Name: Tony Randall on Letterman, March 20, 1986
Uploaded: 2016-07-16T03:20:55.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Tony Randall on Letterman, March 20, 1986' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2016-07-16. Transcript available. A wonderful two-segment appearance with Tony Randall.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Tony Randall on Letterman, March 20, 1986' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2016-07-16. Transcript available. A wonderful two-segment appearance with Tony Randall.

Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the program. A nice show
tonight,
eh, Paul? Yeah. We're going away right afterward, aren't we? Swinging. We're
going on a little
trip. Paul and I are going to California for the weekend. Swinging out there.
Big excitement.
My next guest, ladies and gentlemen, my first guest actually, is an actor, a
patron of the
arts, a man of fine taste, and I understand moments ago backstage he goosed one
of our
staff members. He will be appearing this Sunday at Lincoln Center in an homage
to Stravinsky.
Please welcome Mr. Tony Randall.
It's always nice to see you. It's a very nice sport jacket. Thank you. Now, is
it true?
Did you actually sneak up behind somebody backstage? Yes, I did. Now, who was
it and why did you
do it? Don't mention the name. I don't know her name. Yeah, but why did you do
it? It was
there. I didn't goose, I pinch. Oh, I see. What would be the difference? When
you pinch,
you use two fingers and you gather some flesh. Yeah? And what about the other?
You use only
one finger. And? And the rest is history. It's, well, I didn't realize there
was that
big a difference. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Now, how did the person react? I'm sure she
slapped
you silly. She asked me to marry her. Oh, yeah. Yeah, of course she did. Was
she embarrassed?
Was she surprised? No, she turned and faced me with her mazoopas and dared me
to proceed.
Oh, good Lord. Really? Well, maybe I should have the name of this person then.
Yes. All right.
Now, last time you were here, you were pushing this wine, this, like, $4 a
bottle wine that
it just, you just got in a crate of it off the dock somewhere. And tonight, I
understand
you're here to plug something else. You did it already. Well, let's get it out
of the
way. Let's just be up front about it and take care of it. Sure. Sunday night, I'm
appearing
in the Noel Stravinsky program, as you said, at Tully Hall up at the Lincoln
Center,
since it's in Broadway. What will be the nature of the presentation? Well, it'll
be all Stravinsky
in my part of it. He wrote a work for orchestra and actors called L'histoire du
soldat, the
soldier story. The soldier story. And I played the devil in it. Do you have a
little devil
suit that you wear? A real actor doesn't need artificial... Accoutrements. Aides
to the
imagination. He can make an audience think anything he wants to think. So what
will you
be wearing in your part as the devil? I have this red suit with wine and will
you be running
through this auditorium filled with classical music buffs, goosing people or
pinching people?
Any chance I get. Wouldn't you? Well, I think it's a felony, isn't it? You can't
assault somebody
like that. No, no, it's not a felony. Okay. Now, are you, you must be a big
Stravinsky fan
then, are you? Yes. Yes. He's not a, he's not a composer I love. Uh-huh. Whom I,
uh... Who
is a composer you love? Wagner? No, I don't love Wagner. Beethoven? Yes, above
all. Uh-huh.
Yes. Bach. Uh-huh. Verdi. How about, uh, uh, Sibelius? No, pardon. No, no, he's
not someone
I love and think of all the time. Uh-huh. I think of... Well, it's true.
Certain composers
I think of all day long, every day. Uh-huh. Like who? Verdi, mainly. Oh, Verdi.
His music's
always running in my head. At any time, I could stop the tape and tell you
where I am. Yeah.
So you're a pretty well-versed student of his work? Not a student at all. Just
a fan. Uh-huh.
Just a fan. And do you like all kinds of music? Do you like popular music,
contemporary music,
rock and roll? I don't like rock very much, no. Why, no? Why is that? It's, uh,
it's too
simple. It's monotonous. It's, uh, three or four chords. Uh, same level of loudness
always.
