Here's another episode of The Phil Silvers Show, aka Sgt. Bilko. It's called "The Eating Contest" and there's a great story behind it. I hope it's true. This was told to me by none other than Phil Silvers and if it's not 100% accurate, blame him. Nat Hiken, who was the guy behind that series, wrote the tale of Bilko's platoon betting another platoon that their man could out-eat the other platoon's big eater. To play Bilko's guy, he hired a very heavy man.
It wasn't working in rehearsals and Hiken decided the remedy was to replace the very heavy man with a very thin man. Silvers claimed that Hiken leafed through an Academy Players Directory — which was like a mugbook of actors looking for work — and picked out the guys with the skinniest faces he could find. One they called in to audition was a fellow who had more or less given up acting and who was now making most of his income working in the art department of an advertising agency.
But he got the role and he was so good that Hiken wrote him into another episode later. Those two appearances led to other work and this part-time actor became a full-time actor, though he did later write and illustrate a number of children's books. Years later, when Hiken was casting his other TV sitcom, Car 54, Where Are You?, he hired that actor for one of the lead roles. It was Fred Gwynne. Some of you might know him better as Herman Munster.
There are biographies of Fred Gwynne that tell a somewhat different story but that's the one Phil Silvers told me. And as you'll see, Gwynne is very, very good in this episode…
Two other things you might notice: One is how many actors are in this and how many have speaking parts. A lot of episodes of The Phil Silvers Show had many, many sets and many, many actors and it was a pretty expensive show to do. It ran for four seasons and Silvers told me it could have run two or three more but CBS was eager to move it into syndication and recoup some of its deficits. Again, I don't know if that's true but it was hard to not believe Phil Silvers, the man who could talk anyone into anything.
And those of you who love the musical Li'l Abner may recognize the actor playing the other platoon's eating champ. It's Bern Hoffman, who played Earthquake McGoon (the world's dirtiest wrassler) in the movie and the Broadway show. The episode was shot before the musical was cast but he was in other Bilko episodes that seem to have been filmed while the play was still running in New York. On Car 54 also, Hiken hired a lot of folks out of plays then running in New York.