by Robert Klein
Working in an empty room goes against all the instincts of the stand-up comedian, who needs an audience response, and four people is hardly adequate for the proper effect. Jack assured them that the material was proven, killer stuff, and that a comedian needs a crowd to work to, and they should just be aware of that. Garrison assured Jack that they could compensate in their minds for the lack of big laughs, and they knew funny stuff when they heard it; not to worry. Jack confidently gestured to me with his cigar to begin.
I did the bit just as I had done many times before, while Jack beamed and puffed and laughed. I did it confidently and well. When I finished, Paul Keyes inquired if that was the end, and I replied that it was. Then Garrison and Keyes hit their palms gently on the table four times, which, I took it, was their version of applause. “Do you have something else?” Keyes asked.
In truth, I had prepared two other bits, but the first one, about substitute teaching, was my strongest and most reliable. “I had planned to do that piece, it’s always very strong when I do it,” I said.
“Of course, we understand, we’d just like to hear what else you may have,” said Keyes.
I proceeded to do another five-minute piece about my grade-school days, which got three hits on the desk. All the while Jack was smiling. Garrison said something like “Very funny” and asked Jack to come next door for a meeting “to discuss some details.” A young William Morris assistant dropped by, and we had a conversation about my first impressions of Los Angeles, his hometown. He was very enthusiastic about my appearance, but I was preoccupied by the reaction, or nonreaction, to the turn I had just performed. I wanted to vouch for the material, but that would be unseemly, as if I were a supplicant and not the latest discovery of Jack Rollins. Anyway, I knew this was not an audition, as I had the job.
After about twenty minutes, Jack returned alone, with a pallor more pronounced than his usual New York yellow and a profoundly melancholy smile. He said nothing for a few moments; he just shook his head. “They killed you in there, Robert, especially that Keyes, they just killed you, lad. It’s a shame.”
“You mean I’m not doing the show?”
“They won’t put you on the show, but of course they’ll pay you the twenty-five hundred.”
I felt a knot in my stomach, as if I’d been told of a death in the family. I thought first of my parents and all the friends who had looked forward to my appearance, and of the humiliation of having to tell them. I thought of Rodney. Mostly, I saw this as the end: my work on television ending before it had begun, and the expectation of a big career dimmed. In the cab back to the hotel, I pressed Jack for details of the meeting, though reluctantly, as the account would undoubtedly intensify the pain. He told me that once they got to talking, Keyes insisted that “the stuff isn’t funny,” and guaranteed that it would go over disastrously on the show. Garrison agreed and added that without a dress rehearsal to test the spot, he didn’t want to take a chance. He had of course failed to mention that the show made extensive use of a laugh machine, which boosted a host of untried, often unfunny sketches and a few stand-up comedians to boot. In short, if they so desired, they could make the audience laugh at the Gettysburg Address. Real live people had been laughing at this material for months, dammit.
Back at the Beverly Hills Hotel, Jack kindly suggested a cup of coffee to talk things over, but I declined, preferring to be alone. I was at absolute low ebb, overwhelmed with grief; yes, grief is the word. From the career euphoria, which had been nonstop since signing with Rollins seven months earlier, I was, after all, to fail. I began second-guessing myself. Maybe my successful audiences were nonrepresentative, maybe I wasn’t ready for network television, maybe the stuff wasn’t as funny as I had thought. I had not been this depressed since my college girlfriend, Judy, had broken up with me.
Jack Rollins, ever thoughtful, called my room and invited me once again to talk. We sat in the Polo Lounge, and Jack said all the right things, reminding me about the many positives I had going for me. Most important, he urged me not to lose perspective. These guys were wrong, he said, despite their important jobs, and had missed the opportunity to be the first to present a wonderful new talent. I found it difficult to pity them their loss, but Jack’s encouraging words were welcome and helpful.
