Richard Lewis

I was way more comfortable in front of strangers than I was in front of relatives. So when they would laugh at my dysfunctions or my anxiety, I felt less alone, and I still do it for the same reason.

-Richard Lewis

Richard Philip Lewis

June 29, 1947 – February 27, 2024

Richard Lewis first tried stand-up at an open-mic in Greenwich Village in 1971.He began writing and regularly performing stand-up comedy in 1972, while working as a copywriter for an advertising agency by day. He was discovered by comedian David Brenner while performing in Greenwich Village. Brenner helped Lewis's career by introducing him to the comedy clubs in Los Angeles and getting Lewis his first appearance on The Tonight Show. By the mid-1970s, Lewis had appeared on The  Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and publications, such as the New York Daily News and New York Magazine, were naming him one of the "new breed" or "class" of comedians; this list containing names such as Robert Klein, Lily Tomlin, Richard Pryor, George Carlin, Andy Kaufman,  Richard Belzer, and Elayne Boosler. His influences were Richard Pryor, Buster Keaton, Woody Allen, and Lenny Bruce.

Lewis was known for dark comedy, self-deprecation, and for frank discussions regarding his many neuroses, as well as his struggles with alcoholism and drug addiction. He was noted for wearing all-black attire and for pacing and gesticulating wildly during his stand-up act. In his early days, he was also known for bringing taped-together sheets from a legal pad to his performances; he would lay them across the floor in front of him to remind him of joke premises and topics he wished to cover during his performance.

Lewis made his screen acting debut in Diary of a Young Comic, a 90-minute film that aired on NBC in 1979 in the timeslot normally reserved for episodes of Saturday Night Live. A satirical look at the Hollywood scene, Lewis stars in the film as Billy Gondola (born Gondolstein), a young Jewish comedian who leaves New York City to find fame in Los Angeles. The film's script was co-written by Lewis and Bennett Tramer, and was adapted from a story written by Gary Weis, who also served as the film's director. The film features Bill Macy as Billy's father, Michael Lerner as his agent, and Stacy Keach as a landlord. Performers George Jessel, Dom DeLuise, Nina van Pallandt, and Gary Mule Deer make appearances in the film as themselves.

Lewis gained much wider exposure in the 1980s and 1990s with numerous appearances on talk shows such as The Tonight Show, both Late Night and the Late Show with David Letterman, and The Howard Stern Show. He also produced the comedy special I'm in Pain, which aired on Showtime in 1985, followed by the specials I'm Exhausted, I'm Doomed, and Richard Lewis: The Magical Misery Tour, all of which aired on HBO in 1988, 1990, and 1997 respectively. From 1989 to 1992, he co-starred with Jamie Lee Curtis on the sitcom Anything but Love. He also starred on the short-lived sitcoms Daddy Dearest with Don Rickles in 1993, and Hiller and Diller with Kevin Nealon in 1998. He played Prince John in the 1993 film Robin Hood: Men in Tights, and starred as a struggling alcoholic and drug addict in the 1995 drama film Drunks. The latter film featured performances from Faye Dunaway, George Martin, Parker Posey, Howard Rollins, Spalding Gray, and Dianne Wiest, and was based on Gary Lennon's play Blackout. Lewis also appeared in the 1995 drama film Leaving Las Vegas, and the 1997 romantic comedy Hugo Pool.

Into the 2000s, Lewis had recurring roles as a B movie producer on the sitcom Rude Awakening, and as Rabbi Richard Glass on the family drama series 7th Heaven. He also had a recurring role on the sitcom Curb Your Enthusiasm as a semi-autobiographical version of himself. Lewis first met the show's star and creator, Larry David, at summer camp in Cornwall-on-Hudson, New York, when they were 12 years old – the former claimed that at the time, they hated each other. The two comedians also happened to be born three days apart in the same hospital. The pair met again over a decade later while performing stand-up in New York and became friends.

GQ magazine included Lewis on their list of "The 20th Century's Most Influential Humorists", and Lewis was ranked No. 45 on Comedy Central's list of "100 Greatest Standups of All Time" released in 2004.

