Name: Lou Jacobi on Letterman, October 6, 1982
Uploaded: 2015-11-30T05:47:34.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Lou Jacobi on Letterman, October 6, 1982' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2015-11-30. Transcript available. The great Lou Jacobi in a rare television appearance.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Lou Jacobi on Letterman, October 6, 1982' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2015-11-30. Transcript available. The great Lou Jacobi in a rare television appearance.

Paul Mooney is here tonight, and my first guest is one of the best-liked and
most versatile actors in show business.
His current film is My Favorite Year. Welcome, please, Mr. Lou Jacoby.
Very nice to meet you. I've seen you in many, many films and always look
forward to the parts you play, and you do a very nice job.
The new film, My Favorite Year, I guess, Peter O'Toole, and you brought a
little bit of it we're going to take a look at here.
Thank you.
Okay, do you want to tell us what we're going to see first?
Well, it's the introductory scene. We're all looking forward for the great Alan
Swan to show up, which was Errol Flynn, but he's taking the part of Errol Flynn.
Now, the film is loosely based on your show of shows, right?
The show of shows, "A Year in the Life of Mel Brooks When He Squired Errol
Flynn." It was quite a job.
And this particular one, he takes him up to meet his family in the Bronx,
Jewish family in the Bronx, and I play Uncle Morty.
Okay. So, Errol Flynn, the big star, is coming to meet the family of one of the
writers on the show.
Right.
Okay. All right. And this would be Uncle Morty when you see him. Take a look at
the monitors here, and at home, go next door and use your neighbor's TV.
Uncle Morty, how odd to find you here.
Why? I just caught the 745 elevator down from 6.
I assume Aunt Sadie is here also?
Not yet, but she'll be.
Uncle Morty, say hello to Alan Swan.
I didn't catch the name.
So, Mr. Swan, now that we sat nice, drove bread together, shared a glass of
wine, I feel I know you a little.
Morty, I feel I know you even better.
Good. Then you won't mind if I ask you a question.
Uncle Morty?
What are you worried? It's not personal. What was I, born in Minskipinsk? I
know my way around.
Morty, ask your question.
That paternity wrap a couple of years ago.
Morty!
Morty, shut up!
Didn't you go all the way?
Uncle Morty!
Uncle Morty.
And your wife, I guess, is sitting there in her wedding outfit?
In the wedding outfit, yes.
And I'm trying to take care of her as best as possible.
But it was interesting to act with Peter O'Toole.
As a matter of fact, I'm always in awe, you know, acting with sirs and all that.
And I got together with them because we had the same director.
I was in "Tenth Man," Padachewski's "Tenth Man," and Sir Tyron Guthrie, the
great director, directed me.
And he says, "Oh, yes, I was in the Birmingham Company," he says, "in England
many years ago."
And Tony Guthrie, he says, was my director.
And I was bumbling through my lines, Lou.
And he said, "Peter, stop! Go home, learn your lines, come back here tomorrow
morning, and astonish us!"
He was mildest to work with.
Yeah, this was, in addition to working with Peter O'Toole, and you mentioned Mr.
Guthrie, you worked with some other great writers, haven't you?
Well, I worked with writers and directors.
I want to say particularly that Dick Benjamin's first job as a director here
was wonderful.
And the script was great by Norm Steinberg and Palumbo, and the cast was
wonderful, a top, marvelous cast.
So it was a great atmosphere to work.
It was great.
Yeah, yeah.
Now, tell me about working with Woody Allen.
How did you first meet Woody Allen?
Well, that's remarkable.
I was in "Come Blow Your Horn," the Neil Simon's first play, and he said he's
going to write a play for me.
Woody's going to-- I don't know about Woody.
What year was this, roughly?
This was 1966.
And Jack Rollins had the property together with Charlie Jaffe and Max Gordon.
And they said, "Come down to the Blue Angels," a club on 54th Street, and I see
and watch Woody Allen work.
