Eddie Lawrence
Encyclopedia
Eddie Lawrence is an American
monologist
, actor, singer, lyricist, playwright, director and television personality, whose unique comic creation, the eternally and bizarrely optimistic Old Philosopher, has gained him a devoted, although specialized, cult following for over five decades.
, Lawrence Eisler began performing at the end of the Depression 1930s. Barely out of his teens, he gained a minor reputation as an original comic
/raconteur who performed bizarre elocution of whimsical free verse
in little clubs in the New York
area as well as on the "borscht belt
" circuit in the Catskills.
His first confirmed radio appearance was on Major Bowes Amateur Hour
in 1943, where he did World War II
-themed comic impressions of Charles Boyer
, Ronald Colman
, Roland Young
and Clem McCarthy
. A preserved audio transcript of his performance was one of the selections included 16 years later on the 1959 LP
Original Amateur Hour
25th Anniversary Album (UA
UXL 2). On the recording, Major Bowes is heard inviting "Larry" to come out of the audience and tell us all he knows.
By the early 1950s, now rechristened Eddie Lawrence, he continued to appear in lesser clubs, honing his comic timing, while taking bit parts in the numerous live television productions then prevalent in New York. His first major stage role was in the second revival of The Threepenny Opera
which opened at the Off-Broadway
Theater deLys on September 30, 1955 (an earlier production, without him, lasted for 96 performances in March-May 1954). A member of the original cast, he sang the role of Macheath's most prominent henchman, Crook-Finger Jack. Among the returning players from the 1954 version were future TV stars Beatrice Arthur
and John Astin
, and its leading lady, Lotte Lenya
, the original Jenny from both the August 1928 Berlin
premiere under its German title, Die Dreigroschenoper, and G. W. Pabst's 1931 film version
. The second deLys incarnation was much more successful, running over six years, for a total of 2611 performances, and finally closing on December 17, 1961, but Eddie Lawrence stayed with it less than a year while working on the monologue which was to make his name.
entitled "The Old Philosopher" rose to the Billboard Top 40 chart, a rare distinction for a comedy record by a little-known performer. It turned out to be a one-hit wonder for Eddie Lawrence, but nonetheless paved the way for his long comedy career. In a four-minute routine, a crotchety, ridiculous-sounding character recounts a litany of nonsensical calamities. Speaking in a comically downtrodden, empathetic voice, and accompanied by a flute rendition of "Love's Old Sweet Song," he begins, "Hey there, friend" — or "cousin" or "bunkie" or "pal" — "You say you lost your job today...", followed by a litany of idiotic disasters like "Your daughter's goin' out with a convict?" and "Your wife just confessed she spent your last 60 bucks for a deposit on an airplane hangar?" Pause as the flute retires. Eddie asks plaintively, "Is that what's troubling you, friend?" Suddenly cymbals crash and a brassy rendition of "National Emblem
" plays as Eddie declaims in full voice, "L-L-L-Lift your head up high and take a walk in the sun with that dignity and stick-to-it-iveness and you'll show the world, you'll show them where to get off, you'll never give up, never give up, never give up" — two drumbeats — "that ship!" Those sentiments are followed by a recitation of another round of silly misfortunes and foolish optimism, then another rallying cry, and then still another round.
The success of the single made Eddie Lawrence a minor celebrity and helped the sales of his two previously-released LPs. The initial one, The Garden of Eddie Lawrence (Signature
SM 1003) did not make much of an impact on its original release in early 1955. It contained three comic interviews with personalities introduced as "Kiddie Star", "Wolfgang Birdwatcher" and "Fleming of the Yard", a set of brief blackout gags, a long, whimsically strange routine about plucking chickens, and three monologues delivered by as-yet-unnamed, Old Philosopher-like character. The second LP, released in mid-1956, finally gave him the name of the title—The Old Philosopher (Coral 57103). It was the first of Lawrence's five LPs for Coral Records
and proved so successful that the company realized the profitability of issuance of the title routine as a single ("King Arthur's Mines," another track from the LP was on the flip side). Years later, the original "Old Philosopher" routine would be included on the compilation record, 25 Years of Recorded Comedy (Warner Bros. Records
3BX 3131)
With this achievement under his belt, Eddie Lawrence was already busy writing the routines for a follow-up album, while rehearsing for his first full-fledged Broadway
show. Bells Are Ringing
, a new musical by Jule Styne
, Betty Comden
and Adolph Green
, opened at the Shubert Theatre
on November 29, 1956 with Judy Holliday
in the lead and, in the supporting cast for most of its run, Eddie Lawrence as Sandor, with the role preserved for posterity on the original cast album (Columbia
OL 5170). Closing night, more than two years and 924 performances later, was March 7, 1959.
The second Coral LP, The Side-Splitting Personality of Eddie Lawrence (CRL 57371) came out in 1957. It contained only one "Old Philosopher" track, but the other routines were the usual bizarre mix that pleased his fans. Especially deft were the parodies of The Untouchables
("The Unbreakables") and Casablanca
("Play the Music, Sol"), with an inspired impression of Peter Lorre
. At least two of the tracks, "Panhandling on Madison Avenue" and "Foreign Movies" have the background laughter and applause indicative of performances recorded in front of a live audience.
On March 5, 1958 he made a rare TV acting appearance in an episode of Sergeant Bilko playing an artist named Felix, a next door neighbor to a character played by Alan Alda
.
There were two "Old Philosopher" tracks on The Kingdom of Eddie Lawrence (Coral 57203), his next LP, which came out just before Christmas. Taking note of the season, one of the other tracks, "That Holiday Spirit" was a bizarre routine with a character whom listeners may judge to be a combination of "The Old Philosopher" and Ebenezer Scrooge
, denouncing Christmas and various other holidays, including Halloween
, while an irritated, Wally Cox
-like, voice is heard piping up occasionally with "...will you shut up?". The album cover depicts Eddie sitting in a throne-like chair, wearing what appears to be a white bathrobe and a Prince Valiant
wig held by a metallic ring shaped like the base of a crown, while gazing sideways with an exasperatedly worried expression on his face.
1959 saw the release of Eddie the Old Philosopher (Coral 57155) which contained four "Old Philosopher" routines as well as "Memories of Louise" in which a sentimental Eddie remembers his boyhood love — "...who could predict then that from a little fibber you'd grow into a dangerous paranoid liar? ...ah, the way you used to stick your finger in my eye...". Another well-remembered routine, "Television Highlights" was a series of parodies which sent up popular TV commercials of the era.
