I was in love with a lot of people, because I was a student of the game of comedy - Carol Burnett, Jack Benny, Red Skelton, Jackie Gleason, Don Rickles, Red Foxx, Moms Mabley - who gets no credit, Richard Pryor, Bill Cosby, George Kirby. I loved them all, and I used to just take a page out of all of them.
I used to watch the 'Jackie Gleason Show' and Phil Silvers, those early TV things. And a lot of them were patterned on the silent comedies of the '20s.
What makes a comedian has nothing to do with religion. Think of Red Skelton, Jimmy Durante, Jackie Gleason, who were all Catholics.
My first job at Gleason's Bar in Cleveland was $800 a week, when I was making $92 a week with overtime at the automobile plant.
Jackie Gleason said that comedy is the most exacting form of dramatic art, because it has an instant critic: laughter.
In terms of comedians, I loved, growing up, Jonathan Winters, Sid Caesar, Jackie Gleason, Phil Silvers, Carol Burnett, all those people.
I did the Ed Sullivan show four times. I did the Steve Allen show. I did the Jackie Gleason show.
When you are diagnosed with prostate cancer, your condition is ranked on the Gleason Score, which measures its level of aggression. Mine is graded at seven out of 10. But this doesn't tell me where I stand in general.
Look at Gleason in The Honeymooners. He was humorous but the way he lived wasn't really humorous. He was a bus driver. Who wants to be a bus driver? He didn't have any money and he was not famous. But despite that, the show is humorous.
Gleason was a rough guy. Like all of these comics, I have never known one who is a sweetheart all the way through.
