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Tim Conway on His Career in Television in Cleveland

Tim Conway: So I went in the army and I came out, and Jack Riley, who was on “The Newhart Show” was going in the army and I was coming out. So he said “Why don’t you take my job down at this radio station, and you could become a writer --” and I said “I’ve never written comedy—“ and he says “nothing to it, you copy down six jokes a day, give it to Big Wilson, was his name, --- and he plays the piano and he has a canary, the canary sings and he tells these jokes”. So I said “okay, I’ll give it a shot.” They weren’t all that good, most of them were actually on the bottom of the bird cage. So we became kind of good friends and things kind of developed because I had a sense of humor and got into television and then started working with a guy called Ernie Anderson who came to Cleveland and eventually became Ghoulardi, still very big in Cleveland. We put together a show and I said, “Let’s quit this station, let’s go over to Channel 8 and start all over.” So he was the talent and I was the director. I had never directed and he had very little talent, so he was the host in the morning. He was supposed to have a guest and we would also show a movie. Well I didn’t know how to back time the movie so that it would end at 10 o’clock, so the first week there were no endings, it would just go off and then the news would come on. People would call and go, “Hey, where’s the end of the movie?” We’d go, “Hey, it’s Citizen Kane, it’s the sled, get off my back will you we’re having trouble down here.” It kind of got to be an inside thing where it was just so bad that people really enjoyed it. I mean they just ended up showing the endings of all these movies on Fridays so if you didn’t see any of the endings you could see them on Friday. And he became very big in Cleveland, still is, I mean he exploded with this character because he made fun of the movies, “These movies stink, I don’t know who these people are, I’m not even going to care”, one of those kind of guys. So it worked out very
Tim Conway: So I went in the army and I came out, and Jack Riley, who was on “The Newhart Show” was going in the army and I was coming out. So he said “Why don’t you take my job down at this radio station, and you could become a writer --” and I said “I’ve never written comedy—“ and he says “nothing to it, you copy down six jokes a day, give it to Big Wilson, was his name, --- and he plays the piano and he has a canary, the canary sings and he tells these jokes”. So I said “okay, I’ll give it a shot.” They weren’t all that good, most of them were actually on the bottom of the bird cage. So we became kind of good friends and things kind of developed because I had a sense of humor and got into television and then started working with a guy called Ernie Anderson who came to Cleveland and eventually became Ghoulardi, still very big in Cleveland. We put together a show and I said, “Let’s quit this station, let’s go over to Channel 8 and start all over.” So he was the talent and I was the director. I had never directed and he had very little talent, so he was the host in the morning. He was supposed to have a guest and we would also show a movie. Well I didn’t know how to back time the movie so that it would end at 10 o’clock, so the first week there were no endings, it would just go off and then the news would come on. People would call and go, “Hey, where’s the end of the movie?” We’d go, “Hey, it’s Citizen Kane, it’s the sled, get off my back will you we’re having trouble down here.” It kind of got to be an inside thing where it was just so bad that people really enjoyed it. I mean they just ended up showing the endings of all these movies on Fridays so if you didn’t see any of the endings you could see them on Friday. And he became very big in Cleveland, still is, I mean he exploded with this character because he made fun of the movies, “These movies stink, I don’t know who these people are, I’m not even going to care”, one of those kind of guys. So it worked out very
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Editorial #:
1149863160
Collection:
Getty Images News Video
Date created:
May 13, 2009
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Rights-ready
Release info:
Not released.More information
Clip length:
00:02:14:14
Location:
United States
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QuickTime 10-bit ProRes 422 (HQ) HD 1920x1080 29.97i
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XDCAM NTSC 1080 29.97i
Source:
Getty Images News Video
Object name:
c03613_08-02.mov