's cartoon subsidiary Famous Studios
, providing the voices for thirteen animated shorts, starting with Scouting for Trouble. He also wrote the stories for most of them, including a seven-film series about two characters named Swifty and Shorty whom he used to recreate a number of his routines, such as Panhandling on Madison Avenue and Fix That Clock (both 1964). Ultimately, however, defining changes in the financing and distribution of mass-produced short subject
s, meant that neither Eddie Lawrence nor another creative talent at the studio, Ralph Bakshi
could stave off the demise of the theatrical cartoon, as Famous Studios closed its doors in 1967. Eddie Lawrence's final gift to the animation world was the Swifty and Shorty vehicle, Les Boys, released in January 1966. All of the films, except one, clocked in at 7 minutes. The extended-length title was among the earliest, Abner the Baseball, a 16-minute special seen in November 1961, based upon a tale which was among the tracks on The Kingdom of Eddie Lawrence LP. It is a first-person account by an anthropomorphized
baseball describing its experience of being hit out of Briggs Stadium by Mickey Mantle
in a September 10, 1960 home run
against the Detroit Tigers
. Bizarre whimsy, as usual, was the order of the day.
It was also in evidence in 1963's 7 Characters in Search of Eddie Lawrence (Coral 57411), his fifth and final Coral LP. It had three new "Old Philosopher" routines, including "The Lawyer's Philosopher" — "Hey there, Mouthpiece. You say you represent a man for jaywalking and they hang him? ...Is that what's marrin' your day, Darrow
? Well, lift your head up high and sway that jury in a high baritone voice... remember—if crime didn't pay, you'd be out of work!"
's TV stations, also had the opportunity to see Eddie Lawrence Monday through Friday afternoons on independent station WPIX Channel 11 which, along with another New York independent, WNEW Channel 5 was, during the 1950s and '60s, the station with the greatest number of "kiddie shows" on its broadcast schedule. The management of WPIX realized that Lawrence's monologues were very popular with adolescent boys who were the core audience for The Three Stooges two-reelers shown, at the time, nationwide by TV stations which considered them children's programming. Long-time WPIX children's favorite "Officer" Joe Bolton relinquished his Three Stooges post in favor of hosting Dick Tracy cartoons and Eddie Lawrence was invited to step in as the half-hour program's host. His daily recitations of "Old Philosopher" monologues and other comedy routines, most of which were only tested on the show and never committed to record, built him a faithful and dedicated audience and made him a cult figure.
the director and choreographer, and David Susskind
and Joseph E. Levine
the producers. With such high-powered names at the helm, there was high expectation of success and Eddie Lawrence, the show's author, was expected to assure it by attending all the rehearsals. The first preview was set for February 1, 1965 and opening night for February 6. At the end of October 1964, he hosted his final "Three Stooges show", said goodbye to his loyal viewers, and exited, trailing a banner across the TV screen, emblazoned with the word KELLY.
Kelly became embroiled in controversy when producers Susskind and Levine began to demand extensive changes during rehearsals and out-of-town tryouts. While originally signing onto Lawrence's and Charlap's edgy concept of a darkly comic musical about corruption in old New York, they soon panicked over its perceived lack of commercial appeal, despite some good reviews on the road, and hired new writers in spite of the authors' objections. By the time Kellys February 6 opening night at the Broadhurst Theatre
also turned out to be its closing night, it was an entirely different show. Lawrence and Charlap subsequently brought a lawsuit charging Susskind and Levine with violation of the Dramatists Guild's clauses protecting the rights of creative artists and, ultimately, settling the case out of court for an undisclosed amount.
One lasting legacy from Kelly has been the song "I'll Never Go There Anymore", recorded by many artists over the years. Stephen Sondheim
cited it in a 2000 New York Times article as one of the songs "I wish I had written". Eddie Lawrence was not an actor in Kelly and there was no original cast album, but he was popular enough at the time to warrant a recording of comic material and songs from the show, all performed by himself and Charlap (Original Cast Records OC 8025). A new studio recording of the complete score (Original Cast Records ASIN:B00000DGNP) was issued on CD in 1998, featuring the 79-year-old Eddie along with Brian D'Arcy James
, Sally Mayes
, George S. Irving
, John Schuck
, Marge Redmond
, Jane Connell and Sandy Stewart
, who was married to Moose Charlap from 1962 until his death in 1974.
A few months after the Kelly disappointment, one last LP appeared, Is That What's Bothering You Bunkie (Epic
LN 24159). Taking its title from "The Old Philosopher"'s catchphrase, Bunkie contained five new "Old Philosopher" monologues and six other routines.
Eddie Lawrence continued to perform in clubs and, in 1967, joined the cast of yet another Broadway musical, Sherry!
, nickname
d for Sheridan Whiteside, the acerbic literary wit and radio personality created by George S. Kaufman
and Moss Hart
as the title character in The Man Who Came to Dinner
. Whiteside, a comically exaggerated representation of Kaufman and Hart's friend, Alexander Woollcott
, was performed by Clive Revill
, while Eddie's role was that of Banjo, a send-up of Woollcott's sidekick, Harpo Marx
. Sherry! opened at the Alvin Theater on March 28, 1967 and closed on May 27, having played 72 performances plus 14 previews. No cast album was recorded and the score and orchestrations were lost. All that remained were the book and lyrics written by James Lipton
who gained celebrity twenty-seven years later, in 1994, as the creator and host of the long-running actor-interview series Inside the Actors Studio
. The music was eventually found in 1999, and a 2004 studio cast album was recorded with stars including Nathan Lane
, Carol Burnett
, Bernadette Peters
and Tommy Tune
.
's 1968 recreation of 1920 New York City
, The Night They Raided Minsky's
. Lawrence was hired when Bert Lahr
died midway through the filming schedule of this Norman Lear
-produced tribute to the early days of burlesque
. Twelfth-billed as Scratch, a baggy-pants comic, Eddie performed the "Crazy House" burlesque routine originally scripted for Lahr: Eddie Lawrence is heard calling for the nurse in Lahr's distinctive Brooklyn accent ("Noice! Noice!"). Three years later, Eddie had a couple of fleeting moments as a Bowery
derelict in visionary director Ernest Pintoff
's little-seen noir
-like oddity Who Killed Mary What's 'Er Name?
, filmed on the streets of New York in 1971.
On February 22, 1971, Eddie appeared as a guest on Johnny Carson
's Tonight Show
(which, until May 1972, was based in New York), performing a five-minute Old Philosopher routine at the end of which Carson was laughing loudly and repeating some of its lines and, in 1974, he was heard as the announcer on a TV ad for John Lennon
and Harry Nilsson
's album, Pussy Cats
, which also included contributions by Ringo Starr
and Keith Moon
.
Eddie Lawrence's remaining three films were Blade (1973), The Wild Party
(1975) and Somebody Killed Her Husband
(1978). Blade reunited him with director Ernest Pintoff, an auteur whose original New York City-based films were considered to have little commercial appeal. The film follows a tough cop named Tommy Blade (John Marley
) as he searches for a sadistic serial killer. Eddie has a memorable, though brief scene as a movie producer questioned by Blade. Party was Eddie's sole performing venture in California
. In this Merchant
–Ivory
production which fictionalized the Fatty Arbuckle scandal, Eddie, made-up to resemble an approximation of Louis B. Mayer
, played a grimacing movie mogul attending the titular event thrown by Jolly Grimm, the Fatty
character, played by James Coco
. The film was praised for its period feel, but received otherwise mixed notices and suffered botched editing and other mishandling by the distributor. Finally, Her Husband, filmed in New York by the director of a number of The Twilight Zone
episodes, Lamont Johnson
, with a screenplay by The Defenders creator Reginald Rose
, had Eddie in a semi-comical bit as a neighbor of the titular "her" (Farrah Fawcett-Majors
). Despite the creative talents involved, this initial starring vehicle for the most-publicized of Charlie's Angels
got generally dismissive reviews, engendering its widely-repeated disparagement, "Somebody Killed Her Career".
