I had Bob Zmuda’s book about Andy Kaufman and it mentions an incident when Andy got a chance to meet one of his childhood idols, Howdy Doody. When the meeting happened, Andy was very upset and said that was NOT Howdy Doody. He was right…it was Photo Doody, a copy used in promotions rather than what he’d seen on TV.
People thought that Andy Kaufman portrayed the fictional lounge singer Tony Clifton. He did. Sometimes. Other times his writing partner Bob Zmuda put on the makeup and did it instead. The thing about Andy’s comedy was often that he was laughing at the audience instead of the other way around…he’d irk people and get them ready to kill him. With Tony Clifton, sometimes he was sitting at home watching Zmuda on TV, laughing at the fact that he’d fooled them.
In public, Zmuda and Kaufman played an elaborate, years-long Tony Clifton shell game that lasted until Kaufman’s death in 1984. In the 1999 Kaufman biopic Man on the Moon , Jim Carrey played Kaufman doing Clifton, and Paul Giametti imitated Zmuda imitating Clifton.
Back when they were both alive and working, I always referred to Coburn as “the poor man’s Lee Marvin”—i.e., the guy you’d cast if you didn’t have the budget to hire Marvin.
Can I join your club?
I’m just glad Ryan R. has been getting more sarcastic and snarky parts, because now I can tell him apart from the more “sincere” (or “saccharine”?) Ryan G.
Here’s another one who never could get their Lee Marvins and James Coburns straight. I know they were two different people, but deep inside I think they were identical.
Yes! My husband and I were talking about the old Magnificent Seven the other day. We were listing the main characters and, not remembering his name, I just called him the “other Lee Marvin”.
