Ronnie Schell is the first to acknowledge he never hit the big time as an entertainer.
But the man who has carried the title “America’s Slowest Rising Young Comedian” for about 50 years is also quick to point out his life in show business has kept him working steadily, while many of his contemporaries have stopped or are no longer around.
“I’m not a big star. I always say it’s been mighty lonely in the middle,” said the veteran entertainer and Richmond native, who turns 80 on Friday. “It’s been fun.”
Schell was tagged with — and embraced — the “slowest rising” label decades ago by legendary San Francisco radio personality Don Sherwood.
“It was Sherwood who coined the phrase because everybody I worked with moved on ahead,” Schell said, naming then-novice acts that went to to national prominence such as Phyllis Diller and the Smothers Brothers, among others.
Schell himself got his chance at stardom when he was cast in the lead of the CBS television sitcom “Good Morning World” in 1967 after his successful run on the series “Gomer Pyle, USMC.”
The show flopped in the ratings, and it was his co-star Goldie Hawn who went on to fame, first as a regular on “Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-in” and then in films.
“Two years later she made ‘Cactus Flower’ and won an Academy Award, and I’m working at a club in Omaha,” Schell recalled with a chuckle.
Schell is still working the clubs, getting stage and television roles, doing voice-over work and staying quite busy.
Just this month Schell played a week at Harrah’s Comedy Room in Las Vegas, was the celebrity host of the Christmas tree lighting in Palm Springs and walked through a half marathon in Monterey.
Last month he had shooting for roles in upcoming TV shows “Retired at 35” and “Jessie.”
“I never thought about retiring,” he said. “Fortunately, I’ve never had to in the sense that I’m still working at night clubs. I just played Vegas for the 42nd year.”
Schell lives in Los Angeles, but stays in close contact with the Bay Area, particularly Richmond, where he grew up with dreams of being an outfielder for the San Francisco Seals.
“Despite all my travels, I still have my roots in Richmond,” said the 1950 Richmond Union High School graduate. “I go to a luncheon twice a year with old buddies at La Strada in San Pablo.”
Schell lived in the heart of the area known as the Iron Triangle in the years before World War II changed the city overnight.
“I remember Richmond in a gentler time,” he said. “We lived at 1009 Barrett Ave., and I can remember playing at night in the street.”
The comedian, who got into entertaining during his time in the U.S. Air Force and then at San Francisco State University, also has fond memories of his days as a writer and sketch performer for Sherwood — first on radio and then on his television shows on KGO and KTVU.
“Don used to go across the bay in his boat to KTVU, which was right by the water,” Schell recalled. “Sometimes — I was braver then — I would water ski right underneath the bridge.”
The two made the rounds of San Francisco night life in those days.
“Before I was married we’d go nightclubbing,” Schell said. “I wasn’t the drinker he was. He could go for days, sometimes four days straight and then he’d just pass out.”
Not that there weren’t benefits to being the disc jockey’s sidekick.
“He used to have all these women who would hang around him and I used to get his castoffs,” Schell said.
That all changed in 1968, when he married Janet Rodeberg. The couple celebrated their anniversary this month.
“The greatest thing that happened to me was when my wife said she’d marry me,” he said. “She set me straight. That was also the day I started exercising.”
