Lost in the Funhouse

by Bill Zehme

  He heard about the healers who pulled clumps of disease out of bodies by magic. He and Lynne found one in the California desert; some clumps were extracted which looked like animal intestines, but also like red stringy globs of, um, cancer; there was no scarring; he knew it was magic and he believed completely. A woman there told him of the miracle man of Baguio, which was a small town two hours outside Manila, in the Philippines. The woman said she could make the arrangements. They would go March 21 in search of psychic faith-healing miracles.

  Stanley rented him a nice house in Pacific Palisades, just steps from the beach, at 300 Lombard. He would be able to watch sunsets on the ocean and have more room to breathe. His family headed home a week before the Philippines quest—about which Stanley banked no optimism—and they would return once he had completed his journey. The night before Andy and Lynne departed, there would be a Blassie premiere at the Nuart Theater in West Los Angeles. He would go with some trepidation, for he resembled a wraith, gray and emaciated; he had lost more than twenty pounds and most of his hair and much candlepower in the eyeglow. Lynne shaved what remained of his hair into a renegade mohawk and Gregg Sutton loaned him a studded black leather vest—so he would inhabit one last persona with which to confuse them all. At the Nuart, Lynne and Linda flanked each arm to discourage overt approaches from boisterous friends. Robin Williams came, as did Marilu Henner and director Harold Ramis and Budd Friedman and Elayne Boosler, who fled to the rest room in tears when she first saw him. (Little Wendy followed her in and told her it was cancer.) Afterward, Budd took George aside and said, “Do you think Andy would like to have a little bon voyage party upstairs at the club with some friends and chocolate ice cream?” So a big troop of them repaired to the Improv and the ice cream was plentiful and Andy was happy for the first time in many months and George and Zmuda stoked the room with an effusiveness so relentlessly upbeat as to distract everyone from believing the worst, which they did anyway. “It was like having a wake with the corpse in attendance,” said Sutton.

  I went to the airport to see Andy and Lynne off on the their trip. The flight was 7:15 P.M.Andy had to use a wheelchair because his leg was hurting and, as always, it was a long walk at the airport. A photographer took Andy’s picture in the wheelchair. He jumped out of the wheelchair and screamed, “What the fuck are you taking my picture in a wheelchair for?! You fucking leech! You leech!” Andy chased the guy, trying to get to the camera, but he ran away. Bob Zmuda and Elayne Boosler chased the guy to no avail. Andy said it felt great to get so mad. He loved it. Johnny Gray and Linda Mitchell also saw Andy off. I hugged and kissed Andy several times and wished him a good and healthy journey, and asked him to come back well, as we have a lot of good, creative things to do. Andy hugged and kissed everyone and thanked us for coming. It meant a great deal to him and he expressed this touchingly to us. He had shaved his head completely (actually, Lynne did it), and he removed his hat at the departure gate. This cute, loving, bald-headed guy started to board the plane, holding his jacket in one hand and waving goodbye with the other. It was somehow a very touching and beautiful picture.

  The April 24 issue of the National Enquirer published the wheelchair photograph with a story headlined “TAXI” STAR TELLS PALS: I’M DYING OF CANCER. It was the first time the tabloid had ever run a story about him that he hadn’t invented and phoned in himself.

  The trip took fifteen hours by air and they stayed nearly six weeks in the largely impoverished town of Baguio, where the renowned faith healer and local politician Jun Labo presided over the unadorned clinic in which patients waited in a queue and stepped forth, one at a time, to receive salvation. Andy received the treatment twice a day. He wore only Jockey shorts and took his turns climbing on and off the operating table on which Labo performed spiritual sleight-of-hand—first dipping his surgical hands into water, then inserting them into a folded towel to dry, then quickly pressing them to Andy’s skin and producing the entrails of disease (and/or poultry). Each miracle lasted less than one minute at a charge of twenty-five dollars per. Labo would pluck wet darkness from Andy’s brain and arm and chest but mostly from the towel with which he wiped his hands. “He actually seemed to be getting better at first,” said Lynne. “He believed it was magic. He was eating, we were taking walks, everything was going great. But then, all of a sudden, he just went down.” Zmuda flew over at right about that time to surprise them, which worked, and Andy was buoyant, then faltered again. Zmuda would recall, “Lynne and I told him at one point, ‘Why don’t you become Tony? Tony couldn’t be sick.’ And he summoned whatever energy he had left and Tony stepped out of the wheelchair—‘Hey, how’re doin’? Where’s the chickies….’ And then he collapsed again. For a minute there, we thought Clifton had cured him.” Convulsions started a few days later and Lynne said it was time to go home.

