Who the Hell's in It

by Peter Bogdanovich

  Did your mother perform with him?

  Oh, sure. She was his conductor.

  Your parents toured all over the place and you were with them all the time.

  All through the thirties; 1940, I was fourteen and my mom and dad didn’t take me on this trip—they were working the Coconut Grove in Boston—in the big Boston fire. And they survived because my dad was the kind of man he was, which I’m happy to say I’ve got a lot of his traits—very curious. He had to see everything, had to know everything, had to check everything. He had a voracious curiosity. The only thing I thought was negative was that he was obsessed with having information. But he gave himself a hell of an education that way. Having not ever finished school, he made himself a brilliant man. I followed his lead. I learned what I learned by being curious. So, because of his curiosity he saw where the help came in. The performers came in from a specific street entrance and the workers at the Coconut Grove came in another place. He knew both places. And when the fire broke out, he took my mother by the arm and took her to one of those exits, otherwise they would never have made it. [Silent cowboy film star] Buck Jones was killed in that fire—my mom and dad met him that night. And I’m home with my grandmother and she comes to me in the morning and tells me there was a fire and that Dad called and they’re OK, I shouldn’t worry. That was a wonderful gig for them, a step up from burlesque.

  Did you perform with them during the thirties? Did you go on?

  Sure. My mom and dad would get a gig and they would play other hotels. We stayed at Brown’s Hotel and we would work out of there. My dad would do his show at Brown’s on a Saturday night at 7 o’clock, and do Kutsher’s down the street at 8 o’clock, and Grossinger’s at 9 o’clock, and at 10 o’clock he would do the Luxor. So he had four gigs on a Saturday night. That’s how you survived. And he’d always book whoever the hell had a car on his show—a juggler, a dancer, if you had a car—because my father didn’t drive, he didn’t have a car. Meanwhile he got to all of the gigs. Now, with him and my mom going to Kutsher’s to do a show, my dad would get $20 for the two of them. But they got $25 when I was in the show. That’s an extra twenty bucks in four gigs. My dad would do good on a Saturday night—almost a hundred dollars. Because what the hotel provided for him and the services were for an entire sum of ten to twelve weeks, room and board for his wife and child, and that’s all he cared about, that they were covered. And with the right to do other shows. So, in a summer of ten weeks, he’d do an extra forty shows. It was nothing to have saved a thousand bucks.

  Big acts that came up to the Catskill Mountains were good for $200 or $250 for a show. And they would do two or three. When the Concord wanted Dean and me, they offered us $75,000 for the night, I told them to shove it up their ass.

  So you really never had any kind of formal schooling?

  Oh, I did, up until second year high school—I quit.

  Where were you for those years? Where did you go to school?

  In Irvington, New Jersey. I went to Union Avenue school. Kindergarten through eighth year—you graduated the eighth year—you went into junior high, which is high school, you did four years of that. I only did two and quit.

  And they didn’t mind that you quit?

  Well, I was legally allowed to quit at sixteen.

  Why did you quit?

  Because I couldn’t wait to go and do. I’m going to sit there and watch them cut a frog open so I understand the anatomy of a frog. I’m not going to need to know about a frog in my lifetime. But it was part of the curriculum. I said, fuck you, I’ll meet Tarzan and Jane and discuss a frog. They tried to talk me out of quitting. I said, I’m bored, I’m not productive here, I want to go out and work, I want to help my family. The week after I left high school I was in a burlesque house in Toronto as an act on the show. You know, in between strippers, when the guys in the audience stop with the newspaper, I’d go on. And most of them were like this when I came on [expression of total lack of interest].

  And what did you do?

  Record act.

  Put a record on and you mouth the words. What did you sing?

  They were recordings that you could buy. “Largo al factotum,” from Barber of Seville. I did Sinatra—“All or Nothing at All.” I did Beatrice Lillie, “A Bird in a Gilded Cage.”

  And you didn’t really speak, you just came out and did your thing.

  There was no talking.

  How many songs would you do?

  Three. Until they yell, “Get off!” you stay out there.

  How many years did you do that?

