Watching TV Land episodes of The Flip Wilson Show, I am reminded of how much I once liked one of his guests, deadpan comedian Jackie Vernon. (Did I say "deadpan"? Compared to Vernon, Buster Keaton was Roberto Benigni. Jackie got one of his biggest laughs just by coming out on stage and saying, "To look at me now, you'd never believe that I used to be a dull guy." He'd often follow that by saying, "At parties, I'd stay in the room with the coats…memorize labels…") Vernon, whose real name was Ralph Verrone, was a former musician who began doing stand-up in the mid-fifties. He quickly built up a good following in night clubs and at Friars' Roasts and then made the leap to television.
Legend has it that so many "big time" comics were cribbing lines from him that the producers of The Ed Sullivan Show and all the top talk shows figured, "We're already booking Vernon's material…we might as well book Vernon." He claimed authorship of one of the most-stolen jokes of all time: "I used to be an atheist but I gave it up. No holidays."
Vernon's act was, usually, a masterpiece of taking your time and remaining in character. On the Flip Wilson episode I just watched, he was obviously rushed and was therefore about half as funny as usual…but that was still pretty funny. He did his "vacation slides" bit, which consisted of him standing on stage with a clicker, describing slides that you couldn't see…
Here I am touring the Everglades. That's my guide. Guido the Guide. Here's Guido leading me around a bed of quicksand…" [CLICK!]
Here's Guido from the waist up… [CLICK!]
There's his hat. [CLICK!]
Now, here's the rescue party rushing to Guido's aid… [CLICK!]
And here's the rescue party from the waist up… [CLICK!]
And here's a bunch of hats and ropes…
If I heard it once, I heard it fifty times and it always made me laugh. Everything about that guy made me laugh. Unfortunately, he never seemed able to parlay the act into anything bigger than playing night clubs and making the occasional comedy album. He may be best remembered for providing the voice of Frosty the Snowman in the 1969 cartoon special. Here's a warm, funny article by his son, David, who recalls watching the show and bursting into tears at the end when Frosty melted. He thought his father had been killed but his mother reassured him, "He's not dead…he's in Chicago working the Playboy Club." Jackie would probably have said that was better but not by much.
I used to see Vernon lunching over at Farmers Market and even got the nerve once to approach him and chat for about five minutes. All I remember is that I told him I could quote all his routines by heart and he chuckled and said, "You and Milton Berle." That very evening, I saw Berle on Merv Griffin's show and he did the "atheist/no holidays" joke.
I saw him perform once in Vegas. It was at the old Marina Hotel, which they tore down to build the new MGM Grand. He was in a burlesque revue called "Babes Ahoy," which disappointed me a bit since what I really wanted was to just see him do stand-up, even if it meant hearing the routines I knew so well from his albums and TV appearances. Fortunately, he did about twenty hilarious minutes on his own…and to my surprise, he didn't do one joke I'd ever heard before. This would have been around 1985. He passed away in '87.
Since he never did sitcoms and since variety shows are so rarely rerun, his best work has been long forgotten. He really does seem to be recalled mostly from that cartoon special and its sequel. Maybe some CD company will see the wisdom of reissuing his albums, especially A Wet Bird Never Flies at Night and A Man and His Watermelon. They were as funny as anything ever put on vinyl, and proved conclusively that he was not a dull guy.