Milton Berle

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Milton Berle
Milton Berle
Born July 12, 1908
New York City
Died March 27, 2002
Los Angeles, California

Milton Berle, (July 12, 1908 - March 27, 2002), born Mendel Berlinger, was an American comedian and actor. As the manic host of NBC's Texaco Star Theater (1948-1955), he became known as Uncle Miltie to millions during television's first golden age. His nephew, Warren Berlinger, is also an actor.

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[edit] Early life

Milton Berle was born in a five-story walkup at 68 West 118th Street in New York City, New York. His father was Moses Berlinger, a paint and varnish salesman. His mother, Sarah (Sadie) Glantz Berlinger, eventually became stagestruck and changed her name to Sandra Berle when Milton became famous. His onstage antics got underway in 1913 when he won a lookalike contest with his impersonation of Charlie Chaplin.

Berle appeared a child actor in silent films, beginning with The Perils of Pauline (1914), filmed in Fort Lee, New Jersey with Pearl White.[1] The director told Berle that he would portray a little boy who would be thrown from a moving train. In Milton Berle: An Autobiography (1975), he explained, "I was scared shitless, even when he went on to tell me that Pauline would save my life. Which is exactly what happened, except that at the crucial moment they threw a bundle of rags instead of me from the train. I bet there are a lot of comedians around today who are sorry about that."

By Berle's account, he continued to play child roles in other films: Bunny's Little Brother (1914) with John Bunny; Tess of the Storm Country (1914) with Mary Pickford; Birthright (1920) with Flora Finch; Love's Penalty (1921) with Hope Hampton; Divorce Coupons (1922) with Corinne Griffith and the serial Ruth of the Range (1923) with Ruth Roland. Berle recalled, "There were even trips out to Hollywood--the studios paid--where I got parts in Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, with Mary Pickford; The Mark of Zorro, with Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. and Tillie's Punctured Romance, with Charlie Chaplin, Mabel Normand and Marie Dressler." Milton Berle also co-wrote the theme song from the 1940 movie "Li'l Abner" which starred Granville Owen and Martha O'Driscoll.

However, Berle's claims to have appeared in many of these films, particularly the 1914 Chaplin Keystone comedy Tillie's Punctured Romance, is hotly disputed by some, who cite the lack of supporting evidence that Berle even visited the West Coast until much later. The newsboy role often claimed by Berle in "Tillie" was unquestionably played by Keystone child contract actor Gordon Griffith.

In 1916, Berle enrolled in the Professional Children's School, and at age 12 he made his stage debut in Florodora. After four weeks in Atlantic City, New Jersey, the show moved to Broadway. It catapulted him into a comedic career that spanned eight decades in nightclubs, Broadway shows, vaudeville, Las Vegas, films, television and radio.

[edit] Radio

Publicity shot of Berle.
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Publicity shot of Berle.

In 1934-36, Berle was heard regularly on The Rudy Vallee Hour, and he got much publicity as a regular on The Gillette Original Community Sing, a Sunday night comedy-variety program broadcast on CBS from September 6, 1936 to August 29, 1937. In 1939, he was the host of Stop Me If You've Heard This One with panelists spontaneously finishing jokes sent in by listeners. Three Ring Time, a comedy-variety show sponsored by Ballantine Ale was followed by a 1943 program sponsored by Campbell's Soups. The audience participation show Let Yourself Go (1944-45) could best be described as slapstick radio with studio audience members acting out long suppressed urges (often directed at host Berle). Kiss and Make Up, on CBS in 1946, featured the problems of contestants decided by a jury from the studio audience with Berle as the Judge. He also made guest appearances on many comedy-variety radio programs during the 1930s and 1940s.

Scripted by Hal Block and Martin Ragaway, The Milton Berle Show brought Berle together with Arnold Stang, later a familiar face as Berle's TV sidekick. Others in the cast were Pert Kelton, Mary Schipp, Jack Albertson, Arthur Q. Bryan, Ed Begley, vocalist Dick Forney and announcer Frank Gallop. The Ray Bloch Orchestra provided the music for the series. Sponsored by Philip Morris, it aired on NBC from March 11, 1947, until April 13, 1948.

