by Ted Heller
We're only in Harry Cohn's office for ten minutes, tops. The upshot is he's got a script that's been knocking around the industry since the Lumière brothers. It's called Shall We Dunce? It was first intended for Astaire and Rogers, then for Kelly and Grable at MGM, then for Leslie Howard and Rita Hayworth, but then Leslie Howard died in the war. Ten producers, a hundred writers, and two title changes later it's a short and nobody can remember what the original idea was or who the writers were. They were now leaning it more in the direction of Abbott and Costello. Cohn said there was once the germ of an idea here and then the germ became a virus, but now the epidemic was under control and he wanted this thing filmed. It would be a fantastic vehicle to launch a comedy team, he said. He told us the premise—two guys run a dance school and start romancing their female students, blah blah blah.
“And the beauty part,” Cohn says, “is that Clarence L. Gilbert, who's been here since the silent pictures, would kill to direct this.”
Me, Zig, and Vic all looked at each other and nodded very impressed nods. I said, “Wow, Clarence L. Gilbert!”
“Oh yeah,” Cohn says. “Ned is literally droolin' to do this picture. Look at the script. See these three spots? That's his spittle.” Ned was Clarence Gilbert's nickname.
We took the script back to the Plaza and I said he'd hear from us soon. He threw out a figure to us and I almost got blown off my feet. He said, “Latchkey, this movie the boys could do in a week. There's only two sets. You turn this down, you're mentally ill.”
Sally read it and said, “It might work if Sid Stone and Norman took a whack at it. Or forty.” We couldn't tell if the script was for Moe Howard or Leslie Howard. I knock on Ziggy's door and hand it to him and twenty minutes later he knocks on my door and says, “It'd need a lot of work.” We knock on Vic's door and he's not even in. Turns out he was at Barney's Beanery shooting eight ball. I called Murray at WAT in New York the next day and he says that Harry really wanted us for this picture. He says he can squeeze Columbia for twenty grand and it's less than a week's work. He says, “I don't know if there's anything to lose here, Arn,” and I said, “Yeah, but you ain't read the thing. It's so all over the place that it's nowhere.”
Dissolve. Next day. We're at MGM, in L. B. Mayer's office, which is as big as the left side of Canada, and we meet the old man. This time Ziggy and Vic are a little looser because, one, there's no threat that Mayer is going to decapitate us—he's like everybody's uncle who falls asleep after a big Thanksgiving meal—and, two, we'd already heard Harry Cohn screaming. Why would you be scared of a furry puppy after being in a cage with a rabid python? But Mayer just isn't paying attention to us . . . Ziggy is trying to yuk it up and L. B. ain't buying it. After taking calls from Tracy, Fleming, Cukor, and Garland and leaving us twiddling our thumbs, he said to us, “Now, why did you fellows want to meet me again?” And I said, “We thought you wanted to meet us!” And he said, “Apparently a grave error has been committed.” Like the Bismarck we sank into the plush leather furniture.
It's time to go and Mayer gets up and walks us to the door. He asks, “Did you two fellows once play a place called Club 18 in New York?” And Ziggy and Vic's faces light up! We thought here's our chance to get in good with the old man. And Vic says, “Yeah, we did!” And Louis B. says, “Yes, I saw you perform . . . you said some very insulting things about me and my company.” Teddy, I wanted to grab this guy by his collar and say, “That's what was supposed to happen at Club 18, you old bastard! This is like buying tickets for an airplane and then complaining afterward that it left the ground and flew!” Ziggy said to him, “We saw you laughing, though, Mr. Mayer. You can't deny that.” And he said, “I can afford to laugh.”
We left there with the taste of rust in our mouths.
That night we tried to get Vic to read the script and he said he would. The next morning he and I ate breakfast together and I asked him, “So whatchya think?” and he answered, “I thought the flapjacks were real good.”
“Not that. Are you gonna ever read this thing, Vic?”
“Can't you and Ziggy make the decision? I'll do the acting and singing.”
“You trust Ziggy with a decision this important?”
“I'll do whatever you want me to do, Latch.”
“I want you to read the damn thing is what I want!”
“All right, give me the script then.”
“I already did! You've still got it!”
He said to me, “Look, don't get all worked up. We do this movie, we get a sweet payday, we go home. I mean, what's the big deal here? Whad-daya think?”
I was so exasperated that all I could respond was, “I thought the flapjacks were real good, Vic.”
