Every day after school, I would watch Laurel and Hardy, hosted by Chuck McCann. I would learn about old movies and show business by watching Memory Lane with Joe Franklin. And Dad would let me stay up to watch Jack Paar, especially when crazy Jonathan Winters was on. And I would take my chair and put it next to the old black and white TV set, and I would look like I was Jack Paar's next guest. You might say, What's a young kid doing watching these sophisticated shows? It was Dad's taste. He pointed us in the right direction, and we loved it.
CHAPTER 7
Around this time Uncle Berns really entered our lives, and he would forever change them. A wild man, a Zero Mostel kind of personality, Berns was a mystical man with shoulder-length white hair, and a long white beard, a Santa Claus on acid. He could do magic tricks, and mime. He loved to be silly and make people laugh. Everyone was pulled to him, as if he were a magnet. He is an artist, and an art dealer, who actually represented Zero, who was a talented painter. Berns taught us about color and expression. He equated comedy and art. "Who's funnier than Picasso? Everyone has three eyes and six tits!"
He had his own art gallery in Manhattan, so on an occasional Sunday, we'd go visit him in the gallery, and sit with some of his painters, and listen to their stories. Berns would take us to museums, and point out the "moments" in a painting, almost as if they were movements of a symphony. It was never boring, because he was such a great teacher. Berns touched all of us in different ways. It was like we were all the best parts of him. Joel could always draw and paint, so Berns and he would sketch together. Rip could sing beautifully and Berns had a big baritone voice, so they would sing spirituals together. And Berns and I? We were just funny together. He loved to perform for anybody, never self-conscious, always totally free, a silly kind of genius, and he gave us the courage to get up and perform in almost any situation. As I think back, Dad was never threatened by our relationship with his brother. He loved seeing us play with this St. Bernard of an uncle. In a way, Berns was one of the best gifts he ever gave us.
Then one day, Dad brought home this record from the Commodore Music Shop. It was a Spike Jones record. These were novelty records. Spike would have all different kinds of sound effects, gunshots, whistles, dog barks, all perfectly integrated into his arrangements. I never heard such crazy stuff in my life. Uncle Berns said, "Lip-sync it and do it for the family." I memorized every moment of "You Always Hurt the One You Love," got it down perfectly, every whistle, gunshot and scream. They all loved it. The living room was my room now.
The three of us were always performing for the family. Rip would sing, Joel and I would do something together, and then I would close the show. It's still the best room I have ever worked. Every family event was an opening night to us. Mom would even pack our props in a small suitcase if we were going "on the road" to Grandma's house, or an uncle's home. It was expected of us.
There would be a great meal, and after the cake and cigars would be the show. We would get paid with change. My cousin Edith would give me dimes, and I would stick them on my perspiring forehead. When my forehead was full, the show was over. Mom and Dad were always the best audience.
That's how you really start. You want to make your folks laugh. Dad saw something else in us . . . we weren't just his kids, we were good. Oftentimes he would improvise with us on the tape recorder. It was so great to spend this kind of time with him. There are other ways of "having a catch." One day he came home with the record that Ernie Kovacs used for his hilarious "Nairobi Trio" routine, and three gorilla masks. The Trio were three derby-wearing apes, a piano player (me), one with two large mallets (Rip), and the leader, who had a small baton and kept time (Joel). As the piece progressed, the mallet man would turn as if he was in a music box, and slam the leader on the head with the mallets. The leader never seemed to be looking as he got hit, and couldn't understand who hit him. It was hilarious, and we did it perfectly. It was such a great feeling to do this with my big brothers. I'll never forget how excited we would be, getting into our costumes, as you could hear the relatives saying to each other, "Sit down already, the show is going to start."
Around this time, Joel developed a bad case of mono. He would actually miss two years of high school because of it, running a high fever all the time, which they couldn't get under control. He was in a tough place, sixteen years old, and homebound for so long. He took all his classes at home from tutors. Not many friends would come to visit him. He was very down, because this illness had robbed him of his high school years. So after school I would come home and we'd spend hours improvising on the tape recorder. Being funny together, watching funny people on television, and listening to comedy albums was a great medicine, maybe the only one that was working for him.
