“Over The Top” is a term that is often used as a kind of a slam to someone’s personality. But in Hollywood, playing a role “Over The Top” can make you stand out. And if you’re lucky, it could land you as an iconic character in one of the biggest shows in television history. This is Still Here Hollywood. I’m Steve Kmetko. Join me with today’s guest, Elaine’s boss J. Peterman, on Seinfeld, actor John O’Hurley.
This is Still Here Hollywood. I’m Steve Kmetko. Join me with today’s guest, Elaine’s boss J. Peterman, on Seinfeld, actor John O’Hurley.
“Over The Top” is a term that is often used as a kind of a slam to someone’s personality.
But in Hollywood, playing a role “Over The Top” can make you stand out. And if you’re lucky, it could land you as an iconic character in one of the biggest shows in television history.
Steve Kmetko:
Yes, I'm Still Here Hollywood. Coming up on today's episode.
John O’Hurley:
There I was at the table read and Seinfeld being the most disorganized show on television. They only had half the script written. I picked up the script and I walked away to an area that was secure. I called my manager and I said, this is the number one show on television. I said, it's not funny.
Steve Kmetko:
What about Julia Louis-Dreyfus?
John O’Hurley:
Smart, funny, and easily the greatest. You have to go back to Lucille Lab Ball to remember the embodiment of a better physical comedian. She would go down with the ship to get the laugh.
Steve Kmetko:
Over the top is a term that is often used as a kind of a slam as someone's personality. But in Hollywood, playing a role over the top can make you stand out. And if you're lucky, it could land you an iconic character part in one of the biggest shows in television history. This is Still Here, Hollywood. I'm Steve Kmetko. Join me with today's guest, Elaine's boss, Jay Peterman on Seinfeld actor John O'Hurley. If you'd like to be more involved with us at Still Here Hollywood, you definitely can just visit patreon.com/StillHereHollywood. You can support us for as little as $3 a month. You can get our episodes a day before they post anywhere else. You can see what guests will be coming up and submit questions for them. You can even tell us what stars you want us to have on as guests. You'll see what goes on before and after the episode. Plus, exclusive behind the scenes info picks video and more. Again, that's patreon.com/StillHereHollywood.
John, were you impacted by the fires at all?
John O’Hurley:
You know, I was lucky enough to have dodged a bullet, and we moved out from Beverly Hills to the Westlake Thousand Oaks Area, and which is a wrought with brush and trees. But we also were lucky enough to have we Westlake Lake Sherwood a lot of water around us. So anytime anything seems to spout up, they're able to knock it down fairly quickly. So, we were lucky. We dodged the big bullet that not a lot of people did.
Steve Kmetko:
How has it impacted the city, do you think?
John O’Hurley:
Well, I think it's been an emotional attack on the city. The places that you, I mean, you know, people used to think, well, I'm living, I'm living in Malibu on the ocean. What could possibly happen on that side of PCH? Sure enough, they went down like Domino's and then all the way up in the hills took out what was part of the rich architectural history of Los Angeles. And probably never to be replaced again because it's, you can't build the class and the style of architecture that was there historically. I mean, some of those homes go back to the, to the twenties and the thirties, and were really part of the grand gift of architecture and represented some of the greatest building achievements of some of the great mines in the entertainment industry. They laid it over into the homes that they lived in as well.
Steve Kmetko:
I was coming in yesterday from Chicago, and I usually, I asked the driver if he would go through El Pollo Loco, because we don't have any in Chicago, and I love El Pollo Loco. Lived on it when I was out here.
John O’Hurley:
You wine list, or no?
Steve Kmetko:
No.
John O’Hurley:
No. You just, you bypass that.
Steve Kmetko:
I bypass that. But there were people in the El Pollo Loco yesterday were talking to each other and saying things like-- you know, God bless Los Angeles. I don't know how we got through that and things of that nature. And I Oh, and this is a chicken joint.
John O’Hurley:
Yeah, I know. I know. Yeah. It was the number of people that have been affected by this and not just in it intrinsically affected because they lost their house, but they have all of the things, the ancillary things that went along with it. You know, gardening services, well-- you know, everybody had a gardening service out there. They no longer have those contracts. There's-- you know, employees that are out of jobs. All of the support services, the groceries, the small businesses, they're all gone. They're all gone. And it will be a long time before they come back—
Steve Kmetko:
If?
John O’Hurley:
And, you know, you realize that, yes, okay, maybe I have my lot-- I've lost my home, but do I really want to build in an area where I'm going to be watching building for the next 10 or 15 years? You know? And you start to scratch your head and say, do I want to do this? And if you're older like I am, you say, how many houses do I have left in me? You know? And, you know, you got a lot of decisions to make with a calamity that is this large and all encompassing.
Steve Kmetko:
Okay, let's go back to career stuff.
John O’Hurley:
What a cheery beginning, huh?
Steve Kmetko:
Well, no, you can't-- you know, it's like the elephant in the room. You can't really-- you know, go on without it.
John O’Hurley:
And it's had such an impact on the industry as well.
Steve Kmetko:
It's had an impact on me sitting at home in Chicago and watching it on tv. It was nonstop on every chattel it seemed, and I didn't even live here. You know, we didn't live here, but everybody was asking, do you see things you recognize? Yes, I do--
John O’Hurley:
Not anymore.
Steve Kmetko:
I lived here for 30 years and come on.
John O’Hurley:
Not at all. Yeah.
Steve Kmetko:
Okay. Let me ask you, how, first of all, did the job on Seinfeld ever come about?
