Flip Wilson Stand Up Comedy Remembrance Day

Flip Wilson was a pioneering stand up comedian who would do anything for a laugh and made millions of dollars for it through his own production companies and kept all the money. Jersey City, New Jersey's own Clerow “Flip” Wilson grew up in difficult circumstances, abandoned by his mother at seven years old, one of (slightly exaggerating) 25 kids supported by a single father working with a hammer, a shovel, a paintbrush, and a saw, standing on street corners, hustling work as a maintenance man. It was rough. The older kids mostly dispersed to the workforce. Flip ran off from so many foster homes and reform schools, that he carried whipping scars from when he was beat with cords as punishment so bad it hit him in his soul for the rest of his life. Check the closeups from his tv show, got some of that pain still in his eyes. Part of what made people like him. Forced to eat the nasty mash and scraps from other kids’ dinner plates and live in their shadows, attics, and storage rooms while they drank his welfare milk, as he fought to survive in a sick and crazy world where women kept using him for money, and he was the only standup guy he knew. Flip lied about his age and joined the U.S. Air Force at age sixteen and finally got to eat three healthy meals a day for the first time in his life. Military discipline was a welcome respite from a life of chaos. He found himself late one night laying on his back on a baseball diamond at a military base in the South Pacific nation of Guam, high, pondering the mysteries of the universe. Military life. He sold a little skag, became an expert typist, and wrote a successful one-man show on the Reproductive Habits of South Pacific Giant Coconut Crabs. Clean with an edge. Flip WIlson had the biggest show of its kind on TV from 1970-1974, with 50 million live viewers a week. Twenty-five appearances on Johnny Carson, including as guest host. He got a one-hour network special, followed by his own show on NBC. First black American with his own network tv show. He struck gold. Exceeded all corporate expectations. Millions tuned in, and the next week millions more. A two year upward trending graph that hit a fifty-million live viewers a week spike before sliding in the ratings in the third season and getting canceled after four. Flip owned his own production company, and Little David Records label, and sold millions of albums, including George Carlin’s "Seven Dirty Words" and "Class Clown." George Carlin was a staff writer on the Flip Wilson show, and Richard Pryor was too, giving them early opportunities and solid paychecks. They met when they all got high together backstage of a cheesy tv comedy special. Sponsored by Kraft. They were writers. At the time, Carlin was a square and Richie Pryor was considered a wimp, believe it or not. In 1983, Flip hosted Saturday Night Live, doing a famous sketch with a 22-year-old Eddie Murphy. Wilson was a people’s comic, and a comic’s comic, regularly snorting, drinking, and smoking with Rodney Dangerfield and Redd Foxx at his beachfront home in Malibu. Flip Wilson had tons of broads, wives, and girlfriends, and a pile of kids, and he took care of all them. He drove a 1972 sky blue Rolls Royce Corniche convertible .. READ THE WHOLE STORY IN THE NEW BOOK: Lenny, Flip, and Rickles: Stand Up Comics In The Magic City https://www.amazon.com/Lenny-Flip-Rickles-Standup-Comics/dp/B0CSBCK8NL ©Jacob Katel all rights reserved

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