Funnymen

by Ted Heller

  Vic never said a word, never mentioned it. He knew we knew, and we knew he knew we knew. It was like they'd found a blood clot the size of a couch in his brain and we weren't supposed to mention it, out of politesse or something. So we didn't.

  Jesus Christ, Ziggy looked like he was going to die. He had no idea what his future was.

  They had five nights at the Oceanfront the following week. Billy Wilder had passed on Three of a Kind —so had Blake Edwards. From there we moved down to the hacks, guys who directed Beach Brisket Bongo movies, but no guy who knew how to yell the words “action” and “cut” would bite. We'd tried to get Marilyn Monroe interested for the Miriam Hopkins role, but she died on us so she passed too. Ziggy was hot to get Jayne Mansfield—no surprise, that—but she wasn't taken with it. Still the gears were churning, albeit at a deathly sluggish tempo.

  The movie never got made.

  A day before the Oceanfront shows, we were all together at the office. Shep advised Vic to avoid the casinos in Vegas . . . the only reason they were playing the Oceanfront at all was because Vic had lost so much dough there. He loses forty grand, he does another week. That's how it went.

  Frank Gorshin was opening for the boys. The place was buzzing. Everyone had heard that Vic was doing a solo at the Cal-Neva. Were they breaking up? Weren't they? Everybody was asking me and I told them the God's honest truth: I had no idea.

  Gorshin does his show, then the band begins and Vic comes out. He sings “The Hang of It,” then launches into another song. This is the song that Ziggy is supposed to interrupt. Five bars into the number there's no Ziggy. Ziggy was in his room, or maybe he was skinny-dipping in Lake Mead. I don't know. Vic was left holding his shlong. The band only knew four songs for Vic and they did them all, three times over.

  He came offstage, raging, and he said to me, “Okay . . . where is he?! Where is he?!”

  “I don't know.”

  “How could he do this to me?!”

  “Well, he's asking the same thing about you, most likely.”

  The next night Vic went on after Gorshin and in the second song, as planned, Ziggy interrupted him. They did the act. They did about two and a half goddamn hours in fact. They were cookin', they were burnin', they were torchin' that whole room, boy. That was the only show they ever did where more than two people died at the same show. Three people, two men and a women, died from laughing so much that night. Blood vessels were burstin' like balloons on New Year's Eve.

  The night after that, Ziggy came on at the exact same second he had the night before. They did their first routine and then the lights went down for a brief costume change, so Ziggy could dress as a football player. The lights come up and Ziggy's onstage . . . but there's no Vic. No sign of him. So this is Vic's revenge now, in this eternal Ping-Pong game. Ziggy's onstage alone and when's the last time something like this happened? It's Panic Time.

  He stood there for a minute and didn't make a peep other than the wheezes escaping from the pit of his guts. People start laughing . . . they're chuckling and giggling, they think it's the bit.

  Sally was with me and she said, “They've got to bring the lights down now. Somebody tell the—”

  Then Ziggy started talking. He began with an imitation. He imitated Eddie Fisher. Then he imitated Richard Burton and Cary Grant. (Sally whispered to me, “He used to do this in school. When he had to answer a question but was too scared . . . he used other voices.”) He did President Kennedy. Then he imitated Vic singing “Malibu Moon” and falling asleep and snoring while singing, and everybody was in stitches. Gradually he eased into his own voice. It took a while but he got there. And then, once he'd found it, he did an hour's worth of material. All by himself! What is that line, something about “a terrible beauty is born”? Well, this was a beautiful terror, let me tell you! And it was hatched right before our eyes.

  When he got off the stage I don't think I've ever in my whole life seen anyone so exhilarated. It was like he'd met his true love, married her, had a baby, another one, and then had an affair with a hot, gorgeous mistress all in one shot! “Lemme back out there, Sally, lemme back out there,” he said. He was like a prizefighter, running in place, dancing like Ali, shadowboxing and snorting up smoke like some papal [sic] bull.

  Vic called me in my room late that night. “How'd he do?” he asked me.

  “He did terrific, Vic. The place was jumpin'.”

  “You gotta be kiddin' me.”

  “I'm not. He was terrif.”

  “Hey, did he ask you anything, like how could I do this to him?”

