I saw Don Rickles perform live twice in Las Vegas. Once was in the early eighties when my friends Len Wein, Marv Wolfman and I went there to vacation a bit and drop in on that year's Consumer Electronics Show. The C.E.S. was crowded and full of new, high-tech gadgetry which seemed very futuristic and Jetsony then. Today, it would probably look like something Thomas Edison invented in his teens while waiting for his acne to clear up. We stayed at the San Remo Hotel, an establishment that would have needed major renovation to earn a one-star rating. It's now Hooters and it's been extensively rebuilt, as have many of the women who work there.
We were in Vegas three nights and one of those nights, we went to the Sahara to see the dinner show starring Mr. Rickles. A gent who was in charge of seating asked us if we wanted to sit up front where we might find ourselves part of the show. If we'd said, "Yes, we do," we could have tipped him to put us there or if we'd said, "No, we don't," we could have tipped him to not put us there. Either way, that man had to be tipped and we wound up far enough back to be out of the line of fire.
We were all big fans of Don Rickles on television so we put up with the Tip Extortion and with what at the time seemed like an exorbitant price for prime rib which I think was leftover from when Martin and Lewis played that room. There was also an opening act to get through — a lady singer who was unknown at the time and who gave us no reason to think that might change. All of that would be worth it, we told ourselves, to see a great comedian in what seemed to be the perfect environment for him — a Vegas showroom.
After way too much of the mediocre prime rib and the mediocre lady singer, the mediocre on-stage band played the matador's fanfare, an off-stage announcer introduced the headliner and out came Don Rickles. And boy, did he stink.
I am not kidding. Simply awful…and I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "How could he stink when back then, he was so funny insulting people on Johnny Carson's show, on Dean Martin's show, on just about everyone's show?" Here's your answer: That night at the Sahara, he didn't insult anyone. He barely told anything resembling a joke. This was during a period in Rickles' career where (I guess) handlers and advisers we're telling him in their infinite wisdom, "Don, if you don't want to spend your life appearing for bad money on talk shows, you need to become an all-around entertainer."
So he spent 75% of his onstage time singing and dancing. That's right: Singing and dancing. I remember a very strenuous ten-or-so minute number imitating Jimmy Cagney in the best songs from the film Yankee Doodle Dandy.
Rickles the song-and-dance man. This was like if you paid good money to see Simone Biles perform and all she did was come out and play a harmonica.
I think it was at the end of the Cagney number that we witnessed one of the greatest moments of Show Biz Schmaltz I've ever seen in my life. Rickles, as he took his bow, was schvitzing buckets. (If you don't know what that word means, look it up. And while you're at it, look up schmaltz too. Both words are spelled many different ways, most of them correct.)
He was catching his breath before launching into the next bit when he "suddenly noticed" an elderly black gentleman standing just onstage at stage left. I put "suddenly noticed" in quotes because Rickles could not have done a worse job of pretending to be surprised at this.
The man was holding a pitcher of ice water and Rickles, acting like this had never happened before — which it probably hadn't since the second show the previous night — called the elderly black man by name and asked, "What are you doing out here?" Then Mr. Warmth lived up to that nickname, telling us that this man was his dresser…and had tended to him at most of the hotels he'd played at for the last few decades.
The man, who was not a very good actor, replied cautiously, "Oh, Mr. Rickles…I saw you out here singing and dancing your heart out to entertain these people. I know that you give your all every night to every audience but you have been so kind to me all these years that I wanted to do something for you so I brought you some ice water." (I'm doing this from memory so none of these quotes are exact.)
Rickles was so touched by this "sudden gesture" that he began sobbing and he kissed the man and asked the audience to give him an ovation, which of course we did. There was a little more banter about how wonderful each of them was and then the dresser shuffled off the stage and Rickles had to pause and wipe his eyes before continuing.
About half the audience seemed genuinely moved at the moment. The rest of us didn't buy one second of it. Len and Marv and I all whispered about how the elderly black man who wanted to do something nice for Mr. Rickles had brought out the pitcher of ice water but he hadn't brought out a glass, nor had Mr. Rickles received any of that ice water.
The rest of the show consisted of Rickles telling us over and over in so many ways that in the History of Mankind, there has never been a better human being than Frank Sinatra. It's not just that he's inarguably the greatest entertainer who ever lived, he's also a great humanitarian and a philanthropist and I think Rickles even put Frank's greatness against up Jesus Christ and Francis Albert Sinatra was the clear winner. At one point in a scolding tone, Rickles said something like, "You people who aren't in show business could not possibly understand the greatness of this man." And then Don dropped his pants and fired a rocket.
No, he didn't. If he had, we would have all felt that was worth the price of admission. Alas, he did not drop his pants nor did he fire a rocket. That might have been entertaining.
Like I said, this was in the early eighties. In the following years, Rickles continued to play Vegas often. I knew people who'd seen him and obviously experienced a very different show. I read reviews that said very little about singing and dancing and even praised one number — "I'm a Nice Guy," which was described as a fun, campy break from all the insults and putdowns.
I decided I ought to go see him again and I finally did. Around 1992, I was in Vegas with a lady friend and I promised to take her to a restaurant I didn't want to go to and she did if she'd accompany me to see Don Rickles. She said yes and we dined downtown at that restaurant, then went to a 9 PM (I think) show at the Golden Nugget nearby.
A gent who was in charge of seating asked us if we wanted to sit up front where we might find ourselves part of the show. If we'd said, "Yes, we do," we could have tipped him to put us there or if we'd said, "No, we don't," we could have tipped him to not put us there. Either way, that man had to be tipped and we wound up far enough back to be out of the line of fire.
What we got for my money (plus tip) was indeed a very different show…and a pretty good one, very similar to the show you'll see if you click below. In fact, I'm sure a lot of what Don said was the same. Different Jew, different Spanish kid, different black guy in the front row, same lines. In a way, that was part of the charm. Hearing Don Rickles call someone a hockey puck was in its way like hearing Tony Bennett sing about how he left his heart you-know-where. But there was also plenty of freeform, occasionally incoherent ad-libbing. It was clear Rickles was saying anything that popped into his head at the moment and that he was working a lot harder than necessary.
My lady friend enjoyed it a lot more than she'd expected. She said, "I didn't understand him on TV. I think I do now."
The video below was recorded in 1996 at the Pine Knob Arena located in Independence Township, Michigan and it has a few bleeps and edits in it. I will not pretend to understand the decisions to omit certain words and leave in certain others. Rickles, in case you're wondering, was 70 years old when this was recorded and his opening act was Joan Rivers. When I saw him that second time in Vegas, he didn't have an opening act.
This runs just shy of an hour. If you don't want to watch the whole thing, he does "I'm a Nice Guy" at 6:02 and he does a nicer, more sincere version of the bit with the black colleague at 29:27 and I may be wrong but I don't think it's the same black colleague. The one I remember was much older then. You get a little Jimmy Cagney at 35:40 and there's a little about Sinatra near the end but there's a whole lot less of it and it's a lot less worshipful than what Len, Marv and I saw at the Sahara. That's at 44:15.
Is he funny in this video? I think he's very funny at times and I don't think anyone who bought tickets to see this Don Rickles show was the least bit disappointed. He was extremely Don Rickles. Some of the racial stuff hasn't aged well. No one could or maybe should do that act today but Rickles was around long enough that he was more or less grandfathered in…or least, that's how I feel. But hey, you're smart. You can decide for yourself…