Andy Kaufman Revealed!

by Bob Zmuda

  And a comfortable living was an understatement. Some of the more desirable prostitutes were making more money than Kaufman was. Do the math: Girls were on the floor for eighteen hours a day for twenty-one days straight, taking off the week of their periods. Some turned a trick every hour, so in three weeks they had serviced 378 customers at fifty bucks a pop. That added up to $18,900 a month. Multiplying that by twelve months equals almost $227,000. Even after paying the house its due, a young lady would walk away with $116,000 a year. That bought a lot of feminine hygiene deodorant. Some exquisite beauties could knock off two johns every hour.

  What’s even more shocking was that some of those women were happily married to men they had met at work. That may sound abhorrent by our Western standards of morality, but when asked how their husbands deal with their occupation, the response is matter-of-fact: “I only fuck the customer, I love my man.” When one’s bride is bringing home that kind of dough, it’s easy to keep an open mind.

  As soon as we returned from Reno, the next item on the calendar was a trip to Nashville, where Andy was to appear on the “Johnny Cash Christmas Show.” As Santa Claus. Being a nice Jewish boy, Andy loved the irony, but the main draw of the gig was a chance to work with the legendary Man in Black himself.

  We arrived in Nashville and were whisked over to the new Grand Ole Opry. Apparently that original hallowed hall of country music, the old Grand Ole Opry, was a firetrap, and the fire marshal prevailed in closing it. The new edifice to country western was constructed in the suburbs, along with an adjoining hotel, restaurants, a mini-mall, a television broadcast facility, and last but not least, a theme park dubbed Opryland.

  Andy and I were somewhat disappointed that we were to work in a facility with hardly more history than a shopping mall, but our guide assured us the new GOO was the spiritual successor of the old GOO and took us center stage to prove it. There, embedded in the polished wood, was a one-foot-square piece from the stage of the old GOO. We stared at it for a moment, and I couldn’t help but think of that scene in the movie The Magic Christian where zillionaire Peter Sellers buys the Mona Lisa and cuts out the smile because that’s the best part.

  That minor disappointment faded at the thought of meeting the mythic Johnny Cash, but he was nowhere in sight. We decided to arrange the sizable load of props we carried while we kept an eye out for Johnny. As we organized our things, everyone cleared the stage except for an old guy hunched over a desk in the corner, scribbling some paperwork. Assuming he was a stage manager or something similar, I glanced over and thought a few times of asking where Johnny Cash might be, but he looked so intent, staring through glasses as thick as Coke bottles, that I held off.

  After a few moments the backstage intercom blared. “Johnny Cash, we’re ready for you on stage.” Looking around for the big man to finally appear, Andy and I were stopped in our tracks when the old paperwork guy suddenly stood to full, impressive height, shed his bifocals, shook his long hair back, and sauntered toward us in that trademark, manly gait. “Hi,” he said, smiling as he passed us, “I’m Johnny Cash.”

  That the man was capable of flipping a switch and making the transformation from anonymous, seemingly old man to a virile superstar who strutted by like a panther was not lost on either of us. Like a couple of school kids, we said hello, and Andy’s eyes locked onto and followed Cash, mesmerized by that star quality, that aura the man emanated. And as a student of character metamorphosis, Andy was particularly struck by that exotic transitional quality Johnny Cash had just demonstrated.

  There is nothing that approaches southern hospitality, and fellow guest Tom T. Hall decided to introduce us to a large helping of it. After the taping, Tom T. invited us to his ranch for dinner. The consummate host, Tom T. laid on quite a spread, personally barbecuing our entrees, Tony Clifton–size steaks. Tom T. boasted that he had butchered the ruminant we were about to consume, and to my surprise, Andy the vegetarian wolfed down the immense filet without exhibiting a single Tony Clifton mannerism.

