MASH 09 MASH goes to Vienna Read online

  Eight hours later, famous gourmet and animal lover Taylor P. Jambon, accompanied (somewhat reluctantly) by Senator J. Ellwood “Jaws” Fisch, stole quietly into the airborne bedchamber of Miss Patience Throckbottom Worthington. By custom and tradition, the sleeping compartment of the aircraft was assigned to the senior passenger, military or government official, aboard. In this case, this luminary was clearly Senator Christopher Columbus Cacciatore.

  Senator Cacciatore had, on learning that Miss Worthington’s agony was such that she had to be sedated to bear it, graciously given up his privilege.

  “I’m an Italo-American gentleman,” the senator said, “as well as a United States senator. How could I sleep knowing that sainted lady was suffering out here with the rest of you unimportant slobs?” The senator and Mrs. Cacciatore had passed the flight playing two-handed solitaire.

  “Miss Worthington,” Taylor P. Jambon called. “Patience, dear lady!”

  The sainted lady opened one eye, closed it, opened the other one, closed that, and with great effort finally managed the coordination necessary to open both at the same time.

  “Who the bleep are you?” she inquired. “And what the bleep do you want?”

  “It is I, Miss Worthington,” Taylor P. Jambon replied. “Taylor P. Jambon, your most devoted fan.”

  “More important, where the bleep am I? And what’s that bleeping whistling noise?” Miss Worthington went on.

  “We are approaching Vienna,” Taylor P. Jambon said. “I thought perhaps you might wish to freshen up before we land.”

  “The last bleeping thing I remember is pouring a glass of that moonshine,” she said.

  “I think you dropped off to dreamland, dear lady, and we saw to it that you got on the airplane.”

  “Dreamland, my blat,” she said. “Somebody slipped me a bleeping Mickey Finn, and then you, you bleep, shanghaied me. I’ll have your blat for this, you bleeping degenerate.”

  “Vienna, dear lady, is the home of music. Of Strauss, Beethoven, Mozart, Brahms....”

  “Stick your Strauss ...” she began.

  “... and, for the next several weeks,” Taylor P. Jambon plunged on loudly, “of Boris Alexandrovich Korsky-Rimsakov.”

  “Of course,” Patience Throckbottom Worthington said, sounding as she sounded on Christmas Eve before the microphone. “I had quite forgotten. And how far, you dear man, did you say we were from Vienna?”

  “About forty minutes, Miss Worthington,” Taylor replied. “We just passed over Paris.”

  “Paris with that delightful man would be ever so much better than Vienna,” she said thoughtfully. “But I suppose one mustn’t be greedy.” She turned to Senator Fisch. “All right, precious,” she said, “you may set my hair.”

  “I beg pardon?” Senator Fisch replied.

  “I said, you may set my hair. I must, of course, look my best when I meet dear Boris.”

  “What’s that got to do with me?” Senator Fisch asked. “What the bleep do you think it’s got to do with you? You’re the bleeping hairdresser, aren’t you?”

  “Madame, I am a United States senator,” Senator Fisch said.

  “You’re kidding!”

  “I am not!” Senator Fisch proclaimed, rather excitedly.

  “Jesus, if it waddles like a hairdresser, lisps like a hairdresser, and smells like a hairdresser, it should be a bleeping hairdresser,” Patience said.

  “I’ll have the stewardess look in on you,” Taylor P. Jambon said. “And Senator Cacciatore wishes to pay his respects.”

  “Look, whatever your name is, one bleeping politician at a time is enough. More than enough,” Patience replied.

  “The senator is a devoted fan of yours,” Taylor P. Jambon said. “I think what he would like to do is ask you to honor him by being his guest while you are in Vienna.”

  Patience looked thoughtful. “I suppose I should have some suitable address of record,” she said. “There would be talk if I just moved in with dear Boris.” She turned on a smile and switched her tone of voice again. “Would you please tell the senator I will receive him just as soon as I’m through with my hairdresser?” she said in warm, dulcet tones.

  “I told you that I’m not a hairdresser,” Senator Fisch said.

  “Take it from me, sweetie,” Patience said, handing him a hairbursh, “you missed your calling. If anyone ever had a natural talent...”

  “I will not!” Senator Fisch said, stamping his foot. He looked close to tears.

  “Shut up, Jaws,” Taylor P. Jambon said, “and start brushing!”

