Another longtime comedy veteran has left us. Here's the New York Times obit for Gene Baylos and as you'll see, he had a long career in comedy, though he never quite managed to become a household name. (The one appearance of his that readers of this weblog will probably remember was on The Dick Van Dyke Show. He played the bum who found a lost script and tried to extort money from the writing staff for its return.)
Unmentioned in the Times obit is that Mr. Baylos was famed among other comedians for being cheap and pushy, though in a lovable way. Every time I've been with comics of his generation and his name has come up, there's been a story — told, almost admiringly — of Gene's ability to get someone else to pay the check or drive him to the Catskills. One technique for the latter would be that Gene would get booked in one of the hotels up there and would find out that, say, Corbett Monica was booked nearby and would be driving up from Manhattan around Noon. A little before Noon, Baylos would park his car near where he knew Monica would be turning onto the parkway, put up the hood and wait. When he saw Monica's car, he'd flag it down, plead engine trouble and ask if Corbett could drive him. At least, that's the way I heard Monica tell the story at a Friar's Club table full of comedians, all of whom nodded that he'd done that to them, as well.
The character Billy Crystal played in Mr. Saturday Night has been identified as an amalgam of Alan King, Milton Berle, Buddy Hackett and Sid Caesar…but there was a lot of Baylos in there. Throughout, Crystal's old comedian keeps using the story about how he walked into the house one day, found his wife in bed with his best friend and said, "Murray…I have to. But you?" That was a famous joke from the act of Mr. Gene Baylos.
There was a period in the seventies when Baylos became notorious around Johnny Carson's Tonight Show staff for lobbying to get on the show. Johnny didn't want him or that style of comedy any longer, but Baylos wouldn't take "no" for an answer, and began turning up in the Tonight Show offices or phoning up employees there, acting as if he'd been booked and they just needed to decide on the date. The show's producer Fred DeCordova told me that Baylos would just walk into his office and say, "I ran into Johnny in the hall and he said to check with you if next Wednesday could work." DeCordova never fell for the trick, and Baylos never got on the show then…but he did become quite notorious around the office.
There was a large bulletin board there where cards were pinned-up to list upcoming guests. One day, a planned Guest Host fell out and just to be silly, one of the writers stuck the name of Gene Baylos up there when no one was looking. An NBC publicist came by later to jot down a list of who was scheduled for upcoming shows and, not getting the joke, copied down everything on the board and put that information into a press release. Sure enough, TV Guide printed a listing for The Tonight Show with "Guest host, Gene Baylos." (This is a true story. If it sounds familiar to anyone who's read my comic books, I used the situation once in an issue of Crossfire.)
Mr. Baylos, of course, was ecstatic to find that not only had he finally been booked for the Carson show but that he'd be sitting in for Johnny. He bombarded the office with calls to make plans but was repeatedly told that it was a mistake; that he was not going to appear as host or guest, and that Bill Cosby would be behind the desk that evening. Legend has it — I'm not sure I believe this part — that Baylos showed up at NBC on the day in question, waving a copy of TV Guide at the security guards who had been alerted not to let him in. I'm sorry they didn't at least give him a few minutes on the broadcast. I'll bet he would have been funny.