George Shapiro: Jack Welch and Bob Wright really wanted a tenth year.  And we had a meeting with Howard West and myself and Jerry and Bob Wright and Jack Welch, you know, he was the chairman of General Electric. Like the biggest entrepreneur in the world. And we had this breakfast on the thirty-eighth floor overlooking Central Park; we had engraved, you know, menus. And Jack Welch was there – he was pitching Jerry, it was just the opposite. He had charts, “Look how it went up, it went way past ‘Home Improvement’, all the shows – it’s still growing in its ninth year.” And he wrote on a little piece of paper, you know, what he was offering Jerry. And he handed it to Jerry and – whew! Do you want to know what it was?  Okay, because I think it’s been out already. It was five million an episode for twenty-two episodes. To do the tenth year. And Jerry said, “let’s talk.” You know, we went for a walk. Howard, Jerry and I went for a walk in Central Park, and we sat down on the bench on eight-first street and Central Park West, the same bench where he told his father he wanted to be a comedian. So anyway Jerry sits down, he said, “You know, as a standup comedian, you know, you feel you’re getting a standing ovation. And that’s the time to leave. You don’t want to stay on stage too long. You don’t want to stay on like another fifteen minutes so they say ‘Oh he was good but he was on a little long.’” He said, “My deepest gut, you know, is to leave now. Despite the offer and everything else.” So I was happy ‘cause I said, “This is a great – to go off like that and for the future you have that. Nothing – no one can ever take that away from you.

Reynaldo Rey: One minute she would talk about how she loved Brook Benton, the next minute, and she couldn’t say Brook Benton, she’d call him “Book Ben’n”. And she’d take her teeth out and her face would collapse!  She, oh she looked horrible when she took her teeth out.  And she wore this horrible outfit.  And she didn’t like the way the microphones came up out of the floor at the Apollo.  She said, “God damn microphone be shootin’ up out of the floor, one of them got me right up tight.”  And she was just a crazy, wonderful woman.

Jeffrey Ross: I roasted Jerry Lewis at the Friars’ Club.  And at first I didn’t wanna do it.  And the roast master called me up– in L.A.  I was in L.A. at the time.  Richard Belzer called me up.  He said, “Who the hell are you to say no to Jerry Lewis?  This is the last time you’re gonna have to roast a legend like Jerry Lewis.  Get your ass on a plane.  Do it for me.  Do it for Jerry Lewis.  Do it for yourself.  This is a huge, huge comedy icon.  You gotta come out and roast Jerry Lewis.”  So I do.  And I’m writing jokes for days, getting– ’cause you– you know, you gotta bring your A game when you’re roasting a legend like that.  And to his credit, he was a great sport.  I said– I said, “Jerry Lewis was huge in France.  Then again, they don’t even know when they stink.”  The one thing they said was, “You know, Jerry’s very sort of– sensitive about doing jokes about, you know, muscular dystrophy.  And could you stay away from that?”  That’s all I have to hear, you know.  I’m going right for it. But if you’re saying it to his face, somehow it’s okay.  And I said– I sorta slowed it down.  I had my sorta rat-a-tat-tat delivery.  And I took a deep breath and I said, “You know what, Jerry?  A lotta people make fun of you, but they don’t talk about the good things that you do.  What about the fact that just this past Labor Day a six year-old kid got up out of his wheelchair and walked for the first time to turn off the Jerry Lewis Telethon?”  The subject that they told me not to talk about was the biggest laugh I got, the biggest smile that Jerry made the whole day.

Kaye Ballard: She used to come to this house all the time and say, “Let’s go for a bike ride.” So we’d go for a bike ride, and we were coming down the main street, because then there weren’t any houses around here. There were a lot of palm trees, and a mad dog came out of the woods just like this. Foaming at the mouth. And I fell off the bike. And Lucy says, “Get the hell out of here. Go back in the woods.” And I turned to her and I said, “That is why you are queen of the world” She was a toughie when she wanted to be, but she was also the best.

Bill Marx: The last performance of Harpo Marx occurred at the Pasadena Theatre in California.  And he shared the bill with Allan Sherman who he helped to create a career for himself as one of our great parodists of all time.  Allan did the first half of the show.  There was an intermission and then Dad did the second half of the show.  Allan comes in at intermission and notices there’s a bottle of cognac on Allan’s cot where he would lie down and relax for a while.  And a note saying, “Allan, I want you to know this is my final performance.” Well, Allan went crazy.  He couldn’t believe it.  And the opening of the act after the intermission, he came out and he says, “I want you to know that you’re having a historical moment this evening, folks.  Harpo Marx is retiring.  This is the last time you’re ever going to see him onstage as Harpo Marx.  I now introduce you to Harpo Marx.” And Dad goes and he does some stuff and people are going crazy and whatever it is and, finally, at the very end, he picks up the microphone and he launches into his Bar Mitzvah speech.  “For thirteen long years, I have toiled and labored for your happ-“ and does the whole thing.  The people are just silent as… as a church mouse.  I mean you can’t hear a pin drop.  And he comes to the end of this and he says, “And, in conclusion, I am so honored to know that you folks are, have the keenness and the perspicacity for recognizing monumental genius.  I thank you.” And walked off the stage.  Well, people must have applauded for at least a good two or three minutes. That’s a long time if you’re just counting.

