Funnymen

by Ted Heller

  HUGH BERRIDGE: I had never been on the radio before. Neither had Teddy. This was something new and exciting for us, a dream come true. We had a week to polish ourselves, to get our act down pat. Victor was now the featured singer and Teddy Duncan and I were moved to the background. Looking back from a remove of some six decades, it makes sense. But Teddy was very upset at the time. Vern tried to placate him and I told Ted, “We really ought to do what Mr. Enright asks of us.”

  The show was on a Sunday night . . . we'd been booked into the Newburyport Lounge, a rather smallish nightclub near New Hampshire. We would do two songs and then Mr. Newcombe would chat with us for a minute.

  GUY PUGLIA: Happynuts was going to drive us to that club where the radio show was; he was gonna take Vic and the other two guys.

  The Irish broad pops in just when we're all about to leave.

  What an operator she was.

  MAEVE CLARITY: I offered to drive Teddy Duncan, Victor, and Guy to the Newburyport Lounge because I felt that . . . well, it was raining that night and Mr. Enright did not like all the boys traveling in one car, particularly Vern Hapgood's, which was really some old crate.

  The rain had become torrential and I was never so frightened in all my life.

  Ted Duncan . . . he was the life of the party. The other boy, Rowland, he used to bother me; somehow he'd gotten into his head that I was his girl. But I was no such thing. But as for Mr. Duncan . . . there never would have been a trio if it hadn't been for him.

  He was sitting in the back with Guy. We hit a puddle near a sign . . . then that terrible noise . . . Teddy Duncan went right through the window and there was glass all over his head.

  I stopped the car and Victor said, “We're supposed to be at the Lounge in five minutes.”

  I saw a house, a two-story home, and there were lights on. I told Victor and Guy that I had no idea where a hospital was and that they had to be at the nightclub now in four minutes. Mr. Duncan's forehead was bleeding . . . I said that whoever lived in that two-story home would have to summon a doctor.

  Guy got out of the car and—I guess in the accident the door had broken because he couldn't open the door—he pulled Ted Duncan out right through the window. This was much harder than it sounds because all the glass was broken and a lot of the glass was scraping his skin as he was being wriggled through it.

  Then Guy and Vic helped Teddy up the pathway to this house.

  I checked my watch and called out, “Two minutes, boys!”

  It was still raining out and very dark and I lost sight of them. And they were only maybe fifteen yards away. I heard a noise . . . it was the thud of the people opening the front door. And then a few seconds later Victor and Guy emerged from the rain and fog and were back in the car.

  I felt just like a bandit, like Bonnie Parker or Ma Barker. Because I really “stepped on it,” as they say, and we made it to the Newburyport Lounge with about thirty seconds to spare.

  HUGH BERRIDGE: Backstage I pulled Jack Enright's secretary aside immediately. “Where's Teddy?” I demanded of the girl. I have to tell you: months before when I'd met her in Jack Enright's office . . . she would chase Rowlie around, wait for him outside his house at all hours of the night, had somehow got into her head that he was going to marry her. But in these last few weeks she'd really fallen into disfavor.

  “Teddy just quit,” she told me.

  I looked around. Vic had slipped his vest on. A clarinetist was licking his reed, the tenor saxophonist was screwing the mouthpiece in. I noticed something about Vic's vest. Instead of there being three domino pips on it, now there were only two.

  “He quit?” I asked the girl, understandably incredulous.

  “Here,” she said. “Slip it on quick.” And she handed me a new vest, also suddenly with but two pips on it.

  Good God, it was all a devious scheme!

  “We got a minute before we're on, Hugo,” Vic said to me. “I think some polo horse may have kicked Duncan in the head. It's too bad.”

  Hugo. He'd forgotten my name.

  Quickly, I had two belts of scotch—one for Rowlie, one for Teddy—and then a third, for all of Humanity itself. And I joined Vic onstage.

  RAY FONTANA: Cecil Newcombe comes on the radio and says something like this: “Folks, we were supposed to have an exciting new trio, the Three Threes, sing tonight, but I'm afraid we have some news . . .”

