My Lucky Life In And Out Of Show Busines Part 2

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"It doesn't have a top," I explained. "It's long gone."

It didn't have a second gear, either. It only had first and third, making it difficult to get up the steep hill to our house. Getting down was only slightly easier. Every morning the battery was dead and I had to coast down the hill to the gas station to get a jump. And when it rained, which fortunately was not often in L.A., I got drenched. But I drove that thing for a long time.

A while after our Zephyr Room debut, Phil and I were booked into Slapsy Maxie's, one of Hollywood's hottest clubs, as the opening act for the Delta Rhythm Boys. We signed for two shows a night. It was our biggest gig to date. On opening night, I looked out and saw Lucille Ball in the audience. She was not laughing. Nor was anyone else. We died. We weren't sophisticated enough for a club drawing from Hollywood's upper tier, and n.o.body applauded when we finished. Oh, it was painful.

Afterward two guys knocked on our dressing-room door, gave us thirty bucks, and told us to get out. We never even made the late show. Adding insult to injury, I went outside and found my car had been towed. I eventually found it in a muddy field, buried up to the hubcaps, and spent the rest of the night trying to get it out. It was one of those moments when you ask, "Jeez, am I in the wrong business?"

Word of that debacle spread through the nightclub world and we lost a number of bookings. During that fallow period, Phil bought a TV, one of the seven-inch sets that were on the market. We watched Milton Berle's Texaco Star Theater, The Ed Sullivan Show, Candid Camera, Ted Mack's Amateur Hour Texaco Star Theater, The Ed Sullivan Show, Candid Camera, Ted Mack's Amateur Hour, and the news. Our dry spell was broken when a local station booked our act. One of the few TV stations in L.A. at the time, it broadcast from the top of Mount Wilson, about ninety minutes northeast of L.A.

Phil and I drove there in my '35 Ford. We got about halfway up the mountain, one of the tallest peaks in Southern California, when the car died. It didn't just wheeze and cough. It literally pa.s.sed out. We took our junk out and hiked the rest of the way up.

Less than a year later, Margie and I found a duplex in Malibu. We moved in and for about eight months loved living at the beach. We found out she was pregnant with twins while Phil and I were working at the Georgian Hotel in Santa Monica, which was much closer to where I lived than Hollywood, and I carved out an easy routine with the shorter drive.

A problem arose when my share of the Merry Mutes's take failed to cover all of Margie's and my expenses. I fell behind on the rent, and though I always felt like something would happen that would allow me to catch up, our bills piled up until I had what was easily the worst day of my life.

It started one day with Margie experiencing severe cramps. When she began to bleed, I drove her to St. John's Hospital in Santa Monica. I am sure our old Ford had never been pressed to go as fast as I implored it on that gray afternoon. I had gone to church and Sunday school every week through childhood, right up until I joined the Air Force, and there in the car I said every prayer I had ever learned.

Half of those prayers were for Margie, and the other half were for our car. "Please, G.o.d, get her through this." It didn't matter if G.o.d understood which was which; I covered all bases.

Shortly after we got to the hospital, Margie miscarried, and it was a very bleak time for us. You figure things happen for a reason, and that was one of those times. I left her resting at the hospital and returned home to find all of our belongings stacked up in front of our place, on the shoulder of the highway. Our landlord had thrown us out.

He was apologetic, more so than might be expected from someone who was owed three months' rent. But he was also being practical. As he explained, he needed the money.

Well, I didn't have it. I turned around and, with cars speeding past, began piling our belongings in the back of our Ford.

I went back to St. John's and spent the night with Margie. In the morning, I used most of the last eighty-five dollars I had to my name to pay the hospital bill. With the meager amount left over, we got a room with a hot plate in a shack of a hotel on Sawtelle Boulevard. Margie was lactating, bandaged, sore, and tired. I bought cheap hamburger meat and cooked it on that small griddle. It was a pretty bad moment in our lives.

A few nights later, I stared at the ceiling while Margie slept. I didn't know if we could make it. I wondered if we should go back to Danville, where we had family to help us through tough times.

"Guess what?"

It was Phil, calling a week or so later with good news. We met at a nearby coffee shop and over breakfast he broke the good news. We had a job in San Diego. Not only did we have work, but the club was putting us up as well. We had free lodging. Hallelujah, I thought. My prayers had been answered.

