Flip Wilson

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Archives | 1998
Flip Wilson, Outrageous Comic and TV Host, Dies at 64

By MEL WATKINS NOV. 27, 1998


Flip Wilson, the popular comedian who became the first black entertainer to be the host of a successful weekly variety show on network television, died Wednesday night at his home in Malibu, Calif. He was 64.

The cause was liver cancer, his assistant, Angie Hill, said.

Mr. Wilson was best known for his portrayals of such outrageous, over-the-top characters as the Reverend Leroy of the Church of What's Happening Now and Geraldine, the sassy but proud black woman whose flamboyance, enthusiasm and screeching, high-pitched voice were recognized by millions of Americans. Her trademark quips -- ''When you're hot, you're hot; when you're not, you're not,'' ''The devil made me do it'' and ''What you see is what you get'' -- became national catch phrases, part of everyone's vocabulary in the 1970's, when Mr. Wilson's variety show became one of America's best-watched programs.

Late in his career, Mr. Wilson said of the irrepressible Geraldine, ''She carried me longer than my mother did.''

Geraldine and the Reverend Leroy, along with Mr. Wilson's likable personality, seemingly effortless delivery and joyful depiction of the language and mannerisms of black street life helped catapult ''The Flip Wilson Show'' to No. 1 in the ratings among variety shows shortly after it began on NBC in 1970. The next year, Mr. Wilson won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing Achievement for a Variety Show and, by 1972, his show was second in the overall ratings only to ''All in the Family.''

Mr. Wilson was more storyteller than one-line stand-up comic. His winding tales and uninhibited use of the timbre and resonance of black dialect were often compared to the Yiddish inflections and stories of the comedian Myron Cohen. Richard Pryor once told him, ''You're the only performer that I've seen who goes on the stage and the audience hopes that you like them.''

Unlike many groundbreaking comedians of his period, most notably Lenny Bruce, Dick Gregory and Mort Sahl, Mr. Wilson stayed far afield of politics and social satire. ''Things can be funny only when we are in fun,'' he insisted. ''When we're 'dead earnest,' humor is the only thing that is dead.''

His whimsical fables usually depended on the incongruity of having black characters view historic events from their distinct perspective. In his version of the discovery of America, for example, Christopher Columbus tells Queen Isabella, ''If I don't discover America, there's not gonna be a Benjamin Franklin or a 'Star-Spangled Banner,' or a land of the free, or a home of the brave -- and no Ray Charles.'' When the Queen hears this, she screams: ''Chris gone find Ray Charles! He goin' to America on that boat. What you say!''

Mr. Wilson also delighted in telling shaggy dog stories that wound through circuitous asides and ended with unexpected puns and innocuous word play. His story of a vaudeville comedy team called Well Enough and Bad Enough concludes in a courtroom after one comic has been assaulted by a hotel clerk. Given a particularly harsh sentence, the clerk asks the judge, ''How come you being so hard on me?'' The judge replies, ''I'm trying to teach you to leave Well Enough alone.''

Mr. Wilson was born Clerow Wilson in Jersey City on Dec. 8, 1933, one of 18 children. He was placed in foster care at the age of 7, shortly after his mother abandoned the family. Unhappy periods in foster homes followed; after running away more than a dozen times, he was sent to reform school. ''My happiest memory of childhood was my first birthday in reform school,'' he once told a reporter. ''This teacher took an interest in me. In fact, he gave me the first birthday presents I ever got: a box of Cracker Jacks and a can of ABC shoe polish.'' At age 13, Mr. Wilson rejoined his father, who was a sporadically employed carpenter. ''We were so poor, even the poorest looked down on us,'' Mr. Wilson recalled.

At 16, he quit school and, lying about his age, joined the Air Force. His knack for creating outlandish stories and acting them out in various dialects led some members of his outfit to conclude that he was ''flipping out.'' Soon, everyone was calling him Flip. His commanding officer, a white, Southern major, persuaded him to resume studying and to take typing courses, and he began writing out some of his comedy material. By the time he was discharged in 1954, he had decided to try to make a living as a comedian.