His last radio series was The Texaco Star Theater, which began September 22, 1948 on ABC and continued until June 15, 1949, with Berle heading the cast of Stang, Kelton and Gallop, along with Charles Irving, Kay Armen and double-talk specialist Al Kelly. It employed top comedy writers (Nat Hiken, brothers Danny and Neil Simon, Aaron Ruben), and Berle later recalled this series as "the best radio show I ever did... a hell of a funny variety show." It served as a springboard for Berle's rise as television's first major star.

[edit] Mr. Television

Milton Berle was featured in 1947 NBC promotional art by caricaturist Sam Berman.
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Milton Berle was featured in 1947 NBC promotional art by caricaturist Sam Berman.

In 1948, NBC decided to bring Texaco Star Theater from radio to television, with Berle as one of the show's four rotating hosts. For the fall season, NBC named Berle the permanent host. His highly visual, sometimes outrageous vaudeville style proved ideal for the burgeoning new medium. Berle and Texaco owned Tuesday nights for the next several years, reaching the number one slot in the Nielsen ratings and keeping it, with as much as an 80% share of the recorded viewing audience. Berle and the show each won Emmy Awards after the first season. Fewer movie tickets were sold on Tuesdays. Some theaters, restaurants and other businesses shut down for the hour or closed for the evening so their customers wouldn't miss Berle's antics [2]. Berle's autobiography notes that in Detroit, "an investigation took place when the water levels took a drastic drop in the reservoirs on Tuesday nights between 9 and 9:05. It turned out that everyone waited until the end of the Texaco Star Theater before going to the bathroom. "

Berle is credited for the huge spike in the sale of TV sets during the medium's early years. After Berle's show began, set sales more than doubled, reaching two million in 1949. His stature as the medium's first superstar earned Berle the sobriquet "Mr. Television." [3] He also earned a slightly more familiar nickname after ending a 1949 broadcast with a brief ad lib remark to children watching the show: "Listen to your Uncle Miltie and go to bed." [4]

Berle asked NBC to switch to film to make possible future reruns and residuals, and he was not happy when NBC showed little interest. He also risked his newfound TV stardom at its zenith to challenge Texaco when the sponsor tried to prevent black performers from appearing. In his autobiography, Berle recalled the incident:

Another thing that was a constant anger to me was that I didn't have approval on the acts and performers I wanted on the show. I remember clashing with the sponsor and the advertising agency and the sponsor over my signing the four Step Brothers for an appearance on the show. The only thing I could figure out was that there was an objection to black performers on the show, but I couldn't even find out who was objecting. "We just don't like them,: I was told, but who the hell was "we"? Because I was riding high in 1950, I sent out the word: "If they don't go on, I don't go on." At ten minutes of eight--ten minutes before show time--I got permission for the Step Brothers to appear. If I broke the color-line policy or not, I don't know, but later on I had no trouble booking Bill Robinson or Lena Horne."

[edit] Berle's TV decline

NBC signed him to an exclusive, unprecedented 30-year television contract in 1951. The problem with Berle's 30-year deal was that NBC could not have realized the relatively short lifespan of a comedian on television, compared to radio, where careers went on for two decades or longer. In part, this was due to the more ephemeral nature of visual comedy (those who don't adapt quickly don't survive), and a single television appearance could equal years of exposure on the nightclub circuit. It has also been said that Berle had less appeal with audiences outside the Borscht Belt as television expanded from big East Coast markets to smaller cities. In any event, Berle wore out his welcome on television almost as quickly as he had built it.

Texaco pulled out of sponsorship of the show in 1953. Buick picked it up, prompting a renaming to The Buick-Berle Show, but Berle's ratings continued to fall and Buick pulled out after two seasons. By the time the again-renamed Milton Berle Show finished its only full season, Berle was already becoming history – though his final season provided some of the earliest television appearances by a young rock and roll singer named Elvis Presley.

NBC finally cancelled the Berle show in 1956. He later appeared in the Kraft Music Hall series, but NBC was finding increasingly fewer roles for its one-time superstar. By 1960, he was reduced to hosting a game show, Jackpot Bowling, delivering his quips between the efforts of bowling contestants.