In 2006, The Yale Book of Quotations included an entry for the expression "the ______ from hell" (as in "the night from hell", "the date from hell". etc.,) that was attributed to Lewis. Lewis also petitioned the editors of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations to include the idiom, which was also worked into the plot of Curb Your Enthusiasm during the episode "The Nanny from Hell." His lawyer sent some video tapes to Bartlett's general editor Justin Kaplan showing Lewis using the phrase. Bartlett's declined, stating that the expression had predated Lewis's first taped broadcast. In response, Lewis told Entertainment Weekly that he traces popular usage of the line back to his early days on David Letterman's show.

Lewis met Joyce Lapinsky in 1998 at a Ringo Starr album release party, while Lapinsky was working in music publishing. The pair were engaged in 2004 and married the following year.

Discussions of Lewis's battles with anxiety and depression, and his multiple therapy sessions, were a fixture of his comedy. He also stated in interviews that he suffered from an eating disorder due to body dysmorphia.

Lewis was open about his recovery from alcohol and drug abuse, having been a user of both cocaine and crystal meth. His addictions worsened into the 1990s, prompting Lewis to stop performing stand-up from 1991 to 1994. In a 1995 interview with the Santa Maria Times, Lewis discussed how John Candy's death the year prior had caused him to reflect upon his own life and career. The two starred together in Candy's last film, the Western-themed comedy film Wagons East. In later interviews, Lewis stated that he got sober in 1994 after winding up in a hospital emergency room due to a cocaine overdose.

Lewis published his memoir in 2000, titled The Other Great Depression. The book was reissued in 2008 with an added afterword where Lewis reflected further on his continued struggles with addiction. In 2015, he released the book Reflections From Hell: Richard Lewis' Guide on How Not to Live; it contains his commentary and observations in the form of one-liners and other comedic premises, interspersed with images created by artist Carl Nicholas Titolo.

Good Night Richard.
Thank you for sharing your wisdom with me.
It helped. 

Stay Tuned

Tony Figueroa

This Week in Television History: February 2024 PART IV

     March 1, 1954

Ronald William "Ron" Howard is born. 

Film director, producer and actor.

He came to prominence playing Opie Taylor in the sitcom The Andy Griffith Show for eight years, and later the teenaged Richie Cunningham in the sitcom Happy Days for six years.^[1] He appeared in the films The Music Man in 1962, American Graffiti in 1973, and The Shootist in 1976, the latter during his run on Happy Days.

Howard made his directorial debut with the 1977 comedy Grand Theft Auto, and left Happy Days in 1980 to focus on directing. His films include Cocoon, Apollo 13, How the Grinch Stole Christmas and A Beautiful Mind, which earned Howard the Academy Award for Best Director. In 2002, Howard conceived the idea for the Fox/Netflix series Arrested Development, on which he also serves as producer and narrator, and plays a semi-fictionalized version of himself.

March 2, 1904

Dr. Seuss born. 

Theodor Geisel, better known to the world as Dr. Seuss, the author and illustrator of such beloved children's books as "The Cat in the Hat" and "Green Eggs and Ham," is born in Springfield, Massachusetts. Geisel, who used his middle name (which was also his mother's maiden name) as his pen name, wrote 48 books--including some for adults--that have sold well over 200 million copies and been translated into multiple languages. Dr. Seuss books are known for their whimsical rhymes and quirky characters, which have names like the Lorax and the Sneetches and live in places like Hooterville.

Geisel, who was born on March 2, 1904, in Springfield, Massachusetts, graduated from Dartmouth College, where he was editor of the school's humor magazine, and studied at Oxford University. There he met Helen Palmer, his first wife and the person who encouraged him to become a professional illustrator. Back in America, Geisel worked as a cartoonist for a variety of magazines and in advertising.

