Mack and Myer for Hire - Sitcoms Online Photo Galleries

Mack and Myer for Hire aired from September 1963 until September 1964 in First Run Syndication.

Comics Joey Faye and Mickey Deems rode the coattails of the television slapstick revival by creating a pair of bumbling handymen in the short-lived "Mack and Myer for Hire" TV series. They were a pair of bumbling handymen working in Manhattan, whose jobs always devolved into slapstick disaster.Faye claimed credit for the "Slowly I Turn" routine popularized by comedy acts such as Abbott and Costello and The Three Stooges.

Here is Joey faye's Obituary from The New York Times

Joey Faye, 87, Burlesque Comic and an Actor
By RICK LYMAN
Published: April 28, 1997

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Joey Faye, the last of the legendary burlesque comics and among the few to make a seamless transition to legitimate theater, movies, television and commercials, died early on Saturday at the Actors' Home in Englewood, N.J. He was 87.

In a 65-year career, Mr. Faye played a second banana for Phil Silvers and a dancing bunch of grapes for Fruit of the Loom. He traded ribald jokes with Gypsy Rose Lee, appeared in 36 Broadway shows and numerous programs on early television, and won a best actor award in 1959 from the West Coast Critics Association for a Los Angeles production of ''Waiting for Godot'' opposite Jack Albertson.

But Mr. Faye was best remembered for his work in burlesque and vaudeville playing the sidekick to the lead comic, who is often the target of the slapstick routines.

''He was probably one of the greatest second bananas to come out of burlesque,'' said Michael Townsend Smith, a friend who appeared opposite Mr. Faye in burlesque revivals in recent years.

In that vein, Mr. Faye claimed credit for two of the most famous vaudeville routines, ''Slowly I Turn'' and ''Floogle Street,'' and appeared hundreds of times in both as the hapless butt of the main comic's rage.

''His legacy is that he was really the last of the burlesque clowns,'' said Tony Randall, whose 1993 revival ''Three Men and a Horse'' featured Mr. Faye in his final Broadway appearance. ''With him went the tradition. I don't think there's anybody left who knows all the sketches.''

Mr. Faye, named Joseph Palladino at his birth in 1909 on the Lower East Side, was the son of an Italian immigrant barber.

Mr. Faye got his start in show business appearing in ''amateur night contests'' at New York movie theaters where performers vied for a $7 first prize before the screening of the feature film.

''I'd pick out a movie I hadn't seen and play the 'amateur night' at that theater,'' Mr. Faye told an interviewer. ''I had a good batting average, too. I won 200 out of 290 amateur contests.''

A subsequent job as a social director at a series of hotels in the Catskills led to a job at Minsky's burlesque in New York.

Mr. Faye's first legitimate stage role was in 1937, in the national touring company of ''Room Service,'' opposite Clifton Webb. On Broadway, he appeared in ''Strip for Action'' (1942), ''Little Me'' (1962) and in two plays opposite Mr. Silvers, ''High Button Shoes'' (1947) and ''Top Banana'' (1951).

''It was great to watch the two of them work,'' Mr. Randall said. ''They stood nose to nose and talked into each other's faces. It was like a lesson in acting. It was like the Moscow Arts Theater. They didn't play to the audience. They talked to each other. They acted.''

In a 1942 review, the New York Times drama critic Brooks Atkinson said that Mr. Faye ''knows all the burlesque patter routines and adds to them a rolling walk and a number of unbelievable noises which bear the same relation to sound that slapstick does to the anatomy.''

Another Times critic, Lewis Nichols, described Mr. Faye as ''a funny person, composed of animal and bird noises and quiet misbehaviors.''

In 1968, he appeared on Broadway in ''Man of La Mancha'' as Sancho Panza, second banana again.

Among his television programs in the early 1950's were ''The Joey Faye Frolics'' and ''The Joey Faye Show,'' and he starred in an early situation comedy called ''Mack and Meyer for Hire.''

In movies, he had supporting roles opposite Gary Cooper in ''Ten North Frederick'' (1958), John Wayne in ''North to Alaska'' (1960), Cary Grant in ''That Touch of Mink'' (1962) and Woody Allen in ''The Front'' (1976).

For 15 years beginning in the late 70's, Mr. Faye appeared as one of the talking and dancing fruit in a series of television commercials for Fruit of the Loom. He was the bunch of grapes.

Up until the last year, when Mr. Faye was too sick to work, he often appeared in burlesque revivals.

''He'd seem very fragile off stage,'' Mr. Wright said. ''People would say, how will he do it? And then he'd get onstage and the years would just fly off.''

Mr. Faye is survived by his wife of 28 years, the actress Judi Faye of Los Angeles, and two sisters, Bertha Falacara of North Carolina and Sylvia Palladino of New Jersey.

Mr. Randall also remembered Mr. Faye as an unusually generous man, who always shared a bag of doughnuts and bagels with colleagues in the theater.

''He was an extraordinary man in that he gave away everything he owned,'' Mr. Randall said. ''I mean that literally. If anybody needed anything, he'd give it to him. I remember one time in Hollywood, he gave away his refrigerator. Some friends didn't have a refrigerator and he gave them his. Did you ever hear of such a thing? He carried it himself over to their house.''

For more on Mack and Myer for Hire go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mack_%26_Myer_for_Hire

To watch a clip of Mack and Myer for Hire go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwJJ1qY9y4o

For a Page dedicated to Mack and Myer for Hire go to http://www.tvparty.com/recmack.html

To listen to the theme song of Mack and Myer for Hire go to http://www.televisiontunes.com/Mack_And_Myer_For_Hire.html and to listen to the ending theme song go to http://www.televisiontunes.com/Mack_And_Myer_For_Hire_-_Ending.html