Thirteen years later and thirty years after Bunkie, his 1964 Epic release, the 75-year-old Eddie Lawrence had his first new album. 1994's The Jazzy Old Philosopher (Red Dragon JK 57756) showed that the veteran monologist had not lost his unique touch. The CD
consisted of 58 minutes of the traditional and the new, with names such as Mick Jagger
, Axl Rose
, Boy George
and Sinéad O'Connor
dropped into the routines — "You say your grandpa's in the hospital again because he tried to make a citizen's arrest of Mick Jagger? Is that what's got you down in the dumps, homeboy?"
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
monologist
Monologist
-Monologist:A monologist is a solo artist who recites or gives dramatic readings from a monologue, soliloquy, poetry or work of literature for the entertainment of an audience...
, actor, singer, lyricist, playwright, director and television personality, whose unique comic creation, the eternally and bizarrely optimistic Old Philosopher, has gained him a devoted, although specialized, cult following for over five decades.
Early career
A native of BrooklynBrooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...
, Lawrence Eisler began performing at the end of the Depression 1930s. Barely out of his teens, he gained a minor reputation as an original comic
Stand-up comedy
Stand-up comedy is a comedic art form. Usually, a comedian performs in front of a live audience, speaking directly to them. Their performances are sometimes filmed for later release via DVD, the internet, and television...
/raconteur who performed bizarre elocution of whimsical free verse
Free verse
Free verse is a form of poetry that refrains from consistent meter patterns, rhyme, or any other musical pattern.Poets have explained that free verse, despite its freedom, is not free. Free Verse displays some elements of form...
in little clubs in the New York
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
area as well as on the "borscht belt
Borscht Belt
Borscht Belt, or Jewish Alps, is a colloquial term for the mostly defunct summer resorts of the Catskill Mountains in parts of Sullivan, Orange and Ulster counties in upstate New York that were a popular vacation spot for New York City Jews from the 1920s through the 1960s.-Name:The name comes from...
" circuit in the Catskills.
His first confirmed radio appearance was on Major Bowes Amateur Hour
Major Bowes Amateur Hour
Major Bowes Amateur Hour, American radio's best-known talent show, was one of the most popular programs broadcast in the United States in the 1930s and 1940s...
in 1943, where he did World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
-themed comic impressions of Charles Boyer
Charles Boyer
Charles Boyer was a French actor who appeared in more than 80 films between 1920 and 1976. After receiving an education in drama, Boyer started on the stage, but he found success in movies during the 1930s. His memorable performances were among the era's most highly praised romantic dramas,...
, Ronald Colman
Ronald Colman
Ronald Charles Colman was an English actor.-Early years:He was born in Richmond, Surrey, England, the second son and fourth child of Charles Colman and his wife Marjory Read Fraser. His siblings included Eric, Edith, and Marjorie. He was educated at boarding school in Littlehampton, where he...
, Roland Young
Roland Young
Roland Young was an English actor.-Early life and career:Born in London, England, Young was educated at Sherborne School, Dorset and the University of London before being accepted into Royal Academy of Dramatic Art...
and Clem McCarthy
Clem McCarthy
Clem McCarthy was an American sportscaster and public address announcer. He also lent his voice to Pathe News's RKO newsreels. He was known for his gravelly voice and dramatic style, a "whiskey tenor" as sports announcer and executive David J...
. A preserved audio transcript of his performance was one of the selections included 16 years later on the 1959 LP
Gramophone record
A gramophone record, commonly known as a phonograph record , vinyl record , or colloquially, a record, is an analog sound storage medium consisting of a flat disc with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove...
Original Amateur Hour
Original Amateur Hour
The Original Amateur Hour is an American radio and television program. The show was a continuation of Major Bowes Amateur Hour which had been a radio staple from 1934 to 1945. Major Edward Bowes, the originator of the program and its master of ceremonies, left the show in 1945 and died the...
25th Anniversary Album (UA
United Artists Records
United Artists Records was a record label founded by Max E. Youngstein of United Artists in 1957 initially to distribute records of its movie soundtracks, though it soon branched out into recording music of a number of different genres.-History:...
UXL 2). On the recording, Major Bowes is heard inviting "Larry" to come out of the audience and tell us all he knows.
By the early 1950s, now rechristened Eddie Lawrence, he continued to appear in lesser clubs, honing his comic timing, while taking bit parts in the numerous live television productions then prevalent in New York. His first major stage role was in the second revival of The Threepenny Opera
The Threepenny Opera
The Threepenny Opera is a musical by German dramatist Bertolt Brecht and composer Kurt Weill, in collaboration with translator Elisabeth Hauptmann and set designer Caspar Neher. It was adapted from an 18th-century English ballad opera, John Gay's The Beggar's Opera, and offers a Marxist critique...
which opened at the Off-Broadway
Off-Broadway
Off-Broadway theater is a term for a professional venue in New York City with a seating capacity between 100 and 499, and for a specific production of a play, musical or revue that appears in such a venue, and which adheres to related trade union and other contracts...
Theater deLys on September 30, 1955 (an earlier production, without him, lasted for 96 performances in March-May 1954). A member of the original cast, he sang the role of Macheath's most prominent henchman, Crook-Finger Jack. Among the returning players from the 1954 version were future TV stars Beatrice Arthur
Beatrice Arthur
Beatrice "Bea" Arthur was an American actress, comedienne and singer whose career spanned seven decades. Arthur achieved fame as the character Maude Findlay on the 1970s sitcoms All in the Family and Maude, and as Dorothy Zbornak on the 1980s sitcom The Golden Girls, winning Emmy Awards for both...
and John Astin
John Astin
John Allen Astin is an American actor who has appeared in numerous films and television shows, and is best known for the role of Gomez Addams on The Addams Family, and other similarly eccentric comedic characters.-Early years:...
, and its leading lady, Lotte Lenya
Lotte Lenya
Lotte Lenya was an Austrian singer, diseuse, and actress. In the German-speaking and classical music world she is best remembered for her performances of the songs of her husband, Kurt Weill. In English-language film she is remembered for her Academy Award-nominated role in The Roman Spring of Mrs...