I looked about at the suntanned big shots who would never know me, making deals that would never involve me. Then Jack told me a story about an experience similar to mine. Mike Nichols and Elaine May had been booked on The Jack Paar Show and were relatively unknown to television audiences. At the morning rehearsal, Mike and Elaine asked for suggestions of subject matter from the staff and proceeded to do a hilarious improvisation based on those suggestions. The producers told them to do that on the show. Nichols and May explained that they couldn’t repeat the rehearsal scene and that they wished to improvise a new one for the taping, saying that they wouldn’t even remember most of what they had done, and in trying to perform and remember at the same time, they would lose all the spontaneity and probably bomb. The producers insisted, and the performers, not yet the major stars they were to become, reluctantly acquiesced. At the taping, as Mike and Elaine had predicted, the attempt at the sketch went into the toilet: very few laughs. After the sketch, Jack Paar stared at the audience with a “don’t blame me” look: “Hey pal, I didn’t book them.” Years later, during the filming of Primary Colors, in which I appeared, I spoke to Nichols about this, and he said that he and Elaine had felt the same as I did after my debacle.
I declined dinner and, after a pat on the back from the disappointed and exhausted manager, retired to a lonely few hours in my hotel room to contemplate my grim professional future, if there was to be one. I lay on the bed and replayed the awful event in my mind over and over. After a while, I reluctantly phoned my parents and fought back tears as my mother let loose a barrage of motherly support. (My father, in worried shock, was already trying to figure out how he would explain the situation to his cronies at work.) She tried so hard to comfort me. If only my mother could explain to the producers at NBC: “Mr. Garrison, my son’s comedy routines always make the people laugh, and he would be a wonderful addition to The Dean Martin Show, which I watch every week, by the way.” “Hey, Frieda, you cocksucker, how you doin’? Here, have a good cigar.”
After my mother’s nineteenth “keep your chin up” and “there’s always tomorrow,” we hung up. The conversation had not helped, sending me back to the worst feelings of childhood: helplessness, failure, and solace from one’s mother in a situation in which she can do nothing to alleviate the problem. There was still that knot in my stomach and the repeating thought, common after tragedy, of how happy I’d been only three hours before.
My phone rang. It was a television-writer friend of mine who had no time to talk but had an interesting message. A wealthy married woman who knew his family in Boston was staying at the Beverly Hills Hotel after dropping her son off at Stanford University. He said nothing outright, but he hinted (“nudge nudge”) that she was a bit wild and adventurous and maybe even promiscuous, and that she had a fondness for younger guys. He said that as we were staying at the same hotel, she would like to meet me for a drink, and he had given her a big buildup that I was brilliant and young and in Los Angeles to do The Dean Martin Show blah blah blah. Hearing the name of the show was like a dagger in the heart, but I chose not to mention the morning’s debacle to him.
The human heart is resilient, and the wild, adventurous, promiscuous part piqued my interest and lifted my spirits. I was at an age when carnal appetite alone could perform such miracles. “She’s married?”
“Yes, but I think her husband is in Boston. Let me know what happens.” He hung up, and I began to think about whether or not to call. It bothered me that she was married on two levels: the first, moral. In college, I had been hit on by that thirty-something married graduate student, which had made me most uncomfortable. Second, I did not fancy being the guy caught in bed with someone’s wife, who is forced to ex
it by the fire escape while putting his pants on. This wasn’t Laurel and Hardy here, this was real life. He thinks her husband is in Boston. All of this implied danger, a concept I had scrupulously avoided most of my life. Ah, it’s just a drink, she must know what she’s doing, I assured myself.
Then the phone rang, and it was the woman in question. “Hello, Mr. Klein? This is Glenda Cater calling.” She sounded cordial but conventional, and, well, old, not to mention entirely proper. She had an upper-class twang, like George Plimpton, and the “Mr. Klein” formality did not sound like potential sex to me. She suggested we meet in five minutes at the Polo Lounge for a drink, describing herself and her clothing in detail, mostly designer names, so that I would be spared the task of asking every woman in the room if she was Glenda. I did not confess to not knowing a Gucci from a Pucci if my life depended on it.