  Chapter Thirteen

  The next day, in the marble and glass palace of the Amalgamated Broadcasting System in New York City, another hairbrushing took place. To those unfamiliar with the little tricks of the trade, the magic, so to speak, of television broadcasting, it would have looked a little odd. But, since those out there in television land would never be given the opportunity to witness what was going on, no harm was done.

  A bald man (not Kojak bald—there was a fringe of mousy looking hair at the level of the ears—but bald) sat before a sort of bust, peering at it through thick-lensed glasses, which gave him somewhat the appearance of a guppy. The bust was both lifelike and very familiar. Millions of people would have immediately recognized it as being more than a reasonable (actually an incredible) likeness of America’s most handsome young television newscaster, Don Rhotten.*

  (* Mr. Rhotten, of Serbo-Croatian ancestry, pronounces his name "Row-ten.")

  The bust had the Paul Newman-blue eyes; it smiled, displaying the famous set of pearly white choppers; and it had the familiar Don Rhotten coiffure, dark, thick, luxuriant, and drooping boyishly over the famous Rhotten forehead.

  The bust sat on a specially built table, on the rear of which had been erected eight mirrors arranged in a semicircle so that the head was instantly viewable from eight different angles. From the very latest model loudspeakers (called, in the trade, “studio monitors”) the voice of Don Rhotten filled the room. The famous dulcet tones had been recorded reading Desiderata, which the bald-headed man felt presented more of an opportunity to display the full range of Don Rhotten’s speaking voice than the somewhat pedestrian-sounding world news he read over the airwaves each night.

  As Don Rhotten’s voice rolled sonorously on, the bald-headed man mouthed the words (which he knew by heart), revealing his own set of choppers, which were mottled yellow, brown and purple and obviously in need of the attention of one of the better corrective dental surgeons.

  There was obvious love and boundless admiration in his eyes as he, with infinite tenderness and painstaking care, brushed the thick, luxuriant locks on the bust’s head. He used a hairbrush guaranteed to contain nothing but bristles from the chin whiskers of the finest Tasmanian warthogs. The best was none too good where the hair of Don Rhotten was concerned. From time to time, he would raise his eyes to the wall beyond the table. It was covered with 11 x 14 color photographs of Don Rhotten, generally close-up shots of his head and shoulders alone, but including a dozen or more photographs of Don Rhotten beaming in mutual admiration at one prominent world figure or another.

  Outside the room, mounted above the door, were three red bulbs and a sign reading “NO ADMISSION WHEN LIGHTS ARE FLASHING.”

  Three men came down the marble and plastic-oak-veneered corridors of the building. They paused outside the door when they saw the lights flashing. They were Mr. Seymour G. Schwartz, executive producer of the highest-rated ABS television presentation, “Waldo Maldemer and the Evening News With Don Rhotten;” Mr. Wesley St. James, chairman and executive officer of St. James’s Holdings, the Hollywood-based television goliath (some said “octopus”) which included St. James Productions [eight of the more successful daytime dramas (or “soaps,” as they were known in the trade) and St. James Games, which produced nine of the eleven top game shows for example, “Grovel for Gold” and “What’s My Terminal Illness?”]. The third man was as instantly recognizable as Mr. Rhotten. He was
Waldo Maldemer himself, America’s most beloved telecaster.

  “I could, had you the foresight to seek my counsel,” Waldo Maldemer said in his famous somber tones, “have predicted this. The warning lights are illuminated, indicating egress is unwelcome.”

  “Shut up, Waldo,” Seymour G. Schwartz said. He tried the door. It was locked from the inside. He knocked even though he realized this would be futile. The door and walls had been heavily insulated to keep the sound of the studio from the dressing room and, equally important, to keep the sound of Don Rhotten’s voice, on the tape recorder, endlessly repeating the lines of Desiderata, from driving everyone else bananas.

  “Kick it down,” Wesley St. James said. He was a slight gentleman, standing approximately five-feet-three in his stocking feet and including about ten inches of what can only be described as a blond Afro. Like most small men, he was rather belligerent.

  “It may be fairly presumed,” Waldo Maldemer said, “I would not hesitate to suggest, that privacy ranks high among the priorities of the dressing room occupant.” Seymour G. Schwartz stepped quickly to a large box equipped with a large lever and marked MASTER SWITCH —DO NOT TOUCH! He pulled the switch. For a moment there was total darkness, and then emergency battery-powered lamps came on, giving off a faint light, just enough to see with.