, the original Jenny from both the August 1928 Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
premiere under its German title, Die Dreigroschenoper, and G. W. Pabst's 1931 film version
The Threepenny Opera (1931 film)
The Threepenny Opera is a 1931 German musical film directed by G. W. Pabst. It was produced by Seymour Nebenzal's Nero-Film for Tonbild-Syndikat AG , Berlin and Warner Bros. Pictures GmbH, Berlin. The film is loosely based on the 1928 musical theatre success The Threepenny Opera by Bertolt Brecht...
. The second deLys incarnation was much more successful, running over six years, for a total of 2611 performances, and finally closing on December 17, 1961, but Eddie Lawrence stayed with it less than a year while working on the monologue which was to make his name.
The Old Philosopher
In September 1956, a singleSingle (music)
In music, a single or record single is a type of release, typically a recording of fewer tracks than an LP or a CD. This can be released for sale to the public in a variety of different formats. In most cases, the single is a song that is released separately from an album, but it can still appear...
entitled "The Old Philosopher" rose to the Billboard Top 40 chart, a rare distinction for a comedy record by a little-known performer. It turned out to be a one-hit wonder for Eddie Lawrence, but nonetheless paved the way for his long comedy career. In a four-minute routine, a crotchety, ridiculous-sounding character recounts a litany of nonsensical calamities. Speaking in a comically downtrodden, empathetic voice, and accompanied by a flute rendition of "Love's Old Sweet Song," he begins, "Hey there, friend" — or "cousin" or "bunkie" or "pal" — "You say you lost your job today...", followed by a litany of idiotic disasters like "Your daughter's goin' out with a convict?" and "Your wife just confessed she spent your last 60 bucks for a deposit on an airplane hangar?" Pause as the flute retires. Eddie asks plaintively, "Is that what's troubling you, friend?" Suddenly cymbals crash and a brassy rendition of "National Emblem
National Emblem
National Emblem is a march composed in 1902 and published in 1906 by Edwin Eugene Bagley. It is a standard of the American march repertoire, appearing in eleven published editions....
" plays as Eddie declaims in full voice, "L-L-L-Lift your head up high and take a walk in the sun with that dignity and stick-to-it-iveness and you'll show the world, you'll show them where to get off, you'll never give up, never give up, never give up" — two drumbeats — "that ship!" Those sentiments are followed by a recitation of another round of silly misfortunes and foolish optimism, then another rallying cry, and then still another round.
The success of the single made Eddie Lawrence a minor celebrity and helped the sales of his two previously-released LPs. The initial one, The Garden of Eddie Lawrence (Signature
Signature Records
Signature Records was a mid-20th century United States based record label. Noted Signature recording artists included Anita O'Day, Coleman Hawkins, Eddie Lawrence, Ray Anthony, Barbara McNair, Monica Lewis, Dickie Thompson, Jane Harvey, Kay Thompson and Alan Dale. Bob Thiele produced records for...
SM 1003) did not make much of an impact on its original release in early 1955. It contained three comic interviews with personalities introduced as "Kiddie Star", "Wolfgang Birdwatcher" and "Fleming of the Yard", a set of brief blackout gags, a long, whimsically strange routine about plucking chickens, and three monologues delivered by as-yet-unnamed, Old Philosopher-like character. The second LP, released in mid-1956, finally gave him the name of the title—The Old Philosopher (Coral 57103). It was the first of Lawrence's five LPs for Coral Records
Coral Records
Coral Records was a Decca Records subsidiary formed in 1949. It recorded pop artists McGuire Sisters and Teresa Brewer, as well as rock and roller Buddy Holly....
and proved so successful that the company realized the profitability of issuance of the title routine as a single ("King Arthur's Mines," another track from the LP was on the flip side). Years later, the original "Old Philosopher" routine would be included on the compilation record, 25 Years of Recorded Comedy (Warner Bros. Records
Warner Bros. Records
Warner Bros. Records Inc. is an American record label. It was the foundation label of the present-day Warner Music Group, and now operates as a wholly owned subsidiary of that corporation. It maintains a close relationship with its former parent, Warner Bros. Pictures, although the two companies...
3BX 3131)
With this achievement under his belt, Eddie Lawrence was already busy writing the routines for a follow-up album, while rehearsing for his first full-fledged Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
show. Bells Are Ringing
Bells Are Ringing (musical)
Bells Are Ringing is a musical with a book and lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green and music by Jule Styne. The story revolves around Ella, who works at an answering service and the characters that she meets there. The main character was based on Mary Printz, who worked for Green's answering...
, a new musical by Jule Styne
Jule Styne
Jule Styne was a British-born American songwriter especially famous for a series of Broadway musicals, which included several very well known and frequently revived shows.-Early life:...
, Betty Comden
Betty Comden
Betty Comden was one-half of the musical-comedy duo Comden and Green, who provided lyrics, libretti, and screenplays to some of the most beloved and successful Hollywood musicals and Broadway shows of the mid-20th century...
and Adolph Green
Adolph Green
Adolph Green was an American lyricist and playwright who, with long-time collaborator Betty Comden, penned the screenplays and songs for some of the most beloved movie musicals, particularly as part of Arthur Freed's production unit at MGM, during the genre's heyday...
, opened at the Shubert Theatre
Shubert Theatre (Broadway)
The Shubert Theatre is a Broadway theatre located at 225 West 44th Street in midtown-Manhattan, New York, United States.Designed by architect Henry Beaumont Herts, it was named after Sam S. Shubert, the second oldest of the three brothers of the theatrical producing family...
on November 29, 1956 with Judy Holliday
Judy Holliday
Judy Holliday was an American actress.Holliday began her career as part of a night-club act, before working in Broadway plays and musicals...
in the lead and, in the supporting cast for most of its run, Eddie Lawrence as Sandor, with the role preserved for posterity on the original cast album (Columbia
Columbia Records
Columbia Records is an American record label, owned by Japan's Sony Music Entertainment, operating under the Columbia Music Group with Aware Records. It was founded in 1888, evolving from an earlier enterprise, the American Graphophone Company — successor to the Volta Graphophone Company...
OL 5170). Closing night, more than two years and 924 performances later, was March 7, 1959.
The second Coral LP, The Side-Splitting Personality of Eddie Lawrence (CRL 57371) came out in 1957. It contained only one "Old Philosopher" track, but the other routines were the usual bizarre mix that pleased his fans. Especially deft were the parodies of The Untouchables
The Untouchables (1959 TV series)
The Untouchables is an American crime drama that ran from 1959 to 1963 on ABC. Based on the memoir of the same name by Eliot Ness and Oscar Fraley, it fictionalized the experiences of Eliot Ness, a real-life Prohibition agent, as he fought crime in Chicago during the 1930s with the help of a...
("The Unbreakables") and Casablanca
Casablanca (film)
Casablanca is a 1942 American romantic drama film directed by Michael Curtiz, starring Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman and Paul Henreid, and featuring Claude Rains, Conrad Veidt, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre and Dooley Wilson. Set during World War II, it focuses on a man torn between, in...