Margie and I were so broke, though, that my father-in-law, who worked at a Chevrolet dealership outside of Chicago, brought a 1941 Chevy to L.A. and handed me the keys so we would be able to get to San Diego. I can't imagine how events might have played out if we hadn't been able to get there.

Our weeklong gig at Tops was a big, much-needed success. It turned into a total of four weeks, long enough for Margie and me to regroup, and then we headed to another job, a club in Pocatello, Idaho.

In penny-pinching mode, I thought I could make the 1,200-mile trip, without stopping, in one twenty-four-hour swoop. I was wrong-a fact I was made aware of somewhere outside of Salt Lake City when Margie punched my arm and screamed at me to "wake up!"

I was asleep with my eyes open and headed into oncoming traffic.

"Oh Jesus, I'm on the wrong side of the road!" I shouted as I swerved back onto the right side.

"Yeah, because you were asleep!" she said, alarmed and angry that I had stubbornly insisted on driving straight through.

In Pocatello, we met up with Phil, and the two of us performed on the same bill with the folksinger Burl Ives. At the end of the week, the club owner skipped town and we never got paid. While we were driving back to L.A., the timing gear blew and our car broke down in the mountains outside of Reno. It was about one A.M A.M., cold, and we were in the middle of nowhere. We got out to look around and heard coyotes howling. I thought we were done.

After a while, a big old truck came along and stopped. The driver got out a long, thick chain, tied our car to the back of his truck, and pulled us down the hill. When we hit the curves, we were whipped to the very edge and several times thought we were going over the cliff. We made it to Reno, though, and checked into a hotel after dropping the car off at a mechanic.

Then we had another problem. I had no idea how we were going to pay for the car repairs or our hotel. We were broke.

I stepped into a phone booth outside the hotel and called my father and father-in-law, hoping one of them could wire us money. But neither had any extra funds. I slid the phone booth door open and lit a cigarette, wondering what I was going to do.

As soon as I walked into the hotel room, Margie saw the worried expression on my face. I told her the facts. We had thirty dollars-that was it. I put the cash on the dressing table and took off my coat and collapsed on the bed. I had been driving all the way from Pocatello, then fretting about our fate. I could barely keep my eyes open.

The next thing I knew, I heard Margie coming back into the room. She turned on the lights and I saw that her eyes were as wide as saucers.

"You aren't going to believe it," she said.

"What?" I asked.

She opened her hands and showed me a fistful of money.

"I took the thirty dollars to the blackjack table," she said, "and won!"

It was not a lot of money. But it paid for the hotel, got the car fixed, and allowed us to get home.

After we regrouped, Phil and I went back on the road, starting at the Chi Chi Club in Palm Springs. We were onstage, pantomiming to the Bing CrosbyMary Martin hit "Wait Till the Sun Shines, Nellie," when an earthquake struck and shook the ground beneath us, as well as the walls and ceiling, the tables and gla.s.ses, and everything else in the club, including our record. It skipped from one song to another. Rather than stop, Phil and I tried to keep up-changing lyrics every couple seconds and exchanging panicked looks-and the audience roared.

Afterward, we hurried offstage, confused, dripping in flop sweat, and wondering what the h.e.l.l had just happened. The club's manager, a grin plastered across his narrow face, rushed over and threw his arms around us.

"I loved the earthquake bit," he exclaimed. "Keep it in the act."

Phil looked at me over the manager's shoulder.

"It was an earthquake," he mouthed.

"Oh my G.o.d," I replied without making a sound. "Let's not keep it in the act."

We continued to shake things up, though, at the Last Frontier in Las Vegas and the Golden Hotel in Reno, where I met the young piano sensation of the time, Liberace. He was packing them in down the street, but one night he caught a bit of our act and told me that he thought I had some talent. You wouldn't have known that from our reception at New York's Blue Angel. The weekend tourists lapped up our act, but the more sophisticated Manhattanites who showed up during the week thought we were rubes-and we were fired.

Miami turned out to be our place. We headlined Martha Raye's Five O'Clock Club for an entire season-all winter. I brought Margie, who felt like she was on a long vacation. It was a good time, one that got even better, almost too good to be true. One day, after leaving Margie in our room, I was on my way to meet Phil to discuss adding some new bits to the act when one of the men who ran the club directed me into his office.

