Part One: Frank Fay, The Fascist Who invented Stand Up Comedy

Robert sits down with Andrew Ti to discuss the ground breaking performer who created modern stand up comedy and also palled around with the KKK. (2 Part Series) See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:04Robert Evans?

  Oh my goodness gracious, gosh, golly jeepers. It's Behind the Bastards, a podcast about the worst people in all of history. And today, the worst people in all of history are me and Sophie, because even though this podcast has a video version that some of you listen to, uh, we're not going to be on video this week, uh, which will not affect the vast majority of our listeners. And you're like, why, why are you telling it to us? Because some people watch this on YouTube and we're, we're going video off. Why? Because I look like shit today.

• 0:40Speaker 01

  And I feel like shit today.

• 0:42Robert Evans?

  Being, I was going to say you're just being sympathetic to me, but yes.

• 0:45Speaker 01

  Well, no, no, because I was the first one to go, we're, I'm not doing video today.

• 0:49Robert Evans?

  I'm not doing video today.

• 0:50Speaker 01

  And then you joined my cause.

• 0:52Robert Evans?

  Uh, Andrew T., our guest, are you feeling like shit today?

• 1:00Speaker 02

  I am, I am a little sleepy because I stayed up too late watching TV.

• 1:05Robert Evans?

  Oh, a little sleepy, yeah.

• 1:06Speaker 02

  I got the EPBPs a little.

• 1:08Robert Evans?

  You got the EPBPs, yeah.

• 1:09Speaker 02

  I was watching Slow Horses. Are you a Slow Horses fan? You seem like you would be.

• 1:15Robert Evans?

  I watched the first season of it and I love Commissioner Gordon, or whatever that guy's real name is. Um, and he's lovely in it. I, I'm kinda over spy shows, I guess. I used to love them. Um, I don't know. I, I guess I need to see, it's gotta be real different for me to get super, but I watched the first season, it was fine.

• 1:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's not very different. I, I will say, I think what I thought was gonna happen was it's played as it's maybe gonna be more of a comedy and then it's a pretty straight ahead spy show after the first bit.

• 1:47Robert Evans?

  Yeah, I was totally, it's a different kind of spy thing. It's, but no, they're just doing spy stuff. They're just like the underdogs, I guess, but by the end of the season, they're just like other spies. Uh, it's fine, it's fine.

• 1:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. They're, they're, they get, they get into minimum regular dogs and possibly overdog status pretty quickly.

• 2:06Robert Evans?

  As a CIA agent myself, you know? I've just had enough of that in my day job, destroying the left from within as an agent for, you know, the central intelligence, I, I, whatever, whatever people on Twitter are saying this week. Um, Andrew?

• 2:21Speaker 02

  You would, I, I will say, you would be...

• 2:28Speaker 02

  I mean, I guess it's like too on the nose to have you be a spy. I think it would just be too like, it's more like Sophie, obviously, is in the CIA.

• 2:37Robert Evans?

  Sophie's definitely in the CIA. Well, yes, of course, obviously. There's never been any doubt in my mind about that.

• 2:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:43Speaker 01

  Why are we telling people about this?

• 2:45Robert Evans?

  Uh, because Sophie.

• 2:46Speaker 02

  I'm just sort of daring them to listen.

• 2:47Robert Evans?

  I, I'm, I was a fan of the show Burn Notice. I wasn't really, but I like Bruce Campbell. And I feel like if you get burned because your spy identity gets revealed, I might get to meet Bruce Campbell. I'm not really sure how this is gonna work, but.

• 2:59Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 2:59Robert Evans?

  I'm hopeful.

• 3:00Speaker 01

  I'll figure it out.

• 3:01Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah. Uh, Bruce, if you're listening, have, you wanna have a beer? You know? Yeah.

• 3:08Robert Evans?

  Seems like a cool guy.

• 3:10Speaker 02

  I'm just saying, Sophie, if Sophie just had one job instead of, you know, destroying the left from within.

• 3:15Robert Evans?

  Sure.

• 3:16Speaker 02

  And.

• 3:16Robert Evans?

  As she's doing, yes, absolutely.

• 3:18Speaker 02

  Like, just easy.

• 3:20Robert Evans?

  Speaking of evil people destroying something, how do you feel about stand-up comedy?

• 3:27Speaker 02

  I, wait, have we not talked about this? I, I.

• 3:30Robert Evans?

  No, we haven't, actually.

• 3:31Speaker 02

  I have gone.

• 3:32Speaker 01

  We have, which is why I was like, when I realized what the topic was, I was very excited for this.

• 3:38Speaker 02

  I, I mean, listen, I, I love plenty of stand-up comedians.

• 3:43Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 3:43Speaker 02

  But I think the institution of stand-up comedy is so thoroughly poisoned by, at best, sort of reactionary, like.

• 3:55Robert Evans?

  Uh huh.

• 3:55Speaker 02

  Wild, huh? Structure.

• 3:57Robert Evans?

  Interesting.

• 3:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:59Robert Evans?

  Interesting. It's interesting that stand-up comedy, you know, as valuable and influential as it is, and we all have a lot of stand-up comedy that we love and has meant stuff to us.

• 4:08Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 4:08Robert Evans?

  Has this weird reactionary tinge that, that feels like, oh, that's gotta be this modern thing. It couldn't be baked in. It couldn't be that the literal inventor of stand-up comedy as a discipline was a fascist. Could it?

• 4:24Speaker 02

  I, listen, Robert, if you're gonna, this is not only, I, okay, actually, so the little tiny peek by the garden is I was having lunch with my friend and I told him I had to leave because I had to be on, uh, behind the bastards. And he was like, oh, like, what prep do you do? And I was like, oh, no, no.

• 4:42Robert Evans?

  No, no, that's not the, that's not the idea. Yeah.

• 4:45Speaker 02

  The guest comes in and I'm just like, I'm hit with it. And this is going to be by far, not that the other, uh, episodes I've been on have not been illuminating and educational. I think this might be directly useful to my life.

• 4:58Robert Evans?

  Oh, good. Well, I always hope for that. Cause today, did you, did you know there was a guy who invented stand-up comedy?

• 5:06Speaker 01

  Always one asshole.

• 5:07Robert Evans?

  Like a single guy who is credited as being the guy.

• 5:10Speaker 01

  Dude, bro.

• 5:10Speaker 02

  That is wild.

• 5:12Robert Evans?

  It is wild, right?

• 5:13Speaker 02

  I would have assumed it would be like, you know, apocryphally Aristotle or some shit like that.

• 5:20Robert Evans?

  It, you know, there is, there are different people and obviously things that are kind of in the, the DNA of stand-up comedy have existed probably for as long as people have. Like things you can be like, oh, you could kind of see that as being, but there is a guy who invented what we recognize as stand-up comedy, where a guy walks up wearing like normal clothing on stage and just starts telling funny stories, generally based on observations about the world, right?

• 5:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:49Robert Evans?

  That is something a guy came up with. And that motherfucker's name is Frank Faye. And we're gonna talk about him today.

• 5:57Speaker 02

  This is amazing. Oh, my God. I'm, I'm, listen, I'm always thrilled to be here, but this one is like, I, I can't, I've never been able to articulate why I hate stand-up comedy other than the vibe. So this is fucking great.

• 6:12Speaker 01

  See, that's how I feel about improv, but it's probably because I've had to go to so many people's improv shows.

• 6:18Speaker 02

  Improv is, yeah.

• 6:18Robert Evans?

  Improv, improv is actually evil. Um, but the improv people know this. This is not, we're not, we're not breaking new ground for them.

• 6:25Speaker 01

  My dear friends know about my extreme loathing of improv. And whenever it's brought up, they look at me and they go, we won't talk about it because it's that bad. I hate improv.

• 6:34Robert Evans?

  I love. You stand up's had a big, I've done stand up. It's had a big influence on me. I loved Bill Hicks. I still do.

• 6:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:41Robert Evans?

  A lot of his stuff has aged well. Some of it hasn't.

• 6:44Speaker 02

  Stand up comedians.

• 6:46Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 6:46Speaker 01

  Can I improv?

• 6:47Speaker 02

  Obviously, I can name a, yeah. Oh, please.

• 6:49Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yes, and, yeah.

• 6:51Speaker 01

  Can I improv trauma dump for one second?

• 6:53Robert Evans?

  Oh, sure. Fuck, yeah.

• 6:55Speaker 01

  My, in my, in my early twenties, I once had a boyfriend, uh, take me to, uh, say, I have a special surprise for you. And I'm thinking, oh, what could that be? I'm girly pop. And then it was, he took me to a improv show where we were the only people in the audience.

• 7:16Robert Evans?

  Oh, hell, yeah. Oh, no.

• 7:19Speaker 01

  And it was, and I hate improv. And that man.

• 7:23Robert Evans?

  And like, I feel like.

• 7:25Speaker 02

  That was surprising.

• 7:26Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 7:26Speaker 01

  It was bad.

• 7:28Robert Evans?

  I feel like it should be legal in that instance. I feel like it should be legal to kill the people on stage, not as, not to be mean, not as an act of cruelty. Like, that's just mercy, right?

