Lost in the Funhouse

by Bill Zehme

  Lawler wanted him to send tapes from California. Los Angeles wrestling promoter Larry Burton, who had orchestrated many of Andy’s more surreptitious matches around Orange County, invited Andy and Zmuda to come down to Anaheim, where they borrowed the backyard poolside of one of Burton’s neighbors. They shot a great deal of footage there in which Andy—wearing Burton’s gold chain around his neck and Burton’s rings on his fingers—threatened Lawler with countless law suits and attacked the South in general and Meeyummmphissss Teeeyennnuuhhhsaaaayyyy in point and called Lawler a hick and reminded him ad nauseam that he, Andy, was from Hollywood and that he had the brains. Burton found a six-foot three-hundred-twenty-seven-pound woman at a local hardware store and Andy wrestled her on the poolside patio and slammed her head into the concrete repeatedly until she appeared unconscious. “That’s what’s gonna happen to you, Lawler!” he screamed. “See, I could do anything I want! I’m gonna wipe the floor with you, Mr. Lawler!”

  Lawler, for his part, made his own tapes in Memphis with Lance Russell and called Andy a wimp and said to Andy as well as local viewers, “We can settle it two ways, Andy Kaufman. We can settle it in court—which in your case is a joke [since] I barely pushed the guy. Or what I would propose and what I think everybody would love to see is Andy Kaufman come and get in the ring with a real wrestler and let him see what it’s like to really wrestle.”

  The video baiting continued for weeks and they eventually secured the Mid-South Coliseum for April 5, whereupon the grudge match would unfold—smack in the midst of Andy’s first club and college tour in more than two years.

  George told him that they had lost the engagement in Denver. Only 270 tickets had been sold for an auditorium whose capacity was 2,600. They also lost the Minneapolis engagement—250 tickets sold for a 2,700-seat theater. It was, George knew, the wrestling. Plus, Andy had no new material. Although he did try a couple of new things on March 26 at the Park West Theater in Chicago—he made a telephone call from the stage to someone who had written him a particularly vicious hate letter. Also, the Masked Magician hypnotized plants from the audience. Andy’s sister Carol, who lived in Chicago, feigned a trance in which she became Carol Channing and sang “Hello, Dolly!” A stripper from Boston named Princess Cheyenne, of whom Andy was quite fond, feigned a trance and removed all her clothes prompting a calamitous police raid that seemed very extremely real.

  On April Fool’s Day, he announced the Lawler match on the Letterman show and then returned two nights later to repeat the announcement in case anyone had missed it the first time. He showed clips of them baiting each other. It was very exciting. To him.

  He and Zmuda and Sherry Tuseth went to the home of referee Jerry Calhoun two nights before the match. Lawler was there as arranged and proceeded to demonstrate how Andy would survive a suplex and a piledriver because that was what he was going to do to him in the ring and this was a simple matter of remedial choreography and nothing else. The suplex, he explained, would involve Lawler lifting Andy vertically over his shoulders and falling backward together hard—like a pair of toppled trees—which would impact the back of Andy’s head. The piledriver, which was illegal in Memphis, was generally performed on opponents who had been rendered limp; the victim would be lifted by the legs and turned upside down and his head would nestle between Lawler’s thighs as he fell into a thudding sit. So there on Calhoun’s den carpet Andy submitted to Lawler dangling him by the ankles as Lawler talked him through each maneuver—“I told him, ‘You know, we’ll just keep the match very simple and very basic. You know how to get a headlock around me, don’t you?’ And he said: ‘Oh, yeah, I can do that.’ And I said, ‘Well, just get a headlock on me, and we’ll just go from there. Because I may do a move on you like a suplex from the headlock. If I do, just tuck your chin and try not to let the back of your head hit the mat and you’ll be all right, I’ll take care of you.’ And the move that I’m famous for, if I get a chance, is the piledriver. It’s funny—I remember I said, ‘Don’t worry, I won’t break your neck or anything.’ But I told him that not much of the head should make contact with the mat, just a little bit. I mean, you could do it and try to protect somebody, or you could do it and make sure their head did hit. It just depends on the placement—on how far you stick their head down between your legs. I showed him how I would keep his head way off that mat.”