He couldn't have been friendlier as he closed the door and explained that Phil and I were doing an excellent job, but he especially liked me. He said that he was impressed with my singing, dancing, and all-around ability to entertain. He and his partner, he added, had noticed the way the audience related to me and they had a proposition for me.

"As you can tell, we think you have special talent," he said. "Basically, we'd like to take you over."

"You want to take over Phil's and my act?" I asked.

"No, just you," he said. "We're looking at you as a single."

"Well, thank you for the compliment," I said, "but I still don't understand the, um, proposal."

He explained that he and his partner ran the club with a group of "silent investors," men who, he said, preferred to stay in the background but who trusted their judgment of talent. He said they liked the way the audiences reacted to me and wanted to invest in my act.

"But I don't have an act," I said.

"We'll help you build it," he said, adding that they would get behind me in every way, from writing to PR to salary.

"Really?" I said.

"We'll pay you fifteen thousand a week," he said.

At the time, Phil and I were splitting less than 5 percent of that, or about seven hundred dollars a week. My eyes glazed over.

"It's a good starting salary," he continued. "We'll have the act written. You'll buy your wardrobe. And we'll take care of all your bookings."

Deep down I knew I was not going to leave my partner in the lurch, but the sum of money being offered was so fantastic that it was impossible to simply dismiss it. In truth, I was blown away. I did not know how to respond. Nor did I seem able to. My mouth seemed temporarily out of order. Finally I stammered a thank-you and explained that I would talk about it with my wife and agent and get back to him as soon as possible.

"You're never going to believe what happened," I told Margie.

Like me, she was speechless.

"How much money are they going to pay you?" she asked.

I returned to Earth after speaking to Phil's and my Atlanta-based agent, Monk Arnold. He had me repeat the details, then woke me up from this dream of having arrived on easy street.

"d.i.c.k, they're the Mob," he said.

"You think?" I asked.

"d.i.c.k, if they get a hold of you like this, they've got you for the rest of your life."

I shut my eyes and took a deep breath, feeling a wave of disappointment pa.s.s through me.

"Don't fool with them," Monk advised.

"It did sound too good," I said.

"If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is," he said.

I had Monk Arnold call the guy back and tell him that I had too many commitments and would not feel right changing course. But I implored him to convey how flattered I was at the same time. I wanted to stay on good terms with those guys. I did not want them mad at me.

5.

LIVE ON THE AIR.

In 1949, Phil and I got a job in Atlanta at the Henry Grady Hotel, an excellent establishment with a large ballroom. We performed two shows a day, one in the afternoon for kids and another at night for a more mature crowd. Children's favorites and slapstick were de rigueur for the early show, and then we spiced up the nighttime routine with Spike Jones, Bing Crosby, and popular songs on the radio, as well as more mature jokes.

With Phil as the straight man, more or less, and me in the role of rubber-limbed comedian, tirelessly mugging, miming, dancing, and inventing antics on the spot, we filled the room every show. We also did local events, radio, and even store openings. All the exposure made us quite popular around town. In turn, Phil and I fell in love with the city.

At the time, Atlanta still felt like a small city. With only about 250,000 people living there, it was quaint, comfortable, and affordable. Charmed by the surroundings and buoyed by our success, both of us decided to put stakes in the ground. We took advantage of the GI Bill and bought homes. Mine was a tiny three-bedroom with prefabricated sides that seemed to go up in days. Even as the workmen slapped it together, Margie and I beamed with the pride of new and naive homeowners.

The backyard was up against the woods, and though we had only a couple flower beds, shrubs, and several baby trees, it looked to me, with my vivid imagination, like the grounds of an estate. Wanting the front to look good, too, I carted in umpteen wheelbarrows of sod and had it looking like a magazine ad-until a hard rain washed all that greenery and hard work away.

In 1950, Margie gave birth to our son Chris, and thirteen months later we had a second baby boy, Barry. Like Phil, now that I had a family, I lost my taste for the road. I got a job as an announcer at the local CBS radio station, WAGA. Pretty soon they gave me my own slot as an early-morning disk jockey, and a little later, when there was an opening at night for a fifteen-minute record act, Phil and I took it.

