As a kid, I somehow always enjoyed it when Jack E. Leonard was on television. I didn't understand half of what he said but I liked his rhythms…the way he said whatever the hell it was he was saying. Often, he could make absolutely nothing sound like a real joke…and he didn't even wait for the laugh, if any. Whether the audience laughed or not, he'd just roll right on into the next line as if nothing had happened. He dealt mostly in insults but they were relatively malice-free insults and for every three or four he lobbed at others, he'd direct at least one towards himself.
He was on TV a lot and for a few years there, he was always talking about a forthcoming cartoon series in which he'd play some sort of sheriff who was the fastest fattest gun in the west. He was animated at times as a mailman selling Post Alpha-Bits cereal but I never saw any trace of the promised western series.
As an adult — if you could ever call me that — I still didn't understand half of what the man said but I could enjoy the delivery. I liked him more than I liked Don Rickles, a man of whom Jack E. once said, "I don't mind him doing my act but the son-of-a-bitch stole my head!" Here's ten minutes of Leonard just jabbering semi-coherently on The Merv Griffin Show…