Name: Bill Dana on Letterman, June 24, 1986
Uploaded: 2017-05-28T04:20:42.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Bill Dana on Letterman, June 24, 1986' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2017-05-28. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Bill Dana on Letterman, June 24, 1986' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2017-05-28. Transcript available.

My next guest was a writer on the Steve Allen Tonight Show when he created a
character named
Jose Jimenez. Here is a piece of tape now to refresh your memories of that
particular man.
What is your name?
My name is Jose Jimenez.
Hi, Mrs. Hackney.
Hello, Mrs. Hackney. Do you want me to put this in the bedroom?
Oh, no, just leave it right there, please.
Okie dokie.
Oh, this certainly is a beautiful place, so tastefully furnished.
Yes, it really is.
Everything is very expensive here, you know, isn't it beautiful?
Look at over here. Isn't that beautiful?
Oh, is that a Picasso?
No, that is a painting.
Folks, please say hello now to Bill Dana.
Hey, Bill, it's good to see you. You see Paul?
Sure.
How you doing?
I'm terrific.
This is, I mean, the mixed emotions that are going on here with the accolades
and all of the talking about the old times.
Well, we're happy to have you here.
Oh, and then to go 180 degrees in the other direction, to have a fraud perpetrated
here, Mitch Gaylord, to have his head airbrushed on my body.
No, no, no, I mean, come on, let's, there's got to be truth in advertising.
What did we see there? Now, that was the Bill Dana show?
That is the Inglourious Black and White, CBN has that on now. It's in New York,
it's every Friday nights.
But what was the name of the show originally?
It was called, very clever tie-in with me, the Bill Dana show.
Yeah. Was there another Bill Dana show? Or was that the...
Uh, no. Well, yeah, there was the Bill Dana show, which was the fourth network.
That was the United Network show from, the Bill Dana show from Las Vegas.
But this show had Don Adams as Byron Glick, the hotel detective, and when that
show got canceled, this was in 64, they transliterated that character and they
put him in the James Bond business and became Maxwell Smart.
Yeah. It's interesting that your character, Jose Jimenez, you were, you came up,
how did you come up with the character? Let's just start there.
I said, uh, the awareness of the dialect came years ago. I was in San Juan,
Puerto Rico, and I met a guy down there, it was a lovely guy, spoke English
quite well, but he had this accent that just wouldn't compensate for him.
I said, what do you do? He said, I am the Dutch representative. I said, how
nice, you're with the Netherlands government.
He said, no, no, no, no, I am the Dutch representative. I said, Holland, a Tula
bus? No, I am the only Dutch representative in San Juan.
I said, you're with the United Nations. No, I'm the Dutch representative.
Dutch, blim it, Chrysler.
And, uh, true story, and granted you that I've been driving a Haguay ever since.
Uh, so that was the, uh, you decided then that it might be.
That, that gave, I was going to Emerson College in Boston then, and that, that.
So you were just a kid at the time.
I was just a, just a kid.
Well, it was after the late unpleasantness against the Hun, World War II, I was
in that.
And you started doing the character on the Steve Allen show?
What happened was, Steve, we, we were back here.
I started with Steve Allen, the Hudson Theater, back in late, uh, 54, early 55.
And we went, uh, I was, uh, a writer, and we went out to the coast.
Don Hinckley and I used to write a thing called the Nutley, Hinckley, Butley, Winkley
Report.
It was the first, uh, the weekly Nutley, Hinckley, Butley, Winkley Report.
It was, uh, a send-up of Huntley and Brinkley.
And it was always reporting in shallow about what's happening around the
country.
This was 1959, pre-Christmas USA.
I've got to borrow a pencil to do this right.
And, uh, the thing was, there was going to be a school for Santa Clauses.
And I came up with a joke that if Santa Claus were, uh, were Latino and taught
you to, uh, to laugh,
ho, ho, ho would be spelled like this.
Anyway, it was Pat Harrington.
He said, we're here with an instructor in a Santa Claus school.
What is your name, sir?
And what do you teach Santa Claus?
My name, Jose Jimenez.
I do, I do the Santa, I teach, I do a Santa Claus, I teach a Santa Claus to
speak.
Okay, that's the first joke.
What do you teach him to say?
I teach him to say, oh, this won't come up so good.
Ho, ho, ho, it's spelled J-O, J-O, J-O.
And, and the rest is just it.
But the, uh, the character, the character was, was huge at the time, wasn't it?
It was just out of control.
Hang on a second, we'll, uh, do a commercial and then we'll be right back here
with Bill Dana.
Don't worry.
Bill Dana is there.
Uh, now, the, now, the character became synonymous with the, synonymous with
the space program, didn't it?
Yeah.
Yeah.
In fact, in the right stuff, the motion picture.
Right.
You, you, uh, you see that identified there.
Uh, the Jose was the mascot.
As a matter of fact, I'm so proud.
One of the, the first words from an American on the ground to American going
into, uh, space was, okay, Jose, you're on your way.
And, uh, Jose became sort of the, the, well, not sort of, he was the mascot and
was the, the first honorary astronaut.
We just did the, uh, they honored Al Shepard as the, the Mercury 7 scholarship
fund 25 years ago.
Can you imagine that?
No, it's hard to believe.
And, uh, 1961, May 5th was our first suborbital flight with Al Shepard.
You were on the, uh, the Ed Sullivan show many, many times?
Oh, yeah, I did that.
The King of Comedy.
That was a kick.
That's right.
Uh, and what do we have here?
This is, uh, the laughter prescription.
Yeah.
I did that with, uh, Lawrence Peter.
Uh, it's on, listed on the Secret Service in the bookstores, if you ask.
They did it with Valentine.
And what, what is the premise here?
Well, it's the, it, it spun off of Norman Cousins' book, The Anatomy of an Illness.
The fact that laughter, that feeling good is really not only psychically, but
physically good for you.
You, you don't believe that, do you?
Yeah, I just did the book on it.
I don't believe it, no.
Give us an example of what's in here.
Well, there's a, uh, one of the, the sections I get, uh, I, that I use from
time to time when I, when I, uh, go out and do little things for, for folks.
Now, when you feel, when you don't feel, when you feel off a little bit, are
you able to correct that with a good laugh?
That's right.
Whatever my ailment is, I tell it a joke, and I'm a, I'm.
Tell us a quick joke here.
We're just nearly out of time.
Oh, we are?
Let's take a look from the book.
You got time for one in the book?
Sure.
Okay.
All right, say, for example, it's, you know, this is my first time with you.
I'll be here a lot, I know, because I've been such a hit to you tonight, that,
uh, I have a sense of pride.
And if you want to get across a feeling of pride, you can tell a joke about a
75-year-old man walks into a confessional booth.
He says, Father, I don't know how to tell you this.
I'm a traveler man.
I said, thank God I got my health.
And me, a 75-year-old man, I'm in a confession, I'm in a, uh, a motel, Father,
next to me is a beautiful young lady.
I don't know how it happened, Father, but over the weekend, I made love to her
18 times.
And the priest said, well, you better say, at least 18 Hail Marys.
He said, why?
I'm not Catholic.
I said, well, what are you talking to me for?
He said, I'm telling everybody.
Well, nice to see you.
Thanks for coming by.
And, uh, we'll try and get, uh, Jack Duvall back here tomorrow night, hopefully.
Have a nice evening, folks.
Thank you very much.