At a hotel in San Francisco where he was working as a bellhop, he asked the manager to let him try out a comedy skit between dance acts at the hotel's nightclub. After the first night, he appeared regularly.

For the next eight years, Mr. Wilson worked his way across the country, appearing in black clubs and theaters where he honed his skills and silenced hecklers with lines such as, ''You know, when we take over, we goin' to have to kill some of us, too.'' By the mid-1960's, he had arrived in New York, where he frequently appeared as a comic and master of ceremonies at the Apollo Theater in Harlem. His big break came in 1965, when Johnny Carson asked Redd Foxx who was the funniest comic around. ''Flip Wilson,'' Mr. Foxx replied, without hesitation.

Mr. Carson immediately booked Mr. Wilson on ''The Tonight Show,'' where he scored a success and was invited back frequently. These appearances led to bookings on ''Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In'' (everyone got to imitate the Wilson reading of ''Heah come de judge!''), ''The Ed Sullivan Show,'' and the Mike Douglas and Merv Griffin shows as well as nightclub engagements at New York's Bitter End, Village Gate, Rainbow Grill and Latin Quarter, and San Francisco's hungry i. Mr. Wilson was given a television special in 1968 and his own variety show in 1970. By 1972, his income had soared to more than a million dollars a year.

Although he rose to prominence at a time when the nation was racked with racial tension, urban riots and a call for black power, he continued focusing on the lighter side of comedy. ''What Flip Wilson has accomplished is almost incredible in a time of Black Panthers and savage rhetoric,'' the critic John Leonard wrote in Life magazine. ''He has taken the threat out of the fact of blackness.''

While other critics praised him for humor that ''was without a shred of racial rancor,'' others criticized him for ''defusing his blackness.''

''Funny is not a color,'' Mr. Wilson responded. ''Being black is only good from the time you get from the curtain to the microphone.'' He insisted that ''my main point is to be funny; if I can slip a message in there, fine.''

Mr. Wilson appeared on four comedy albums, including ''Flip Wilson, You Devil You,'' which won a Grammy Award for Best Comedy Recording in 1968. His film credits included ''Uptown Saturday Night'' (1974) with Sidney Poitier, Bill Cosby and Harry Belafonte. Vincent Canby, the critic of The New York Times, wrote that his performance as a preacher delivering a rousing sermon ''almost stops the film.''

After the 1974-75 season, Mr. Wilson abruptly left his weekly variety show, while it was still among the top 10 shows on television. During the next few years, he starred in several NBC specials and appeared in films but severely curtailed his public appearances.

''I accomplished what I set out to do,'' he said in an interview in 1979 at his home in Malibu. ''I wanted the whole cookie and I got it. Now I want to spend more time with my children -- make sure they don't go through what I did.''

Mr. Wilson was married and divorced twice. He is survived by his sons Kevin and David, and his daughters Stacy, Tamara and Michelle.

He made headlines in 1981 when he was dropped from a 7-Up advertising campaign after he was arrested and charged with possession of a small amount of cocaine. He returned to television in 1984 as the host of a revival of the old Art Linkletter show ''People Are Funny'' and, in 1985, he starred with Gladys Knight in a situation comedy for CBS called ''Charlie and Company.'' Neither show matched the success of his earlier program.

Despite the congeniality and openness he exuded on stage, Mr. Wilson was protective of his privacy. ''What I have to say is on the screen,'' he once told a reporter. ''My life is my own. My show is my statement. Mention my family and I'll walk away. Touch on my personal life and I'm gone.''

After the 1980's, he seldom performed except for occasional guest spots on television situation comedies. He lived quietly, out of the public eye, at his Malibu home.

Flip Wilson's enduring contribution may have been the reintroduction of a distinctively black voice to mainstream comedy, but his appeal was hardly racial. ''Mr. Wilson is not just a black comedian, any more than Jack Benny is just a Jewish comedian,'' a Time magazine critic wrote. ''His humor is universal. He has the talent to make blacks laugh without anger and whites laugh without guilt.''

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