#buddy hackett

[oldshowbiz]

Buddy Hackett told Joe Rogan to shut the fuck up on one of the very first episodes of Last Comic Standing.

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

EXCERPT FROM BORSCHT BELT BOY: RECOLLECTIONS OF A HOTEL BRAT

In 1950, my father hired Lenny Bruce to be the emcee and social director for the hotel. Lenny was great. He tummeled, he danced, he told jokes. He taught the cha cha. He was even a hit with the little old ladies.

My father was happy. So happy, in fact, that he rehired Lenny for the 1951 season. That was the summer that Lenny brought his new wife Honey along. They were still a loving couple then, often mooning at each other in a boat on the lake. So loving, in fact, that several times a week my father had to have Lenny paged over our booming loudspeaker system to return from the lake. Temporarily chastened, Lenny would straggle back from his tryst on the lake to conduct the daily dance lesson by the pool, schmooze with the guests, and tummel. That summer, my father was not so happy with Lenny.

In spite of Lenny’s somewhat lowered standing in my father’s eyes, Jack listened the day the comic made a proposition. Lenny suggested that he invite some of his entertainer friends to do a late show at the hotel’s casino a few nights a week. In return for providing extra entertainment for our guests, he wanted fifty percent of the bar take after midnight. Since our guests were all asleep by midnight and the bar take past that hour was zero, my father gladly accepted. Good to his word, Lenny brought in jazz musicians, comics, even strippers to our little casino. For that one summer, Kramers was the hottest hotel in the Catskills. Everyone was happy. Lenny played impresario (and got a cut of the bar) and my father made money, too, while he and most of the rest of the hotel slept. Some of our younger guests and most of our dining room staff stayed up for the shows.

One evening several weeks into this arrangement, there was a particularly large, raucous crowd at Lenny’s show. Cars were parked all over the lawn, under the guest room windows, down the driveway and onto the road. A couple of guests knocked on my father’s door some time past 2 am demanding that he quiet down the crowd so they could get the sleep they needed for the next day’s dance lessons and volleyball games. Reluctantly, my father donned his bathrobe, put on his slippers, picked up his ubiquitous cigar and ventured downstairs.

My father went looking for Lenny to get him to try to quiet down his crowd. When he arrived at the casino, packed with people, both drunk and sober, he didn’t see Lenny, but there was a pudgy, pimply faced kid on stage talking dirty in New Yorkese English and broken Yiddish. The crowd loved it, but this was too much for my father. He marched on stage with his bathrobe, slippers and cigar and kicked the foul-mouthed young comic off the stage.

The next week or so Lenny got more morose with the guests and more attentive to Honey. In the middle of August, when the crowd was thinning out anyway, my father fired Lenny. He figured he would get an emcee for Labor Day weekend, and save two weeks’ pay.

So it was that in one season my father both fired Lenny Bruce and threw Buddy Hackett off stage for talking dirty.

[hotvintagepoll]

Buddy Hackett (The Love Bug, The Music Man)—i like a guy who can sing a funny little song called 'shipoopi' and act like that is normal (music man fans rise up)

Louis de Funès (Hibernatus, La Grande Vadrouille)—He is THE French scrungly icon, everyone knows him and either loves him for his scrungliness or fucking hates it and there's no in between. He is The Scrungly. He is Little. He is amazing. His facial expressions, his little noises, his everything - he's freaking hilarious. Also he's not afraid to crossdress in his movies and he looks fucking AMAZING in drag just saying Old men fuckers, this is your call 💪

Who is the scrungliest little guy?

Buddy Hackett

Louis de Funès

Voting ended onOct 3, 2024

This is round 1 of the contest. All other polls in this bracket can be found here. If you're confused on what a scrungle is, or any of the rules of the contest, click here.

[additional submitted propaganda + scrungly videos under the cut]

Buddy Hackett

Other than playing Harold Hill’s best pal in The Music Man, he also voiced Scuttle the seagull in The Little Mermaid :)

Louis de Funès:

He is a small old comedy man, what else can I say? My mom loves him and even was disappointed that such a charismatic man wasn't in the hot contest.

Well... Look at him! He started as a jazz pianist, but he became super famous for his roles of angry little guys, or grumpy little guys, or very, very fractious little guys. A comedy, and in particular physical comedy, legend! And in all of them, he is scowling, contorting himself, seething, spitting words and incoherent with rage, making the funniest faces and noises and... he's like a very, very angry wet cat. Angry Wet Cat is, in fact, the best description I can come up with!!!! He was #ScrungleLifestyle #BornScrungly #Scrungle4Life

[editor's note: I don't speak French so let me know if anything in these clips is offensive. The first two clips are mostly physical comedy and a good introduction to Louis de Funès' physical humor.]

he is so silly!!!! little old man with crazy energy and facial expressions like you wouldn't believe!! the scrungliest!! he makes the most insane characters seem lovable due to his comedian skill and his scrungly quality :D my favorite actor of all times

[citizenscreen]

“As a child, my family’s menu consisted of two choices: take it or leave it.”

– Buddy Hackett, #botd

[lobbycards]

The Love Bug, British lobby (front of the house) card. 1968

[lew-basnight]

I love the old movie It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World. It was made a long time before I was born but it’s such a big movie, it’s shot big and acted big, and the cast is enormous. Every single actor in the movie is famous. Imagine a really big broad epic comedy that’s three hours long and features Every Single Famous Actor working. It’s not the kind of movie anyone could make now. I mean there are jokes right in the opening credits about how impossible it is to list everyone’s names without offending someone because they’re all so famous

It’s a simple idea; a group of people learn a secret about where a bunch of money is hidden “underneath a big W” and they all scramble to get there first. Hella hijinx ensue. The story fractures and splits more and more until people are involved who don’t even know what they’re looking for. Columbo is in it. The Three Stooges appear in a silent cameo for less than five seconds in one of the best jokes in the film. It’s ultra-wide screen and shot in super technicolor, it’s as rich as eating a whole wedding cake by yourself. It’s perfect for new years day or any lazy decadent day off. A young Johnathan Winters destroys an entire gas station using Phil Silvers as a weapon. Everyone is competing to see whose character can be the most foolish, venal, arrogant idiot, and there is so much mugging and scene stealing it’s almost too much. There have been attempts to remake it but it’s impossible to match the original. I don’t watch it often, I save it as kind of a special treat and today is a perfect time to watch it. Highly recommended

[sparklejamesysparkle]

Janet Leigh and her then-husband Tony Curtis react with surprise when actor Jeff Chandler playfully pinches comedian Buddy Hackett's nose on the set of the Universal Pictures/Lloyd Bacon musical comedy Walking My Baby Back Home in 1953. Janet and Buddy were co-stars in the film and Jeff and Tony were paying them a visit.

[haveyouseenthismovie-poll]

Have you seen It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963)?

Yes

No

Haven’t even heard of this movie

Voting ended onJan 26, 2025