• 7:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:39Robert Evans?

  Like, if you're performing improv to an audience of two at a full theater, it's just, it's just kinder to die, you know?

• 7:46Speaker 01

  And they just kept including us in the bits.

• 7:49Robert Evans?

  Of course, of course. They have no other idea. What a nightmare. What hell.

• 7:54Speaker 01

  It was almost as bad as the relationship. Heyo! Stand up comedy. Let's do it.

• 8:00Speaker 02

  No, I was gonna say, Sovi, I think it's reasonable, especially, I think if you've been single in your, like, let's say twenties, at any point in Los Angeles or New York, improv is, improv is a weirdly big part of that.

• 8:15Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 8:16Speaker 02

  I think a lot more people think it's a good date than.

• 8:19Speaker 01

  It's not. It's a bad time.

• 8:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:22Robert Evans?

  It's a bad time and dating comedians also a real mixed bag, let me tell you. That, that's just, I, I've never done it. I've been the comedian, but based on the experiences of the women I've known who have dated stand up comedians and me.

• 8:34Speaker 01

  I was gonna say, and you, my friend.

• 8:38Robert Evans?

  All right. I think that's enough for the cold open.

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• 8:48Robert Evans?

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• 10:22Robert Evans?

  And we're back. So, we're talking about the inventor of stand-up comedy. He also invented being an MC. Like, he's the first actual MC. This guy's crazy influential.

• 10:36Speaker 01

  This guy's a nightmare.

• 10:37Robert Evans?

  Yeah, Frank Faye, yes. He's also a bigot, an abusive spouse, and an American fascist activist par excellence. So-

• 10:45Speaker 01

  The holy trifecta.

• 10:46Robert Evans?

  He's everything, you know? Joe Rogan before Joe Rogan, Joe Rogan.

• 10:51Speaker 01

  MC, comedian, fascist, yeah.

• 10:53Robert Evans?

  He did it all. He did it all. He's Kill Tony, he's Joe Rogan, he's everybody, you know? He's everybody. So-

• 10:59Speaker 01

  Heyo. I'm gonna do- I'm sorry, I'm gonna heyo a lot this episode.

• 11:03Robert Evans?

  Yeah, no, that's great, that's great. Born Francis Anthony Donner, or perhaps Donar, D O N A. It's either D O N N E R or D O N A R. There's both on some documents and I've, anyway, it doesn't really matter. Born Francis Anthony Donner on November 17th, 1891 in San Francisco, California. His parents were what you might call small time traveling performers. Also, as a note, in an episode recently, someone called me out for mispronouncing Nevada because I called it Nevada A as like a joke and they were like, Robert doesn't even know. Fuck you, fuck you. It's a bit. Go to hell. I say Nevada right. Fuck off. Anyway, his mother, Mary, was a stage actress at the start of her career.

• 11:48Robert Evans?

  His father, William, was a poet and also just about everything else. They, these people are like theater kids, right? They're proto, they're theater kids, you know? So much so that they like travel around doing theater with like a traveling group to make a living, a bad living. They're not doing well. So his father was a lyric poet who, prior to meeting his mom, who was a stage actor, his dad had been like a poet and a conductor on the Southern Pacific Railroad. He'd fought Indians, he'd prospected in a mine. But it was as an actor and a comedian that he came to be known as Chicago Billy Fay. Now, again, that's like not, I think, the name he's born under.

• 12:32Robert Evans?

  I think it's a stage name that he adopts, although it's a little unclear to me. At any rate, Frank starts, you know, he and, he and his wife get together and they start traveling around this like traveling vaudeville show. And we'll talk about vaudeville, but basically it's a traveling variety show, right? And they're performing, doing different kinds of bits, going all around the country while their little boy is a small child. And because everybody has to like do something to contribute to the, the, the company that they're keeping, he starts performing as a very little kid, right?

• 13:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:03Robert Evans?

  He's, he's maybe four years old at the, at the, the oldest when he starts performing onstage.

• 13:10Speaker 02

  Glad, glad child labor got worked into this so early.

• 13:13Robert Evans?

  Oh, yeah. No, they don't give a shit. Shit at this. No one does because they're working in factories. This is like

• 13:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 13:18Robert Evans?

  Ethical by the standards of, yeah. You know, early, late 1800s child labor. His first stage role is as a potato bug in the play Babes in Toyland. And his biographers all suggest that he changed his name from Francis Donner to Frank Faye because it read better on a marquee at some point in his childhood. I don't think that's true. The scant genealogical evidence I can find from WikiTree suggests his father was born as William Faye, although his dad may have taken that name because we know that he was born as Donner. So it's a little unclear. Did his dad adopt Faye as a stage name? And so Frank started using Faye as a stage name. His mom's last name was Tynan. I don't really know.

• 14:03Robert Evans?

  Everyone seems to say he picked the name Frank Faye, but it really does look like his dad did, and he just decided to take the last name. His dad did. But I, I, I don't have like stronger evidence on it than that.

• 14:16Speaker 02

  I mean, I feel like tracking down Carney's real names is gonna be perpetually tough.

• 14:21Robert Evans?

  Yeah, like, yeah, who cares, right? I always do my best with this sort of thing, but these are fucking Carnies. Who knows what their real names were? Nobody had birth certificates. Poor people didn't have births in 1891. Like, there's no record of these people.

• 14:36Speaker 02

  Everyone's an alias.

• 14:37Robert Evans?

  You think these fuckers got social security cards?

• 14:43Robert Evans?

  So the family sprint Frank's childhood, Crisscrossing the Nation, is part of a fairly popular vaudeville act. Now, I mentioned that earlier. Let's talk about what vaudeville was. Do you know anything about vaudeville, Andrew?

• 14:54Speaker 02

  I mean, I guess I'm realizing now, most of my knowledge of vaudeville almost certainly comes from Looney Tunes.

• 15:02Robert Evans?

  Right. Looney Tunes and maybe some family. Seth MacFarlane's obsessed with it, so it winds up in all of his shit, too.

• 15:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 15:09Robert Evans?

  Vaudeville was the number one form of entertainment from like the late 1800s and up to the early 1900s in the US. Like during kind of like the Victorian era and a little after, like vaudeville is the big, you know, all over the world. And it had started about 50 years before Frank's birth. So we're talking in like the mid 18, early, like the 1840s, 1850s. It started in France and it was originally kind of like a comedy act and like pretty focused on comedic performances, but it changes through in the UK. There's some like, they introduce kind of more stage elements and people start like adding like

• 15:51Robert Evans?

  one act plays or like they'll do like scenes from famous plays. So you'll do like a little bit of Shakespeare or something, you know, just the good bits. Someone do like Mark Antony's funeral oration or whatever. And by the time it's migrated to the US, it's everything, right? It's almost, it's essentially kind of like a quasi circus style act, right?

• 16:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:11Robert Evans?

  And probably the closest modern equivalent to what vaudeville was when it kind of hits its height in the US in the late 1800s would be like the modern late night show, or maybe to be more accurate, like late night in like the era of Johnny Carson, right?

• 16:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:26Robert Evans?

  Height.

• 16:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:27Robert Evans?

  You've got like-

• 16:28Speaker 02

  It's a little bit of everything.

• 16:29Robert Evans?

  It's a little bit of everything. There's not like a main host most of the time. Like sometimes there'll be a guy and it's him and he'll like come on and introduce the act, but he's not like the draw in the way like Carson was or like Colbert is, you know?

• 16:40Speaker 02

  Right, right, right.

• 16:40Robert Evans?

  Soon to be late show, right? But it is like a, a, a late night show in that you've got a bunch of different things, a little bit, as you said, a little bit of everything. So you'll have comedians coming up and like doing skits, right? So they'll like bite you in the face or whatever. You'll have actors do bits of plays. Sometimes you'll have one act, full one act plays performed. You'll have musicians come on and do songs in between acts. You'll have stunts. You'll have trained animals. There's a little bit of like, even like a morning show, right? That, that kind of there's some of that DNA in there, right? There's like, you could like fucking The View is in the line of descent from vaudeville, right?

• 17:16Speaker 02

  Right. You know what it also sounds like a little bit? There's a little bit of like just America's Got Talent in there.

• 17:22Robert Evans?

  Yes, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. This is like, this is the primordial ooze from wherein like almost all modern entertainment kind of comes out of is vaudeville, right? And yeah, by the time it hit- It's the, again, it's different in every country in the West, but by the time it hits the US, it's become, it's, it's kinda hard to tell where Circus Inns in Vaudeville begins sometimes, right? And there are like circuses that are like Vaudeville, basically, right?

• 17:47Speaker 02

  Right.

• 17:48Robert Evans?

