The history of the high-five isn’t something you think about every day. At least I don’t. But then somebody who reads this blog pointed out to me that the high-five may have originated on the TV series, The Phil Silvers Show, sometimes called Sgt. Bilko.
What? I thought. That couldn’t be.
But I’m starting to think that Phil Silvers may have had something to do with the murky origins of the high-five. Yes, sit back – or maybe somebody should alert the media. I’m about to blow your minds. Everything you thought you knew about the history of the high-five is wrong.
(Boy, I hope I'm not over-hyping this.)
Today's "TV Lesson" Breakdown:
- The history of the high-five didn’t begin with sports
- Phil Silvers, Sgt. Bilko and a History of High-Fives
- For those who don’t know anything about “The Phil Silvers Show”
- So did the “high five” originate on “The Phil Silvers Show”?
- Going Even Deeper into High-Five History
- Great moments in High Five TV History
The history of the high-five didn’t begin with sports
For years, the prevailing wisdom and assumption has been that the first high-five was the result of a sporting event in the 1970s.
That isn't entirely wrong, and certainly it was sports that popularized the high-five.
But the high-five, if it originated with sports, occurred long before the 1970s.
Generally, the high-five origin stories I’ve read mention three possible ways the high-five was created:
- Magic Johnson invented the high-five when he was playing college basketball at Michigan State. That would have been during the second half of the 1970s.
- Women’s volleyball teams in the 1960s started doing the high-five, and it slowly caught on.
- Two basketball players at the University of Louisville, Derek Smith and Wiley Brown, sometimes get credit for doing the first high-five during a basketball practice during the 1978-1979 season.
All of that said, the two people who generally gets the most credit for creating the first high-five are major-league baseball players Dusty Baker and Glenn Burke.
The story goes that the first high-five happened October 2, 1977, during a game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Houston Astros. A crowd of 42,501 spectators watched Dusty Baker hit a home run, tying the score. As Baker ran to home plate, Glenn Burke was standing there.
Baker told a journalist later, "His hand was up in the air, and he was arching way back. So I reached up and hit his hand. It seemed like the thing to do.”
And the high-five was invented.
I don’t want to take anything away from Dusty Baker and Glenn Burke, who both clearly took it further into the mainstream than it had ever been, but the high-five already existed, in some form or fashion for decades. If anyone had bothered to ask Phil Silvers at the time, he could have told anyone that.
But did Phil Silvers invent the high-five? Probably not, but maybe, and because The TV Professor is a fan of Phil Silvers, we’re giving the late balding, bespectacled and brilliant comedian the benefit of the doubt. If nothing else, we're at least crediting him as one of the early adopters.
Phil Silvers, Sgt. Bilko and a History of High-Fives
So I was first alerted that Phil Silvers, of Sgt. Bilko fame, was in the habit of doing high-fives on his sitcom by Kelly Durcan, a director of public relations at DeVito/Verdi, a prominent advertising and public relations company in New York City. Somehow, he got into a conversation with a co-worker, Rich Peterson, about the history of the high-five and thought it might make an interesting fodder for The TV Professor. (So thank you, Kelly, and Rich, for inspiring this blog post.)
Kelly is positive he remembers the Polish volleyball team high fiving each other at the 1976 Olympics – and that’s when Rich mentioned that Sgt. Bilko on The Phil Silvers Show used to do high-fives with his army buddies all the time.
And so Kelly emailed me a bunch of YouTube links leading to snippets from The Phil Silvers Show, and what do you know? I took a bunch of screenshots, so you'll see what he was referring to.
And there are more scenes with Phil Silvers, a.k.a. Sgt. Bilko, doing a high-five.
And more...
And here's another one.
And there may be more examples of the high-five on The Phil Silvers Show for all we know, but you get the idea. Long before sports teams became well known for offering each other high-fives during the 1970s, in the 1950s, Sgt. Bilko and his fellow soldiers were very familiar with the practice.
For those who don’t know anything about “The Phil Silvers Show”
The sitcom had multiple-title disorder, if that is a thing. It was at first called You’ll Never Get Rich, and then later it became The Phil Silvers Show. In reruns, it was sometimes called Sgt. Bilko.