It was a remarkable thing.
He was very quiet, very shy, talked very quietly, looked down, and he kept
talking, doing his own material,
and suddenly I says, "Gee, he's going to write a play for me."
And suddenly he comes out with this line.
He says, "Ladies and gentlemen, I was just divorced.
My wife is emotionally immature."
And I'll give you an example of what I mean by immature.
She'd come into my bathroom while I'm taking a bath and sink my boats.
So I says, "My God, what a tremendous mind.
What a ser-- you know, to give a relationship in one line."
Now, and for him to write a play for me was remarkable, and little did I dream
that the guy was a genius.
I thought he was brilliantly talented, but it was a wonderful lift for me.
I will always be grateful to Woody and Jack Rollins and Charlie Jaffe for
having me in that play.
It ran 80 weeks.
This was "Don't Drink the Water."
Don't Drink the Water.
And he also wrote--
And then he wrote, "It Was Everything You Want to Know About Sex."
Okay, yeah, hold it right there, and on that note, we'll be back.
We have to pause here for a commercial.
We'll continue talking with him.
Lou Jacoby is here.
Tell me about the part that you played in the Woody Allen movie, "Everything
You Want to Know About Sex."
Well, it was a transvestite.
And I said, and he says, "It's for you," and he wrote for me.
And I'll play anything that Woody tells me, you know what I mean?
And it was a wonderful part, you know, you get dressed in women's clothes and
the whole thing.
Did you do it--was it a complete dress-up job?
Whoa, terrific, you know, with the black brassiere and the black tights.
And I played it sensually and the whole thing.
And it was in the master bedroom.
Always, when we went someplace, I went up to the master bedroom.
I excused myself and got into these women's clothes.
And then, of course, I jumped out of the window.
The cops chased me and so on.
It was a wonderful part.
Of course, I played it in a high voice.
Uh-huh.
Didn't play it in a low voice.
And I kept the handkerchief over my mustache behind it, but it was an
experience, you know.
Did it, not having ever really done it, quite to that extent, did it make you
feel differently?
Well, I'd say this, as an actor, if you put on a dress, you act differently,
you know what I mean, if you put on a tuxedo.
But I mean, clothes play a tremendous part in the thing.
As a matter of fact, the face, as you know, is also a very important thing.
The way I got into the business is crazy because I didn't always look like this.
Oh.
I looked across between, get this, Robert Taylor and Tyrone Power.
Now, I couldn't get any chance.
Too good-looking.
Too beautiful.
Yeah.
Can you get that?
Yeah.
The kind of rejection?
Too beautiful.
I got sick of it.
Sick of it because I knew I had something else, you know.
And how can I fight that?
No, you can't fight it.
No.
I went to a plastic surgeon, and I said, "Look, I want to be a character actor."
And he made this, and I've been working ever since.
Really, the American dream comes here.
And that's amazing.
Now, when you're working with Mr. Allen, can you go up to him and say, "I got
an idea to change this," or is it pretty much, you're doing it his way and that's
it?
No, he's quite flexible, but he's a remarkable mind.
And I'll never forget in "Don't Drink the Water," David, you know, we play a
caterer from Newark who's caught behind the Iron Curtain.
We wind up in the American Embassy, and the Russian comes in, you know, and I've
got a mason ring here, and the gag is this, "Don't come near me!"
I said, "If you come near me, there's enough nitroglycerin in this ring to blow
you to pieces."
You know, got a terrific laugh.
Comes in the next day, Woody, very quiet on, "Lou, I got a better gag."
I said, "What do you mean, better? This is terrific!"
I said, "Shh, got a better gag."
When he starts coming near you, you get up, "Can I get up in a minute?"
I said, "Sure, come near me! If you come near me, I'll..."
You know, and I got my finger, and he says, "I'll..."
And I take out my hand. He said, "But that's a finger!"
I says, "It may look like a finger, but it's a flesh-colored 45!"