Larry Gelbart: If you want to hear my favorite George Burns story, one of my first writing partners was a man named Sid Dorfman. And when Sid and I ended our association, Sid went to work with George Burns and he worked for Burns for about seven or eight years and then, he finally handed in his notice to George’s brother Willy and Willy said, “George is gonna want to talk to you.” So when he talked to George, George said, “Sit down Sid. I understand you’re leaving.” And he said, “Yes I am George.” And he said, “You know, Gracie and I love you as a son.” And Sid who had a very low tolerance for any sentimentality, he, he, his eyes went to the floor. And George said, “The son we never had.” He said, “It’s not like someone’s leaving the staff. It’s like someone’s running away from home. And Sid,” and George finally said, “Sid, if you don’t look at me, I can’t work.” He just never stopped being in show business.

Dick Cavett: He had such a great time being Bob Hope.  And when I would get him on a show of mine– I’d see him and come on with me and– of course with Johnny and Jack and everybody.  And– he always– swapped gags.  He had– got a bunch of gags– ready and he came on and ready to do.  And about current stuff. And I thought– as many people have wondered– was there anyone underneath the Hope façade– the great comic picture that he was covered with.  And– was there anything under the covers?  So I would– intentionally not steer him into something I’d knew he’d do a joke on. Sometimes it was fun, too.  As in, “Were you really a bad boxer back then?  And you knew you were gonna get– I was on the canvas so much they called me Rembrandt.  And I was the only fighter carried into the ring.”  He– he would come right up with them like– a machine or like a computer.  But– so I would ask him to talk about himself.  And I got one show– it’s also on the DVD.  It’s the one where I got so conversational with him without his doing gags, that at one point he stated some fact about himself.  Oh, he talked to him when he was a kid– but he got a scar– the scar– “Little scar you can see– ’cause I got that from protecting my dog. And it was some– guys were throwing rocks at my dog and I went up– “  And he didn’t have a punch line for it.  But he was charming as hell just talking.  At one point he said something– he said, “Hey, would you rather have a gag on that one?” And I said, “No.  That’s just fine.  That’s fine.”  Amazing man.

Cheech Marin: He used to live out here in Malibu where I live and I’d see him at the market and he’d being going, walking up and down the aisles doing these characters.  “Okay, Jonathan, it’s time to buy your groceries and go now.”  But he was, he was the, the master at doing that kind of improvisational free association thing which Robin Williams and some of those other guys came up after did.

Jeffrey Ross: Cheech and Chong was like the first dumb guys I kinda heard doing comedy.  And they were a little bit slower paced.  “Uh, what’d you mean by that?  Huh?  What?”  And, you know, just not hearing things correctly and just like– almost like two Gracies (PH).  And– it was fun to hear that stuff.  I– I was– young to really appreciate it as stoner humor.  To me, it was just dumb guys.  They were like, what we would call burnouts, guys that– you know, we didn’t know much about drugs.  I was too young to really understand about– how marijuana would ruin your brain.  But I did understand it, there was plenty of dirtbags hanging out at the 7-11 that were– dumb, and that’s all they were ever gonna be.  And for me, Cheech and Chong sort of was that.  They gave voice to these idiots that I knew around the neighborhood.

George Carlin: Well, I had always—I was a disc jockey.  I was in Shreveport Louisana, I had—I was out of the Air Force living with a roommate in an apartment building.  He worked at one radio station, I worked at another.  And he came home one night and said, “Man, I heard about this guy Lenny Bruce, you know.”  And I was a big fan of comedy and I knew that was my next step, “I’ll get out of radio, I’ll be a comic.”  And I liked—let’s see, that would have been nineteen fift—hold on for me a second here.  That would have been 1958 or nine.  So some of that ferment was, was begun, had begun and I was—I guess I knew some, about some of it.  But he said “Lenny Bruce,” and I didn’t know anything about Lenny Bruce.  And he got the album, “Interviews of Our Time,” on Fantasy Records, it was a combination—Henry Jacobs did the album and Lenny was on it, in a few performance pieces.  And then there were these other things like an interview with Sheldom Stein, which is a mock-academic who talks about the connection between the wandering Jew and Bahama Mama, which is the mother myth of the Bahamian ind—you know, just wonderful stuff.  But the whole album wasn’t a Lenny Bruce album, but it kinda was.

And I heard things he did.  And then came the “Sick” album.  “The Sick Humor of Lenny Bruce,” I think that was second.  And we got that.  And what it did for me was this; it let me know that [pause] there was a place to go, to reach for, in terms of honesty in a self-expression.