[edit] Life after The Milton Berle Show

In Las Vegas, Berle played to packed showrooms at Caesar's Palace, the Sands, the Desert Inn and other casino hotels. Berle had appeared at the El Rancho, one of the first Vegas hotels, in the late 1940s. In addition to constant club appearances, Berle performed on Broadway in Herb Gardner's The Goodbye People in 1968.

He appeared in numerous films, including Always Leave Them Laughing (1949) with Virginia Mayo and Bert Lahr; Let's Make Love, with Marilyn Monroe and Yves Montand (1960); It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963); The Loved One (1965); The Oscar (1966); Lepke (1975); Woody Allen's Broadway Danny Rose (1984) and Driving Me Crazy (1991).

Freed in part from the obligations of his NBC contract, Berle was signed in 1966 to a new weekly variety series on ABC. The show failed to capture a large audience and was cancelled after one season. He later appeared as guest villain Louie the Lilac on ABC's Batman series. His other TV guest appearances included The Jack Benny Show, Make Room for Daddy, The Lucy Show, The Big Valley, Get Smart, I've Got a Secret, The Mod Squad, Ironside, Mannix, McCloud, The Love Boat, CHiPs, Fame, Fantasy Island, Gimme a Break, Diff'rent Strokes, Matlock, Murder, She Wrote, Beverly Hills 90210, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, The Nanny, Roseanne and Sister, Sister.

Like his contemporary Jackie Gleason, Berle proved a solid dramatic actor and was acclaimed for several such performances, most notably his lead role in "Doyle Against The House" on The Dick Powell Show in 1961, a role for he later received an Emmy nomination for. He also played the part of a blind survivor of an airplane crash in Seven in Darkness, the first in ABC's popular Movie of the Week series, and was often seen on the Hollywood Palace variety show on ABC.

During this period, Berle was named to the Guinness Book of World Records for the greatest number of charity performances made by a show-business performer. Unlike the high-profile shows done by Bob Hope to entertain the troops, Berle did more shows, over a period of 50 years, on a lower-profile basis. Berle received an award for entertaining at stateside military bases in World War I as a child performer, in addition to traveling to foreign bases in World War II and Vietnam. The first charity telethon (for the Damon Runyan Cancer Fund) was hosted by Berle in 1949 [5]. A permanent fixture at charity benefits in the Hollywood/Los Angeles area, he was instrumental in raising millions for charitable causes.

[edit] Uncle Miltie offstage

After World War II, Milton Berle founded the Los Angeles The Friars Club in 1947 aka The Friars Club of Beverly Hills at the old Savoy Hotel on Sunset Boulevard in 1947. Actors Jimmy Durante, George Jessel, Robert Taylor, and Bing Crosby. In 1961, the club moved to Beverly Hills. The club is a private showbusiness club famous for its celebrity members and "Roasts" where a member is truly embarrassed by their club friends in good fun.

A bizarre aspect of Berle's 'private' life was the very well-known rumor—amounting to an open secret—that he was extremely well endowed, and that this had led to a number of sexual relationships with beautiful Hollywood women. He was an occasional guest on the Howard Stern radio show, where he endured Stern's questions about the enormous size of his genitals, and what Marilyn Monroe was like in bed.

The television show Mad About You referred to his size in an episode where Jamie's aunt confirmed it was 100% true. In an episode of the popular situation comedy Friends, it was also suggested that Milton Berle was well-endowed, when character Rachel Green claims that she could turn character Chandler Bing into "a legend, a Milton Berle of their generation". The rumors of Berle's size were already well-known in Hollywood, but this episode brought the legend to a wider audience. It was also referenced in the Family Guy episode "Fifteen Minutes of Shame." Saturday Night Live writer Alan Zweibel, in Live From New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live by Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller, is quoted, noting that while Berle's SNL episode was in production, he had revealed his penis to Zweibel, who testifies that it was enormous, "like a pepperoni." In his 1975 autobiography, Milton Berle, An Autobiography, Milton Berle himself quoted several women as complimenting him on being well-endowed when they first saw it. The first of which was the showgirl whom he lost his virginity to in his early teens.

