Too Gay for Television? How Charles Nelson Reilly Proved NBC Wrong

with 99 appearances on the tonight show gay or non-gay nearly 2 000 game show episodes and starring roles from broadway to sitcoms to cartoons for decades charles nelson riley was television i'm trying to keep a career together but it almost never happened at charles's first tv audition an nbc executive took one look at him and then he said they don't let queers on television so how did charles go from being too gay for broadcast to dominating the airwaves i just love happy endings hey i'm matt i make videos about pop culture and this is the story of charles nelson riley who went from selling his blood to make ends meet to being the most in-demand actor on television thanks to a little help from burt reynolds broadway and a haunted house i have such an exciting life i know you do if you've watched tv in the last 50 years at some point you've encountered charles nelson riley you might know him from his voice in various cartoons or from his guest roles on tv shows or from his many appearances on match game the women are turning toward me but before we talk about his rise to fame let's go back to where it all began a little tenement building in hartford with no heat or hot water and a toilet bowl full of fish skeletons and by the way a lot of these details about his early life are from his one-man show life of riley there's a link to that in the description charles was born on january 13th 1931 just at the start of the great depression and his childhood was rough he was a sensitive and artistic child he used to go into his mother's supplies and sew puppets so that he could create shows to amuse himself something his parents hated now a father doesn't like to see his only son sewing doll and every time he caught me he said the same thing why don't you go out and throw a ball around but charles was small physically weak and had poor eyesight he had trouble playing with other kids when he tried to join them for baseball games the other parents laughed at him and every time i got up to bat they said no even his mother was cruel to him she would knock down my puppet show and she would say i should have thrown away the baby i kept the after her charles described his family life growing up as pure chaos there were seven of them crammed into a tiny two-room apartment his mother was always angry and constantly screaming slurs at the neighbors his father had a nervous breakdown over the collapse of his business and was institutionalized his aunt had hip pain and her doctor's treatment was to give her a lobotomy his uncle had the most active social life in the family because he would sneak into strangers funerals for the food his other aunt and uncle were immigrants from sweden and charles described them as eating an entire fish for dinner every night and throwing the skeleton across the kitchen into the toilet while shouting at each other in swedish i spent my adolescence in an igmar bergman movie walking home one day charles heard some neighbors gossiping about his family but they weren't talking about the lobotomized aunt the uncle who snuck into funerals or the fish bones instead he heard them say don't you think stella that mrs riley's son is odd which wasn't so bad except but how do you think i felt being the odd one in a family like that even in an early age charles knew that while strangers might consider his family eccentric they considered him something far worse he was sensitive artistic emotional in short a [ __ ] at the time a [ __ ] was considered one of the worst insults you could call a boy there was a big scandal in 1934 when a newspaper called usc football team sissies doctors warned that the future of the country depended on making sure boys weren't too feminine parents were encouraged to bully effeminate sons or to send them to institutions or kick them out of the home to toughen them up in movies [ __ ] characters tended to be depicted as creepy villains oh i thought i was alone or as pathetic failures in need of a cure why you're nothing but a great big coward you're right i have a coward or is the butt of jokes you know we do the squealers around here we stuff them in a sack and drop them in the rubber you do that seems rather drastic and as if the rejection by his family and other kids wasn't bad enough he would endure an even worse trauma when he was 13 years old one afternoon in july a circus was passing through hartford and charles went with a friend while they were there one of the tents that they were in caught fire and in those days cheap circuses saved money by waterproofing their tents with a mix of paraffin and kerosene in seconds the entire big top went up in flames with seven thousand other people inside charles jumped off the top of the bleachers and crawled out as people rushed for the exits he managed to escape but 160 people died in the fire in stampede now you might expect that a kid who lived through an experience like that would never want to go near showbiz again but charles found that for some reason theater called to him you like me you really like me it started with his puppet shows his one private escape from the stress of his family life then when he was 13 he got a job as an usher at a theater in hartford this was the early 1940s and the vaudeville circuit had just died out but it was still common for radio and film stars to tour the country doing live shows people like bert lahr the marx brothers mae west thank you very much charles watched these performers bring stories to life just like he did with his puppet shows but instead of doing it in secret and private hoping not to be caught they were doing it for an audience of thousands making people laugh helping them escape from their day-to-day problems and he realized that's what he needed to do the greatest thing a man can have is