While speaking with MEL magazine about Rodney Dangerfield back in 2018, comedian Harry Basil, who’d co-written 1997’s Meet Wally Sparks with Dangerfield, told an interesting story about being introduced to the stand-up legend. According to Basil, he first met Dangerfield backstage at his comedy club in New York City, and at the time, Dangerfield’s testicles were hanging out of his robe. Basil went on to make a bold claim regarding this not-so-unique experience in that same interview: “Anyone who spent any private time with Rodney saw them,” Basil insisted. “He was only comfortable in a bathrobe, but he never shut it all the way and never wore underwear.”
We wish we could tell you this was a gross exaggeration, but as it turns out, Basil’s is far from the only account that someone’s shared publicly about spotting Dangerfield’s balls (which he described as hanging low like a grandfather clock, in case you needed any additional visuals seared into your brain). Adam Carolla has also talked about catching a glimpse of them while visiting Dangerfield in his dressing room on the set of Loveline years ago. Dom Irrera recalled a similar backstage encounter recently, during which Dangerfield asked him, “What can I do for you?” Irrera responded by saying, “Close your robe.”
The Very NSFW Rodney Dangerfield Story Multiple Comedians Have Told
It doesn’t end there. Pauly Shore found out the hard way about Dangerfield’s habit of wearing loosely-tied robes when he went to rehearse with him for an MTV Spring Break special in the ‘90s. “Basically his balls were hanging out,” Shore remembered on his Interested podcast in 2014. Andrew Dice Clay, who was one of Shore’s guests on the show, revealed that he once brought his parents to meet Dangerfield, and his mother had to ask the comedian to put his testicles away. Hell, even Ron Jeremy said that he saw them at one point and has a picture to prove it, for whatever reason.
Dangerfield’s widow, Joan, has all but confirmed these testicle tales, by the way. As she explained on Shore’s podcast, her late husband “loved being comfortable.” In fact, Joan says Dangerfield actually would’ve preferred being a nudist. Thankfully for the rest of us, he never took that wish beyond the fantasy stage—that we know of, anyway.
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