Last Words Read online

  Now, a lot of youse guys have been asking me about promotions. You’d like to make Brave second class. Get another scar up on your arm. Well, the results of your tests have come in and youse doin’ beautifully. “Burning Settlers’ Homes,” everybody passed. “Imitating a Coyote,” everybody passed. “Sneaking Quietly Through the Woods,” everybody passed, except Limping Ox. However, Limping Ox is being fitted with a pair of corrective moccasins …

  I received a smoke signal from headquarters today. Actually I didn’t receive the signal. They smoke-signaled me but I was out, so I returned their signal later. The smoke signal is: there’ll be a massacre tonight at nine o’clock. We meet down by the bonfire, dance around a little, and move out. This’ll be the fourth straight night we’ve attacked the fort. However, tonight it will not be as easy as before: tonight there will be SOLDIERS in the fort!

  Okay, uniform. This is a FORMAL massacre. You want your Class A summer loincloth. Two green stripes over the eye, no feather. Arms are blue, legs are red, chest is optional. What’s that, Prancing Antelope? No, you can’t put any purple on your eyelids. Hey, ain’t you the one with the beads? I told youse—get outta line!

  I can’t say it was edgy, socially significant, daring, risky or anything else that the pot-smoking rebel outsider aspired to. But it worked.

  The Merv Griffin Show was different from other network shows in that it was syndicated, so while it wasn’t fundamentally “freer” than any other variety-style TV show, the burden of approval of things didn’t weigh entirely on the producer and production staff—it was also on a group of stations that wouldn’t receive it until two weeks later. There was less panic and pressure. The staff were more relaxed. Merv wasn’t as much an overlord of his domain as Paar or Carson were of theirs. And the Little Theater on West 44th Street where it was shot for its first few years was very congenial; all those friendly vibes of live performance had survived. A warmer atmosphere than the cold, technical ambience of a TV studio, a warmth which could be perceived as freedom. At least the freedom to fail a little or screw up in some way that could be turned back into comedy.

  Everyone was vying for the Griffin “interview”—the first step in getting on the show, when you’d go in and tell the producer or the booker (like the legendary Tom O’Malley) what you wanted to do if you got it.

  Richard Pryor and I were pretty much contemporaneous at the Go Go. But Richard got his Griffin interview first, in early ’65. I hadn’t been seen yet. After Richie’s interview, Tom O’Malley came in to see me and I got an interview scheduled. By the time I did the interview, Richard had done his first Merv. By the time I did mine, Richard had done two. And so on. I always had this lag time with Richie—a week or a month or some unit of time behind his professional development. It went on for years, through albums and Grammys and specials until I finally overtook him in the Heart Attack 500.

  The Merv Griffin Show was my big breakthrough, that odd little syndicated talk show whose host everyone discounted or made fun of. All that happened afterward flowed from that one appearance. It was in July ’65. I did “The Indian Sergeant.” And it killed. I didn’t win the big prize: being invited to sit on the couch with Merv. But that would come in due course. Needless to say, Richie had already made it to the couch.

  Right after the show they told me that they wanted me to do three more. I didn’t have anything else prepared. Fragmentary media spoofs were rambling around in my act, none of them five to six minutes long. I was going to have my work cut out. Just as with school assignments when I was a kid, I put it off and put it off. Invariably I wound up the day before a show going down from our sixth-floor apartment—which we’d finally escaped to the year before—to my mother’s second-floor apartment. I’d sit at the kitchen table where I’d done my homework a few years before and write the next day’s piece. I would take the two minutes I already had and build it up into five or six. It was nerve-racking because there was no chance to test this new stuff on anybody, outside of myself. I did always trust myself to know the difference between something that would work for me and something that wouldn’t. I was wrong a lot but my average was pretty good.

  One media piece I’d been fooling with was a takeoff of a Top 40 deejay. It got to be a comedy cliché later but at the time no one had really done it. And it came from my own experience. I did it on my second Merv and it wasn’t hard to expand, because all I had to do was add a few more stupid names for bands and more stupid song titles … Here’s Willie West on Wonderful WINO, all this of course done at breakneck speed:

  Hi there, kids. Welcome to the Willie West show here on W-W-W-W-W-W-W-W-W-I-I-I-I-I-I-N-N-N-N-N-O-O-O-O- O-O-O-O! Wonderful WINO RADIO-O-O-O-O! Welcome-to-the- Willie-West-show-here-in-the-wonderful-West-If-it’s-a weird-one-it’s-best-Willie-West-with-the-hundred-and-one-wild-and-woolly-wedges-of-WAX! Right here on Wonderful WINO-O-O!