John O’Hurley:
Well, it was kind of a very strange perfect storm. I was doing a sitcom on ABC called a whole new Ball game, which was put up by the producers of then the series coach, which you think back, you'll remember, it was a very successful series with Craig T. Nelson. And they wanted to do a pair up, a series that they could move along with Coach. And if they had to move it around, they'd take that series with themselves. So, they had locked, they would lock up a full hour of television programming. Well, they ended up moving the show coach around a little bit, moved our show around a little bit, and we never found an audience. So halfway through the season, they called and, and said, don't bother coming to work. We've canceled the show, and which is the way ABC and all the other networks do it.
And so, I went out to dinner that night with my manager crying in my beer, trying to take the cancellation as personally as I possibly could. And Larry Davis office called and said we heard John's show got canceled. And there is we have this guest star on the show this week. I don't know if he'd like to do it, but it's a really funny, weird character that he could have a lot of fun chewing up and-- you know, spitting out with the scenery. So, I said to my manager, I said, tell him thank you, but no. And I said, I really, I'm licking my wounds over the cancellation of the series today. And I said, I don't really want to go guest star on somebody else's show. And, in truth, I had never really watched Seinfeld, even though at the time it was the number one show.
Well, come to find out the following morning, I get a call at about 10 o'clock and my manager says to me, get out of bed. I never called last night. They're waiting for you over there in an hour. So, I ended up going over there and there I was at the table read, and Seinfeld being the most disorganized show on television. They only had half the script written. And sure enough, by the end of the week and through the taping Elaine was working for the J. Peterman Company. And I had a job. Everybody looked at me and they said, well, welcome to the cast. And but it's funny, I learned a lot. Because the second I finished that table read, I picked up the script and I walked away to an area that was secure.
I called my manager and I said, this is the number one show on television. I said, it's not funny. I said, it's not funny. Now, what I didn't know, and it took me a while to learn, was that it wasn't Golden Girls funny. It wasn't a show that you, your job was to set a joke up and deliver a punchline, set the joke up and deliver a punchline, wasn't the way it was. Seinfeld was funny because everybody played their scenes like it was streetcar named desire. Everybody was so passionate and over. I mean, it was like, who's afraid of Virginia Wolf? It was like Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor going at each other tooth and nail. That's what made the scene funny. If you played it for the drama, it was funny as the comedy, and that's something that not a lot of people realized. And it took me a while to realize it as well, that I had to play it as a drama. And that included-- you know, the intensity of J.Peterman for his-- you know, mis-wanderings around the world and his river markets that he was always traveling to, and in search of an elusive swatch of corduroy and what have you. But I had to learn a new style of comedy, and that's what made Seinfeld different.
Steve Kmetko:
Tell me about your voice.
John O’Hurley:
It's all mine. The irony to my voice is that mine was the last one to change in high school. I had a little voice that was like this all the way up till I was in 16 years old. The fall of being 16 years old, I still had a little squeaky voice. And then all of a sudden, one day it started to drop, and it was the happiest day of my life, because it paralleled a time in entertainment. When music was owned by the great DJs, the record companies didn't own music. The groups didn't own their music. It was the radio, it was the DJs on the radio station. They determined what would go on the airways, and they had these incredible mellifluous voices and personalities. You had-- you know, people like Dick Robinson-- you know, and so I'm-- my voice is changing at the same time.
I'm hearing all of these incredible voices on the radio, which is really only the mechanism that we had to really listen to popular music. And I realized that the human voice is an instrument and that it can be played. And then you cut to some years after that, and I was in college, and I was majoring in theater and minoring in opera. And then I realized, and I will underscore again, that the voice is an instrument. And if you sustain it, it's music, it's tone. If you don't sustain the tone it's talking. So, really, it was this that's a long answer to your question of tell me about your voice.
Steve Kmetko:
Well, I'm just curious because of what I've read online, is that it's your voice that gets you a lot of your jobs.
John O’Hurley:
It does indeed. You know, it-- and I do a lot of voiceovers. I do a lot of cartoons and they're mostly very urbane characters, because I do happen to kind of have cornered the market on a style, I suppose, of speaking. I don't differentiate too much from that, but it's-- you know, it's a but, on the other hand, if you were to, if you were to go back into the forties and the fifties, you would find people having, my voice was pretty much commonplace. Because they came from the Broadway stage, they came from radio. They came from places where the voice really was the mechanism by which you communicated. You put a microphone in somebody on stage right now that is coming from any one of the sitcoms or any one of the movies that we, you can't hear. They have no voice. They've never learned to develop their voice. And so that's probably why I stick out, is because I, I took the time to learn.
Steve Kmetko:
Have people complimented you on your voice?
John O’Hurley:
I have received some very nice compliments on my voice, and I cherish those. I really do. Because again, it's like someone say, congratulations. You learned how to master your instrument, not your domain, but your interested--
Steve Kmetko:
Master of your domain.
John O’Hurley:
That was a whole different thing, different episode.
Steve Kmetko:
Tell me some of the characters you've voiced. You've done a lot of animated work, right?
John O’Hurley:
There are about 15 cartoons that I've done. Some of them, I remember some of them I don't. And the reason being is when you go into a studio and you record a, an animated character, they may not have that the cell illustrations and what have you done for another year. So, you completely forget that you've done, you did that thing, and you'll-- you know, just happen to watch and animated. You go, oh, here I am. That's me. But some of the more notable ones, king Neptune on SpongeBob, which is probably one of the largest shows, I think, with Nickelodeon. And the enormous success that that has been, and that's carried over into its sequel, which is called Patrick. So that character lives on. I had a wonderful experience on ABC's top show called Phineas and Ferb which I think is the it's kind of Seinfeld for kids.
