When I get some budding young comic who’ll come up to me and say, ‘What was it like to do it in those days?’ I try to be as gracious to him as Stan Laurel was to me.
I wrote a little autobiography about how luck has to do with everything. It’s called ‘My Lucky Life In and Out of Show Business.’ A publisher came to me and said, ‘Write a book,’ so I did. I wanted to call it ‘Everybody Else Has Got a Book.’
Jon Stewart kills me. I love him. And Bill Maher. He does an hour on HBO. But entirely political. It is awfully rough, but he does make me laugh.
I’ve had a lot of writers, in particular, who said they got into writing because of the ‘Van Dyke Show.’ They said it looked like fun.
I worked nightclubs all through my 20s, and I was a teetotaler.
I went from my mother to my wife. And to this day, I can’t bear to be alone.
They did ask me to do ‘Dancing With The Stars;’ I said I can do one show, but on that show you have to come up with a new number every week, and I told them that I think I’m a little past that stage.
I married somebody half my age, and everybody thought I was crazy, but she is just an absolute angel.
Somebody asked what I wanted on my gravestone. I’m just going to put: ‘Glad I Could Help.’
I was the class clown, you know, that kind of thing, and I gathered around me a group of guys who also were silly. I was in all the plays and everything. But I don’t know, at that time show businesses looked like the moon, you know, it was so far away. I wanted to be a radio announcer.
I’m not a loner. I have to have a life partner.
As wonderful as they were, my parents didn’t teach me anything about self-discipline, concentration, patience, or focus. If I hadn’t had a family myself, I probably never would’ve done anything. Marriage taught me responsibility.
My brother and I laughed a lot as kids. We came up in the middle of the Depression, and neither one of us knew we were poor. We had nothing, but we didn’t know it.
I was always in show business but in many ways was not really of show business. I didn’t move in show business circles, particularly, still don’t do it.
I was a ‘Laurel and Hardy’ nut. I got to know Laurel at the end of his life, and it was a great thrill for me. He left me his bow tie and derby and told me that if they ever made a movie about him, he’d want me to play him.
I wanted to be Stan Laurel, then I wanted to be Fred Astaire and then Captain Kangaroo. I actually started out as a radio announcer when I was 17 and never left the business, so that’s literally 70 years.
I think the saddest moment in my life just happened two months ago. My old nightclub partner passed away, Phil Erickson down in Atlanta. He – I owe him everything. He put me in the business and taught me about everything I know.
I think most people will tell you that. They can go along and, while they’re denying that they are addicted, say it’s stress this, it’s this, it’s that. But I – it’s – I think – I really believe there is a gene. Some people become addicted and others don’t.
I do miss the rhythms of comedy. And I’ve never been able to perform very well without an audience. The sitcoms I’ve done had them. It was like doing a little play.
I asked Fred Astaire once when he was about my age if he still danced, and he said ‘Yes, but it hurts now.’ That’s exactly it. I can still dance, too, but it hurts now!