Funnymen

by Ted Heller

  Ginger extended her hand and Lulu didn't shake it.

  “Oh, you're Vic's whore, right?” Lu said.

  Ginger looked straight down.

  “You wanna screw him,” Lu said, “I don't care. Do a good job, keep him happy. But don't think for a second you can take him away from my kids and me.”

  She and Bruno and Violetta walked away.

  “Maybe we should leave, baby,” Ernie said.

  “Maybe we should have another drink,” Ginger said.

  About a week after that, Chinese Joe Yung had to drive Ginger to Mexico-to get an abortion.

  LULU FOUNTAIN: I felt sorry for that Ginger girl. She thought she was somethin' special to Vic, but she wasn't. She was a piece of meat. I could've sat down with her and set her straight. But, I figured, the best thing to do is just let Vic break her heart.

  ERNIE BEASLEY: Guy's Seafood Joint in Malibu had been open for a few months and Vic was there one night with me, those Fratelli brothers, who always frightened me, and Hunny and Ginger. And Bobby Hale and his wife walked in.

  Near the end of our meal, Vic went to the bathroom, returned to the table, and called the waiter over. He said to the waiter, “Bring this over to Mr. Hale's table, tell him it's compliments of Vic Fountain. And tell him no hard feelings.” He handed the waiter a rolled-up napkin and I don't have to tell you what was in there.

  “Just watch this,” Vic said.

  “He don't need a napkin,” Hunny said. “He's already got one.”

  “Okay, Hunny. Sure.”

  The waiter presented the napkin to Bobby Hale, and Bobby raised his glass to us. For a moment he must have thought Vic the magnanimous sort. His wife snuggled up close to him, wondering what was inside. They couldn't smell it—Vic told me he'd poured some of Ginger's Chanel on it.

  I will never as long as I live forget the look on Bobby Hale and his wife's faces when they unrolled it. Before they could stand up to leave, Vic was right over them, yelling. He yelled at Bobby Hale's wife, “You actually let this stinkin' piece of shit fuck you? 'Cause that's what he is!” and to Bobby Hale, “Who the hell do you think you are to rip me like that?! Vafancul'!”

  For some reason, Hunny and one of the Fratellis joined Vic at the table. It became this whole macho thing, a pissing contest.

  “Vic, this is disgusting,” Hale said. “We're leaving.”

  But Vic wouldn't let the two of them go.

  “You're not even man enough to fight me!” Vic said. “You insult me in your paper but now that I'm here you're too afraid to have a go at me.”

  I thought Vic was going to shove Bobby Hale or grab his collar but he never did.

  “Come on, Bobby, be a man. Come on, pussy!” Vic said.

  “Honey, let's go,” Bobby said, and he and his wife stood up.

  But Hunny mistook “honey” for “Hunny,” I guess. He started messing with Bobby Hale. By now, Guy and some waiters are over at the table and he's urging Vic to back off. The last thing he wants is a big scene. “Just let 'em go, Vic, okay?” Guy was urging.

  Before anybody knew it, Hunny had leveled Bobby Hale. He was unconscious on the floor. One of the Fratellis started kicking him in the ribs but Bobby Hale's wife restrained him and so did Guy, who was very, very strong.

  It was in the papers the next day. There were pictures of the ambulance outside the restaurant, which, by the way, was just fabulous publicity for the place! And all the reporters had it that hot-tempered singer/actor Vic Fountain had gotten into a fierce brawl. Nobody had it right, that someone else had fought Vic's battle for him.

  • • •

  GUY PUGLIA: I had this lovely setting in Malibu, right on the water, and Vic was my big backer. For years he tried to get me to take lobster and oysters off the menu but I told him that a place called Guy's Seafood Joint that didn't serve any seafood wouldn't really draw too many people. He wasn't thrilled I served seafood but, hey, seafood is what I know. The chef would always have food special for him, like veal, steak, or pasta. I had to go along with this one thing of his, though, or he wouldn't ever have put up the dough—the place looked onto the ocean and the beach, it was a great view. People would've killed for that view. But Vic said he didn't want to see the water. Windows on the highway outside, that was fine, but none onto the water. So on that I caved in. Instead of windows, there was a mural of Mount Vesuvius erupting all over Pompeii covering the whole wall. And there was another thing: My sister Franny sent me a big plastic swordfish to hang on the wall. When we knew Vic was comin'—or when he just popped in—we had to take it off the wall.