I just think it is one of the most imaginative and funny to the bone shows. And it has nothing to do, whether I'm in it or not. It was just the magic of the music and the writing of the dialogue, the construct of the, of the story. It was just brilliant. And then there were other things that I kind of look at and I go, oh, because I remember them from being a child. I am the Phantom Blot on Mickey Mouse. Phantom Blot being nothing more than this amorphous shaped ink stain that can kind of morph himself into different figures. And that was kind of fun because it was something that was back from the 19, late 1930s. And then Walter Bunny on Bugs Bunny. I'm that was kind of fun to be part of that that series as well. I was Mr. Slate on Fred Flintstone which was kind of fun. That was one of the ones. So there, there've been a few that kind of stick up. And then, as I say, I'm Hades and monster High, and there's a few popular ones now, but they don't have the history that that draws me back into it.
Steve Kmetko:
Like a Bugs Bunny might have.
John O’Hurley:
Sure. Oh, yeah.
Steve Kmetko:
John, how do you like working in a booth alone? You must do quite a bit of work alone, standing in a booth.
John O’Hurley:
It is very lonely, but no, I actually prefer it.
Steve Kmetko:
Do you?
John O’Hurley:
Sure. Because you know, the directors are so wonderful about a, knowing the story and presenting you with the context of what you do that basically I'll just give them three takes on a particular line, that's all I need to do. And, one of them is right by what they're looking for.
Steve Kmetko:
One of them is bound to be right.
John O’Hurley:
One of them is right. So, I am literally, I can do an entire episode in, in 15 minutes, and I'm-- you know, I don't even really have to turn the car off out in the lot. Yeah.
Steve Kmetko:
That's nice.
John O’Hurley:
Yeah, it is.
Steve Kmetko:
I don't know, it doesn't say much for your carbon footprint, but other than that Hey, tell me about, once again, I'm going back and forth. I jump around a lot. Going back to Seinfeld for a second. What was it like working with Jerry Seinfeld?
John O’Hurley:
Well, I only actually worked with Jerry. In one particular episode, I was always with either George or Elaine, and sometimes Kramer but Jerry, only one episode. And it was the night, it was in the Bosco episode when everybody is supposed to be having dinner with me at the Chinese restaurant. And they all scoot out of there on an, as they say, scoot out on an excuse built for one. And George was the only one left. And he ends up having dinner with me, which involves a phone call, to which I understand my mother is at death's door. And George then becomes my mentor, my compatriot, and he's seeing me through the passage of my mother. And I later find out that he gave up his ATM code, Bosco, and that were, oddly enough, my mother's final words to which I understood that George killed my mother.
Steve Kmetko:
It's a shame. That's a startling thing to find.
John O’Hurley:
So, Jerry-- but Jerry, but that doesn't mean Jerry wasn't there. Jerry was an active part of the show, and he was an active part of all the scenes that I was in. And I was there for some, I guess five seasons, four or five, anyway. And but Jerry always was such an interesting character because unless you knew who he was, he looked like a tourist. He would have his hands in his pockets, or he'd be holding a bowl of cereal from craft services and just kind of sitting in the background and laughing along. And, you know, he was so nondescript and very endemic to his suburban upbringing, I guess, out in long Island there. He just, just kind of dressed the part, looked the part, acted the part, always a gentleman. And one of the smarter people I've ever worked with.
Steve Kmetko:
Really?
Steve Kmetko:
Yeah. I wouldn't say one of the best actors, but he knew that, and he knew that he was the keel. Every comedy has to have a keel-- you know, so, that becomes the interpretation of what is normal in that world of comedy. And so, all of the lunacy can happen around it, as long as you have your keel. And everyone and everyone had it. Cheers, had it with you know, Ted Danson. And, you know, it's like every, every good comedy has to have--
Steve Kmetko:
Mary Tyler Moore show with Mary, she was like--
John O’Hurley:
Yep. Everything could happen to her.
Steve Kmetko:
Yeah.
John O’Hurley:
Because she was the keel. Exactly. And then the relationship with Edward Asner and Mary was very much a more surreal version, was Peterman and Elaine.
Steve Kmetko:
We'll be back for more in a moment.
What about Julia Louie Dreyfus? I only encountered her from time to time on various red carpets at the Emmy's.
John O’Hurley:
Sure.
Steve Kmetko:
But she was always hysterical. She was so bright. She always looked great.
John O’Hurley:
Smart, funny, and easily the greatest. You have to go back to Lucille Lab Ball to remember the embodiment of a better physical comedian. And I-- its ENNE, I guess, is appropriate. But she was-- she would go down with the ship to get the laugh as evidenced by that inane Elaine dance that she did.
Steve Kmetko:
Yes. Which is still on today, still on for commercials.
John O’Hurley:
I appear; I will do appearances now at foot at baseball stadiums on their Seinfeld nights. And sure enough, they'll have a dozen or two dozen people out there in the field all doing the Elaine dance. And the crowd has to applaud for their--
Steve Kmetko:
Favorite--
John O’Hurley:
Their favorites. And yeah. Yeah. She is. But I-- it's just a lovely person and funny as can be married to a great guy and good people. Sadly, they-- I think lost their home as well in Palisade.
Steve Kmetko:
I think I read that.
John O’Hurley:
Yeah.
Steve Kmetko:
The last time I interviewed her, she came to the Emmys with Comedian
John O’Hurley:
Wanda Sykes.
Steve Kmetko:
That's it. She came-- the two of them came up.
John O’Hurley:
I am sorry. We needed that in the form of a question. Who Was Wanda Sykes?
