Funnymen

by Ted Heller

  He reaches for his trumpet case and Vic is standing up and backing away and saying, “Floyd . . . I can explain . . . it wasn't me . . . I swear . . .” Floyd is struggling to open the case but is quaking so much he can't get a purchase on it, and Vic says, “She came to me, Floyd, my hand to God! She started just rubbing herself against me real nice and—”

  “THALIA!!!” he yelled.

  Floyd snapped open the case and I thought, Okay, he knows now I cheat at cards, what do I do here? Do I stay? Do I go? If I go, where do I go? What do I do for the rest of my life? All these questions in a hundredth of a second but no answers.

  “Arnie, let's go!” Vic yelled to me and that seemed like the only answer there was. I made my way around Floyd—no small feat, that—and me and Vic ran out of the dining car. Behind me I hear a gunshot and then the train whistle and I heard these big pounding footsteps of Floyd coming at us, like Sasquatch himself. We made it through one sleeping car and there was another gunshot. The next thing I know, Vic and me—his hair was blowing all over in the wind—are standing between two train cars and we see and hear Floyd stomping toward us.

  “I can't believe you, you dumb guinea,” I said to him. “You gotta wise up in life, you know that?”

  “Maybe so,” he said. He told me he'd been trying to wipe the scent off with the hot towels.

  “So by the way,” I asked, “how was she?”

  He told me she was only so-so and then said, “I guess we jump, Arn.”

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  The ground hurt when we hit it and we rolled for a few yards. I felt dirt kick up around my foot—Floyd was shooting at us. I stood up and looked at the train and it looked like the whole goddamn train was big Floyd's bald egg-shaped head streaking away . . . I heard the train whistle and the words “THALIA! THALIA! THALIA!”

  I helped Vic up and he picked a twig out of his hair, wiped the dirt off himself, and straightened out a stray pleat in his pants.

  We walked for a while. We didn't say a word. At first it was pitch-black out but then the clouds cleared away from the moon and things were starting to look very familiar from my old tummling days. The air smelled sweet and the wind was rustling the leaves. It was summer.

  After about an hour Vic asks me, “Hey, Latch . . . you got any idea where the hell we are?”

  “We're in the Catskills, Vic. Loch Sheldrake.”

  “What the hell are we gonna do now?”

  I told him, “I got an older brother named Marvin owes me a favor. Big time.”

  • • •

  DANNY McGLUE: It was the lowest, coldest thing I think I've ever heard of.

  I knocked on his door . . . by this time Ziggy had his own bungalow at Heine's. It wasn't much; there was a radio and a Victrola, a bed and copies of Variety and Billboard and Metronome all over the floor.

  I walked in and there are two people sitting there, a man and a woman in their fifties, as Irish-looking as a four-leaf clover. Ziggy had a sheepish, guilty look on, as if I'd caught him at something. He was standing and they were sitting.

  Ziggy directed me to a corner and told me, “They're auditioning to become my folks.”

  All I could say was “Wha—?” I mean, I was dumbstruck!

  “Danny,” he said, “I'm really very miserable with the present arrangement.”

  He stared talking about how his contracts were with “Sigmund Blissman and Parents” but that they never did say Harry Blissman or Flo Blissman. He's telling me all this and I'm taking in the man and the woman sitting there—I felt sorry for them. They needed work. I had 'em figured for vaudeville hoofers right away. I have no idea how Ziggy found them.

  “So you're replacing your parents with these two?” I asked him.

  “If they're good enough.”

  “Harry and Flo have no idea about this, do they?”

  To everyone he suddenly said, “Alas, I am being rude!” He introduced me. Their names were Jimmy and Kathleen O'Hare. They'd been in the Gus Edwards and Considine and Sullivan circuits; they'd worked with the Marx Brothers way back when, but were small potatoes. And they weren't even husband and wife—they were brother and sister! A pauper's Fred and Adele.

  “You gotta hear this broad sing,” Ziggy says to me. “What pipes.”

  I whispered to him, “You know, your own mother has pipes from God.”

  “This one don't bust eyeglasses, Danny.” And then he pulled me back into the corner and said, “I really think this is going to work out for the best.”