The next day a driver from Gus Kahn's office picks us up. Now, I've heard that Gussie Kahn can make Harry Cohn look like a goddamn saint. He's louder, he's meaner, he's ruder, he's cruder, and, unlike Harry, he don't even like his own relatives. The driver takes us on the scenic route to Galaxy Pictures because, he tells us, Gussie is going to be a little late that day. So we're driving around and the mood in that car was not good. Ziggy is now wanting to get back to New York, and Vic knew that we knew he hadn't read the script. We'd been on trains together, in hotels together since Chicago, we urgently needed to be apart.
“I got a new idear for the radio show, guys. A new bit,” Ziggy said. We were all three of us tightly crunched together in the back of that car.
“I got an idea for the radio show too, Zig,” Vic said. “We cancel it.”
“Why you wanna cancel it for?”
“'Cause I got better things to do at night than that.”
“Like what, Vic? Bang as many broads as you can before you marry Lu?”
“Yeah, Zig, that is what I'm doing. It's a plan. I figure, I get that out of my system before I'm a married man, then maybe I won't want to do it so much when I am one. And at least, partner, I don't have to pay for it.”
Ziggy elides over the latter part of that statement and says, “And we should cancel the radio show on account of this ten-point Marshall Plan of yours?”
“Guys, please,” I said.
Vic says to the driver, “Where the hell are we, buddy?”
“I thought I'd show you some of California's beautiful shoreline, Mr. Fountain.”
We were in Santa Monica. Right near the pier.
“Did I say I wanted to see the goddamn shoreline, you fuckin' punk?!” Vic barks at the poor kid. “Did I ask to see that?!”
“S-s-sorry,” the poor kid simpers.
“I grew up near the goddamn shoreline! I need to see the same goddamn thing here?!”
“But this ain't the same ocean, Vic,” Ziggy butts in. “This is the Pacific.”
Vic gets out of the car, he's in a rage. He opens the driver-side door and pulls the driver out by his collar. He grabs the cap off the kid and stomps on it a few times. Vic gets back in, into the driver's seat, while me and Ziggy just sit there with our jaws slung open to New Zealand. “I'll fuckin' drive us where we wanna fuckin' go!!!” Vic yells.
Five minutes later Vic says, “Where were we going again?”
“To Galaxy Pictures,” I told him. “Do you have any idea where that might be?”
So Vic pulls a U-turn and drives back to the pier . . . Vic gets out and grabs the kid again by the collar and pushes him back into the driver's seat.
“Take us to Galaxy, kid,” Vic says. “Here.” And he hands him $300.
“Gee, thanks, Mr. Fountain,” the driver says.
So we arrive at this meeting not in such a fantastic mood. And Gus Kahn ain't even there. The secretary tells us that and Vic mutters to me, “Let's just do the Dunce With Me flick, Latch, okay?” I reminded him the name of the vehicle was Shall We Dunce? The secretary says that Gus Kahn is at the track today and he'd like to meet us there—the driver will take us to Santa Anita right away. This seemed to ameliorate Vic's mood somewhat, but Ziggy quickly soured. “We gotta go to the track, Arn?” he asked me in a so
rt of annoying whine. “Maybe we should just do the dunce flick for Columbia.”
An hour later we're at the track sitting next to Genghis Kahn himself. The man is five foot three and dresses like a millionaire, which he was, of course, and he's got these solid gold binoculars around his neck. He barely looks at us the entire day. He's got a flunky there, maybe an assistant producer or something . . . Gus studies the racing form, tells this flunky to go bet so much on so-and-so, and then off the guy goes. Well, Gus is blowing hot and cold today, winning and losing. Me and Vic start betting but we cannot believe the sums that Kahn is wagering. “A thousand on the three horse, Bill,” he says. “Put two grand on the nine horse,” he says. Every time he does this, me, Ziggy, and Vic turn to each other in awe. But Gus don't see this, because the man is just glued to those binoculars. At one point he says to us, “I hear you guys are hilarious. Is it true?” Ziggy says, “Yeah, we can be pretty funny.” “I saw you at Club 18 a few years ago,” Gus says, “and I did notice that you were of a humorous bent. Bill, let's get serious now. Eight grand on Wayfarer to win. The five horse, that big roan colt.” And off goes Bill the flunky while me, Zig, and Vic are cowering in our seats at the quantity of brass in this guy's balls. “Are you going to do that dunce picture for Columbia?” Kahn asks us. I told him we didn't know yet. Kahn tells us it had been a Galaxy property at one point. He said a short comedy about two dance teachers was a nifty premise for a picture; a few songs, some clownin' around and romance, a pretty girl . . . it could launch a movie career like you were shot out of a howitzer. He said he wished he still had it. If Cohn was willing to sell him back the property, he said, he'd buy it for top dollar and turn it into a full-length picture. Maybe get Gene Kelly and Betty Grable. I asked him if Clarence L. Gilbert was reliable and he said, “Oh, there's no one better than Ned. No one. He'll make the boys look like a million bucks.”