The British comedian Bob Monkhouse recalls in his memoirs Over The Limit a very funny anecdote in the bar at the Hillcrest Golf Club in Los Angeles in 1959, in which Berle was invited by a number of inebriated fellow celebrities to compete with the actor Forrest Tucker—who was also reputed to be well endowed—to prove there and then who had "the biggest schlong in Hollywood." After Berle had politely and graciously refused to agree to such a public contest, Monkhouse recalls the comedian George Burns judging the group's respectful silence perfectly before urging, "Aw, go on Milton. Take out just enough to win!"

Unlike many of his peers, Berle's off-stage lifestyle did not include drugs or drinking, but did include cigars, a "who's who" list of beautiful women, and a lifelong addiction to gambling, primarily horse racing. His obsession with "the ponies" was responsible for Berle never amassing the wealth or business success of others in his position.

Berle was known to have a colorful vocabulary and few limits on when it was used. Surprisingly, however, he "worked clean" for his entire onstage career, except for the infamous Friars Club all-male, private celebrity roasts. Berle often admonished younger comedians like Lenny Bruce and George Carlin about their X-rated humor, and challenged them to be just as funny without the four-letter words. Hundreds of younger comics, including several comedy superstars, were encouraged and guided by Berle. Despite some less than flattering (and true) stories told about Berle being difficult to work with, he was a source of encouragement and technical assistance for many new comics who were fortunate enough to meet him. Young comics were always "invited over to the table" with a smile, and given an audience with "the King," according to William Berle.

Berle was well known among his peers to have one of the greatest joke collections in the world, which Berle estimated to be around five to six million jokes. A running joke between Berle and his comedian "friends" was that he stole his jokes from them. Bob Hope quipped onstage with Berle, that he "never heard a joke he didn't steal." "Uncle Miltie" would then mug for the cameras with an exaggerated innocent face. Occasional claims by Berle and others that these jokes were transferred to computer media are suspect, as a member of Berle's family verified that the majority of them were on sheets and scraps of paper and index cards in a vast, disorganized collection amassed over decades, well before personal computers. The books Milton Berle's Private Joke File and The Rest of the Best of Milton Berle's Private Joke File each contained 10,000 of these jokes.

[edit] Later life and death

Alan Light photo of Berle and his wife arriving to the premiere of Bette Midler's The Rose in 1979.
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Alan Light photo of Berle and his wife arriving to the premiere of Bette Midler's The Rose in 1979.

As "Mr. Television," Berle was one of the first seven people to be inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 1984. The following year, he appeared on NBC's Amazing Stories (created by Steven Spielberg) in an episode called "Fine Tuning". In this episode, friendly aliens from space receive TV signals from the Earth of the 1950s and travel to Hollywood in search of their idols, Lucille Ball, Jackie Gleason, Burns and Allen—and Milton Berle. Speaking gibberish, Berle is the only person able to communicate directly with the aliens.

He appeared in drag in the video for "Round and Round" by the 1980s metal band Ratt.

In 1988, a series of syndicated TV specials with the umbrella title "Milton Berle: The Second Time Around," recycled footage from the live Texaco Star Theater programs (unseen for decades) helped to introduce Berle's brand of comedy to a new audience. One of his most popular performances in his later years was guest starring in 1993 in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air as a womanizing, joke-making patient who leads Will to think that he died because the patient fell asleep right away. Most of his dialogue was improvised and shocked the audience in one blooper where he screamed out a four-letter word by mistake.

Berle made a notorious appearance with RuPaul at the 1993 MTV Video Music Awards where RuPaul responded to Berle's reference of having once worn dresses himself (during his old television days) with the quip that Berle now wore diapers. The audience responded to this ad-lib poorly. (This was, according to one interview with RuPaul, in retaliation for Berle's allegedly boorish behavior during rehearsals.)

In January 1995, Berle appeared on an episode of Beverly Hills 90210 as Saul Howard - a legendary actor/performer who became nursing-home bound due to Alzheimer's disease.