("Play the Music, Sol"), with an inspired impression of Peter Lorre
Peter Lorre
Peter Lorre was an Austrian-American actor frequently typecast as a sinister foreigner.He caused an international sensation in 1931 with his portrayal of a serial killer who preys on little girls in the German film M...
. At least two of the tracks, "Panhandling on Madison Avenue" and "Foreign Movies" have the background laughter and applause indicative of performances recorded in front of a live audience.
On March 5, 1958 he made a rare TV acting appearance in an episode of Sergeant Bilko playing an artist named Felix, a next door neighbor to a character played by Alan Alda
Alan Alda
Alphonso Joseph D'Abruzzo , better known as Alan Alda, is an American actor, director, screenwriter, and author. A six-time Emmy Award and Golden Globe Award winner, he is best known for his role as Hawkeye Pierce in the TV series M*A*S*H...
.
There were two "Old Philosopher" tracks on The Kingdom of Eddie Lawrence (Coral 57203), his next LP, which came out just before Christmas. Taking note of the season, one of the other tracks, "That Holiday Spirit" was a bizarre routine with a character whom listeners may judge to be a combination of "The Old Philosopher" and Ebenezer Scrooge
Ebenezer Scrooge
Ebenezer Scrooge is the principal character in Charles Dickens's 1843 novel, A Christmas Carol. At the beginning of the novel, Scrooge is a cold-hearted, tight-fisted and greedy man, who despises Christmas and all things which give people happiness...
, denouncing Christmas and various other holidays, including Halloween
Halloween
Hallowe'en , also known as Halloween or All Hallows' Eve, is a yearly holiday observed around the world on October 31, the night before All Saints' Day...
, while an irritated, Wally Cox
Wally Cox
Wallace Maynard Cox was an American comedian and actor, particularly associated with the early years of television in the United States. He appeared in the U.S. TV series Mr. Peepers , plus several other popular shows, and as a character actor in over 20 films...
-like, voice is heard piping up occasionally with "...will you shut up?". The album cover depicts Eddie sitting in a throne-like chair, wearing what appears to be a white bathrobe and a Prince Valiant
Prince Valiant
Prince Valiant in the Days of King Arthur, or simply Prince Valiant, is a long-run comic strip created by Hal Foster in 1937. It is an epic adventure that has told a continuous story during its entire history, and the full stretch of that story now totals more than 3700 Sunday strips...
wig held by a metallic ring shaped like the base of a crown, while gazing sideways with an exasperatedly worried expression on his face.
1959 saw the release of Eddie the Old Philosopher (Coral 57155) which contained four "Old Philosopher" routines as well as "Memories of Louise" in which a sentimental Eddie remembers his boyhood love — "...who could predict then that from a little fibber you'd grow into a dangerous paranoid liar? ...ah, the way you used to stick your finger in my eye...". Another well-remembered routine, "Television Highlights" was a series of parodies which sent up popular TV commercials of the era.
Cartoon series at Famous Studios
In 1960 he began a six-year association with ParamountParamount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...
's cartoon subsidiary Famous Studios
Famous Studios
Famous Studios was the animation division of the film studio Paramount Pictures from 1942 to 1967. Famous was founded as a successor company to Fleischer Studios, after Paramount acquired the aforementioned studio and ousted its founders, Max and Dave Fleischer, in 1941...
, providing the voices for thirteen animated shorts, starting with Scouting for Trouble. He also wrote the stories for most of them, including a seven-film series about two characters named Swifty and Shorty whom he used to recreate a number of his routines, such as Panhandling on Madison Avenue and Fix That Clock (both 1964). Ultimately, however, defining changes in the financing and distribution of mass-produced short subject
Short subject
A short film is any film not long enough to be considered a feature film. No consensus exists as to where that boundary is drawn: the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences defines a short film as "an original motion picture that has a running time of 40 minutes or less, including all...
s, meant that neither Eddie Lawrence nor another creative talent at the studio, Ralph Bakshi
Ralph Bakshi
Ralph Bakshi is an Israeli-American director of animated and live-action films. In the 1970s, he established an alternative to mainstream animation through independent and adult-oriented productions. Between 1972 and 1992, he directed nine theatrically released feature films, five of which he wrote...
could stave off the demise of the theatrical cartoon, as Famous Studios closed its doors in 1967. Eddie Lawrence's final gift to the animation world was the Swifty and Shorty vehicle, Les Boys, released in January 1966. All of the films, except one, clocked in at 7 minutes. The extended-length title was among the earliest, Abner the Baseball, a 16-minute special seen in November 1961, based upon a tale which was among the tracks on The Kingdom of Eddie Lawrence LP. It is a first-person account by an anthropomorphized
Anthropomorphism
Anthropomorphism is any attribution of human characteristics to animals, non-living things, phenomena, material states, objects or abstract concepts, such as organizations, governments, spirits or deities. The term was coined in the mid 1700s...
baseball describing its experience of being hit out of Briggs Stadium by Mickey Mantle
Mickey Mantle
Mickey Charles Mantle was an American professional baseball player. Mantle is regarded by many to be the greatest switch hitter of all time, and one of the greatest players in baseball history. Mantle was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1974.Mantle was noted for his hitting...
in a September 10, 1960 home run
Home run
In baseball, a home run is scored when the ball is hit in such a way that the batter is able to reach home safely in one play without any errors being committed by the defensive team in the process...
against the Detroit Tigers
Detroit Tigers
The Detroit Tigers are a Major League Baseball team located in Detroit, Michigan. One of the American League's eight charter franchises, the club was founded in Detroit in as part of the Western League. The Tigers have won four World Series championships and have won the American League pennant...
. Bizarre whimsy, as usual, was the order of the day.
It was also in evidence in 1963's 7 Characters in Search of Eddie Lawrence (Coral 57411), his fifth and final Coral LP. It had three new "Old Philosopher" routines, including "The Lawyer's Philosopher" — "Hey there, Mouthpiece. You say you represent a man for jaywalking and they hang him? ...Is that what's marrin' your day, Darrow
Clarence Darrow
Clarence Seward Darrow was an American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union, best known for defending teenage thrill killers Leopold and Loeb in their trial for murdering 14-year-old Robert "Bobby" Franks and defending John T...
? Well, lift your head up high and sway that jury in a high baritone voice... remember—if crime didn't pay, you'd be out of work!"
Children's TV Host
Concurrent with his work on the Famous Studios cartoons, for a 13-month period from September 1963 to October 1964, baby boomers who lived within reach of New York CityNew York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
's TV stations, also had the opportunity to see Eddie Lawrence Monday through Friday afternoons on independent station WPIX Channel 11 which, along with another New York independent, WNEW Channel 5 was, during the 1950s and '60s, the station with the greatest number of "kiddie shows" on its broadcast schedule. The management of WPIX realized that Lawrence's monologues were very popular with adolescent boys who were the core audience for The Three Stooges two-reelers shown, at the time, nationwide by TV stations which considered them children's programming. Long-time WPIX children's favorite "Officer" Joe Bolton relinquished his Three Stooges post in favor of hosting Dick Tracy cartoons and Eddie Lawrence was invited to step in as the half-hour program's host. His daily recitations of "Old Philosopher" monologues and other comedy routines, most of which were only tested on the show and never committed to record, built him a faithful and dedicated audience and made him a cult figure.
