Seven Dirty Words_ The Life and Crimes of George Carlin - James Sullivan [45]
Spanky and Our Gang was a folk-rock vocal group from Chicago whose first single for Mercury Records, “Sunday Will Never Be the Same,” was on its way to becoming a million-seller. (The following summer one of the band’s singles, the civil rights song “Give a Damn,” was banned for profanity in several cities.) Carlin was already good friends with the group’s big-voiced singer from Peoria, Elaine “Spanky” McFarlane, whom he’d met several years before on the Playboy Club circuit, when McFarlane was part of a vocal group called the Jamie Lynn Trio. “At the Playboy Clubs, there were several rooms of entertainment—the Library, the Speakeasy,” she recalls. “George was with Jack Burns. We met in the entertainer’s lounge over the pool table. Not on the pool table,” she is quick to amend, letting out a hearty chuckle.
Carlin quickly became good friends with McFarlane’s new band mates, including the West Virginia-born, Coral Gables-raised bassist Paul “Oz” Bach, an actor by training and an amateur comedian by reputation, who had performed with such folk fixtures as Fred Neil, Tom Paxton, and Bob Gibson. As Spanky and Our Gang’s debut single was climbing the charts, they spent an evening with Carlin in New York City, where he was preparing to tape another Tonight Show appearance the following day. The band was in the middle of an engagement at a Midtown club called The Scene, says McFarlane. On a night they all had off, Carlin came to the band’s hotel to visit. “We didn’t have anything to smoke, but we had heard you could smoke bananas—the peel,” she says with a laugh. “You scrape the inside of the peel, bake it in the oven, and smoke it. It was hilarious.” The next night, on Carson, Carlin joked about trying to get high from banana peels. “I thought, ‘Oh, my God, I hope my parents aren’t watching,’” says McFarlane.
The year 1968 began with accolades for Carlin, starting with a Grammy nomination for Take-Offs and Put-Ons. In the Best Comedy Recording category, the album was up against Flip Wilson’s Cowboys and Colored People, the posthumously released Lenny Bruce in Concert, and a record by former country music radio personality Archie Campbell, who would soon become a star of Hee Haw. The fifth nominee, Bill Cosby’s Revenge, was virtually preordained as the winner, with Cosby in the midst of a six-year streak of winning every comedy Grammy. Carlin took home a consolation prize when he was honored as one of the “Hollywood Stars of Tomorrow,” as the outstanding young male performer in the variety format for Away We Go. Carlin beat out Pryor (for his work on The Merv Griffin Show) and Flip Wilson, a future colleague.
He was reaching a certain level of acceptance in Hollywood. “I became known as a reliable prime-time variety show comedian,” said Carlin. In February Gleason grabbed Carlin for his own variety hour. Sullivan wanted him back for more; so did Carson. Anything-goes producer Chuck Barris, angling to capitalize on the recent successes of The Dating Game and The Newlywed Game, booked Carlin for two weeks on a mercifully short-lived game show called How’s Your Mother-in-Law? In January Barris’s production company made Carlin a guest host for Operation: Entertainment, a USO-style grab bag shot at various military bases. One week after celebrity impersonator Rich Little hosted the show’s debut episode, Carlin emceed a taping at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas.
For some nagging reason, none of these opportunities felt quite right. One particular letdown was Carlin’s first film role. Eyeing the comic acting career of Jack Lemmon, who turned a largely uneventful resume as a television role player into box-office stardom (Some Like It Hot, The Apartment), he took a supporting role as a goofy carhop