  They went through this a couple of times that night and Sherry Tuseth was struck by Andy’s respectfulness toward Lawler and how he relinquished all control to him. “He was pretty much in awe of him all the time,” she said. “But what was real surprising to me was just how quickly they could rehearse something like that. It took about five minutes.”

  George flew in because. Andy had given George assurances, but still. George had not known of the extent of the choreography, so therefore. George was not thrilled. George was very extremely concerned. Zmuda told him not to worry. George sat ringside next to Sherry. George recollected afterward—He wrestled Jerry Lawler. All the pre-interviews seemed to indicate that Andy was very worried about this guy…. There was a guy, Woody Something, from Associated Press, who interviewed Jerry Lawler and he told me that Jerry wasn’t kidding around with this wrestling match. Andy went into the ring at the Mid-South Coliseum to a tremendous chorus of boos. For the first five minutes after Andy went into the ring, he was dancing around, jumping around like a monkey, got out of the ring to protect himself, and after five minutes Jerry Lawler offered to let Andy put him in a headlock. So Andy got Lawler in a head-lock. Lawler picked him up and threw him right on his back on the canvas. He hit pretty hard. Then Lawler grabbed him and gave him a piledriver, which is an illegal hold…. He did this twice. It looked like Andy’s neck was broken. He was out for a couple of minutes. Then he woke in a lot of pain and the audience was hooting and cheering and really happy that Andy was hurt.

  Lawler recollected after many passing years:

  “We went five to seven minutes before we actually even touched. So I offered him the free headlock and, just as I told him, we went into the suplex. But funny thing was the suplex knocked him out. It really did knock him goofy and he could not get up. I’ve watched the tape a thousand times. And even though he tried to tuck his head, his head still hit real hard. I mean, if it had been any of the other wrestlers, you wouldn’t even have thought anything about it. But Andy wasn’t accustomed to taking that type of abuse or whatever. It just knocked him goofy there for a minute. And I had hoped to have a little bit of a match. So I went straight to the piledriver, which meant it was already a disqualification. But now I’m thinking to myself, Oh my gosh—this has probably been a minute and a half’s worth of action for these 12,000 people here. I figured, man, I need to do something else. We’ve cheated ’em out of a wrestling match. And so that’s where the second piledriver came into effect. I gave him another one. I mean, I’ve taken probably five hundred piledrivers in my career. You just brace yourself for it, that’s just part of wrestling. All of the stuff hurts to an extent, but it’s not like a big-injury-type thing. And so I’m telling him while the crowd’s screaming, ‘Don’t worry, you won’t feel anything.’ Later on he said, ‘First of all, the suplex knocked me out. Then both of the piledrivers jammed the heck out of my neck.’ And I said: ‘Well, you didn’t hit, did you?’ He said, ‘Yes, my head hit both times.’ I mean, the wrestlers just don’t think anything about it. But not being accustomed to that, he thought: Oh, my gosh, this is really hurting big-time.”

  The ambulance came. Took them about fifteen goddamn minutes before they came. I almost got into a fight with one of those stupid punk fans there. Andy was taken out on a stretcher. The cameras were all over the place. I was in the ring with him. I was holding his hand…. Initially, we were told that he had a compressed vertebra and a short disc space between his fourth and fifth vertebrae and severe muscle strain around his neck. Later it turned out that it was primarily muscle strain. He was in traction for three days in St. Francis Hospital and took every k
ind of conceivable test—cat scans, bone scans, brain scans. The X rays indicated there was nothing serious. It was probably a cervical sprain from an old injury and that was alleviated by the traction. He’s supposed to wear a neck brace for a day or two.

  He was released from the hospital on the eighth and went home to Great Neck to celebrate Passover with his family, all of whom were mortified and Stanley actually did want to sue and Andy shrugged and happened to tune in Saturday Night Live on the tenth, most of which was devoted to a live viewer phone-in poll wherein people were casting votes as to whether or not a lobster named Larry should actually be boiled on television. Larry’s life was spared—239,096 votes to save versus 227,452 to boil. He liked this bit very much.