Broadway: Kelly and Sherry!
The hosting stint, however, came to a premature end because of another Broadway show. Lawrence had written the book and lyrics for a musical entitled Kelly. Moose Charlap was the composer, Herbert RossHerbert Ross
Herbert Ross was an American film director, producer, choreographer and actor.-Early life and career:Born Herbert David Ross in Brooklyn, New York, he made his stage debut as Third Witch with a touring company of Macbeth in 1942...
the director and choreographer, and David Susskind
David Susskind
David Susskind was a producer of TV, movies, and stage plays and also a pioneer TV talk show host.-Personal:...
and Joseph E. Levine
Joseph E. Levine
Joseph E. Levine was an American film producer.He was born in Boston, Massachusetts. His Embassy Pictures Corporation was an independent studio and distributor responsible for such films as Hercules , The Carpetbaggers, Harlow, The Graduate, A Bridge Too Far and The Lion in Winter.Levine is famous...
the producers. With such high-powered names at the helm, there was high expectation of success and Eddie Lawrence, the show's author, was expected to assure it by attending all the rehearsals. The first preview was set for February 1, 1965 and opening night for February 6. At the end of October 1964, he hosted his final "Three Stooges show", said goodbye to his loyal viewers, and exited, trailing a banner across the TV screen, emblazoned with the word KELLY.
Kelly became embroiled in controversy when producers Susskind and Levine began to demand extensive changes during rehearsals and out-of-town tryouts. While originally signing onto Lawrence's and Charlap's edgy concept of a darkly comic musical about corruption in old New York, they soon panicked over its perceived lack of commercial appeal, despite some good reviews on the road, and hired new writers in spite of the authors' objections. By the time Kellys February 6 opening night at the Broadhurst Theatre
Broadhurst Theatre
The Broadhurst Theatre is a legitimate Broadway theatre located at 235 West 44th Street in midtown Manhattan.It was designed by architect Herbert J. Krapp, a well-known theatre designer who had been working directly with the Shubert brothers; the Broadhurst opened 27 September 1917...
also turned out to be its closing night, it was an entirely different show. Lawrence and Charlap subsequently brought a lawsuit charging Susskind and Levine with violation of the Dramatists Guild's clauses protecting the rights of creative artists and, ultimately, settling the case out of court for an undisclosed amount.
One lasting legacy from Kelly has been the song "I'll Never Go There Anymore", recorded by many artists over the years. Stephen Sondheim
Stephen Sondheim
Stephen Joshua Sondheim is an American composer and lyricist for stage and film. He is the winner of an Academy Award, multiple Tony Awards including the Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre, multiple Grammy Awards, a Pulitzer Prize and the Laurence Olivier Award...
cited it in a 2000 New York Times article as one of the songs "I wish I had written". Eddie Lawrence was not an actor in Kelly and there was no original cast album, but he was popular enough at the time to warrant a recording of comic material and songs from the show, all performed by himself and Charlap (Original Cast Records OC 8025). A new studio recording of the complete score (Original Cast Records ASIN:B00000DGNP) was issued on CD in 1998, featuring the 79-year-old Eddie along with Brian D'Arcy James
Brian d'Arcy James
Brian d'Arcy James is an American actor and musician.-Personal life:James was born in Saginaw, Michigan, the son of Mary , a seller of children's books, and a lawyer father, Thomas F. James. Brian's maternal grandfather was Harry F. Kelly, former Governor of the state of Michigan...
, Sally Mayes
Sally Mayes
-Biography:Born in Livingston, Texas, Mayes began her career as a rock and jazz singer in Houston. She made her Broadway debut in April 1989 as Winona Shook in Cy Coleman's Welcome to the Club. For her performance she won a Theatre World Award. This was followed by her appearance in the original...
, George S. Irving
George S. Irving
George S. Irving is an American actor, known primarily for his character roles on Broadway. Born George Irving Shelasky in Springfield, Massachusetts, he made his debut in the original 1943 production of Oklahoma!, only to be drafted days later to serve in World War II...
, John Schuck
John Schuck
Conrad John Schuck Jr. is an American actor, primarily in stage, movies and television. He is best-known for his roles as police commissioner Rock Hudson's mildly slow-witted assistant, Sgt. Charles Enright in the 1970s crime drama McMillan & Wife, and as Lee Meriwether's husband, Herman Munster...
, Marge Redmond
Marge Redmond
Marge Redmond is an American actress.-Background/Family:Margery Redmond was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1924. She was the first wife of the late actor Jack Weston, with whom she developed her acting craft at the Cleveland Play House after they married in 1950...
, Jane Connell and Sandy Stewart
Sandy Stewart (singer)
Sandy Stewart is an American singer of popular songs. She was a regular guest on 1950s TV variety series including shows hosted by Perry Como and Eddie Fisher....
, who was married to Moose Charlap from 1962 until his death in 1974.
A few months after the Kelly disappointment, one last LP appeared, Is That What's Bothering You Bunkie (Epic
Epic Records
Epic Records is an American record label, owned by Sony Music Entertainment. Though it was originally conceived as a jazz imprint, it has since expanded to represent various genres. L.A...
LN 24159). Taking its title from "The Old Philosopher"'s catchphrase, Bunkie contained five new "Old Philosopher" monologues and six other routines.
Eddie Lawrence continued to perform in clubs and, in 1967, joined the cast of yet another Broadway musical, Sherry!
Sherry!
Sherry! is a musical with a book and lyrics by James Lipton and music by Laurence Rosenthal. The musical is based on the George S. Kaufman-Moss Hart play The Man Who Came to Dinner....
, nickname
Nickname
A nickname is "a usually familiar or humorous but sometimes pointed or cruel name given to a person or place, as a supposedly appropriate replacement for or addition to the proper name.", or a name similar in origin and pronunciation from the original name....
d for Sheridan Whiteside, the acerbic literary wit and radio personality created by George S. Kaufman
George S. Kaufman
George Simon Kaufman was an American playwright, theatre director and producer, humorist, and drama critic. In addition to comedies and political satire, he wrote several musicals, notably for the Marx Brothers...
and Moss Hart
Moss Hart
Moss Hart was an American playwright and theatre director, best known for his interpretations of musical theater on Broadway.-Early years:...
as the title character in The Man Who Came to Dinner
The Man Who Came to Dinner
The Man Who Came to Dinner is a comedy in three acts by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart. It debuted on October 16, 1939 at the Music Box Theatre in New York City. It then enjoyed a number of New York and London revivals. The first London production was staged at The Savoy Theatre starring Robert...
