you finished
Speaker 1: doing the show and you're eating crap on the road.
Speaker 1: By the way, that's another conversation. All the people, all
Speaker 1: the entertainers who have been on the road all their life,
Speaker 1: okay forty fifty years. I don't know if you've noticed
Speaker 1: or not, but they all have dementia or Alzheimer's. And
Speaker 1: why because they're doing nighters. They get to the venue,
Speaker 1: they're nervous, so not eating. They do a sound check, rehearsal,
Speaker 1: they do the show. Eleven o'clock at night, they say
Speaker 1: to the the road manager, go get some food. So
Speaker 1: what's open? You know, what's open at eleven o'clock at
Speaker 1: night if you're lucky, because he brings back crap food
Speaker 1: that's it's sprayed with poison and who knows what else.
Speaker 1: And that's what these people have been eating for forty
Speaker 1: and fifty years, and I believe it's the food. Okay,
Speaker 1: how does the thigh master happen? Get a call from
Speaker 1: a guy I casually knew in Toronto and he says
Speaker 1: to me, and he's part of a film development company.
Speaker 1: There are three of them. He said, I got this
Speaker 1: exercise device. He said, I don't know what to do
Speaker 1: with it. He said, I want you to take a
Speaker 1: look at it. So he comes to what we're living in,
Speaker 1: Palm Spring. He comes to Palm Springs and it's called
Speaker 1: a V Toner because it's shaped leg and it's an
Speaker 1: upper body workout. It's not for thighs, its upper body.
Speaker 1: And the idea is if you use it for your
Speaker 1: upper body, your upper body will be shaped like a
Speaker 1: V as well. So it's called a v Toner and
Speaker 1: it was invented by a Swedish doctor and it's Swedish looking,
Speaker 1: kind of gray, has a gray utility, sort of looked
Speaker 1: to it, and it'd been around for fifteen or twenty
Speaker 1: years and they couldn't sell a unit. So Suzanne takes it,
Speaker 1: puts it between ear thighs and started squeezing it and
Speaker 1: says to the guy, is this good for thighs? And
Speaker 1: he says yeah, but it's an upper body. She said, okay,
Speaker 1: leave it with us. So during the next two weeks
Speaker 1: we came up with the name. Suzanne says it was her,
Speaker 1: I said it was me um, and we changed the
Speaker 1: color combination so it had a red knob and blue handles,
Speaker 1: and we shot the commercial and the commerce you a
Speaker 1: little flaccid. The results were a little flaccid. We weren't
Speaker 1: losing money, but we weren't making the money we thought
Speaker 1: we were going to make kah, So we had to
Speaker 1: figure out what do we do next? So we added
Speaker 1: three pages called Susanne Summers Helpful Hints for Healthy Eating
Speaker 1: as a premium and I took off like a rocket.
Speaker 1: What do you why do you think that was people
Speaker 1: like getting free stuff? Yeah, okay, so most people who
Speaker 1: have a heyday on TV, certainly at that time, I
Speaker 1: want to get back on weekly TV. What was your
Speaker 1: feeling about that about me getting back? Well, she had
Speaker 1: done most people don't even think think about this. She's
Speaker 1: done two hit series. Three's Company. Then she did seven
Speaker 1: years with Patrick Duffy on Step by Step seven years.
Speaker 1: That's a that's a hit TV show. She did Candy
Speaker 1: Camera for two years. I believe she did a she
Speaker 1: did the first um, the first time they produced a
Speaker 1: virgin sitcom for syndication. Usually it goes to the network
Speaker 1: and then so they decided, Lorimar decided, let's produce a
Speaker 1: sitcom for syndication before it goes to They'll never go
Speaker 1: to a network. Right. It was called She's the Sheriff,
Speaker 1: and Susanne was the sheriff, of course, and she she
Speaker 1: did not like doing the show. I said, why why
Speaker 1: don't you like doing the show? She's I don't like
Speaker 1: what I have to wear. I said, okay, okay, but
Speaker 1: they're paying you every week, right, She's yeah, but I
Speaker 1: don't like Okay. So that show ran for I think
Speaker 1: a year, maybe two years, I can't remember. So she's
Speaker 1: done a lot of TV, A lot of TV. We
Speaker 1: did music specials for CBS, a lot of guest starring
Speaker 1: on music specials with Paul Anka and you know, John Wayne, etcetera.
