November 24, 2024
by Carla Hay
Directed by Josh Forbes
Culture Representation: The documentary film “Gallagher” takes place in the United States and features an all-white group of people discussing the life and career of comedian Leo Gallagher Jr., who was known by his stage name Gallagher.
Culture Clash: Gallagher had a happy-go-lucky image in public but was very troubled in private.
Culture Audience: “Gallagher” will appeal primarily to Gallagher fans and people who are interested in documentaries about famous comedians.
The insightful documentary “Gallagher” is a lesson on the fickleness of showbiz fame and is another example of how comedians are often self-destructive and deeply unhappy in their personal lives. This definitive documentary about comedian Gallagher gives a comprehensive look at the highs, lows and everything in between during his troubled life. The film benefits from his participation before his 2022 death.
Directed by Josh Forbes, “Gallagher” had its world premiere at the 2024 edition of DOC NYC. Forbes, who is the occasional narrator of the documentary, begins by saying up front that he made the movie as a big fan of Gallagher, whom he says “changed [Forbes’] life forever.” It’s a movie made from a fan’s perspective, but it’s also not afraid to show who Gallagher really was, flaws and all.
Forbes says in the documentary’s introduction about Gallagher: “He really was a wordsmith, a poet, a visual absurdist. What happened to Gallagher? What happened to that surreal hippie I knew as a kid?” The answer (which many viewers might not know until seeing this documentary) is not a safe and pretty story, since the end of Gallagher’s career was a downward spiral of family feuds and controversies over racist and transphobic jokes in his stand-up comedy act.
Gallagher (his one-word stage name) was born Leo Gallagher Jr. in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, in July 24, 1946. He died at age 76 of organ failure in a hospice in Palm Desert, California, on November 11, 2022. The documentary “Gallagher” includes a great deal of archival footage of his performances and interviews, as well as footage filmed exclusively for the documentary of Gallagher in the final years before his death.
The documentary tells Gallagher’s life story in mostly chronological order, but focuses mainly on his years as a professional entertainer. There’s not much discussion about his childhood and teenage years, except to say that he didn’t like to talk too much about his past and he had a rocky relationship with his father. His relationships with his relatives are given more detail later in the documentary when Gallagher was embroiled with lawsuits about his younger look-alike brother Ron Gallagher performing as Gallagher Two or Gallagher Too.
Gallagher’s on-stage persona was being a goofy and playful comedian who used a lot of props during his stand-up comedy act. He became famous for taking a sledgehammer (called the Sledge-O-Matic) and smashing items (most notably watermelons) on stage during his performance. He was also considered a pioneer in doing stand-up comedy specials on cable TV. Gallagher starred in several stand-up comedy specials for Showtime, beginning with 1980’s “An Uncensored Evening.”
Before he found fame on television, Gallagher honed his act from the late 1960s to the mid-1970s at various comedy clubs in the Los Angeles, including the Comedy Store, where he first did his Sledge-O-Matic performance. This exposure led to Gallagher having guest appearances on “The Mike Douglas Show” and “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.” Gallagher’s “Tonight Show” debut was delayed in 1975 because the show’s bookers decided to have Steve Martin on the show in a spot that was originally booked for Gallagher.
People who knew Gallagher back then, such as comedian/musician Jim Stafford and comedian Tom Dreesen, say in the documentary that Gallagher’s public image of being a freewheeling, happy-go-lucky guy was mostly an act. In real life behind the scenes, Gallagher could be a cranky and very competitive workaholic. For example, when Gallagher found out that Martin replaced Gallagher for a guest spot on “The Tonight Show,” Gallagher reportedly watched the episode with envy and insults directed at Martin, even though Gallagher begrudgingly admitted that Martin was very talented.
When Gallagher finally got to be on “The Tonight Show,” he felt slighted when “Tonight Show” host Johnny Carson didn’t invite Gallagher to be interviewed on the couch after Gallagher’s performance. This was a sign that Carson wasn’t very enthusiastic about Gallagher, reportedly because Carson wasn’t a fan of comedians who use props. But Gallagher was apparently the type of person who held grudges and saw this snub as a reason to dislike Carson.
Robin Riker, a comedian/actress who was Gallagher’s live-in girlfriend in the late 1970s, remembers their relationship as being unstable because of Gallagher’s unpredictable mood swings and workaholic ways. He could be volatile or emotionally distant. When Gallagher called her while he was on tour, “There was an aloofness to him,” Riker says.
When she asked him once, “Do you love me?,” his reply was, “Do you have to know?” Riker says in the documentary that she ended the relationship shortly after he had an explosive outburst and embarrassed her a wrap party for the 1980 film “Alligator,” which was her feature-film debut. Gallagher’s career then took off in the 1980s, when he became famous enough to sell out arenas, but there were limitations to the career opportunities that he got.
According to Gallagher’s former manager Craig Marquardo: “Gallagher has a particular look that perhaps wasn’t so friendly for sitcoms or late-night TV hosts or movies or TV shows. So while [Jerry Seinfeld] and [Jay] Leno and [David] Letterman went to other careers, Gallagher got left behind.” Instead of starring in big TV series or movies, Gallagher earned his fortune by touring. It was a fortune that he says Gallagher lost from bad investments and legal problems.
