Here's the Time obit.
Before making it big, he worked in a radio-TV spot in Cleveland. He later said he left that job for health reasons — "They got sick of me."
Years later this happened:
He did make trouble for himself on New Year's Day 1965, when, annoyed by having to work on a holiday, he impishly instructed kids to tiptoe into their parents' bedroom, take out "green pieces of paper with pictures of guys with beards" and send them to his New York station. The punch line: "And you know what I'm gonna send you? A postcard from Puerto Rico." For that he got suspended. He said that the kids were hipper than his bosses: many sent him Monopoly money. One adult enclosed a few dollars and wrote: "Now go to Puerto Rico."
What a character, huh?