  George and Linda and Elayne met them at the airport on April 28 and saw that there was now less of him and what there was of him moved more deliberately. Linda would recall, “He was really trying to walk normal. I went over and took his arm to help him and he told me, ‘I’m cured.’” They got him back to the Pacific Palisades house (where John Gray had stayed during their absence due to marital separation) and, there, he denied reality—his unparalleled forte—for as long as he could muster strength to do so. “He came back worse than ever,” said Rubins. One day, he rallied suddenly and went with Elayne to see three movies in a row which was fun up until sometime during the third one. Also, he briefly flew with Lynne to Denver and back to have crystals laid upon him. But, on May 7, he was admitted to Cedars-Sinai for controlled care and radiation and heavy dosages of Demerol for the pain. He went home five days later (hated the hospital) and Michael and Carol and Mommy and Daddy promptly arrived because there wasn’t much life left. He was home for only a couple of days.

  “Don’t worry,” Michael told him, saying something/anything.

  It was time to go back to the hospital.

  “I’m not worried!” he snapped.

  He went back to the eighth floor VIP wing.

  He was registered under the name Nathan McCoy.

  Nathan Richards = unctious happy oblivious man.

  Kid McCoy = cut the kidding, Pearl would say.

  May 16, 6:20 something P.M

  Suite was very large. They were scattered in various corners dozing. They had been awake, it seemed, for days. Watching. Waiting. Mommy and Daddy and Michael and Carol and Lynne, they all nodded, eyelids leaden. Linda stood beside the bed, giving him moisture, dipping a cloth into the water, then onto his lips. His brain, hours earlier, fell into ether. Not long before that, however, he and Michael had sung a little piece of a song together. Mostly, for days, he had faded in and faded out and now he had faded out but he breathed through chapped lips, which Linda dampened.

  Then his eyes opened and he gasped, but it was a rattle more than a gasp. Linda said/knew it was the death rattle. She woke them up and they came to the bed and each one took a part of him, held a part of him—a hand, a foot, a leg. Lynne pressed her mouth to his forehead. Stanley and Michael and Carol tried coaxing him back—“Come on, Andy, you can stay with us! You can stay!” Janice stroked him serenely. And they all said they loved him. Then Michael said, “Bye, Andy. Have a great trip.” And they cried. Because there was nothing left to do. And at twenty-seven minutes past the hour, he had finished.

  But his eyes stayed open.

  And when a nurse tried to close them, they opened again.

  Elayne came in from the lounge down the hall.

  She stared into those eyes that would not concede.

  “I remembered a reviewer’s words,” she would later write. “‘This guy doesn’t know when to get off.’”

  Linda stayed alone in the room with him as the others wandered away to find sense and reason. “I turned the television on to the news because I thought Andy might get a sort of weird kick out of having the news reporting his death while his body was lying there, watching. That was sort of my
last little tribute to him.”

  Stanley called George and George rushed over to Cedars—I felt numb, and the feelings kept creeping in…. I touched his face and said “goodbye” and “Andy, I love you.” My love is so strong for him. Andy was a unique, wonderful, loving person. He fought until his last breath. I’m so proud to have been his friend. He was a treasure in my life. He stood up bravely for what he believed in as a performer and as a person. He was kind and generous and above all human…. I’m so fortunate to have known him.

  Zmuda, meanwhile, had gone home from the hospital early that morning and slept all day and woke to hear from Linda two hours after his friend departed. And thus he came late. Which was what Andy had always done, which was, um, fine.

  And then the people heard and then the people laughed.

  And he could not tell them no really.

  And it was almost better that way.

  Because no one knew what to believe.

  And so he won.

  He went back to Great Neck to the Temple Beth-El, where the Rabbi Davidson memorialized milk and cookies and his brother spoke of being fortunate enough to have been the only person in the world who had gotten to be his brother and loved ones wept and also smiled and then he himself sang “This Friendly World” on a tape and people quietly sang along and/or cried along and a local Elvis Presley fan club stood vigil outside. He wore Daddy’s old sport coat, which was his now anyway, and he wore no tie because he never wore ties and he went back to the cemetery to be with Papu Cy and Grandma Pearl and Grandpa Paul and to lie next to where Mommy would come later. The stone above him, when it got there, would say that he was a beloved son and brother and grandson and it would also say WE LOVE YOU VERY MUCH and there would be serious discussions beforehand regarding the spelling of very about which he would have been thankful.

  Dec. 16, 1963

  THE EXTREME SUCCESS:

  Mr. X was a failure so far,

  but hadn’t had a chance yet,

  for he had just started.

  Mr. X is a playwrite;

  Mr. X is a poet.

  Mr. X is both.

  He wrote a poem,

  and put it in his play.

  It got to be promoted.

  And it got to be produced.

  It was opening night.

  Mr. X was very happy.