laughter and i had to learn how they made people laugh as soon as he could charles left hartford and moved to new york with dreams to become a big broadway star his timing was perfect the 1940s was a golden age for live theater in new york and for mega hits like carousel south pacific annie get your gun julie jordan when he first got there charles couldn't find steady acting work he worked odd jobs to pay for his seven dollar a week flat with no hot water and some days he sold his own blood so he could afford train fare to auditions but he had to stop doing that after selling so much that he fainted halfway through a day but he had two things that were working in his favor one was that for the first time he wasn't completely alone charles signed up for an acting class and his classmates were all in the same boat as him youngsters who'd moved to new york with a dream in that class he befriended charles grodin jerry stiller jack lemmon geraldine page barbara barry orson bean peggy cass harvey corman frank langella hal holbrook steve mcqueen jason robards and methodists people who'd go on to win emmys and tonys and oscars but back then they were all just struggling nobodies the second thing working in his favor was how much his fellow students liked him in those classes charles gained a reputation for being reliable and hardworking and very very funny the kind of funny that had attracted unwanted attention back in hartford but here in new york it was an asset his new friends came to know that when things were rough charles could always make them laugh he was finally starting to find a community where he belonged and where people appreciated him for who he really was everyone except casting directors one of his friends had a day job at nbc and because she liked him she managed to get a meeting with one of the network's top executives vincent j donahue donahue was a big broadway guy who nbc had hired to direct theater style specials like tv versions of peter pan annie get your gun and dozens of classic plays getting on vincent donahue's radar could be just the break that charles desperately needed so he borrowed a suit and tie the one that his uncle wore to funerals and headed to the meeting according to charles's one-man show vincent donahue was waiting for him in a giant office at the top of rockefeller center in an expensive suit holding a gold cigarette lighter charles started to talk but then he said vincent interrupted him and then he said they don't let queers on television it was a very short interview it was the same rejection he'd faced in childhood there was just something about him that people could instantly detect and made them want to have nothing to do with them he left nbc and went back to his little apartment and tried to figure out what to do next vince and donahue's words weren't just harsh they were wrong there were queer people on tv in the 1950s it's just that they were closeted and not as recognizably gay as charles for example actor raymond burr who starred in perry mason went to great lengths to hide his homosexuality when reporters asked bremen burr about his personal life he fabricated a whole fake family complete with a wife who conveniently died in a plane crash and a son who happened to have died of leukemia publicity agents headed off rumors about burr's homosexuality by arranging for him to be photographed on stage dates with actress natalie wood who by the way turned out to be so good at being a beard that they later arranged for her to go on fake dates with another closeted actor tab hunter many gay actors of the time tended to seek out butch leading man roles actors like rock hudson montgomery clift and richard chamberlain or they played straight lace serious roles like richard deacon on the dick van dyke show rob is the producer of the show once more i must insist that you instruct your staff to show me a little respect we're showing you as little respect as possible or womanizers like roger carmel as harry mudd on star trek or happily married men no matter how implausible it seemed as in the case of paul lind hello dear how goes the rat race the rats are winning and then there was dick sergeant who played the second darren on bewitched he also made up a fake wife for reporters and if you want to know more about his story i've got a whole section about him in my upcoming book hi honey i'm homo it's a queer history of american sitcoms now available for pre-order at gaysidcoms.com charles could have done the same thing as all those actors for the sake of his career he could have masked his flamboyance played it straight pursued the manliest possible roles in fact some directors tried to get him to do just that when one leading actor in an operetta fell ill charles was asked to step into cover for him in part because he was the only one who could learn the part quick enough and minutes before he went on the director told him charles do you think you could be more could you be less charles was a good enough actor that he could have butched it up if he wanted to in fact in his earliest roles you can see him playing it straight and now danny and the junior is singing the nation's number one hit at the hop and there were occasions on which he could pull out a more restrained persona our guests are taken by morgan limousine but something about those performances just felt wrong then i had lines like this take a oh and balloon hard to talk that way living a lie just wasn't right for him so he chose not to even when authorities in the industry told him that he should i never thought of coming out of a closet because i never was in a closet i just was being who i was and and what i what i was but being authentic came at a heavy cost to his career there were very few roles for someone as conspicuously flamboyant as charles and for years it was very hard for him to find