Speaker 1: So a lot of television. Does she want to go
Speaker 1: back to TV? Um? I think if she went back
Speaker 1: to TV, it wouldn't be to do a sitcom because
Speaker 1: it's never going to be as good as what she's done. Uh.
Speaker 1: She would probably go back to do a talk variety
Speaker 1: show remember those of course, Okay merv Griffin, and you
Speaker 1: know she'd go back for that. She'd probably said, well,
Speaker 1: let's do it out of Palm Springs. Okay, so we
Speaker 1: do it out of Palm Springs. But what we're doing
Speaker 1: right now is um. She was on the shopping channel
Speaker 1: HSN for seventeen years, one of the top vendors, and
Speaker 1: we started with jewelry, then we went to fashion, then
Speaker 1: we went to small kitchen appliances, then we went to
Speaker 1: organic food, then we went to audio video, then we
Speaker 1: went to publishing. Uh, and then we went to candy
Speaker 1: and chocolate, and then we went to bedding. I'm probably
Speaker 1: missing okay, but I had. Your memory is phenomenal, um.
Speaker 1: And she was one of the top vendors and they
Speaker 1: referred to her as the Queen of TV shopping Okay,
Speaker 1: seventeen years. So then she started writing these books and
Speaker 1: she wrote her first book was seventy three She wrote
Speaker 1: a book of poetry called touch Me and Uh. That's
Speaker 1: the story in itself. She came down to audition for
Speaker 1: the Dom Delawis Show and she had a call back,
Speaker 1: so she went to the commissary at NBC to wait
Speaker 1: to be called back. It was mid afternoon. She was
Speaker 1: the only one in there in watch Johnny Carson, and
Speaker 1: she thinks, oh my god, there's Johnny Carson. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: Johnny Carson is coming over to me. So he comes
Speaker 1: over to her and says, hey, little lady, what are
Speaker 1: you doing here. I'm here for Don Delawi. He said, Oh,
Speaker 1: he's a friend of my and I hope you get it.
Speaker 1: She didn't have an eight by ten. She hands him
Speaker 1: her book of poetry, so he takes it. That was Wednesday, Friday.
Speaker 1: She's on the Tonight Show having purchased address with a
Speaker 1: bad check. Okay. Carson loved her because she was a
Speaker 1: small town girl, totally open. I mean he would say
Speaker 1: to her, when did you get to town? She'd say
Speaker 1: this afternoon okay. Um. So he had her on I
Speaker 1: don't know every month. He loved having her on. And
Speaker 1: um so from that Fred Silverman, so Freddie was head
Speaker 1: of NBC, there were no They didn't have committees then
Speaker 1: to decide if they're going to do a show or not.
Speaker 1: Now it's by committee because no one wants to, you know,
Speaker 1: get be responsible. Yeah, but they all take credit from
Speaker 1: a win. Right. So Fred had watched Suzanne on the
Speaker 1: Tonight Show often. They had done two pilots with two
Speaker 1: other Chrissie Snows that did not test well. So he
Speaker 1: said to the producer producers, I've got the girl. So
Speaker 1: they called Suzanne, and Suzanne said, you know, and I
Speaker 1: did a bunch of pilots and none of them sold.
Speaker 1: I think I'm done. I'm going to teach cooking. Okay,
Speaker 1: now he's coming for this one, lad. Okay. So she
Speaker 1: goes in not caring if she gets the job, which
Speaker 1: of course is the best way to get the job, right.
Speaker 1: And she gets home, the phone rings, you got it
Speaker 1: and we start Monday, Monday, Monday, Okay, not with a pilot.
Speaker 1: We're in production Monday, and the first order was for
Speaker 1: six shows, which was normal in those days. Okay. She
Speaker 1: walks in to the room where they're all sitting around
Speaker 1: the cast and the producers and the writers are sitting
Speaker 1: around for a table read and she's never been to
Speaker 1: a tape will read. She's never done done anything right.
