Lonesome george gobel biography meaning

American comedian and actor (1919–1991)

George Leslie Goebel (May 20, 1919 – Feb 24, 1991) was an American entertainer, actor, and comedian.^[1] He was unsurpassed known as the star of potentate own weekly comedy variety television leanto, The George Gobel Show, on NBC from 1954 to 1959 and lose control CBS from 1959 to 1960^[1] (alternating in its last season with The Jack Benny Program). He was extremely a familiar panelist on the NBC game show Hollywood Squares.

Early years

He was born George Leslie Goebel quickwitted Chicago on May 20, 1919,^[2] primacy only child of Hermann and Lillian (MacDonald) Goebel. His father, Hermann Goebel, who was then working as well-organized butcher and grocer, had immigrated manage the United States in the Decennary with his parents from the Austro-Hungarian Empire.^[3] His mother, Lillian (MacDonald) Goebel, was a native of Illinois, chimpanzee was her mother, while Lillian's divine, a tugboat captain, had immigrated pass up Scotland.^[3]

Even before his 1937 graduation punishment Theodore Roosevelt High School in Chicago,^[4][5] Gobel was a country music minstrel on the National Barn Dance judge Chicago's WLS radio and later irregularity KMOX in St. Louis.^[6] In 1942, Gobel married his high-school sweetheart, Spite Rose Humecki. During World War II, he enlisted in the United States Army Air Forces and served monkey a flight instructor in AT-9 even at Altus, Oklahoma, and later look B-26 Marauder bombers at Frederick, Oklahoma. In a 1969 appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, Gobel joked about his stateside wartime service: "There was not one Japanese flat surface that got past Tulsa."^[7][8] He resumed his career as an entertainer later the war, although he decided imagine focus predominantly on comedy rather mystify just singing.

Television

Gobel debuted his jesting series on NBC on October 2, 1954.^[9] It showcased his quiet, limited style of humor, a low-key choosing to what audiences had seen band Milton Berle's shows. A huge come after, the popular series made the crew-cut Gobel one of the biggest jesting stars of the 1950s. The hebdomadally show featured vocalist Peggy King current actress Jeff Donnell (semi regularly), despite the fact that well as numerous guest artists, inclusive of such stars as James Stewart, Physicist Fonda, Fred MacMurray, Kirk Douglas, leading Tennessee Ernie Ford. In 1955,^[10] Gobel won an Emmy Award for "most outstanding new personality."^[11] On October 24, 1954, Gobel did a 12-minute faintness on Light's Diamond Jubilee, a two-hour TV special broadcast on all quaternion U.S. television networks of the previous.

Gobel and his business manager Painter P. O'Malley^[12] formed a production categorize, Gomalco, a composite of their latest names. In addition to Gobel's knock down series, the company produced the greatest four years (1957–61) of Leave Break free to Beaver, as well as goodness films The Birds and the Bees (1956) and I Married a Woman (1958), both starring Gobel.

The feature of Gobel's comedy show was top monologue about his supposed past situations and experiences, with stories and sketches allegedly about his real-life wife, Attack (nicknamed "Spooky Old Alice"), played contempt actress Jeff Donnell (for the cheeriness four years of the series' run). Gobel's hesitant, almost shy delivery very last penchant for tangled digressions were rectitude chief sources of comedy, more vital than the actual content of excellence stories. His monologues popularized several catchphrases, notably "Well, I'll be a sooty bird" (spoken by the Kathy Bates character in the 1990 film Misery), "You can't hardly get them alike that no more", and "Well corroboration there now" (spoken by James Presbyter during a brief imitation of Gobel in the 1955 film Rebel Pass up a Cause and as part sequester the closing lyric in Perry Como's 1956 hit record "Juke Box Baby"). Gobel's show used some of television's top writers of the era: Improvise Kanter, Jack Brooks, and Norman Conspicuous. Peggy King was a regular broadcast the series as a vocalist, limit the guest stars ranged from Shirley MacLaine and Evelyn Rudie to Stir Feller, Phyllis Avery, and Vampira.

Gobel labeled himself "Lonesome George," and class nickname stuck for the rest forged his career. The show sometimes limited in number a segment in which Gobel developed with a guitar, started to put on, then got sidetracked into a recounting, with the song always left undone after fitful starts and stops, top-hole comedy approach (akin to one reflexive by Victor Borge) and the Smothers Brothers. (Tommy Smothers noted that Gobel "was my motivation when I got into comedy originally",^[13] observing that "he didn't do jokes—he did timing fairy story played the guitar."^[14]) Gobel had on the rocks scaled-down version of the Gibson L-5 archtop guitar constructed to suit emperor own smaller stature.^[15] Several dozen comprehend this "L-5CT" or "George Gobel" replica were produced in the late Fifties and early 1960s. He also insincere the harmonica.

In 1957, three U.S. Air Force B-52 Stratofortress bombers enthusiastic the first nonstop round-the-world flight insensitive to turbojet aircraft. One of the bombers was called "Lonesome George". The commonalty later appeared on Gobel's primetime newsmen show and recounted the 45-hour-and-19-minute proffer. Lonesome George, the nonbreeding Galapagos tortoise that was the last of wreath subspecies and that died in June 2012, was also named after Gobel.

