by John Ridley
I THINK THEY WERE READY FOR ME. After my little show at rehearsal, despite my promises otherwise, they were ready for Jackie Mann to go off the page. Or maybe, being live television, they were always ready for anything. But there must have been someone somewhere with his finger over the kill switch. As soon as I started my first bit, just as soon as I started talking about being black, the switch got thrown. I got cut off. Most of the country saw five minutes of PLEASE STAND BY.
For the West Coast rebroadcast a bike-riding bear from the Moscow circus got edited in to fill my time.
Then they really let me have it.
Ed Sullivan, pious, upstanding Ed Sullivan, cut into me with a buzz saw of language that would make drunken sailors bleed from the ears. Ed demanded to know what the “ef” I was thinking, let me know what an “effer” I was, how badly I'd “effed” up, and how badly I would be effed now that I had effed him. He was slightly more incoherent, very inconcise, ranting at a fever pitch, but that was basically what he said.
And Ed was a man of his word. I was plenty effed. He put the word out and put the word out good: Jackie Mann was a lunatic of a comic, liable to go off on a filth rant on live television. Book him at your own risk.
In the early 1960s that was a risk no one wanted to take.
Chet, feeling betrayed, feeling the heat from Abe Lastfogel, who was feeling the heat from Ed, threw the first shovelful of dirt on the rest of my career. I had a two-year contract with William Morris. William Morris wouldn't book me anywhere. Not in any of the good clubs. Dives, Village cellars, they let me work those. Let me. But for two years any joint that had more audience members than roaches crawling in the bathroom wasn't allowed to hire Jackie Mann to do their dishes.
I had nowhere to turn, no angels to save me. I'd burned my favors and my bridges with Frank C. He wouldn't lift a manicured finger to help me. Same with Frank S once our agency, William Morris, hipped him to their version of the truth of Jackie Mann. For a guy who always played so big in the gossip columns, Frank was incredibly ready to swallow the slime he was spoon-fed about other people. Smoky? Sammy made little efforts to set things straight, a phone call here and there. A promise to help me same as I'd helped him out a couple of years prior.
I'd helped him out by selling him out.
I hated to think how he would help me.
Frances called.
No doubt she'd heard the real deal concerning the Sullivan show. Around then her TV show was losing steam, but Frances still had juice and connections. Frances could still jump-start my career. So she called. She called and called. I dodged every one of them. Not for a second did I even consider letting her burn off what was left of her career by helping her best and dearest and oldest friend who'd shown his fidelity by giving her a slap to the face.
Sid tried getting in touch, too. He got about as close to talking to me as Frances did.
Tammi never tried to call. I don't think she did. Anyway, I never heard from her. Not directly. But she was heard from. Teaming up with Marvin Gaye, Tammi finally broke and broke big like I always knew she would. Hit records came pouring out of the pair. “Ain't No Mountain High Enough,” “If I Could Build My Whole World Around You,” “Ain't Nothing Like the Real Thing.”
“You're All I Need.”
I fell apart the first time I heard that song. Tammi never sounded more lovely, she had never expressed more passion and emotion. Her voice, always her gift, always able to make you feel what she felt, made me feel love. It made me feel, again, the hole in my soul that was beyond healing.
In 1967 during a concert at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia, just as she was ending “Your Precious Love,” Tammi collapsed onstage. They got her to a hospital. Diagnosis: brain tumor.
Three years.
Three years of wasting away, dropping nearly forty pounds from her tiny frame, loss of memory and muscle control. Three years with eight operations in eighteen months. Three years of trying to record again but being so busted up, another chick had to lay down Tammi's vocals on the last songs to bear her name.
March 16, 1970. Tammi Terrell, Thomasina Montgomery, died in Philadelphia. Three years of suffering ended that day.
After she was gone, my thoughts went to our arguments, those times, those many times, Tammi would clutch her head hurting from the nonsense I force-fed her. And then my thoughts went to my father and the way he worked my mother to her death. And then my thoughts said to me: The apple really doesn't fall very far from the tree, does it?