The first children's book that Geisel wrote and illustrated, "And to Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street," was rejected by over two dozen publishers before making it into print in 1937. Geisel's first bestseller, "The Cat in the Hat," was published in 1957. The story of a mischievous cat in a tall striped hat came about after his publisher asked him to produce a book using 220 new-reader vocabulary words that could serve as an entertaining alternative to the school reading primers children found boring.

Other Dr. Seuss classics include "Yertle the Turtle," "If I Ran the Circus," "Fox in Socks" and "One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish."

Some Dr. Seuss books tackled serious themes. "The Butter Battle Book" (1984) was about the arms buildup and nuclear war threat during Ronald Reagan's presidency. "Lorax" (1971) dealt with the environment.

Many Dr. Seuss books have been adapted for television and film, including "How the Grinch Stole Christmas!" and "Horton Hears a Who!" In 1990, Geisel published a book for adults titled "Oh, the Places You'll Go" that became a hugely popular graduation gift for high school and college students.

Geisel, who lived and worked in an old observatory in La Jolla, California, known as "The Tower," died September 24, 1991, at age 87.

Stay Tuned

Tony Figueroa

This Week in Television History: February 2024 PART III

    February 25, 1928

The Federal Radio Commission issues the first television license. 

The license went to the Charles Francis Jenkins Laboratories for a television broadcast station on Connecticut Avenue in Washington, D.C. The station later moved to Maryland and operated until 1932.

Government regulation of broadcasting has been in existence almost as long as the broadcast industry itself. The Wireless Act of 1910 required American ships to carry a broadcasting transmitter and qualified radio operator on all sea voyages. In the early 1920s, laws were passed governing transmission power, use of frequencies, station identification, and advertising. The Radio Act of 1927 shifted regulatory powers from the Department of Commerce to the new Federal Radio Commission, which became the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in 1934.

Today, the FCC still regulates broadcasting and communications. The U.S. president appoints its five commissioners with the Senate's consent. The commission licenses and regulates radio and TV broadcasters as well as other communications mediums, such as telephone and cable television. It assigns frequencies and call signs to radio stations and is responsible for ensuring rapid, efficient telephone and telegraph service. The FCC also operates the Emergency Broadcast System, which provides a vehicle for authorities to communicate with the public and disseminate critical information immediately when national disaster strikes (though the system can also be used to broadcast weather warnings and local emergencies).

More expansive policy issues under the purview of the commission include deciding how much sex and violence is permissible on television. Deregulation of the industry in the 1980s reduced the FCC's size from seven to five commissioners and increased the term of radio and television station licenses. In the 1990s, the FCC developed a television rating system, much like the one used in movies, which helps people decide which shows are appropriate for the viewers in their household.

Stay Tuned

Tony Figueroa

This Week in Television History: February 2024 PART II

   February 18, 1954

John Joseph Travolta is born. 

Actor, dancer, and singer. Travolta first became known in the 1970s, after appearing on the television series Welcome Back, Kotter and starring in the box office successes Saturday Night Fever and Grease. Travolta's acting career declined through the 1980s. His career enjoyed a resurgence in the 1990s with his role in Pulp Fiction, and he has since continued starring in more recent films such as Face/Off, Ladder 49, and Wild Hogs. Travolta was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for Saturday Night Fever and Pulp Fiction. He won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor - Motion Picture Musical or Comedy for his performance in Get Shorty.

Stay Tuned

Tony Figueroa

This Week in Television History: February 2024 PART I

  February 6, 2014

The last Tonight Show with Jay Leno… again.

 

February 7, 2014

The Last Late Night with Jimmy Fallon

 

February 7, 1964

Beatles arrive in New York. On February 7, 1964, Pan Am Yankee Clipper flight 101 from London Heathrow lands at New York's Kennedy Airport--and "Beatlemania" arrives. 

It was the first visit to the United States by the Beatles, a British rock-and-roll quartet that had just scored its first No. 1 U.S. hit six days before with "I Want to Hold Your Hand." At Kennedy, the "Fab Four"--dressed in mod suits and sporting their trademark pudding bowl haircuts--were greeted by 3,000 screaming fans who caused a near riot when the boys stepped off their plane and onto American soil.