work his friends from the acting class like geraldine paige and jason robards were getting cast in hits like the iceman cometh but the best charles could hope for was a minor role in a forgotten disaster like the saintliness of marjory kemp the salary was 20 a week plus luncheon meat and you know you needed luncheon meat i hadn't eaten for years over the next 10 years charles appeared in 22 off-broadway shows and every single one was a flop critics started to take notice of him not in a good way but as a bad omen one critic wrote if i see charles nelson riley's young energetic face in one more opening number i'm going to be sick after 10 years in new york charles had made a name for himself as the bad luck charm of off-broadway flops not exactly what he had in mind when he set out to see his name in lights i am the kiss of death but then he got a lucky break one of the failed shows that he was in a musical review called lending ear was choreographed by a dancer named gower champion a few years later champion had an opportunity to direct a new show on broadway and he remembered how fun hard-working and reliable charles had been champion offered to give him a minor walk-on role the best he could do and also arranged for charles to understudy the two leads a pair of up-and-coming talents named paul lind and dick van dyke the show was bye bye birdie and it turned out to be 1960's biggest hit it won tony's for best musical best direction best choreography and best lead performance after more than a decade of struggling in obscure shows finally charles was in a genuine broadway smash or at least he would have been if either of the leads missed a show and as luck would have it in 1961 dick van dyke was called out to los angeles for an extended period to shoot a pilot for a new tv show the dick van dyke show suddenly charles had a lengthy run as the male lead of the biggest show on broadway and that brought him a huge audience and also an opportunity to show off his own personal take on the lead character albert infusing him with a comedic campy charm that was all charles's own that was followed by another lucky break later that year his friend robert morse got cast in the lead of a new musical called how to succeed in business without really trying robert loved how funny charles was and insisted that the producers let him audition for the show's bumbling villain bud frump the part of bud frump turned out to be perfect for charles he could bring all his goofy larger-than-life energy to the role making bud as silly and clumsy and comedic as he could no coffee critics loved him one called his performance exquisite like bye bye birdie how to succeed was a smash hit winning a ton of tonys including a tony win for charles for best featured actor in a musical not bad for a guy who critics said would make them vomit just a few years earlier don't be annoyed me i'm a simple humble person his next rule was cornelius in hello dolly alongside carol channing an even bigger hit that set records for the most tony wins and the longest run in broadway history he'd gone from struggling out of work actor to bad luck omen to appearing in three of the biggest broadway hits of the decade eat your heart out ethel merman he should have been thrilled but something charles realized was still missing work on broadway was exhausting it was still low paying despite being in hits and the audience for live theater would never be as big as if he was on tv despite the rejection years earlier charles still dreamed of getting on television fortunately the awards and acclaim presented a new opportunity for him off the success of his stage shows charles started getting cast in radio commercials and then tv ads he usually played the same kind of roles that work for him on broadway big clumsy larger-than-life goofs a character type that translated well to the screen oh we've gone bananas for big banana and crayons you'll learn to write a lot of ways casting directors for tv shows started to take notice and cast him in tiny roles on shows like a bumbling neurotic architect on car 54 where are you or is a bumbling neurotic basketball coach on the donna reed show or is a bumbling neurotic scout leader on the nanny and the professor you see i i've misplaced my compass basically if you needed a one-off character to be bumbling and neurotic charles was your guy these weren't dignified roles or prominent sometimes his character wasn't even named it was pretty thankless work and it seemed like even though he made the jump to television he was doomed to be stuck in the most obscure and humiliating roles possible but that was all about to change thanks to a haunted house in the late 1960s nbc decided to adapt the classic film the ghost and mrs muir into a wacky sitcom the premise of the show is that a single mom moves into an old run-down house with her two kids and her live-in housekeeper and discovers that the house is haunted by the ghost of a sea captain and a romantic will they won't they hijinkin what for some reason i wrote hijinks as singular i mean the show really only had one hijink anyway on the show the single mom discovers that the house is haunted by the ghost of a sea captain and romantic will they won't they hijinks ensue kind of like sam and diam if sam was invisible the pilot episode featured charles as the property owner in what was supposed to be yet another one-off guest role as written the part was pretty unremarkable but as he so often did charles put his special spin on the character with a big broad performance this part of the house should have been condemned years ago lots of physical comedy [Music] and scene stealing bumbling this house is haunted actress hope lang who played the star of the show loved how funny he was and insisted that they make him irregular so in the fall of 1968 the show debuted with charles