My years of loss had begun.
They began with me not being able to say good-bye to Tammi. By the time I found out about her illness, kept hidden from the public, which was all that I constituted to Tammi, she was already gone. I considered going to the funeral.
I figured, who'd want me there?
I didn't make the trip.
My loss of Frances as a friend remained constant. Though she tried, my shame kept us from ever speaking again. An interested but uninvolved observer, I watched Frances pass through her life. Eventually her TV show got tired, then canceled. Her records stopped selling. She had a couple of parts in some movies but never really took to the big screen. Her career went real cool, but it sort of didn't matter. Frances had made some good money over the years and had been smart with it. Smart as in banking most of it, and what she didn't bank she used to buy up land near Santa Barbara. A lot of land. By the time showbiz was through with her, she was equally through with showbiz, no longer needing the work. But Frances had always come across as sweet and sincere, as being a decent person. She'd come off that way because that's the way she was. So, naturally, big fat corporations wanted sweet, sincere Frances to peddle their wares. She did, did their commercials, and people loved her for just that, selling stuff. Some never knew her as anything but a pitchwoman, but that and her personality were enough to revive her some, get her a morning talk show that ran for another bunch of years, and when that folded Fran pretty much finally, officially retired. Other than the old-school Hollywood parties she occasions, once a year she makes an appearance at a golf tournament the big fat corporation she shilled for sponsors and named after her. I'm not even sure if Fran golfs.
Li'l Mo, Morris, was killed along with Fred Hampton in a police raid on a Black Panther house in Chicago in 1969. The cops, busting in in the middle of the night, fired over one hundred shots. Morris fired none. He was unarmed.
Frank Costello went in 1973. Unlike most mob bosses, he got to go unassisted. Bobbie buried him in a silk suit. Dapper to the end.
Liliah eventually got bored with movies and left Hollywood, left America, and ran off to marry some prince or sultan or emir or some kind of guy who was rich in that way. Eventually she got bored with him and ran off with a guy who sailed boats for a living. After that me and the rest of the world got tired of tracking her mood swings and allowed Liliah to fade away.
Sammy Davis went on being a big star, then not such a big star, then just a legend for sexing white chicks and hugging Nixon. He was a legend for being a hell of an entertainer, too, but somehow that became secondary to sexing white chicks and hugging Nixon. Ultimately all those years of smoking finally got Smoky. Throat cancer. Before Sammy Davis went Big Casino, when he was thin and ravaged and surgery had left him with just a whisper of his old, digable voice, Hollywood started in with the star-studded tributes and awards and honors they heap on their dying stars: “We're going to miss you, pal. Here's a plaque; thanks for the dances.” After he was gone, there came a slew of testimonials from the new black Hollywood, the young black Hollywood on what a talent Sammy was, and how he was the Jackie Robinson of showbiz and if it weren't for Sammy hanging with white cats and staying in white hotels and dating up white starlets and doing whatever the hell he pleased, doing all those things he got nothing but heat for from the black community, where would “we” be now?
Funny … not really funny. Sad. It was sad. Sammy finally had the respect he'd spent his whole life chasing, and all he had to do to g
et it was die.
Finally, Sinatra. Eight plus decades he spent living, more than five of them as the celebrity among celebrities. We listened to his records, saw his movies, read every gossip piece—right or wrong, good or bad—ever planted about him. But I think if Frank had lived ten times ten decades more, we never would've known the guy. He moved with the same swinging style among princes, presidents, pimps, and mobsters. He would hug you one second and get just the same amount of joy from crushing you the very next. But with Frank you took that. You took it all, because if he were just one part of one percent any different, then he wouldn't be Sinatra. And at the end of the day being Sinatra was the only thing Frank was about. There may be better singers, it wouldn't take much to be a better actor, there are some cats who were bigger personalities, but I don't think, ever again, anyone will so comfortably and completely fulfill the occupation of star the way Francis Albert Sinatra did.
