Funnymen

by Ted Heller

  If you notice, everyone at the table is looking at the camera. Except Ziggy, because he's mugging with his eyes. But look at Vic. He's the only one who's looking away. And I can tell you why. Because there was a very hot redhead at the table to our right, the next table over. I remember that distinctly.

  ARNIE LATCHKEY: Bud Hatch wrote it up in the old Globe. He used adjectives and adverbs you usually reserve for the ceiling on the Sistine Chapel. Ostensibly he said that if you had the chance, you should head for the hills and check out this new dynamic dynamite daffy duo. He promised a gargantuan gaggle of guffaws.

  Now, you must understand that the Catskills was a very select area, not select as in some elite Wasp country club, oh no, au contraire. Fountain and Bliss may have been playing to a packed house, but it was as far in mental mileage from the Big Time as the Wailing Wall is from the Royal Albert Hall. This was not the Copa, El Morocco, the Blue Beret, the Roxy, or the Chez Paree.

  Which meant we had work to do.

  With the twelve grand windfall, I opened up an office in New York, in the Brill Building. The rent was staggeringly low by today's standards. I named our little operation Vigorish Productions, Inc. Combination Vic and Zig.

  Sally had an office and I had an office and there was the “living room.” We needed a secretary so Murray Katz sent us his niece, Estelle Fein, who'd been sewing size labels onto blouses on Thirty-seventh Street. She was about eighteen then and was a lovely girl, tall and long-legged with a mane of auburn hair that Rita Hayworth would've killed for. How do I know this? Because Rita Hayworth a few years later said directly to Estelle—and by then, may I add, the latter had become Mrs. Arnold Latchkey—“I would kill for your hair!” But Rita had a low hairline—she had long bounteous tresses coming out the bridge of her nose—so she might have even killed for Yul Brynner's hairline too.

  I remember dropping off at Bertie Kahn's office a clipping of the Bud Hatch review as well as a write-up from a rag up in the mountains, the Loch Sheldrake Picayune or some such thing. Bertie sent me a telegram the next day; typical behavior for him even though his office was only two blocks away. As long as I live I'll never forget the wording: “Oil plus water = TNT. Or poison.” You didn't get too many words out of him.

  Bertie, though, was willing to work for us. With us. He was the best PR man in New York at the time. And his cousin was Gus Kahn (not Gus Kahn the songwriter), who everybody referred to as Genghis and was the head of Galaxy Pictures. And if you think for one second that that incredibly precious little tidbit escaped Arnie Latchkey's purview, then brother, are you sorely mistaken.

  DANNY McGLUE: Every morning we'd meet at the Vigorish office on Broadway at the exact same time, 10:00 A.M.Vic wanted it to be later; he used to joke, “Hey, I fall asleep at eightA.M.” It was Sally, Arnie, me, Vic, and Ziggy at first, but after a while Norman White and Sidney Stone would be at the meetings too; they were gag writers who were with us many, many years. Vic sometimes did look like he'd only slept two hours when he came in, but after a Chesterfield, a dose of Terry and the Pirates, and some Chase & Sanborn, he'd perk up real quick. We had a piano in there too, and we'd send out for food from Bratz's on Broadway and Fiftieth or sometimes we'd all go to Handelman's or Lindy's.

  I wish there were tapes of those meetings. As funny as Ziggy was, and Vic too, Norman and Sidney were more clever, in terms of jokes and one-liners. Norman had worked on a few radio shows in New York—Allen's Alley and The Joe Penner Show —and then done some punch-up script work for MGM, where he'd met F. Scott Fitzgerald. Sid had done some gag work for the Marx Brothers at Paramount. But they hated California, just hated it.

  That room was jumping sometimes.

  Now, it wasn't all productive. I mean, I think that a quarter of the time we were just making fun of how loud Arnie chewed. But you know, now that I think about it, we even developed a routine out of that.

  ERNIE BEASLEY [songwriter]: I met Vic and Ziggy because my rehearsal studio was two doors down the hallway from the Vigorish office. I was writing jingles then with Max Marcus, stuff for Texaco, L&M cigarettes, and Gillette razors . . . or for anybody really. This was not the road I'd chosen in my life, having studied with Otto Korda at Juilliard. But the pay was good and I was living in Greenwich Village and, besides, that “road” was really chosen for me by my family. They would listen to the NBC Symphony Orchestra on our farm and—this is to their credit, I suppose— they would not let me work the farm. They were too afraid of me bruising or hurting my fingers.