  In a moment the door above which, pre-switch throwing, the red lights had flashed burst open and the baldheaded man with the bad teeth and thick spectacles rushed out.

  “What the bleep happened to the bleeping lights?” he demanded. Astonishingly he sounded just like America’s most handsome young telecaster.

  “Don-Baby,” Seymour G. Schwartz said. “What a coincidence! Waldo, Wesley and I were just going to drop in on you.”

  The bald-headed man suddenly rushed back into the dressing room. Wesley St. James tripped him. He flew into the dressing room. The others followed him, closing the door after them. Seymour G. Schwartz bolted it.

  The lights came back on.

  “I don’t know what you guys are up to,” the bald-headed man said.

  “Don-Baby!” Seymour G. Schwartz said.

  “My dear fellow and esteemed colleague!” Waldo Maldemer said.

  “Big Bunny!” Wesley St. James said.

  “But whatever it is, you can forget it,” the bald man went on. “You can only fool Don Rhotten three or four times. I’m wise to you guys!”

  “Don-Baby, you don’t mean to say you don’t trust us?” Seymour G. Schwartz asked.

  “That you actually harbor even the faintest suspicion that we have anything but your welfare at heart?” Waldo Maldemer intoned.

  “That Little Bunny would do anything to hurt Big Bunny?” Wesley St. James asked.

  “You bet your bleeping blat I do,” the bald man said. “If you guys aren’t up to something crooked, my name’s not Don Rhotten.”

  (A word or parenthetical explanation is obviously required here. Mr. Wesley St. James, Mr. Seymour G. Schwartz and Mr. Don Rhotten had begun their careers in television simultaneously. Mr. Schwartz, as “Uncle Ralph,” was the undisputed king of Saturday morning kiddie television in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Decked out in a straw hat, overalls and a plaid shirt, and aided and abetted by Mr. St. James and Mr. Rhotten, who wore rabbit costumes and were known respectively as “Little Bunny” and “Big Bunny,” he brought mirth, joy, and the latest Chicago hog futures to literally dozens of viewers in the Cedar Rapids area. The world will never know to what heights Mr. Schwartz might have risen as a performer, for fate stepped in and rearranged their lives.

  (The television station’s anchorman, who delivered the noontime news, dallied a bit too long in the Last Chance Saloon. When he appeared at the studio, he couldn’t see the microphone, much less the wire-service copy he was to read. It was decided, in the grand, even sacred, tradition of show biz that the show must go on. The problem there was who could read the news? Uncle Ralph, even without his rubber nose, was obviously too famous a figure to pass himself off as a newsman. Little Bunny was disqualified by a shiner acquired the previous evening in the Last Chance Saloon. That left Big Bunny.

  (With something less than unbridled confidence, Seymour G. Schwartz seated Don Rhotten before the camera, equipped him with a sheet of news-service copy, and ordered the cameraman to focus on him and the engineer to put him on the air. Then he put his hands over his eyes and closed them. Sometimes, he knew, it is really better to do nothing at all, rather than something foolish. And trying to pass Big Bunny off as a newscaster was foolishness of the ultimate degree.

  (Amazingly, however, when he couldn’t see Big Bunny, just hear his voice, a miracle occurred. Don Rhotten’s voice oozed warmth, sincerity, wisdom, compassion, understanding and credibility. Mr. Schwartz, frankly, had never listened much to his voice before. All he had previously required of Big Bunny was that he hippity-hop around the stage with his fists tucked under his chin, making bunny noises.

  (To cut a long story* short, Mr. Schwartz had the courage to grasp opportunity when it passed his way. First signing Mr. Rhotten to a lifelong contract guaranteeing him seventy-five percent of all his earnings, he then borrowed sufficient funds from Mr. St. James to equip Big Bunny with a wig, contact lenses, caps for his teeth and his first pair of shoes with laces. He then arranged for a high-ranking television executive to view a film which showed Mr. Rhotten reading news and cutting back and forth between him and other TV biggies such as H. Smith, W. Cronkite, H. Rudd and D. Rather, as they read the news. Big Bunny was better, and everyone could see this.