You'll Never Get Rich, or The Phil Silvers Show or Sgt. Bilko -- whatever you prefer -- was created by both Phil Silvers and Nat Hiken (who created another wonderful and woefully underrated sitcom, Car 54, Where Are You?, which The TV Professor has written about). The Phil Silvers Show ran from 1955 to 1959 and featured Silvers as Sgt. Ernest Bilko, something of a fast talking con man who was in charge of the motor pool at Fort Baxter, a fictional military base in Kansas.
Bilko was always trying to bilk people out of their money with a get-rich-quick scheme, usually his own platoon. In the second episode when Bilko misses a game, one of the soldiers says, “It was strange sitting down to a poker game and watching the cards being dealt from the top for a change.”
Still, Sgt. Bilko was a con artist with a heart of gold. In another episode from the first season, “Bilko on Wall Street,” he tries to trick a skinflint boss into giving his employee more money. The old friend, Morgan Twinhasey (Eddie Phillips), is severely unpaid and practically living in squalor – and Silvers is full of righteous indignation. In fact, Sgt. Bilko gives a monologue for the ages when Twinhasey appears nervous about trying to get a raise from his employer.
“You work amongst millionaires, and this is the best you can do? I work amongst paupers and I do better than that," Bilko says. "What's the matter with you? Don't you want to be rich? What do you got against money?”
“Nothing,” Twinhasey says. “I haven't got anything against money, but—”
“Ah, there's your trouble... ‘but,'" Bilko says. "That word ‘but.’"
Bilko then goes on, offering a monologue that you can almost picture being delivered at a seminar by a self-help guru, and just to make it stand out, because I think it's such good and timeless advice, I'll highlight this in this purple font:
"I see now. You're a ‘but’ man. That's the difference between success and failure, the use of the word ‘but.’ Take it out of your vocabulary -- 'but.’ Never say ‘but.’ Now, a hundred years ago, there was a man named Louis Pasteur. And he said, ‘I think I will purify milk.’ There was another man named Edward Schlemmer. He said, ‘I think I'll purify milk, but...’ So today, we drink pasteurized milk. Let me ask you something. When's the last time you bought a bottle of Schlemmerized milk? Well? Did you? Did you?”
“No, but—”
“‘But’! There you go with the ‘buts’ again. Forget the word ‘but.’’
Bilko winds up getting his friend the raise – which was par for the course. Bilko was often helping other people get rich, but generally by the end of each episode, he was never wealthy. If he did earn riches in an episode, it was short-lived; he would wind up as broke as he was at the start of the show.
So did the “high five” originate on “The Phil Silvers Show”?
Oh, yeah. I almost forgot. We were discussing the “high five.” Well, um, no, the high-five probably didn't originate on The Phil Silvers Show. While Sgt. Bilko gave his pals some version of the high-five, the high-five likely goes back even further than the 1950s.
Now, let’s keep in mind that the high-five evolved throughout the 20th century. I doubt that many, if any people, in the 1950s were saying to a little kid, “High five, low five,” and all of that business that you hear now. There’s no question that the 1970s was the decade when the “high five” took root in the imagination of popular culture.
But the high-five existed before then, and it wasn't only on The Phil Silvers Show. For instance, going through the newspaper archives, I found:
- a Washington Post article from 1971 about the Special Olympics describes athletes “slapping palms.”
- A sports columnist in a March 19, 1971, issue of "The Madison Capital Times," the paper for Madison, Wisconsin, refers to a basketball tournament, and in describing the atmosphere refers to 'slappin' skin and lay five on me, too."
- In a 1967 issue of The Berkshire Eagle, the paper of record for Pittsfield, Massachusetts, a theater critic did a review of a play called, “Does a Tiger Wear a Necktie,” and he has this curious sentence in it: “The play seems ancient historically, symbolized by the people still slapping skin for hello and goodby [sic]..."
That comment from the review certainly suggests that in 1967, this theater critic felt like “slapping skin” was already something of a cliché.
And, of course, we have the characters in The Phil Silvers Show giving each other a celebratory high five – or at least, slapping palms.
I'll be interested to hear in the comments section from any older readers, if they recall giving friends or family members a high-five before the 1970s.
But going back even farther into time, before The Phil Silvers Show, in the 1944 movie Cover Girl, two actors do what can only be described as an awkward high five. And those two actors are Gene Kelly and… Phil Silvers!