  Professionally, from sixteen when I was allowed to be professional until Dean and I got together when I was eighteen and a half. But I had been doing it in the borscht circuit with my dad for ten years.

  Whenever you could.

  Yeah, whenever I was with them.

  Andyour grandmother took care of you when they were on the road. How was that? You loved your grandmother.

  Yeah. She was incredible. My mom’s mom. She was the only one who thought that I shouldn’t be put away. One aunt said I need a keeper. Another aunt said he’s retarded. Another aunt said he’s insane, he should be put away.

  A lot of your comedy is based on taking an established situation and destroying it. When did you discover that?

  When Dean and I played the Havana Madrid together. We weren’t a team, yet, but I was working as the emcee of the show and for the first time I had to talk. And that’s when I was really making my bones talking, learning. And Dean and I had great fun during that four-or six-week engagement. But when I started to establish it—when I wrote “Sex and Slapstick”—which is what Dean and I were …

  When you say you “wrote” it, what do you mean?

  Well, when I started to write for us. The title of what I was writing was “Sex and Slapstick.” [Feature magazine writer] Leo Rosten took the title for a Life piece, and I teased him and said, “You can’t take my material and use it and say it’s yours. I demand to be paid!” So a messenger came to the hotel room, brought me three dollars. He said, “Mr. Rosten said this is all it’s worth.” But in the writing process, the first thing that I did was to give Dean a kid brother, or give Dean the monkey. And the premise in my mind always was that I’m going to dig in and get the child within me alive. I cannot see two men standing on the stage and doing what I think we should do together, and be adults and do it. Dean must be the adult, but Jerry has to be the kid—the little guy—I loved that. I was as tall as Dean, except I worked in a crouch and I had his shoes lifted. Just so that I could work the crouch better. He always looked that much taller than me on the stage because I’d shrink. When I stood upright introducing him or something, I was six feet.

  The Havana Madrid. Broadway and 50th. It was a great gig. I was in there for two or three months, and then Dean came in for four weeks.

  You were there doing your record act, and then what happened?

  Dean came in and we started to cock around, just have some fun. Which gave me the germ of the idea when I went into the 500 Club in Atlantic City. This was like, December ’45 or January, February of ′46. So we leave, we part, he goes away, I go away, then I’m in Atlantic City. They needed a replacement for a kid that got sick. I talked to [club owner] Skinny D’Amato about Dean. He said, “I don’t want another singer.” I said, “He’s not another singer. He and I do a lot of bits together.” So he brings him in. Dean comes in opening night, sings his three songs and leaves. I do my three records and I leave, and Skinny comes back to the dressing room and says, “Where’s the fucking silliness? If I don’t see it in the second show, you’ve got cement feet.” So, we had ordered hot pastrami from across the street—the kid brought it over in a brown bag—the grease is still on the brown bag and it’s now in my safety-deposit box here. I can show you the brown bag … We went out, and the two guys—who together did thirty minutes the first show, doing their two acts respectively—the second show was two hours and forty minutes. Playing to four people:
two over here, two over there. By the third night we had a thousand people around the club. Spread like wildfire. And in less than eight weeks we were at the Loews State Theater for $5,000. I had no idea what to do on that stage. I couldn’t do the shit we were doing at the 500 Club. So I had to start to re-create. See, I was a very good creator from where the geography was. Take me to where you want me to be and I’ll create with that in mind.

  You mean, the actual location.

  Yeah, that’s how I wrote The Bellboy. I’ve always been very good at that. So when we went into Loews State for two days, I sat at Nola Studios briefing Dean on the bits I thought we should do. He was fucking brilliant. I mean, he brought such shit to the table. Incredible.

  How did you get the idea for the act? Did you have a moment of inspiration?

  I cannot in good conscience say to you that I knew what Dean would bring. I didn’t. So I was really writing generically: straight-man/comic. Then, when I sat him down and I said, “Let me tell you about what the comic must be—he’s got to be your kid brother. He’s got to be the nine-year-old that’s an annoyance—means well, but fucks up,” Dean understood immediately. I said, “You can’t waver from that position of authority. Because what you are is, for all intents and purposes, the bank president with the top hat that I’m throwing snowballs at.”

