PART FOUR - by L. WAYNE HICKS
Read part one here

ENTER ANDY KAUFMAN

Three weeks after Lee's death, Fridays welcomed a guest host who would provide a lasting memory of Fridays. On Feb. 20, 1981, Andy Kaufman took the stage.

And he wouldn't get off. Kaufman opened his monologue by telling the audience the show was live and no one could stop him. He ignored off-stage entreaties by Moffitt and Burns to get on with the show. "They told me I couldn't say crap. I just did!" Kaufman said.

During the rest of the show, Kaufman appeared distracted, as though he didn't want to be there. He didn't appear to be trying hard. His point-counterpoint with himself on Friday Edition was sloppily done.

Everything was leading up to the now-infamous restaurant sketch.

"I'm sure that single event got us picked up for the next year," Moffitt said.

Kaufman, who would die of lung cancer in 1984, had become increasingly known for off-the-wall antics, stunts such as wrestling women.

Bob Zmuda, a writer for Kaufman who appeared on that Fridays as a masked magician who gives away secrets, later wrote the biography Andy Kaufman Revealed! Best Friend Tells all. In it he noted that when Kaufman was offered the chance to host Fridays, "The only edict given him: Kick start this dog and get it some attention."

Kaufman's idea for Fridays: break out of a sketch and cause a fight on the air, on live TV. The scene was recreated for the Kaufman biopic Man in the Moon, with Zmuda portraying the part of Jack Burns.

"We didn't tell many people because it wouldn't have worked," Moffitt said. "Like the stage crew did not know. The director did not know. Most of the cast didn't know. We told one or two people because we thought Melanie might freak out. In any case, we had the script written. During rehearsal, we rehearsed the script, with an ending to it, and during dress rehearsal, we did the whole script, we did the whole scene. It was complete. It was beginning, middle, end. Only on air did Andy stop in the middle and just say 'I can't do this.' That part was totally unrehearsed, live on the air."

Roarke wasn't in on the joke. Before the sketch started, he saw Kaufman backstage, bullying people.

"He went over to one guy and started pushing him. I said, 'That's it.' I went behind him and I got him in a headlock, 'cause I thought he was really out of control. And I realize he's not really resisting me that much. For a guy who's acting so hot, he's not straining against me."

Roarke let Kaufman go when it was time for the sketch to start.

The sketch featured three couples in a restaurant. The situation called for each person to leave the table, smoke a joint in the bathroom, then return. When it was Kaufman's turn, he came back to the table, broke character and announced he couldn't do drug humor. His announcement was greeted with silence and then increasingly hostile whispers from the cast.

Richards walked off stage, grabbed the cue cards and plopped them in front of Kaufman and told him to read them. Kaufman responded by throwing his drink at Richards. Burns, who was in the plan, rushed the stage and shoved Kaufman, sparking a brief scuffle between the two men.

"We were told to stay in character," Chartoff said. "I was playing his prissy wife and tried to play along till the crew, who weren't in on the joke and wanted to protect us and the show, got violent with Andy. I took off at that point, which is what my character would have done."

"It was all planned and nobody believed us," Moffitt said, "but we got more calls. For the next week we got solid press. I mean, everybody was calling left and right and nobody believed us."

Peter J. Boyer, the TV writer for The Associated Press, wrote: "The folks at ABC's Fridays are delighting over the windfall hype that has come their way this week after guest host Andy Kaufman's on-camera 'fight' at the end of last Friday's show." Fridays milked the gag by having Kaufman return the next week to announce that the fight had been a planned event. Kaufman spoke haltingly, like he was reading unfamiliar words off a TelePrompTer.

"ABC wants you to know the truth," Kaufman said. "The truth is it was an experimental piece to do something different." After a pause, Kaufman added: "I can't do this. "I won't do it. I'm sorry. I will not say it. This has been a very hard week for me. Because of last week's show my job on Taxi is in jeopardy. I'm having trouble getting producers to hire me for other shows. My friends won't talk to me. The show has led to a separation from my wife. We were just trying to have some fun. Maybe I went too far."

Kaufman wasn't married. It was all another put-on. But the fight and Kaufman's second appearance on Fridays gave the show considerable press attention.

FRIDAYS SAYS FAREWELL

The second full season for Fridays began Sept. 18, 1981. Andy Kaufman was back as guest host. This time, he appeared a remarkably changed man. Dressed in a suit, his hair slicked back, Kaufman treated the crowd to his Foreign Man character and lip synched the Mighty Mouse theme. Then he was joined on stage by his fiancee, a gospel singer from the Lawrence Welk Show. They sang a duet together.

"That was the Andy Kaufman thing. He was brilliant in his own way," Moffitt said. "Andy was always trying something different."

The second season of Fridays would be its last. The show would be cancelled after just 57 episodes. The killing blow came from the desire to expand Ted Koppel's Nightline to five nights a week, filling up the spot on the schedule for Fridays.