  “He never did. Vic, what are you doin' to us? We've been on top of the world for years. You crack up this combo, you'll break your old pal Latch's heart.”

  “Look, I—”

  “Vic, can you hear my heart breaking? Can you? I'm holding the phone to my ribs. Can you hear the springs poppin' out and the gears fallin' off? You hear that noise just then?! That's all the crankcase oil gluggin' out. Don't do this to me, Vic.”

  “I gotta do what's right for me.”

  “But since when have you ever known what that is?”

  A few nights later he sings two songs on Lenny Pearl's TV show. The unkindest cut of all, right?

  LENNY PEARL: How exquisite was this?! You talk about “just desserts”—this was a strawberry shortcake with Ziggy's name written in cyanide on the top and a bomb inside it! That fat red thing and his midget parents destroy my radio show, he runs rampant and creates havoc . . . you think you can do that to Lenny Pearl?! That I'm some helpless little schnook who don't fight back?! When Vic Fountain was crooning those two songs of his on my TV show, I didn't care how goddamn comatose he was sounding . . . this was the music of the gods to me! Because I knew that in some corner of the world somewhere, Sigmund Blissman's face was turning blue and he was choking on his vomit! If I had dropped dead at that second, I would have died a happy man.

  • • •

  SALLY KLEIN: Vic never told Arnie or me he was leaving Ziggy, and Ziggy never told Arnie or me he was leaving Vic. Did Vic and Ziggy ever tell each other? Nobody knows.

  It just happened. It was in the newspapers. Nobody was communicating, they just told the papers. Nobody ever told anyone anything.

  Vic told Arnie that Ziggy had slipped a note under his door at the Oceanfront. The note said something like, “It's been a blast. Hope to see you around. Arrivederci and shalom.” So according to Vic, Ziggy ended it. But for years Ziggy told every reporter and columnist and Johnny Carson and Merv Griffin and Mike Douglas and Barry Gray and every single person in the world it was the other way around. “He sent a bellhop to my door at the Oceanfront with a note,” the story went. The bellhop read Ziggy the note aloud, supposedly. “Ziggeleh. No hard feelings, but you've been a nightmare to be with. And I've been one for you, too. So, baby, it's all over. I'm spreading my wings and taking off. Shalom and arrivederci.” That's what the note said. But each time Ziggy told the story, he added to it, enhanced it to make himself look more like the injured party and make Vic look more like Adolf Eichmann.

  I honestly do not think there were any notes. I think—pffft —it just happened.

  REYNOLDS CATLEDGE IV: I got a phone call late one evening in Los Angeles. It was Ziggy calling from Las Vegas. He sounded as though he might be in a panic. “Cat,” he said, “do you know anything about Fountain and Bliss breakin' up?” I told him I didn't. He instructed me to call Vic immediately in his hotel room, which was only one floor down from his own, and to tell Vic to not announce a breakup until the two of them could sit down man-to-man and talk about it, after Vic's solo engagement at the Cal-Neva Lodge. He also told me to inform Vic that he—Ziggy—would be agreeable to Vic working solo as well as in tandem with him. “Make that call, Cat,” he ordered.

  But Vic was not in his room. I finally reached him at 4:00 A.M. I relayed Ziggy's message and he said to me, “That seems square to me. Yeah, tell Zig we'll have a powwow.” Whereupon I called Ziggy back and told him.

/>   “I hope the discussions are fruitful,” I said.

  “Discussions?” he said mockingly. “Ha! You think he and I are actually gonna meet? Cat, I just won a big, big hand of poker.”

  The next day it was announced that Fountain and Bliss had split up.

  SNUFFY DUBIN: People usually never remember where they were when they heard that Fountain and Bliss had broken up, and that's 'cause it happened on the same day that Jack Kennedy was killed. Arnie used to say, “The sheer chutzpah of that Oswald, huh? His aim may have been great but his timing was lousy.” Me, I was at a hotel in Philly . . . I had an engagement at the Red Hill Inn.

  I'm there in the afternoon, signing some paperwork, and I get handed the phone.

  “It's horrible, Snuffy,” Ziggy tells me on the phone.

  “I know. I know.”

  “It's horrible. It's all over.”

  “I know,” I said. “Jesus, they blew the man's brains out all over that car.”