It's never soft, never louder. It has no variation. Yeah. But there must be,
there must be
some of it that you... Uh, there must be some of it that you enjoy. I mean, you
must have
heard something occasionally that strikes your fancy. Never once. Oh, no, that's...
Is
that true? True. Now, what about the Beatles? What about Elvis Presley? No.
What about Dee
Snyder? Never heard of it. Would I like Dee Snyder? Well, I think you probably
would, yeah,
because, yeah, I think you might. I think there's a good chance that you would.
No, don't think
so. Um, what about television? Do you watch a lot of television? I don't really
watch television
at all. Now, why is that? There's nothing to watch. The only thing I watch is
commercials.
Mm-hmm. I tune out the program, and then I turn it on quickly to get the
commercial to
get... Well, because they're the best thing on television. You think so? Oh,
they're the
only decently done things. Yeah. Can you give us an example? No, it's hard to
find anything
to give you an example about, but I, uh... Well, I'm glad you brought it up. I,
uh...
I feel that you can study commercials and learn about trends. Well, that's,
that's absolutely
true. And I... Because the commercials start the trends. Yeah. Or, or vice
versa. Which
is it? Now, there's a trend now, and I think it's unmistakable in commercials,
towards tears.
Making people cry? No. They cry in the commercials. Oh, I see. Yeah. And, and I'm,
I'm trying to
figure out the meaning of this trend. I think it all began with the tele...
those long-distance
telephone commercials. Oh, yeah. Where people say goodbye to each other, and
they cry, the
actors cry at them, and they call each other up. Right. Yeah. And the, the saddest
one was
the one that said, you know, "I love you, Mama." Remember that? Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. And, but
now there's one where this sergeant is saying goodbye to his swell German
buddies over in Germany,
and the other, the German fella says, "Not for first, we will meet you, you
know." And,
"Not for first, we will meet you." And, and I don't know what those guys, I don't
like
anything about their relationship. Uh-huh. But anyway, as soon as he gets to
America, he calls
them up. Uh-huh. Well, yeah. And they're all there together, waiting for his
call. It's
heartbreaking. And, but then there, there's one, uh, where it starts with a
girl, she has very
beautiful eyes, and she's looking like this, and she's, she's crying. It's a
wine commercial.
Oh. Yeah. And the fella says, "Didn't a man ever tell you he loved you before?"
Yeah. And more
tears well up all the way, and she says, "Never the right one." Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. And I think she's crying,
because he's bought her such a cheap wine. Uh-huh. If he loves her, why didn't
he buy
her champagne? Yeah. Or, or perhaps he's not the right one either. That's what
I think. Yeah.
Just a long line of losers in this woman's life. She just found out that he's
the wrong one because
he didn't buy champagne. Okay. No, I, I got another one. Oh, no, we have to do,
we have to do one now.
We have to do a commercial. We have to do a commercial, then we'll come back
and you'll
talk more about him. All right. All right? Yeah. It'll be all right. Don't
worry. We'll be right back here with Tony Randall.
Welcome back to the program. Tony Randall is here, and you were, uh, we
interrupted you in a flow. You
had something, uh, a stream of consciousness there you wanted to conclude. Yeah,
but it, it, it's ruined
now. I lost that. No, you're talking about commercials, and you just described
the one where
the woman's sobbing about the poop line. Yeah, the, the worst one of all is, um,
this child who
wants to meet Mickey Mouse. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Now, see, these people obviously
like that. Yeah,
there's this child with bleach blonde hair, and, and she's crying in the
beginning of the commercial,
and she says, "I guess I'll never meet Mickey." And then she goes, "Ha, ha, ha,
ha." You know the one I'm talking
about? Yeah. And then her father says, "I'm sorry, honey, we just don't have
the money," or something like
that. And then he comes in and says, "It's okay, we're going." And they all go,
and everything. So you
wonder what happened between the moment when he realized he was dead broke, and,
and, and he got the
money, and they went. Well, you know what happened. I think I know what
happened. Um, I think his wife
took him aside and said, "What do you mean we don't have the money?" Sure. What
am I gonna tell that
kid? Yeah. She wants to meet Mickey. And he said, "I'm sorry, honey. We just
can't cut it. I don't have
it." Right. Besides which, if I had it, I wouldn't blow it on just meeting
Mickey." And she says, "What are
you? I thought you were an American." Yeah. "Are you one of these pinko
liberals?" He says, "No, no,
don't say that. Honestly, never. I'll get the money somehow." And he goes, and
he embezzles it from his
place of business. Gee. And then they all go to Disneyland, they meet Mickey,
and everybody's happy.