I checked myself in the mirror, brushed my teeth, spritzed on some deodorant, and proceeded to the Polo Lounge. Upon entering, I looked around carefully only to discover to my horror that at least twenty women in the place met the description she had given me: bracelets on blondes who had names sewn and etched into everything they wore. There was the aggregate scent of very expensive perfume, accentuated by cigarette smoke. Picking a candidate who could have a son of college age reduced the number by half. Suddenly, that bizarre staple of the Polo Lounge of the time, the little guy dressed like the old Phillip Morris midget, wearing a bellhop’s hat with a chin strap, was paging someone for a telephone call. “Mrs. Cater, paging Mrs. Cater. Mrs. Cater, paging Mrs. Cater.” A blond woman of about forty-five gestured to the little man, who plugged a telephone into her table. It was she.
I stood back and observed her on the telephone, slightly to the side, about thirty feet away from her. I liked her legs and the elegant look of her foot in the Chanel pumps with the black toes. She was pretty, and not yet heavily lined, though nearly twice my age. Twice my age . . . oooh. Hello Oedipus. God help me. Mrs. Cater was wearing an array of expensive jewelry and a suit right off of Rodeo Drive, with a prominent Gucci imprint on her handbag. As she spoke on the telephone, she used her hands in clipped and definitive movements, and the bracelets kept banging against her martini glass like a church bell. An anticipatory shiver went down my spine, abetted by the rather titillating fact that I was watching her unobserved. Her emphatic tapping on the table, while talking, convinced me that she was addressing an inferior. Apparently, from the snippets I could hear, she had several subjects on her mind, among which were drapes and a scratch on her BMW. She appeared to be someone who was used to giving orders and getting what she wanted, and if she wanted me, I was definitely available. Hell, I hadn’t thought of The Dean Martin Show in over ten minutes.
Her call was going on for quite a while, and standing there, I was becoming a serious impediment to the waiters and their trays of cocktails. I thought people were noticing me. I stepped up to her table, nodded, and smiled hello; she smiled and gestured for me to be seated, and she yacked on about dinner reservations at her club, a painting bought at auction, the sprained ankle of her horse, and the helicopter that was to meet her at the airport. It was good to know that we had so much in common. My presence and her eye-contact smile seemed to make her ease up on the poor battered assistant she was addressing, and after one last command and another admonition, she hung up. The diminutive bellhop immediately pulled the plug, removed the phone, and proceeded to scream someone else’s name around the room.
“How nice to meet you, Mr. Klein. Harold has told me so much about you.”
“Nice to meet you, too, Mrs. Cater. And Harold has told me . . . I understand you know Harold’s family.”
“Oh yes, Mr. Klein, from summers on the Cape.” She sounded like the duchess of Windsor. I decided on a bold stroke. “May I call you Glenda?”
“Of course you may, Richard.”
“It’s Robert.”
“Robert, of course. I hope I wasn’t rude on the phone and all. I just had to get these things done. I could use another cocktail, how about you?”
“Sounds good, a martini would be nice.”
“Wonderful. We drink the same drink. They make divine ones here.”
I called for the waiter while she went on about how wonderful it was that we were both ordering martinis, as if this made us part of some important club. I was silently thankful that I had not ordered a Scotch and soda. She was a talkative sort and launched into a lengthy discourse about her trip to California: some business, some shopping, seeing friends, and dropping off her son at college. She fervently hoped he wouldn’t get involved with those damned hippies who were protesting the war in Vietnam. Berkeley was full of them, she said.
She’d had so many problems on this West Coast trip. According to her, the trouble associated with dropping one’s child off at college was comparable to torture on the rack. She seemed utterly disinterested in knowing anything about me or the reasons for my trip to California, which suited me fine. I was not anxious to discuss my fabulous career. She happily filled the air with the accent of a Boston Brahmin, going on about her son. He was certainly my favorite subject of the moment, considering that I was attempting to have sex with his mother. William’s grade-point average was in no way my idea of conversational foreplay. “He made the dean’s list last semester.” What was I going to say? “I’m so happy he’s doing well, how about a blow job?”
Still, she seemed pleased with the way I looked, observing me, though not at all salaciously, as if I were a pretty dress at Bergdorf’s. Yet, after a half hour of chatter about many subjects, she gave not a hint of anything that would suggest she would seduce a young man, and I began to question the veracity of Harold’s story. Mrs. Cater appeared to be a rich, conventional, and, unfortunately, moral woman, and there was no way I would make a move and be humiliated.