  With all his friends to come and see,

  the stage with actors,

  the theater sold out.

  It was the largest success

  of plays that played.

  At end, they called him up.

  He then took a bow.

  The applause was almost deafening,

  and Mr. X went off.

  He put his hand in his pocket,

  and took out his gun.

  He had the broadest smile of anyone,

  as he shot into his head.

  He was Dead!

  Here was a gauntlet thrown and a madness born—to sort and sift through a life of fantasy, but also a life on earth, and locate truths wherever truths had been sent to hide. The sizable task was made navigable due only to the kindnesses and generosities (and sublime patience) of those who truly knew him and deeply loved him. Primarily, there could be no intimacy with subject were it not for his family and those who became his family:

  My debt looms most profound for the miraculous nuclear unit members who trusted to share the private wonder of Andrew Geoffrey Kaufman with biographer and world—Stanley L. Kaufman and Michael Kaufman and Carol Kaufman Kerman, each of whom carry the pieces that keep him alive. Then, too, there is the redoubtable George Shapiro, spontaneous diarist/poet, who championed a life and a life story (worth telling and retelling). Those who were peerless compasses throughout the process: Linda Mitchell, Gregg Sutton, Lynne Margulies, Wendy Polland, Kathy Utman, Dennis Raimondi, Mel Sherer, Beverly Cholakian Block, Gloria Acre Schwartz, and, of course, Bob Zmuda.

  The author wishes to thank the following for their memories, observations, ideas and time, all of which helped to piece together the lovely puzzle:

  The Great Neck Years: Rabbi Jerome Davidson, Cathy Bernard, Moogie Klingman, Richard Corey, Marilyn Blumberg Cane, Jim Krieger, Charley Wininger, Rick Etra, Gina Acre, Gloria Greenberg, Gil Gevins, Ginger Petrochko, Glenn Barrett, Peter Wassyng, Carla Shore

  The Relatives: Sam Denoff, Margot Goldberg, Maria Bellu Colonna, Jill Kaufman, Rebecca and Steve Tobias, Susan Lawrence, Jack and Fran Kaufman, Rick Kerman, Prudence Kaufman, Margaret E. English

  Grahm Junior College/Boston: Al Parinello, Burt Dubrow, Dick Mallary, Don Erickson, George Schwartz, Marshall Nanis, Marc Summers, Cindy Mace-Arnett, Paul Fusco, Ron Seidle, Ilona Lange Dudasik

  Transcendental Meditation: Don Snow, Emily Draper, Jerry Jarvis, Maharishi University of Management, Trisha and Phil Malkinson, Mews Small, Penny Bell, Phil Goldberg, Dean Sluyter, Craig Pearson, Prudence Farrow, Harold Bloomfield, Pamela Paradowski, Kathy Brooks

  The Clubs: Budd Friedman, Silver Friedman (The Improv); Rick Newman, Conan Berkeley, Zane Busby (Catch a Rising Star); Seth Schultz (Pips); Eppie Epstein (My Father’s Place); Mitzi Shore (The Comedy Store); Jay Leno, Elayne Boosler, Martin Harvey Friedberg, Tom Dreesen, Nancy Redman, Richard Lewis, Richard Belzer, Jimmie Walker, Rodney Dangerfield, Glenn Super, Robin Williams, Johnny Dark, David Brenner

  Saturday Night Live: Lorne Michaels, Dick Ebersol, Anne Beatts, Brad Hall, Brian Doyle Murray, Chevy Chase, Gary Kroeger, Jean Doumanian, Joe Piscopo, John Head, Laurie Zaks, Mary Gross, Tim Kazurinsky, Alan Zweibel, Sandra Restrepo, Marc Liepis, Laurie Berden

  Taxi: Richard Sakai, Carol Kane, Ed. Weinberger, Howard Gewirtz, Jeff Conaway, Jim Burrows, Jim Brooks, Joel Thurm, Judd Hirsch, Marilu Henner, Mike Binder, Randall Carver, Stan Daniels, Tony Danza, Vicki Rosenberg, Felicia Nalivansky, Larina Adamson

  The Productions: Bill Block, Sean Daniel, Thom Mount (The Tony Clifton Story); Johnny Legend, Linda Lautrec (My Breakfast with Blassie); Larry Cohen (God Told Me To); Allan Arkush, Vince Prentice (Heartbeeps); Bill Boggs, Paul Noble (Midday Live); Harold Ramis (The Top); Bob Einstein, Allan Blye, Dick Van Dyke (Van Dyke and Company); Greg Garrison, Lee Hale (Dean Martin’s Comedyworld); Jay Redack, Harry Friedman (Hollywood Squares); John Moffitt, Pat Lee, Bruce Mahler, Kathie Sullivan, Melanie Chartoff, Michael Richards, Steve Adams, Wayne Williams (Fridays); Fred Tatashore, Sharon Olson (Dinah & Friends); Vince Calandra (The Mike Douglas Show); Johnny Carson, Steve Allen, Steve Martin, Peter Lassally, Jeff Sotzing, Susan Rubio, Helen Sanders (The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson); David Letterman, Robert Morton, Chris Elliott, Gerard Mulligan, Rob Burnett, Rosemarie Keenan (Late Night with David Letterman); Chuck Braverman (Carnegie Hall); Deborah Harry (Teaneck Tanzi)