  1750 on your dial! Just above the police calls, kids! We got stacks and stacks of wax and wax, we’re gonna pick and click the oldies-but-goldies, the newies-but-gooeys. We got the Top 700 records right here on Wonderful WINO-O-O-O!!!!

  Now the big rockin’ sound of that great new group from England—The KANSAS CITY BOYS! With—“MY BABY’S DEAD”!!!!

  “Brrrding-ding Brrrding-ding-ding-ding-ding … My baby’s DEAD!! DE-EH-EH-AAAAUD! Got hit by a TRAIN! Big ’ol train, diddle-do-do-do. I’m gonna GIT that train diddle-do-do-do!!!”

  Another big romantic ballad and ya heard it right here on Wonderful WI—bulletin-bulletin-bulletin-bulletin-bulletin-bulletin-bulletin-bulletin -bulletin-bulletin-bulletin-bulletin … The SUN did not COME UP this morning!! HUGE CRACKS have appeared in the EARTH’S SURFACE!! BIG ROCKS are falling out of the SKY!! Details later on Action Central News!

  Hey, kids, TWO IN A ROW, a big double play here on the Weird Willie West Show. This is brand new, hasn’t even been released yet but it’s NUMBER ONE on the charts this week and moving higher all the time … Next week it’ll be a GOLDEN OLDIE! We got some dedications! This goes out to … Red Louie, Spike Choochoo, Spanish Annan, Dirty Mary, Baby Carlos, Peewee, Junior, Toots, Baboo Spot, Greasy Creep and Woozie Mush, our pick to make you sick … JENNY!

  Eeeee-eeeee-eeeee-eeeee-doe-doe-eeeee-eeeee-eeeee-bum bada loop-bum-badda boop dada-doot bum-badaloop-badaloopbadaloop badaloop blip-blip-blip-blip-blip-blip-blip-blip blip-blip-blip-blip-blip-blip-blip-blip-blip—JENNY!!!

  After the fourth show, the Griffin people were sufficiently impressed that they said, “We’d like you to do a cycle of thirteen.” A nice ring to that; almost like the thirteen-show cycle of a series. A mixed blessing, though. The first four were hard enough to find material for—what the fuck will I do for thirteen?

  On the other hand it was a great opportunity. The first thing I did was repeat “The Indian Sergeant.” Merv really loved that. Then I was able to repeat a couple of others. I took a bunch of TV commercials and made a whole TV commercials routine. Then I rewrote “Wonderful WINO” with different jokes, same character, and added News, Sports and Weather. Somewhere in here Al Sleet, the Hippy-Dippy Weatherman, made his debut. But “The Indian Sergeant” was a mother lode: I eventually came up with a Columbus sergeant, a Sergeant on the Pinta, a Robin Hood sergeant, a santa Claus Sergeant. I was learning early a basic rule of television: repeat, repeat, repeat. Find variations, but stick to the successful format.

  There was a certain secret tension. Now I had to forget all of those pieces with some adventure and risk to them: the stuff I’d been showing off to my coffeehouse friends. Mr. Anal hated to let things go. But for now and the foreseeable future they had to be abandoned. They weren’t going to work where I was going.

  My fondest memories of sixties television are the Griffin shows. Although it was a television show like any other, it had a little something more. The thrilling thing about Merv’s show was that it was on Broadway, 44th Street between Broadway and Eighth no less, in the heart of the theater district, when that heart still beat strong and steady. The Little Theater w
as right next to Sardi’s, where I was happy to find Hirschfelds of my heroes Danny Kaye and Jack Lemmon, whom I would one day join on those beige walls. More important they served great creamed spinach. Just like the good old Automat.

  When you grow up in New York and you collect autographs as a boy, you know where all the stage doors are. Broadway is the center, the mecca, true magnetic north. Though I didn’t aspire to be a Broadway actor, Broadway was the symbolic pinnacle of what I wanted to be and belong to. Broadway was where I first found out that guys actually stood up in front of people to make them laugh. (In this case between features at the Capitol Theatre or the Strand.) Wonderful to be back downtown in those same streets I’d once haunted, running from stage door to stage door searching for autographs, but now with some level of acceptance, invited to be, however briefly, on the inside looking out.