Yeah, except he gets caught. No, no, that's the end. Everybody's happy. He gets
away with it. No,
he does time in a federal prison. That's what happens. Oh. And there he meets a
very high class
type of guy who's served at the highest levels of government, and he uses that
in to get a newspaper
column. Okay, sure. Yeah, why not? And then what happens? I don't know. I don't
know. I know what
happens. Extreme loyal people, extremely loyal to the government, begin to leak
the truth to him
about little things. Uh-huh. And he becomes a national hero. Yeah, except that
they insist that he
take a drug, uh, I mean, a lie detector test. Right, right. And they find drugs
in his, um,
in his eye drops. Well, this is all very interesting, uh, Mr. Randall. Now we're
going to show you
some ink blots that we have here on file, and we'll see what you can make of
those, if you will.
Okay. Um, what kind of a kid were you? Did you ever have any demands or cravings
that you, uh,
imparted to your parents like that? I must do this. What kind of a kid were you?
You were probably just
nuts, weren't you? I don't know. I don't know. I, I... Did you come from a big
family of brothers
and sisters? A lot of them? I don't remember. You don't remember if you had
brothers or sisters? No,
they're, they're, I remember some, some kids being around. I just, um... Do you
get cards at the
holidays from, uh, signed your sister, your brother? Um, they, they, they're,
people used to leave
little presents, uh, on my bed and under my bed and, and hope that I would, uh,
talk to them. Yeah.
I, uh, I went my own way. I, uh... At what age did you go your own way? About
12. About 12. Yeah. Sort of
left them behind. Yeah. I really did actually. Yeah. Do you have fond memories
of those, uh, days before
you, uh, sort of, uh... To be truthful, I had a marvelous childhood. Yeah. I
can't imagine having
a happier one. Well, I bet you were beaten up a lot though, weren't you? Yes, I
was. Really?
Uh, virtually every day of my life. No. Some neighborhood toughs or bullies
would
swat you and so forth? Yeah. Yeah. And you would probably provoke it too,
wouldn't you? No,
I tried to avoid them. Yeah. And I tried to ignore them, but they'd hit me
anyway. Yeah. Yeah.
And, uh, were, were you pretty good with your mitts? No. Yeah. And still I'm
not. Yeah. I've
never, uh, struck another human being. Um... Yeah, but you've, you've goosed
plenty of them,
haven't you? Yeah. I, I once almost hit a man in the opera. Uh-huh. Uh... He
was probably a
boar, wasn't he? Talking and... No. No, he was conducting in front of me. Oh.
Yeah. He sat there conducting. He was, uh,
Joan Sutherland and Lucille Lammermorny. He conducted incessantly, and his
hands always in my way.
And, uh, came the big scene, the mad scene, best scene in the opera, and, uh...
Yeah. That is my
favorite. He, he... He continued conducting. I suddenly grabbed his shoulders.
Stop that. I, I grabbed his
shoulders hard enough to break them both. Uh-huh. And I've since seen him many
times at the opera. Yeah.
Yeah. And he always looks... Well, sure. You're gonna hit me again. Yeah. But
he was upsetting
you and probably others around you. Everyone thanked me. Yeah. I don't blame
him. All right. Uh,
all right. If you want to go see this deal for, uh, uh, it's an homage to Stravinsky.