  You know, Vic pissed me off with that big fight. If I wanted to open up a goddamn arena for gladiators, I would have.

  The day after Hunny decked that reporter, it was the first time I ever had to turn people away. We sat about eighty people and I'm tellin' you, three hundred people turned up all at once. It made me wonder how much business that barber shop where [Albert] Anastasia was killed did the next few weeks . . . that place must've been fuckin' packed.

  ARNIE LATCHKEY: It was a miracle Hunny didn't kill Bobby. It was one thing to have a reputation as a hot-tempered, lethargic-voiced Italian brawler—even though Vic hadn't punched anybody—but it's another thing entirely to be a murderer.

  Morty Geist went berserk over this. On the one hand, Vic really wanted it spread around that he was a tough guy and could lick anyone alive; on the other he didn't want to be charged with assault and go to jail. The Examiner —which didn't take too much of a shining to Vic beating one of their star reporters senseless—had found out that Vic had gotten Ginger in a family way.

  We were in the Vigorish offices on Wilshire, trying to figure out how to spin this thing like a dreidel.

  I said, “How do they know Vic knocked up Ginger, but they don't know that it wasn't Vic that knocked out Bobby Hale?”

  Sally set us straight. She said, “It's not news that Hunny Gannett knocks out Bobby, but it is if it's Vic. Man bites dog.”

  “What are we gonna do?” Morty said. “We gotta do something!”

  “Calm down, Morty,” Sally said.

  “I am calm. This is me calm.” He pulls another five hairs out of his head.

  He and Shep Lane, who'd just moved to Los Angeles, spelled it out. Hunny, who had really knocked out Bobby anyway, would take the fall. There were witnesses in the restaurant . . . it was only Vic crowing to the world he'd laid out Bobby, nobody else. If Bobby wanted to sue for damages, we'd give him what he wanted, which we did. (Turned out the guy needed more wiring in his jaw than Bell Telephone.) So Hunny wound up going to jail for a spell, and Vic was out a hundred grand. Morty rigged it so, yeah, Vic would pay the dough but the Examiner would bury the thing about Ginger. And Bobby Hale, even though he was in the hospital for a week and didn't have all his wits about him, had just enough of them to go along with it.

  So a week after this whole brouhaha, Joe Yung drives Vic and Hunny to the police station to turn Hunny in.

  “See ya in a few weeks, okay, buddy?” Hunny said to Vic as they took him away.

  The next week Vic has to make the same trip, this time with Joe Yung. 'Cause the cops had caught Joe ushering Sondra Webb to one of those “clinics.”

  SALLY KLEIN: Gus Kahn was furious. Not only had Ziggy half-blinded one of his directors, but Vic—via Hunny—had knocked out a big Hollywood reporter! Galaxy was paying for the couthier but the lessons just weren't taking. “What is Clotilde doing with him anyways?” Gus shouted to me at the Polo Lounge. “Giving him boxing lessons?”

  You know, it boosted record sales. After the fight, Midnight With Vic really took off. And Fountain and Bliss got so much mileage in the act out of this new “Brawling Baritone” reputation of Vic's . . . they milked it for all it was worth.

  “Someone's got to put a lid on these two,” Gus said. And then he said, “Or hey, you know what? We could maybe put them in a prizefighting movie!”

  (Not two months later A Couple of Lightweights went into pro
duction.)

  Arnie and I went to Vic's place at the Ambassador one afternoon. We brought up some deli food from Canter's, I remember. Vic was overextending himself, Shep had told us. He was now keeping three hotel suites, one at the Wilshire for Ginger, one at the Ambassador for himself, and another at the Biltmore for . . . well, I don't know for who or what. He had the house with Lulu and the kids and had also just bought a house in Vegas.

  “Look, everything's okay with me, guys,” Vic said.

  “What about Hunny? Have you visited him in jail?” I asked him.

  “I'll get around to that,” he said. “I think the Hun's a little embarrassed. Besides, I don't think he even remembers what he's in there for.”

  “We're getting offers from CBS for a TV show,” I told him. “But I think—”

  “Hey, I think we should bite. You work one day a week, you can't beat that.”

  “Well,” I said, “it's not really working one day a week. There are rehearsals and the show has to be written.”