  Ted, I would be playing the piano in the studio and Max Marcus would be singing along and we'd be playing at fairly high volume too—and you could hear, even through those thick prewar walls in the Brill Building, even two offices down —the absolutely raucous laughter ringing out from the Vigorish office.

  A few times I'd gather enough nerve up to knock on the door. Estelle would answer and even as I was saying something as mundane as “Could you please try to keep it down in there?” I'd be looking over her shoulder and I couldn't believe what I saw! You had grown men lying on the floor, standing on their heads or on furniture, sometimes with their pants at their ankles or wearing outrageous wigs. One time I went in there and Vic was playing Arnie and Sally and Norman's heads like they were conga drums! There was always food all around and always there were faces as red as roses with laughter. And it was infectious. About the third or fourth time Ziggy grabbed my hand and dragged me in. They had a small piano in there and I started to play and within a few bars I became part of that wonderful, delirious mayhem.

  After that, I didn't want to go back to my studio, where Max Marcus was waiting for me. I ask you: Who in his right mind would want to write a song about Silver Crest socks or Wilson's Miracle Shaving Powder after a taste of all that?

  ARNIE LATCHKEY: It was a fecund breeding ground. The ideas, the jokes, the everything that was born in those rooms . . . many years later we were still using the material. I once saw Ziggy and [second wife] Pernilla on that Bert Convy game show Tattletales and Ziggy used some joke that he and Sid Stone had written! Three decades earlier!

  SALLY KLEIN: Arnie and I could only do so much. Ziggy and his parents had been booked for a few more engagements that summer in the Catskills. But now Harry and Florence were dead. I made some calls and got Fountain and Bliss in for those dates . . . I think it was Fiedler's, Grossinger's, and the White Lake Lodge for a week at each place. But after that, the calendar was clear. Which is very frightening for entertainers.

  “Estelle darling, call Murray Katz at Worldwide, would you,” I remember-hearing Arnie say one day.

  I went in to his little office and said, “Why are we calling them?”

  “Because as Bert Kahn says, this act could be TNT . . . but as long as we're only in the mountains, it won't amount to more than a moist firecracker.”

  “We could call places,” I said naively. “We could call other people. I have a friend who knows Julie Podell at the Copa.”

  “And, Sally, the man who shines my shoes also shines the shoes of the man who does manicures for the man who cuts Sherman Billingsley at the Stork Club's hair!”

  In my heart I felt that calling Murray or any of Herb Blackstone's people-at WAT was a betrayal . . . it was going outside our little mishpocheh. But Arnie tried to make me see—frankly, he wasn't very convincing—and then Bert Kahn in six words convinced me that for big-time talent you had to use big-time people.

  Still, when Murray Katz showed up one day for a meeting of prospective venues I had a very bad taste in my mouth. Until he started rattling off dollar amounts. I must admit, the bad taste vanished very quickly.

  DANNY McGLUE: I was living in a dumpy studio apartment off Columbus Avenue on Seventy-fourth Street. Sally was living in the Eighties on West End Avenue. I'd see her every day at the office and we'd talk and joke around for hours at a stretch. In the evenings, I would want to phone her or take her out to dinner but I never could summon up the nerve.

  I didn't have the do
ugh or the space for a piano so sometimes at night I would go back to the office to play and write my silly songs. One night I'm there writing some little ditty and what happens? Sally Klein walks in, looking very surprised to see me there. She told me she'd forgotten some paperwork and that's why she'd shown up. I continued playing and then I stopped and, well, before you know it, I was kissing her all over.

  SALLY KLEIN: The first boy I kissed was in Philadelphia and that was like being with a camel, frankly. Well, Danny knows this now but I returned to the office that night not because I'd forgotten anything, but because Arnie had told me that Danny sometimes would tickle the ivories at night. So I was hoping that he'd be there. And he was.

  Even as Danny and I were kissing, it occurred to me: Ziggy is not going to like this.