  He wore the neck brace in public for the next five months.

  He repeatedly announced that he had now officially retired from wrestling, but contended that at least he remained the undefeated in-tergender champion. He also said, “I just realized after this happened what a delusion I’ve been going under for the last four years. Just because I’ve never lost a match, then they gave me this belt—The Intergender Wrestling Champion of the World—I started thinking I was a sports hero. You know, I’ve just been under this macho delusion that was building up to the point where I could actually seriously think that I could beat a Jerry Lawler in a wrestling match. I mean, that’s stupid. I was just stupid.”

  He was quite gleeful really. As was Lawler.

  Lawler told the media that he was glad that he had injured that wimp and that he was not at all sorry and that he wished that he could do it again.

  Then Andy went on the Letterman show five weeks after the match; he went on the program to maunder pitifully—with chin nestled in his woeful brace—and to stammer contrition and welcome empathy. He tried to address the camera to send a heartfelt message and quavered—“Can I say something? Mr. Law—Well, I hate to be hokey about it. But, Mr. Lawler, if you—I wish—Well, I just wish he’d apol—you know … I don’t want to see anybody suffer. I think he’s suffering now enough from people hating him so much for what he did…. And I forgive him … And I think he should vindicate himself …” And Letterman nodded along sympathetically and then said, “What about a song, Andy?”

  On July 28, they would reunite on Late Night—although according to Andy’s datebook he had quietly stolen back to Memphis during the last week in June. But they would now appear together publicly for the first time since the night of suplex and piledrivers and sirens and jeers. Andy had called Lawler when the date was confirmed and they both took rooms at the Berkshire Place and went separately to meet with talent coodinator Robert Morton to roughly strategize what would occur on the program. Morton told Lawler, “Andy wouldn’t come in if you were in the same room, so we’ll just do this individually.” The plan was that they would appear in two segments interrupted by one commercial break. In the first segment, Morton said, footage of the Memphis match would be shown and it would be good if he and Andy were antagonistic toward each other. Lawler said that would be no problem. Then, in the second segment, they would finally apologize to each other and Andy said that he would then want to sing “What the World Needs Now (Is Love, Sweet Love).” And Lawler smirked and said fine and went back to the hotel where Andy called him.

  Lawler would remember: “So he asked me what I thought about the idea—the apology and the song. I said, ‘Well, you know, it’s okay with me.’ I figured I’m in his arena now, so I’m not making any suggestions, right? So he said to me—and I’ll never forget the way he put it—he said, ‘I wonder what would happen if you hit me instead? If you just slugged me?’ I said, ‘You mean on the show?’ He said, ‘Yeah.’ I said, ‘Well, since we’re taping it, they probably wouldn’t even broadcast it. And, second of all, they’d probably have me arrested.’ He said, ‘No, I would have to be the one to have you arrested.’ I said, ‘I don’t know, Andy, that’s pretty strong.’ He said, ‘I know—but wouldn’t it be great?’ But I could tell that’s what he wanted to happen. He didn’t want to come right out and tell me to hit him. Because he never wanted to tell me what to do. He was always kind of shy around me.”

  They arrived at NBC Studios separately and stayed apart in the makeup room and also in the greenroom and did not actually see each other until Letterman introduced them. Andy timidly skulked out behind Lawler and they sat at the panel and Andy pulled his chair away from Lawler’s chair. And Letterman asked right away whether he still needed his neck brace and Andy said yes he did and Lawler smirked. But Andy tried to be friendly about the whole mess and they looked at the footage—“I was just teasing in fun,” he said about his hectoring Hollywood tapes—and Lawler grumbled and stated, “I don’t want to sit out here and pretend that I’m friends with this guy, because I think he’s a wimp.” And it was very uncomfortable and the first commercial break came and Andy left his chair to gain more distance and Letterman asked Lawler questions about wrestlers Dick the Bruiser and Bobo Brazil. Then the show resumed and Andy admitted that he had been wrong to wrestle Lawler and said that he now felt Lawler owed him an apology. “I don’t think I owe him an apology,” Lawler responded, adding that he didn’t know whether Andy was wearing a neck brace or a flea collar.