Steve Kmetko:
Wanda Sykes and the two of them together just destroyed us. Those of us who were working the line, the two of them got together. It was like they'd been together forever and ever playing off each other. Just very, very funny.
John O’Hurley:
Yeah. You have to go back to Veep to find a lane actually saying a four-letter word. Yeah. It's like, rather, it just doesn't sound right coming out of her mouth, has it?
Steve Kmetko:
No. and Veep was another one. How, what is with her? She just seemed the new adventures of old I, old--
John O’Hurley:
Christine.
Steve Kmetko:
Christine. Seinfeld Veep. It's like she has a Midas touch.
John O’Hurley:
She does. She hits upon all wheels, always. Well, she just plays one. I mean, she's a wonderfully engaging character. She really was just.
Steve Kmetko:
And when she received an award for the Mark Twain Award at the Kennedy Center, she was hysterical just doing her stick. And had everybody going, anyway blah, blah, blah.
John O’Hurley:
Yep.
Steve Kmetko:
My--
John O’Hurley:
She was the one that we had the toughest time completing a scene without
Steve Kmetko:
Laughing?
John O’Hurley:
Going into just--
Steve Kmetko:
That's why there's so many outtakes on the internet.
John O’Hurley:
Oh, there are. Oh, my goodness. There are more. It took us forever to shoot a show, because, because the, the everybody, I mean, she would just look at me and go, and all I would have to do, and I would go, Elaine, that's it. And she would just go.
Steve Kmetko:
Dissolve.
John O’Hurley:
Go. Because it sounded so different.
Steve Kmetko:
So, John, tell me about how the whole dog show stuff came about.
John O’Hurley:
Hmm. Interesting. Speaking of doing different things. Yes. I put my finger through the belt loops of some interesting franchises between Seinfeld and Dancing with the Stars and--
Steve Kmetko:
Family Feud.
John O’Hurley:
Family Feud, and to tell the truth. And yeah, I've been really lucky to be surrounded by success. And I've been really lucky to be able to sit in the same room as those people. But the Dog show came about in a funny way. The head of NBC sports back in 2002, took home a copy of Best in Show, the movie that Christopher Guest made famous, the parody of the Westminster Dog Show. He watched it twice that weekend and was in hysterics. So, John Miller, head of NBC Sports comes into the morning meeting at NBC on Monday and says, I know what we're going to do with that two-hour slot between the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade and Football. We're going to do a dog show. Well, they about laughed him out of the office, but by the end of the day, he had licensed from the Counter Club of Philadelphia, the National Dog Show, one of their shows.
And had contacted Purina as our presenting sponsor. And then Tuesday morning called me in LA and I answered the phone and I said, hello. And it was him. And he said, Wolf, Wolf. And that's how it all started. And that was 23 years ago. And, you know, normally I kill shows, they don't stay on the air that long with me. They-- it was, it's been 23 years. We go in the year number 24. Hopefully we'll get to 25, but we have to, its fairness. It's the number two next to the Super Bowl, the number one show on television. We get an audience of anywhere from 25 to 30 million people a year. And it's bewildering to us that our audience is actually growing at a time when television audiences are shrinking on individual viewing platforms. So, it's just amazing to us that we have found something that is the perfect piece of programming. And God bless us, we'll be blessed with permanence.
Steve Kmetko:
Well, dogs aren't about to go any, go away.
John O’Hurley:
No, they really aren't. And I'll tell you, and I always say, if you're sitting there with a remote and you're just kind of doing this, and you're going around on Thanksgiving Day, and all of a sudden you see a set of puppy dog eyes, we own you.
Steve Kmetko:
Yes. Hard to turn away. What kind of dogs do you have?
John O’Hurley:
Well, I have two rescues now. I've had many Pure Barge during the years. I've always had a dog. My first we were talking earlier about dachshunds and you had happened to have a mini dachshund, I believe and--
Steve Kmetko:
Buddy?
John O’Hurley:
That was, I had Taffy. Taffy was a short-haired dachshund. That was my first dog when I was four year three, four years old. And she was my little buddy.
Steve Kmetko:
And now?
John O’Hurley:
And now I have the two rescue dogs.
Steve Kmetko:
That, and you don't know what they are. We have 23 and me.
John O’Hurley:
Not a clue. Tell you, I did the 23 and me, and as I joke mommy swam out to meet the Navy ship because it's, there are so many different breeds tucked in there that she could I mean, Andy Kaufman, I think was in there as well. I think he was one of the things that surfaced.
Steve Kmetko:
Whoa. Have you had any bad experiences doing the dog show at all?
John O’Hurley:
Not bad experience. Dogs or dogs.
Steve Kmetko:
Dogs or dogs.
John O’Hurley:
And these are-- you know, we have on any given year in Philadelphia, which is where we filmed the National Dog Show just before Thanksgiving, and we air it on Thanksgiving. So, we have 2000 of the best dogs, and we have over 200 different breeds. These dogs are so exceptionally well-trained that everything you can possibly think of, and most notably, they're socialization, their ability to be around 2000 other dogs. And, you know, no dog fights, no barking, no nothing. They all basically are--
Steve Kmetko:
Mind their own business.
John O’Hurley:
They mind their own business, and they know what they're there for. However dogs are dogs, and these are just our dogs, and they do the same thing. They sit on the couch and occasionally they drink the toilet water. And, you know, it's like they, you can't help that they are dogs. So, one year they brought the best in show, which are the final three seven dogs rather brought into the ring. And they have been winning all day long in the process of elimination groupings. So, the top seven dogs are in the ring. They all do their walk or run around the ring. And just as the Great Dane, which is one of the largest dogs on this planet earth, comes past the NBC booth, it stops. It's a black and white dog. I remember it distinctly, it stops and it just looks over its right shoulder at me, then proceeds to squat down and leave.