  Sal and Tony [Fontana] and Pop had to restrain Mom. You know how those old-time radios, they had cloth covering the grille? Where the noise comes out? When my mother hears Newcombe say he's afraid he has some news, she starts clawing the cloth off the grille . . . it was confetti in three seconds. She's yelling, “I'll kill you!” and I asked Cathy, “Who's she gonna kill?” but then I remembered that Mamma always thought the tubes inside the thing were little men.

  But the news was just that the Three Threes were now the Two Threes.

  CATHERINE RICCI: They sang three songs and then Cecil Newcombe interviewed them. When we heard Vic talking on the radio it was just amazing. It was the first time Papa ever really paid attention to the radio other than to shut it off or listen to Mussolini or NBC Symphony. He was so proud.

  Cecil Newcombe asked Vic about the group and then that man Hugh started to say something, but Vic jumped in and explained how they'd gotten together. The audience chuckled when Vic spoke . . . not just 'cause Vic was funny but because he was funny-sounding. They'd never heard the son of a fisherman talk before, I guess. Newcombe asked another question and Hugh began to answer it and then Vic interrupted again and he got more laughs. But this time because he was funny! Cecil Newcombe asked why [Ted Duncan] had quit the group and Vic said he'd had a croquet accident. Except he pronounced it “croquette.” Newcombe asked what the future held for these two young singers. Vic told him that a nightclub act was ephemeral but that being on the radio was really for posterity.

  Mamma was in tears. Papa was smiling but also crying.

  • • •

  SALLY KLEIN: We took a bus from Camden to Trenton and then from Trenton to New York. They had a two-day break before an engagement in Buffalo and wanted to spend some time at home.

  I had dinner at home with Harry and Flo. Ziggy went out . . . he didn't tell us he was going anywhere, he just went. And he didn't come back until the next morning.

  I was asleep when he came in, asleep on the couch in the living room. It was maybe eight in the morning and he looked like hell.

  I said, “Where've you been? Is everything okay?”

  “No, Sal,” he said, “everything is not okay . . .”

  Well, he'd done a few things. He went to Jerome Milton's office and demanded to look at the contract that Milton had with Harry and Flo. When Milton told him he'd ripped the paperwork up, Ziggy went nuts and grabbed Milton by the collar. Now, I know Ziggy was only eighteen years old and on the fat side but he was always very strong. He was much stronger than Vic Fountain and that's a fact. Vic never got in a fistfight in his entire life unless he had Guy Puglia, Hunny Gannett, or Ices Andy around.

  I asked Ziggy, “Why do you care so much about the paperwork? You should be glad Milton ripped it up.”

  “I just wanted to make sure he ripped it up, Sal,” he told me with that mischievous baby grin he had. You know, smiling with one corner of his mouth.

  He had turned over file cabinets, flung open every drawer in the office, just to make sure.

  “I asked one of the girls in the office to have dinner wit' me,” he said. “And she said no dice.”

  I told him, “Well, you'd just ransacked their office and made a spectacle-of yourself! Do you think that's the way to make a nice impression?”

  He didn't hear me. Some things filtered in but if he didn't want to hear something, it went straight in the other direction.

  He told me that after leaving the Milton office he made a few rounds. He went to the Bursley-Bates publicity agency and met some people, including [publicist] Bertie Kahn. Then he went to a bunch of n
ewspapers. He demanded to see Walter Winchell, he demanded to see Westbrook Pegler, he wanted to see Grayling Greene and Lee Mortimer and Bud Hatch. All the ganzer machers on Broadway and in gossip. He wanted to spread the word around, tell them he was going to play Buffalo in a few days.

  “I just cannot see,” I told him, “Grayling Greene or Westbrook Pegler getting on a train to Buffalo to see the Blissmans!”

  “Get out, Sal,” he said.

  I didn't think he was serious and so I didn't budge.

  He yelled at the top of his lungs. “Get the hell outta my house!”

  Harry and Flo ran out of the bedroom. They were in—they had to wear kiddie pajamas because that was the only clothing that would fit them.

  “Ziggy! Why are you yelling at your cousin?” Flo asked him.

  Ziggy said to her, “Don't you ever raise your voice at me.”