  Oh, God, we had such fun, it was ridiculous. He’s doing a number one night and he calls me up. He said, “I hope I didn’t interrupt you when you’re busy.” I said, “No, I was just standing around, listening to you.” He said, “In the middle of the song I thought to myself, I miss him.” I said, “That’s why you called me up, because you missed me?” He said, “Yeah—now we’re together—isn’t that wonderful?” I said, “What the hell are you talking about? There’s people here! What are you, a fag?” And like that would develop into incredible shit that we’d do. For no reason he’d call me up. “Why’d you call me?” “I missed you.” But never did anyone ever bend the material or the ideas that we were having. They all knew exactly what we were doing.

  You mean, nobody took it as a homosexual thing.

  You see, the one thing that [newspaper columnist Walter] Winchell told me that night—he saw us at the Havana Madrid—and I was sitting having a drink with him after the show and he said, “You know what’s wonderful about what you two guys are doing?” And he’s talking like we’re an act. We’re not an act. He said, “I love the way you look at him.” I said I didn’t know it was that evident. “You know, that’s part of the magic—and the way he looks at you.”

  You mean the affection?

  Yeah. Oh, God, yeah. It was difficult not to show that.

  You were just over eighteen and Dean was ten years older.

  Yeah.

  Had he already recorded?

  He was on a sustaining [not sponsored] radio program, and he wasn’t going anywhere. It was just the beginning, the embryo stage. So when he got the call, he came like it was a job. He came to earn a few bucks. He was getting two hundred and a half and I was getting two hundred and a half.

  This was at the 500 Club?

  Yeah. And I was so enamored by him and so thrilled that I could work with him that I saw more and more deeply. He will never ever ever be given his due for how fucking brilliant he was.

  There was an enormous amount of wit behind him.

  Oh, yeah. A brilliant sense of humor. But remember, anyone with a sense of humor and anyone that does shtick and bits—that’s a cover.

  You recognized in Dean a kind of kindred spirit. He did it his way, you did it your way.

  Without question. Now the interesting thing is that nobody could ever get close enough to Dean to confer with him on anything.

  He wouldn’t talk seriously.

  He procrastinated on brushing his teeth in the morning. But not with me. If I said, “Sit down,” that meant I wanted to talk. He’d sit down. He knew it was going to be meaningful because he respected me. He knew I knew him so well. And he appreciated that. Because no one else knew it but me. And then he would open up a little bit. Knowing that nobody would ever hear our discussions. And then I would see the change on his face, I would see his comfort develop more. When I was offstage, I saw the discomfort of his being alone. Many shows I saw him getting into a funk a little bit. Somebody yelled something, something someone did distracted him, and I’d pop out on stage, unrehearsed, and just do some crazy shit just to take him back. He never said a word to me about it, but he was grateful for it. He always knew that I knew when.

  A lot of times on the [TV] Colgate Comedy Hour he’d sing and you’d do shtick while he was singing, which was hysterical.

  Right. We had wonderful times. If he didn’t feel like really singing straight from the heart one show, we’d fuck with it. I would just create something. And the most wonderful thing about the two guys was that I could write anything at any time, or create anything at any time with anything. And I was fearless about it. “Let’s go for it!” “Yeah, but you’re on the air live now—there’s like fifty million people tonight.” “That’s right, let’s go for it!” “You mean, you’re going to do this thing live without …” “It’s ready. And what’s going to happen to me if I fall on my ass? I’ll be here next week.” “Oh, OK.” Now, the brilliance of Dean was that he would expedite it like he rehearsed four years. He wouldn’t get in the way of it, he knew how to hold on to it, he knew where to take me, when to back off. And I’m on the stage and my mouth drops open sometimes because I’m watching this excellence, and 97 percent of it was that he wasn’t even aware of how good he was.

  Because he worked on a totally instinctual level.