  The height of the evening came after dinner when we retired to Tom T.’s back room and the artist took out his guitar. As he strummed away and began singing an obscure country ballad, Andy, to my and Tom T.’s surprise, joined in. Into the night Tom T. played and sang, and Andy accompanied him, knowing most of the songs Tom T. dished up. It was yet another discovery about my complex friend. As they sang, I reflected on one other benefit of hanging with Andy: not only meeting famous people but also relaxing with them in their natural settings, away from the artifice of that celebrity demeanor.

  From Nashville we shot up to New York for Andy’s October 10, 1979, appearance on Saturday Night Live. The guest host was Monty Python alum Eric Idle, and it was to be Andy’s first wrestling match with a woman on national television. And as the ref, it was to be my first appearance live in front of that same national audience. I was scared shitless.

  I had done the routine countless times on the college circuit, but this took my role to a new, frighteningly visible level. Suddenly all those ring moves I’d done dozens of times in the past, and taken for granted, were now rolling over and over in my mind. When I realized the surest way to fuck up was to overthink it all, I put it out of my mind and focused on making our first television wrestling gig work like clockwork. We decided, in honor of moving up to the big time, that we’d raise our standard five-hundred-dollar prize for defeating Andy to an even grand. Of course he wasn’t supposed to lose, and he never had.

  As the ref I was not only to officiate the match but also to lead the opponent-selection process by holding my hand above the head of each of our volunteers as the audience voted for their favorite with applause. The chosen lady was then cast in the role of challenger and candidate to win the dough. As the show went on the air, we prepared in our dressing room backstage. As usual, Andy annoyed some of the more zealous cast members when he changed the channel of the television in our dressing room from the live show feed to an old movie. They were all riveted to the myriad monitors backstage and they chose to acknowledge Andy’s indifference as a slap in their faces.

  We closed the door, and as Andy stripped down to his skivvies and prepared to don his tights, I held out a roll of fiber-backed gaffer’s tape.

  “What’s that for?” he asked.

  “You.”

  “Me? Whaddya mean, me?”

  “You. We gotta tape you down. We can’t have you on national TV with a major flagpole. I’m taping you down.”

  He considered the implications for a moment, then said, “You’re right. Let’s do it.”

  After laying on another pair of underwear I started strapping him, crisscrossing the sturdy tape around his waist and across his groin. When I was done he looked quite silly, as if he were sporting a metallic codpiece. “I’m going out like this,” he said spontaneously.

  “No, you’re not,” I snapped.

  “Okay.”

  After his long johns Andy put on an additional covering, a pair of swim trunks, so eager was I to conceal his secret. Being wacky was one thing, but I understood how people could twist anything sexual, and I didn’t want it to come back and bite us. Over the whole outfit I draped his dad’s old bathrobe. Then we were ready for combat.

  I was called to the stage first to choose the opponent. In a last minute twinge of either vanity or fear of seeing the camera and studio audience, I removed my glasses. They were hardly cosmetic props, and without them I couldn’t see shit. I held the selection process, and as Andy was introduced, he entered the ring and lambasted me in front of the crowd.

  “Zmuda, are you nuts? This woman’s pregnant. You want me to wrestle a pregnant woman?”

  As blind as a bat, I hadn’t noticed when the audience offered up the pregnant would-be wrestler. I quickly put my glasses on, dismissed the future mother, and went to the alternate, a striking young woman named Mimi. Of course, everyone thought the pregnant bit was part of the act.

  Mimi was attired in a skintight, sheer leotard that rev
ealed every inch of her exceptional physique, including the fact she wore no panties, evidenced by the fabric coyly adhering to the cleft below her mound of Venus. That she also possessed a spectacular ass didn’t help matters. Not only was Kaufman becoming aroused, but so was I, along with every other red-blooded male watching Mimi circle the ring. Mimi lunged for Andy and the thousand bucks, but they both evaded her. When she and Andy finally hit the mat and began to roll about he started in with the love talk.

  “Can you believe it?” he whispered. “There are millions of people watching us right now. Come back to my dressing room … I’ve got to see you again.”

