I sometimes tell people that I got into "show business" (including the comic book business) for the anecdotes. I love great stories about things that happened and like most folks, I often settle for "probably happened" or even "might have happened." I have sometimes repeated a story acknowledging it might be spurious and saying, "I hope this actually happened."
For instance: In the comic book field, there's a tale about a freelancer working for DC Comics who grabbed one of their editors and dangled him out a very high window. I don't know how many times I heard that from people who claim to have been there and witnessed it.
The name of the freelancer changed. The name of the editor changed. The reason for the dangling changed. The number of stories-up the window was changed. But either lots of freelancers dangled lots of editors out windows there or the tale has been reimagined by a great many tellers. I doubt it ever happened even once.
Here's a clip of Billy Crystal on with David Letterman, telling a Redd Foxx story I've probably heard from a dozen different people who claim to have been there and witnessed it. I don't know who told it to me first but I wrote about a version of it in a column I did in 1996. You can read it on this very blog at this link.
The story is always about Redd Foxx but the name of the act that preceded him changes from telling to telling and the punchline is always the play-off with the theme from Sanford and Son. Some of the other details are flexible.
There are a few things amiss with Billy's story. The clip starts with a mention of the MGM Hotel and a mention of him being at a fight between Ken Norton and Larry Holmes in the afternoon. The way the clip is cut, we can't tell if he said the fight took place at the MGM but in reality, Norton fought Holmes in the evening of Friday, June 9, 1978 but not at the MGM. The fight was at Caesars Palace.
Also, Redd's 2:30 AM show probably wasn't at The Frontier Hotel. It was probably at the Silverbird Hotel, which is where Foxx played in 1978 and did, as the ad above shows, a 2:30 AM show on Friday and Saturday nights. And without further adieu, here's Billy…
What especially intrigues me is that the story is about Foxx doing a show with almost no one in the audience…and I've met so many people who claim they were in the audience for that performance. If this actually happened, maybe the reason so many people claim to have been there for it was that it happened more than once. Maybe that's all Redd Foxx ever did at his 2:30 AM shows.
I do know Jack Goldfinger, the magician Crystal says was on the stage just before Redd and the next time I see Jack, I'm going to ask him about this. In the meantime, you can decide for yourself if it actually occurred and if you believe Billy Crystal was present when it occurred. He sure sounds convincing but so did everyone else who ever told this anecdote.
One other thing: You'll notice Mr. Crystal says that before the show, someone was hawking Redd's comedy record, You Gotta Wash Your Ass. I posted its cover at the top of this article and if you can't tell, the thing on the right is the rear end of a donkey. The joke might have evoked at least a little laughter if you could have perceived that.
The dates check out on that since it came out in 1975. I wrote in the above-linked article that as a collector of funny albums, I was always intrigued by the sheer number of different "party records" (i.e., dirty records) Foxx made and how many zillions of them were sold. I also wrote…
I always wondered what was in those albums. The jackets divulged nothing about the contents but I somehow knew my parents wouldn't be thrilled to catch me buying one. It was many years later that I came across one in a second-hand shop and bought it, wondering just where all the others had vanished.
I took it home, put it on my turntable and…well, I made it through about half of the first side before giving up. There were a lot of jokes about women being basically worthless and stupid and men being even more worthless and stupider. There were a lot of references to body parts not generally itemized in mixed company. I didn't laugh but the audience on the album sure did, proving that you can laugh at anything if you're drunk enough.
Well, the Redd Foxx record I listened to was You Gotta Wash Your Ass and I thought it was pretty poor. You may feel otherwise if you listen to it and you can listen to it here. Good luck.