What I would regard as an editorial comment on my performance, that had to be that large. And so, the show stops in its tracks because we have to bring out what is the Hazmat Team with the shovels that would accommodate an elephant's refuge. And they had to stop the show, disinfect the rug and everything so that every dog didn't stop and smell as they are known to do. But so it was, oh my goodness. Yeah. So, I think that was really, we've had a couple of runners where all of a sudden, the handler let go of the dog, and the dog just took off in the ring. And it's like, you know, we got a runner. We got a runner.
Steve Kmetko:
It reminds me of that joke about the guy who cleans up after the elephants in the circus parade, and somebody says-- you know, why don't you quit your job? And he said, what? And give up show business, same kind of thing. That's got to be a lot of fun.
John O’Hurley:
It is. It's a wonderful show. And everybody's happy. You know, it’s-- if you can imagine the joy that if we had a dog in this room right now, at one point, we'd all be looking at the dog and just dogs hold a fascination to us, both with their docility and their innocence, but also their loyalty to us. I mean, there's so many Wonder Dogs have very few negative qualities to them. They teach us so many things. I've actually written three books on the subject of dogs. And basically, the premise of what I write about is that dogs teach us everything that we need to know in life. It's kind of like everything I needed to learn in high school, I learned or everything I needed to learn in life. I learned in kindergarten. It has that same feeling of the dogs teach us so many wonderful life lessons. And but if you were to have a dog here would all be looking at that dog, because they just represent just the state of goodness.
Steve Kmetko:
I used to have a Yorkie named Stella. Oh. And I would take her to work with me at E. And she would lay down on my desk and sleep. She was only like four pounds.
John O’Hurley:
Oh, of course. Yes.
Steve Kmetko:
So, I'd you know-- I'd bring in her in every once in a while, because everybody relaxed automatically when she'd-- they'd come in, can we touch? You know, can we pet say Stella?
John O’Hurley:
Sure, you can.
Steve Kmetko:
And I used to take her downstairs to the mail department because that's the only scale I could find a weigh on that she'd register. So, that was great fun. I think dogs should be allowed more public places.
John O’Hurley:
Well, you know, it is happening. And there's been a very strong movement in the country. And there actually very few places, especially in New York City now, where you can go, where a dog isn't allowed. I have in fact, they don't even ask anymore. Why-- you know, do you have a service? You know, your credentials for that as a service. They don't even ask anymore. They just assume dogs are all over the place. I mean, New York is the greatest dog city in America. So, if it happens there, it pretty much happens anywhere.
Steve Kmetko:
Tell me about, again I was kind of surprised to read this, that you are now, the character you play was J.Peterman, which was connected to the catalog company J.Peterman, the real.
John O’Hurley:
J.Peterman.com.
Steve Kmetko:
And you now, and have for some time own a percentage of it, don't you?
John O’Hurley:
I do; I do. It was a very odd story. John Peterman, the owner of the J.Peterman Company arrived in at work one morning and his employees said, you were on Seinfeld last night. And he said, no, I was on a plane last night. And they said, no, you were the one of the characters on Seinfeld last night. And he went, what? Well, you know, immediately, if you are slightly litigious, your ears go up and it's the first call is to your lawyers. But he thought about it and he ended up talking to the people at Seinfeld and just said, well-- you know, we're going to do this once just because we thought it was an unusual character. The catalog is so unusual. It is the most unusual catalog you'll ever read, j peterman.com, if you want to find something like that.
The show or the what we pared on Seinfeld. It's about-- it's a Hemingway novel a bit of copy written about climbing K-2 in your Oxford button down. And it's about one of a kind romantic wear. And it's really a fascinating piece of literature and capitalism. It it's just beautiful merchandise. And I just found it. So anyway, long story short, he and I, because of over the years of being on Seinfeld, he and I became joined at the wrist and ankles. And we became very good friends. Well, about a year and a half after Seinfeld ended, he was about to IPO the company, and everything went belly up on him. And that's the way things happen in that world. And he went down in about two weeks.
He didn't even see it coming. So, he called me back about a year later and said, I've got the intellectual property back. Would you like to write me a really, really large check? And we'll put the company back together again under our parallel strength. So, I wrote a really, really large check, and since 2000 I have been part owner of the J.Peterman catalog. And it still has been the greatest act of identity theft ever. And I'm not giving it back. And we will walk now, we have, I'm on the board and we'll walk, he and I will walk down Madison Avenue on our way to lunch and a bottle of wine. We always have to have our wine. And we'll end up going to this Italian restaurant. We'll be walking down Madison, and sure enough, some cop car will roll down a window and scream, hey, Peterman. And they're not talking to him. They're talking to me. Now, isn't that bizarre?
Steve Kmetko:
It is bizarre.
John O’Hurley:
It is what Marshall Mcluhan used to say, the message in the medium will eventually become indistinguishable. And I am the greatest example of that because I am Peterman, he's not. And all he did was just run a successful clothing catalog company, and for the rest of his life, he will have lost his identity. It's amazing when you think about it.
Steve Kmetko:
In exchange for?
John O’Hurley:
Yeah. Well, a, keeping the company going, I suppose.
Steve Kmetko:
Yeah.
John O’Hurley:
You know, the perpetuity of the company.
Steve Kmetko:
You sing, you act on stage, on television, in film. You do voices. I was surprised to see all that. What was the-- you did a one man show called a man of--
John O’Hurley:
A man with standards.