  • • •

  RAY FONTANA: After they went back to the Catskills for a few more weeks and Vic had some more dough, he got his first real spread, right near the Ansonia. I drove Lulu, Mom, and Pop down to New York one weekend—it was their first time there. Lu and Vic hadn't seen each other for a while, but I got to tell you, I've seen couples who've been apart for a while and this wasn't like that really. It was more like two cousins. He did give her some gifts though—earrings and a coat. He got Mom some stuff too, but she wasn't too big on clothing or jewelry. Pop refused to accept anything from Vic; he wouldn't even let Vic buy him the Daily News. We went to Antonio's, an Italian restaurant, and Vic paid, but even after that Pop slipped him the dough for his and for Mamma's meals.

  Vic showed us all these newspaper clippings, stuff from the Post and the News and Variety. It was really very impressive. And my parents met Ziggy for the first time. He tried to make 'em laugh, he was really cranking it up . . . he even got my mom goin' a few times. But Pop didn't crack a grin, not at all.

  I remember that while Ziggy was entertaining everyone in the main room of the Vigorish office, Vic excused himself to make a call. Ten minutes go by and then I go into Sally Klein's office where Vic was, alone. And Vic is whispering into the phone and his back is turned. I heard him say something like, “Baby, they're all leaving today, I'll meet you at Jimmy Dooley's joint at ten sharp.”

  Jesus, Lulu was in the next room!

  • • •

  SNUFFY DUBIN: I now had Leo Silver at WAT as my agent. Finally having an agent was a very big deal for me, but nothing was lined up. Leo also handled the Louis Bingham Orchestra, who had a radio show on the old Mutual Network, sponsored by Brylcreem. Billy Ross was their pianist, by the way. So I'm having lunch with Leo Silver at Lindy's one day and at the next booth are Arnie, Ziggy, and Vic, who Leo had seen a few weeks before at the White Lake Lodge. Enter through the door: Lou Bingham and the show's producer, Marty Miller. Lou and Marty sit at our booth and before you know it, Ziggy and Vic are going to audition for the Bingham radio show. Which was a fucking lock: you just knew they'd get the job. This happened in the blink of an eye! I hadn't even taken one bite out of my cheesecake yet! So they're standing and shaking hands all around and I'm sitting there like a lonely dill pickle, thinking, Hey, what ever happened to me?

  ARNIE LATCHKEY:The Shadow and The Falcon were on Mutual, and the Macy Twins, from Lenny Pearl's show, had a program on Mutual too. Those two made the Andrews Sisters look like ravishing beauties. Years later, the Macys got an offer to do television, but they wisely retired instead. Cheated the hangman, you could call it.

  Lou Bingham came up to the White Lake Lodge with Marty Miller and a few Brylcreem execs and two days later we're signing the paperwork in Herb Blackstone's office. We were signed for about twenty shows; Ziggy and Vic were guaranteed $250 each a week. Worldwide American took out their usual 121/2percent, those gonifs. Sally and I were coproducers of the show, but, to be honest, we were only responsible for the fifteen-minute segment that Ziggy and Vic did midway through the show, which was an hour long. What Lou Bingham did, played, or said had nothing to do with me. I didn't even listen to the show, other than to Fountain and Bliss, and I was getting paid a hundred a week.

  Lou would play a few tunes, interview a few people who were usually plugging something. Lou was a little bit of an Arthur Godfrey type, except he played the clarinet and not the ukulele, thank God almighty. About half an hour into the program he'd turn the mikes over to Ziggy and Vic. Vic would sing a number with the band too. Sometimes Ziggy would interrupt the song but more often than not it was sketch comedy.

  Now, this is what separated Fountain and Bliss from Abbott and Costello, who hadn't yet appeared on fat Kate Smith's radio program, and Martin and Lewis. The sheer range. Costello was always Costello, the dumb sap. Lewis was always the Melvin character, the pansy. Groucho and Chico had a radio show—it went straight into the toilet—and Chico was always stuck, like the Dutch boy's finger in the dike, doing the Italian thing. But Ziggy could do it all. It was like Gleason later on, who did Reggie Van Gleason, the Poor Soul, Ralph Kramden. Ziggy could do the German cook, the Hungarian scientist, the Japanese gardener, the Yiddish tailor, he could do the pansy, a Li'l Abner rube. They had this one slow-burn routine where Vic has just married this girl, played by Zig, and now they're having their very first meal as a couple and Vic realizes, Oy vey iz mir, my bride chews really, really loud! (Where they got this idea, I don't know.) And every sketch was so, so smooth. Vic's timing—nobody was better. Every single pause and note he'd hit on a dime. On a dime! You could practically hear him doing double takes on the radio! It was a revelation.