Milton Berle died of colon cancer on March 27, 2002, at the age of 93. Berle left detailed arrangements for burial with his third wife, Ruth, at Mount Sinai Memorial Park Cemetery in Burbank. However, his fourth wife, Lorna Adams, altered the plan so that Berle was interred in the Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery in Culver City, California. He was survived by two adopted children; a daughter, Victoria, born in 1945, and a son, William, born in 1961.

[edit] The SNL debacle

On April 14, 1979, Berle guest-hosted Saturday Night Live. During the performance, Berle seemed to spend as much time trying to upstage the show's youthful cast as he did trying to work with or augment them. Berle's long reputation for taking control of an entire television production—whether invited to do so or not—was a cause of stress on the set. Thirty years earlier, Berle had designed and built the studio that SNL used and was apparently not ready to accept that he didn't know how to do everyone's job (from the stagehands to the lighting crew) better than they did.

In Shales and James Andrew Miller's Live From New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live, one of the show's writers, Rosie Shuster, described the rehearsals for the Berle SNL show and the telecast as "sort of like watching a comedy train accident in slow motion on a loop." Upstaging, camera mugging, inserting old comedy bits and a maudlin performance of "September Song" complete with pre-arranged standing ovation (something creator Lorne Michaels and company had never sanctioned), resulted in Berle being banned from the show. In the weeks that followed, Berle's household in Beverly Hills received rambling, stoned phone calls from John Belushi, loudly proclaiming that Berle was the greatest comedian in history. The Berle episode of SNL was long thought to have been permanently banished to the vaults on the direct order of Michaels, but in recent years it has been occasionally shown on E!.

Another well-known incident of upstaging occurred during the 1982 Emmy Awards, when Berle and Martha Raye were the presenters of the Emmy for Outstanding Writing in a variety or music program. Berle was reluctant to give up the microphone to the award's recipients, from Second City Television, and interrupted actor Joe Flaherty's acceptance speech several times. The SCTV actors and writers left the stage looking very upset, and later created a parody sketch of the incident, in which Flaherty's character beats up a Berle look-alike, shouting, "You'll never ruin another acceptance speech, Uncle Miltie!"

[edit] Broadway

  • Earl Carroll's Vanities of 1932 (1932) - revue - performer cast by Earl Carroll in the roles of "Mortimer" in the sketch "Mourning Becomes Impossible", "Joe Miller, Jr." in "What Price Jokes", "Frank" in "Two Sailors", "Paul" in "The Cabinet of Doctor X", the "Announcer" in "Studio W.M.C.A." the "Defendant" in "Trial By Jury" and "Milton" in "The Bar Relief"
  • Saluta (1934) - musical, co-lyricist and performer cast in the role of "'Windy' Walker"
  • See My Lawyer (1939) - play - performer cast in the role of "Arthur Lee"
  • Ziegfeld Follies of 1943 (1943) - revue - performer in the role of "Cecil" in Counter Attack, "J. Pierswift Armour" in The Merchant of Venison, "Perry Johnson" in Loves-A-Poppin, "Escamillio" in Carmen in Zoot, "Charlie Grant" Mr Grant Goes To Washington, "'The Micromaniac' Singer" and "'Hold That Smile' Dancer"
  • I'll Take the High Road (1943) - play - co-producer
  • Seventeen (1951) - musical - co-producer
  • The Goodbye People (1968) - performer cast in the role of "Max Silverman"

[edit] Filmography

[edit] References

  • Berle, Milton with Haskel Frankel. Milton Berle, an Autobiography. New York: Dell, 1975. ISBN 0-440-15626-2
  • Dunning, John. On The Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio, Oxford University Press, 1998. ISBN 0-19-507678-8
  • McNeil, Alex. Total Television. New York: Penguin Books, 1996. ISBN 0-14-004911-8
  • Shales, Tom and James Andrew Miller. Live From New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live. New York: Little, Brown, 2002. ISBN 0-316-78146-0
  • Berle, William and Lewis, Brad. "My Father, Uncle Miltie". New York: Barricade Books, 1999. ISBN: 1569801495

[edit] Listen to

[edit] External links

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