Frank Fontaine, known as Crazy Guggenheim from The Jackie Gleason Show in the 1960s, was one of those comedians that died or nearly died onstage.
Conductor Tim Fowler and musician Jack Salley toured with Fontaine when they were musically fronting the Roy Radin Revue during the 1970s, here they reminisce about Fontaine at the end of his life and his death in 1978 just moments after stepping offstage. He was 58.
You can read all about the Roy Radin Revues in the book ‘Beyond Our Wildest Dreams’ by the Alberici Sisters from Dean Martin’s Golddiggers!
FOM WIKI:
Fontaine is best known for his appearances on television shows of the 1950s and 1960s, including The Jack Benny Program, The Jackie Gleason Show, The Tonight Show, and The Ed Sullivan Show. One of his earliest appearances was on the radio version of The Jack Benny Program. During an episode which aired on April 9, 1950, Fontaine played a bum (named "John L.C. Sivoney") who asked Benny for a dime for a cup of coffee. The smallest coin Benny had to offer was a fifty-cent piece, so he gave it to him. The story Benny told about this event became a running gag during later shows. Fontaine's goofball laugh and other voice mannerisms made a hit with the audience, and Benny brought him back for several more radio shows between 1950-52. He also later appeared on four of Jack Benny's television shows between 1951 and 1961.[citation needed] In 1952, Fontaine starred in The Frank Fontaine Show, a weekly variety program on CBS radio.[8] The program featured four other members of Fontaine's family in addition to singer Helen O'Connell and announcer Harry von Zell.[9] He also was heard regularly on The Bob Hope Show on radio.[8]:?47-48? On June 3, 1955, his comedy-variety television program, Frank Fontaine's Showtime, debuted on KTTV in Los Angeles.[10]
On The Jackie Gleason Show, he played the always-inebriated character "Crazy Guggenheim" during Gleason's "Joe the Bartender" skits. His trademark was a bug-eyed grin and the same silly laugh he had done on Jack Benny's radio show. At the end of his Guggenheim sketch, he would usually sing a song, demonstrating a surprisingly strong baritone voice.[11]
In 1963, he released an album Songs I Sing on The Jackie Gleason Show, with a collection of some of those songs, which reached number one on Billboard magazine's Top LP's chart in 1963. He also was the voice of Rocky the Rhino in Walt Disney's The Jungle Book until Disney cut the creature from the picture.
Fontaine was a lifelong non-drinker in his private life. (Well, this story says that’s not true, at least at the end of his life!)
Tales On the Road with the Infamous Roy Radin Revue.