Two days later, Paul McCartney, age 21, Ringo Starr, 23, John Lennon, 23, and George Harrison, 20, made their first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, a popular television variety show. Although it was difficult to hear the performance over the screams of teenage girls in the studio audience, an estimated 73 million U.S. television viewers, or about 40 percent of the U.S. population, tuned in to watch. Sullivan immediately booked the Beatles for two more appearances that month. The group made their first public concert appearance in the United States on February 11 at the Coliseum in Washington, D.C., and 20,000 fans attended. The next day, they gave two back-to-back performances at New York's Carnegie Hall, and police were forced to close off the streets around the venerable music hall because of fan hysteria. On February 22, the Beatles returned to England.

The Beatles' first American tour left a major imprint in the nation's cultural memory. With American youth poised to break away from the culturally rigid landscape of the 1950s, the Beatles, with their exuberant music and good-natured rebellion, were the perfect catalyst for the shift. Their singles and albums sold millions of records, and at one point in April 1964 all five best-selling U.S. singles were Beatles songs. By the time the Beatles first feature-film, A Hard Day's Night, was released in August, Beatlemania was epidemic the world over. Later that month, the four boys from Liverpool returned to the United States for their second tour and played to sold-out arenas across the country.

Later, the Beatles gave up touring to concentrate on their innovative studio recordings, such as 1967's Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band, a psychedelic concept album that is regarded as a masterpiece of popular music. The Beatles' music remained relevant to youth throughout the great cultural shifts of the 1960s, and critics of all ages acknowledged the songwriting genius of the Lennon-McCartney team. In 1970, the Beatles disbanded, leaving a legacy of 18 albums and 30 Top 10 U.S. singles.

During the next decade, all four Beatles pursued solo careers, with varying success. Lennon, the most outspoken and controversial Beatle, was shot to death by a deranged fan outside his New York apartment building in 1980. McCartney was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1997 for his contribution to British culture. In November 2001, George Harrison succumbed to cancer.

February 8, 1974

Good Times first aired on CBS.

The show was created by Eric Monte and Mike Evans, and developed by Norman Lear, the series' primary executive producer. Good Times is a spin-off of Maude, which is itself a spin-off of All in the Family along with The Jeffersons.

The series stars Esther Rolle as Florida Evans and John Amos as her husband, James Evans, Sr. The characters originated on the sitcom Maude as Florida and Henry Evans, with Florida employed as Maude Findlay's housekeeper in Tuckahoe, New York and Henry employed as a firefighter. When producers decided to feature the Florida character in her own show, they applied retroactive changes to the characters' history. Henry's name became James, there is no mention of Maude, and the couple now live in Chicago.

Florida and James Evans and their three children live in a rented project apartment, 17C, at 963 N. Gilbert Ave., in a housing project (implicitly the infamous Cabrini–Green projects, shown in the opening and closing credits but never mentioned by name on the show) in a poor, black neighborhood in inner-city Chicago. Florida's and James's children are James, Jr., also known as "J.J." (Jimmie Walker), Thelma (Bern Nadette Stanis), and Michael (Ralph Carter). When the series begins, J.J. and Thelma are seventeen and sixteen years old, respectively, and Michael, called "the militant midget" by his father due to his passionate activism, is eleven years old. Their exuberant neighbor, and Florida's best friend, is Willona Woods (played by Ja'net Dubois), a recent divorcée who works at a boutique. Their building superintendent is Nathan Bookman (Johnny Brown), to whom James, Willona and later J.J. refer as "Buffalo Butt", or, even more derisively, "Booger".

February 9, 1964

America meets the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show.

At approximately 8:12 p.m. Eastern time, Sunday, February 9, 1964, The Ed Sullivan Show returned from a commercial (for Anacin pain reliever), and there was Ed Sullivan standing before a restless crowd. He tried to begin his next introduction, but then stopped and extended his arms in the universal sign for "Settle Down." "Quiet!" he said with mock gravity, and the noise died down just a little. Then he resumed: "Here's a very amusing magician we saw in Europe and signed last summer....Let's have a nice hand for him—Fred Kaps!"