Yes. It's
not a deal. It's an homage to Stravinsky. Yeah. And it'd be a very nice, classy,
uh, well-executed
performance, won't it? Oh, yes. Conducted by Robert Kraft. Yeah. And you'll be
in your little red suit with
the horns. That's right. That's where you'll know me. Tony, nice to see you
again. Thank you, Dave. Good luck,
sir. Thanks for being here. We have to pause for our station identification. We'll
be right back.

Tony Randall on Letterman, March 20, 1986

Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the program. A nice show
tonight,
eh, Paul? Yeah. We're going away right afterward, aren't we? Swinging. We're
going on a little
trip. Paul and I are going to California for the weekend. Swinging out there.
Big excitement.
My next guest, ladies and gentlemen, my first guest actually, is an actor, a
patron of the
arts, a man of fine taste, and I understand moments ago backstage he goosed one
of our
staff members. He will be appearing this Sunday at Lincoln Center in an homage
to Stravinsky.
Please welcome Mr. Tony Randall.
It's always nice to see you. It's a very nice sport jacket. Thank you. Now, is
it true?
Did you actually sneak up behind somebody backstage? Yes, I did. Now, who was
it and why did you
do it? Don't mention the name. I don't know her name. Yeah, but why did you do
it? It was
there. I didn't goose, I pinch. Oh, I see. What would be the difference? When
you pinch,
you use two fingers and you gather some flesh. Yeah? And what about the other?
You use only
one finger. And? And the rest is history. It's, well, I didn't realize there
was that
big a difference. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Now, how did the person react? I'm sure she
slapped
you silly. She asked me to marry her. Oh, yeah. Yeah, of course she did. Was
she embarrassed?
Was she surprised? No, she turned and faced me with her mazoopas and dared me
to proceed.
Oh, good Lord. Really? Well, maybe I should have the name of this person then.
Yes. All right.
Now, last time you were here, you were pushing this wine, this, like, $4 a
bottle wine that
it just, you just got in a crate of it off the dock somewhere. And tonight, I
understand
you're here to plug something else. You did it already. Well, let's get it out
of the
way. Let's just be up front about it and take care of it. Sure. Sunday night, I'm
appearing
in the Noel Stravinsky program, as you said, at Tully Hall up at the Lincoln
Center,
since it's in Broadway. What will be the nature of the presentation? Well, it'll
be all Stravinsky
in my part of it. He wrote a work for orchestra and actors called L'histoire du
soldat, the
soldier story. The soldier story. And I played the devil in it. Do you have a
little devil
suit that you wear? A real actor doesn't need artificial... Accoutrements. Aides
to the
imagination. He can make an audience think anything he wants to think. So what
will you
be wearing in your part as the devil? I have this red suit with wine and will
you be running
through this auditorium filled with classical music buffs, goosing people or
pinching people?
Any chance I get. Wouldn't you? Well, I think it's a felony, isn't it? You can't
assault somebody
like that. No, no, it's not a felony. Okay. Now, are you, you must be a big
Stravinsky fan
then, are you? Yes. Yes. He's not a, he's not a composer I love. Uh-huh. Whom I,
uh... Who
is a composer you love? Wagner? No, I don't love Wagner. Beethoven? Yes, above
all. Uh-huh.
Yes. Bach. Uh-huh. Verdi. How about, uh, uh, Sibelius? No, pardon. No, no, he's
not someone
I love and think of all the time. Uh-huh. I think of... Well, it's true.
Certain composers
I think of all day long, every day. Uh-huh. Like who? Verdi, mainly. Oh, Verdi.
His music's
always running in my head. At any time, I could stop the tape and tell you
where I am. Yeah.
So you're a pretty well-versed student of his work? Not a student at all. Just
a fan. Uh-huh.
Just a fan. And do you like all kinds of music? Do you like popular music,
contemporary music,
rock and roll? I don't like rock very much, no. Why, no? Why is that? It's, uh,
it's too
simple. It's monotonous. It's, uh, three or four chords. Uh, same level of loudness
always.
