Shark Bytes

When I was 14 to 15 yrs of age I literally LIVED at The Joey Bishop (late night) talk show! I was a budding singer and my Mother had made a friendship with Joey, so we would go at least a couple of times each week. My best gal friend and I would "take a walk" with Joey and Regis every afternoon. We would walk up Vine Street to Hollywood Blvd and back, and Joey once told the audience that we were the only "kids" they allowed to walk with them, for whatever the reason was! I just can't remember. We were quite honored! It was their little constitutional they did each day and we were always included if we were at the studio. One day we walked in on the old Pat Boone Show with Joey and Regis and everyone wondered "Who are those two little hotties." We were Bishop groupies and definitely first string!! I literally worshipped the man growing up. We would go back stage after the show and sit in Joey's dressing room while he was greeting guests or just preparing to go home. Mom made elaborate Menora's for Joey for hannaka each year. (I still have pictures of this)! He loved them and would display them at the studio. I would sometimes sit in the green room meeting the likes of O.J Simpson, a young Richard Dryfuss performing with an unknown comedy troup called The Session, listen to a young Neil Young, so many artists! Joey was to me, naturally, brilliantly, hysterically funny. He was perfect for late night at that time. I remember there being internal turmoil behind the scenes of the show, hence it "closed up shop" much earlier than it should have. Regis was, to me, "milktoast' and I always thought him a bit of a snob. He and Joey didn't mesh, as far as I was concerned. I always found it interesting and very sad that he would go on to become such a television legend and a talent like Joey Bishop - nearly forgotten in many ways. BUT, "for one brief shinning moment," there WAS The Joey Bishop late night Show! I would LOVE to watch ALL the old shows. Anyone out there know how to acquire them? There is much I could write about Bishop the man. I knew him personally and intimately until I was in my early 20's. Maybe someday I'll write my own little memoir about the "sweetness and the sorrow" of Joey Bishop. After all's said and done, he WAS a genius and I think the most intellectual and charismatic of the famed Rat Pack.

Actually, the Bishop talk show did very well..it was a huge shoe for a couple of years..but there were problems...
the network didn't like the idea of Joey
kind of doing his thing when certain things came up..This show was brodcast during a very turbulent time in america's history...the assiassinations
of King, and Kennedy, etc, the racial strife, the hippie generation and all of that...I remember when Bobby Kennedy got shot, Joey did a tribute to
him..for a complete show there was no audience..or the whole show was a tribute to Bobby..I felt that Joey's show was very unique, and for me it was
a great thing...
Regarding the Regis "Walking off" event,
this was due to some executives at ABC
criticizing Mr. Philbin, saying he was
not their idea of a strong co-host, indicating that he slowed the show down, or was the cause for some of its ratings slippings, etc. I don't really think this was so, and neither did Joey...Regis felt overwhelmed by all of this, and decided to announce he was leaving, right on the air, without any warning....he did walk off...later that night, Joey held a meeting at his Beverly Hills home with Regis, and gave his support to him all the way...telling the network its Regis or no show...
ABC capitulated, but after awhile,
they canceled the show, citing
lower ratings than Johnny Carson...
ABC was forced to pay Joey the rest of his salary which involved about a million dollars...

I don't remember the sitcom, but want to comment on the talk show, which I watched as a kid sometimes. It probably was never going to succeed because Joey lacked the warmth and sincerity of Carson. But the big event in the history of the show was when Regis walked off for a few days. He was miffed about his role, I think, or was it Joey making fun of his lack of talent? I think I saw the show where he came back, and they made jokes about the whole thing. Can anyone shed more light on this episode? I'm sure it was the inspiration for a couple of times when Hank Kingsley quit or almost quit the Larry Sanders Show.

Oops! I just looked at my entry about the pill-taking Real Life playwright staying over at their house and realize that the man's name was *Oscar Levant* NOT Elia Kazan! Sorry!

The best show of the whole series was when Joey and Danny Thomas imagined what their infant sons would be like as seventeen-year-olds and the actors put on pompadour wigs, jeans and bowling shirts and did 'teenaged' things such as taking off their loafers and climbing on furniture in their socks. What was unintentionally hilarious about this episode was that it was produced in 1963 so the 'future' was *supposed* to be *1980*!! Yet, they imagined that teenagers would STILL be one step away from being beatniks and wild about Elvis! Funny, they didn't think pop culture would change ONE iota in seventeen years- yet it HAD changed a great deal from the PREVIOUS seventeen years. What did the teens in 1963 have in common with those in 1946? Nada!! The worst show was when they whooped it up laughing about the troubled writer Elia Kazan in which they played up his very serious (and ultimately fatal) neuroses and pill-taking for laughs! Tasteless!

Joey would make such a fuss talking about "the baby, the baby" when his wife was pregnant and after it was born. Yet, both Joey and his wife never had any real interaction with the baby, leaving him in the hands of fulltime, uniformed nurse Mary Treen and handyman Joe Besser. There were actually two series called "The Joey Bishop Show." The sitcom cited here, and the 1967 late-night talk show that featured Regis in the Ed McMahon second banana role.

This week, on a very special Joey Bishop show, I don't think they ever had to say this, but if they did, wasn't his second banana the one and only Regis? I remember Reg having something to do with this, as Joey's MC or some kind of Rat Packer in training!

I enjoyed what I've seen of this show on TV Land. I loved Joe Besser when he was a Stooge, so I really enjoyed seeing him on this show. I'm making this comment mostly to correct a misunderstanding of the previous poster. The Joey Bishop Show actually went from color back to black and white when it moved from NBC to CBS in 1964 for its last season, so the black and white eps that the poster liked more were actually the last ones of the series. The other guy that the poster says he didn't like was probably Joey's agent Freddie, who was played by Guy Marks. Guy Marks looked very different from Corbett Monica because he was a lot taller than Joey, while Corbett was shorter. Guy left the show in the middle of the second season, the first season that appeared on TV Land. The first season, which was on NBC in black and white, included Marlo Thomas and Joe Flynn in the cast and didn't have Abby Dalton, who was still appearing on Hennessey until 1962.