This was a particularly wonderful time for comedy records. My Son the Folk Singer, Jonathan Winters did a few great albums, The First Family, Nichols and May Live on Broadway, The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart, Stan Freberg's America, which was an original musical about American history, and the daddy of them all, The 2,000 Year Old Man. Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner.
This is all we did now. It was either watch a ballgame, play baseball, improvise on the tape recorder, listen to jazz, or a great "live" comedy album. They always printed that on the album jacket--"Recorded Live at the Bitter End," "Recorded Live at Carnegie Hall." Of course it was "live." Who's gonna buy "Recorded Dead at the Troubadour"? I devoured those records. I could feel the magic of being in front of an audience, just by listening to these masters. I learned about timing by listening to the way the comic would wait for the laugh to die down, and then hit the crowd with the topper. It was like surfing, riding the wave and taking it wherever it was going. Sitting on the top of it, with all of that power, gliding you almost gently to the shore only to start all over again. Not only could I hear it, I could see it, I could feel it. It really was my rock and roll.
This was an important time to be laughing. We needed laughter, because we were in the middle of the Cold War. We had a president who was an aging war hero, and a first lady too old to wear bangs. We were terrified of the Russians. It all started in 1957 with Walter Cronkite telling us, "This is the sound from Outer Space." We heard a few electronic beeps, it was Sputnik, the first satellite to orbit the earth. What the hell is this thing? Eighteen inches around with a bunch of small knitting-needle-type prongs protruding from it. We're doomed, we all thought. It's a death ray!
Nikita Khrushchev came into our lives then. A squat, scary little bald man, and his equally scary wife, and the fact that Khrushchev didn't speak English made him even scarier, so I became even more frightened of his interpreter. How did we know this interpreter was getting it right? Khrushchev came to the U.N. He took off his shoe and banged it on the table and screamed at us, "WE WILL BURY YOU!" At least, that's what they told us he said, what he really said, was, "THESE ARE NOT MY SHOES! WHO STOLE MY SHOES?"
"The Bomb" was on our minds all the time. We watched films in elementary school, showing us what nuclear explosions looked like, what they could do to a city. Horrifying. People were building fallout shelters all across the country. It wasn't a matter of if the Russians would bomb us, it seemed like when. We were practicing duck-and-cover drills in school, in case of an enemy attack. They would hurry us into the hallway, we'd sit on the floor with our arms folded, our heads down, our legs crossed. This position was surely going to save me when the Russians dropped the big one on us.
At the end of Long Beach, in a place called Lido Beach, about two miles or so from my house, was a Nike missile base. Every day at noon the air raid alarms would go off and the Nike missiles would rise up and point to the sky. You could see them from the street. I would be playing ball on the mall in front of our house, and flatbed trucks with new missiles on them would pass us. Sometimes they would stop at the light, and I would just stare at these weapons of mass destruction, and the military men guarding them, just feet from me. Terrifying.
It's also terrifying to think that we accepted it as jus
t the way things were. The early sixties was a stunning time. Kennedy was elected. I was thirteen, and he got me interested in politics. I thought he was amazing, a president you could relate to, and the wife was pretty cute too. Then came 1961, the summer of Maris and Mantle, Yuri Gagarin orbited the earth, the first man in space. While the Yankees were winning the pennant race, we were losing the space race. The Mercury Seven astronauts, Alan Shepard, John Glenn, were now huge stars. "We're going to go to the moon first," JFK promised. The Bay of Pigs came, the Cuban blockade, Kennedy vs. Khrushchev. The aerial photographs of the Russian missiles just ninety miles from Florida. The Russian ships bearing down on our destroyers. They will bury us! Duck and cover, duck and cover . . . At the last moment, the Russians turned back.
Terrifying. We thought the Russians were the enemy. They thought we were the enemy. And we were both wrong. It's the French.
