Fame can expand the parameters of what a crowd will tolerate, but for a comic who wants steady work, it's a balancing act. The most talented comedians struggle with the irresolvable dilemma of getting laughs and pushing the audience to hear their real comedy, their true voice. Murray says he thinks Baylos didn't because he was "scared to die" (to bomb, in contemporary parlance). ![]() For heaven's sake, why don't you do these things onstage?" "All the comics thought he was brilliant, creative and innovative." Over the years, Baylos's friend the comedian Jan Murray gave him advice he didn't heed: "You're making me, Jerry Lewis, Milton Berle laugh. "People who didn't have half his ability went on and on," says the comedian Norm Crosby. But while his peers went on to national fame in the golden age of television, Baylos's career stalled. Whether he was circulating among the tables in the 1930's at the Theatrical Pharmacy (a hangout for Variety performers), antically shoving butter packets and rolls into his pockets for laughs (he also was notoriously cheap) or doing zany physical gags backstage at the Riviera as he waited to open for Dinah Shore, Gene Baylos cracked up the comics. "Get your own bum," Baylos said.Ĭomedians graduate loosely in classes, and many of those in Baylos's fraternity - Red Buttons, Henny Youngman, Shecky Greene - got their legs in the Catskills and made their livings in the big-city clubs following World War II. One day, a friend accompanied Baylos and offered to bring the homeless man some hand-me-downs. ![]() On the way home, at 2:30, he would deliver a sandwich to a homeless man he knew, and each winter Baylos made sure the man had a coat. Other times, he'd go chat with Kim at Simon Lock and Key, or go to a men's clothing store where he would joke with the clerk. Sometimes he would visit Raphael Serrur at his jewelry store on 57th and entertain the customers. The walk took a good two hours, because Baylos made stops along the way. Sonny, his building's doorman, was the first to see the day's comic routine. for more than 30 years, the comedian Gene Baylos left his West 56th Street apartment for his daily walk to the Friars Club. I never found out what the reasoning was for not showing that episode.Every weekday at 10 a.m. I was suspicious of this, partially because of JFK being assassinated a year later, or more interestingly, the thought of a police officer who is under the influence while on the job. However, when the reruns were run several years back, this was the only episode that wasn't aired. The funniest part of the episode is when Toody, who is waiting patiently in the patrol car for Muldoon to write a ticket on a person he had just stopped, goes to check up on his partner and finds him passed out on the hood of the stopped vehicle, apparently from taking too many tranquilizers. However the opposite occurs when Muldoon starts coming apart at the seams. ![]() Anyone familiar with Car 54 would probably think that Muldoon would be the perfect candidate for such a prestigious job and that Toody would be nothing more than a hindrance. Of the entire New York City Police Department, Toody & Mulddon are picked to drive the President to the U.N. It was "Hail The Chief", season 2, episode 1. Though I felt at the time that Car 54 Where Are You? was the funniest show on television,there was 1 episode that I still remember some 52 years later.
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