Steve Kmetko:
A man with Standards.
John O’Hurley:
I'm touring that right now around, actually, it's internationally too. I toured overseas as well.
Steve Kmetko:
And it's all about stories you've accumulated in your life and show this.
John O’Hurley:
They're the stories of my life. But it's framed around growing up in the fifties and the sixties around the music of the standards we called them, the music of Mancini Sinatra, moon River all of that style of music. And I also quip that, I was lucky enough to grow up in a time around people who had standards. We called them gentlemen and gen ladies and gentlemen. And I talk about, which brings in my parents a lot, and the way that I grew up and the very funny stories of my life, because I was just another bozo on the bus. And I did some very strange things, but I always knew that I was going to be an actor. So, for me, it was always just about sitting back and just trying to connect the dots until my time came and it came, and it, well, it did it-- you know, but not without you know, a lot of kicking and screaming. But yeah, I went to New York in 1981. I took me 48 hours to get my first show longest. 48 hours of my life, I'll tell you. But and I never looked back and never looked back. And I've been blessed with being able to work every day ever since.
Steve Kmetko:
One of the things you say in your show is the biggest mistake of your show business career was singing Sinatra to Sinatra.
John O’Hurley:
Yeah. You know, this is one of the fun. It it's truly one of the funniest stories because of the height of the circumstances. I was-- Sinatra had an enormous influence on my life. He-- I had a kid, my best friend in high school tells me that I had the worst voice he'd ever heard, and I shouldn't sing. And so, because he was doing this for my own good-- you know, you don't say that to somebody unless you're really doing them a favor. I shut up and I didn't sing at all for many, many years, but it was Sinatra in college that got me to sing again, not him personally, but it was his music that got me to sing again when he brought out his album Old Blue Eyes as back in 72 or 73, I think it was 73.
And so, you can imagine the influence he had on my life. Well, cut to the mid-eighties when I'm now in New York and I've become kind of Mr. Daytime television. I was on just about every show you could possibly do. And I was the original Twin Brothers on daytime, and I was on the number one show, young and The Restless for a while. And so, I really developed a niche in that style. Well, lo and behold, in the mailbox one day, I get an invitation to none other than the Frank Sinatra celebrity golf tournament, and I nobody could have been more--
Steve Kmetko:
That'll make the hair on the back of your next stand up.
John O’Hurley:
It sure did. And I rolled up my tuxedo, stuck it under my arm, and I went out to Palm Springs to the gala out there, and, and I was by myself and I knew I was going to see his himself. So, he came in and I just was mesmerized by the power and the command and the silence that he had. And I said to myself, I learned more about being an actor by watching him walk across the room than I ever learned anywhere in any portion of my acting career. Well, what I didn't realize is that we were all supposed to go back to Sinatra's house afterwards and entertain Frank. Everybody, all the celebrities were supposed to go back. So, Robert Goulet is there. He sings 45 minutes of the best ballads he's ever belted out. Buddy Hackett was there insulting with the most obscene material I've ever heard in my life. Don Rickles insulted two entire zip codes. Well, it got to be about two in the morning, and people were kind of still there. You know, there was still about a hundred hangers on in the, at his house.
And Frank was sitting by the piano, and he's probably on his 43rd scotch by the time I was, his pianist does this to me, because I'm the last one easily about two in the morning. And I said, oh no. And at this point, I want to climb into my glass of Chardonnay. And I went over to him and he says, what are you doing? So I leaned over and I told him what I was going to do, and he looked back at me as though I had just licked his ear. And he says, okay. And he sat down and started playing. And I proceeded to do the stupidest thing I have ever done in my career. I sang Sinatra to Sinatra. And when he finished, there was absolutely not a sound in the room. There was absolute silence. And they knew I had broken the rule. And Sinatra is sitting there with his drink and he is just running his fingers over the edge like this, and everybody's waiting for what he's going to say. And he looks up and he says, you know, that was the song that Joe Raposo wrote for me to sing to my wife.
Were you singing to my wife? I said, no, sir, I wasn't. I was, I'm sorry. And I don't know what I said, but I grabbed my chardonnay and I began to walk back to the wall that I had been holding up. And as I pass him, he reaches over, touches me, like right there in a spot that I have not washed since. And he says, it sounded good. You sounded good. That was it. That's all I ever needed. I don't know if anybody else said anything that night, because as I stood back on that wall, I raised my glass and I thought to myself, somewhere in this world, that guy, Martin, the Italian, had just dropped dead. True story.
Steve Kmetko:
What a great story.
John O’Hurley:
It's a great one. And because he had such an influence on me, and I still do, you know, it's funny, in my One man show, I do the song You Will Be My Music, which is the song that Raposo wrote for him to sing to his wife. And it's one of the greatest pieces that he ever sang. I think it's one of the best written pieces. But yeah, yeah, he had an enormous influence on my life and continues to this day.
Steve Kmetko:
I think he had an enormous influence on a lot of people's lives. I saw him in concert with Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald, Liza Minnelli, Sammy Davis Jr..
John O’Hurley:
And it wasn't a better stylist than him.
Steve Kmetko:
And we'll be right back.
Do you think that role in Seinfeld, do you think that affected your casting in any other parts positively or negatively?
John O’Hurley:
Probably.
Steve Kmetko:
Are there things that you would've liked to have done that somehow or another just haven't come through yet?