  “No, not that. I meant me and Vic.”

  “Oh. Oh. Well. it was quite a ride, though, wasn't it?”

  “Wha—? In Dallas? Yeah, I guess.”

  “No, I meant you and Vic.”

  “Yeah, it was. But all marriages have to end sometime, right?”

  They do?

  DANNY McGLUE: I was driving around in my car and I heard it on the radio, on the news. I couldn't believe it! I thought: They couldn't possibly do this without anybody telling me first, could they? But then I realized: Of course they could!

  I'd been with them for almost twenty-five years. I was a kid when I started, I was a bellhop who wrote nonsense songs when I met Ziggy! Jesus, I looked like a lawn ornament.

  I pulled over to the side of the road and started blubbering. But then the great relief of it all struck me and I began laughing and laughing, and I was bawling my eyes out and laughing at the same time. I must have looked completely nutso.

  ERNIE BEASLEY: I picked up a paper and there was Vic in Leonard Lyons's column talking about the split. “Zig is the closest thing I have to a brother,” Vic said. “There's no bad blood. What he wants to do is fine with me. And Ziggy's behind me all the way too. Hey, I'm Ziggy's biggest fan.” A few hours later I read Bud Hatch, and Vic said the same thing to Bud, word for word. Then in Earl Wilson's column Ziggy said, “Vic is the closest thing I have to a brother. There's no bad blood. What he wants to do is fine with me. And Vic's behind me all the way too. Hey, I'm Vic's biggest fan.”

  When you see something like that, you realize that it's probably Morty Geist at work.

  SALLY KLEIN: I was at the Malibu house . . . I was watering plants on the porch. It was about midnight. Jack and Donny were asleep. A car pulls up and I see it's Ziggy's Lincoln Continental convertible. He gets out and then so does Danny.

  “You're awake?” Ziggy called out to me.

  I put a finger to my lips to tell him that I may be awake but everyone else wasn't. He made his way to the porch, and I looked at Danny, who was shrugging. He didn't know what they were doing here any more than I did.

  “Let's go to the beach, Sal,” Ziggy said.

  “Now?” I said to him.

  “Yeah. The three of us. Got a beach towel in there?”

  So I went to the linen closet and got out this big beach towel, and Danny, Ziggy, and I walked down to the beach. It was a clear night, no clouds, and the moon was full. Ziggy made like a highfalutin' waiter at some fancy French restaurant, whipping the towel like he was setting a table and then laying it down, and the three of us sat down on it. Ziggy was in the middle, naturally; I was on his right and to Ziggy's left was Danny.

  “So it's all over,” Ziggy said.

  “You never know,” Danny said.

  “Oh, I know. I know.”

  “It might not be such a bad thing,” I said.

  “They said that about Pearl Harbor, Sal,” Ziggy said.

  “No,” Danny said, “I don't think they did.”

  “It must have been the Malibu Moon,” Ziggy sang, “that made me fall in love with you. It must have been that light in your eyes, those cocktails of silver and blue.”

  “Hey, if the comedy thing doesn't work out,” Danny joked, “you could always try your hand at singing.”

  Ziggy lay back, it was like it was daytime and he was trying to get a tan . . . he had his arms behind him and his head in his hands. Then he sat back up and said, “So how miserable has it been? How miserable?” I looked at him, didn't say anything. “For twenty-five years now. This is a nightmare for you, for the two people who're the closest to me.”

  “Ziggeleh, this isn't the time for this,” Danny said.

  “What? You want we all should go surfing now?!”

  Danny took some sand in his hands and let it sift out.

  Ziggy said, “About ten years ago Vic and I were playing Baltimore. We're between shows. A stagehand comes to my dressing room and says to me, ‘There's a fella here says he'd like to meet you.’ I say to him, ‘There's lotsa fellas like that.’ The stagehand says, ‘This guy says he knew your parents. He knew them from vaudeville.’ I looked at my watch . . . I had a half hour to kill and nuttin' to kill it with, so I say, sure, show the fella in.”

  A cloud passed by the moon and Ziggy started humming “Malibu Moon” again for a few bars.

