Today In Humor History: He was wearing dresses long before Gay Pride month. Jameel Joseph Farah was born on July 1, 1934 in Toledo, Ohio. His first success at acting came at age 11 when he won $2.00 in a local acting contest. After high school, Jameel attended the Pasadena Playhouse in Pasadena, California, where a talent scout for MGM offered him a screen-test for the upcoming 1955 movie “Blackboard Jungle”. Jameel won the role of the mentally challenged student Santini, and he was on his way. At the beginning, only small roles were available for the young actor, who appeared in several movies over the next few years (‘Three Violent People”, “No Time For Sergeants”, “Las Vegas Beat”). Then, in 1959, Jameel got his first taste of television when he joined the ensemble cast of “The Red Skelton Hour”, which he stayed with for two years until the show’s cancellation. It was during that time that he changed his name to the American version we recognize today: Jamie Farr. After Skelton, Jamie guest-starred on several TV shows (“Get Smart”, “The Dick Van Dyke Show”, “Hazel”) and starred in the occasional movie (“With Six You Get Eggroll”, “Who’s Minding The Mint?). Then, in 1972, he was hired for one day’s work on the first season of a new sitcom called “M*A*S*H*”. His character, Corporal Maxwell Klinger, was a soldier who wore dresses in an attempt to be discharged from the army on a Section 8 (Mentally unfit for service). He was asked back for a dozen episodes in the second season and he became a regular in the third. Eventually, his character gave up wearing women’s clothing (after a lecture from Colonel Sherman Potter, explaining how a Section 8 Discharge would adversely affect his life). Like most of the characters on “M*A*S*H”, Corporal Klinger matured as the years passed. He gradually progressed from being a cross-dressing visual joke, and became a more sensitive and resourceful character, appearing in 212 episodes in all. After the show’s cancellation in 1983, Jamie spent one more years as Klinger in “After M*A*S*H*”, the sequel that showed how civilian life treated the returning soldiers (29 episodes). Since that time, Jamie has been a guest star on numerous TV shows “Murder She Wrote”, “Mad About You”, “Diagnosis Murder”) and movies (“Scrooged”, “A Grandpa For Christmas”, “A Month Of Sundays”). Still working in the industry today, he is certainly one of the nicest guys that ever wore a gown. >:-p youtube/watch?v=LJyfmanqYc8
Posted on: Mon, 01 Jul 2013 10:39:13 +0000
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