Bill the flunky comes back and says the bet's been placed. The horse finishes dead last.
Gus says to Bill the flunky, “Bill, this is what we're doing . . . I'm buyin' this horse. Today. Buy it for three grand. And the minute he's mine, I want him destroyed.”
Still shuddering from that, that night I canceled the meeting at Paramount.
“We'll do the picture,” I told Harry Cohn the next day. “When can we get started?”
SALLY KLEIN: It was the first real argument I had with Arnie. He was blinded by the easy money, I'm sure he'll admit that. I read the script and I could just tell this thing was a stinker.
“The only way the boys should do this,” I told him, “is if Sid and Norman can work some of their magic with it. Although I doubt anyone's wand is that big.”
“Why them? Columbia has a hundred writers on their staff,” he said.
“That's the problem. This thing has been through the mill already.”
“You want Danny to look at this, don't you?”
“I think,” I said slowly, “that he could help too. Arnie, they know Ziggy and Vic better than anyone. This script is not Fountain and Bliss.”
“How do I know you just don't want Danny back in the fold?”
“Don't you too?”
He nodded. “Look,” he said, “it's a short picture, it's an easy twenty grand. I say we cancel our engagement at the Blue Beret and just have the boys do this thing.”
“Can you at least send it to Sidney and Norman? Please?”
I got that out of him. They got the script the same day. And we got it back that night at the hotel. Sid Stone had written on a note: “I work with a typewriter, not gasoline and matches. That's what this screenplay needs. All the very best, Sid.”
LULU FOUNTAIN: I was all set to come in to New York to see Vic at the Blue Beret. But Estelle calls me and says that they've canceled so that they could make a movie. I was pretty angry. Estelle has to call me? Vic can't? For three days I walked around and I could've killed Vic if he was around. Then Dominick says to me, “Vic's making movies now, Lu. That's very serious business.” And I realized that I was now engaged to a movie star.
FRANK LUDLAM [assistant director of Shall We Dunce?]: It was not the worst piece of garbage I was ever involved in, but it was certainly in the same heap. The behind-the-scenes people were either very new, such as myself, or were old veterans on the way out. The director was Clarence Gilbert; Ned had never directed a movie before. He was about fifty-five years old then and was Columbia's second-string makeup and wardrobe test director. You want to see how Rhonda Fleming or George Montgomery looks with a new coat, a new hairdo, or different makeup, you shoot twenty seconds of it with different lighting. That's what Ned Gilbert did.
Vic Fountain and Ziggy Bliss were never anything less than professional. I think they were too scared to “act up.” When the hairdresser poured a ton of Vitalis on Ziggy's hair, he did not protest. There were a few of us, myself included, who knew right then that this little movie would die . . . to do that to Ziggy Bliss's hair would be like shaving Charlie Chaplin's mustache.
The lead actress was Frances Alcott, who was our model for wardrobe and hairstyle test shoots, filling in when the actual stars couldn't make it. I had coffee with her one day and she said to me, “Where the hell did Harry find these two?” When I told her they were big on the nightclub circuit, Frances rolled her eyes—she merely wanted to finish this job.
There were two songs in the movie; both were written by Ernie Beasley. Vic Fountain was already quite adept when it came to lip-synching. He did have some trouble memorizing his lines though. One very brief scene required about ten takes; I remember Vic Fountain saying to Ned, “Hey, I only read this thing this morning, buddy!” But there was never any fooling around or destructive behavior on the set, as characterized their later films.
When the filming was over, their manager, Arnold Latchkey, walked up to Ned and asked him how he thought it went. Ned said they were very good to work with and it'd be interesting to see how they'd look with the makeup and wardrobe.
DANNY McGLUE: They looked utterly lost up there. It was about twenty minutes too long and it was only a twenty-two minute film. I'm not saying this out of sour grapes, but the screenplay was a mess. It was a little Three Stooges, a little Ritz Brothers, a little Abbott and Costello. It was like cooking with all your leftovers: chicken chow mein, lasagna, a burrito—it's going to end up one stinkorama of a meal. The only thing this movie is memorable for is that Vic got to sing Ernie Beasley's “The Hang of It.” [ Singing:] “Now, I've got the hang of it, I've got that Sturm and Drang of it, I've got the yin and yang of it . . .”