  Realizing Andy wasn’t the enemy, Mimi was eventually pinned under Andy on the mat on stage and, later, in his dressing room. As Mimi emerged from Kaufman’s room I couldn’t help but marvel at how he’d taken public wrestling with a stranger and turned it into a sexual prelude.

  Feminists everywhere decried Andy’s Neanderthal attitude and were infuriated when he would utter such phrases as “Stay in the kitchen where you belong,” or “God, man, woman, dog,” indicating the hierarchy with a descending hand gesture. On the other side of the coin, cavemen in all walks of life loved Andy and mindlessly applauded his efforts to “keep women in their places.” Both groups couldn’t have been further from the reality of the situation or the nature of the man they were cheering or jeering.

  That was part of Andy the Chameleon: make them believe something reversed from the truth. In fact, Andy was more of a feminist than many feminists. He respected women and harbored none of the prejudices that many other men did regarding equality of the sexes. Andy never felt women were incapable or had any less a role in the world than men, but he certainly knew that it was a societal hot button and delighted in standing at the control panel and punching it over and over to get a reaction.

  As I’ve said, Andy revered women, and his sincerity and innocence caused many of those he came in contact with to fall for him. And he for them. He was a very sensitive man, in touch with, as they say, his “feminine side.” Dates were often surprised to accompany him to a touching movie, watch him cry his eyes out, and note that afterward he exhibited none of the guilt many men would show.

  I think he was surprised at the lack of sophistication our audiences showed regarding the put-on nature of our matches. He assumed they would know, as in mainstream pro wrestling, that it was all for show and that the insults, violence, and animosity were merely theater. That seemingly hip crowds sometimes became so incensed over his ring antics was a shock to him. But rather than wilting under the scorn, he used that knowledge to increase his effects on future wrestling audiences.

  As for Mimi, that match was the start of a beautiful friendship, one that would last the rest of Andy’s life. Many men can love ‘em and leave ‘em, and Andy could wrestle ‘em and love ‘em, but he was a failure at leaving them.

  On returning to L.A., Andy went back to toiling on Taxi, and I found myself in a crisis with Shelly, my live-in girlfriend of three years. Shelly had had all she could take of L.A. and yearned for the good old almost-bucolic days of Ocean Beach, when schedules were simple and life was like an oil painting. She wanted to return to San Diego, and I, of course, was where I belonged and stubbornly held my ground. I sought Andy’s advice, assuming he’d take my side.

  “She says she has nothing here,” I said.

  “She’s right,” he said bluntly, to my hurt and amazement, “she doesn’t.”

  The hopeless romantic, I threw up my best defense. “But how about me? I’m here. I’m certainly not nothing!”

  Andy looked me square in the eye and said, “You’re here for your career.”

  I was shocked by the cold, simple truth of it. He was dead right. It was moments like that in which that rare but strong Andy surfaced, as if a dispassionate and levelheaded business executive had subsumed the man-child for a moment. Shelly and I broke up and life went on.

  Despite Tony Clifton’s attempt at its destruction, Taxi was into its second season and going strong, a solid hit for ABC and a growing millstone around the neck of Andy Kaufman. As Andy’s strength to endure the tedium of his television production schedule began to ebb he knew he’d better summon his super-hero to deliver him from the bathos of sitcomedy — faster than a speeding insult, able to change the course of mighty stage shows. He needed an emotional rescue, like a life-giving IV, and that rescue could be found only in the chaos of Tony Clifton.

  After he instructed George Shapiro to quit booking Andy Kaufman and begin booking Tony Clifton, Andy and I sat back and waited for some unsuspecting victim to fall into our web. It wasn’t long before George called with news that the afternoon variety show Dinah!, hosted by its namesake, singer and actress Dinah Shore, happily wanted Tony. Used to has-beens and B-grade performers on their way down and out, the producers of Dinah! were giddy that someone as hot as Andy Kaufman would deign to do their show in any guise.