  There's a lot of Saturday Night Live, you know, or a lot of Vaudeville DNA in Saturday Night Live, right? Because often, these comedy skits do kind of lean political, too. Now, there's a lot of racism baked into Vaudeville in the US, because one major popular thing in Vaudeville are, in the US, are, I mean, it's, I'm sure this happened in Europe, too, but it's particularly US thing, are minstrel shows, right? M-I-N-S-T-R-E-L. I've run into Zoomers who don't understand and think I'm talking about menstruation. Very different thing, that would be a really different show. This is, minstrel shows are white people dressing in blackface and pretending to be racist caricatures of black Americans, right? They're, it's, it's just super racist, that's all we need to say about it, right?

• 18:33Robert Evans?

  Now, the best thing I can say for young Frank is that I don't think he performed in any of these, maybe he did, right? As a kid, there's a decent chance he wound up doing something like, just because everyone does a little bit of everything, but I don't find any of that written in his backstory. Instead, he's really drawn from a young age to dramatic acting, which, which separates him. His father is a comedic actor, and Frank really likes doing Shakespeare. You know, from as soon as he can, he's doing every Shakespeare, when they're doing these segments from Shakespeare plays, he estimates that by the time he was 15, he had performed in pieces of every single one of the Bard's dramatic plays, besides Titus Andronicus, which I'm guessing is because a bunch of drunk yokels in the 1890s and 1905 don't really wanna see Titus fucking Andronicus.

• 19:17Robert Evans?

  Yeah, let's get drunk on moonshine and watch fucking Titus Andronicus.

• 19:23Speaker 02

  Oh, man.

• 19:24Robert Evans?

  None of us can read, but sure.

• 19:28Robert Evans?

  Sounds foreign. Don't like it. Yeah. Now, we know vanishingly little about his early life outside of a stage career, what his parents were like. I'm gonna guess he got abused at least the normal amount physically, right? Yeah. It'd be weird if he did. Just assuming. We wouldn't know about it, yeah. But not enough that like he said anything about it or that it was a particular like, although again, he has no dedicated biographers really, so it may just be that this was also a time when men didn't talk about the shit that happened to the men's kids, especially guys like Frankie Faye. What we do know is that he never spends much time in school. At best, he has maybe a fifth grade education, and I don't even know if it would really be accurate to say he had a fifth grade education. Like, it's said that he never made it past

• 20:10Robert Evans?

  the fifth grade. They're traveling constantly. He has odd classes, but he's a very smart kid, and he teaches himself to read and write. Again, he has basically all of Shakespeare's dramas memorized his whole life, right? So this is a smart kid, and this is a kid probably didn't really need much in the way of formal education. He's an autodidact, right? Right. He also, there's not, I mean, there are theater schools, but he doesn't benefit from that. He is living in and around these actors and performers, and he learns from them and from just his own. He's got instincts. He learns how to perform. So he's basically, his whole childhood is theater school, right? Right. As he gets closer to being an adult, his ambition, again, he wants to be a serious

• 20:53Robert Evans?

  actor. He wants to be a stage actor somewhere like Broadway, you know, performing, trotting the boards. But this is not to be. And years later, he would blame his failure to break through as a serious actor on the fact that he was a redhead. Quote, "For that reason, neither the public nor the managers take me seriously when I claim I would be a great dramatic actor." And I think this is actually true, like, that just like, no, you're a redhead. That's funny. Like, it's funny. You need to be a fucking clown. Like, nobody wants to see a redhead be fucking, uh, uh, Mark Antony. Get out of here, kid. Like...

• 21:28Robert Evans?

  Accept it, you're comedy.

• 21:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 21:31Robert Evans?

  Um, so as he grows into a young adult, you know, he kind of splits from the family. It's unclear a little bit exactly when, but he like, he goes off on his own. He tries to make it. He's not initially successful because, you know, and he flits around different shows, traveling shows, stage shows, just doing the only thing he knows how to do. He does try his luck as a boxer, which is weirdly common for like comedians of this era. A lot of the great first generation of comedians also had box, because it's like, yeah, if you're, if you're, if you're in the same, performing in the same kind of places, it's also where they do bare knuckle boxing, right? You might as well see if you're good at it.

• 22:09Speaker 02

  It, Robert, it is crazy to learn that the fucking jujitsu freak, stand up guys also have a historical precedent.

• 22:17Robert Evans?

  A long, long and proud history. He was not good at it by his own recollection. Quote, "I was a pugilist at one time and what a ham. I was so poor that I myself realized I was no good." And when a boxer knows he is no good, he is terrible.

• 22:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:33Robert Evans?

  Which is like, yeah, that's, that's pretty true. When the guys with head injuries for a living know that they can't, they're not good boxers.

• 22:41Speaker 02

  Well, it's like, like whatever ego it takes to put you in the ring is usually the thing that keeps you from leaving the ring.

• 22:48Robert Evans?

  No, no, no, just one fight away.

• 22:49Speaker 02

  So if you have it, yeah, if you have it and you're like, nah.

• 22:53Robert Evans?

  Nah, I, I suck.

• 22:54Speaker 02

  I'm gonna do something else.

• 22:55Robert Evans?

  You know what else sucks, Andrew?

• 22:57Speaker 02

  Oh, hit me.

• 22:58Robert Evans?

  Not buying the products and services that support this podcast. In fact, if you're not buying these products and services, like, I don't believe in simulation theory, but you're a simulation of a real person. Cause real people buy from our sponsors. Is this a good idea, Sophie? Does the audience like it when I do this?

• 23:18Speaker 01

  I don't really care at this point.

• 23:20Robert Evans?

  Fuck them. I love you. Goodbye.

• 23:24Robert Evans?

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• 24:23Robert Evans?

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• 25:34Robert Evans?

  And we're back. So he's a bad boxer, but the experience does seem to have left a mark on him. For the rest of his professional career, even after he makes it big, Frank Faye will carry a set of boxing gloves with him from theater to theater and like, put them up in his, you know, office is the wrong word, his like powder room or whatever, to remind him of his origins, right? Like, it's like, this is something that like, leaves an impact on him, maybe just because of the head injuries, I don't know.

• 25:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, the only impact.

• 26:01Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 26:02Speaker 02

  The eternal impact.

• 26:04Robert Evans?

  So he tries next to make, and he's probably in his late teens, maybe young adult, maybe 18, 19 at this point, he tries to make a name for himself as a ballad singer next. And you can find, I'm not gonna play you his old timey singing, but he has a nice singing voice, right? He's known for having a nice singing voice. It sounds weird to us, because he sings in a way that people really don't these days, but like, he was, he was considered very good. And for a time, he teamed up with another balladeer, but the act ran into a problem, which is that people don't like ballads, and they didn't want to hear his ballads. So he broke up the act, and the next thing he does is he gets together with an older performer named Johnny Dyer. And Dyer is a vaudeville comedian, like Frank's father had been.

• 26:47Robert Evans?

  The way Frank would later tell it, like, he'd been pigeonholed because of his hair color, and this is just him like bowing wearily to the inevitable because he needs money, like, "I guess this is the thing I'm destined to do. I can't do better than comedy. This guy Johnny wants to take Mander's wing, I'll try it." Now, one of my sources for these episodes is the book, "The Comedians", which is a history of American comedy by Cliff Nesterhoff. And it does a good job of describing what a miserable existence this act was for Frank at first. Quote, "Veteran comic Johnny Dyer goaded Faye into showbiz while regularly hustling him in billiards. Dyer wrote an act in which Faye wore baggy pants, rollerskates, and a fake nose, circling Dyer as he made wisecracks. The eight-minute performance ended with Faye's pants tearing in half.

• 27:32Robert Evans?

  It was a kind of humiliation Faye vowed never to repeat." And again, comedy is very primitive at this point, you know? We haven't really invented the joke in a proper sense yet, so it is shit like this.

• 27:46Speaker 02

  That is amazing.

• 27:47Robert Evans?

  Look, his pants ripped open!

• 27:50Speaker 02

  I mean, look, I was argued there's a plenty of shit that's not materially better than that that you could find on TikTok today.

• 27:57Robert Evans?

  No, again, the aforementioned, well, I'm not gonna, I, who needs to shit on various cartoons on television? You know which ones I'm mentioning. So basically, every credible source agrees that Faye hated this act and fucking wants to kill himself the whole time he's doing this, right? He is embarrassed about performing with Dyer for the rest of his life. He wouldn't quite deny he'd ever worked with the guy, but he clearly, like, this is a thing of deep shame for him. And the primary lasting consequence of this period working with Dyer seems to be that Frank Faye develops an almost pathological hatred for comedians who wear outlandish outfits or use props, which is the only kind of comedy at this period of time, right? There are no comedians who just show up in their clothes

• 28:41Robert Evans?

  and like tell jokes. They're always wearing costumes. They're always using props. They're nearly always with other comedians. They're usually doing skits, right? And part of the joke is, look at him. He's a man in woman's clothing, you know, or he's got face paint on. He's dressed as a black man, right? Like, those are the jokes, right? Like, it's a whole world of carrot tops and Gallaghers, basically. Except for, they don't even have the courage to be carrot topper Gallagher alone. They've always got to have other guys on, right? It's just, you know, that's, that's, it's primitive. We haven't invented being funny.

• 29:13Speaker 02

  I have to say, the thing that is bumming me out is I do, I do very much sympathize with the guy in comedy who fucking hates comedy.