Ziggy looked like a gibbon up there. They didn't know what to do with him—the director, the screenwriter, the makeup and wardrobe departments. They tried to tame his hair, but once in a while a strand or two would spring up, which made him look like he had horns.
“I thought these two were supposed to be funny,” a guy sitting behind me in the theater said to his date.
Snuffy said to me, “Danny boy, if Zig and Vic wanted to kill any chance they ever had at a successful movie career, man, did they ever choose the right vehicle.”
• • •
ARNIE LATCHKEY: Now, Hunny Gannett knew Max Rosenbloom, the prizefighter who opened up Slapsie Maxie's in L.A. (When he was just a light heavyweight, Hunny had gotten pummeled by Max.) Maxie and the club bumped an act and let Fountain and Bliss do a week. We had to cancel a week at the Blue Beret, which did not go over well. “This is very, very unprofessional!” Pete Conifer said over the phone. “Oh, I realize that, Pete,” I said. What was I going to do—deny it? I told him that the opportunity to do a movie had come up. Pete said, “Well, it better be good.” And I forewarned him that, no, it would not be. Pete had to scramble to get a replacement. He wanted a comic. Vic said to me, “Pete could get Snuff for the week . . . he'd do it.” Ziggy said, “No. Snuffy can't work a room that size.” I said to Ziggy I thought Snuffy could handle it. Ziggy said, “No. I know Snuffy, I know his limitations. If Pete signs him, it's his own funeral.” S
o Pete got a singer instead, I think it was Tony Martin or Al Martino.
SALLY KLEIN: My third date with Jack, we went to see Fountain and Bliss at Maxie's. The first two dates, Jack had taken me to the Brown Derby and House of Murphy. He was fifteen years older than me, was thin and bald, and his wife had died two years earlier. He'd already had one heart attack. When we sat down at our table at Slapsie Maxie's a terrible thought occurred to me: Oh my God, what if this Jack Klein laughs so much he has a heart attack and dies? Well, he was laughing his head off, the whole audience was, but fortunately he survived the show.
Jack was very polite, very quiet. When I took him backstage to meet the boys, Vic was effusive and polite and doing the Vic thing, joking around and pinching Jack's cheeks, but Ziggy was aloof and sort of wary. I wanted to say to him, So if this Jack Klein fella isn't good enough for you, then I might as well go back to Danny McGlue!
The engagement got some wonderful press . . . Bobby Hale of the Examiner went a few times and gave it raves, and Billy Wilkerson of The Hollywood Reporter was a big fan. Many celebrities turned out. Orson Welles, Ava Gardner, who was just so gorgeous, Cary Grant, the Gary Coopers. You should have seen Vic imitating Gary Cooper. It was really priceless. You know that an act is doing very well when the waiters, busboys, and hatcheck girls are cracking up. On the final night, Clark Gable came backstage and said, “I heard you guys did a picture for Columbia. Congratulations.” Ziggy said, “Yeah, Ned Gilbert directed it.” “Gee, sorry, guys,” Gable said and then slunked out with a queasy look on his face.
SNUFFY DUBIN: [Agent] Leo Silver calls me and says he hears the Blue Beret needs a comic for five nights. My life is at a new low now—I'm drinking too much, I'm playing dives, I'm picking up junkie chicks and taking them home with me and they're getting sick in my bed. But out of all this misery, pain, and loneliness, I'm slowly finding a new voice in my act. Before, when I was just a raw comic, I did jokes. Myron Cohen, Henny Youngman stuff. My room was so small, my wife is so ugly, my taxi driver was so bad, man walks into a psychiatrist's office, horse walks into a bar. What I'm trying to do now, though, is tell stories. The story itself is the funny thing; the way I tell it is funny. The problem is, though, the places I'm playing, nobody is liking it. I play the China Doll on Broadway or the Town and Country Club in Brooklyn, I get booed out the door. They're too drunk, they're too stupid, they got their hands up their secretary's skirt at their table. They want the dumb psychiatrist-walks-into-a-horse jokes. The only good thing about the China Doll was that Charlie the bartender had a good pill connection, some quiff-fiend pharmacist from Jackson Heights he used to set up with the girls working the bar.