  The Wrestling: Bill Apter, Jerry Lawler, Jim Cornette, Jimmy Hart, Lance Russell, Larry Burton, Sherry Tuseth Jackson, Roddy Piper, Lou Albano, Fred Blassie

  Other Voices and Stories: Carl Reiner, Barry Manilow, John Landis, Bill Knoedelseder, Ken Chase, Fabian Forte, Freddy Cannon, Babatunde Olatunji, Merrill Markoe, Alan Abel, Woody Allen, Alan Spencer, Andy Dickerman, Billy Swan, Mimi Lambert, Cindy Lamb, Cindy Williams, Dave Gross, Dustin Hoffman, Murray Schisgal, Eddie Rabin, David Zucker, Elizabeth Wolynski, Emmett Wilson, Gary Lee Fletcher, Greg Gasaway, Janet Coleman, David Copperfield, Jim Walsh, Richard Beymer, Joanna Frank, Joel Siegel, John Burke, John Gray, Mark Perento, Martha Batorski, Sarah Jessica Parker, Shelley Herman, Soupy Sales, Terry Cooney, Terry McDonell, Tom Cottle, Val Shively, Al Garfinkel, Oscar Arslanian, Jennifer Spano, Garn Stevens, Dr. Irwin Grossman, Dr. Steven Rubins, Dr. William Young, Dr. Champion Teutsch, Dennis Hof, George Flint, Peter Guralnick, Joe Esposito, Jerry Weintraub, Bill Belew, Scott Alexander, Larry Karaszewski, Arthur Hull, Sandy Wernick, Albert Brooks, Steve Dahl, Garry Meier.

  Additional Research: Comic Relief, Andrea Dennett, Billy Rose Theatre Collection—N.Y. Public Library, Eric Grater, Phil Kruener, HBO, James Taylor, Mike Miller, R. J. Johnson, Rosemarie Garland Thomson, Simeon Peebler, Great Neck North High School, Great N
eck Public Library, Brent Zacky, Andy Nulman, Paul Brownstein, David Shayte of the Smithsonian

  Shapiro/West & Associates: Howard West, Aimee Hyatt

  The Transcribers: Eugene Corey of Brave New Words, Cindy Price of Purposeful Journey, Amy Goldstein, Marcia Smith, and Genelle Izumi, who began it all.

  This book would not exist without the herculean fortitude and journalistic virtuosity of Mike Thomas, ace among copilots, who performed scores upon scores of key interrogations, chased the unchasable, ordered the morass, held the fort, sent for reinforcements, felt the pain and kept his wits about me. (He presently seeks professional counseling.) Chris Calhoun, of Sterling Lord Literistic, came into my life with the birth of this project six years ago; he believed first and has never stopped crashing surf for which I am grateful. At Delacorte, Jacob Hoye—my trusted partner in funhousing—has edited with wisdom and devotion, sustained shrapnel wounds, and made me think very extremely fast; Leslie Schnur took the leap that made the difference. Also Irwyn Applebaum and Nita Taublib were most patient in the face of delay. Richard Sakai of Gracie Films—who was a youth on the set of Taxi and who shared his stories first—gave me the idea that Andy belonged in my life; I think I thank him very much. David Hirshey, the Sleuthing Jew (as he wishes to be known), cased Kaufman and Clifton as others might have only dreamed/feared for Rolling Stone, then insisted that I take over the job; I think I thank him, too. Webmaster Brian Momchilov—whose Andy Kaufman Home Page, Goofin’ On Elvis, (http://andykaufman.jvlnet.com) keeps the torch aflame with uncompromised integrity—is owed a special thank-you for his support and assistance. Ditto Mark Warren at Esquire. For their goodwill or enthusiasm or concern or all of the above: David Granger, Mike Sager, Steve Randall, John Rezek, David Rensin, Sandy Holzbach, Melissa Hellstern, Richard Hull, Donna Tadelman, Bill Tonelli, Michael Angeli, Paige Smoron, Richard Raymond, Judd Klinger, Jim Agnew, John Davies, Ilene Rosenzweig, Chris Pallotto and Hugh M. Hefner.