[ExI] Crazy Guggenheim (Jackie Gleason Show)

[Lee Corbin]

Spike wrote

> Just so I don't feel like too much of a geezer, how many of ye recall Frank
> Fontaine doing Crazy Guggenheim on the Jackie Gleason show in about the mid
> 60s?  Those are my earliest memories.

Oh yes. That was really great!  I was a teenager, but it feels as
though I didn't miss an episode, not from the "Hiya Mr. Dunnahee",
to Joe having to wipe the spit from his eye, to saying good night,
singing visibly only through the frosted glass of the top part of the
door.

Oh.  I just found
" When The Jackie Gleason Show was on--not The Honeymooners, the next one, the variety show based in Miami, the one that always 
ended with him screaming, "Miami Beach has the greatest audiences in the world! Goodnight, everybody!"--one of their regular and 
most beloved sketches was a thing called "Joe, The Bartender."

" It was on the show every week and, most importantly, the vital structural elements of it were always exactly the same. The camera 
would dolly in through swinging barroom doors, like the Old West, and Gleason would be found, alone, wiping down the bar, hair 
slicked and parted in the middle, garter on the arm, singing the end of "My Gal, Sal" in his wonderful Bassett Hound howl.

and is continued on

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/004/474pmndv.asp?pg=2

which is a superb description any fan will enjoy.

Lee