Random Insane Stories About Andy Kaufman That Prove He's An All-Time Legend (22 items)

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  (#1) He Once Took An Entire Audience Out For Milk And Cookies After A Show

  In 1979, rather than end a Carnegie Hall Show in some old-fashioned, outdated way (by just ending it), Kaufman took the entire 2,800-person audience, which included Tony Danza, out for milk and cookies.

  And if that wasn't enough Kaufman for them, he invited anyone who was interested to meet him on the Staten Island Ferry the next morning where he continued the show. 
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  (#2) Towards The End Of His Life, He Received Psychic Surgery

  The story of Andy Kaufman's death is truly sad. According to his friend and the best straight man he ever had, Jerry Lawler, Kaufman died three months after he was diagnosed with a highly aggressive form of lung cancer. Kaufman, an early proponent of natural and organic foods, sought out any form of medical help that he could get from chemo to something called psychic surgery.

  Essentially, psychic surgery was a hoax perpetrated by a man in the Philippines who would pretend to remove a foreign body from his patient's innards, thus "healing" them. Think reiki combined with slight-of-hand magic. One would believe that Kaufman, a practiced prankster, would be able to note a fake when he saw one, but he still went through with the process and claimed to have been cured.

  Unfortunately, he passed away shortly after going through with the "surgery." Was he actually interested in this, or was he just playing a final prank? 
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  (#3) He Never Rehearsed On Taxi

  Despite starring on Taxi for six years, Kaufman never rehearsed with the rest of the cast. According to co-star Tony Danza, the producers hired a stand in to rehearse with the cast. Danza remembered: "He didn’t rehearse. He never rehearsed. You know. When he did come to rehearsal, he was always late.

  And, by the way, when his alter-ego,Tony Clifton, did the show - he constantly wanted to rehearse and he was always early. He was a real pain..."
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  (#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!’"
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  (#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. 
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  (#6) He Cried On The Dating Game

  Before Andy Kaufman was established as the Loki of the comedy world, he was just working out his act in New York City. While he was still working out his "foreign guy" character that would later be fully exploited on Taxi, he was booked as a guest on The Dating Game, and he was 100% amazing.

  The two hot '70s bros that he was playing against were really into hooking up with a woman on TV, and Kaufman went out of his way to make the audience stew in the awkward soup he made. After the swingin' '70s babe picked dude #2, Kaufman burst into tears and protested that he correctly answered all the questions.
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  (#7) Seeing Kaufman Was A Great Way To Hear F. Scott Fitzgerald

  In the late '70s, Kaufman was a regular guest on Saturday Night Live while it was still on the cutting edge of comedy, but even for the show's cool downtown audience, he was a bit too much. One night, rather than performing his "foreign man" character that had become a hit, he came out onstage, spoke with an English accent, and read from The Great Gatsby.

  When the audience began to boo, he asked if they'd like to hear some music instead, when they answered with an emphatic yes, he put a record on, and it was just his voice reading the words he had just read. 
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  (#8) He Let A Group Of Nurses Beat Him In A Wrestling Match

  Andy's brother Michael, who has tried to keep some mystique around Andy's life since his death, told a story in a Vice interview about how sweet Kaufman could be - even when he was being super weird. Michael said: 

  "Andy went to visit a girl who was dying. She was a fan of his, and when his plane was delayed in Chicago on its way to Washington, he drove out to Demotte, Indiana, to visit her. Word got out at the hospital and Andy wrestled three people. I have pictures. They were supposedly nurses and maybe one patient's mother. It's the only time he ever lost a match. He let them beat him. And then there's a letter from the mother, thanking Andy for doing that. Seven weeks after his visit, she died. That whole correspondence will be there. Andy never told anyone about that. I only knew about it because I went through the stuff."
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  (#9) His Brother Thought Andy Ruined His Career When He Appeared On Fridays

  After a while, Andy's brother Michael said that he didn't want to know when Andy was pranking people anymore because he didn't like lying to people about Andy's intent. Michael says that at the famous Fridays taping - where Kaufman stopped a sketch, saying on camera that he "felt stupid," acting stoned, and freaking everyone out - he thought that his brother had ruined his career. Michael was in the audience and cautiously went backstage to see how his brother was doing.

  "I approached his dressing room with trepidation because I thought he was going to be very angry. I had to open a door to a bigger room before getting to his dressing room, and when I did there was music and a great mood going on. I thought, This is in poor taste. Andy's in there packing up like he's got no career and you guys are having a great time. That feeling lasted about four seconds, because I looked up and saw that Andy was one of the people celebrating. He was high-fiving people and dancing around."
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  (#10) Kaufman Worked As A Busboy While He Was On Taxi

  The story that Kaufman worked as a busboy is an interesting part of his mythology, but was it actually true? Or was it just one of his lies that went over like gangbusters? Multiple articles say that Kaufman was a busboy, but none of them can agree where he worked. Grantland reported that "[after] he was famous, he took a night job as a busboy at the Posh Bagel restaurant on Santa Monica Boulevard, just to see what would happen."

  But a 1981 People Magazine article said that he worked "one night a week as a busboy at Jerry’s Famous Deli in Studio City." Maybe it never even happened. 
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  (#11) During One Act, All He Did Was Sing "One Hundred Bottles Of Beer On The Wall"

  During what seems like a particularly hectic couple of weeks in 1981, writer David Hirshey followed Kaufman through New York City, Los Angeles, and San Francisco for an issue of Rolling Stone. One of the craziest stories from that time recounts how Kaufman performed at the Improv and sang "One Hundred Bottles of Beer on the Wall" to a confused, and then bemused, and then stressed-out crowd. 