And then Dad brought home an album called Bill Cosby Is a Very Funny Fellow, Right! I loved Bill Cosby. I thought Bill was the greatest comedian of that time, and the most important one to me. I could relate to Cosby. He had brothers. I had brothers. He played ball at Temple. I belonged to a temple. So there was a bond.
On that album--I think it's the finest piece of recorded comedy ever--is a routine called "Noah," and it's about the building of the Ark. It was an amazing piece. So I took that recording, and I memorized it, and I did it in the school show called "The Swing Show" at Long Beach High School. It was a variety show . . . a big band, singers, and I was the comic. And it was the only time that my dad ever got to see me perform in a sport jacket, "live," in front of an audience that wasn't relatives.
I was a smash. Well, I was doing Cosby's stuff, but I didn't think that I was stealing. I was fourteen years old. I just did it word for word in front of an audience. Is that stealing? In Hollywood, they call that an homage. And then years later, friends were now listening to Cosby and they'd say to me, "Billy, there's this guy, Cosby. He's doing your stuff!"
I loved being in front of audiences. It always felt like one of the safest places for me to be. Fielding ground balls, and being on a stage, that's where I really felt most at home. My friends would come over and listen to these records. One of them, Joel Robins, would become my comedy partner. He was hilarious. A moon face, with great timing. We started doing things together. We would imitate Laurel and Hardy, derby hats and all the trimmings, and do their routines and others we would come up with. We lip-synced the entire Stan Freberg America album, over an hour long, playing all the characters, perfectly lip-syncing all of the songs. He and I performed together at sweet sixteens, "The Swing Show," in the hallway, and basically at the drop of a laugh. Comedy was becoming more and more important to me. If I couldn't be the Yankees' shortstop, I was going to be a comedian. Or better yet, the funniest shortstop the Yankees ever had.
Uncle Milt was always my mentor. He always had great advice and stories of the giants that he was working with at Decca Records. Uncle Milt always made sure to take the time to tell me something that would inspire me. He never discouraged me. Never said, "It's a tough business. Have something to fall back on." He always made me feel that I could be funny anyplace, not just the living room. He'd say, "Listen, Billy. I'm producing a guy now. I think he's a genius. You must watch him. His name is Sammy Davis, Jr. He can do everything. He sings great, he dances better than anybody, and he does great impressions. If you want to be a performer, great, but try to do a lot of things. Not just one thing. Watch Sammy Davis, Jr."
Ironically, Sammy was the star of the first Broadway show that I ever saw, Mr. Wonderful, which also starred Jack Carter. Dad got tickets from his friend, The Daily News critic Douglas Watt, and we sat in the front row. I remember the house lights coming down, the orchestra playing the overture, and then Sammy walking out to a great ovation, and I also remember feeling I wanted it to be me.
I watched Sammy every chance I got, never once thinking that someday I not only would become his opening act, but that I would also become Sammy Davis, Jr. Opening for Sammy was the greatest thrill, we became good friends, and I would watch his show every night. We did three weeks together at Harrah's hotel, in Lake Tahoe. I went on at 8:00 P.M., and I would get to the dressing room, around 7:00 or so. Sammy had been there since 6:00. I would always go in to say hello, and we'd play backgammon and talk. The stories he would tell were priceless. He was mesmerizing. Listening to his history and firsthand accounts of the biggest stars in the business was simply sensational . . . that's how I developed my impression of him. I couldn't help but absorb him, and many a night I would leave his dressing room with his sound, his inflections, his "thing," man, ringing in my head. And Sammy could do something I never could do. He could tap-dance with both legs.
But then I discovered something that made me forget Sammy, made me forget Cosby, made me forget The 2,000 Year Old Man, made me forget the Yankees, made me forget everything that I cared about because I discovered my penis. This was the greatest discovery of all. I discovered mine six, seven, eight, ten times a day. I wonder what the record is. The penis is not a good thing to get addicted to. Let's face it. It's a weapon of self-destruction and you don't need U.N. inspectors to find it. You know right where it is every second.