For the record, Fred Kaps proceeded to be quite charming and funny over the next five minutes. In fact, Fred Kaps is revered to this day by magicians around the world as the only three-time Fédération Internationale des Sociétés Magiques Grand Prix winner. But Fred Kaps had the horrific bad luck on this day in 1964 to be the guest that followed the Beatles on Ed Sullivan—possibly the hardest act to follow in the history of show business.

It is estimated that 73 million Americans were watching that night as the Beatles made their live U.S. television debut. Roughly eight minutes before Fred Kaps took the stage, Sullivan gave his now-famous intro, "Ladies and gentlemen...the Beatles!" and after a few seconds of rapturous cheering from the audience, the band kicked into "All My Lovin'." Fifty seconds in, the first audience-reaction shot of the performance shows a teenage girl beaming and possibly hyperventilating. Two minutes later, Paul is singing another pretty, mid-tempo number: "Til There Was You," from the Broadway musicalMusic Man. There's screaming at the end of every phrase in the lyrics, of course, but to view the broadcast today, it seems driven more by anticipation than by the relatively low-key performance itself. And then came "She Loves You," and the place seems to explode. What followed was perhaps the most important two minutes and 16 seconds of music ever broadcast on American television—a sequence that still sends chills down the spine almost half a century later.

The Beatles would return later in the show to perform "I Saw Her Standing There" and "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" as the audience remained at the same fever pitch it had reached during "She Loves You." This time it was Wells & the Four Fays, a troupe of comic acrobats, who had to suffer what Fred Kaps had after the Beatles' first set. Perhaps the only non-Beatle on Sullivan's stage that night who did not consider the evening a total loss was the young man from the Broadway cast of Oliver! who sang "I'd Do Anything" as the Artful Dodger midway through the show. His name was Davy Jones, and less than three years later, he'd star in a TV show of his own that owed a rather significant debt to the hysteria that began on this night in 1964: The Monkees.

February 11, 1934

Tina Louise is born Tina Blacker in New York City. 

She was raised by her mother, Betty Horn Myers (1916-2011), a fashion model. Her father, Joseph Blacker, was an accountant. The name "Louise" was supposedly added during her senior year in high school when she mentioned to her drama teacher that she was the only girl in the class without a middle name. He immediately picked the name "Louise" and it stuck. She attended Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. At the age of 17, Louise began studying acting, singing and dancing. During her early acting years, she was offered modeling jobs and appeared on the cover of several pinup magazines such as Adam, Sir! and Modern Man. Her later pictorials for Playboy (May 1958, April 1959) were arranged by Columbia Pictures studio in an effort to further promote the young actress. Her acting debut came in 1952 in the Bette Davis musical revue Two's Company, followed by roles in other Broadway productions, such as John Murray Anderson's Almanac, The Fifth Season, and Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? She also appeared in such early live television dramas as Studio One, Producers' Showcase, and Appointment with Adventure.

In 1957, she and Julie Newmar appeared on Broadway in the hit musical Li'l Abner. Her album It's Time for Tina was also released that year, with songs such as "Embraceable You" and "I'm in the Mood for Love".

Louise made her Hollywood film debut in 1958 in God's Little Acre. That same year the National Art Council named her the "World's Most Beautiful Red Head." She became an in-demand leading lady for major stars like Robert Taylor, Richard Widmark and Robert Ryan, often playing somber roles quite unlike the glamorous pinup photographs and Playboy pictorials she had become famous for in the late 1950s. She turned down roles in Li'l Abner and Operation Petticoat taking roles on Broadway and in Italian cinema and Hollywood. Among her more notable Italian film credits was the historical epic Garibaldi (1960), directed by Roberto Rossellini, that concerned Garibaldi's efforts to unify the Italian states in 1860. When Louise returned to the United States, she began studying with Lee Strasberg and eventually became a member of the Actors Studio. She appeared in the 1964 beach party film For Those Who Think Young, with Bob Denver, prior to the development of Gilligan's Island.