. Whiteside, a comically exaggerated representation of Kaufman and Hart's friend, Alexander Woollcott
Alexander Woollcott
Alexander Humphreys Woollcott was an American critic and commentator for The New Yorker magazine and a member of the Algonquin Round Table....
, was performed by Clive Revill
Clive Revill
Clive Selsby Revill is a New Zealand-born British character actor best known for his performances in musical theatre and on the London stage.-Early life and stage career:...
, while Eddie's role was that of Banjo, a send-up of Woollcott's sidekick, Harpo Marx
Harpo Marx
Adolph "Harpo" Marx was an American comedian and film star. He was the second oldest of the Marx Brothers. His comic style was influenced by clown and pantomime traditions. He wore a curly reddish wig, and never spoke during performances...
. Sherry! opened at the Alvin Theater on March 28, 1967 and closed on May 27, having played 72 performances plus 14 previews. No cast album was recorded and the score and orchestrations were lost. All that remained were the book and lyrics written by James Lipton
James Lipton
James Lipton is an American writer, poet, composer, actor and dean emeritus of the Actors Studio Drama School at Pace University in New York City. He is the executive producer, writer and host of the Bravo cable television series Inside the Actors Studio, which debuted in 1994...
who gained celebrity twenty-seven years later, in 1994, as the creator and host of the long-running actor-interview series Inside the Actors Studio
Inside the Actors Studio
Inside the Actors Studio is a series on the Bravo cable television channel, hosted by James Lipton. It is produced and directed by Jeff Wurtz; the executive producer is James Lipton. The program, which premiered in 1994, is distributed internationally by CABLEready and is broadcast in 125 countries...
. The music was eventually found in 1999, and a 2004 studio cast album was recorded with stars including Nathan Lane
Nathan Lane
Nathan Lane is an American actor of stage and screen. He is best known for his roles as Mendy in The Lisbon Traviata, Albert in The Birdcage, Max Bialystock in the musical The Producers, Ernie Smuntz in MouseHunt, Nathan Detroit in Guys and Dolls, Pseudolus in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to...
, Carol Burnett
Carol Burnett
Carol Creighton Burnett is an American actress, comedian, singer, dancer and writer. Burnett started her career in New York. After becoming a hit on Broadway, she made her television debut...
, Bernadette Peters
Bernadette Peters
Bernadette Peters is an American actress, singer and children's book author from Ozone Park, Queens, New York. Over the course of a career that has spanned five decades, she has starred in musical theatre, films and television, as well as performing in solo concerts and recordings...
and Tommy Tune
Tommy Tune
Thomas James "Tommy" Tune is an American actor, dancer, singer, theatre director, producer, and choreographer. Over the course of his career, he has won nine Tony Awards and the National Medal of Arts.-Early years:...
.
Eddie Lawrence in the movies
Eddie Lawrence's film appearances were, at best, an afterthought to his other activities. Between 1968 and 1978, he had small roles in five features, starting with William FriedkinWilliam Friedkin
William Friedkin is an American film director, producer and screenwriter best known for directing The French Connection in 1971 and The Exorcist in 1973; for the former, he won the Academy Award for Best Director...
's 1968 recreation of 1920 New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, The Night They Raided Minsky's
The Night They Raided Minsky's
The Night They Raided Minsky's is a 1968 musical comedy film directed by William Friedkin and produced by Norman Lear. It is a fictional account of the invention of the striptease at Minsky's Burlesque in 1925...
. Lawrence was hired when Bert Lahr
Bert Lahr
Bert Lahr was an American actor and comedian. Lahr is remembered today for his roles as the Cowardly Lion and Kansas farmworker Zeke in The Wizard of Oz, but was also well-known for work in burlesque, vaudeville, and on Broadway.-Early life:Lahr was born in New York City, of German-Jewish heritage...
died midway through the filming schedule of this Norman Lear
Norman Lear
Norman Milton Lear is an American television writer and producer who produced such 1970s sitcoms as All in the Family, Sanford and Son, One Day at a Time, The Jeffersons, Good Times and Maude...
-produced tribute to the early days of burlesque
Burlesque
Burlesque is a literary, dramatic or musical work intended to cause laughter by caricaturing the manner or spirit of serious works, or by ludicrous treatment of their subjects...
. Twelfth-billed as Scratch, a baggy-pants comic, Eddie performed the "Crazy House" burlesque routine originally scripted for Lahr: Eddie Lawrence is heard calling for the nurse in Lahr's distinctive Brooklyn accent ("Noice! Noice!"). Three years later, Eddie had a couple of fleeting moments as a Bowery
Bowery, Manhattan
Bowery , commonly called "the Bowery," is a street and a small neighborhood in the southern portion of the New York City borough of Manhattan...
derelict in visionary director Ernest Pintoff
Ernest Pintoff
Ernest Pintoff was an American film and television director, screenwriter and film producer....
's little-seen noir
Film noir
Film noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and sexual motivations. Hollywood's classic film noir period is generally regarded as extending from the early 1940s to the late 1950s...
-like oddity Who Killed Mary What's 'Er Name?
Who Killed Mary What's 'Er Name?
Who Killed Mary What's Er' Name? is a 1971 film starring comedian and actor Red Buttons and featuring Conrad Bain, Sylvia Miles, Alice Playten and Sam Waterston. Ernest Pintoff was the director, and Gary McFarland wrote the soundtrack music.The plot centers around the murder of a prostitute in a...
, filmed on the streets of New York in 1971.
On February 22, 1971, Eddie appeared as a guest on Johnny Carson
Johnny Carson
John William "Johnny" Carson was an American television host and comedian, known as host of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson for 30 years . Carson received six Emmy Awards including the Governor Award and a 1985 Peabody Award; he was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 1987...
's Tonight Show
The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson
The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson is a talk show hosted by Johnny Carson under the Tonight Show franchise from 1962 to 1992. It originally aired during late-night....
(which, until May 1972, was based in New York), performing a five-minute Old Philosopher routine at the end of which Carson was laughing loudly and repeating some of its lines and, in 1974, he was heard as the announcer on a TV ad for John Lennon
John Lennon
John Winston Lennon, MBE was an English musician and singer-songwriter who rose to worldwide fame as one of the founding members of The Beatles, one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music...
and Harry Nilsson
Harry Nilsson
Harry Edward Nilsson III was an American singer-songwriter who achieved the peak of his commercial success in the early 1970s. On all but his earliest recordings he is credited as Nilsson...
's album, Pussy Cats
Pussy Cats
Pussy Cats is the tenth album by Harry Nilsson, released in 1974. It was produced by John Lennon during his "Lost Weekend" period. The album title was inspired by the bad press Nilsson and Lennon were getting at the time for being drunk and rowdy in Los Angeles...