  (* The rise of Messrs. Wesley St. James and Mr. Don Rhotten to the pinnacle of television success is discussed in M*A*S*H Goes to Las Vegas, M*A*S*H Goes to Morocco, and M*A*S*H Goes to Hollywood, all of which may be found at better booksellers’ places of business, offered for sale at very reasonable prices.)

  (The rest is history. Within a matter of weeks, Don Rhotten was a star. Mr. St. James, realizing that there was no place for him in big-time TV news, had bought the controlling interest in an about-to-be-shot-from-the- airwaves soap opera. Brilliantly sensing its weaknesses (the heroine wasn’t suffering enough), he did an overnight rewrite, giving the heroine, in addition to her unwanted pregnancy, two exotic diseases, an amputated leg, a drinking problem, and an unwarranted indictment for election fraud. Overnight, the soap had soared back to the top of rating lists, and St. James Productions was off and running.

  (We left Don Rhotten, you will recall, just after he had said that Mr. Wesley St. James, Mr. Waldo Maldemer and Mr. Seymour G. Schwartz could bet their “bleeping blats” that he didn’t trust them, that he harbored suspicions about their intentions and suspected that they, indeed, wanted to hurt him. We rejoin them now:

  “When did we ever fool you, Don?” Wesley St. James said. He walked over to the Don Rhotten bust. “Say, you really have done wonders with the hair. It glints beautifully, gives off little shimmers of health and wholesomeness.”

  “You think so, Wesley, or are you just saying that to get on the right side of me?”

  “What’s this ‘Wesley’ business? You’ll always be Big Bunny to me, Don, no matter how great a star you’ve become, no matter how simply smashing your hair looks.And boy, does it look good! Howard K. Smith, eat your heart out!”

  “I am sort of happy with it,” Don Rhotten said, somewhat shyly. “It’s my own idea, Little Bunny.”

  “Your own idea, Big Bunny? Well! I don’t suppose you’d care to tell me what you put on it?”

  “I wouldn’t tell anybody but you, Little Bunny,” Don Rhotten said.

  “I appreciate that, Big Bunny,” Wesley St. James said solemnly.

  “Mazola,” Don Rhotten said.

  “Wow!” Wesley St. James said. “It really takes a Don Rhotten to think that out for himself, doesn’t it, fellows?”

  “I mean,” Don Rhotten said, “grease is grease, you know? I mean, I can get a whole gallon of Mazola for a couple of bucks, and I’m paying like seven-fifty for two lousy ounces of Pa
risian Hair Pomade.”

  “I always said ol’ Big Bunny had a head for figures,” Wesley said. “Wasn’t I saying that just before we came here, fellas?”

  “You sure were, Wes,” Seymour G. Schwartz agreed. “I remember it quite clearly,” Waldo Maldemer said. “I was thinking, Seymour,” Don Rhotten said. “If I gave it a little plug on the show, you know, let people know that I use Mazola on my hair, do you think the Mazola people would slip me a couple of gallons for free?”

  Seymour G. Schwartz winced.

  “Don’t take offense, Don-Baby,” Seymour G. Schwartz said, “but don’t you think that for a great big star, an international star, of television newscasting, such as yourself, that trying to mooch a couple of lousy gallons of com oil is a little, well, declasse?”

  Don Rhotten looked thoughtful. “Seymour,” he said, “you know I don’t speak Russian.”

  “That’s Polish, I believe,” Waldo Maldemer said. “Either Polish or Swedish.”

  “What he’s saying, Big Bunny,” Wesley St. James said, “is that you would look like a piker.”

  “Seymour, you can’t talk to me that way!” Don Rhotten said. “I’m Don Rhotten, you know.”

  “Tell you what,” Wesley St. James said. “I’ll send you a case of Mazola, Don, O.K.? Gallon cans.”

  “Make sure it’s polyunsaturated, whatever the hell that means,” Don Rhotten said.

  “I will,” Wesley St. James said. “But I was listening to what Seymour said, Don, and he had a point.”

  “What kind of a point?” Don Rhotten asked suspiciously.

  “He said that for ‘a great big international star,’ such as yourself. You heard him say that, Waldo, didn’t you?”

  “I heard him say that, Wesley,” Waldo Maldemer agreed.

  “So I’m a great big star,” Don Rhotten said. “I know that. So what?”

  “The key word is ‘international’ star, Don,” Wesley said.