• 29:21Robert Evans?

  Of course, of course. I mean, like, look, you can't be a good comedian unless you hate yourself. We all know this, right? We all know this.

• 29:28Speaker 02

  And everyone else a little.

• 29:29Robert Evans?

  And everyone else around you. There's, Bill Burr being the one exception, being the only stand-up comedian to be emotionally healthy. I think just because he's in a, he's the only stand-up comedian to be happily married. It happened once.

• 29:46Robert Evans?

  And stay a stand-up comedian, right? Yes. Victoria Wilson, who is his wife, who we'll talk about later, is biographer, not his, but who is the closest he has to a real biographer because she's a good biographer and he's a big part of her life. She writes that he had already developed an obsession by kind of the point that he's working with Dyer near the end of that time with what he considered smart comedy, right? Which is what he wants to be doing. And one of his idols is a guy named Wilson Misner. Misner was a playwright and a general performer who was also a severe opium addict and an adventurer as well as like an entertainer. He had, and he's not really, he's not performing in front of like normal audiences, but he

• 30:31Robert Evans?

  gets invited to the Lamb's Club, which is this like social club and restaurant in New York. And he's like, yeah, he writes plays and other stuff and sometimes he'll deliver monologues at the Lamb's Club that are like, kind of funny, right? And this, again, this isn't a standard performance. He's not like selling tickets. He's just like coming up because he's a guy who's known for other things and he'll give some like little monologues and they're kind of funny. And Faye really likes it, right? And Faye really thinks that he's smart and really together. And there's some other guys who are doing kind of similar things where it's not quite stand-up because the purpose isn't, they're there for like an event and they're just kind of like showing up to open this like benefit or whatever. They're not really like a normal performance, but he sees, he gets from this the idea that

• 31:14Robert Evans?

  like, this is actually kind of a good idea, just a guy coming up and like talking to the audience and being funny, right? Right. Yeah. Now, these are not- That's so weird. Yeah, they're kind of just like little speeches. Yeah, exactly. And they're not written, they're spontaneous acts of wit, right? They're just by guys who happen to be funny. And Faye admires these men terribly. He said of his idols, and he's talking about Misner and a couple of other guys, none of whom there's a lot about online, quote, "They never went after anyone, but if you got in their way or tried to outsmart them, Lord help you, you were dead." Right? Because they're kind of talking with the audience and stuff. And that, that's really noteworthy because one of the things about Faye is- An early point in his career, he doesn't just see comedy as a way to earn a living

• 31:58Robert Evans?

  or a thing that's meant to make people laugh. Comedy is always also for him, a tool to attack and damage people he doesn't like.

• 32:07Speaker 02

  Right.

• 32:08Robert Evans?

  That's a big part of what draws him to comedy. And the greatest thing he admires about Misner and some of these other guys that he's kind of taking on as idols, is the way they can cut an enemy down to size and do it with ease, right? The way that they can, you know, tear into somebody and hurt them, right? He really is drawn to that, which gives you an idea of the kind of bastard this guy is.

• 32:28Speaker 02

  What kind of dude?

• 32:29Robert Evans?

  Right? He doesn't care about punching up or down, he just likes to punch.

• 32:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:33Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 32:33Speaker 02

  I mean, that kind of guy always likes punching down.

• 32:36Robert Evans?

  Right, right.

• 32:38Speaker 02

  God.

• 32:38Robert Evans?

  So for two years, he struggles to get by as, you know, with, with Dyer, as the kind of comedian that he's come to hate, right? Where he's wearing these pants that rip, he's like fucking roller skating around. It's making him want to, he's miserable. He sees his colleagues, who are other types of comedians clinging to these props, which he sees as like totems that, that symbolize a lack of confidence in their own comedic skills, right? If you need to dress up, if you need another actor on stage, like if you need these, these are crushes, right? So he doesn't immediately start taking to the stage. What he starts doing is backstage, in between acts, he starts just talking shit to the people around him about the bad acts on stage, right? And speaking his mind about them, and he's funny.

• 33:23Robert Evans?

  And like his, his like colleagues backstage are like laughing as he's shit talking other performers. And he comes to the like, fuck, maybe this could work. Maybe someone, maybe I'm just funny and I could just get up and be funny in front of an audience, right? So he's taken from these experiences and from these early idols of his, this very simple idea that a comedy performance doesn't have to have pies in the face or any of this physical comedy shit. It could be, you could just have a man get on stage, wearing normal clothing, and talking about how he feels to an audience, right?

• 33:57Speaker 02

  Cause even like the court jester had like a dumb hat.

• 34:01Robert Evans?

  He's got a dumb hat. And again, there's still, even court jesters usually had other people or like, you know, they're right. There's other shit they're doing, there's props. It seems like an obvious idea that just like a guy would get up, it'd be funny. But this is kind of revolutionary and it's a big risk, right? People don't even think about this as an, the idea that you would get up alone, without just naked, basically, to try to make an audience entertained is wild to people. In an article for WFMU's Beware of the Blog, comedy historian Cliff Nesteroff summarizes just how wild the idea of a stage comedian without props was at the time. Quote, "Even those without gimmicks rarely appeared onstage alone. Comedians had their punchlines set up by another person, a straight man. To be a comedian meant you performed without the help of a costume, or an instrument, or another guy.

• 34:46Robert Evans?

  A comedian without a prop can't click," said actor Wesley Ruggles. "I learned that back in the days when I pushed props around for Charlie Chaplin. Great pantomimus that he is, Chaplin realizes the necessity of props." So again, even like Charlie Chaplin, best in the business, right? Ah, he's fucking Charlie Chaplin. People still know who he is today. Got to be played by Robert Downey Jr. Has to have props and other people. He's got, he can't keep an audience on his own, right? And so it's ballsy what Faye's about to do. Sure. And around 1915 or 16, we don't know exactly. He makes his first performances where he is just coming onstage wearing a professional tailored tuxedo, which to us is not normal clothing, but is pretty normal formal wear for the time, right? For like a nightclub where he's the guy places he's performing.

• 35:30Robert Evans?

  It's what like the people in the audience are wearing, right? So he's, he's dressed more or less the way a man would be dressed. And he shows up onstage. He's got no straight man. He's got no props and he's just performing alone. He's talking and he, he starts performing under a stage name, The Nut Monologist, right? Which means like he's the crazy, he's delivering nutty monologues, right? He's talking about the crazy aspects of modern society. In other words, it's stand-up, right? Now, the term doesn't exist yet and it doesn't get coined for him. We don't really know exactly why we call it stand-up comedy. There's one plausible theory, the most plausible theory properly comes from, and this is a guy I think Cliff Nesteroff interviewed, a dude who's very old when Cliff talked to him, who'd been a minor comedian.

• 36:14Robert Evans?

  He comes a little bit after Frankie Faye. So he's a guy like around the twenties. He's performing, right? Is when this guy starts. And that, this guy says, "The term stand-up comedy came from mob lingo," right? Because the first big venues, the nightclubs and the casinos, especially since like what becomes stand-up is being invented during prohibition largely, they're all owned by the mob, right? So everyone who is an entertainer is at to some extent, working for organized crime, you know, even if they're not involved in other aspects of it. And within the mob, the term stand up guy means something. Right. It means you're a man who can be counted on, right? If you're a stand up guy, we like, we can, we can count on you to like, keep a secret, to go to prison for us, right? To do, to do whatever, to wax somebody like, that's a stand up guy, right?

• 37:00Robert Evans?

  And a stand up comedian is a comedian you can trust to deliver their act in the allotted time and to not go over even by a minute, right? Because most of these acts are at casinos, there's gambling and the act is there because people, you know, it'll keep people there longer. But if you go over, for every second you go over time, people aren't back at the tables gambling, right? So a stand up comedian means I can trust this guy to hit his, his time, right? He's not gonna, he's gonna do no more and no less than what we want, right? So that's the likeliest term I've heard for a stand up comedian. Obviously, it could just be because they're usually standing there, but. They're standing up. But so is every performer. So is every performer. I think that sounds really credible, right?

• 37:45Robert Evans?

  Well, there's no way to know for sure, but it makes sense to me. If that's the case, it does, the, the term, I, I bring this up now, but the term stand up comedian, I think 1946, 47 is really the first time people start using it.

• 37:57Robert Evans?

  So it doesn't, people aren't calling it yet, right? I'm getting ahead of myself because again, Frank is the only guy doing this at this point and he's going under the stage name, the nut monologist, right? And he's talking, he's lampooning daily life and pop culture in a way that we'd see is very modern and he's not really writing bits, right? He's kind of performing a new thing every time he goes up. He's really good on the fly. He's just sort of like living his life and making notes about shit during the day and then coming up on stage and like joking about them. And he was, he was, he would, he would tell people that in his opinion, the only thing you needed to do to make, this is what he says about how to make good comedy, quote, "All anyone has to do is stand in the subway station and watch people," right? He's inventing observational comedy as a discipline. Oh, man.

• 38:41Robert Evans?

