Yeah, I presume he was a stage/vaudeville guy before this. If I remember, even as a child star?
Berle saw his star rise high…only to see major cultural changes(think “Back to the Future”) happen and his style to be a lot less relevant.
I remember when RuPaul and he came out on stage at the MTV award show and Rupaul ripped him with insult comedy and Berle tried to rip them back and it fell so flat.
Note: The “other thing” he is famous for. I mean…I have no idea if that is just speculation. I swear if we got him and LBJ together…Lord help us.
I thought this couldn’t possibly be correct. But I googled it, and sure enough, he signed the $1mil / yr, 30 year contract in 1951-- when a million dollars was worth over $12 million in today’s money.
Gigantic comedy star at the dawn of television, gigantic wallet, gigantic…y’know. No wonder he was a gigantic asshole (but still no excuse).
Say what you will about Burroughs, he was good at evaluating doctors. His preoccupation was with locating a croaker who writes scrip (a medico who’d give him prescriptions for morphine).
It’s the highest praise possible in our household for physicians, from a patient perspective (“he’s a croaker who writes scrip”).
Reminds of the story about Milton and Forrest at a party and wanting to once and for all determine who in Hollywood held the crown. After grabbing a tape measure, the two started to go upstairs to hold their contest.
As they were heading up, legend says Berle’s manager yelled out, “Remember, Milt, only take out enough to win!”
Oh, yes, it was borderline scandalous at the time. The network figured they had scored a huge win because he was at the time pretty much the most famous person in the country. He fulfilled the contract…sort of.
He actually got a show on ABC in the 1960’s, but I don’t know how he managed it while under contract with another network. ABC paid the salary at that point? I have no idea.
His 1979 performance/behavior at SNL as a host was so legendarily bad, he was always listed as the worst host of all time. Except for maybe Steven Seagal, another famous Hollywood jerk.
Make sure you watch Always Leave Them Laughing (1949) to see Milton Berle in a movie role, as a not very nice up-and-coming comedian. Plus you’ll get to see Bert Lahr perform his vaudeville routine.
I think I saw a reviewer opine that Berle was trying to do comedy and it didn’t really click with the audience, and Seagal wasn’t trying to do comedy and also didn’t click with the audience.
Yeah, I mean I think that despite Berle being a big jerk…it’s hard to be a bigger loser and mean person thatn Seagal. He’s a monster.
My wife just told me Seagal is like Gilderoy Lockhart from Harry Potter. We aren’t sure he has even done any of the things he says he has done. I mean, everything. Even his martial arts performances/demonstrations look terribly lame.
I remember the one skit he was in; everyone else playing like they were totally baked (which given that cast was likely actually true), but all he would do when offered is consistently and humorlessly insist that he never does drugs. [he was clean in real life note]
Zappa was so bad even I, a 17 year old who was likely half asleep, noticed. And even allowing that, in those days, you could never be sure if a skit went bad because the cast fucked up, or of it was all an act.
Like I “remember” that Lily Tomlin stomped off and never came back for the rest of the episode, like, for reals. Apparently, that never happened.
As a Zappa fan I had to come to terms with him being an asshole long ago. No doubt a complex and interesting asshole. At least his difficult personality came out of genius and not a delusion of grandeur like Seagal. It was easy to feel bad about what Gail Zappa went through with him but then the stories came out about her behavior with their kids. Seemed like they kind of deserved each other.
I’m a little surprised Gene Simmons hasn’t been mentioned yet. His infamous Fresh Air appearance is more than reason enough to grant him a lifetime membership to the jerk hall of fame.