  Hirshey wrote, "By seventy-seven, worried glances. Is he really going all the way? The voices change as he starts doing impressions. But the song goes on. George C. Scott sings 'Sixty-six bottles of beer on the wall, sixty-six bottles of beer.' Elvis takes us down to fifty-three. At fourteen bottles of beer on the wall, he leaves the stage. Suddenly, six people are screaming, 'Don’t stop. Please, Andy, do it.' After he finally returns to the stage "applause erupts when he returns and completes the ordeal. He struts offstage, pumping his arms like Bruce Jenner in a Wheaties commercial. He’s euphoric." 

  After the show, over ice cream, Kaufman told Hirshey, "'A Hundred Bottles of Beer’ has always been a fantasy of mine. But there’s a little voice that says, ‘Oh, no, you can’t do that, that’s breaking all the rules.’ That’s the voice of show business. Then this other little voice says, ‘Try it.’ And most of the time, when the voice comes on and says, ‘No,’ that’s the time it works.” 
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  (#12) He Requested To Read His Own Hate Mail

  After an appearance on the morning version of the David Letterman Show where Andy told a sob story about his wife leaving him that ended with him begging the audience for money because he just went through a divorce, Letterman claimed that they got a ton of hate mail and that Kaufman wanted to read it all. 

  “We got an instant reaction to that show. Phone calls, letters. People were mad at me for having him on, mad at him, sorry for his plight. Other people thought I had not been sympathetic to the needs of this obviously desperate human.” But what about Andy? “He was real eager to get the hate mail. He made me promise to send it.” 
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  (#13) The Man Loved Prostitutes

  Andy Kaufman was an enigma of a man, and he loved sleeping with working gals. According to the director of Heartbeeps (and like, every TV show you've ever watched), Allan Arkush: “Oh, Andy has a whole theory on prostitutes. He’s a real champion of theirs, and he believes in meaningful relationships with them.”

  Arkush says that the subject came up when he asked Kaufman how he spent his vacation. 

  “I spent my vacation at the Mustang Ranch, every night,” Kaufman told him.
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  (#14) He Included His Family In The Worst Show He Ever Played

  From the amount Kaufman involved his family in his life and work, it's obvious that he either loved them deeply, or that he truly hated them. At the end of his Carnegie Hall appearance, they helped give out milk and cookies, which sounds fun, but you know what doesn't sound fun? Watching him bomb at a resort hotel in the Catskills over Thanksgiving. His father, Stanley said that one of Andy's conditions was that "the hotel accommodate the whole family, including" his parents, but "[it] was awful. He bombed.

  There was just nothing he did that made anyone laugh. And he had all of us, the whole family, come up onstage.” Afterwards, people started posting angry notes on Andy's door and one person at the hotel even yelled in Kaufman's face while he ate with his family in the dining room, and Andy just took it. 
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  (#15) Andy Did Bits Just For Himself

  Kaufman made a big deal out of telling interviewers about the bits he would perform while no one was around, but does that mean that he actually did them? One story involved Kaufman going to a busy restaurant dressed in his father's pink polyester jacket and dirty white shirt while rattling a cup and talking to himself about the “finest cuppa cawfee in New Yawk.” He said plenty of people freaked out. Cool? 
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  (#16) He Committed So Hard To His Bits That He'd Stay In Hospitals Even When He Didn't Need To

  One of Kaufman's most famous bits was his time spent wrestling women, specifically his match against Jerry Lawler in Memphis, TN. According to Lawler, after Kaufman was powerbombed and the match ended, Kaufman requested and paid for an ambulance to take him out of the auditorium to a Memphis hospital.

  Lawler said that Kaufman spent"three days... in the Memphis hospital with his neck in traction" even though he didn't need it. 
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  (#17) He Was In An Off-Broadway Play With Debbie Harry

  At first glance, this isn't the craziest thing that he did, but the more you think about the fact that he starred in an Off-Broadway play about a wrestling match that eventually moved to Broadway and starred the singer of Blondie, the more intriguing Kaufman becomes. Also, the 8'0s sound amazing. The play, Teaneck Tanzi: The Venus Flytrap, starred Debbie Harry as “Tanzi,” Caitlan Clarke as “Tanzi,” and Andy Kaufman as the “referee.” Debbie Harry describes the whole thing as super fun, but also kind of weird. 

  "All of a sudden I got this script and I thought it could be really fun. So we did the show for about three weeks in previews, downtown in a nice sort of loft space Off Off-Broadway. And it was great; the audiences were loud and everybody was shouting at the wrestlers just like a real wrestling match. And then they decided they were going to open it on Broadway and it opened and closed almost instantly! So I guess it was a little bit premature for Broadway."
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  (#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."
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  (#19) When He Bombed The Opening Of A Temptations Concert, He Faked Shooting Himself

  Early in Kaufman’s career as a stage performer, he was curiously booked to open for musicians, which seems crazy for any booker that had seen Kaufman, but whatever. When Kaufman opened for the Temptations as Foreign Man he completely bombed, and the folks who came to see The Temptations basically gave him a big thumbs down.

  When they began booing him, Kaufman wept uncontrollably, pulled out a cap gun, walked offstage, fired it into the microphone, and fell to the ground, "dead."

  Reportedly, The Temptations “sang extra hard that night to make up for it.”
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  (#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.”
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  (#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.
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  (#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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