Then it happened, in the middle of the most inane subject: I felt her foot nudge mine underneath the table. “Oh, excuse me,” I said. But she continued to talk on as if nothing were happening, and once again I could feel the gentle pressure of her foot. This was no accident. I could feel her stockinged foot ambling up my pant leg as she rattled on incongruously, this time about Republican politics. She looked around a hundred and eighty degrees to see if anyone was watching, removed her toes from the cuff of my pants, and, with the agility of a ballerina, placed them with precision on the rather stiff penis between my legs. Bingo, Mrs. Cater! This contact made her stop in midsentence, and she suddenly turned to a waiter and said with a most regal air, “Check, please.” Maybe this day, one of the worst I’d ever had, wouldn’t be a total loss after all. “It’s so noisy in here. I’ll meet you in ten minutes at Suite 306,” she said matter-of-factly. I could feel my heart racing. She leaned toward me, smiling. I thought she was going to kiss me, but she wagged her finger in a scolding fashion and said, “But no funny business”; and she was gone. What did she mean by “no funny business”? Had saucy Glenda been just a five-second flash who had reverted to prim Mrs. Cater? On the other hand, she had invited me to her hotel room, for God’s sake, which seemed to indicate to me that this woman had more on her mind than introducing me to her bridge club. No funny business? What the hell would you call rubbing my penis with your foot in the middle of a crowded public room?
As I stalled to stretch the highly anticipatory ten minutes, and having little experience as a gigolo, I still wasn’t sure I wasn’t being teased. I chose to take the optimistic road and concluded that since she knew I was a comedian, “no funny business” undoubtedly meant that she did not wish to hear comedy during sex. This presented no problem whatever, as I was sure Mrs. Cater had a minuscule sense of humor, if any. I also thought that good, passionate, uninhibited sex and humor were mutually exclusive.
I made my way uncomfortably down the hall, checking myself in the mirror, feeling quite conspicuous. At the appointed time, I knocked on the door, and she greeted me formally (Mr. Klein again), with a slight, elegant bow and a gesture to enter: very Claud
ette Colbert. Back to square one.
It was a huge multiroom suite. She sat me down at a discreet distance and launched into yet another spate of mundane chatter—conservative Republican politics again—as she poured two giant ready-mixed martinis. I finished mine in three gulps. She decried the Communist thugs who had stormed the Pentagon the previous day at an anti–Vietnam War rally in which the novelist Norman Mailer had been arrested. I pointed out that the rally had been relatively peaceful until many of the demonstrators were bloodied by nightsticks and rifle butts, and they were not Communists but Americans who, in good conscience, were against our involvement.
She said they deserved it. “We’re at war, young man,” she said in a frosty tone as she poured us another round. This discussion seemed no more conducive to sex than the subject of her college progeny, but she had struck a nerve, and it was making me angry. “We have no business in Vietnam, it’s a civil war,” I said.
“Oh, sure, let’s just let the goddamned Communists take over anywhere they choose. You and your President Johnson. He doesn’t think we should win in Vietnam, either,” she said bitterly, and swallowed a healthy swig of her drink. “You Communists are all alike. You enjoy the benefits of a free country and then you seek to undermine it.”
“What the hell are you talking about? I am not a Communist, and I and every other American have the right to protest the policies of our government. It’s the right-wing fascists like you who are un-American, for Chrissakes!”
She downed the rest of her martini and came toward me slowly, menacingly as I sat in my chair. “How dare you call me that,” she hissed, staring me in the eyes. I figured the evening was definitely over. “Why don’t you go to Russia, where you belong?” She was quite attractive in her ideological rage, and despite the context of our conversation, I felt myself getting aroused. She was just above me now. “Don’t you call me a fascist, you little revolutionary bastard.” Suddenly, she lifted her skirt, revealing no underwear, straddled my lap, took my head in her hands, and kissed me wildly with a tongue like a boa constrictor. “I hate you,” she whispered.
