This is an unusual photo of the prolific TV writer-producer Chris Bearde, who died unexpectedly this morning…of what, I do not know.
It's unusual because he's not laughing in it. I remember Chris laughing at everything I said to him — and that was not because I was so unusually funny. I also remember Chris laughing at everything anyone said to him. I worked on a show with him for Dick Clark and he laughed at everything Dick Clark said, for Christ's sake.
Chris was the producer of the show we worked on together and if you went to him with an idea, he'd howl with laughter, tell you it was brilliant…and often, ten minutes later, decide not to use it because he realized it wasn't funny. I had just come off writing a project for a producer named Alan Landsburg and I'm telling you the honest truth here: It was more pleasant to have Chris Bearde reject your idea than it was to have Alan Landsburg approve it.
You might know the laugh if you ever saw a Chris Bearde show because he rarely produced from the booth. He was almost always down on the stage, just out of the camera's view, howling over everything the performers said and did. I can hear him on reruns of Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In, The Andy Williams Show, The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour, The Hudson Brothers Show and many others.
Chris was born in England, moved to Australia when he was a toddler and as a young adult, bounced around for a time between TV there and TV in Australia. In the mid-sixties, he came to America and later on, he had a kind of dual citizenship, producing shows here and in Canada. His first big TV credit in the U.S. was on Laugh-In and the story about how he got hired goes something like this: Laugh-In hired a British writer who kept turning in lots of very funny material. Eventually, they found out the material was purloined from Chris, who'd worked with this writer on a show in Australia. For some reason, the British guy didn't lose his job — in fact, I think he got a promotion — but they did hire Chris.
At least, that's that way the story is usually told.
After Laugh-In, he did all those other shows I mentioned and a lot that even he would tell you aren't worthy of a mention. He and the recently-also-deceased Chuck Barris created The Gong Show together, then began fighting over every single thing about it, which led to Barris buying out Bearde's interest in the program. Chris disappeared into Canadian TV for a while but he's turned up here a few times in the last decade or three.
I hadn't seen him in person for a decade or two. We kept in touch via Facebook, planned to get together for lunch one of these days, and never did. Let that be a lesson to me. But I always liked the guy and not just because I made him laugh but because he made everyone else laugh.
Oh, and he would have wanted me to mention one person who didn't make him laugh: Donald Trump. Yesterday at 1:50 PM, Chris posted on Facebook…
Thought: There is no way anyone can believe what the Despot says now as a clear pattern is emerging that what ever he's says we can expect a complete reversal as early as an hour later. Absurd as it sounds he probably believes both statements meaning he should immediately be asked to step down as President as his actions are those of a man in a state or paranoid delusion. We are facing Captain Queeg without the brass balls incapable of telling truth from his fiction…
A few hours later, he posted what might have been his last joke…
To many of us looking at the state of the nation..this is "What on Earth day?"
He was a funny, witty man. If you want to know more about him, read the interview he did with our pal Kliph Nesteroff. Or watch a rerun of one of his shows and listen for him amidst the laughter. He's always there.