This little guy has caused problems for men throughout history. The great Thomas Jefferson had affairs. His boyhood friend Strom Thurmond--same thing. Kennedy, Eisenhower, Clinton . . . all men of power, and the power went right to their pants. Even FDR fooled around. This I don't understand. Because if you have a chance to screw Eleanor Roosevelt every night of the week, where you going? A great woman, without a doubt, but not really a "hottie." He actually faked being paralyzed so he wouldn't have to have sex with her. He wasn't only frightened of fear itself, he was frightened of that overbite. Now I had the same problem, right in the palm of my hand.
I was so horny. I was always ready. My glands were relentless. They were screaming at me.
NOW, NOW, NOW!
And I was ready for anything that looked hump-able. A bagel.
NOW!
It was poppy-seeded, I almost shredded myself to death.
A 45 RPM record.
NOW!
To this day I can't look Lesley Gore in the eye.
NOW, NOW, NOW!
And then I saw The Girl.
NOW!
This wasn't lust.
BULLSHIT!
No, it wasn't. This was something different. This was love.
COME ON, YOU'RE TALKING TO ME NOW!
I fell in love with this adorable blond girl. First love. The kind of love that actually hurts. She was the cutest thing I'd ever seen. I knew what head-over-heels meant because I kept tripping and falling when I would follow her home from school.
THIS IS SO FUCKING BORING!
Finally, I got up enough nerve to ask her out and she said yes.
LET'S GET READY TO RUMBLE!
My first date. Panic. I walked to her house. (Driving was still years away.) She lived in Lido Beach, not far from the Nike missile beach. A perfect image for my condition. I was so nervous I couldn't remember where she lived.
MAKE A LEFT!
It was the first global positioning system.
YOU HAVE ARRIVED AT YOUR DESTINATION!
Leave me alone!
NEVER! I OWN YOU!
I got to the door, I started to knock and I heard something that scared the hell out of me.
LET ME RING THE BELL!
I didn't know what to do, I just stood there frozen.
FORGET IT. I'LL KNOCK!
And if they hadn't cut off the top six to eight inches, I would have leveled the place . . .
So now we start going out, and it was the first time I made out with somebody in a movie theater, in the balcony of the Laurel Theatre in Long Beach.
NOW!
Then in the back seat of a friend's car . . .
NOW!
Oh, she was Miss Right . . .
NOW!
And I got up eno
ugh nerve and I said, "You know what? I love you, I really do . . . Let's go steady."
"Oh, no, Billy I can't do that. As a matter of fact, I don't want to go out with you anymore. I really just like you as a friend."
OH NO!
"Really?"
"I mean, I like you, but not in that way . . ."
"Uh-huh . . ." I understand. (But my glands don't.)
WHAT ABOUT ME?
CHAPTER 8
The rejection was too much to take. The first time out, and you open yourself up to someone. You tell somebody that you care about them, you tell somebody how you feel about them, and they say, "I just don't like you." That hurts. I was mad. I was embarrassed. I felt like a fool. I was fifteen, and I was ready to settle down, and have a family. It felt so right, how could I have been so wrong? Why didn't she like me? I couldn't see straight for days. I didn't eat, I didn't sleep. I didn't think about anything else but The Girl. It was a Tuesday night . . .
October 15, 1963. I was sitting at the kitchen table studying for a chemistry test in the morning, and I didn't give a shit. I had just lost The Girl. Who cared about chemistry? Was chemistry ever going to be important in my life? No. Was I ever going to need chemistry? No. I knew what I was going to be. I didn't need chemistry. Was anyone ever going to say to me, "Billy, what's lead?" And I wouldn't hesitate and look him right in the eye and proudly say, "Pb."
"Yes, it is, Bill. Yes, it is. Here's a million dollars."
That was never going to happen. And every time I'd turn the page of the chemistry book, I'd see The Girl's face.
My parents came into the kitchen to say goodbye. They were on their way out to their Tuesday night bowling league at Long Beach Bowl. They loved bowling with their friends. They had so much fun doing it. And frankly, this was pretty much the only fun that they were having now because times had changed for us, and not for the better.
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