Jim J. and Tammy Faye Made an Odd Couple in 1996

The unlikely tale of Tammy Faye Bakker is dramatized in The Eyes of Tammy Faye, out Sept. 17, with Jessica Chastain as the mascaracaked televangelist. But the story of the rise and fall of The PTL Club, which she and then-husband Jim Bakker hosted for 14 seasons starting in 1974, and her path to redemption, stops short of one of the odder chapters in her career: when Tammy Faye (by then known as Tammy

Faye Messner) co-hosted a talk show with Jim J. Bullock, aka Too Close For Comfort’s Monroe. The concept for The Jim J. and Tammy Faye Show came from Fox Lab, a subdivision of 20th Television, which saw potential in putting Messner back on TV. “There was this idea of pairing her with an openly gay co-host,” recalls Bullock. “I was on a short list back then.” (Messner had endeared herself to the LGBT community by sympathetically interviewing an AIDS patient at the height of the crisis.) Bullock was shocked at the pitch — “My exact words were ‘She’s fucking crazy …’ ” — but was eager to meet the tabloid queen. “When she walked in, it was the first time I’d seen how pretty she was,” he says. “A little-bitty thing.

She had a beautiful face and gorgeous eyes.” The pilot scored high with test audiences, leading to a pickup — but the two outsized personalities were reined in by producers, diluting their chemistry. Messner left a few months later, after being diagnosed with colon cancer. The show lasted one season, with Ann Abernathy filling in. Messner died in Kansas City in 2007 at 65. Bullock, 66, lives in Palm Springs and had been touring in theatrical productions, but says he is currently “retired until my 20-year-old cat dies.”