This is how he builds a gag. It's a fantastic gag.
But what he's done, they're terrific, you know, very great.
Plastic surgery, huh?
Yeah, everything. That's the way it all starts.
We have to pause for station identification.
We'll be back with Lou Jacoby, Ann and Nancy Wilson from Roger here,
and also comedian Paul Mooney.
Thank you very much.
Mr. Lou Jacoby is here.
Also, later on in the program, from Hart, Ann and Nancy Wilson.
Now, tomorrow night, our good friend Richard Lewis will be here.
This will be interesting. Former owner of the Oakland A's, Charlie Finley, will
be joining us.
Also, we answer our viewer mail.
Now, talking about Woody Allen, tell me about working with Neil Simon.
Well, it was a wonderful opportunity.
In 1961, he writes a play, "Come Blow Your Horn."
And the part of the father, I created the part of the father, which is his
father, too.
This is my building.
This is Neil Simon's father.
Yeah, Neil Simon's father.
And it's very rare, David, that an actor can play his own father on the stage,
you know, and scream.
And yell.
You don't have to go to psychiatrists, right?
So now, you're actually playing your father, but it's the part of Neil Simon's
father.
I'm playing my own father, who was a wonderful, terrific guy, a happy grouch
guy, a nice guy.
And I've got an older son who's a kind of a bum, you know.
And I keep saying, "You're a bum."
He says, "Dad, why am I a bum?"
I says, "How old are you?"
He says, "28."
I says, "Are you married?"
He says, "No, then you're a bum."
And I kept screaming, "This is terrific," because my father kept calling me
that, you know.
Nice guy, wanted me to get married and so on.
And after the whole play, my father saw the play.
I says, "Pa, how did you like the father I played?"
He says, "You know, Lou, I know fathers like that."
Now, I know that the play had its 25th anniversary recently.
Oh, easy, yeah.
I recently revived it again, you know, in the Burt Reynolds Theatre, and then
in L.A.
I played it for four weeks.
How do people react to it now?
Oh, still, it's wonderful.
I have a true story that happened at the Burt Reynolds Theatre, where the kid,
he doesn't want to go into the business, see?
And he wrote me a letter, see?
And I say, "So what's the wind-up?"
He say to the kid, "My sister, Gussie, has two grandchildren, and I have a bum
and a letter."
See?
So I come outside, and an old woman said to me,
"Lou, Mr. Jacoby, I want to introduce you to my three bums."
And no letter.
And she introduces me to her three daughters.
Isn't that remarkable?
Where did they look?
That's how timely the play is.
It's remarkable.
It's a classic, you know?
Did they look bummy to you?
Did they look kind of deadbeats, pretty much?
They looked, yes.
When you're working around the country like that, a lot of times people are not
necessarily accustomed
to going to live stage plays.
Do they sometimes get over-involved?
Oh, my!
I have to tell you, David Dissaturian.
Benny Baker, a lot of people, a few people may know, a wonderful comedian.
He was my understudy, you know, in L.A.
And he goes out there in the audience to watch me do the part.
And I come to the part where I say to the kid, "Don't you dare raise your voice
to me?"
He says, "You're not too big yet to get a good slap across your face."
I says, "What a thing to happen to a father that a father should have to stand."
And this guy stands up.
He says, "It's a lot of crap!"
He got so involved in the play.
I heard he eats a lot of crap.
So what does that do?
What do you do there?
You take a break?
No, I just take a break.
I have the audience laugh.
And then we go on with the play.
You know, you can't ad-lib with a guy.
With a guy like that, you don't ad-lib.
That's terrific.
No, I guess not.
He identifies too much with his father.
Yeah, yeah.
So, and the film now?
It looks like it's going to be another big success for you.
Oh, it's taken off like it.
And I'm so happy, you know, because you work very hard on a film.
And I'm very happy for Dick Benjamin because it's his first directorial job.
And everybody mentions another terrific job that you do in the play.