So was the high-five birthed in 1944 on the set of Cover Girl? Well, probably not. It’s been suggested that the high-five originated with the low-five during the jazz age with performers like Louis Armstrong and Dizzy Gillespie slapping skin. That seems logical and probable, though I’d like to posit another theory that might work in tandem with that one. Phil Silvers was in vaudeville during the 1920 when he was just a kid and in the 1930s, when he was in his 20s, and if the high-five, or low-five, or some form of it, existed in jazz circles in the 1920s, maybe it was also a thing in vaudeville.
It seems logical that actors and musicians in vaudeville doing a quick pressing of the palms backstage might have been looking for a quiet way to celebrate a successful performance.
Unfortunately, it seems likely that no one person will ever be credited with actually inventing the first high-five, but when it comes to the history of the high-five, Phil Silvers does deserve a significant mention.
Going Even Deeper into High-Five History
This is probably getting a little ridiculous, but I feel like I should mention that there was a High Fives Gang in the Old West, and I really like to imagine these five men – Will Christian, Bob Christian, Bob Hayes, George Musgrave and Code Young – riding their horses and then giving each other high-fives after a successful train robbery.
But apparently these robbers, cattle rustlers and all around bad guys took their name because they had five people in the group, and a popular card game called “high five” inspired them.
And I’m not the first to point this out, but there are other signs that the high-five existed long before the 20th century.
Great moments in High Five TV History
While Sgt. Bilko was probably the first TV show to offer up a high-five, it definitely wasn’t the last. A few other examples of classic TV shows addressing the high-five include…
Family Ties (1982-1989)
In the sixth season, in the 17th episode, “The Play’s the Thing,” a local theater group puts on a play that Steven Keaton (Michael Gross) wrote back in the 1960s. Steven ends up directing the play, and his wife, Elyse Keaton (Meredith Baxter) stars as the lead, Sequoia. Well, Steven gets jealous when Elyse and the lead actor, Jeff (Rod McCary) start to kiss. It’s in the script that Steven wrote, but he nonetheless says, “OK, hold it!”
“The kiss was too much. Don't -- don't dwell on it. Make it incidental. A throw away,” Steven says.
Moments later, he is explaining that Jeff’s character is “too tired and emotionally drained to do much more than shake hands with Sequoia. I wouldn't even go that far,” Steven says. “Make it a high-five.”
“A high five? That doesn't seem right.”
“Jeff, you're a dentist. What do you know about art? Your area is pain.”
“ I have to agree with Jeff, honey,” Elyse says.
“Oh, do you, Sequoia?” Steven says, irritated.
“Well, when a man says, ‘Sequoia, darling, I love you with all my heart, come to me, I'm on fire.' Well, people expect them to kiss, you know, not just give a high-five.”
“Oh, fine. let's just give them what they expect,” Steven says, and he explains that too often, audiences are shown the same thing over and over. “’I love you! High-five,’ Steven says. “Now, that's something new, something different.”
No argument there.
The Gilmore Girls (2000-2007 and a short sequel series in 2016)
In the fourth season and 21st episode, “Last Week's Fights, This Week's Tights,” Rory wraps up her first year of college and talks on the phone to her mother, Lorelai, about how all the Yale students are thrilled that summer vacation is beginning – but poor Rory still has a Saturday morning exam.
“There is so much joy around me, I'm gonna hurl,” Rory says.
“Hey, what’s wrong?” Lorelai asks.
“You should see all the boisterous high-fiving going on all around me. It's sad. It's just really sad,” Rory says, before being jostled by a student.
“Kids are in party mode, huh?” Lorelai asks.
“ The kids are clicking their heels like there's no tomorrow. And there is no tomorrow for those who do not have a final on Saturday morning, such as me,” Rory says. “I'm pathetic. I should stand between two of them and have them high-five my head from opposite sides and put me out of my misery.”
Brooklyn Nine-Nine (2013-2021)
At the start of the sixth season of Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Jake Peralta (Andy Samberg) is late to a precinct meeting, and Captain Holt (Andre Braugher) creates an ingenious punishment.
Holt: While you were out being tardy, I was hard at work devising a special punishment. I've crafted an intricate personal high five with everyone in this office except you.
Jake: What? But you hate high fives.
Holt: Yes, every minute of it was hell.
Holt then proceeds to do an elaborate high-five with virtually every member of the precinct, including Leonard, the guy who fixes the copy machine. Jake is utterly devastated.
Where to watch The Phil Silvers Show (at the time of this writing): As far as The TV Professor knows, The Phil Silvers Show isn't available for streaming -- at least for free. It turns up on cable sometimes, and it can be found on DVD.
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