  What could I do? I felt terrible. Harry and Flo had always been wonderful to me. They'd sung songs by Kern, Foster, Arlen, the Gershwins, and Berlin, and then along comes Danny McGlue and I'm giving them nonsense like “Ol' Man's Liver” and they never once raised a fuss.

  I went along with it and I'll probably burn in hell.

  SALLY KLEIN: They came back from Laramie in June. They looked wonderful—vigorous and tan and refreshed. Harry especially—he looked five years younger.

  Ziggy hadn't played a date since he froze up onstage. Bernie Heine and the owners of Marx's and Berenson's and Kutsher's—they weren't exactly thrilled with him. He told me to tell them—which I did—that his parents were coming back any day now.

  Harry and Flo knocked at my room at Berenson's resort and we all hugged and kissed and I let them in. They told me what a wonderful time they'd had and after ten minutes we got down to business.

  “So is there anything lined up?” Harry asked.

  “You're booked here this Thursday through Sunday. And you've got the White Lake Lodge the following weekend.”

  Harry asked, “So did Ziggy's solo act go over like gangbusters?”

  “Oh no!” I told them. “He hasn't worked in a while. He knew you were coming back and he had Joe Gersh book these dates.”

  I told them about how he'd failed miserably, how he was practically comatose afterward. It really got to Flo. You know, they hadn't treated him well when he was a boy and by now he'd exacted his revenge. I think that now, in their hearts, it was time to call the war off. The hatchets were buried.

  I had no idea whatsoever what was going to happen.

  ARNIE LATCHKEY: Freud would have had a field day with this. This is classic stuff! Biblical stuff! Ziggy was once the loneliest kid in Brooklyn, practically abandoned. He rises up and wreaks his revenge on his parents. What's the word that comics use when they have an audience in hysterics? They slay them. And now here you've got Ziggy slaying his parents. I mean, this is like Greek mythology. Just classic stuff.

  SALLY KLEIN: Every show that Harry, Flo, and Ziggy did, the O'Hares were there . . . with the very best seats in the house, courtesy of Ziggy. You've seen Strangers on a Train, when Robert Walker is at the tennis match and all the heads are going back and forth, following the ball? Except Robert Walker, he's fixed on Farley Granger? Well, that's just what was happening here. These two were glued.

  “Who are those two people following you around?” I asked Ziggy one day.

  He came out and told me he was replacing Harry and Flo with the O'Hares.

  “This will kill your parents!” I said. I was incensed. “This will kill them!”

  He didn't say anything.

  “You're really going through with this?” I asked him.

  “Sally, I'd like you to be the one who fires them.”

  “You don't have the guts to do it?” I hissed at him. “You dream up this cockamamie scheme and you don't have the guts to do it?”

  “Sally, you do this, I swear . . . I'll buy you anything you want. You want a fur? I'll get you one. Chinchilla, mink, sable, whatever you want, it's yours.”

  “You could get me every fur in the world,” I told him, “I won't do it, you weasel.”

  “I'll remember this,” he said.

  I have to admit: That frightened me. I didn't want to work in my father's girdle factory. I loved being in show business. It was fun and I didn't want to leave.

  I told him I wouldn't do it and
I don't think he ever forgave me.

  DANNY McGLUE: He did the engagements with Harry and Flo at night and then in the daytime he rehearsed with the O'Hares in his bungalow.

  It was the most nefarious thing.

  One day I ran into Harry in the lobby at Berenson's. We sat down in those big plush chairs they had and he said, “You know, everything is wonderful for us right now.”

  I thought, Hey, okay, maybe Ziggy's told them about the O'Hares and they're fine with it. So I said to Harry, “That's good, that's good.”

  Harry told me about how there's been some sort of unspoken rapprochement between him and Ziggy. He said that from now on it was all business, that they worked for their son. They were resigned to that.

  “We never thought we'd ever be this successful. You should've seen some of the places we played, Danny. Black holes of Calcutta they were.”

  The O'Hares suddenly walked by, about twenty feet away.

  “Hey, those two are our biggest fans!” Harry said to me. “They're at every show!”

  I looked at him—he was still looking at the O'Hares and smiling—and I nodded and said, “Uh-huh.”