Well, thank you very much.
I try to help.
Oh, you're terrific.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much for being here.
Wonderful being here.
We'll be right there.
Lou Jacobi, ladies and gentlemen.
We'll be right back with Anne and Nancy Wilson from Heart.

Lou Jacobi on Letterman, October 6, 1982

Paul Mooney is here tonight, and my first guest is one of the best-liked and
most versatile actors in show business.
His current film is My Favorite Year. Welcome, please, Mr. Lou Jacoby.
Very nice to meet you. I've seen you in many, many films and always look
forward to the parts you play, and you do a very nice job.
The new film, My Favorite Year, I guess, Peter O'Toole, and you brought a
little bit of it we're going to take a look at here.
Thank you.
Okay, do you want to tell us what we're going to see first?
Well, it's the introductory scene. We're all looking forward for the great Alan
Swan to show up, which was Errol Flynn, but he's taking the part of Errol Flynn.
Now, the film is loosely based on your show of shows, right?
The show of shows, "A Year in the Life of Mel Brooks When He Squired Errol
Flynn." It was quite a job.
And this particular one, he takes him up to meet his family in the Bronx,
Jewish family in the Bronx, and I play Uncle Morty.
Okay. So, Errol Flynn, the big star, is coming to meet the family of one of the
writers on the show.
Right.
Okay. All right. And this would be Uncle Morty when you see him. Take a look at
the monitors here, and at home, go next door and use your neighbor's TV.
Uncle Morty, how odd to find you here.
Why? I just caught the 745 elevator down from 6.
I assume Aunt Sadie is here also?
Not yet, but she'll be.
Uncle Morty, say hello to Alan Swan.
I didn't catch the name.
So, Mr. Swan, now that we sat nice, drove bread together, shared a glass of
wine, I feel I know you a little.
Morty, I feel I know you even better.
Good. Then you won't mind if I ask you a question.
Uncle Morty?
What are you worried? It's not personal. What was I, born in Minskipinsk? I
know my way around.
Morty, ask your question.
That paternity wrap a couple of years ago.
Morty!
Morty, shut up!
Didn't you go all the way?
Uncle Morty!
Uncle Morty.
And your wife, I guess, is sitting there in her wedding outfit?
In the wedding outfit, yes.
And I'm trying to take care of her as best as possible.
But it was interesting to act with Peter O'Toole.
As a matter of fact, I'm always in awe, you know, acting with sirs and all that.
And I got together with them because we had the same director.
I was in "Tenth Man," Padachewski's "Tenth Man," and Sir Tyron Guthrie, the
great director, directed me.
And he says, "Oh, yes, I was in the Birmingham Company," he says, "in England
many years ago."
And Tony Guthrie, he says, was my director.
And I was bumbling through my lines, Lou.
And he said, "Peter, stop! Go home, learn your lines, come back here tomorrow
morning, and astonish us!"
He was mildest to work with.
Yeah, this was, in addition to working with Peter O'Toole, and you mentioned Mr.
Guthrie, you worked with some other great writers, haven't you?
Well, I worked with writers and directors.
I want to say particularly that Dick Benjamin's first job as a director here
was wonderful.
And the script was great by Norm Steinberg and Palumbo, and the cast was
wonderful, a top, marvelous cast.
So it was a great atmosphere to work.
It was great.
Yeah, yeah.
Now, tell me about working with Woody Allen.
How did you first meet Woody Allen?
Well, that's remarkable.
I was in "Come Blow Your Horn," the Neil Simon's first play, and he said he's
going to write a play for me.
Woody's going to-- I don't know about Woody.
What year was this, roughly?
This was 1966.
And Jack Rollins had the property together with Charlie Jaffe and Max Gordon.
And they said, "Come down to the Blue Angels," a club on 54th Street, and I see
and watch Woody Allen work.
It was a remarkable thing.
