Seven Dirty Words_ The Life and Crimes of George Carlin - James Sullivan [54]
Still, he had obligations. He did the Sullivan show, on a night that also featured Bob Newhart, just after wrapping up the disaster at the Copa. He appeared twice more on Sullivan’s stage in a matter of months—the first time alongside singer Bobby Goldsboro, impressionist David Frye, and Pryor (who remained a favorite of the taciturn host); the second with Don Rickles and the Jackson 5.
His changing perception was beginning to show in his physical appearance. He no longer looked like the dutiful middle-manager type. When he checked into a hospital for a hernia operation, he stopped shaving and quickly decided to keep the beard. Returning to Mister Kelly’s in Chicago for a summertime engagement, Carlin drew a rave from Variety’s reviewer. With other Chicago clubs coasting through the quiet summer season, owner George Marienthal could have followed suit, the unnamed writer pointed out. Instead, Mister Kelly’s had put together a fine lineup, including an “attractive thrush” named Taro Delphi, that would have been a nice draw in a busier season.
Carlin, “no stranger hereabouts,” unveiled new material “that reaffirms early impressions that he is one of the most creative and engaging laugh producers playing the café circuit.” Though prone to “offbeat routines,” the reviewer continued, “he has the ability to couch them in jargon and imagery that is palatable to a wide range of tastes.” He mixed topics well, alternating “typical grogshop stuff,” like his advertising spoofs, with social commentary, “per his assessment of the country’s burgeoning drug orientation.” Little did the critic know how deeply invested the comic was in his new material; during Carlin’s last visit to Mister Kelly’s the previous year, he’d been in the midst of an acid binge.
In September 1970, Carlin dragged himself back to the Frontier, which still held options on him through the end of the year. The headline act was the Supremes, who were returning to the hotel after performing their last show with Diana Ross there in January. Carlin was scheduled for three weeks with the group, followed by one more week with Al Martino, the former construction worker from Philadelphia whose singing career would lead to a role in The Godfather.
Opening night with the Supremes went off without a hitch. In fact, Variety’s reviewer was more impressed with Carlin than with the head-liners, who, performing with the house’s Al Alvarez Orchestra, were “gradually becoming bleached in musical content and direction.” Carlin, the writer suggested, had “come up a modish contemporary fellow complete with a well-trimmed beard.” The “brand-new whimsies” in his repertoire reportedly caused “plethoras of sidesplits,” and, after a momentary lull, his finale about drugs and druggists inspired the audience to show its appreciation with “vigorous palming.”
But Carlin was still stung by the previous year’s episode at the Frontier. He was feeling devilish; during the engagement he came up with a way to test the management’s tolerance while seemingly keeping his own innocence intact. He’d been thinking about how certain comedians got away with working “blue.” For years Buddy Hackett, who was so firmly entrenched at the Sahara Hotel that owner Del Webb made him a vice president, had been doing raunchy jokes about sex and ethnicity. Redd Foxx, an old friend of Malcolm X who became one of the first black performers to work for white audiences in Las Vegas, was an underground celebrity for his risqué “party” records long before the launch of his television show Sanford and Son. Both of those Vegas regulars said the word “shit,” Carlin noted onstage. “I don’t say ‘shit’ in my act,” he said. “I may smoke a little, but I don’t say it.”
Carlin had been smoking “shit” habitually since he was thirteen years old. “I