Once a week long-time radio producer and author Rick Kaempfer shares his favorite brushes with greatness in a feature he calls “Celebrity Snippets.”
Ellen DeGeneres turns 49 this week. She has hosted The Emmy's twice, and her very popular TV-talk show “Ellen” is on the air every weekday on NBC.In 1989, I was working as the producer of the Steve Dahl & Garry Meier show on WLUP AM, but I was also helping out another show at the same station: The Kevin Matthews Show. For the most part, my help was only needed at his live stage shows.
Kevin hosted a series of what he called “Comedy Jams” in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. He recruited comedians from around the country to appear at these shows, and one of them was Ellen DeGeneres.
At the time, Ellen was an up and coming comedian with a quirky sense of humor. Her stand up act was polished, but she wasn’t nationally known.
I was working backstage when I had my one and only encounter with her. She was in her dressing room minding her own business, when a co-worker of mine (I won’t embarrass him by publicly revealing his name) knocked on her door. This co-worker had earlier told me: “There’s something about Ellen that really turns me on.”
He saw me watching him knock, and winked to let me know he was going to be turning on the charm. Ellen was 31 at the time. My co-worker was around 25.
I knew he had no chance, but I didn’t know he really had no chance.
Ellen was very polite and allowed him to enter her dressing room, but she stood in the doorway in a way that wouldn’t allow the door to be closed. That was too bad for my co-worker, because I heard the entire awkward conversation.
He asked her what she was doing after the show, and wondered if she wanted to “party.”
Ellen told him that she never went out after shows--she preferred to go back to her room and chill out. I was expecting my co-worker to ask if he could come back to the hotel with her, but even Romeo realized he was striking out. He sheepishly told her to “break a leg,” and then left her dressing room.
He was embarrassed when he saw that I had heard the entire conversation, so as he walked by me, he said: “I bet she’s a lesbian.”
"Sure, pal," I joked. "If she’s not into you, then she’s gotta be a lesbian."
When Ellen "came out" on her television show in 1997, I was probably laughing harder than anyone else in the country.
She really is a lesbian.
Although between you and me, I’m betting that even if she wasn’t, she still would have given my co-worker the exact same brush off.
Stories like this one (and many, many more) are available via Allworth Press--in my How-To-Guide for producing radio shows (co-written with fellow radio producer John Swanson)Click on this link to order your copy: The Radio Producer's Handbook