  Again, people have like made jokes about daily life forever, as long as there have been people in daily life, right? But he is inventing it as like a discipline, right? Where he's like being, no, all you gotta do is go out in the world, watch people, find out what's funny, find a funny way to talk about it and then go talk about it. Right? It doesn't have to be some sort of like, you know, big elaborate bit with a pie.

• 39:00Speaker 02

  Right, right, right. It doesn't have to be a tortured setup.

• 39:04Robert Evans?

  No.

• 39:04Speaker 02

  That's so.

• 39:05Robert Evans?

  And in fact, it's just people, people find regular life funny, you know? Like.

• 39:10Speaker 02

  Right.

• 39:11Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 39:13Speaker 02

  It's also nice to learn that all, you know, not, not that I guess this wasn't clear and not that obviously like crowd work and that business has not always been part of

• 39:21Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 39:21Speaker 02

  this type of act, but yeah, that's it. Or just speaking extemporaneously and even if you're not necessarily the funniest, you're funnier than everyone else in the room.

• 39:32Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 39:32Speaker 02

  That's all it takes.

• 39:34Robert Evans?

  That's it.

• 39:36Robert Evans?

  So Victoria Wilson writes, quote, onstage, Faye talked about things people did that were recognizable. He would talk about his uncle, the string saver, who was working his way up to rope, or his Aunt Agatha, a paper bag putter aware. Everyone knows string savers and paper bag putters away, Faye would remark. That's why those people are funny to the rest of us. Talk about those people and everyone laughs. Take the mustache fixer. You've seen him twist his mustache for half an hour or so at the end of that time, and it looks worse than ever. But because you have seen the mustache fixtures, you laugh when I talk about it. That's all there is to being funny. You know?

• 40:08Speaker 02

  Oh, my God.

• 40:09Robert Evans?

  Like, he's literally like, yeah, yeah. Like, this is, there's a direct line between that and like, you know, black people walk like this, white people walk like this. This kind of like, you know, observational comedy, right? You know?

• 40:20Speaker 02

  Oh, man.

• 40:21Robert Evans?

  Like, that's, that's what we're seeing here. So, yeah, cool stuff.

• 40:26Speaker 02

  Truly, yeah. I mean, and it does make sense. I don't, you know what I think I'm realizing I'm picturing is fucking probably like a sketch from like History of the World, Part One.

• 40:36Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 40:37Speaker 02

  Where it's just like a Roman doing this.

• 40:39Robert Evans?

  Right, right.

• 40:39Speaker 02

  But yeah, someone had to invent this, of course.

• 40:41Robert Evans?

  Yes, someone had to invent that. And again, you know, there's pieces of this for forever, but this is, he's inventing it as a, as a profession. Um, yeah, and this is, this is going to, I mean, there's not really any debate among comedy historians or the first generation of comedians that comes after him, that Frank Faye is the guy who started this, right? Every major stand-up comedian, from what most people know of like the first generation of stand-up comedians, credits him. Milton Berle says that seeing Frank Faye made him immediately put away his props and completely change his performance after seeing Faye for the first time, right? Berle is like, "I became a stand-up comedian because of seeing Frank Faye," right? Like, he was the guy. And everyone has at least heard of Milton Berle,

• 41:22Robert Evans?

  right? He's famous for both being one of the first stand-up comedians, writing a bunch of joke books, and having a comedically huge dick. Um, as opposed to being one like Frank Faye. I don't think I knew that. Oh, yeah. Hung like fucking god, like crazy dick. Crazy dick. Hung like Willem Dafoe. Confoundingly large. Now, another one of Frank Faye's biggest fans, and like a guy who will say Frank Faye, as soon as I saw him, I knew that's what I wanted to be. He completely inspired how I did comedy, was Bob Hope, right? If you know anything about comedy, you know what a big deal that is, right? Right. If you're Gen Z, maybe you haven't heard of this guy. Bob Hope was the most famous comedian on earth for like fucking half a century, right? Right.

• 42:05Robert Evans?

  He lived to be 100 and he spent 80 years as a stage performer. Like, he is crazy big as a comedian. Uh, he was also a boxer at one point, uh, although weirdly enough, I didn't know this about Bob Hope. Unlike Frank Faye, he was pretty good. He had a professional record of five wins and one loss. So, kind of surprising. Bob Hope, good boxer. I mean, I guess it's, it's just a certain type of man that is, that loves both these things. Sure. Getting in the ring and proving yourself. Um, now, over the course of his remarkable career, Bob Hope hosted the Oscars 19 times, which is more than anyone else ever did or probably ever will. He also did more than 50 tours for the USO, which is the organization

• 42:50Robert Evans?

  that does performances for US military personnel around the world. He starts in World War II and he continues up to Desert Storm. In short, He's one of the most influential and well-known performers in history. He has a massive impact on stand-up comedy and how it becomes a profession. And the fact that he is like Frank Faye was my model. And not only that, he's like Frank Faye was the best stand-up comedian I ever knew. You know, like that's how Bob Hope described him decades later. He called Faye the most economical comedian he ever watched. He said that he had, quote, "complete audience control." So again, Bob Hope, 80 years of experience in this is like, "The best I ever saw on stage was Frank Faye." That is genuinely so wild. Yeah.

• 43:33Robert Evans?

  Yeah, like that's a big, if you know anything about comedy, that's a really big deal. Yeah. And I'm not idolizing, I don't think Bob Hope was a great person, but like he's undeniably a massive figure in comedy. Yeah, yeah. Here's how Victoria Wilson describes Hope's recollections of a particularly impactful set by Faye. Quote, "Hope saw Faye one time alone on, quote, 'a darkened stage with the spotlight on him.' For the longest time, Faye just stood there. He said absolutely nothing, and he did absolutely nothing. Then he said, 'I think I'll go play the piano.' He walked slowly across the stage to the other side. As he got there, the spot which had followed him showed a piano with a stool and a fellow sitting on it. Frank just looked at it and then just as slowly walked back to exactly where he had been standing.

• 44:18Robert Evans?

  'There's somebody there!' 'That was the whole thing,' said Hope. 'But it was one of the funniest acts I ever saw.'" And you have to just like imagine like, yeah, it's all presence, right? It's performance, it's timing, you know? It's the way he does it. We've all know comedy like that, where it's like if you describe the bit, you don't get it, but you see it and it's amazing. Yeah. Right? Yeah. So there's an extent, like, there's not, there's not videos of his early stand-up performances, obviously. You have to trust that like, all of the guys who were the funniest people of that, Milton Berle and Bob are all like, yeah, Frank Faye was a fucking amazing. So I assume he really was. Like, I have no reason to doubt this. Almost everyone agrees that his greatest strength was that he has this unique understanding of how to use his hands.

• 45:01Robert Evans?

  And obviously, if you're a performer, what do I do with my hands is like the quintessential question performers, stage performers have to ask, right? Like, what the fuck do I do with my hands here? There's this inherent awkwardness there, which is a big part of why props and costumes had been such crutches for comedic action. You gotta have something to do with your hands, right? Right, right, right, of course. Right. Like, even fucking like Robin Williams and his water bottles, right? You can see it, like, people need something, you know? Frank never did. George Burns, who was another great, famous comedian in his own right, declared to Johnny Carson that, quote, "Frank Faye had the best hands in show business." Another colleague later recalled, "He could give you an inferiority complex just watching him light his cigarette," right? Because just, he's just, he's just effortlessly funny.

• 45:45Robert Evans?

  And it's, again, this kind of thing, I can't describe, you just have to trust that these people are not, they have no reason to lie about this, right? He must have been. Now, he's also a dynamic performer, and it doesn't hurt that he's considered handsome. Trav SD, author of The Travelance Blog and a modern vaudeville performer and historian, describes him as looking like Ralph Fiennes. You can judge that one for yourself, so if you can pull up a picture of him.

• 46:10Speaker 01

  Rafe.

• 46:12Robert Evans?

  Oh, come on, fuck it. I like Ralph, too.

• 46:15Speaker 01

  He's handsome, get his name correct.

• 46:17Robert Evans?

  Fiennes, I'm mixed about him because he's got good stances on Gaza, but he's a transphobe. He's like a real mixed, real mixed bag there.

• 46:23Speaker 01

  I didn't know that, that hurts.

• 46:25Robert Evans?

  So half fuck you, I like his performances, he's a great actor.

• 46:27Speaker 01

  He was good in that Conclave movie.

• 46:29Robert Evans?

  He's good in everything, he's never been bad at anything, he's an amazing actor.

• 46:33Speaker 01

  But ew.

• 46:34Robert Evans?

  Yeah, well, whatever, you know, how many?

• 46:36Speaker 01

  I take it back, you can call him Ralph.

• 46:38Robert Evans?

  How many, how many great actors don't have something about them that's like, right? Like, I just rewatched Tropic Thunder with some friends, Tom Cruise kills in that, he's also Tom Cruise, what are you gonna do? Yeah.

• 46:50Robert Evans?

