The Cigarette Box Incident
The series is often remembered for an infamous incident that occurred on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. Rickles had earlier appeared on The Tonight Show with guest host Bob Newhart. While poking fun at Newhart and improvising a bit in which he was a clerk in an immigration office, Rickles slammed the cigarette box Carson kept on his desk while pretending to stamp passports, and accidentally broke the box. When Carson returned to the show and discovered this, he took a camera crew to the studio next door where Sharkey was being taped. Carson disrupted the taping in order to tease Rickles about it, to the delight of the studio audiences of both shows. Carson imitated Rickles' insult comedy style by calling him a "big dummy" and teasing Harrison Page by speaking to him in an exaggerated jive accent. This incident was often replayed in Tonight Show retrospectives and was considered a highlight of the 1970s era of the show. It originally aired during December 1976. It was also featured in the documentary Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project.
Read more about this topic: C.P.O. Sharkey
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