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Herschel Shmoikel Pinkus Yerucham Krustofski (1930s – ), more commonly known as Krusty the Clown, is a fictional character in the cartoon The Simpsons (His name was originally Herschel Schmoikel Krustofski, but it has changed since the episode "Today I am A Clown". The spelling of the first and last name has been confirmed in "Bart the Fink"). He is voiced by Dan Castellaneta. Krusty is the long-time clown host of Bart and Lisa's favorite TV show. The TV show is a combination of kiddie variety-television hijinks with a sidekick, and cartoons (including the Tom and Jerry parody Itchy and Scratchy). His sidekick, Sideshow Bob, has been replaced by Sideshow Mel. Another sidekick was Sideshow Raheem, an angry black young man in sunglasses who wears a multi-colored dashiki, but no evidence exists to show whether Sideshow Bob was a replacement for Sideshow Raheem. He was also aided briefly by Sideshow Luke Perry (his 'worthless' half-brother on his mother's side) while preparing for his comeback special. In one episode, Marge Simpson said she had worked briefly as Sideshow Marge. One Krusty trademark is changing the spelling of many words that begin with C to instead begin with K, as evidenced by the original spelling of his name, Krusty the Klown, and with such events as the unfortunately-named Krusty's Komedy Klassics (KKK).
Inspirations The character was partially inspired by real-life clown "Rusty Nails" who Simpsons creator Matt Groening watched as a child while growing up in Portland, Oregon. In one episode, Bart references this inspiration ("Rusty the Clown? Springfield gets the lamest balloons"). Castellaneta based his voice characterization on Chicago television legend Bob Bell who portrayed WGN-TV's Bozo the Clown from 1960-1984. Krusty, with his 'Krusty Burger' chain, is also a parody of Ronald McDonald, the famous fast-food clown of the McDonald's burger chain. Krusty's off-camera personality, particularly his treatment of his show staff was reportedly modelled after David Letterman by ex-Late Night writers who went on to write for The Simpsons. Homer Simpson himself was in an inspiration for creating Krusty, as said in DVD commentary, "Krusty is basically Homer in a clown suit." This is proven in the episode, "Homie the Clown", where Homer becomes a clown and looks nearly identical to Krusty, often being mistaken as him. Biography The episode "Like Father, Like Clown" (based on the film The Jazz Singer), first released on October 24, 1991, expanded on his origin. According to it, he was born Herschel Schmoeckel Krustofski and is of Jewish heritage. Krusty is a third generation American. In 1902, Krusty's grandfather Zeev Krustofski left Imperial Russia for the United States and gained entry through Ellis Island. His son Hyman Krustofski became an Orthodox rabbi and a leader of his community, whose wise counsel (such as if it is right to buy a Chrysler) is continually sought. Rabbi Krustofski, voiced by Jackie Mason, hoped that his son would follow in his footsteps (he brags that Herschel is at top of his Yeshiva class). However, Herschel wanted to become a clown because he wanted to make people laugh. Consequently, the Rabbi disowned him. Decades later, Krusty memorably reconciled with his father with the assistance of Bart and Lisa. It was later revealed Krusty did not have a Bar Mitzvah service, because Hyman feared he would violate the sanctity of the rites by "acting up." Krusty had two adult Bar Mitzvah ceremonies: a Hollywood gala, then a simple ceremony intended to reconnect with his father. After leaving the Lower East Side of Springfield, Krusty started his 50-year show biz career as a street mime in Tupelo, Mississippi. He then appeared on a variety of Laugh-In style variety shows, but in the 1950s was banned from television for 10 years after saying "pants" on the air, which was not allowed at the time. In the 1960s he finally got his own television show, The Krusty the Klown Show, which featured Krusty discussing current events with serious guests (an episode of the show dated February 6, 1961 featured AFL-CIO president George Meany and a discussion of the "labor crisis in America"). The interview format began to increase in wackiness from that point on -- while interviewing Robert Frost, he dumped a load of snow on the poet. Much of this loss of prestige may have been due to Krusty's substance abuse problems: he was clearly stoned when Ravi Shankar played on the show less than a decade after Meany's appearance, and he once exclaimed "what was I on?" while watching a clip of himself howling a drugged-out version of The Doors' "Break on Through (to the Other Side)." By the 1980s the show had devolved into a children's entertainment show. Krusty quickly became a multi-millionaire, mostly by licensing his name and image to a variety of suspect products and services. In the Simpsons' world, there are everything from Krusty alarm clocks, to Krusty dolls, to Krusty eye wash (many of which are owned by Bart) and Krusty's Clown College, which Homer attended. The more dangerous ones include: the Krusty home pregnancy test, which "may cause birth defects"; Krusty's brand of bubble gum, which contains spider eggs (which they knew about) and hantavirus (which they didn't know about); Krusty Kologne, which may cause "severe chemical burns"; and Krusty's brand of cereal, which in one episode boasted a jagged metal Krusty-O in each box, at first, and then flesh-eating bacteria in each box. One of many lawsuits regarding these products was launched by Bart, who ate a jagged metal Krusty-O and had to have his appendix removed. It was suggested at the end of the episode that he would sue Krusty again after he ingested the flesh-eating bacteria that was put into the cereal. Other lawsuits have resulted from defective products, such as a number of parents suing Krusty for one of his defective balloons exploding and taking out the eyes of "every kid in the room", Krusty's sexual harassment of any number of women, accusations that his theme park is a "death trap", and for illegally selling Tonya Harding's honeymoon video. Krusty likely avoided further trouble over Kamp Krusty by personally taking the campers to the "happiest place on earth" - Tijuana. The "Krusty Korporation", the company responsible for Krusty's licensing, has also launched a series of disastrous promotions and business ventures: Sponsoring the 1984 Summer Olympics with a rigged promotion that backfired when the Soviet Union boycotted the games, causing Krusty to personally lose $44 million; building a series of Krusty Burger outlets on unmanned oil rigs, leading Krusty himself to observe "I'm taking a bath on this"; and recording "We're Sending Our Love Down the Well", a "We Are The World"-type charity song meant to raise funds for a little boy that was supposedly trapped down a well. When the boy being trapped down a well was exposed as one of Bart Simpson's pranks, the song instantly plunged from At one time, he had his own brand of pork products; this might have led to his almost-fatal on-the-air heart attack and subsequent pacemaker. There is a list of all Krusty related products at the end of this page. Krusty also operates his own television production company, Krustylu Productions (a pun on Lucille Ball and her husband Desi Arnaz's Desilu Productions). His much-abused sidekick, Sideshow Bob, framed him for armed robbery, which resulted in Krusty's brief incarceration. In the interim, Bob ran the show, but was fired when he was identified as the real culprit. Krusty is a hard-living entertainment veteran who has been down and out several times (always being rescued by the Simpson children) and remains addicted to gambling, cigarettes, alcohol, Pepto, and Xanax (and, in one episode, Percodan). He instantly becomes depressed as soon as the cameras stop rolling. He seems to suffer from bipolar disorder, and, in a Soupy Sales parody, asked children to send him spare lithium from their parent's medicine cabinets after every employer in town cut off their prescription drug plans. In "The Heartbroke Kid" he says that his tolerance levels are so high from years of excess he has to smoke ground-up moon rocks just to feel normal. Krusty's vices have affected American foreign policy. On an episode guest starring Drew Barrymore as his illegitimate daughter, it was revealed that he prevented Saddam Hussien's assassination by US forces during the Gulf War. After meeting a beautiful soldier during his USO tour, he sleeps with her ("Maybe it was the anthrax in the air," he said). They awake the next morning, she panics because she is late for her mission and pushes off Krusty who wants her to stay and "get down with the clown". When he finds out she is planning on killing Saddam with a missile launcher, he tackles her and knocks the explosives off course. Saddam was a great source of his comedic material, he claims. Since then she's hated him despite them having a daughter. Her home is filled with a variety of artwork depicting clowns being killed. His show was briefly canceled after the debut of Gabbo the ventriloquist dummy, who was so popular that Krusty was subsequently driven out of business. Bart tried to get the Gabbo show canceled when he snuck into the studio and switched on the camera during what was supposed