Every so often on Facebook — hourly, it sometimes seems — someone uploads the above photo and asks what's it from and who everyone in it is. Often, they also ask if it's a shot from It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. Taking the last of these first: No, it isn't, though three of the folks in the picture — Berle, Durante and Shawn — had significant roles in Mad World. It's from a Bob Hope TV special.
Recently, I uploaded a version of the photo to which I'd added captions to answer the other two questions. Someone who calls themselves "Herbert" (just Herbert) writes, in part…
Thank you for doing that but how about answering some questions for me? How many of the men in that photograph have you met? Which one was the funniest when you met him? Which was one do you think was the funniest comedian, regardless of whether you met him or not? Which one, regardless of whether you met him, struck you as the least funny?
Were any of the one you met rude to you? Which one were you most excited to meet? Did any of them make you sad? Which one was the nicest?
Regardless of whether you met them, which one do you think was the richest? How many of these people ever did voices for cartoons? Which one would you have liked to dine with and talk to all evening?
Okay, here are some answers but first, let me remind everyone that if you click on the above photo, my larger and captioned version of it should open in your browser. Now, here we go…
I met Milton Berle, Soupy Sales, Dick Martin, Bob Hope, Jack Carter and Bill Dana. The one I found funniest in our meeting(s) was Dick Martin. The one I think was funniest…well, one of the most brilliant, hilarious things I ever saw on a stage was Dick Shawn's one-man show. No one else in the picture ever made me laugh so much so I guess I'll say him. Least funny? Well, Dan Rowan but he was mainly a straight man so he wasn't really in the business of being funny.
Rude? I met Jack Carter a few times and…well, he just seemed angry at everyone around him. I wrote about some of those encounters here. No one else among the six was rude in any way.
I was very excited to meet Soupy Sales because his TV show was so important to me when I was a kid. The first few times I talked with him were not as wonderful as I might have wished because they were on the set of his 1978 syndicated "comeback" show. The moments I chose to visit the stage often were moments when things were going wrong so Soupy rarely seemed to be in a good, affable mood. And then the last time I saw him in person was a few years after he had suffered an accident, falling down a flight of stairs. Thereafter, his speech and wit were impaired and it was very sad to see him like that and not easy to have much of a conversation.
It was also kind of exciting to meet Bob Hope, which I did on two occasions, because he was Bob Hope — and I wouldn't be surprised if he died with more wealth than all the others combined. The nicest of those I met would either be Dick Martin or Bill Dana.
Mr. Dana did some voices for cartoons, including on a Hanna-Barbera special that he also wrote. Jack Carter did voices on an ABC Weekend Special that I wrote. Dick Shawn was a voice actor on the Rankin-Bass animated special, The Year Without a Santa Claus and Jimmy Durante was the narrator of the Rankin-Bass animated special, Frosty the Snowman. Wally Cox was the voice of Underdog, Soupy was the voice of Donkey Kong on a Saturday morning cartoon and I'll bet most of the others did a cartoon voice somewhere or other.
I would have loved to talk to almost any of these guys at length. I did have a couple of long conversations with Berle and he was fascinating because of all that history, including It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and I could have done with more of that. I guess I'd pick Mr. Robert Hope, though I wish I could have met Mr. James Durante.