He was very quiet, very shy, talked very quietly, looked down, and he kept
talking, doing his own material,
and suddenly I says, "Gee, he's going to write a play for me."
And suddenly he comes out with this line.
He says, "Ladies and gentlemen, I was just divorced.
My wife is emotionally immature."
And I'll give you an example of what I mean by immature.
She'd come into my bathroom while I'm taking a bath and sink my boats.
So I says, "My God, what a tremendous mind.
What a ser-- you know, to give a relationship in one line."
Now, and for him to write a play for me was remarkable, and little did I dream
that the guy was a genius.
I thought he was brilliantly talented, but it was a wonderful lift for me.
I will always be grateful to Woody and Jack Rollins and Charlie Jaffe for
having me in that play.
It ran 80 weeks.
This was "Don't Drink the Water."
Don't Drink the Water.
And he also wrote--
And then he wrote, "It Was Everything You Want to Know About Sex."
Okay, yeah, hold it right there, and on that note, we'll be back.
We have to pause here for a commercial.
We'll continue talking with him.
Lou Jacoby is here.
Tell me about the part that you played in the Woody Allen movie, "Everything
You Want to Know About Sex."
Well, it was a transvestite.
And I said, and he says, "It's for you," and he wrote for me.
And I'll play anything that Woody tells me, you know what I mean?
And it was a wonderful part, you know, you get dressed in women's clothes and
the whole thing.
Did you do it--was it a complete dress-up job?
Whoa, terrific, you know, with the black brassiere and the black tights.
And I played it sensually and the whole thing.
And it was in the master bedroom.
Always, when we went someplace, I went up to the master bedroom.
I excused myself and got into these women's clothes.
And then, of course, I jumped out of the window.
The cops chased me and so on.
It was a wonderful part.
Of course, I played it in a high voice.
Uh-huh.
Didn't play it in a low voice.
And I kept the handkerchief over my mustache behind it, but it was an
experience, you know.
Did it, not having ever really done it, quite to that extent, did it make you
feel differently?
Well, I'd say this, as an actor, if you put on a dress, you act differently,
you know what I mean, if you put on a tuxedo.
But I mean, clothes play a tremendous part in the thing.
As a matter of fact, the face, as you know, is also a very important thing.
The way I got into the business is crazy because I didn't always look like this.
Oh.
I looked across between, get this, Robert Taylor and Tyrone Power.
Now, I couldn't get any chance.
Too good-looking.
Too beautiful.
Yeah.
Can you get that?
Yeah.
The kind of rejection?
Too beautiful.
I got sick of it.
Sick of it because I knew I had something else, you know.
And how can I fight that?
No, you can't fight it.
No.
I went to a plastic surgeon, and I said, "Look, I want to be a character actor."
And he made this, and I've been working ever since.
Really, the American dream comes here.
And that's amazing.
Now, when you're working with Mr. Allen, can you go up to him and say, "I got
an idea to change this," or is it pretty much, you're doing it his way and that's
it?
No, he's quite flexible, but he's a remarkable mind.
And I'll never forget in "Don't Drink the Water," David, you know, we play a
caterer from Newark who's caught behind the Iron Curtain.
We wind up in the American Embassy, and the Russian comes in, you know, and I've
got a mason ring here, and the gag is this, "Don't come near me!"
I said, "If you come near me, there's enough nitroglycerin in this ring to blow
you to pieces."
You know, got a terrific laugh.
Comes in the next day, Woody, very quiet on, "Lou, I got a better gag."
I said, "What do you mean, better? This is terrific!"
I said, "Shh, got a better gag."
When he starts coming near you, you get up, "Can I get up in a minute?"
I said, "Sure, come near me! If you come near me, I'll..."
You know, and I got my finger, and he says, "I'll..."
And I take out my hand. He said, "But that's a finger!"
I says, "It may look like a finger, but it's a flesh-colored 45!"
This is how he builds a gag. It's a fantastic gag.
But what he's done, they're terrific, you know, very great.