"I think that's largely the reason we got thrown off the air," Roarke said. "I do know that before that happened, I imitated Ted Koppel one night on Fridays with a big hairdo and big ears with a dress. I heard he wasn't happy about that. I don't think people in the news department and Ted Koppel are that petty. I hope not, but I heard he didn't like it."

Moffitt said Fridays was hurt by having Nightline in its time slot. The audience wasn't tuning in to Nightline waiting for Fridays to begin. "The ratings are just going down, down, down and they just called us in one day and said it was losing money."

Rather than kill Fridays outright, ABC tried another approach - a shot at prime time, with a special that aired April 23, 1982.

But the prime time edition of Fridays, which featured a performance by Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder singing "Ebony and Ivory," aired against a rerun of Dallas, which still outdrew Fridays in the ratings. Fridays was doomed.

By then, Moffitt was ready to move on. He had purchased American rights to the British program Not the Nine O'Clock News and pitched his Americanized version, Not Necessarily the News, to ABC. Rejected by ABC, Moffitt took it to HBO, where it became the cable channel's first piece of original programming.

Fridays last aired Oct. 22, 1982. "I wish we'd been on longer," Moffitt said. "I think we would have gotten better and I would love to have had a couple of people break out from our show rather than later on. I think if we were on another year. Michael Richards would have broken out. Maybe Larry David would have broken out. Maybe somebody else would have broken out."

Tom Kramer, who wrote and directed the Friday Focus news parodies, said in an interview he thought Blankfield deserved to become the biggest star. "He reminded me of Buster Keaton. He was so likable and inventive and such a great guy to be around."

LIFE AFTER FRIDAYS

The cast fully expected Fridays to make them stars. That didn't happen. "I went to unemployment in nicer clothes," Chartoff said.

Life after Fridays has proved a mix bag for the nine cast members. Maryedith Burrell costarred in several short-lived series, including The Jackie Thomas Show and Parenthood, but lately has concentrated on writing, including the 2002 TV movie Mr. St. Nick, about Santa's son.

Darrow Igus has appeared in a string of independent films, and made appearances on several TV series, including The Steve Harvey Show, NYPD Blue and Sister, Sister.

Brandis Kemp briefly starred in the 1983 series After MASH, which followed several of the crew from the 4077th stateside, but the series was widely panned.

Mark Blankfield went from Fridays to a starring role in Jeckyll and Hyde... Together Again. And he turned in an impressive performance in a December 1982 episode of Taxi, portraying a monk who woos Elaine. But his other TV parts put him in a strange career loop. He portrayed a legally blind elevator operator in Mel Brooks' 1989 series The Nutt House. In the 1991 series Good & Evil, Blankfield played a psychiatrist who fumbled along as he got used to having recently lost his sight. And in 1993, Blankfield again played a blind character in Brooks' movie Robin Hood: Men in Tights.

Bruce Mahler appeared in a string of the Police Academy movies - the first, second, third and sixth - but in recent years has chosen to work behind the camera. He served as a assistant production manager on two recent movies, Bruce Almighty and Freddy vs. Jason.

Melanie Chartoff has been heard on TV more than she's been seen. She gives voice to two characters on the Nickelodeon series Rugrats, which debuted in 1991, but she also won recurring roles on Newhart and JAG and starred in the 1990-93 Fox series Parker Lewis Can't Lose as the principal. In addition, Chartoff demonstrated her inventive mind by earning a patent in 1994 on a system that uses recycled water - from showers, for example - to flush toilets.

John Roarke continued his impression of Ronald Reagan on the Sid and Marty Krofft political puppet show D.C. Follies, where he supplied some voices, and in Garry Trudeau's musical Rap Master Ronnie. He also appeared as President Bush in the second Naked Gun movie. He busies himself these days entertaining at corporate meetings.

Larry David spent an unsatisfying season writing for SNL, 1984-85, during which he saw only a single one of his sketches used, but a few years later rallied to create the extremely successful series Seinfeld, with his longtime friend Jerry Seinfeld. David wrote many of the early scripts for the show and lent his voice to several characters, including George Steinbrenner. Most importantly, he based the character of the hapless George Costanza on himself. Today David is the star of the HBO series Curb Your Enthusiasm, an unscripted show in which he plays himself.

The last of the Fridays ensemble, Michael Richards, became the most visible, as one of the stars of Seinfeld.

"Knowing Jerry and Larry helped get me into the door," Richards said in a 1997 interview, "but I still had to audition to prove myself."

The set of Seinfeld proved a way station for former Fridays talent. In addition to David and Richards, Bruce Mahler, Maryedith Burrell and Melanie Chartoff all appeared on at least one episode. Fridays writers Bruce Kirshbaum, Elaine Pope and Larry Charles also wrote episodes for Seinfeld.

The history of Fridays doesn't end here. Still to come is the possible release on DVD of the entire series, including the infamous Diner of the Living Dead and Ronny Horror Show sketches. The DVD release hinges upon a solitary one of the nine - Richards.

"Michael Richards was the only person that in his contract had approval that was anything that was not a rebroadcast," Moffitt said. "There's a clause in there which prevents us from doing a home video without his permission. Unfortunately, in our ignorance at the time, we signed it."

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