  “I will raise my voice as loud as I want to,” she said back. Which, believe me, was a frightening proposition . . . I started thinking, Uh-oh, I might have to get a new pair of glasses.

  Harry said, “Can we all go back to sleep here?”

  And then Ziggy really let them have it. He shouted and shouted, he called them every name in the book. He called them “old vaudeville midgets.” He said he was ashamed to know them. He said one day he was going to sleep with Betty Grable, Rita Hayworth, Hedy Lamarr, and Myrna Loy. I remember Harry saying, “What the hell's Myrna Loy doing on that list?” Ziggy just cursed them out some more.

  I tried to tell myself, Okay, he's eighteen years old, he's talking about conquering the world. But he's also Cousin Ziggy. Years and years later [husband] Jack said to me that the child part of him which should have been underdeveloped was overdeveloped, and the adult part of him which should have been overdeveloped had never developed at all. So he was way, way off-kilter.

  I was young too, so I don't know if I realized it then . . . that Ziggy was lonely, he was very, very lonely. He absolutely craved love. And attention, which he often mistook for love. He never had much of either when he was a baby or a child. He just wanted to be loved. And here he was, alienating the only two people who cared about him.

  Aunt Florence was weeping and Harry had to hold her up.

  “Look what you did to your mother!” Harry said. “Look what you did!”

  Ziggy stormed out.

  “What did we do so wrong?” Flo was asking Harry.

  He shook his head and muttered something I didn't understand: “That goddamn magician.”

  DICK HARVEY [assistant manager at the Erie Lounge]: The week before the Blissmans played Buffalo, Dick Fain and Connie Bishop had performed with the Floyd Lomax band. We'd had a hard time of it, those of us working there, because Mr. Fain was not easy to deal with. Ever try and stop a guy from sticking his finger in a wall socket? People used to call him the Prince of Pain.

  The Blissmans had performed at the club before and hadn't done too well. But now with this fat kid with the crazy red hair, they really had a strong show.

  Their final night was the broadcast night. The Blissmans were opening for the Dick Saxon Orchestra. There were some reporters, entertainment reporters from the local papers, there that night.

  The first few nights Ziggy had gone into the audience and done some gags—but on this night? It was as if his life depended on it. The house was in stitches. He even got a bunch of waiters and busboys involved! It was hilarious.

  The mother sang a song at the end. Someone from the radio station had to put up a screen in front of the mike so people at home wouldn't have their fine china busted. In the club, people's ears were ringing. Then everybody thought the show was over and the lights came up. The radio announcer was about to go to a commercial and all of a sudden Ziggy was back on the stage.

  He wrested the mike away from the announcer and started talking about his parents. He said that though they were short of stature, they were giants where it counted, in their hearts. They'd risen up from nothing, from nowhere, he said, they'd done vaudeville and burlesque and eaten cold soup and stayed in hotels that no rat should ever be caught dead in.

  He was almost weeping. His parents were right next to him.

  An hour later Ziggy came out of the dressing room. He goes over to Bud Hatch, the old Globe columnist, and says to him, “I hope you newspaper guys got all that Mommy and Poppy stuff.”

  • • •

  HUGH BERRIDGE: We got back to Boston and everything started happening so quickly. Jack Enright's secretary called to say that Jack had lined up a few more engagements. There was one in Boston and one as far away as Camden, New Jersey, opening up for Floyd Lomax's band.

  But then it all fell apart.

  Vic and I had a rehearsal at the studio. We waited outside in the corridor but Vern didn't show up. Vic forced open the door. Nobody was there. More startlingly, neither was Vern's piano. From what I understand, both had abruptly moved to Texarkana, Texas.

  Several days after that, I made a decision that I have not regretted for a single day: I retired as a vocalist. I devoted myself to the law and time has proved that this was the smart thing to do. For I'd come to feel that being an entertainer was not advantageous to my health. I feared, I admit, waking up one morning with a badminton shuttlecock embedded in my midbrain.

  MAEVE CLARITY: I showed up one morning at the office and let myself in. I sat at my desk, put on some lipstick, and waited for Mr. Enright and Mr. Flynn to show up.

  At about noon I started getting worried. I went into Mr. Enright's office and saw that the room was stripped bare, no desk, no chairs, not even a lightbulb. It was the same with Mr. Flynn's office.