  The final stage to Frank's stage presence is his walk. Frank Faye developed a trademark gait described by Travis D as, quote, "distinct, swishy, and almost effeminate," right? He has a lot of ladylike gestures, particularly the way he walks, which are, we might say today, he's kind of like acting as if he's like a stereotypical, like, the way like gay people were portrayed in like a lot of 80s, 90s. Like, that's how we might describe it today. They describe it as effeminate. Then, if you've ever seen Bob Hope walk on stage, that weird walk he had when he's got like his golf club on, Bob Hope is doing, and admits that his entire walk is based on Frank Faye. So if you've ever seen a Bob Hope performance, that's what he's doing. He's doing a Frank Faye.

• 47:35Speaker 02

  But I guess that's also theater, right? Because it's like hippie, because you're like, you know, you need to be seen and the movements are, "Yeah, that's so weird."

• 47:45Robert Evans?

  But that's also, we see it now as like, well, that's a theater thing. No one else is doing this. He starts this, and everyone copies him, right? Like, this particular, like, kind of affectation is so common and so copied by the people who come after him that they get their own nickname, wristwatch comedians, because he would often like do this kind of like wristwatch, like, with his hands or looking at his fingers that way, like checking his nails. Milton Berle explained, "He always worked a little effeminate. He had a hauteur about him, but he talked to his audience in a way that made them feel like he was, that what he was talking about could happen to them. He never did jokes in which he was the butt, right? Which is also interesting to me. He does not have a sense of humor about himself, right?"

• 48:25Speaker 02

  Sure. Oh, weird. Weird, weird how that thread has just carried through.

• 48:32Robert Evans?

  Yeah, yeah, right. That's always the biggest, I would say like the biggest fucking, like, red flag of any kind of comedian is like, can they laugh at themselves?

• 48:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:44Robert Evans?

  You know?

• 48:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:46Robert Evans?

  Like, I can, you know, theoretically. Obviously, there's nothing funny about me. I'm a very serious, you know, journalist who does only serious journalism. I don't just write about random assholes on the internet using other people's work. That would be fucked up. Heyo! Heyo!

• 49:01Robert Evans?

  So Faye was, this is a huge hit. He starts around like 19, I think maybe 1915 or 16. It's a little unclear to me when he starts doing the nut monologist act. But by 1918, he's a major star, right? So in a very short period of time, he went from no one is doing this to this is the biggest thing in vaudeville, right? Is this specific motherfucker? He's got immediately people trying to copy him, right? But nobody's as good as Frank Faye. Now, during this period of time, when vaudeville still rules entertainment, we're talking 1918, the absolute peak of success for a performer in the vaudeville world is getting to play The Palace, which is a legendary venue in New York City. I think it still exists. I don't know if it's under the same name, but The Palace is like the, that's, that's,

• 49:46Robert Evans?

  that's headlining Saturday Night Live in this era, right? Or Madison Square Garden, which I also think exists, but like the, the same thing, if you're a comedian today, you can sell at Madison Square Garden. That's the top of standup comedy, basically. I don't think there's really anything bigger than doing that right now. The Palace is that in this era. Frank gets booked there for the first time in 1919 and he sells out multiple days worth of shows. A huge act at the time, might expect to run for a week at The Palace, doing two shows a day. This is, by the way, an exhausting pace, right? You're talking any modern standup comedian doing two shows a day, like you're fucking draining yourself. So if you can do a week and sell out a week worth of two a days at The Palace, you're a major success.

• 50:30Robert Evans?

  In 1925, Faye sells out 10 straight weeks in a row. Eventually, his longest spree is going to be 16 straight weeks. No one will ever equal or exceed this, right? Like, this is the best anyone ever does at this. Now, when he's not performing at The Palace, he starts in 1919, doing sets. And right, when he's at The Palace, he's part of like a larger show, but like he's the centerpiece of it, right? Him doing these like 10 or 15 minute sets is like, and he's coming on for other stuff too, like that's the reason people are there. And he starts, you know, after he's selling out The Palace, doing what like a long set for a comedian would be like 10 or 15 minutes. He starts doing these sets that are- More than 20 minutes at a time, a half hour, right?

• 51:14Robert Evans?

  We're closing in on what we now consider to be like a normal full, not like a tight five, but like a full kind of like, you know, Netflix special, right?

• 51:21Speaker 02

  An hour.

• 51:21Robert Evans?

  We're not there, we're not at an hour yet, but like, at that period of time, doing a 20 or 30 minute set is like wild. People are just aren't doing that on their own. You're alone on stage for that much time, right? So again, at first, he's kind of, he's headlining, he's the big guy, but there's multiple things going on. But he starts experimenting pretty early on with something new, as Cliff Nesteroff writes. "It was at that venue Frank Faye not only became a bona fide celebrity, but also pioneered the idea of an emcee. For several years, vaudeville used only painted placards with the name of each act to announce who was coming to stage. Faye changed this common practice, becoming one of the first people to actually emcee a show. His role as an introducer and extraduser was another revolutionary shift in stand-up.

• 52:05Robert Evans?

  He wasn't just introducing, but entertaining as he did show. If the previous act bombed, he warmed the crowd back up, and if the momentum was good, he just kept the show going. Abel Green, editor of the trade paper Variety, said, 'Faye pioneered the emcee and made him important.'" And this, people had done this before, he's not the first emcee, but he's the first really good one? Cause he's like, he reck, he's not just, I'm not just there to say, and now, coming up, I am there to notice, ah, the audience didn't like that one. Or like, I need to get this guy off early. Or I need to start telling some jokes that were not planned because that went so badly. Or I can tell this next guy's kind of nervous, I want to like build him up a little bit, I need to get the crowd moving so that they'll be happy. Like, no one had really done that before.

• 52:48Robert Evans?

  And he is the guy who kind of, he creates being an emcee, really, in the modern sense. Like, he's now invented stand-up, in very short order, stand-up comedy and being an emcee. Like, those are the two things Frank Faye gets credited for making.

• 52:59Speaker 02

  Huh. I guess I, I, that, I mean, it makes sense. I guess I would have assumed... There was like, again, I'm realizing all my knowledge of showbiz pre, I don't know, fucking 94 is basically, I guess I would have assumed there was like a ringleader, like, like in a circus type deal.

• 53:22Robert Evans?

  Yeah, and there'd been ringleaders and circuses. In the UK, there had been performances that had guys kind of trying to do this.

• 53:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:28Robert Evans?

  But Frank, a big thing is like, previously, it had been, maybe the most you'd do is you'd have a guy come up to introduce everybody, and he'd have like a set at the beginning at the end. Again, the fact that he's doing inner stittle bits, and that he's kind of paying attention to how is the audience doing? What do I need to, like, change?

• 53:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 53:43Robert Evans?

  Do I need to bring them back? Do I need to, like, pull this guy back from the brink? And by doing this, he's making himself, in a way that even like circus ringleaders won't, he's the center of the show. And so he's also created kind of being like a late night host, right? Like, this is, this is, this is the proto Johnny Carson, too, right?

• 54:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, this is his show, and this is his, you know, he's putting it on with these folks.

• 54:05Robert Evans?

  Right, even though he's not on stage all the time for every act, he's all, he's there in between acts, right? And that, that's, that is like, it's really interesting that he created both of those things, right?

• 54:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:15Robert Evans?

  So at this point, by the mid 20s, Faye is arguably the biggest performer in New York, he's definitely the biggest performer in New York City, and he might, he's probably one of the three or four biggest stars of any kind in the country, right? At least top 10. He's up there. He's massive. Because, first off, movies, not nearly as big a thing as they're going to become very soon. They're starting, movies are not, nothing, right? Obviously, the 20s is when film is really getting its legs under it, but this is a period of time in which you are a, if you're a big live performer, you could be bigger than the biggest movie stars. And he's, he's up there with the biggest movie stars, at least, right? And he's touring basically 52 weeks a year, right? He's going, he's doing a lot of performing in New York, but he's traveling all around, and everywhere he goes,

• 55:00Robert Evans?

  he sells out shows. He is at least equivalent to a guy like Charlie Chaplin, right? Like, very much so. You know, we don't remember him now as well, but at this point in time, it would be fair to say he's about at that level. And success goes to his head immediately, right? This guy becomes famous and successful as a comedian, and he becomes a crooked evil monster right away, obviously, you know?

• 55:26Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, I guess they were always kind of, you know, the capacity for crooked evil monster. I mean, I guess that's the open question. Is it in us all? Or is it just in these dickheads that gets expressed?

• 55:38Robert Evans?

  Yeah. Is it just bad? You know, it's just, uh, if your job is to be worshipped by a crowd of people.

• 55:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 55:47Robert Evans?

  You, it, easy to wind up- Say more, Robert. Kind of narcissistic. Yeah. Like, obviously, I've never made a mistake. Ever. You're a perfect angel baby. I can't actually be wrong. Everyone knows that. Yes. Um, and you know who else can't be wrong? Wow.

• 56:04Speaker 02

  Ooh.

• 56:04Robert Evans?