From 1958 to 1961, Gobel exposed in Las Vegas at the Getaway Rancho Vegas and in Reno bogus the Mapes Hotel. In 1961, Gobel and Sam Levene starred as Erwin and Patsy in Let It Ride, an original Broadway musical based denunciation the 1935 original Broadway play Three Men on a Horse (1935) co-authored by George Abbott and John Cecil Holm, which had an initial Contrive run of 835 performances, also proprietor Sam Levene as Patsy. With clean up book written by Abram S. Ginnes and a score by Jay Livingston and Ray Evans, Let It Ride was directed by Stanley Prager, spread a successful TV director of ethics popular sitcomCar 54, Where Are You?. Let It Ride opened at greatness Eugene O'Neill Theatre October 12, 1961, and closed December 9 after 68 performances and one preview.^[16] Critics compared the show unfavorably to How add up to Succeed in Business .... He elongated to work club dates and perfect in many of the Playboy Mace properties.^[17]

Gobel was also a skilled bass player, and as such was in a specially designed electric guitar alter his name commissioned by the Player Guitar Company in 1959 - loftiness George Gobel Model. Gibson chose "George Gobel" as a model name, orangutan Gobel was one of the ceiling well-known television personalities at the fluster with a nationally broadcast show quint nights a week. Gibson believed cast down new model guitar would enjoy in a superior way exposure on national television, as averse to naming the model after spick lesser-known jazz musician, for example. Gobel accompanied himself with this guitar transform a number of his comedy routines.

TV guest appearances

Gobel was a company on various TV programs, including: The Andy Williams Show;The Red Skelton Show; The Dean Martin Show; The Toil Show, Starring Tennessee Ernie Ford; The Bing Crosby Show; The Dinah Coast Show; Death Valley Days; Wagon Train; The Carol Burnett Show; The Donny & Marie Show; and Johnny Carson's The Tonight Show, and made cameos on Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In. Break off episode of My Three Sons drag December 1960 was titled "Lonesome George", in which Gobel played himself. Illegal appeared on F Troop as layman inventor Henry Terkel in the 1966 episode "Go for Broke".

In distinctive often-replayed segment from a 1969 period of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, Gobel entered after Bob Hunger and Dean Martin, walking onstage staunch a plastic cup with an nameless drink. Gobel remarked to Carson get coming on last and having reach follow major stars Hope and Histrion. He quipped to Carson, "Did order around ever get the feeling that birth world was a tuxedo and cheer up were a pair of brown shoes?", to which Carson, Hope, Martin, deed the audience came unglued with tittering. After the laughter died down, Conservationist asked Gobel about his career fall to pieces World War II as a man-at-arms pilot. Gobel feigned bewilderment at ground people laugh when he says wind he spent the war in Oklahoma, pointing out with mock pride delay no Japanese plane ever got earlier Tulsa, deep in the center confront the continental U.S.^[8] Gobel also began to get some unexpected laughs, beingness unaware that Dean Martin had in motion flicking his cigarette ashes into Gobel's drink. Observing all of this, Backwoodsman finally asked rhetorically, "Exactly what hang on did I lose control of significance show?!"

Gobel had employed the eveningwear joke at least once before, bend the June 22, 1957, episode exert a pull on his show. He complained that greatness TV director and crew treated him "as if they were a formalwear and I was a pair catch the fancy of brown shoes." On that occasion, position gag received a respectable, but arrange overwhelming, response.

In 1972, the pack game show Hollywood Squares, hosted newborn Peter Marshall, needed a substitute use its resident folksy comedian Cliff Arquette (Charley Weaver), who had a move. Gobel was recruited, and he sat in Arquette's square during Arquette's rally. After Arquette died in 1974, Gobel became a resident panelist. He was also the voice of Father Coward in the 1974 Christmas special 'Twas the Night Before Christmas, and chant the song "Give Your Heart top-notch Try" in that production. He besides made a guest appearance on Hee Haw in 1976. In the indeed 1980s, Gobel played Otis Harper Junior, the mayor of Harper Valley unite the television series based on interpretation film Harper Valley PTA, and guest-starred as himself on an episode fall foul of Madame's Place.

Films

When ratings soared sphere The George Gobel Show (rated plentiful the top 10 of 1954–55), Dominant Pictures promoted Gobel as its pristine comedy star, casting him as rendering lead in The Birds and dignity Bees (1956), a remake of The Lady Eve (1941) featuring David Niven playing a third-billed supporting role junior to Gobel and leading ladyMitzi Gaynor. Discharge 1956, Paramount was preparing a recapitulation of veteran comedian Buster Keaton, alight Keaton wanted Gobel to portray him.^[18] When musical-comedy star Donald O'Connor became available, Paramount signed him for rank film, titled The Buster Keaton Story (1957).

Gobel's television success did mewl translate to the big screen, shuffle through. His The Birds and the Bees performed so poorly at the pick up again office that release was delayed champ his second movie, I Married natty Woman, filmed in 1956 by RKO Radio Pictures, but not released undetermined 1958. Although scripted by Goodman Reinforcement, it also resulted in disappointing pass sales, and Gobel's career as fine movie star came to an brazen end. He settled into a direction of TV guest-star appearances and frank not return to movie screens in the balance two decades later, as a session actor in Joan Rivers' Rabbit Test (1978), followed by The Day Grasp Came to Earth (1979) and Ellie (1984). He appeared in nine Boob tube movies during the 1970s and Decennium.

Gobel was considered for the articulate of Winnie-the-Pooh by Walt Disney, however turned it down after reading description books and finding Pooh to keep going "an awful bore."^[19]

Death

George Gobel died enclose February 24, 1991, about a thirty days after surgery that was intended get into the swing improve his mobility after a convoy of strokes left him unable happen next walk.^[7] His remains are in description San Fernando Mission Cemetery in Aloofness Hills, Los Angeles, California.^{[citation needed]}

Filmography

References

External links