  Oh, yes. Because he always told everybody, “I can go out and drift, he’ll always pull me back.” And visa-versa. Jerry can get as crazy as he wants and who’s the best judge of what Jerry does but Dean. And Dean knew when to pull me back if I was getting in trouble or something. So, we never sat and discussed the enormity of our emotional ties together. But it was always underlined. It was always underneath it all. I would reprimand him sometimes: “Would you sing one, just straight!? You’ve got a marvelous voice. Go out in the Copa and let the honeymooners hug while you sing a love song.” “I do.” “No, you don’t.” “Yes, I do.” “No, you don’t.” “Yes, I do!” “No, you don’t!” He felt his oats really good and clean and solid when we split up. Then he didn’t have to do what I thought he did all those years, and that was cop out. Have me as the cop-out. “Well, that’s not what got us here—singing.” “No, but it was part of it. So you should do it. I mean, honor those who think you’re a wonderful singer, that buy your records and so on.” He said, “You know what we’d be getting if we were two singers?” I said, “What’s that got to do with it?” He said, “Tell me, what if we were two singers and we were hot in the business. Do you think we’d get a grand a week?” I said, “Oh, that’s fucking ridiculous. We wouldn’t be. Two singers wouldn’t have made it.” He said, “How about that?” Now, July 25, 1946, the team legally started. And we ended July 25, 1956, to the night.

  Was that a coincidence?

  Yeah. Just an accident. But if I could ever describe the Copacabana that night, I’m sure I can’t.

  Orson Welles told me in the seventies that he saw you guys at the Copa, and he said people peed their pants.

  Yeah, it was insanity. See, I forced Dean to break every barrier…. There were two sensual peek-a-boos at the guys. One was Dean as such a sexy-looking guy, but the kid got most of the women because they mothered him. They were there to protect him. They were there to free him up from this tyrant. Dean’s reading comic books in the suite and I got a chick in the room.

  I would guess since Dean was older that he was romantically more experienced than you.

  Oh, God, yes.

  Was that part of the affection between you—that he initiated you or he taught you about women in some way?

  No, he was not a teacher at all. I brought my own education. I taught him a couple of thin
gs. Oh, I loved that he was a jock. Then when he’s reading the comic book and I know there’s girls down there and he’s not in any mood, I look at him: “You crazy!? There’s girls there!”

  He wasn’t interested.

  He did it in his own time. He was not anywhere near what I was. I was a fucking animal. And they were coming in by the numbers—29A is the blonde; number 29B is the brunette.

  You mean, as soon as the act caught on, it was like rock ‘n’ roll groupies?

  It was. Later, on pictures, it started in the morning in my dressing room at a quarter to eight, before I went to the set. And I’m directing a movie, so I’m there early with my crew. Quarter to eight I give a little hump, nice. Good to get started, get rid of the poison.

  When you guys got together at the 500 Club, when you were officially a team, was that just like wildfire?

  Yes, absolutely. There’s no way to describe it—no way.

  Did you guys ad-lib an enormous amount?

  Oh, sure. Well, what I had written on the greasy brown paper bag was what I thought would be a marvelous formula. 1) Intros and acknowledging the players. That meant my introducing Dean. In other words, I would come out first and establish that I am part of a team and that I do the silly stuff: “So, I implore you, ladies and gentlemen, please don’t be bored during his three songs because I’m getting ready to come out. It’s not that long. Clap a lot because he’s very sensitive.” But that would establish where the kid was coming from. Then I would introduce him and then he would do his three songs, so we knew he was now the singing straight-man. Established. Then, I was very strong about our doing a “runner” right away. And that was: He’d be singing his third song and I come out and I’d say, “Mr. Martin, I hope you don’t think I’m disrespectful, you know every night it’s a strange thing, when you do that number I have to go to the bathroom. So, when you see me leaving the room that’s where I’m going. It’s not that I’m not liking your number. You know what I’m saying? It’s just that I had to go to the bathroom.” Now that starts the “runner.” Because like eight minutes later Dean will say, “By the way, did you go?” “No, but it’s OK. I’ve got great control.” And we’d pass it. The third or fourth time I’m starting to weaken. “I think I can now—” and Dean would say, “I just want you to hold this music for me.”