John O’Hurley:
No. I've had a pretty blessed career. I tell you from, I've done, you know, for 15 years, I have done Billy Flynn and the musical of Chicago on Broadway. Over 2000 performances. I've done over, over almost 2000 performances of King Arthur and Monty Python, Spamalot, and then I did the El Gallo in the Fantasticks on Broadway. So, I've had a pretty nice, I've had a pretty nice theatrical career. Yes, it probably salted the castings, I would say, in on television, because I think people kind of remembered it. It's kind of like everybody remembers Newman as Newman, and you don't want to bring new that character onto into your show. You want something new and Sparky. You know so it, it might've, I'll never know because they'll never tell you. You know, it's like they'll never tell you the jobs that you don't get, that you weren't offered. You know, you only know the ones you got. But I've worked, you know, every day since Seinfeld, so in one capacity, or I've been really blessed. I've always had; I've never had a difficulty being employed. And, and that was really my goal when I went to New York in 1981, was to be--
Steve Kmetko:
Well that's the definition of a working actor.
John O’Hurley:
It was to be a working actor. It's all I wanted to be. In fact, I would've been very happy just going to a repertory company like-- you know the Goodman Theater and, or-- you know, the Hartford Stage or someplace and just, you know, been part of the Repertory company and earned my four or $500 a week. And I mean, that to me would've been just, that's all I ever wanted, you know? Because at the age of three, when these large people were standing over me asking me what I wanted to be when I grew up, and, and I recall still soiling diapers at the rate of three a day, and I didn't know if I had a concrete career example, but that's when I decided that I would point to the black and white television in the corner of the room, and I would say, well, I am an actor, so that's what I'm going to be. And so, for me it was always about connecting the dots.
Steve Kmetko:
What do you have lined up right now?
John O’Hurley:
Something very unusual actually. I just signed to a new movie. I've done three this year already. I've been really much.
Steve Kmetko:
Hey, it's only February.
John O’Hurley:
I know I just got a new one yesterday, but I'm doing something different. Patrick Warburton, who played putty on the show. We had this crazy idea over too many beers one night, and I said, we should really do something together, because we never did anything together on the show. And yet we're such close, close friends, and yet we both have a different but pronounced sense of humor. I said, we should do a show together. And I thought that, you know, Steve Martin and Marty Short are doing a kind of a two man show. And so, I said, so sure enough in late March, the end of March, we are doing a two man show. It's called An Evening with Putty and Peterman. And it says, and the subtext is crass and class, and it's already almost sold out.
And we just went on really the docket about four days ago. So, it's we're doing three different venues up there. It's going to be part of the Food and Comedy Festival they're having in Providence. Then we have two other theaters that we're doing some stuff in while we're out there as well. So, it's going to be, so he and I will probably continue marching around the company with the country with an evening with Putty and Peter. But it's a lot of fun. Because he does, he takes one act, I take another, and we come back and do a Q&A.
Steve Kmetko:
That sounds like great fun. I mean, Martin Short and Steve Martin have made it work so well for them. Yep.
John O’Hurley:
Well, the nice thing about Patrick and I are just so different. He just-- you know, he is, as he said, he says, I'm crass and your class, and it's just a perfect evening of entertainment.
Steve Kmetko:
The building works to your advantage.
John O’Hurley:
It sure does.
Steve Kmetko:
Did you come up with a personality of Peterman or was it written that way?
John O’Hurley:
Oh, no, that was me. Yeah, it was me. I just knew, I had read, they gave me the ca they gave me the clothing catalog to read. And they said, we just want him to sound, the way the catalog is written is though this Hemingway dialogue is coming out of, it's just tripping off his tongue and that this is the way he speaks. And so, it was an easy thing for me to do. Because as I read through the catalog and I said, yes, it was Hemingway, but it sounded like a bit of a forties radio drama combined with a bit of a bad Charles Carroll. And so, and then it gave, as the history of the character went on through the show, it gave the writers a chance to write, not short form, but in long form they could write monologues. Now, sadly, a lot of most of the monologues were cut from the show. Because the show, as I said, the most disorganized show, but it, and always too long. So, the first thing the editor would do is cut the Peterman Monologue, and then they've got two more minutes to work with. And so, but there was a lot of stuff, and I'll give, I'll give you an example of one monologue that was cut.
It was when Rob Schneider was playing my Heart of Hearing Assistant, and I thought that he, I thought Elaine and Bob were having a little tete on Office time. And so, I walk into her office and I slapped down two tickets to the Kara Matson Circus playing Cupid. And I decided to, I told her that she and Bob could knock off a little early to get ready. Well, she looked at me as though I had grown a second head, and she says, Bob, and I said, Elaine, don't worry. I too am no stranger to love on the clock. As a young lad, my father apprentice me to a honey factory in bellies. The chief beekeeper was this horrible hag of a woman with gnarled teeth and a giant wart that she called un nose. Whoa. She was not attractive, even by backwards standards. But love is truly blind, Elaine. And as the days went on, working closer and closer together, that sweet smell of honey in the air. I knew I had to have that horrible creature. And I did. So, you and Bob have a good time tonight, right on the cutting room floor.
Steve Kmetko:
We've resurrected it today. Thank you.
John O’Hurley:
They're fun. I enjoy them very much.
Steve Kmetko:
And I'm trying not to laugh too hard because I lost a tooth in front.
John O’Hurley:
Oh dear.
Steve Kmetko:
Which is always attractive.
John O’Hurley:
Oh, I've had that myself.
Steve Kmetko:
Oh Boy. So, I enjoyed.
John O’Hurley:
That's why they have super glue.
Steve Kmetko:
That's what he used last time I was in there. And it didn't seem to hold long enough.
John O’Hurley:
No, I pity-- I understand. I've been through, I have been through, I empathize.