Speaker 1: So the first thing she announces to everybody, Okay, this
Speaker 1: is a small town girl speaking. I've never had an
Speaker 1: acting lesson, and I I'm not quite sure what I'm doing,
Speaker 1: but I learned fast. All the professionals were sitting around
Speaker 1: and I'm sure they were thinking, what this is one
Speaker 1: of the three stars of the show who's never had
Speaker 1: an acting lesson and doesn't know what she's doing. Okay,
Speaker 1: but that was her honesty. I'm just telling you. I'm
Speaker 1: telling you people who I am. Okay. So the first
Speaker 1: she doesn't like the first year of threees company, she said,
Speaker 1: I didn't hit it okay, but by the second year,
Speaker 1: she was hitting it out of the park. She got that.
Speaker 1: She I said, it's very hard to be a likable
Speaker 1: dumb because most dumb lawns are irritating. She said, I
Speaker 1: created a moral box for this character, and in the
Speaker 1: moral box, I don't lie ever, and I'm never going
Speaker 1: to steal anyone's husband or boyfriend. That's my moral box. Okay.
Speaker 1: Always tell the truth, never come on to anybody's guy, okay.
Speaker 1: And that's why people love that character. Okay. So but
Speaker 1: now that you were saying a couple of times, you're
Speaker 1: doing Facebook shows. So we have a we have about
Speaker 1: a thousand products that we've all of which we've developed
Speaker 1: over the years. We have Susanna Organics, which is and
Speaker 1: by the way, Susanna Organics came out of you know,
Speaker 1: for every downside, there's an upside. The downside was twenty
Speaker 1: or twenty one years ago, she was diagnosed with breast
Speaker 1: cancer and she couldn't figure out why she would host
Speaker 1: this terrible disease. And she realized it was because she
Speaker 1: was staying up late at night writing, Uh, she was eating. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know when you're doing when you're doing a TV show,
Speaker 1: there's the craft table cross service. I call it the
Speaker 1: crap table, okay, because there's orange things there. There are
Speaker 1: no natural foods other than oranges that I know of
Speaker 1: that they're covered in orange powder. And you're a little nervous.
Speaker 1: Every time you go by, you grab something and just
Speaker 1: throw it in your mouth. And then if they serve,
Speaker 1: you know, lunch, it's not with a gourmet food. It's
Speaker 1: the cheapest food they could find. Right, So she figured
Speaker 1: a part of it was staying up late not getting
Speaker 1: enough sleep, uh, being too busy and not being aware
Speaker 1: of the food I was eating. So she decided to
Speaker 1: change her life and ultimately my life, and uh, get
Speaker 1: all the toxins out of our life. Okay. We got
Speaker 1: rid of all the stuff in our house for cleaning,
Speaker 1: which is poison. We created a home cleaning system that
Speaker 1: you could drink. It tastes awful, but you could drink
Speaker 1: it okay, and it works incredible. We created Susanne Organics.
Speaker 1: It's uh organic skincare, organic hair care, organic cosmetics. Okay,
Speaker 1: because when you see the the stuff that you buy
Speaker 1: commercially for skin care and hair care, you wouldn't want
Speaker 1: to go anywhere near it. Okay. So on your Facebook
Speaker 1: live show, do you promote these products? Absolutely? So what
Speaker 1: we do is it's like a reality show. Oh. A
Speaker 1: few years ago, John Feldheimer, who's a dear friend of
Speaker 1: ours who runs a lions Gate, he said, I want
Speaker 1: to do a reality show with you and Sudan. We said,
Speaker 1: but we don't argue, we don't fight. We're not like
Speaker 1: you know, all these reality shows they kick the crap
Speaker 1: out of each other. Okay, and that's the show, and
Speaker 1: we don't do that. He said, that's why I want
Speaker 1: to do it with you guys. I know you so
Speaker 1: well and you don't argue, but you have this great,
Speaker 1: loving relationship. That's what I want. So I said, okay,
Speaker 1: So for three days we had two guys with big
Speaker 1: cameras like this following us around. I called John. I said,
Speaker 1: I can't do this, Okay, I said, I there are
Speaker 1: things that I want to do that I can't do
Speaker 1: because I know it's going to be on camera. I said,
Speaker 1: and even though you know we we have the final
Speaker 1: look in terms of it, I said, we can't do this. Okay,
Speaker 1: we can't do it least I understand. So what we
Speaker 1: do now with Facebook Live and we simulcast on I
Speaker 1: g TV, Instagram, and we're on our way to another
Speaker 1: nine or ten digital platforms. We've been doing this for
Speaker 1: about a year and a half. We've archived about a
Speaker 1: hundred hours which you can You can go to Suzanne
Speaker 1: Summers Facebook and you'll see them all there. There's no
Speaker 1: script Susanne and I don't discuss what we're gonna do.