Gallagher was married and divorced twice and had one child with each ex-wife. His first ex-wife Deedra Higgins (who is interviewed by audio only) and their daughter Aimee Gallagher Correia (also known as Aimee Correia) are interviewed separately in the documentary. Ex-wife Higgins says that their marriage fell apart because he was too preoccupied with work. Even at home, he wanted people to call him Gallagher, not by his first name Leo. Aimee remembers being aware from an early age that her father was famous because of how people would react to him every time she would go out with him in public.
She also remembers quirky things about their home life, such as the family’s swimming pool being in their front yard and how her father would practice smashing watermelon with a sledgehammer in the front of the house. When Gallagher was alive, Correia commented in the documentary: “He loves to create. That’s what keeps him alive.”
Bruce Baum, a comedian who was Gallagher’s friend, shares a very different memory of what type of father Gallagher was to Aimee. Baum tells a story in the documentary about his daughter (who was 4 years old at the time) and 2-year-old Aimee having playtime together that Gallagher was videotaping. When Gallagher played the video back for the kids to watch, all he could do is give criticism to Aimee about what she was doing wrong in the video.
Gallagher’s son Barnaby, from Gallagher’s second marriage to Geralyn Hines, doesn’t have much to add about his father and will only say that he’s proud to be his father’s son. The documentary also has mostly quick and not-very-interesting soundbites from comedians who knew Gallagher or consider themselves to be fans of Gallagher. These comedians include Jimmy Kimmel, Bill Burr, Dax Jordan, Howie Mandel, Pauly Shore (who’s mother Mitzi Shore owned the Comedy Store), Mike Binder, Jon Schnitzer. Also interviewed are musician Jimmy Zappas and music producer Lee Miles, who both worked with Gallagher.
Carrot Top talks about how when Gallagher seemed to be jealous and suspicious of Carrot Top early in Carrot Top’s career because Carrot Top uses a lot of props in his stand-up comedy act. Over the years, Gallagher’s hostility toward Carrot Top cooled down, and they became cordial colleagues. Comedian/actor Bobcat Goldthwait says Gallagher had a hard time functioning off stage.
The documentary chronicles how things started to go downhill for Gallagher in the 1990s, when Gallagher began to be sued by audience members for injuries sustained during his Sledge-O-Matic performances. He also started including racist comments in his stand-up comedy act and was no longer welcome on certain TV shows as a result. According to the documentary, a Gallagher family feud was the biggest reason why Gallagher he went into a decline.
During the 1990s, younger brother Ron was given permission to perform as Gallagher Two, under the condition that it was made clear Ron was not his older brother Leo, the original Gallagher comedian. But somewhere along the way, lines began to be blurred between the two brothers’ images and stage acts, and Gallagher ended up suing Ron to stop performing under the Gallagher Two name. Their father Leo Gallagher Sr. also got involved in these legal disputes by claiming he invented the Sledge-O-Matic idea. Leo Gallagher Sr. and Gallagher’s mother took Ron’s side in these legal battles.
This family feud broke Gallagher’s spirit, according to his daughter Aimee. “He felt extremely betrayed,” she says. “It did something to his brain.” In the 2000s, Gallagher started having more health problems, including heart attacks, but had to earn most of his income the only way he knew how: touring. His stand-up comedy changed from being whimsical anecdotes and playful antics to becoming increasingly angry and bitter ranting about the types of people who experience bigotry for not being white, heterosexual or cisgender.
As for the footage of Gallagher in his elderly years, some of it shows him unapolgetically making racist, homophobic and transphobic jokes. When asked about controversies over his offensive comments during his stand-up comedy act, Gallagher dismisses any concerns by saying the world has gotten too politically correct.
That’s not to say that if Gallagher suddenly became a politically correct comedian, he would’ve had a bigger audience in his elder years. The documentary shows that the slow and pathetic decline of his career and his health had more to do with his overall negativity and bitterness. At times, Gallagher also gets temperamental and tells director Forbes he doesn’t want to be filmed anymore.
By the end of his life, Gallagher seems to still enjoy performing but there’s a forced obligation that comes across when he interacts with his fans, who are there mainly because of the way Gallagher used to be at the peak of his fame. You can practically see Gallagher suppress a wince when a female in her mid-20s tells him that she wasn’t even born when he was famous. It’s obvious from Gallagher’s mercurial personality, this was a documentary made in starts and stops, because he seems like the type of celebrity who frequently changed his mind on how much he wanted to participate in a documentary about his life.
“Gallagher” is not a fully comprehensive documentary. There are many aspects of Gallagher’s pre-fame life that aren’t detailed in the movie. For example, it’s never really explained how Gallagher went from graduating from the University of South Florida in 1970 with a bachelor’s degree (he majored in chemical engineering and minored in English literature) to becoming a stand-up comedian. However, the strength of this documentary is that it avoids the pitfalls of overly flattering celebrity documentaries by presents a frank examination of how Gallagher’s life was very different on stage and off stage.
