'TVparty is hands down the best site on the Web for classic TV.'
- Discovery Channel

Past TV Blog Entries: RESCUE KITTY GOES NUTS! /Filthy Rich / Police Squad / Lost Christmas Specials of the 50s & 60s / 1970 TV Shows / Strother Martin / Joya Sherrill / Super Circus / 1950's The Big Show / Saturday Morning TV Memories / Hilarious Outtakes / The Smothers Brothers Revisited

by Billy Ingram

OOOH! OOOH!
Watching Car 54, Where Are You? on DVD reminded me of how much I enjoyed the great Joe E. Ross. At least as a kid I liked him, one of those oddball performers that kept popping up here and there for no apparent reason. It certainly wasn't talent.

He started out life in show biz as a raunchy burlesque club comic, here's a cleaned up sample of his 1950's act as half of a duo with Dave Starr, crammed full of corny vaudeville routines but funny none the less.

He shot to stardom on Nat Hiken's Sgt. Bilko as the imbecilic mess sergeant, Rupert Ritzik. His trademark phrase "Oooh, Oooh" sprang from an inability to remember his lines, he was stalling until the words finally came.

But sudden fame was like lighting a match to his flame, soon the unlikely TV star was gaining a reputation in town as a hard partier who was undependable on the set.

Co-star Hank Garrett recalled, "Where we shot in the Bronx we had a little cafeteria. You [ate] whatever you wanted and [then] you told the cashier what [you had eaten]. So, I [told the cashier] I had a tuna fish sandwich and a coffee or whatever it was and the cashier says, 'Three bucks.' Joe E. Ross would walk up and he didn't have to say a word. They looked at his clothes and they said, "Okay. You had the cottage cheese and the scrambled eggs.' It would be all over his uniform. He was quite the slob."

Ross' vivacious appetite for hookers, cigarettes, fatty foods, and booze were fueled by Hollywood's open embrace for that sort of behavior.

Author David Everitt wrote that Ross' celebrity inflated his already bombastic ego. "That the tail was actually wagging the dog," Everitt said. "Stardom, as Ross understood it, meant not bothering to learn his lines ... he believed that preparing for the scene was beneath him."

Ross developed a nasty attitude when it came to extras, the crew, guest stars, visitors to the set, anyone he deemed beneath him. He returned to the nightclubs when Bilko was cancelled in 1959.

Still, his charm was irresistable to the home audience so Nat Hiken cast him as one of the leads in his new series, Car 54, where Joe E. Ross proved even more difficult to control.

Car 54 was dropped after two terms and a few years later Joe E. Ross landed the show I first saw him on, It's About Time, which I loved as a 9 year old.

The kooky combo of Joe E. Ross and Imogene Coca was hard to resist. Again his co-workers complained about his loutish behavior. Coca despised Ross because of his body odor (made worse by the heavy furs they wore as cave people) and for bringing his prostitutes on to the set. That one season wonder was the comedian's last primetime series.

In the 1970s he was relegated to doing cartoon voices for Hanna-Barbera where he once again resurrected his "Ooh, Oooh" catch phrase to delight a new generation.

Even that career was short-lived. Joe E. Ross died in 1982 attempting to do his nightclub act for a hundred bucks in a nearly empty room at a rundown apartment complex where he lived in Van Nuys, CA. You can read Joe E. Ross' cautionary tale here.

1960's TV Seasons: 1961 / 1964 / ABC 1966 / 1967 / 1968 / 1969 / Fall Previews / Sharon Tate on The Beverly Hillbillies / Dark, Unseen Monkees Pilot / Pistols 'N' Petticoats / Best Episodes of Every 'Lucy Show' Season / How Lee Meriwether Became Catwoman / The Star Trek Spinoff That Didn't Happen / Why Ginger Was Almost Fired From Gilligan's Island / Every Batman (1966) Fight Scene / Whatever Happened to the Beverly Hillbillies' Mansion? / Remembering "Mary Ann" - Dawn Wells Interview / The Ronny Howard Show?!? / Death of Bonanza's Dan Blocker / Broadside / The Monkees / Jimi Hendrix 1967 Tour - The Only Night It Clicked Was In Greensboro! / William Shatner on the Origin of Star Trek / The Nurses / The Riddler Was Batman's First TV Super-Villain / Betty Lynn aka Thelma Lou / Remembering The Rifleman's Johnny Crawford / Leonard Nimoy on NBC Hating Spock / Sinatra Wanted To Play Joker on Batman? Yes! / Directing the Batman Pilot / Elinor Donahue on The Andy Griffith Show / Lucy After Ricky / Robert Clary on His Hogan's Heroes Co-stars / Jeopardy! in the 60s & 70s / Stunts Gone Wrong on The Wild Wild West / Whatever Happened To Lost In Space's Guy Williams? / Best of Julie Newmar Catwoman Season 2 / The New People / Dark Shadows Director Lela Swift / Pioneer Newswoman Lisa Howard / The Jim Nabors Hour / The UN Goes to the Movies / Stories About Filming Batman from Burt Ward / Life With Linkletter / The Green Hornet / Best of The Joker / Matt Weiner Interview / Lost in Space: Mark Goddard Interview / 1961 CBS Fall Season / Bette Davis TV show: The Decorator / The Hathaways / He & She / Eartha Kitt as Catwoman / The Good Guys / James Drury of The Virginian / The Ron Hicklin Singers / Man From U.N.C.L.E. on DVD / Behind the Scenes at The Andy Griffith Show / Pat Buttram & Green Acres / Remembering Clint Walker / Cheyenne / Camp Runamuck / Gilligan's Mary Ann - Dawn Wells / 1960's Nightclub Comic Rusty Warren / Johnny Carson Tonight Show 1964 / That Girl / The Amazing Randi / TV's Greatest Car Stars / Best of Batgirl 1967-68 / TV Shows to Movies / Batman Season 2 / Supermarionation / The Virginian's Clu Gulager / William Windom / New Bewitched Book / Court Martial / Cast Changes on Bewitched and Green Acres / Sammy Davis Jr. Show / Sunday Morning Cartoons / Naked City Sherwood Schwartz Interview / Walter Cronkite Moon Landing / The Farmer's Daughter / Petula-Clark /

It is what it is!

Star of Sgt. Bilko, Car 54 Where Are You?
and It's About Time

Lost Kid Shows / Movie Stars on TV / Saturday Morning Shows / Video Vault / TV Goodbyes / Fabulous Fifties / Unseen Scenes / Game Shows / Requested Forgotten TV Shows / The Super Sixties / More Modern TV Shows / The New * * Shows / 1980's Wrestling / TV Blog

Classic TV on the Internet!