  DOMINICK MANGIAPANE: We could hear the Bingham Brylcreem show in Codport . . . there was a local Mutual affiliate in New Bedford. It came on after The Lone Ranger. It was very funny stuff, very out-of-control-type material.

  Every week now, something would come in the mail from New York. From Vic. My sister [Lulu] and I would get in screaming fights . . . you think just 'cause she was five foot two and slim she couldn't scream? The voice she had on her! Still does.

  I would tell her, “Lu, I don't trust Vic. I don't like him and I don't trust him.”

  And she'd hold up a pair of shiny leather gloves and see, “Look at these! How can you not trust him?!”

  “Just because he sends you gloves from Wanamaker's he should be trusted? He used to cheat at cards, he used to cheat at pool, he even cheated at Go Fish!”

  “Yeah, but he don't ever cheat me, Dommy!”

  “Oh yeah? How do you know? How do you know he don't cheat you? You're here, he's maybe wining and dining all kinds of girls on Broadway.”

  “Vic ain't like that,” she said.

  But I couldn't tell her what I knew. I couldn't tell her that Vic had banged Joe Ravelli's wife and Virgillio Marchi's wife and Angie Crosetti's mom and he'd banged big Patsy Jones with five other guys one night under the gazebo or that he'd probably bang a dead trout if it was wet enough. I didn't want to break her heart.

  “All right, Lu,” I'd say. “Whatever you say.”

  When she told me that she was going to marry him, I couldn't bring myself to congratulate her. She was telling me how happy she was gonna be, and all I could remember was him going at Fatsy Patsy under the gazebo, that look on his face.

  DANNY McGLUE: Snuffy really was Ziggy's only pal around the time of the Bingham show. Hunny and Vic would go out together, Guy Puglia too. Ziggy wasn't invited and I don't know if he'd have gone out if he was. See, Vic and Ziggy didn't have common interests. Vic loved boxing, baseball, and the track but Ziggy just liked the theater and comedy and movies. He'd try to get Vic to go to Barney Arundel's Blue Beret Cafe with him to see so-and-so or such-and-such but Vic would rather go to the fights. Also, Vic had started “seeing” Constance Tuttle, who was on the Consolidated [radio] Network, on The Murphy's Oil Soap's Edmund Sligh's Peerless Radio Theater show.

  GRACE WHEELWRIGHT [actress; friend of Constance Tuttle]: I was Connie's roommate for many years, until she married [Broadway producer] Jake Nealy. Connie was a classically trained actress, had been educated as a girl in Switzerland, and then studied drama in Londo
n in her late teens. Well, that's what she told everybody. She told me that a few of her British pursuers had included Ivor Novello, Michael Redgrave, and Charlie Chaplin. And Robert Donat too. He had terrible, terrible asthma and Constance said that when he made love to her he always made sure to have three tanks of oxygen near the bed. By four in the morning, supposedly, the tanks were emptied and Robert Donat's valet had to deliver three more.

  Connie, did you know, almost landed a big part in Alfred Hitchcock's Lifeboat, a part which was simply perfect for her. But Tallulah Bankhead edged her out. “Oh well,” Connie said to me, “at least I don't have to kiss William Bendix.”

  She was a bit of a prima donna. She lied about her age and used to dress in ridiculously opulent furs and jewels, most of which were borrowed. Edmund Sligh, who wrote, produced, directed, and acted in the Murphy's oil soap show, did not pay Constance what she thought was even half her due, but I suppose the Rockefellers and the Rothschilds combined would not have been able to do that either. She really did think she was the cat's meow. For someone who spent the first twelve years of her life in Columbus, Ohio, Connie did sound veddy, veddy British. I mean, she'd only studied at RADA for a year! (If that.) But you would have thought she was Dame May Whitty the way she rolled her r's.

  When Vic entered her life she was about forty years old. It's hard to say. When she died, even the Times was unsure about her age, something Connie would have loved. (Although she would have preferred getting more than two paragraphs on the obituary page.)