  Andy had little respect for sitcoms and even less for poor Dinah’s show, which was solidly in his “contempt” category, the ass end of television. Andy had done Dinah! before, as Andy, and had loathed everything about it. To Andy, it was worse than pornography, a homogenized effluent of mindless patter and less-than-trivial guests and features, all contrived to give its target — stultified, midlife housewives — an effect strikingly similar to fifty milligrams of Thorazine. If Andy had wanted to blow Taxi out of the water, Dinah! was in the path of a strategic nuclear strike. The thought of his having to chatter away with Dinah, as the simpering Charles Nelson Reilly demonstrated how to concoct Cherries Jubilee, caused a seldom-seen hostility to well within Andy. Tony Clifton was called up for active duty and given his marching orders.

  As I Cliftonized Andy at his home that morning, the rest of our entourage began to assemble: a new employee of George Shapiro’s, a young agent named Jim Cancholla, whom we renamed “Jimmy the C” after presenting him with his Clifton-approved Ray-Bans, and three women, Andy’s secretary Linda Mitchell and two other girlfriends of ours. The ladies did themselves up as tarts, and as soon as Tony Clifton emerged from makeup, we jumped into Tony’s signature pink Caddie convertible with me at the wheel and sailed down Laurel Canyon to our two o’clock taping in Hollywood.

  Tony spotted a liquor store and ordered us to stop for cigarettes and booze, a pint bottle of Jack Daniel’s. Then we continued on to our destiny with Dinah! Noting it was spot on two as we approached the studio, Tony started in on the bourbon and told me to drive around for a while to make sure we were late. Half an hour later at the studio gate, juggling a cigarette and the three girls, who were in back with him, Tony barked a nasal command to the gatekeeper. “I’m Tony Clifton. I’m doin’ Dinah! Lemme in.” The guy looked over his drive-on sheet and made a mistake: he disagreed with Mr. Clifton.

  “Clifton? Sorry, but your name’s not here.”

  “You idiot, don’t you recognize me? I’m the International Singing Sensation, Tony Clifton. I’m deeply insulted. Lemme in.”

  “I’m sorry, sir, your name’s not on my list.”

  “I don’t have to put up with this shit! Listen, asshole, I’ll sue you and your two-bit studio for everything it’s worth! You understand me?”

  Recognizing what might have happened, I said to the rattled sentry, “Check the list, maybe you got the wrong name, maybe you got Andy Kaufman instead.”

  “What did you say? What did you say?” blasted the enraged Singing Sensation. “I told you never to use that untalented jerk’s name around me … ever!”

  Then he focused his rage on the poor guard. “How old are you?” demanded Tony.

  The guard looked quizzical. “Forty-five.”

  “Forty-five? Forty-five?” mocked Tony. “You’re forty-five, and this is all you’ve made of your life?”

  The man’s eyes narrowed angrily, so I quickly leaped out, apologized, and tried to communicate with him while Tony screamed for the man’s full name, yelling at the girls to take it down and “spell it
the hell right!”

  I confirmed that sure enough, the talent coordinator hadn’t heard the rules and had given Kaufman’s name to the gate. After calling the set, we cleared that up and the guy let us through, but not before jotting down our license number. Having already gotten off on the wrong foot, I knew Clifton was somehow going to exact revenge for the slight. As we pulled into our parking place I glanced into my wallet and inventoried our potential bail money.

  As Clifton and his retinue swept onto the set of Dinah! the producers and talent coordinator took one look and began getting nervous. With about twenty minutes to tape time, the plan was for Tony to go out, sing “On the Street Where You Live,” then do a duet with Dinah, the cheery song “Anything You Can Do.” After that, time permitting, they would do a cooking segment. One of Dinah’s hooks was to get her celeb guests to cook something in the on-set kitchen, a little feature that “humanized” the stars for the folks in Iowa. Tony offered to whip up his favorite breakfast, bacon and eggs à la Clifton. His secret that made it so special? A dozen eggs, including some shells, whipped, tossed with raw bacon, then pan fried. Mmmmm, gooood.