  SALLY KLEIN: One day Ziggy came to me and said, “Would you do me a favor, Sal?” And he asked me to take Harry and Flo out to dinner, to Tremolo's restaurant in Loch Sheldrake, on a Tuesday night. I asked him why and he just said he had to go to New York and it was their anniversary and he wanted them to have a good time.

  That Tuesday night, Harry, Flo, and I are having this sumptuous feast and I said to them, “Happy anniversary!” They looked at me like I was crazy! I said, “This isn't your anniversary?” And they said no, it wasn't.

  Snuffy Dubin told me, a week or so later, what it was all about.

  Ziggy had gone on Lenny Pearl's Viceroy radio show that night. With the O'Hares playing the “parts” of Harry and Flo. Tremolo's was just to keep the real Harry and Flo from knowing about it. I was a diversion and I didn't even know it.

  LENNY PEARL: I dreaded Ziggy being on my show! To me, he was the black plague of Echo Beach. I told those Viceroy big shots, “Okay, once a month. I'll have 'em on once a month. But no more. Because I don't think I can take any more than that.” Ziggy's shtick . . . it was unprofessional. My staff and I, we worked all hours into the night, every night, honing and finely polishing and crafting that show. And then Ziggy comes on and it's all shot to hell.

  So now Ziggy shows up with these two people and he's telling everybody they're his parents! The sheer chutzpah! See, I had no idea he was going to do this—due to prior commitments I hadn't been able to make it to one single rehearsal that week.

  These two people, his new mother and father—who they were, I don't know, they just played right along. As a matter of fact, I thought they had more polish than Harry and Flo ever did, may all parties involved rest in peace.

  SNUFFY DUBIN: I'm working the Colonial Inn in Signac [New Jersey] and there are more people backstage than in the crowd that night. I'm washing my face in the john and I hear Ziggy on the radio—some stagehand is listening to Lenny Pearl's Viceroy show. Then I hear this woman start to sing, I don't know her voice from Minnie fucking Mouse. And Ziggy's calling her Mommy and then I hear this other voice I don't know and Ziggy's calling him Poppy.

  I may have been flabbergasted but I wasn't surprised.

  ARNIE LATCHKEY: Marvin was older than Vic and myself, he was about thirty at this time. He didn't have too much going for him, he wasn't born with my savoir faire for deals or anything. But he was still my flesh and blood and he sure owed me one.

  He took me and Vic in at Heine's and I told him every single thing that had happened, leaving out a few details here and there. I said, “Marvin, this Italian kid, the girls soak him up like a sponge does spilt coffee.”

  Vic was in a corner smoking and brushing up on Skeezix in Gasoline Alley.

  “Can he sing, Arnie?” Marvin asked me.

  “The answer is yes. And besides, it don't matter.”

  I asked him if the small house band was good enough to back a crooner like Vic Fountain, and he said they were better than the Lomax band. I asked him if he could put Vic on the bill and he started hedging. That's when I played the ace: “You knocked up a Wall Street banker's daughter and it was me who got a Bellevue janitor to do the dirty work on her!” He said he'd do it on one condition. “The name's gotta change,” he said. I told him that this was my guy, this was my talent, and who's he to go around changing names? He said people hear the name Fountain, they're gonna think Fontana or Montana. Change the name, Arnie, he said, and we'll put him on. I quickly acquiesced.

  Vic rehearsed with the house band the next day—they were better than the Lomax band—and in three days he was an opening act.

  We're in the lobby at Heine's and they're putting the poster up. On top in small print isVICTOR FELDBAUM, FORMERLY WITH THE FLOYD LOMAX ORCHESTRA.Underneath that and in much bigger letters was a picture of Ziggy, and it just saidTHE BLISSMANS! LAFF RIOTS!And, to my surprise, underneath that in the biggest letters on the sign, it saidSPECIAL GUEST:lenny pearl!

  What had happened was, on the Viceroy show on NBC, Ziggy had lured Lenny Pearl to come to Heine's. He baited him into it, he challenged him. He said things like, “Too scared of the altitude, Lenny?” and “Oh, it's safe inside a studio with a sound-effects man doing all the laughing for the audience . . .” And Lenny, just to shut the kid up and save face, agreed to play the place.