Plastic surgery, huh?
Yeah, everything. That's the way it all starts.
We have to pause for station identification.
We'll be back with Lou Jacoby, Ann and Nancy Wilson from Roger here,
and also comedian Paul Mooney.
Thank you very much.
Mr. Lou Jacoby is here.
Also, later on in the program, from Hart, Ann and Nancy Wilson.
Now, tomorrow night, our good friend Richard Lewis will be here.
This will be interesting. Former owner of the Oakland A's, Charlie Finley, will
be joining us.
Also, we answer our viewer mail.
Now, talking about Woody Allen, tell me about working with Neil Simon.
Well, it was a wonderful opportunity.
In 1961, he writes a play, "Come Blow Your Horn."
And the part of the father, I created the part of the father, which is his
father, too.
This is my building.
This is Neil Simon's father.
Yeah, Neil Simon's father.
And it's very rare, David, that an actor can play his own father on the stage,
you know, and scream.
And yell.
You don't have to go to psychiatrists, right?
So now, you're actually playing your father, but it's the part of Neil Simon's
father.
I'm playing my own father, who was a wonderful, terrific guy, a happy grouch
guy, a nice guy.
And I've got an older son who's a kind of a bum, you know.
And I keep saying, "You're a bum."
He says, "Dad, why am I a bum?"
I says, "How old are you?"
He says, "28."
I says, "Are you married?"
He says, "No, then you're a bum."
And I kept screaming, "This is terrific," because my father kept calling me
that, you know.
Nice guy, wanted me to get married and so on.
And after the whole play, my father saw the play.
I says, "Pa, how did you like the father I played?"
He says, "You know, Lou, I know fathers like that."
Now, I know that the play had its 25th anniversary recently.
Oh, easy, yeah.
I recently revived it again, you know, in the Burt Reynolds Theatre, and then
in L.A.
I played it for four weeks.
How do people react to it now?
Oh, still, it's wonderful.
I have a true story that happened at the Burt Reynolds Theatre, where the kid,
he doesn't want to go into the business, see?
And he wrote me a letter, see?
And I say, "So what's the wind-up?"
He say to the kid, "My sister, Gussie, has two grandchildren, and I have a bum
and a letter."
See?
So I come outside, and an old woman said to me,
"Lou, Mr. Jacoby, I want to introduce you to my three bums."
And no letter.
And she introduces me to her three daughters.
Isn't that remarkable?
Where did they look?
That's how timely the play is.
It's remarkable.
It's a classic, you know?
Did they look bummy to you?
Did they look kind of deadbeats, pretty much?
They looked, yes.
When you're working around the country like that, a lot of times people are not
necessarily accustomed
to going to live stage plays.
Do they sometimes get over-involved?
Oh, my!
I have to tell you, David Dissaturian.
Benny Baker, a lot of people, a few people may know, a wonderful comedian.
He was my understudy, you know, in L.A.
And he goes out there in the audience to watch me do the part.
And I come to the part where I say to the kid, "Don't you dare raise your voice
to me?"
He says, "You're not too big yet to get a good slap across your face."
I says, "What a thing to happen to a father that a father should have to stand."
And this guy stands up.
He says, "It's a lot of crap!"
He got so involved in the play.
I heard he eats a lot of crap.
So what does that do?
What do you do there?
You take a break?
No, I just take a break.
I have the audience laugh.
And then we go on with the play.
You know, you can't ad-lib with a guy.
With a guy like that, you don't ad-lib.
That's terrific.
No, I guess not.
He identifies too much with his father.
Yeah, yeah.
So, and the film now?
It looks like it's going to be another big success for you.
Oh, it's taken off like it.
And I'm so happy, you know, because you work very hard on a film.
And I'm very happy for Dick Benjamin because it's his first directorial job.
And everybody mentions another terrific job that you do in the play.
Well, thank you very much.
I try to help.
Oh, you're terrific.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much for being here.
Wonderf