Speaker 1: The only thing that we plan ahead is what products
Speaker 1: are we going to be selling and how much are
Speaker 1: we charging? Okay, we discount our products like crazy. How
Speaker 1: lucrative is it? Well, it depends on your definition of lucrative.
Speaker 1: I mean everything is relative, you know. But okay, how
Speaker 1: long are the shows, like between forty and to an
Speaker 1: hour show? What is the range of the lowest amount
Speaker 1: of gross product you could sell to the top. I
Speaker 1: don't know how to answer that question. Um, most of
Speaker 1: the show is Suzanne and I or if our families
Speaker 1: there are families on just goofing around. Um, I'm the
Speaker 1: bad boy, okay, I say things that we know. The
Speaker 1: audience goes, oh did you hear what Allan said? And
Speaker 1: I'm not making it up? Who I happened to be?
Speaker 1: I like being a bad boy? Okay. So we have
Speaker 1: fun doing these shows, and we market not all of
Speaker 1: our products. Um, like we did a show with a
Speaker 1: thime master a few weeks ago, and I mean we
Speaker 1: keep a good supply of thime masters. Okay. So when
Speaker 1: you email, you always emailed with me with marketing wisdom.
Speaker 1: So as you look at and you talked about branding earlier.
Speaker 1: So what are a couple of lessons you can tell
Speaker 1: my audience in terms of selling their products. But first
Speaker 1: of all, you have to believe in your products. The
Speaker 1: first aside from my experience on the train, I got
Speaker 1: a job selling food freezer plans in Canada. That's like
Speaker 1: selling you know, ice to the Eskimos. Really uh. And
Speaker 1: the sales manager said to me, I don't care if
Speaker 1: you like the food freezer plan or not. Okay, I
Speaker 1: said no, no, he said, I don't care if you
Speaker 1: like it or not. He said, you have to talk
Speaker 1: yourself into believing that you love it. If you can
Speaker 1: believe that you love it, you can then get anyone
Speaker 1: to love it. Okay. So I said, okay. So that
Speaker 1: was my first lesson in marketing to people that may
Speaker 1: not want to buy anything. So with all the products
Speaker 1: we have, we developed all of them ourselves. So there
Speaker 1: are no products there where someone comes to us and
Speaker 1: says other than thy master. That happened in the eighties. Um.
Speaker 1: We we created all these products. Okay. We we have
Speaker 1: a formulator. We do it all ourselves. We have a
Speaker 1: team of four that runs our digital programs. Uh. Soon
Speaker 1: we're gonna get into the podcast business. We've been avoiding
Speaker 1: it for a long time, but it's time okay. Uh.
Speaker 1: And we sell our products. Um. We don't spend a
Speaker 1: lot of time during the hour. During the hour, it's
Speaker 1: mostly goofing around and every so often and we try
Speaker 1: to make it look homemade. There's nothing slick. There are
Speaker 1: so in other words, let's assume I'm watching your Facebook
Speaker 1: live show. Where do I buy it from Susanne Summers
Speaker 1: dot com? So you're driving everybody to Suzanne Summers. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: we could go out for hours. You're you know, your
Speaker 1: incredible rack and tour. You've been listening to Alan Hamlet.
Speaker 1: We could listen all day telling his stories, you know,
Speaker 1: just about Canada, never mind threes Company. Thanks so much
Speaker 1: for being here and informing my guests what's going on
Speaker 1: in the Billy of the Beast. Well, thank you for
Speaker 1: inviting me. This is my first podcast. Well it's not
Speaker 1: your first time around the block talking Alan. Thanks so much.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Until next time, This is Bob Left six