  Hello, Dolly! with Carol Channing was next door. (The first time around when she was a mere forty-three.) Sammy Davis Jr. was across the street, in Golden Boy. On Broadway.

  After fighting against it for so long, I felt the wind at my back and the road rising to meet me.

  9

  INSIDE EVERY SILVER LINING

  THERE’S A DARK CLOUD

  George, right, with Mike Douglas

  (Photo of The Mike Douglas Show courtesy of CBs Television Distribution)

  I’m sitting in a brightly lit pink and white gazebo in a drab medium-sized studio in Philadelphia. It’s much too early in the day. Mike Douglas is also sitting in the gazebo, watching his guests the Andrews Sisters, musical (and sexual) icons of World War II, belting out one of their close-harmony boogie-woogie hits. Not the kind of thing you want to hear at eleven in the morning, but for the audience of plump, blue-haired matrons this shit is sacred.

  Sitting next to Mike is Jimmy Dean, himself an icon of white-bread wholesomeness and down-home values, and next to him, Mike’s cohost, George Carlin.

  As middle sister, Maxene, hits a high note, Jimmy leans over to me and says under his breath: “I bet that old Maxene’s cooze hangs down like a sock.”

  The Mike Douglas Show in Philadelphia was a kind of extra added bonus to Merv. If you did Merv you did Mike. Mike Douglas was one of the top-rated daytime shows. Both were syndicated by Westinghouse: both had staggered play dates that might be a week later in one city and a week earlier in another. So both were pretty good exposure.

  Mike was a nice enough guy: like Merv an ex-big-band singer. And because the ladies who came in from the suburbs to catch the show before lunch loved him so much, anyone he brought out had to be okay. If you were reasonably affable and clever and got through your stuff, you could get them to go: “Oh, he’s a nice boy too.”

  Even so the show’s central emotion was fear. I’d like to think it was bred by Mike’s producer—a fat, loud, brash twentysomething named Roger Ailes who laughed at anything you said, funny or not—but, as I was learning fast, fear was the driving force of TV. Especially variety TV.

  I’d take the train from New York to Philadelphia, and the whole way down, I’d be second-guessing myself over the piece I planned to do, wondering if this should come before that, trying to think of new jokes. Fearful of the constant threat: going into the sewer.

  I did eight Mervs before I sat down at the panel. On Mike Douglas, you sat in the gazebo—his version of the panel—from the very first show. Right from the beginning I hated the scripted sociability of people sitting together, pretending to know stuff about one another, the fraudulent showbiz chitchat that went on in these conversations.

  For comics it was especially hard. It was your job to keep people chuckling along. But you had no control over the phony setups. You had jokes ready and the host was supposed to ask you the right question, so you’d come back with your joke and bring the house down. But it was always nerve-racking, because you knew he’d get the setup wrong, which more often than not he did. And your hard work would go in the sewer.

  Mike Douglas was daytime TV, which multiplied the opportunities for embarrassment. There’d be some activity you had to get physically involved in: an exercise lady or a juggler or a cooking segment. Once when I was cohost, Ailes sprang on me: “For tomorrow’s cooking thing, we want you to have a recipe. We’ll have all of the ingredients for it. You show Mike how to cook it.”

  I come up with—a jelly bean omelet. I’m thinking: “Boy, there’s two things that don’t go together. This will be REALLY humorous.”

  Next day I’m cooking and the egg mixture’s half done and Mike’s nodding along, pretending to be real serious. And I say: “Now in goes our filling: JELLY BEANS!” I’m expecting a nice laugh and then wing it from there. But Mike’s still nodding, concentrating on the jelly bean omelet. Committing the details to memory so he can make one himself. Into the sewer again.

  I hated that—being compromised, embarrassed, humiliated.

  This loss of dignity and control. But hey, it’s still only Stage Two: grin and bear it.