  I went home and the next morning it was the same thing, except now my desk and phone were gone.

  I came in for two weeks more but Mr. Enright and Mr. Flynn never showed up. I tried calling them at home, but their numbers had been disconnected. I gave up on my job there and started working at Filene's. The next time I heard of Victor Fontana he was Vic Fountain and was performing with Ziggy Bliss.

  Years later in the fifties, I ran into Mr. Flynn in a tavern in South Boston. When he saw me coming toward him, he quickly drained his glass and ran out of the place.

  • • •

  ARNIE LATCHKEY: It's funny the way things work out. Murray Katz at WAT [Worldwide American Talent agency] was doing the bookings for the Floyd Lomax Orchestra. The Lomax band had played Camden the week before Ziggy and his tiny parents performed there. If Murray had booked us in one week later—one week! —Vic and I and Zig would have met then and who knows what would've happened? It really does makes you dwell on kismet.

  Entertainment is in my blood.

  This goes back years and years, to the old country, and if you think I mean France, what UFO did you just desaucer from, my friend? My grandparents on one side used to make woodwinds back in Poland or Russia or Moldavia or some-where, and on my father's side my grandparents would take the guts out of cats, sheep, and cows and turn them into strings for violins and cellos. You ever wonder, Hey, who the hell is so desperate for money that they turn animal guts into strings? Well, now you know. That's what they did, when the czar and czarina and their henchmen on horseback weren't too busy taking a Zippo lighter to their hovels, might I add?

  So they came over in a boat and believe me, they weren't playing shuffleboard in beaver coats and drinking brandy out of gold flasks on the poop deck of the Mayflower. They came over on a vermin-infested tub and settled in the Bronx and they didn't miss a beat; it was violin strings again. One thing about a poor neighborhood, no matter where it is: lots of stray cats. Now, when some people look at a stray cat, they see a pet. My family sees one, they hear Brahms.

  My mother sewed costumes for the old Yiddish theater big shots downtown, people like Luther Adler and Robert Weitz, Morris Carnovsky, Lionel Gostin, and the great Zelda Gutterman, the “Sarah Bernhardt of Second Avenue.” These were important people, noble, respectable, almost regal people . . . and they spat on her! Never a penny
in tips or a kind word, those lousy momzers. And her sister, my Aunt Ruthie, she played the organ at the Orpheum on Gun Hill Road, for the silent pictures. They had it all mechanically rigged up: the lights darken, the organ and Aunt Ruthie slowly rise out of the floor and she starts playing; when the picture is over she slowly sinks back into the floor. Well, one day—it was the day before The Jazz Singer opened—she sank back down into the floor and nobody ever saw her again. It was the end of the Silent Era and the end of Aunt Ruthie too.

  My father, Hyman Latchkey, started a music and record store with his brother-in-law Sy Lowe, and if you think they had enough business savvy to call the store Hy's and Lowe's, then think again. Not even Hy and Sy's they could come up with. No. There was a sign above the door and it saidMUSIC STORE.They sold sheet music and 78s and worked seven days a week and had nothing to show for it. Did they ever complain? Did you ever once hear them gripe or curse their fate? Yes. They did. All the time.

  My older brother Marvin was a concierge at Heine's [Resort] in Loch Sheldrake and got me a job as a tummler in the Catskills one summer when I was about sixteen. I was a very klutzy busboy by night and by day I'd run Simon Says games or I was a lobby comedian in a bellhop's suit. An insult comic, like Rickles or Jack E. Leonard. But I didn't have the finesse for it. I'd stop people and say, “May I take your luggage? Your wife has the face of a horse.” I got in trouble when I pinched some fourteen-year-old girl's cheek and said to her father, “She's gonna break a lot of hearts in a few years but I'd like to have sex with her right now.” So I was fired, but whether it was 'cause I wasn't funny or 'cause I broke a lot of dishes, I don't remember.

  All I know is this: Marvin—he ran dice games up there too—got a girl in trouble. A seventeen-year-old, the daughter of a rich family staying at Heine's. I make a couple of calls to New York and we get this girl taken care of. I saved my brother's neck.