You couldn't be in Atlanta for any appreciable amount of time without hearing me, which worked in my favor when the local television station owned by the Atlanta Const.i.tution Atlanta Const.i.tution, WCON, needed a full-time announcer. They turned to me. I got the job reading all the news, announcements, and commercials-anything that needed announcing over the course of an eight-hour day.

I proved myself adept and inexpensive, and eventually the station's management gave me an hour-long show of my own. I was thrilled.

But let me tell you, no matter how excited and eager I was to do well-and I was-it didn't take long before those sixty minutes felt like six hundred minutes. It ate up material. I mean it devoured material. Few things are as terrifying as standing in front of a camera by yourself and realizing you have used most of your best material and still have to fill fifty-four minutes.

On my first night, I felt like the clock had stopped. It didn't seem like the hour would ever end. I read the newspaper, told jokes, and interviewed people-whatever I could think of. It was like an episode of The Twilight Zone The Twilight Zone. A young performer's dream comes true when he's given his own hour-long television show, except when that hour never ends and the performer goes bananas.

Fortunately, I figured out the pacing and quickly got to where I was so comfortable in front of the camera that I forgot I was on the air. I never gave it a thought-until the red light on the camera went off and I began to think about the next day's material.

I never worked as hard. At night, I sat in front of the TV with Margie and the boys, with a portable typewriter on my lap, and read through the newspaper, through joke books, and listened to the TV, all the while writing furiously.

Was it quality material?

I had no idea. But I got very good at producing a lot of it.

I pantomimed records, told jokes, and interviewed people on the street about popular topics. I also came up with a running bit where I put some soft clay on a slant board and told a story while I sculpted. I kept the bit going throughout the hour. At the end of one show, I put the finishing touches on a guy and then punched him under the chin. His face scrunched up and I quipped, "Well, there's a funny-looking old fart."

This was the early 1950s, when there were only a few stations on the dial, and oh my G.o.d, the phone calls poured into the station. I was almost fired.

Eventually the station moved into a more proper studio and I partnered with a quick-witted woman named Fran Adams (later Fran Kearton) on The Fran and d.i.c.k Show The Fran and d.i.c.k Show, also known as The Music Shop The Music Shop. We wrote and produced skits, clowned around, satirized popular TV shows, and pantomimed hit songs. Like all such shows done live, it was a little bit of everything we could think of.

In her 1993 memoir, Fran recalled a play on the show Dragnet Dragnet, with Detective Friday and his partner, Thursday, investigating the murder of Goldilocks, of "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" fame. She was found on the street "wearing a derby and slacks," intoned Friday. "At least she died like a man," said Thursday. Ugh. As I said, it was everything we could think of.

One day, as I was lip-syncing Andy Griffith's 1953 comedy hit "What It Was, Was Football," a monologue about a hillbilly preacher watching his first football game and trying to figure out what was happening on "the pretty little green cow pasture," I looked up and saw Andy himself, watching me.

It turned out he was in town promoting his record, but no one told me he was stopping by the studio. I was too far into the bit to stop. I thought, Oh, G.o.d, I'm in trouble. He's not going to appreciate my interpretation. (Given the quality of the Dragnet Dragnet satire, you can only imagine.) satire, you can only imagine.) But Andy was quite amused.

And I was quite relieved.

At some point, I left Fran and repartnered with Phil on a show for WSP, the local NBC affiliate. The show was more elaborate than anything either of us had done up to that point. We had a little band, a girl singer, and a kid who helped us write. In other words, it was a real show.

We embraced the challenge of producing what was essentially a variety show every day. We poured every ounce of creative energy into writing sketches and rehearsing songs. I even painted scenery on the weekends. I was so pa.s.sionate that I was nearly possessed. It was also fun, and the show was quite popular-or so we thought. We figured we would do it a long time.

Phil had also opened a comedy club called The Wit's End. It was located near the Biltmore Hotel and Georgia Tech University. The club's motto was to the point: "Bring money." And people did. It was an instant hit with the college kids and would, by the 1970s, send improv groups all over the country. In its early days, though, it complemented our TV show.

After about a year, the TV station's general manager came to me and said they wanted me to do the show alone.

"What about Phil?" I asked.

The station manager shook his head.

I raised my eyebrows. I didn't know what that meant.