  “One day a week, Sally. How much any other sucker wants to work, that's his problem.”

  Arnie opens up three bottles of Cel-Ray tonic but Vic passed on it. Instead he had Joe Yung mix him up a martini.

  “It's a little early for a martini,” I said. “Don't you think?”

  “It's always a little early for a Cel-Ray tonic, if you ask me.”

  “Look, you got the boxing picture,” Arnie said, “you've got the Sullivan show to do, you're booked for three weeks in Vegas, I'm a little hesitant about adding a TV show to the mix.”

  “So we won't do the boxing picture,” Vic said. “We'll cancel that.”

  “We can't cancel that!” Arnie said. “Look, do you ever see Vicki and Vincent? How are they doing?”

  “Oh, they're just the best, Latch. Vicki is the prettiest little thing you ever saw.”

  “And Vincent?”

  “Vincent's okay. He's just a boy.”

  “When's the last time you saw them?”

  “Jesus, it was as recent as five days ago, I'd say. Joe Yung drives her to school every day. Don't worry about me and Vicki. She'll be the princess of Hollywood.”

  I tried to get through to Vic. I spoke very earnestly to him, girl to boy. I told him that he should spend more time with his family, with Lulu, that he shouldn't spend all his extra time running after showgirls and actresses. Joe Yung had been in jail for a week, Hunny was in for over a month. He was hurting his wife, his kids, his mistress, his friends. I went on for about ten minutes and in this time Joe Yung made him one or maybe even two more martinis. Whenever I delivered lectures to Ziggy, it felt to me that the words went around him, but this time, with Vic, I felt that there was a fog around his head. The words got lost in all the smoke.

  Arnie and I were leaving, we were at the door. While we were saying 'bye to Vic, the bedroom door opened. There was a girl there, she looked just like she'd stepped off the floor show at the Desert Inn. She went to the bathroom, said hello to us. Arnie nudged me and I looked into the bedroom. There was another girl in the bed.

  “See ya, guys,” Vic said to us.

  • • •

  JANE WHITE: Freddy was just the cutest, the most adorable little boy. He looked just like me, too. So many celebrities would stop on over at the house and play with him. If it wasn't Larry Olivier coming over with Vivien Leigh one night, it was him coming over with Danny Kaye the next. Claude Rains would come over too, and he and Freddy would play hide-and-seek. When Jack and Sally had little Donny, Freddy and he used to play all the time. Vicki and Vince would play with him, but I think Vicki hit him a few times. Oh, did you know that Freddy had a criminal record before he was two years old? Isn't that just the darndest thing? I was shopping for a bracelet one day in Rusar's, and Freddy's nanny Ruthie was pushing him around in his stroller. By accident, a few items fell into the stroller. Well, when the man in the store stopped us as we were going out, Ruthie and I were so offended. There was no way, I told the man, that a one-year-old could possibly have taken all that merchandise and put it into the stroller! And he said to me, “You're right, there is no way, ma'am.” The manager came over and it seemed to be a choice between arresting me, Ruthie, or little Freddy. But since Freddy had the goods, they arrested him and, naturally, the charges were thrown out.

  When [Ziggy found out] that Vic had recorded an album—I didn't think I could control him. He had two rooms in the back of the house that I was never to enter, and he just sealed himself in there. When he came out for dinner he barely said a word. I would try to engage him in normal conversation but, to tell the truth, it was always hard to engage Ziggy in normal conversation. I would spend so much time supervising the cooking of his dinners and sometimes he wouldn't take a bite. Freddy and I would sit at the table and Ziggy would be silent for twenty minutes and then say out of the blue, “How does he think he can do that to me? He thinks I'm gonna roll over and play dead?” My best friend Joanie Pierce, who lived across the street then, reminded me a few years ago that Freddy's first full sentence was “I hate Vic.”

  Ziggy had an autographed copy of Midnight With Vic . . . Vic had signed it “To my favorite partner. Hope you like it.” When Ziggy got that he was beyond my control. He put it on the record player and listened to each song for about three seconds each. He was merciless, he was using such nasty words—I had to cover up Freddy's ears. And he would scratch the record to pieces with the needle while the volume was turned all the way up! It was the worst noise.