to be a commercial break, revealing the ventriloquist Arthur Crandall saying "That oughtta hold the little S.O.B.s," referring to his audience, through Gabbo, a reference to a famous radio urban legend about Uncle Don. Krusty then returns to the air with an Elvis-style comeback special in which his many celebrity friends appear and reignite his career. In 1996, after an IRS bust for tax "avoision", (sic), according to Kent Brockman, which resulted in his bankruptcy, Krusty faked his death and lived briefly as sailor Rory B. Bellows. Krusty insured Bellows's life in his own name and then staged an accident to "kill" Bellows, collecting the money to rebuild his life. Krusty otherwises wastes money almost as fast as he earns it: lighting his cigarettes with hundred-dollar bills, pearl necklaces and priceless copies of Action Comics; eating condor-egg omelets; hiring Kenny G to play for him in his elevator; sending a thousand roses to Bea Arthur's grave, even though she is still alive; settling plagiarism lawsuits with other comedians (see below); spending huge sums on pornographic magazines (which Apu says kept him in business his first year); losing a fortune gambling on everything from horse races to operas to the Washington Generals; and buying a ruby-studded clown nose. He seems to retire from and then get back into showbiz repeatedly throughout his career. His last retirement (a parody of Carson's retirement) was almost permanent because of recently-paroled Sideshow Bob's latest scheme – wiring plastique explosives to a hypnotized Bart and sending him up on stage (a parody of The Manchurian Candidate). A last minute change of heart at Krusty's touching mention of him in a speech (as well as a last-minute rescue by Krusty's chain smoking chimp, Mr. Teeny) stopped Bob's plan. Bob and Krusty later reconciled, with Krusty exclaiming that Bob's attempts at Krusty's life make his ratings shoot through the roof. Krusty – minus his trademark clown-hair, pale "facepaint" and red nose – bears an uncanny physical resemblance to Homer Simpson. There are some differences, such as his cow-skull birthmark, his superfluous third nipple, and his small feet. In addition, in the episode "Bart the Fink", he was seen sans clown makeup, but in a bizarre twist, while swimming, yellow face paint washed off, revealing his trademark clown features, indicating that the look is indeed permanent. This would seem to confirm a remark he once made to Homer Simpson, in which he noted the after effects of his heart attack and pacemaker implant by pointing to his face and saying, "This ain't make-up!". Krusty's physical similarity to Homer was discussed in an interview with Matt Groening, who explained that he wanted Krusty (who Bart idolises) to demonstrate a close resemblance to Bart's own father (who he doesn't). Krusty shares a number of parallels with certain real-life celebrities. His addiction to Percodan mirrors that of Jerry Lewis. Like Lewis, he also holds children's telethons (raising funds for motion sickness), and easily believed that the French government would award him the Legion of Honor (actually a trick invented by Bart and Lisa in an attempt to reconcile him with his estranged father). Krusty also shares Sean Penn's tendency to punch members of the paparazzi. Krusty's show is also patterned after the Tonight Shows of Johnny Carson and Steve Allen; it has both the opening monologue and conversations with guests made famous by Carson and the madcap stunts popularized by Allen, even going so far as to directly plagiarize some of Allen's jokes. Krusty has even mentioned how, like Carson, many other people have come after him in an attempt to become the number-one children's show in America, but that he buried them all, including "hobos, sea captains, Joey Bishop" (Bishop was one of many would-be usurpers to Carson's throne, all of whom Carson thwarted without difficulty) and "slaughtered" the Special Olympics. Krusty has been threatened with lawsuits by other entertainers, such as George Carlin and Steve Martin, for stealing their material, which Krusty resolves with $10,000 payments to each. Recent history It was revealed that Krusty was illiterate in "Krusty Gets Busted" (first released on April 29, 1990), where Sideshow Bob framed him for armed robbery. He has since been seen reading with varying ability (many fans have noted that in the episode "Lisa's First Word", he is shown reading a wire service article in 1983). Since, many years before, Krusty's rabbi father praised his apparently genuinely good performance in Yeshiva school, it seems highly unlikely that Krusty never learned to read in his youth. Possibly his modern "illiteracy" stemmed from temporary brain damage from his long years of overindulgence after achieving show business success. Through his unnamed mother, Krusty is supposedly an older half-brother to actor Luke Perry. His only other known relatives are his father, his grandfather, and his illegitimate daughter Sophie, (voiced by actress Drew Barrymore), the result of an affair between Krusty and a U.S soldier during the Gulf War. Krusty may well have other illegitimate children from his various sexual escapades, as at least one woman has been trying to show him their son. Krusty's profligate spending has resulted in encounters with the local Mafia, not to mention schemes such as running a clown college to turn out proxy Krustys to appear at birthday parties, and running a concentration camp-like summer camp called "Kamp Krusty". He willingly sells out to commercial interests to sell all manner of second-rate goods – he even has a generic spoken endorsement: "I heartily endorse this event or product!" His lack of care towards the quality of his merchandising is evidenced by the little attention he pays to the names of events he stars in: his Christmas show, "Krusty Kinda Khristmas"; his TV special, "Krusty Komedy Klassics"; and a tennis tournament he sponsored, the "Krusty Kharity Klassic" all use the unfortunate acronym "KKK" (as in Ku Klux Klan). The only instance of this he notices is the TV special, and that was only because the initials are shown behind him. Due to a poorly thought-out booking decision, Krusty was live at the Apollo Theater at the time. He also owns a toy factory in China that manufactures Krusty-brand toys, where a huge painting of him stares down at the workers, and a recorded message from him -- "Laziness is counter-revolutionary!" and "Questions are decadent!" -- is played repeatedly to encourage the employees to work harder. In 2003, Krusty was elected to the United States House of Representatives as a Republican (though he once joked of voting for Bill Clinton in 1992 whilst campaigning for the GOP). A year later, he served on a House committee to investigate Ziffcorp – run by one Artie Ziff until he lost 98% of the company to Homer for corporate malfeasance. Apparently back in showbiz (despite having retired several times), he balances a political career with his local cable shenanigans. Krusty's humor is primarily aimed at children, and thus involves a great deal of slapstick and physical abuse of Sideshow Mel. That said, he also briefly enjoyed some success as an alternative stand up comic, after Bart persuaded Jay Leno to put him on the bill for a charity comedy night, which also featured Bobcat Goldthwait, Steven Wright and Janeane Garofalo. Krusty's routine (involving a revolving bow tie and an outdated racist impersonation of a Chinese person) bombed badly, sparking his decision to retire from showbusiness. Unexpectedly, his angry condemnation of modern trends at his retirement press conference caused great mirth from the gatherered journalists. Seizing the opportunity to reinvent his career, Krusty tied his hair back in a ponytail and appeared at Moe's Tavern, quickly becoming an anti establishment, furious stand up comic, along the lines of George Carlin and Bill Hicks. Unfortunately, the lure of free merchandise in exchange for blatant promotion of a product proved too much for Krusty to resist. Offered a "Canyonero" SUV in return for promoting it in his act, Krusty was soon bottled off the stage and returned to his avaricious, cynical old self. Episodes Starring Krusty This is a list of Simpsons episodes in which Krusty plays a substantial role in driving the plot, not simply a supporting role. In the comic books In Simpsons Comics Quotes Krusty: "No, I got where I am today by naming names in the '50s." Apu: "Hello?" Krusty: "Hello?" Apu: "Are you a beautiful woman?" Krusty: "Do I sound like a beautiful woman?" Apu: "This is not as hot a party as I had anticipated." Krusty:''reading from cue cards'' "Well here we are the star of the Blue Lagoon and me, the blue haired goon! I...ah...wait thats terrible!" Brooke Shields: "Cartoons have the power to make us laugh and to make us cry. Wouldn't you agree, Krusty?" Krusty: "First of all my hair is green not blue. I got nothing to work with here. Nothing." ''walks off stage'' "Well, at least I can take off this girdle." ''long elastic snapping noise'' "Ahhhh...oh yeah." Krusty products Krusty has endorsed many products and places that are named after him. Here is a partial list: Krusty also endorses endorsement contracts. (Hey, hey! They're binding!) Video game appearances | ||||||||
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