nelson riley in his first recurring tv role there have been disturbances here it had been nearly 20 years since vincent j donahue had told him he'd never be allowed on television this was a make-or-break opportunity for him he could finally realize his childhood dreams of entertaining millions or if it was a flop it could mean he'd be stuck playing one-off guest roles forever so how'd it go he was a hit an audience favorite he got nominated for an emmy for his role let me call the emmy people hello and with this show he shot from an obscure guest to one of tv's most in-demand actors following his success on the ghost of mrs muir offers started pouring in within a year he was appearing in more lead roles than any other actor on television across all three networks he was hired as a regular on dean martin's variety show do you know who i am i'm not even sure who i am on sitcoms with his friend lucille ball now do not get so emotional we do not raise our voices here he was on kids shows like lidsville where he played the evil wizard the great hoodoo i just love happy endings and he was a frequent guest on match game the show that drag race used as the basis for snatch game over the years he wound up appearing on a whopping 1648 episodes of match games of various incarnations i'm fine the doctor said i can play another round 1970 was the year of charles the busiest he'd ever been and the biggest audience he'd ever had in just one week that year his name appeared in tv guide 27 separate times all the qualities that brought him unwanted attention and marked him as an outcast were now the things that audiences loved about him all right now i'm a star but for all those appearances he still wasn't doing the work that he wanted the goofy comedy roles and the sly game show persona were fun but they weren't exactly fulfilling or the kind of roles that people respected welcome to uncle crocs block the greatest show there is or my name's not brock and the more famous he got for playing larger than life weirdos and getting silly on game shows he discovered that it was getting harder and harder to get cast in serious roles where he could truly act then what are you doing here [Laughter] he'd been typecast and he started to feel trapped worried that he would only be remembered for his most trivial parts and to think years and years ago i was told that i would never be allowed on television and now i got to try to figure out who do you have to [ __ ] tick at all but once again his friends came to his rescue he'd worked on so many shows over his career made so many close friendships across the industry and developed a reputation for being great to work with so when he told his friends that he wanted to take on more meaningful work they all leapt into action to help his friend broadway star julie harris asked him director in the play the bell of amherst which he did so brilliantly she won a tony sweet countryman judge tenderly of me his friends in the opera community hired him to direct big epic shows like la traviata the magic flute and deflater mouse when his friend burt reynolds opened a theater school in florida he hired charles to teach there and named the facility after him the charles nelson riley stage charles helped train aspiring actors like liza minnelli peter boyle and lily tomlin and he said in one interview all the awards i've won on broadway all the tv shows i've done don't mean anything in comparison to my teaching and directing experiences just as it had been decades earlier the pay wasn't great but unlike before when he was a young actor struggling in obscurity now he had a way to fund his passion projects but a great movement such as ours is not without oh it's expensive charles was still very much in demand for his trademark roles as zany flamboyant weirdos so whenever he needed to fund a new project he could just take on a guest role to pay for it as a result he'd often pop up as a guest voice on shows like rugrats and spongebob they are trapped by my awesome surface tension or in cameos on shows like designing women girls you can swim whatever you want but please oh we're bathing cats and no underwear in the whirlpool and the x-files he's a nut i just read his manifest oh when charles started his career there was almost no hope for someone like him to reach the kind of audience that he dreamed of but he managed to forge a path to success by refusing to hide who he was by finding a community where his talents were welcomed and by being genuine warm and kind so his colleagues were eager to support him even when others weren't and that's how this lonely kid putting on puppet shows for himself became a cultural icon they'll tell you it's not important acting but i don't believe it i think it's important to lift men's spirits you're not going to get paid a lot of money and then lots of times you're not going to have anything to eat but you will get one thing in return and that's a chance to act on a stage and say the things you want to say and do the things you want to do and i think that's enough says the great hoodoo now in making this video i dug up lots of great appearances and stories about charles from his connection to the actor who played dr smith on lost in space to the time he was hired to be a topless spokesmodel for a place called the man's room to a confession about just how drunk everyone was on match game i'll be posting those stories over on patreon and there's a link in the description thanks to everybody who makes these videos possible on patreon and now if you'll excuse me i gotta give uncle crock a hand something tells me this is gonna be a big mistake too i told you so oh the pain

Channel: Matt Baume

Views: 670,566

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Id: jp9-hVEpLBA

Length: 21min 13sec (1273 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 18 2022