The Phil Silvers Show: Bilko's Grand Hotel
02:30 am - 03:00 am, Wednesday, January 7 on WNYW Catchy Comedy (5.5)
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About this Broadcast
Bilko's Grand Hotel
Season 4, Episode 16
Bilko buys a rundown hotel, hoping a well-known chain will buy him out. Hilton: Irwin Corey. Rocco: Harvey Lembeck.
repeat
1959
English
Comedy
Sitcom
Cast & Crew
Harvey Lembeck
(Actor)
.. Cpl. Rocco Barbella
More Information
Did You Know..
Harvey Lembeck
(Actor)
.. Cpl. Rocco Barbella
Born:
April 15, 1923
Died: January 05, 1982
Died: January 05, 1982
Trivia:
Brooklyn-born Harvey Lembeck was a nightclub and Broadway comedian at the time of his 1951 film bow in You're in the Navy Now. The roly-poly, nasal-voiced Lembeck was most often cast as the wise-guy comedy relief in war films, most notably Stalag 17 (1953), in which Lembeck and bearlike Robert Strauss repeated their stage roles as "court jesters" in a dismal POW camp (the two actors would later be reteamed in the 1961 Jack Webb picture The Last Time I Saw Archie, not to mention a series of TV commercials in the mid-1960s). Harvey remained in uniform for a four-year hitch as Corporal Barbella on the popular 1950s Phil Silvers sitcom You'll Never Get Rich. In 1963's Beach Party, Lembeck made the first of several sidesplitting appearances as leather-jacketed Brando wannabe Eric von Zipper, whose attempts to prove his toughness to his fellow bikers always came a-cropper; in Beach Blanket Bingo, for example, he was cut in twain by a buzzsaw, moaning "Why Me?" even as his two halves fell bloodlessly to the floor. During the 1970s and early 1980s, Harvey Lembeck directed several TV sitcom episodes, and also operated a training school for aspiring comedians; carrying on the "family business" after Harvey's death was his son, actor/director Michael Lembeck.