  Lawler would recall: “If you watch the tape, you can see Dave’s face is like, Uh-oh, where are we going here? Because Dave was expecting the apology from me. So he gets a little worried and I could tell that he was gonna force the next commercial break early, right? And then Andy starts turning toward me and tries to goad me—‘Whattsamatter, Lawler!’ And he starts talking about lawsuit again or something. So Dave said, ‘We’re gonna pause here for a commercial and get out the hoses….’ And right up to that point I didn’t know what I should do, but when I heard the music start playing, I knew. I thought, if not now, then never. And Andy gave me this mean look, like he was waiting for something. So I just stood up and slapped the crap out of him, openhanded right across the face, as hard as I could….”

  Andy spilled out of his chair to the floor and pandemonium ensued and nobody knew what to believe and Robert Morton rushed forth and Letterman stepped away and the show went to a break—“It was like the President had been assassinated or something,” said Lawler. The break would last almost twenty minutes, in which time the studio lights were dimmed and a security guard came for Lawler and escorted him to the greenroom, which had been emptied of its many previous occupants. Lawler said, “I could hear through the door out in the hallway people crying and screaming. And I’m thinking, I just really screwed up here. And then I hear Andy screaming and cussing—‘I want him arrested! Call the cops!’ Je-sus. And I had already told this goof that if I hit him I’d get arrested! So I’m thinking I’m getting double-crossed here.”

  And Robert Morton would recall: “During this enormous break, Andy came over to me in the middle of his ranting and kind of whispered, ‘Am I taking this too far?’ I said, ‘No, absolutely not. Just keep going. It’s entertaining as hell!’ So he just picked up where he left off with his performance. I mean, Andy knew that he was performing. He saw that there was entertainment value in this. Whether or not he was surprised by the slap, I never knew. But it was just electric.”

  Lawler was finally brought back into the studio—“Now the whole audience boos, right? All of a sudden they’ve turned into a wrestling crowd! So I sit down and everyone is trying to get their composure. Dave is not even looking at me. Andy is over by the studio door, where everybody comes in and Dave says to him, ‘Andy, do you want to come back here and sit down or not?’ And he said, ‘No! If I come out there, I’ll say words that I can’t say on television!’”

  And so the cameras relit and Letterman welcomed viewers back and said, “Andy, are you coming in here again or—” Whereupon, he burst back into the studio and began leaping up and down behind Letterman’s desk as he addressed Lawler with a diatribe that would resonate in broadcast history, largely for the number of expletives that were obscured by coo-coo noises
—“I am sick of this bull shit!” he began. “You are full of bullshit, my friend! I will sue you for everything you have! I will sue your ass! You’re a motherfuckin’ asshole!!!!!!!!! As far as I’m concerned!!!!! You hear me?!!!!! A fuckin’ asshole!!!!!!!!! Fuck you!!!!!! I will get you for this!!! [He stormed away, then instantly returned.] I am sorry, I am sorry to use those words on television. I apologize to all my fans. I’m sorry, I’m sorry. But you—you’re a fuckin’ asshole!!!!!!!!!!!!! You’re a fuckin’ asshole!!!!!!!!! [He slammed his palms on Letterman’s desk.] You hear me!!!!!! A fuckin’ asshole!!!!!!”

  Which was when he took Letterman’s coffee cup and sailed its hot black contents in Lawler’s direction—“You know,” Lawler would say, “if you watch that closely, you can see him make the move to the cup to let me know what he was fixing to do. He threw it so I could get out of the way. It barely went on my left shoulder.” So Lawler leapt and Andy scampered out and Letterman said, “Uhh, I think you can use some of those words on TV…. But what you can’t do is throw coffee. I’ve said it over and over again….” And the segment ended.

  Lawler was accompanied to an elevator by the same security guard who saw that he was safely out of the building before asking him to autograph a wrestling magazine. Andy, meanwhile, went upstairs to the Late Night production offices to hide from view and to think about what he had done. After the show, Letterman found him up there and Andy eagerly asked, “What did you think?” And Letterman wearily glanced at the neck brace and sighed, “Next time wear a tie.”