It's never soft, never louder. It has no variation. Yeah. But there must be,
there must be
some of it that you... Uh, there must be some of it that you enjoy. I mean, you
must have
heard something occasionally that strikes your fancy. Never once. Oh, no, that's...
Is
that true? True. Now, what about the Beatles? What about Elvis Presley? No.
What about Dee
Snyder? Never heard of it. Would I like Dee Snyder? Well, I think you probably
would, yeah,
because, yeah, I think you might. I think there's a good chance that you would.
No, don't think
so. Um, what about television? Do you watch a lot of television? I don't really
watch television
at all. Now, why is that? There's nothing to watch. The only thing I watch is
commercials.
Mm-hmm. I tune out the program, and then I turn it on quickly to get the
commercial to
get... Well, because they're the best thing on television. You think so? Oh,
they're the
only decently done things. Yeah. Can you give us an example? No, it's hard to
find anything
to give you an example about, but I, uh... Well, I'm glad you brought it up. I,
uh...
I feel that you can study commercials and learn about trends. Well, that's,
that's absolutely
true. And I... Because the commercials start the trends. Yeah. Or, or vice
versa. Which
is it? Now, there's a trend now, and I think it's unmistakable in commercials,
towards tears.
Making people cry? No. They cry in the commercials. Oh, I see. Yeah. And, and I'm,
I'm trying to
figure out the meaning of this trend. I think it all began with the tele...
those long-distance
telephone commercials. Oh, yeah. Where people say goodbye to each other, and
they cry, the
actors cry at them, and they call each other up. Right. Yeah. And the, the saddest
one was
the one that said, you know, "I love you, Mama." Remember that? Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. And, but
now there's one where this sergeant is saying goodbye to his swell German
buddies over in Germany,
and the other, the German fella says, "Not for first, we will meet you, you
know." And,
"Not for first, we will meet you." And, and I don't know what those guys, I don't
like
anything about their relationship. Uh-huh. But anyway, as soon as he gets to
America, he calls
them up. Uh-huh. Well, yeah. And they're all there together, waiting for his
call. It's
heartbreaking. And, but then there, there's one, uh, where it starts with a
girl, she has very
beautiful eyes, and she's looking like this, and she's, she's crying. It's a
wine commercial.
Oh. Yeah. And the fella says, "Didn't a man ever tell you he loved you before?"
Yeah. And more
tears well up all the way, and she says, "Never the right one." Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. And I think she's crying,
because he's bought her such a cheap wine. Uh-huh. If he loves her, why didn't
he buy
her champagne? Yeah. Or, or perhaps he's not the right one either. That's what
I think. Yeah.
Just a long line of losers in this woman's life. She just found out that he's
the wrong one because
he didn't buy champagne. Okay. No, I, I got another one. Oh, no, we have to do,
we have to do one now.
We have to do a commercial. We have to do a commercial, then we'll come back
and you'll
talk more about him. All right. All right? Yeah. It'll be all right. Don't
worry. We'll be right back here with Tony Randall.
Welcome back to the program. Tony Randall is here, and you were, uh, we
interrupted you in a flow. You
had something, uh, a stream of consciousness there you wanted to conclude. Yeah,
but it, it, it's ruined
now. I lost that. No, you're talking about commercials, and you just described
the one where
the woman's sobbing about the poop line. Yeah, the, the worst one of all is, um,
this child who
wants to meet Mickey Mouse. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Now, see, these people obviously
like that. Yeah,
there's this child with bleach blonde hair, and, and she's crying in the
beginning of the commercial,
and she says, "I guess I'll never meet Mickey." And then she goes, "Ha, ha, ha,
ha." You know the one I'm talking
about? Yeah. And then her father says, "I'm sorry, honey, we just don't have
the money," or something like
that. And then he comes in and says, "It's okay, we're going." And they all go,
and everything. So you
wonder what happened between the moment when he realized he was dead broke, and,
and, and he got the
money, and they went. Well, you know what happened. I think I know what
happened. Um, I think his wife
took him aside and said, "What do you mean we don't have the money?" Sure. What
am I gonna tell that
kid? Yeah. She wants to meet Mickey. And he said, "I'm sorry, honey. We just
can't cut it. I don't have
it." Right. Besides which, if I had it, I wouldn't blow it on just meeting
Mickey." And she says, "What are
you? I thought you were an American." Yeah. "Are you one of these pinko
liberals?" He says, "No, no,
don't say that. Honestly, never. I'll get the money somehow." And he goes, and
he embezzles it from his
place of business. Gee. And then they all go to Disneyland, they meet Mickey,
and everybody's happy.