I RETURNED FROM MY EXILE by Ed Sullivan and the Morris agency, but I never recovered from it. The two years I was out of things might as well have been a hundred. Clubs, the big showcase clubs, were shutting down on a regular basis. Ciro's, the Copacabana, mighty as they once where, couldn't beat back eventual death. The crowds were gone. The living room was a much more convenient place to get your entertainment. The nightclub's crooner-and-cocktail style was self-parody in the new world.
The new world was a place were presidents got blown away and so did their brothers and so did civil rights leaders on a schedule. Wars got fought on the nightly news and in the streets and on college campuses and just about everywhere except in the war zones. There was protesting and race mixing and free love, quiet rage and generational discord.
And people talked about it. Comics joked about it. You were tired and corny and out of step if you didn't.
By the time I got back into things, the voice I'd found that night on the Sullivan show was no longer unique, just one more among many. Worse than a has-been, I was a never-was.
But I kept working, kept taking whatever stage time I could book because … I don't know why because. Because at first I had a glimmer of hope that I could still find a new voice, cut through the noise and get myself back to the top of the heap. But when that dream finally croaked, I took stage time just because I didn't know what else to do with myself. In the shrinking venues and diminishing crowds there were still, at least, some familiar faces, people who passed as acquaintances. It was a weak pantomime of life, without friends, family, or possibilities, as far from any existence I had ever wanted. And maybe very close to being what I deserved.
These days
Late nights again. Going onstage, trying to pry laughs from a handful of drunks. Again. No strippers. Not anymore. Just me and the drunks and thirty years' time separating where I started and where I ended up.
Thirty years.
In that time I'd collected age and wrinkles, an apartment that once was a symbol of my moving up and moving on but was now just rent-controlled and affordable. And late-night comedy spots. Those I had. Again.
One of those late nights/early mornings at a West Side club I ran into a comic I'd known for a long time in passing. Like me, he was a guy who was well past his prime. We got along okay. With all the new faces, the fresh faces, constantly popping up in comedy clubs, being a couple of older guys made friends of us.
After our sets, at a bar, we sat over some drinks, swapping old-days stories, traded information about this club booker or that who would still toss a maturing act some dates. Age didn't make it any easier to get work. Didn't matter what your act was like, it was the young who were hip. It was the young who got booked.
And then the other guy lamented that he'd been working with Sid for a while, but really had to scramble for work since he'd died.
I made a little noise, a little gasp as my breath choked out.
The other comic: “You didn't know?”
No. I didn't know. I'd figured. Sid wasn't a young man the day I'd met him. It'd been nearly twenty years since I'd last talked to him. So, I didn't know, but I'd figured. But hearing it, hearing that Sid was gone …
The comic gave a couple of sketchy details. It was a few years back. Peaceful. He went in his sleep. The comic saw my expression to all that, asked me if I was okay.
No, but I said sure, I was fine. I begged off another drink, wishing the comic well.
I went back to my apartment.
I did some thinking.
What I came up with was that I had to do … something. Maybe it was too late to do anything, but Sid had died, and no matter the years, no matter how long it had been since we'd so much as spoken, I knew that I couldn't let him pass without doing … something.
His brother. Sid had a brother. I did some poking around, people who used to know Sid. Got a phone number. A retirement home. Made a call. No good. Sid's brother had died as well.
His brother's daughter. Sid had a niece. Some pleading. Some begging. Some rule breaking. Some woman at the retirement home gave me the niece's name and number.
I made a call.
“Hello?”
“May I speak with Allison Wallach?”
“This is Allison.”
“I'm very sorry to bother you, and I don't mean … My name is Jackie Mann. I was a friend of your uncle's. We hadn't talked in a while. I guess it had been a long while. I just now heard of his passing, and I wanted to … ” I took a beat. “Your uncle was a real fine man. He was … I just wanted to let someone know that he would be missed.”