, which also included contributions by Ringo Starr
Ringo Starr
Richard Starkey, MBE better known by his stage name Ringo Starr, is an English musician and actor who gained worldwide fame as the drummer for The Beatles. When the band formed in 1960, Starr was a member of another Liverpool band, Rory Storm and the Hurricanes. He became The Beatles' drummer in...
and Keith Moon
Keith Moon
Keith John Moon was an English musician, best known for being the drummer of the English rock group The Who. He gained acclaim for his exuberant and innovative drumming style, and notoriety for his eccentric and often self-destructive behaviour, earning him the nickname "Moon the Loon". Moon...
.
Eddie Lawrence's remaining three films were Blade (1973), The Wild Party
The Wild Party (1975 film)
The Wild Party is a 1975 Merchant Ivory Productions film directed by James Ivory, produced by Ismail Merchant, and starring James Coco and Raquel Welch....
(1975) and Somebody Killed Her Husband
Somebody Killed Her Husband
Somebody Killed Her Husband is a 1978 comedy/mystery film directed by Lamont Johnson and written by Reginald Rose. It starred Farrah Fawcett and Jeff Bridges. Also in the cast were John Wood, Tammy Grimes and John Glover. The film is set in Manhattan, New York City...
(1978). Blade reunited him with director Ernest Pintoff, an auteur whose original New York City-based films were considered to have little commercial appeal. The film follows a tough cop named Tommy Blade (John Marley
John Marley
John Marley was an American actor who was known for his role as Phil Cavalleri in Love Story and as Jack Woltz— the defiant film mogul who awakens to find the severed head of his prized horse in his bed—in The Godfather...
) as he searches for a sadistic serial killer. Eddie has a memorable, though brief scene as a movie producer questioned by Blade. Party was Eddie's sole performing venture in California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
. In this Merchant
Ismail Merchant
Ismail Merchant was an Indian-born film producer, best known for the results of his famously long collaboration with Merchant Ivory Productions which included director James Ivory as well as screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala...
–Ivory
James Ivory (director)
James Francis Ivory is an American film director, best known for the results of his long collaboration with Merchant Ivory Productions, which included both Indian-born film producer Ismail Merchant, and screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala...
production which fictionalized the Fatty Arbuckle scandal, Eddie, made-up to resemble an approximation of Louis B. Mayer
Louis B. Mayer
Louis Burt Mayer born Lazar Meir was an American film producer. He is generally cited as the creator of the "star system" within Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in its golden years. Known always as Louis B...
, played a grimacing movie mogul attending the titular event thrown by Jolly Grimm, the Fatty
Fatty Arbuckle
Roscoe Conkling "Fatty" Arbuckle was an American silent film actor, comedian, director, and screenwriter. Starting at the Selig Polyscope Company he eventually moved to Keystone Studios where he worked with Mabel Normand and Harold Lloyd...
character, played by James Coco
James Coco
James Coco was an American character actor.- Early life and career :Born James Emil Coco in New York City, son of Feliche Coco, a shoemaker and Ida Detestes Coco, James began acting straight out of high school. As an overweight and prematurely balding adult, he found himself relegated to character...
. The film was praised for its period feel, but received otherwise mixed notices and suffered botched editing and other mishandling by the distributor. Finally, Her Husband, filmed in New York by the director of a number of The Twilight Zone
The Twilight Zone (1959 TV series)
The Twilight Zone is an American anthology television series created by Rod Serling, which ran for five seasons on CBS from 1959 to 1964. The series consisted of unrelated episodes depicting paranormal, futuristic, dystopian, or simply disturbing events; each show typically featured a surprising...
episodes, Lamont Johnson
Lamont Johnson
Lamont Johnson was an American actor and film director who has appeared in and directed many television shows and movies. He won two Emmy Awards....
, with a screenplay by The Defenders creator Reginald Rose
Reginald Rose
Reginald Rose was an American film and television writer most widely known for his work in the early years of television drama. Rose's work is marked by its treatment of controversial social and political issues...
, had Eddie in a semi-comical bit as a neighbor of the titular "her" (Farrah Fawcett-Majors
Farrah Fawcett
Farrah Fawcett was an American actress and artist. A multiple Golden Globe and Emmy Award nominee, Fawcett rose to international fame when she first appeared as private investigator Jill Munroe in the first season of the television series Charlie's Angels, in 1976...
). Despite the creative talents involved, this initial starring vehicle for the most-publicized of Charlie's Angels
Charlie's Angels
Charlie's Angels is a television series about three women who work for a private investigation agency, and is one of the first shows to showcase women in roles traditionally reserved for men...
got generally dismissive reviews, engendering its widely-repeated disparagement, "Somebody Killed Her Career".
Later years
Fourteen years after Sherry!, Eddie Lawrence had one final encounter with Broadway. At the age of 62, he was again the writer and, in his sole such outing, director of a Broadway show. The comedy Animals consisted of three one-act plays, The Beautiful Mariposa, Louie and the Elephant and Sort of an Adventure. The first of nine previews at the Princess Theater was on April 14, 1981. Like Kelly, Animals closed on its opening night, April 22. There was no cast album.Thirteen years later and thirty years after Bunkie, his 1964 Epic release, the 75-year-old Eddie Lawrence had his first new album. 1994's The Jazzy Old Philosopher (Red Dragon JK 57756) showed that the veteran monologist had not lost his unique touch. The CD
Compact Disc
The Compact Disc is an optical disc used to store digital data. It was originally developed to store and playback sound recordings exclusively, but later expanded to encompass data storage , write-once audio and data storage , rewritable media , Video Compact Discs , Super Video Compact Discs ,...
consisted of 58 minutes of the traditional and the new, with names such as Mick Jagger
Mick Jagger
Sir Michael Philip "Mick" Jagger is an English musician, singer and songwriter, best known as the lead vocalist and a founding member of The Rolling Stones....
, Axl Rose
Axl Rose
W. Axl Rose is an American singer-songwriter and musician. He is the lead vocalist and only remaining original member of the hard rock band Guns N' Roses, with whom he enjoyed great success and recognition in the late 1980s and early 1990s, before disappearing from the public eye for several years...
, Boy George
Boy George
Boy George is a British singer-songwriter who was part of the English New Romantic movement which emerged in the early 1980s. He helped give androgyny an international stage with the success of Culture Club during the 1980s. His music is often classified as blue-eyed soul, which is influenced by...
and Sinéad O'Connor
Sinéad O'Connor
Sinéad Marie Bernadette O'Connor is an Irish singer-songwriter. She rose to fame in the late 1980s with her debut album The Lion and the Cobra and achieved worldwide success in 1990 with a cover of the song "Nothing Compares 2 U"....
dropped into the routines — "You say your grandpa's in the hospital again because he tried to make a citizen's arrest of Mick Jagger? Is that what's got you down in the dumps, homeboy?"
External links
- An interview with Eddie Lawrence, July 2011
- Discussion of phrases used by Eddie Lawrence in his Old Philosopher routines
- Cover of The Kingdom of Eddie Lawrence LP with commentary and links to audio clips
- Front and back (with liner notes) of 7 Characters in Search of Eddie Lawrence LP
- Album covers of Eddie Lawrence CD reissues