  “So this little fella comes in and he's maybe in his seventies or eighties and he's in a tux. But this tux had seen much better days, like in maybe 1830. He's very shy. I tell him to sit down anywheres, even though there's only one place to sit down. The old man has a handlebar mustache and this thing had more wax on it than a candle factory. He says to me, ‘I've wanted to meet you for the longest time.’ And I said, ‘Oh yeah. Why's that?’ But he didn't answer. He says to me he knew my parents, he knew them a long time ago. He was a magician, he says, way back when, in that vaudeville troupe Harry and Flo used to bomb in regularly.”

  “The Bratton company?” I said.

  “Yeah. Them. So this little guy—and what kinda accent he's got, I don't know—asks me if I ever by any chance saw him perform his magic act. I told him the truth, I said, ‘Uh-uh. My parents never took me on the road. I saw 'em perform only once and that was the night I got my start. As I unnerstand it, I wasn't missin' nuttin'.’ He sort of grimaced and said, ‘You shouldn't talk that way about them. They were nice people. They worked very hard.’ I said to him, ‘Well, now I'm workin' hard, carrying on the tradition.’ He told me he'd been following my career, he'd seen me perform up and down the East Coast, from Miami Beach to Boston. ‘Your parents would be very proud of you,’ he said to me. I says to him, ‘They wouldn't even recognize me, pal.’ He started tellin' me about some of the other acts in the troupe . . . he talked about this brother-and-sister regurgitating act; they could swallow anything and bring it back up and had even worked it out somehow so's the brother swallows a champagne glass and then the sister brings it up. I say to him, ‘Jesus, I am sure glad I've made it in the big time.’ And he says to me, ‘And so am I.’ He stood up and buttoned his jacket . . . except the button fell to the floor. I say to this little old guy, ‘Buddy, why don't you let me get you a new tuxedo?’ and I pull out a wad as thick as Webster's Dictionary. But he waved his hands over it. He don't want my dough. Then he put his hand on my shoulder and—can you believe this?—he reaches down and kisses my head! He kissed my hair! This guy did that! I looked up at him and he was crying. Not like sobbin' or nuttin', just crying.”

  “This guy had been a magician since before the dawn of time,” Ziggy said. “He'd probably been makin' rabbits disappear on the boat over, wherever he came from. Can you imagine that? Probably never made more than ten bucks a show and he stuck at it.”

  “Whatever happened to him?” I asked. “Did you ever see him again?”

  “No. He was on his last legs. You could tell he'd be dead in a year.”

  I heard footsteps behind me. I looked back. It was Jack in his black pajamas. He saw me with Danny and Ziggy. I told him eve
rything was all right, that I'd be in soon, and he went back to bed.

  “I ruined you guys' lives, didn't I?” Ziggy said.

  I swallowed, I heard Danny swallow. Danny started to say something but Ziggy said, “Nah, it's the truth. I ruined you guys' lives.”

  “I happen to be very happy with Jack,” I said.

  “But if it wasn't for me, you could be with Danny.” He shook his head, then said, “Hey, look at me! I got a wife who didn't even let me circumcise my own son and who's got magnets on her fingers when she walks into Bergdorf Goodman. I make whores laugh, I buy 'em chinchilla and sable and diamond earrings and make 'em laugh, and they permit me to sleep with 'em. What a life I've got. But you two . . . Jesus, I'm sorry.”

  “Things have worked out,” Danny said. “They have.”

  He didn't say anything for a while. Then he said, “What am I gonna do?”

  “About what?” Danny asked him.

  “About everything. I gotta chart the rest of my life out. I gotta make a map. And I've started on it. And right now, all roads are leadin' me straight into the grave.”

  “That is nonsense,” I said. “That is utter nonsense.”

  “Then where do I go? Where the hell do I go?”

  “Ziggy, I really believe,” Danny said, “that you can go as far as you want to.”

  “I do. Sally?”

  “I think so too,” I said.

  Ziggy said, “Straight into the grave.”

  ARNIE LATCHKEY: For over twenty years, a hundred times a day I got asked the same damn question: “Will Fountain and Bliss ever get back together again?” I answered it the same way every single time: “God, I hope not.”

  After Vic did the Cal-Neva engagement he and I had dinner. I wanted to get everything straight, I wanted to know where I stood with him or if I still stood at all. He was with some girl, I don't even remember who she was, I don't think she said a word the entire meal.