In 1964, she left the Broadway musical Fade Out – Fade In to portray movie star Ginger Grant on the situation comedy Gilligan's Island, after the part was turned down by Jayne Mansfield. However, she was unhappy with the role and worried that it would typecast her. The role did make Louise a pop icon of the era, and in 2005 an episode of TV Land Top Ten ranked her as second only to Heather Locklear as the greatest of television's all-time sex symbols.

After the series ended in 1967, Louise continued to work in film and made numerous guest appearances in various television series. She appeared in the Matt Helm spy spoof The Wrecking Crew (1969) with Dean Martin. Louise played a doomed suburban housewife in the original The Stepford Wives (1975), and both the film and her performance were well received.

She attempted to shed her comedic image by essaying grittier roles, including a guest appearance as a pathetic heroin addict in a 1974 Kojak episode, as well as a co-starring role as an evil Southern prison guard in the 1976 ABC TV Movie Nightmare in Badham County. Her other television films of the period included Look What's Happened to Rosemary's Baby (1976), SST: Death Flight (1977), Friendships, Secrets and Lies (1979), and in the prime-time soap opera Dallas, during the 1978-79 seasons. as J.R.'s secretary, Julie Gray, a semi-regular character.

The question "Ginger or Mary Ann?" is regarded to be a classic pop-psychological question when given to American men of a certain age as an insight into their characters, or at least their desires as regarding certain female stereotypes.

Despite successes on her own, she declined to participate in any of three reunion television films for Gilligan's Island and the role of Ginger was recast with Judith Baldwin and Constance Forslund. Although she did not appear in these television movies, she made brief walk-on appearances on a few talk shows and specials for Gilligan's Island reunions, including Good Morning America (1982), The Late Show (1988) and the 2004 TV Land award show with the other surviving cast members. In the 1990s, she was reunited with costars Bob Denver, Dawn Wells, and Russell Johnson in an episode of Roseanne. She did not reunite with them for the television film Surviving Gilligan's Island: The Incredible True Story of the Longest Three-Hour Tour in History (2001), co-produced by Wells. She was portrayed by Kristen Dalton in the television film. Her relations with series star Denver were rumored to be strained, but in 2005, she wrote a brief, affectionate memorial to him in the year-end "farewell" issue of Entertainment Weekly.

In 1985, Louise played the second and final Taylor Chapin on the syndicated soap opera Rituals. Later film roles included a co-starring appearance in the Robert Altman comedy O.C. and Stiggs (1987) as well as the independently made satire Johnny Suede (1992) starring Brad Pitt. She appeared in Married... with Children as Miss Beck in episode Kelly Bounces Back (1990).

From 1966 to 1974, Louise was married to radio and TV announcer/interviewer Les Crane, with whom she has one daughter, Caprice Crane (born 1974), who became an MTV producer and a novelist. Crane's first novel, Stupid and Contagious, was published in 2006, and was warmly dedicated to her mother. Louise now resides in New York City. She is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and a lifetime member of the Actors Studio. As a literacy and academic advocate, she became a volunteer teacher at Learning Leaders, a non-profit organization dedicated to providing tutoring to New York City school children. It has been her passion to help young students gain not only literary skills, but also confidence, self-determination and proof of their own potential. She has written two books: Sunday: A Memoir (1997) and When I Grow Up (2007). The latter is a children's book that inspires children to believe they can become whatever they choose through creative and humorous comparisons of animal kingdom achievements. She published a second children's book named "What Does A Bee Do?".

Louise made four record albums, two for Concert Hall, and two for Urania Record (1958 and 1959 respectively). By far the most sought-after of these is the 1957 album It's Time For Tina (Concert Hall 1521). With arrangements by Jim Timmens and Buddy Weed's Orchestra, 12 tracks include "Tonight Is The Night" and "I'm in the Mood for Love". Coleman Hawkins is featured on tenor sax. A version of this album is planned by UK label Harkit Records. 

Stay Tuned

Tony Figueroa