Steve Kmetko:
Smile.
John O’Hurley:
Smirk.
Steve Kmetko:
Did I sit down with you at Fox once with Dorothy Lucey and Lauren Sánchez? Did we do a show? They used to have a little Hollywood show, and I was freelancing for them, and I think they asked me to sit in once and I was pretty certain you were the guest.
John O’Hurley:
Might have been during the Family Feud times.
Steve Kmetko:
May have been. Yeah.
John O’Hurley:
I did a lot of that during then.
Steve Kmetko:
Boy, that show has lasted and lasted and lasted--
John O’Hurley:
Hasn't it. Well, Steve did a wonderful job with it. You know, he just took it. I had five seasons of it, and it was turning into a penis joke, and I didn't like that. And I got all the letters and saying, well, we can't show this, you know, to our kids at six o'clock anymore. And I go, eh, no, I don't want to. So, contract came up, I was gone. They were ready to move the show to Florida, which I said, perfect timing, because that's where game shows go to die. And so, it was a good separation of the ways, but Steve came in and really resurrected the show, and my hat's off to him. He's really given the show a sense of permanence that will go on. It was a fun time. And I had some wonderful stories of it. I remember two guys that were standing at the face off two easily college graduates now that turned into Deer in the Headlights. And the question was, name a classic film that begins with the letter C to which you would say Casablanca--
Steve Kmetko:
Chicago was named best Picture here.
John O’Hurley:
Yeah, exactly. Citizen Kane. Caddyshack. They were all up there on the board. Ah, sea Biscuit. I mean, you can't write that stuff. I mean, it's just, I mean, it was just, it was never, always a source of entertainment to me. They always would give grandma; they would always put her down in the fifth position as though she was never going to get called on. You know, it's like, why did, I don't know why. So, the question was, name something that you would do on a first date to make yourself seem more attractive now you'd say, what would you say?
Steve Kmetko:
Haircut?
John O’Hurley:
Haircut. Perfume. Take a bath, change your clothes, whatever. I get all the way down to grandma there. I grab her hand and I did my, my little kiss on her hand. And I said, okay, we're going to think back now, you and I, what would someone do on a first date to make themselves seem more attractive? And she says, stuff your pads with a vegetable.
Steve Kmetko:
Did she name the vegetable?
John O’Hurley:
That was, I think it was, yeah. One of the heads of lettuce in the produce section, I'd say.
Steve Kmetko:
God, that was funny.
John O’Hurley:
Isn't it funny stuff. Your parents been a vegetable.
Steve Kmetko:
Hey, is it true you won't color your hair?
John O’Hurley:
I never have. I did it once because I had-- it was a parody that we were doing of like a forties radio, a forties drama. So, I did it just to show them that I could because it, the character was significantly younger, so I did it just that once. But no, I've never dyed my hair because--
Steve Kmetko:
People asked you to?
John O’Hurley:
No, I did. No, no, they never, they never did. And I'll tell you a very funny story. Because I did mention to you that back in my soap opera days, I was the first Twin brothers on daytime television preceding David Canary, who did it for many years on all My Children. But I was on the Show Loving, which is also an ABC show, as a show that preceded all my children. And I became the first two twin brothers. Well, to be a twin brother, you have to have a body double. So, they had to go search New York of the extras and find somebody that was my size, and I had black hair back then. Just little wisps of gray and, but essentially dark hair. So, they had to find somebody my size and somebody with my hair coloring. And so, they could shoot over the shoulder. Well, they found a guy who was a bouncer down at the Limelight nightclub, the old church down on 19th and Madison, I think. And he became my body double. The only problem was he had to talk like Dish and everything was like this.
And I said, oh my God, we, and so he was doing all of my, my other lines, the twin brothers’ lines, while I was doing the other brothers’ lines. And it drove me absolutely nuts because-- you know, I'm a urbane type of character, and I'm listening to this bastardization of what I'm supposed to be saying. And I couldn't, it took me so far out of the character. I said to the producer, tell him to shut up, please, . Just, I can't. I said, be polite. And he's a nice guy. I said, don't hurt his feelings, but tell him to shut up. Don't let him talk. I'll just figure the spacing out myself. And so that's the way we ended up doing. So, he never bothered opening his mouth, but when he finished, he would say, are they finished with me? I said, yes, I think they are. They're all set. You can head back to your dressing. Or he says, okay, good, good. He says, I'm kind of in the middle of my play right now. I said, what? He says, I'm writing a play about my life, I said. I said, well, well, good for you. It was Chazz Palminteri.
Steve Kmetko:
Really?
John O’Hurley:
He was my body double all those years. And he wrote Bronx Tale in the dressing room while he was my body double for loving. Hmm. Isn't that funny?
Steve Kmetko:
Should've hit him up for a part.
John O’Hurley:
No to this and to this day-- you know, I'll see him across the room and it's like, you go, who knew?
Steve Kmetko:
Who knew?
John O’Hurley:
Who knew? We don't look that much like each other anymore. So, we kind of took over here off.
Steve Kmetko:
He has a nose that goes like this.
John O’Hurley:
Well, it's through years of conditioning.
Steve Kmetko:
Yeah. Thank you, John.
John O’Hurley:
Great to be with you.
Steve Kmetko:
Coming in. I really Appreciate it.
John O’Hurley:
Thank you.
Steve Kmetko:
Very nice of you to do this.
John O’Hurley:
Absolutely. A lot of fun.
Steve Kmetko:
Still Here Hollywood is a production of the Still Here Network. All things technical run by Justin Zangerle. Theme music by Brian Sanyshyn and executive producer is Jim Lichtenstein.