  So good at your job. This podcast, sponsored by Little Miss Little Miss Can't Be Wrong. That's a song, right? I don't remember which song that is. Anyway, we're done. Is that Spin Doctors? Is that the Spin Doctors? Who knows? Who cares? Who's ads?

• 56:21Robert Evans?

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• 57:20Robert Evans?

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• 58:31Robert Evans?

  We're back. I remain, having never made a mistake in my entire life, all my pronunciations are right. I've never fucked up a fact or anything like that, obviously. Just like Frank Faye. Because this is Behind the Heroes, a podcast about men who never do bad things. So Frank Faye is hugely successful now. And once he's a star, his first instinct is to use his newfound position of power and influence to mock, deride, and belittle his less powerful colleagues because it's fun to him and he likes being cruel. One of his peers is Burt Lahr, who you probably don't know by name unless you're a real film nerd. He is, at this point, a comedic actor. He will become a movie star.

• 59:14Robert Evans?

  And he is best known today because he's the Cowardly Lion in the Wizard of Oz movie, right? So like, pretty successful guy, right? You know, like, people still watch that fucker today, you know? And he's pretty popular and well-liked as a live performer at the time. But he's the kind of comedian who wears silly costumes as part of his act. And so Faye fucking hates him. Both men often performed in the same shows. And when passing Lahr in the wings, Faye developed a habit of asking, Well, well, well, what's the low comic up to today? And he did this, he would do this right as Lar was going upstage. And his goal was to make him upset and sabotage his act, right? He loves, he doesn't just, I, I mentioned how he'll like, try to set people up for success or like bring people back. He also will try to fuck people over if he doesn't like them.

• 59:59Speaker 02

  Right, he knows how to work performers' confidences.

• 1:00:02Robert Evans?

  Right. And some of it is like, he knows that if he fought, if he makes someone perform badly, then he can come in and save it and look better, right?

• 1:00:08Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:00:09Robert Evans?

  He's a big fan of undermining his fellow performers. And one thing he likes about him seeing is that it provides him with subtle opportunities to insult people he doesn't like and destroy their careers when they're trying to get them off the ground. Victoria Wilson explains, quote, "He would simply introduce the act by saying with a slight smile and a soft voice, 'The next gentleman is very, very popular. They say that he's very funny.'" Then he would raise an eyebrow. The act didn't have a chance with the audience, right? He's just so good at this that he can just destroy your career with like raising an eyebrow, like.

• 1:00:41Speaker 02

  I mean, yeah.

• 1:00:42Robert Evans?

  And he just does this for fun. If he gets bad vibes from somebody, he'll just ruin them as a bit.

• 1:00:47Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:00:47Robert Evans?

  To laugh at their failure. Fay develops a reputation as a man who likes watching people suffer. And when he destroys someone's career on stage, he'll do it with a smile on his face. I probably don't need to say this, but he is particularly abusive to his female colleagues. Obviously. A man in stand-up comedy being abusive to women? Wow! He's another pioneer. Louis C.K.'s got this guy's photo in a locket over his heart. One performance he put together during his vaudeville period, which may have been the first, he may have also, this may, like this performance he does may be the first stooge act ever, involved him telling the audience that he needed volunteers to do a card trick.

• 1:01:31Robert Evans?

  And then he'd bring up a trio of his performers who were hidden amongst the audience, including volunteers. And one of those performers was a woman who worked for him named Patsy Kelly. So he's having them up, come up to do card tricks to them, right? And these ringers that he brings up, they're all dressed like shit. They look like they haven't like showered, they're in bad clothes, they're meant to look like yoke. Right? So that Faye can make fun of them as he's like walking them through these card tricks. Right? And he is especially cruel to Kelly. Uh, one of the things he would do when he, when she would come stage, she'd ask her, good heavens, where have you been? And he'd have her respond to the beauty parlor. So he could say, I can see they didn't wait on you, you know, like just, just to shit on her appearance after making her dress up badly. Like he's making her do these lines. He really likes insulting her

• 1:02:13Robert Evans?

  appearance on stage. Kelly and her two colleagues made up Faye's stock company. They were the pinch hitters that he could bring on for any sketch or bit that he needed someone else for. And she recalls his tutelage as being valuable, like she learns a lot from him, while also admitting that he could be cruel, as Wilson recounts. He didn't want her to wear makeup. He would yell at her on stage. He fired her weekly. Faye never had a script and would just spring lines on me, she said. He might start talking about anything from pairs to presidents. It always seemed to me that I was standing on the stage with my hand out, waiting for my cue to drop. I lit with my chin because my knees were helpless. So like, you don't know what to expect with him, but he's always just going to be mean and insult your appearance. If you're like, he, he just, he really gets off on the cruelty thing. He loves

• 1:02:58Robert Evans?

  to punch down. Now, I, yeah.

• 1:03:01Speaker 02

  I mean, it is also, that's, I mean, this is basically an improv troupe also.

• 1:03:06Robert Evans?

  Right, right.

• 1:03:08Speaker 02

  Oh, God.

• 1:03:09Robert Evans?

  So Faye helps to pioneer being a huge asshole celebrity, too. During one performance at the Orpheum in Brooklyn, shortly after his career gets big, he want, he does like, he's like four minutes late to the show because he's fixing his tie in the green room and he can't get it right. And so the stage manager runs back and is like, the audience is like really pissed off. Like what the fuck? When are you going to get on? You have to hit your mark, right? Um, and he's like, the audience is getting frustrated and Faye snaps back, let them wait. And this does not go over well. The booking office cancels the rest of his scheduled performances and fines him a hundred dollars. But Faye doesn't give a shit. He is in demand everywhere and he has completely lost his mind as a result of that and the sheer amount of money flying at him from all sides. At the height of his

• 1:03:51Robert Evans?

  days doing the palace, he's taking home eighteen thousand dollars a week in the twenties.

• 1:03:57Speaker 02

  Oh, my God.

• 1:04:00Robert Evans?

  Like, that's, that's a crazy amount of money.

• 1:04:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:04:04Robert Evans?

  That's like, uh, 300 grand a week.

• 1:04:07Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:04:08Robert Evans?

  When he's performing at the Palace. So, he starts to become a narcissist before each, if he hadn't been one previously, he gets more. Before each performance-

• 1:04:16Speaker 02

  Or he, it gets to come out freely.

• 1:04:19Robert Evans?

  Right. Like, there's nothing holding it back anymore.

• 1:04:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:04:22Robert Evans?

  Before each performance, he would look into the mirror in his dressing room and ask loudly, "Who do I love?", before answering, "Me."

• 1:04:31Robert Evans?

  Is just, he's just the, he's just the most that guy he could possibly be.

• 1:04:37Speaker 02

  I mean, you guys didn't hear Robert's pre-show warm-up, but, you know-

• 1:04:42Robert Evans?

  Who do I hate? Me.

• 1:04:44Speaker 01

  Oh, buddy.

• 1:04:46Robert Evans?

  So, he quickly drops the name he'd started his act under, the Nut Monologist, and starts demanding people call him one of several nicknames, and he, all of these are nicknames he's given himself. Nobody gives themselves cool nicknames, and his nicknames are: The Great Fay, The King of Vaudeville, or just The King, The Great Fay, and Broadway's Favorite Son. And he makes people call him that, introduce him that way.

• 1:05:10Speaker 01

  There's only, there's only one king, and his name is LeBron James.

• 1:05:15Robert Evans?

  You're right, you're right. LeBron James, who sung some of, you know, my favorite rock and roll songs, obviously Suspicious Minds, just a great musician, LeBron James. Not as good at dunking as Elvis Presley, but, you know, a, a fine, fine performer. So-

• 1:05:30Speaker 01

  It's good we're not filming right now.

• 1:05:34Robert Evans?

  Now, the thing about, like, it's obvious to everyone that he has a massive ego, and that these are names he's given himself, but audiences love it because his ego works with the character he's performing. His character is this sarcastic, mocking figure who's smarter than everyone and above it all, right?

• 1:05:50Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:05:51Robert Evans?

  So it does kind of fit with who he's performing as. It's just that the people don't necessarily realize that's also the real Frank, and the real Frank is not just a narcissist, and not just a bully, but racist as fuck. Particularly-

• 1:06:06Robert Evans?

  I assume he was racist against black people, but we don't really get a lot about, I don't really get much of that in the history. He hates Jewish people. He is the anti Semite's anti Semite, right? Milton Berle, obviously, I just said, is a great foundational American comic. He's up there with Bob Hope in terms of guys who influenced the development of the vocation. And he is an obsessive fan of Frank Faye, patterns his whole early career in Frank's image. And Frank gets really angry about this because Milton Berle is Jewish. Now, the other thing is that Frank is really scared about having his act plagiarized, right? And that is a common fear in the business then and today. And as a result, because comedians don't want to get plagiarized, it's considered bad form to watch a colleague from the wings

• 1:06:51Robert Evans?

  before going on yourself, right? People do this all the time, but it's considered bad form by some performers, and Faye is one of them. And so, one night while performing, Faye catches Berle watching, and so he calls to a stagehand and tells him, "Get that little Jew bastard out of the wings." Sir. So, this happens a couple of times, you know, they're on at the same shows, and Faye gets angrier and angrier at Berle. And eventually, Faye shouts directly at Berle, using the K slur for Jewish people. Sir. Like, like, really goes to, like, like, very racist to Milton Berle, right? Basically, "Stop stealing from me, you slur."