Yeah, except he gets caught. No, no, that's the end. Everybody's happy. He gets
away with it. No,
he does time in a federal prison. That's what happens. Oh. And there he meets a
very high class
type of guy who's served at the highest levels of government, and he uses that
in to get a newspaper
column. Okay, sure. Yeah, why not? And then what happens? I don't know. I don't
know. I know what
happens. Extreme loyal people, extremely loyal to the government, begin to leak
the truth to him
about little things. Uh-huh. And he becomes a national hero. Yeah, except that
they insist that he
take a drug, uh, I mean, a lie detector test. Right, right. And they find drugs
in his, um,
in his eye drops. Well, this is all very interesting, uh, Mr. Randall. Now we're
going to show you
some ink blots that we have here on file, and we'll see what you can make of
those, if you will.
Okay. Um, what kind of a kid were you? Did you ever have any demands or cravings
that you, uh,
imparted to your parents like that? I must do this. What kind of a kid were you?
You were probably just
nuts, weren't you? I don't know. I don't know. I, I... Did you come from a big
family of brothers
and sisters? A lot of them? I don't remember. You don't remember if you had
brothers or sisters? No,
they're, they're, I remember some, some kids being around. I just, um... Do you
get cards at the
holidays from, uh, signed your sister, your brother? Um, they, they, they're,
people used to leave
little presents, uh, on my bed and under my bed and, and hope that I would, uh,
talk to them. Yeah.
I, uh, I went my own way. I, uh... At what age did you go your own way? About
12. About 12. Yeah. Sort of
left them behind. Yeah. I really did actually. Yeah. Do you have fond memories
of those, uh, days before
you, uh, sort of, uh... To be truthful, I had a marvelous childhood. Yeah. I
can't imagine having
a happier one. Well, I bet you were beaten up a lot though, weren't you? Yes, I
was. Really?
Uh, virtually every day of my life. No. Some neighborhood toughs or bullies
would
swat you and so forth? Yeah. Yeah. And you would probably provoke it too,
wouldn't you? No,
I tried to avoid them. Yeah. And I tried to ignore them, but they'd hit me
anyway. Yeah. Yeah.
And, uh, were, were you pretty good with your mitts? No. Yeah. And still I'm
not. Yeah. I've
never, uh, struck another human being. Um... Yeah, but you've, you've goosed
plenty of them,
haven't you? Yeah. I, I once almost hit a man in the opera. Uh-huh. Uh... He
was probably a
boar, wasn't he? Talking and... No. No, he was conducting in front of me. Oh.
Yeah. He sat there conducting. He was, uh,
Joan Sutherland and Lucille Lammermorny. He conducted incessantly, and his
hands always in my way.
And, uh, came the big scene, the mad scene, best scene in the opera, and, uh...
Yeah. That is my
favorite. He, he... He continued conducting. I suddenly grabbed his shoulders.
Stop that. I, I grabbed his
shoulders hard enough to break them both. Uh-huh. And I've since seen him many
times at the opera. Yeah.
Yeah. And he always looks... Well, sure. You're gonna hit me again. Yeah. But
he was upsetting
you and probably others around you. Everyone thanked me. Yeah. I don't blame
him. All right. Uh,
all right. If you want to go see this deal for, uh