Sketch o’the Week: Car 54, Where Are You?

Ooh! Ooh! It’s Wednesday, and it’s time for another “Sketch o’the Week!”. After last week’s sketch was from a TV show about a car, I had to continue the trend with another sketch from a show about a car… except this time I skipped drawing the car! “Car 54, Where are You?” is another of those beloved sitcoms from the 1960’s that are cult classics thanks to sixty years of syndication. The adventures of New York officers Toody and Muldoon, as portrayed by Joe E. Ross and Fred Gwynne, still has a lot of fans today.

I was chatting with writer extraordinaire Mark Evanier the other day, and incidentally if you are not following his superb blog you are truly missing out, and we discussed Fred Gywnne. I knew some of what Mark told me in general terms, but as usual Mark knew a lot more of the story.

Fred Gwynne was an excellent artist, illustrator, and cartoonist. This I knew as even as he made his primary living as an actor, he also did children’s books, and had many he wrote and illustrated published. He also went to college at Harvard where he did cartoons for the Harvard Lampoon, and eventually became the Lampoon’s president. He also did a lot of acting at Harvard.

What I didn’t know is that Gwynne was torn between acting and being an illustrator. He moved to New York to try both. He auditioned a lot and got a few roles here and there, including being a Broadway play and a bit part in the film “On the Waterfront”, but he began to feel that acting was not going to work out, and he started concentrating more on illustration. In fact Mark told me Gwynne had basically resigned himself to a future as an illustrator, and had given up acting.

Then the got contacted by the producers of “The Phil Silvers Show” asking him to audition for a part. They were doing an episode that featured a character that suffered eating binges that Silvers’ character Sgt. Bilko leveraged into competing in an eating contest. The actor originally cast as the big eater was very fat, and Silvers thought it would be funnier for the character to be a tall, skinny guy who didn’t look like he’d be a champion eater. Silvers had seen and liked the 6’5″, gangly Gwynne in that Broadway comedy, and asked for him to try out for the part. Gwynne was cast, and his character was so well liked that he appeared on the show again in a later episode. This led to more guest appearance on TV series, which led to his being cast in “Car 54, Where are You?”. Gwynne went back to being an actor and had a long and very fine career, and his art became a secondary focus.