• 1:07:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:30Robert Evans?

  Now, Berle, again, admires Faye tremendously. He's patterned his career off of this man, but he's not going to take this racism lying down. Milton Berle later related, after he calls, Faye calls him a slur, "I waited until he had finished for the night. I was ready for him as he cut around behind some flats on his way to the dressing room. I had picked up a stage brace. They're made of wooden metal, and they're used to hold the scenery together. And as he went by me, I reached out and spun him around. Before he knew it was happening, I hit him right across his face with the brace. It ripped his nose apart." He has to go to the hospital. Milton Berle hits him with a board with metal on it in the face. Also-

• 1:08:07Speaker 02

  Could have killed him. It's, it's like, kind of amazing to be like, "I'm doing this because I'm, on some level, still such a big fan."

• 1:08:17Robert Evans?

  Yeah. "I'm a huge fan, but I am going to beat you in the face with a board."

• 1:08:22Speaker 02

  Yeah. This is like divorcing the artist from the art harder than anyone's ever done.

• 1:08:27Robert Evans?

  And honestly, it makes me like Milton Berle a lot more. I didn't have an opinion on him before this, but that's pretty cool. Now, Faye is not just a bigot. He is the kind of bigot who feels no compunction against dropping slurs in public. He loves dropping slurs in public at social events.

• 1:08:47Speaker 02

  I do feel like it's probably worth like being like, it's also like, what, what, like, when would this be? Like, the 20s, the 30s?

• 1:08:55Robert Evans?

  Yeah, we're in the like, the mid 20s.

• 1:08:57Speaker 02

  So he's not like, super unique?

• 1:08:59Robert Evans?

  No, no, no, no, no.

• 1:09:01Speaker 02

  If anything, even the stuff that you've quoted, probably soft, all things considered.

• 1:09:06Robert Evans?

  I say that. Let's wait, let's, let's hold on, call it soft for the period, right?

• 1:09:10Speaker 02

  Sure, sure, sure.

• 1:09:11Robert Evans?

  Comedian Milt Josephberg, who you might guess is a Jewish man, one of Frank's contemporaries, later claimed, quote, "Faye referred to other comedians as Jew bastards." And this regularly, like, so this is like a common thing to him. He says this socially at like, parties and stuff.

• 1:09:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:09:29Robert Evans?

  This regularly leads to fistfights. In fact, one of the things Faye is most known for is getting into fights all the time with Jewish performers because he calls them slurs, right? Now, let's be fair to Faye. He gets into fistfights with a lot of people. It's not just Jewish performers.

• 1:09:46Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:09:47Robert Evans?

  He loves punching people.

• 1:09:49Speaker 02

  And you know what? To be even more fair, we already know even he knows he's not a good boxer.

• 1:09:54Robert Evans?

  Even he knows he's not a good boxer. Now, Faye is also a chain smoker. He lights up regularly throughout his act. He's like a proto Dennis Leary in that, or, you know, Dennis Leary was stealing from fucking, uh, uh, Bill Hicks.

• 1:10:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:10:09Robert Evans?

  But he's one of these guys, right? So, once he gets rich and famous, uh, he buys a gold cigarette case, which he would bring on stage, so everyone could see it when he lights up. And during one performance, when he's backstage, there's a no smoking sign because of the fire codes, because like, it's a dangerous building to have anything light in, and they don't want to kill everyone in the venue, because it's the fucking 20s. And it's such a threat that the venue had hired a firefighter to make sure people followed the rules. And the firefighter sees Frank light up, and the firefighter's like, "Hey, man," and calls him the F slur, right? You know, just because it's the 20s. And Frank punches him in the face, like this firefighter. But my favorite punch-related Frank Faye story happens onstage during a

• 1:10:52Robert Evans?

  performance, and this is such a good story to end this episode on. One of Frank's very few friends was Burt Wheeler, and Wheeler was one half of a popular comedic duo called Wheeler and Woolsey. Now, Burt admired Faye and described him as having the fastest mind in the business, but he also knew that his friend had a cruel side, and that whenever Faye brought a performer onstage with him, it was to mock them. And so Wheeler doesn't want to be onstage with his friend necessarily, because he knows he's going to get insulted really badly. So one night, Wheeler gets the feeling that Faye is going to bring him onstage to, like, do this, and is like, he begs his friend, he's like, "Hey, man, don't bring me up after I finish my act. I just, I really don't need this today," right? Like, "I just, I don't want to be laughed at in the way that I'm going to be laughed at if

• 1:11:36Robert Evans?

  you bring me onstage." Victoria Wilson describes what happens next. "Faye honored Wheeler's plea until one important performance, a matinee, when the talent bookers were in the audience with stopwatches in hand to time the laughs. Wheeler finished his act to great applause and left the stage. Faye came on, as he had throughout the show, and called Wheeler back onstage. For whatever reason, Faye began to talk to the audience at Wheeler's expense. Faye was calm, controlled. He spoke in his soft, easy, slow delivery with his deadpan stare. Wheeler stood on the stage, unable to think of anything he could say to equal or top Faye's sarcasm. Finally, Wheeler said, 'Frank, you're a very funny man, but I predict I'm going to get the biggest laugh ever heard at the palace.' Faye said, 'Oh, really, Burt? How are you going to do that?' Wheeler pulled back and hit Faye

• 1:12:20Robert Evans?

  in the face. The audience laughed. They think this was part of the act."

• 1:12:26Robert Evans?

  That's a pretty good joke.

• 1:12:28Speaker 02

  I... Listen, especially given who the stand-ups are these days, I would love to see more of this.

• 1:12:35Robert Evans?

  There's a lot of stand-up comedians I want to get see hit on the face, in the face onstage, right?

• 1:12:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:12:41Robert Evans?

  So, I think at this point, we've established that this guy's both innovative and groundbreaking, and also an abusive dick and a racist. But Frank Faye is about to be so much more. In part two, we're going to talk about his marriage to his wife, a woman you may know, Barbara Stanwyck. And these two are going to embark on a relationship so abusive and poisonous that it would become a piece of Hollywood history. This is like the archetypal, toxic, abusive Hollywood relationship, Frank Faye and Barbara Stanwyck. The movie A Star is Born is based off of their abusive relationship.

• 1:13:15Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:13:16Robert Evans?

  So that's gotta be cool.

• 1:13:18Speaker 02

  Can't wait.

• 1:13:19Robert Evans?

  Can't wait.

• 1:13:19Speaker 02

  Can't wait.

• 1:13:20Robert Evans?

  Can't wait.

• 1:13:20Speaker 02

  What a table set.

• 1:13:22Robert Evans?

  How you feeling, Andrew T?

• 1:13:25Speaker 02

  I feel, I, I am, I, as, as it happens on Behind the Bastards, I am finding myself, at least in part one, more sympathetic in general than I thought I was gonna be.

• 1:13:39Robert Evans?

  Right.

• 1:13:39Speaker 02

  And typically, that is, I guess, how biographies work. No one starts out as an evil child, so I get it.

• 1:13:44Robert Evans?

  Well, and it's like, he's, he's a racist and he's abusive so far, but he hasn't done, this is not Behind the Bastards level stuff quite yet, right? Like, this is like, this is honestly feels- This is just kind of an asshole, right? Like, I wouldn't just do an episode on a guy who's a dick.

• 1:13:58Speaker 02

  He doesn't even seem that transgressive-

• 1:14:00Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:00Speaker 02

  For like, the fucking twenties.

• 1:14:02Robert Evans?

  He's not-

• 1:14:02Speaker 02

  This is-

• 1:14:03Robert Evans?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:03Speaker 02

  He wouldn't be canceled today.

• 1:14:05Robert Evans?

  Yeah, right, like, right, like, today, he would be a popular, right-wing comedian, who we would be annoyed by, but I would not do an episode on.

• 1:14:12Speaker 02

  Um, yes.

• 1:14:13Robert Evans?

  We're getting to the stuff that's like, Behind the Bastards worthy, right?

• 1:14:19Speaker 02

  Can't wait.

• 1:14:20Robert Evans?

  But, before we get to that, why don't we get to your pluggables?

• 1:14:25Speaker 02

  Oh, I don't know, still doing Yo, Is This Racist? We have a premium show called Yo, Can We Live? Um, I don't know, that's it, I'm around.

• 1:14:34Speaker 01

  Heyo.

• 1:14:34Speaker 02

  Andrew T on places.

• 1:14:35Robert Evans?

  Heyo. All right, everybody, this has been Behind the Bastards. I've been Robert Evans. Come back in part two, where we are going to hear some real fucked up shit about a guy who sucked.

• 1:14:51Speaker 01

  Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Behind the Bastards is now available on YouTube. New episodes every Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to our channel, youtube.com slash at Behind the Bastards.

• 1:15:16Speaker 08

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