  With all the exposure, things began to happen fast. In October ’65 I was booked into Basin Street East, a place I could only have dreamed about six months earlier: my first big-time nightclub as a single with real momentum. I opened for the Tijuana Brass, who were white-hot, just beginning to crest. It was thrilling to discover that even though the place was packed with people who’d come to see Herb Alpert and his Brass, I could get them quiet and get their attention and even pull some laughs out of them. I did a really good job. I had a good act. I could handle a room of people who hadn’t come to see me.

  Bob Banner caught me at Basin Street. Banner was a long, lanky country-boy type from Texas who’d been cleaning up in New York as a producer. Among other things, he’d produced Candid Camera and discovered Carol Burnett and Dom DeLuise. He put me on The Jimmy Dean Show, an ABC primetime show he also produced. I did it in January ’66 and they liked it so much they immediately had me back for another.

  Next up was the Drake Hotel in Chicago, the far end of the spectrum from the Wells Street, folkie-hippie Chicago I knew. Very chichi, very snooty room where the comics had to wear tuxedos. My opening night I was standing behind a pillar in the middle of the room waiting for my announcement to go on and some large woman with far too many diamonds tapped my arm and told me to bring her some water. I said: “I will, as soon as I finish my act.”

  Bob Banner was soon back with an offer to be a regular and a writer on the Kraft Summer Music Hall, a summer replacement series in the Andy Williams slot. It was to star the new white-bread heartthrob singing sensation John Davidson. Since it started taping in April, I was needed in March 1966. In L.A. We closed down our tiny sixth-floor apartment, gave my mother the key and the three of us headed to California. Where we would stay for more than thirty years.

  On Kraft Summer Music Hall I was the “house comic.” I appeared on every show. Other regulars included the King Cousins, who were an offshoot of the King Family, and a singing duo: Jackie and Gayle from the New Christy Minstrels. Jackie eventually married John Davidson. It was a “young” show and the guests included Richie Pryor and Flip Wilson, singers like Nancy Sinatra, Noel Harrison (Rex’s son), the Everlys, Chad & Jeremy.

  John Davidson himself was bland as hell but easy to please; the son of a Baptist minister. Nothing seemed to upset him. One reason could’ve been, as he told me years later, that he’d fucked every girl on the show. I was always impressed with that. At the time I would never have thought it possible.

  I did my spot and I wrote the chatter. The chatter was easy, because it was always, “Thank you, Gayle, thank you, John.” I had those two lines and I worked from there. With the exception of the white pants, yellow shirts, striped blazers and boaters—that Andy Williams touch of Iowa in the summer of 1890—the show was very pleasant. It seemed as though this shit would lead somewhere.

  Still, the Jimmy Dean and John Davidson shows, my first extended network exposure, were also the first taste I got of all the blocking and sitting around empty TV studios for long hour
s while whatever went on went on around you. Which you didn’t understand a word of nor wanted to. Occasionally a voice up in the lights would tell somebody on the stage, “Do that again.” “This time come in from the right.” “Now stand over there …” All this boredom—the other driving force of television.

  That didn’t mean the fear was gone. However pleasant the people were, fear kicked back in with the endless fucking run-throughs. These were nerve-racking because you had to succeed for everyone present, the cast, the guests, the execs, the staff. Then you had to succeed again at dress rehearsal for the same people (who’d now heard your material at least once) plus the technicians and cameramen. And you still had air ahead. You’d dissipated your edge and energy and you hadn’t even done yet what you’d come to do. Fear and boredom. Boredom and fear.

  There were some private compensations. Kraft Summer Music Hall was where Al Pouch, the Hippy-Dippy Mailman, made his debut until he became Al Sleet, the Hippy-Dippy Weatherman.

  What was great about having Al on this harmless, pleasant, white-bread show was that to my way of thinking—after all, I was Al—Al was a pothead. Like me, he was permanently stoned. That’s where his misperceptions came from. Sure, he was a bit ignorant too. But he was fueled by cannabis.

  I don’t know where the John Davidson staff and the great middle-American viewing audience thought Al’s weirdness came from, whether he sipped a little wine or whether they just thought Al was dumb as a brick, an early version of Forrest Gump.

  But I knew Al’s jokes were written from a pot mentality. By someone who smoked pot all day, every day. That felt wonderfully subversive. I’ve never been a full-blown radical. I wasn’t cut out to man the barricades. But any time the subversive part of me is satisfied, it delights me. Thank God I’m nurturing this little animal over here.