A pause.
“Jackie Mann?”
“Yes.”
“Are you in the city?”
“… Yes, I am.”
“Would it be possible for us to meet sometime? I have something that I need to … that I would like to give to you.”
Something …
Yes. I told Allison that, yes, it would be very possible for us to meet. That I would like that very much. I suggested the following day, but she thought the sooner the better. We set a time for that evening.
A coffee shop in the Village. Not like back in the day. Not a place for poets and artists and beats. A chain joint with fifty variations of Folgers, and wannabe actors hanging around complaining about the state of their non-lives.
I recognized Allison the moment she walked in. She was a handsome woman, maybe just shy of forty. Maturity looked good on her. But what made her recognizable was something in her eyes, some of Sid.
We traded hellos. We sat at a table, and for a moment we said nothing to each other. What was there to say? Two strangers who had only the dead in common. Then from the pocket of her coat Allison took a legal-sized envelope. Bent, discolored, it looked years old.
“Before Uncle Sid died, he gave this to my father, told him to keep it safe and told it to him in a way that made him know it was important. The same way my father told me before he died. I guess my uncle knew … at least he always hoped you would get in touch one day.”
Allison held out the envelope. Written on it was one word in Sid's scrawl: Jackie.
I took it. I opened it. Inside, a letter:
Jackie,
My hope is that you will never read this letter, that the things I want to say to you I will be able to say face-to-face. But, if that's not the case, then this letter will have to do my talking for me.
Jackie, I can't tell you how badly I wanted to be there for you the night of your Sullivan appearance. I know how important that show was to you, to your career, and after all we'd been through together, even from the shadows, I wanted to share your night with you. But it was your night. I thought better to just leave it alone. Instead, I watched the show from the apartment. When you were cut off, I was stunned and angry about the dumb luck that would bring about some technical problem at the top of your set after all you'd done to get where you were. Then I was kind of happy for you. I knew Sullivan would re-book you, and the glitch was sure to get you some press. Only, they didn't re-book you, and you didn't get any press, a
nd I couldn't figure out what in the hell was going on.
I asked around. I found out.
I don't know what the circumstances were, I don't know why you picked that moment out of so many opportunities, but, Jackie, I can't tell you how proud I am of you for doing the “San Francisco” set. The way I hear it, you were terrific—poised, in control, and funny. You were the comic I always knew you could be. I see where comedy, where the country, has gone in the last decade or so, and I think: Where would Jackie be now if some guy hadn't pressed a button and erased his jokes from history? But if you ever wonder if you did the right thing or not, if it would've been better to do some other bits than get tossed aside, quit wondering. You stood up for yourself, Jackie. You did what you had every right to do. You were your own man, and at the end of the day they can take every other thing away from you, but they can't take from you who you are: a funny comic, and an exceptional person. Thank you, Jackie. Thank you for having let me represent you. And thank you for having been my friend.
Sid.
By the time I'd gotten to the “my friend,” and the signature, a steady leak of tears was running down my face, dripping on the paper. I tried to play my crying off, just sort of rub away the wetness. You can't rub away a river. I quit trying. I broke down. I buried my face in my hands and my hands on the tabletop; the whole of it shook with sobbing. Over my own sucked and heaved breaths I could hear the whisper of people who watched my remorse act. Let them whisper. I was saying good-bye to a friend.
I felt a hand on my back. Allison. I heard her voice in my ears. A mourner's Kaddish, a prayer of both strength and forgiveness. In Hebrew, I understood none of it. But her touch, her sound, it sent my crying into overdrive. She sat with me until I had emptied myself.
Allison asked me if I was all right.
Guilt, over time, had compounded in me. It crushed me with a weight I could hardly bear, but couldn't purge. Sid's letter freed me of all that. The load gone, I felt as if, for the first time in nearly twenty years, I could take a breath blameless, deep and clean.