  Classic, classic show business boner. One for the books.

  The morning before he's going to open, Vic and me were having blintzes at some roadside dive. He said to me, “You know, I've seen the Blissmans before. When I was with Johnny Nelson's outfit.”

  “And?”

  “And I'm glad I'm opening for them and not the other way around.”

  “Why's that?” I inquired.

  “'Cause the kid is insane. He's loony. He goes into the crowd, he spills things on himself, he does a pansy act and double-talk. They go over by an hour sometimes.”

  And then I remembered: I'd read about Ziggy in Variety. He'd screwed up Lenny Pearl's whole show on the radio.

  I said, “You're right . . . this kid is a freak. You better hope he don't come on during your act, Feldbaum.”

  Vic said, “He does, I'll rip that red mop right off his head.”

  SALLY KLEIN: Ziggy knocked on my hotel room door at about noon. I was on the phone to my mother, I remember that. He said, “Sal, tonight is the big night.”

  I'd been living in fear for two weeks. When were Harry and Flo going to get the ax? Who would tell them? How were they going to react? I could hardly eat . . . I would just stay in my bed and curl up and try not to think about it. But it didn't work.

  “Have you told them yet, Ziggy?”

  “I asked Jerry Milton to do it.”

  “So he told them?”

  “He won't do it.”

  “So you told them?”

  “Then I called Rosie Baer.”

  “And?”

  “She wouldn't do it either.”

  I asked him, “Has anyone told them yet?”

  “Then I tried Murray Katz.”

  “And?”

  “No dice. He said, ‘I may be a theatrical agent and I may be loathsome and dishonorable but somehow you've found something which is beneath me.’”

  I said to him, “So nobody has told them yet? This is what you're telling me now?”

  “You sure you don't want to do it?”

  “I can't, I can't,” I told him. Tears were running down my cheeks. He said, “Poor Cousin Sally.” He tried to hug me and I let him but then I broke away.

  “This is for the best,” he told me.

  I shook my head and no words came out.

  Nobody ever told them. Nobody had the nerve.

  ARNIE LATCHKEY: Vic and I are backstage and there was this great buzz around, this murmuring in the crowd we heard. It's maybe the second week of June, the place is packed. Packed. Because of
Lenny Pearl. Wall-to-wall Christ killers, Vic said to me, but he was only kidding . . . we could do that. I could call him dago or guinea, he could call me mazza Cristo. No harm, no foul.

  The emcee comes on and says, “Ladies and gentleman, please give a warm Loch Sheldrake welcome to a new performer making his very first appearance at Heine's tonight . . . from Boston, Massachusetts: Vic Feldbaum!”

  I pushed Vic onto the stage and the piano starts up. I'm watching all this through the curtains. First thing I do, I key on all the women in the crowd. The girls, they're oohing, aahing, and ogling. Vic sang “It Was You,” a very up-tempo number, and they were eating him up, male and female alike. He was swinging and they were swinging along with him.

  He went into his second song, a more adagio-type number, and I turned around and saw—for the very first time in the flesh—Mr. Ziggy Blissman of Echo Beach, Brooklyn. The hair, up in what was called an Afro later. And the body . . . the Human Basketball, that's what he was. And the eyes . . . he could really pop them out every which way.

  He sidles over to me and says, “Who's this?”

  I said, “His name's Victor Feldbaum.”

  And he said, “Yeah, and I'm Benito Mussolini.”

  I laughed at that. My type of joke.

  “Who is he really?”

  I told him he was Vic Fountain. Ziggy remembered he'd met him once, at the Hacienda, and—this really shocked me—Ziggy rattled off every single band that Vic had ever played with. Every single one. He mentioned Don Leslie, he mentioned Lomax, he mentioned Mickey Ford at that joint in Brooklyn near the navy yard. For Christsake, he even mentioned that barbershop quartet up in Massachusetts! He pointed to his forehead and said, “It's all up here. Einstein's got nuttin' on me except the mustache.” Well, I found out later that Ziggy read every single show business trade newspaper, every gossip column, and he locked it up there in his gray matter or whatever color Ziggy's cerebellum happened to be.