When Andy Kauffman appeared on the 1979 Johnny Cash Christmas special
If there’s one thing a music legend can rely on to boost record sales, it is Christmas. Just ask Johnny Cash, who hosted the Johnny Cash Christmas Special every year from 1976 to 1979, transforming his public image from road-worn drug addict to festive family entertainer.
Cash, though it may come as something of a surprise to those who didn’t grow up watching American television in the late 1970s and ’80s, was no stranger to the small screen. The Man In Black made appearances in Columbo and Little House on The Prarie, bagged a recurring role in Dr. Quinn Medecine Woman, and gave a flinty portrayal of James Brown in a 1985 mini-series TV adaptation of Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South. He even did a few adverts for Amoco during the gas crisis of the early ’70s.
Of course, Cash’s most memorable TV work was as a genial version of himself in his short-lived variety program The Johnny Cash Show, which ran from 1969 to 1971 before being axed by the network. A few years later, he reprised the role for the Johnny Cash Christmas Special, an unashamedly corny slice of festive television that saw the ‘Folsom Prison Blues’ singer dial back the confrontations and amps up the merriment. In the inaugural 1976 broadcast, there’s a whole lot of fake laughing, a heap of monologuing through winter forests, and the obligatory mock Swiss chalet. What there isn’t is much humour.
By the 1979 Johnny Cash Christmas Special, that was no longer the case. Suddenly, there were comedy sketches to break up the musical numbers, allowing comedians like Andy Kaufman to strut their stuff. Kaufman first appears in the opening bit in the role of Latka, one of his many characters, who, two years previously, had caught the attention of the producers for Taxi, who saw his Foreign Man act at the Comedy Store. The sitcoms had already been cast, but the producers decided to offer Kaufman a role nevertheless.
By the time Kaufman appeared on The Johnny Cash Christmas Special, he was a huge star, but there was a sort of desperation in his eyes that implied his appearance on the TV program was a means to an end. That being said, his performance brings a much-needed dose of surrealism to the program, with the comedian appearing a while later to perform a “special Christmas song” and ask Canadian singer Anne Murray to marry him and have his children.
