What To Know
- Jim J. Bullock described late comedian Milton Berle as difficult and controlling during their time together on The New Hollywood Squares.
- Bullock recounted a specific incident where Berle demanded he suppress any expression of his comedic style.
- Despite negative experiences with Berle and Ted Knight on Too Close for Comfort, Bullock ultimately found more acceptance and success by embracing his authentic self on The New Hollywood Squares.
Jim J. Bullock wasn’t so happy to have Uncle Miltie as a member of the Hollywood Squares family. At a recent convention, Bullock expressed his frustrations about sharing the game show’s stage with late comic Milton Berle.
“I don’t want to say anything bad about the dead, but he was an a***hole,” Bullock told the audience at the recent Fanboy Expo Knoxville’s Too Close for Comfort reunion panel in Tennessee, per People.
Bullock recalled a bit in one of his earliest episodes of the 1980s The New Hollywood Squares, in which he was supposed to gush over meeting Berle, who would respond by smashing a pie in his face.
And Bullock remembered ignoring every comedic instinct he had during that bit, all because Berle had exerted complete control.
“I just remember he was such a d***,” Bullock said. “He was like, ‘Kid, none of that gay s*** that you do. You follow exactly what I tell you to do, because I created this bit.’”
Bullock recalled the same moment in MEL’s 2020 oral history of The New Hollywood Squares.
“I was nowhere near out [as gay], or comfortable with myself, so when Milton Berle says, ‘None of this f** s***,’ you say, ‘Yes, sir, OK, I won’t,’” Bullock said at the time. “I did exactly what he told me to do, which was to stand there with this stupid look and let him slam the pie in my face, ignoring all my comic intuitions. But then it was totally flat, un-spontaneous and bombed. Zero laughs. So I had to crawl back up to my square with whipped cream running down my chest and sticky underwear — and in not a good way either.”
Despite his interactions with Berle, Bullock said he felt more freedom on The New Hollywood Squares than he did on the sitcom Too Close for Comfort, where costar Ted Knight was “never comfortable” with Bullock’s sexuality.
“So Ted would say, ‘Bring it down a couple of mince,’” Bullock remembered. “I knew what he meant by that, so I’d try to butch it up. But when I got to Hollywood Squares and they were so comfortable with me and who I am naturally, the more I was myself, the more successful I became.”