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  • Andy Made The Producers Of Taxi Fire His Alter Ego In Front Of The Cast on Random Insane Stories About Andy Kaufman That Prove He's An All-Time Legend

    (#4) Andy Made The Producers Of Taxi Fire His Alter Ego In Front Of The Cast

    One of Andy's conditions for working on Taxi was that the producers had to hire his alter ego, lounge singer Tony Clifton, as well. When Clifton was on the show, Kaufman would only appear in character and would never acknowledge himself. Does that make sense? As Tony Danza told an audience at the Gotham Comedy Club, as much as the cast thought Kaufman was a pain, they hated Tony Clifton. So one day when Clifton showed up with two prostitutes, the cast persuaded the show's producer, Ed Weinberger, to fire Clifton.

    That's when things got ever more confusing, Danza explains: "Ed Weinberger went to Andy and he said, ‘Andy, or Tony, I have to fire you. I’ve got to let you go. This is not good for the show, to go on.’ And Andy, Andy loved the show. And he was not going to do it. But he could not resist the chance to do something with that. So evidently he told Ed that you can fire me, but you have to do it in front of everybody."

    The day Clifton was fired Danza happened to have his Super 8 camera with him and filmed the "wrestling match" that broke out when he was kicked out of the studio, and a week later they watched the footage. 

    "We’re all on top of one another, everyone’s in there, the cast, the crew, some of the producers, everybody’s in there. And we’re watching it. And just as this fight is starting to break out, the door opens up and out the door, Andy walks in. It was like the air was sucked out of the room. We’re all standing there. And we watched him - I watched him - watch the film. And then the film ran out. It just ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch. You know that thing, because it was on film? So I reached in, and I turned the film off. And we stood there for a second and Andy went just like this, he shrugged and went, ‘Geez. What an assh*le!’"

  • Carol Kane Believed That He Was Never Out Of Character on Random Insane Stories About Andy Kaufman That Prove He's An All-Time Legend

    (#18) Carol Kane Believed That He Was Never Out Of Character

    Carol Kane wasn't on Taxi with Kaufman for the entire run of the series, but it seems like all of her run ins with Kaufman involved him staying in character throughout their working relationship.

    Kane told the AV Club: "There was this other great character that I did get to work with, which was Vic Ferrari, who was kind of obnoxious and pretentious and slick and sly. The opposite of Latka. And I had a date with Latka and woke up to Vic. That was kind of amazing and great."

  • Barry Manilow's Audience Hated Kaufman on Random Insane Stories About Andy Kaufman That Prove He's An All-Time Legend

    (#20) Barry Manilow's Audience Hated Kaufman

    One of the other artists that Kaufman opened for when he was getting started as a performer was Barry Manilow, the very boring singer of "Copacabana." You can probably guess how his set went - Foreign Man, maybe Elvis, probably some weeping - but apparently the set went so badly that that Manilow said he had to work the hardest he ever had “to try to bring them back from the edge of revolution.”

  • Thumb of He Had To Have A Safety Net To Protect Him From Audience Missiles video

    (#5) He Had To Have A Safety Net To Protect Him From Audience Missiles

    While opening for Rodney Dangerfield under the guise of Tony Clifton, Kaufman went out of his way to infuriate the audience. But it's not like he was winging it as he went along; the man had a plan. On his third night, he showed up 25 minutes late and said that he wouldn't perform until all of the cigarettes were extinguished.

    When he finally got on stage, he lit a cigar and blew smoke into the audience and began singing "I Left My Heart in San Francisco" as people began to throw tomatoes and eggs at him. When someone threw a banana at him, he shouted, "Drop the net!,” and a protective barrier came down to block him from the audience. When someone threw a coin at him, he donned a SWAT helmet and yelled at everyone from the wings. 

  • Thumb of He Drove A (Fake) Woman To (Fake) Suicide video

    (#21) He Drove A (Fake) Woman To (Fake) Suicide

    During Andy's special Andy's Funhouse, he brings out a former child star named Gail Slobodkin who starred in a Broadway production of The Sound of Music and antagonizes her for the better part of a segment. After she performs a song he asks, "What was it like when you first felt you weren’t going to make it in show business?" And, “How does it feel to be a has-been?” before telling her that he really hopes that she makes it, adding: “Personally, I don’t think you will...”

    She keeps it together during the show, but in Bob Zmuda’s book, Lost in the Funhouse: The Life and Mind of Andy Kaufman, Zmuda says that Slobodkin committed suicide shortly after her appearance on the show and mentioned Andy's special in her suicide letter. But here's the thing, there was never a Gail Slobodkin. It was all an elaborate Kaufman prank.

  • Thumb of He Regularly Messed With People At Coney Island video

    (#22) He Regularly Messed With People At Coney Island

    It's been well established that Kaufman was fond of acting like a crazy person in public, but when he went to Coney Island, he went extra hard in the paint. One of his helpers, performance artist Laurie Anderson, (who later married Lou Reed) described his antics as being essentially illegal but very fun if you were in one the joke. 

    "I followed him around for a couple of years and did his straight-man stuff in his clubs. We’d go out to Coney Island to just practice situations, and we’d get on the roto-whirl where the bottom drops out, and we’d just be spinning around, so there’s a minute where everyone’s locked in that’s when he began to freak out: 'I think we’re all going to die on this ride! Look at the way the belts are done, they’re really flimsy!' And everyone is like, 'Who is this moron?' and second, 'Maybe the belts aren’t attached that well,' and it was chaos."

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About This Tool

Andy Kaufman is the most famous American comedian in the 1970s. He is known for his unique and alternative performance style on stage and TV. Although audiences have mixed praise and criticism for his humorous expressions, his many performances and roles are still for a generation of audiences. It left a deep impression and also had an important influence on the history of American comedy.

Although his life is so short, as the most famous American comedian since the 1970s, his outstanding achievements and performances will never be forgotten. The random tool introduced 22 fun facts about the legendary actor you never know.

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