  Do you know what he did? We drove all around L.A. and stopped at every single hi-fi store and bought the record. We bought up every single copy we could find. He was so irate—he must've been driving ninety miles an hour down Sunset Boulevard. I think by then he was already taking what he called “funny fuel.” (I took them too, but they didn't really have an effect on me. They made me feel naturally “me,” peppy and all.) We went to every record store within forty miles, I'd say. Freddy was on my lap the whole way, and Ziggy was cursing a blue streak. When we got home, Ziggy broke them or burned them or buried them.

  “How can he do this to me?” he said to me. “Do you think he would put out this dreck if it wasn't for me?! Do you think he'd be in movies? Do you think he'd be living in Beverly Hills?! Do you think he'd be banging Marilyn Monroe and eating at the Trocadero and wearing all those suits he's got?!”

  “Is he really banging Marilyn Monroe?” I asked him.

  “Yes!!! And it's all on account of me! If it wasn't for me, Janie,” he said, “he'd still be fishing in New England!”

  “I thought you told me he never did fish in New England.”

  And then he got that sweet, special, impish look on his face. He was in the middle of the living room, surrounded by Vic's records, the jackets and the sleeves, dozens of them, hundreds. The fact that he was boosting Vic's sales so much—this hadn't occurred to him. But when I mentioned the fishing thing to him, all of a sudden he felt 100 percent better. And he was Ziggy again.

  REYNOLDS CATLEDGE IV: Ziggy Bliss, who was then appearing at a nightclub with Vic in Florida, phoned me in Nebraska. Things were not going well for me but I shall refrain from relating just how bad it was. But it was bad. An article about Vic's childhood had appeared in Parade, Ziggy told me now, and was replete with errors. This article was only two pages long but there were ten pages of mistakes, he jested. Ziggy related to me all the inaccuracies. He would say something to the effect of “and in the next sentence, that's all horseshit too.” I informed him that I did not have the article in question, but he did not seem to hear this. “Look at this!” he yelled, but I had nothing to look at but the phone cord.

  “Someone's got to clear the air here, Cat,” Ziggy said to me. And I at once knew that this someone was myself.

  My letter to the magazine was two pages—Ziggy had actually written it and I fixed up the grammar and the spelling, which was quite a task. When Parade ran it, they edited it down to some four sentences. Mr. Fountain has never worked in
any aspect of the fishing industry, I'd written. A Clotilde Sturdivandt, I also wrote, has been working with Mr. Fountain for years trying to improve his couth, to no apparent effect. Mr. Fountain's father, the letter stated, was once suspected in the murder of a mob figure in the commonwealth of Massachusetts, and Vic himself had once had a run-in with some sheriffs in Washington State. I also alluded to the tale of his missing toes and indicated that it was unlikely lobsters had bitten them off. The letter was sent anonymously from Nebraska.

  Several weeks later, I received a call from Arnie Latchkey. I had not spoken to him since Vic's wedding. He and I made small talk, and then he got down to business. Vigorish Productions, he told me, needed a person in charge of security. “I have to be brutally frank with you,” Arnie said, and he then proceeded to tell me that individuals in nightclubs would approach Vic Fountain and challenge him, dare him to fight them. The more that Vic's entourage would fight off such people—Tony Fratelli had recently knocked a man unconscious in Las Vegas—the more challengers there would be. “We can't win,” Latch said. “Like locusts, they just keep coming.” Arnie was also trying to get Vic to not commingle with the Fratellis, who apparently had some underworld connections. In addition, not only did they have to worry about protecting Vic from others, they had to protect Vic from Vic. Now, Vic had recently been swayed to hire an Andy Ravelli, the grandson of a hometown acquaintance of his, as a bodyguard. “But we need someone to really take charge of this operation,” Latch said.

  “I run a beer distribution business, Mr. Latchkey,” I informed him. This was not true, as my company had recently gone bankrupt.

  “Ziggy says you're great at these type things,” he said to me.

  “I do have a flair for certain sorts of intrigues,” I admitted rather bashfully.

  He told me that I could live in Los Angeles, that I would be given a hotel room in Las Vegas and New York when Fountain and Bliss performed there, that I would be entitled to a more than generous expense account, that my car would be paid for. He told me my starting salary would be $30,000 a year, which was certainly a very handsome sum in the mid-fifties. I said, “You're asking me to simply leave my company? And move from Nebraska to California. The people who work for me are like family.” He replied, “Okay, we'll make it thirty-five grand.” Three weeks later I was living in Los Angeles.