“No, it’s yours.”
“No, Mr. Rogers, please, you go ahead.”
“Don’t call me Mr. Rogers!”
The moose looked up from the stream and stared in our direction for a second, then went right back to drinking. Roy squeezed off a shot . . . and missed. He fired a second time and, believe it or not, missed again. The moose didn’t seem to notice. It turned around and slowly disappeared into the trees.
It was an awkward moment until Roy said, “He’s obviously never seen any of my movies.”
Roy’s was a sweet and gentle version of the Old West, and there was no attempt at realism. He liked to say that the reason they called it a Colt .45 was that they could shoot it forty-five times without reloading. The shows were little morality plays with simple plots: Roy was the good guy in the white hat and you knew he’d triumph over the black hats at the end of every film and TV show. He was a hero, not an antihero. He never drank or smoked, and “shucks” was the closest he ever got to cussing.
I’m glad he never got to see Deadwood.
Roy had a flair for showmanship. All decked out in those embroidered shirts, those fancy tooled boots, and that white Stetson, he looked like a stockbroker at a dude ranch. But he used to say, “If they’re gonna call me the King of the Cowboys, then I’ve got to be the King of the Cowboys.”
Roy’s approach to acting was simple. “I never took any lessons on singing or acting or anything,” he said. “So I’d read the script. If I had to play the bad guy, I’d frown. If I had to play the good guy, I’d smile.”
Roy bought a palomino named Golden Cloud off the set of The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), where it was ridden sidesaddle by Olivia de Havilland, and renamed him Trigger. He was a fabulous horse. Roy liked to say that Trigger could turn on a dime and give you nine cents change. The horse was a real trouper. He could do dozens of tricks and was billed as “The Smartest Horse in the Movies.” He was popular with the public, who were unaware that there were actually two Triggers. The second was a body double used for chase scenes. When you run a horse hard, he’s not going to be ready for his close-up.
Roy and his wife and costar, Dale Evans, moved to television in the early fifties with a half-hour series. In addition to Trigger, there was Roy’s German shepherd, Bullet, the Wonder Dog, and Pat Brady as Roy’s sidekick with his temperamental Jeep Nellybelle. (It was a “modern Western.”) Roy and Dale sang “Happy Trails” at the end of each episode.
They were a great couple, though it was his third marriage and her fourth. They adopted five kids and had one of their own and were wonderful parents. Dale was the driving force there. She was smart, especially about business. Her problem was that she sized people up too quickly and didn’t like half of them. I know she didn’t like me. She thought I might be a bad influence on Roy . . . and she was right, because that’s what I had in mind. But Roy didn’t need much encouragement in that department. He only sang like a choirboy.
I liked Roy enormously. He was much more than a singing cowboy. Something a lot of people don’t know about him is that he loved jazz. It was his quiet passion and he was knowledgeable about it, but he couldn’t say anything because it didn’t fit his image. It’s strange how paranoid people in show business are about guarding their territory. Roy was afraid that his fans wouldn’t like it if they knew.
When Trigger died in 1965, at the age of thirty-three, Roy couldn’t bring himself to put him in the ground, so he had Trigger stuffed, in the rearing position, anatomically correct. He put him in the museum, where the sight of him startled the visitors. But Roy was thrilled. “Trigger was a stallion till the day he died,” he liked to say.
Roy died of congestive heart failure in 1998 at the age of eighty-six. He’s buried at Sunset Hills Memorial Park in Apple Valley, but if he had his way he’d have been stuffed and put up on Trigger.
Dinah Shore
In 1969 I went to the Philippines to do a movie called Impasse, a word that also described the state of my career. I stopped in Japan on the way because I’d heard about Kabuki theater and wanted to see it in person. It turned out to be everything I’d imagined and more. Young actors go there in their early teens and stay for ten or twelve years studying voice, dance, and acting. They live like monks and nuns while being immersed in the traditional Kabuki characters.
One evening I went to a theater in the suburbs of Tokyo, where I saw a young actress named Miko Mayama who absolutely bowled me over. She had black hair way down to there, a beautiful, shapely figure, and a throaty, almost sultry voice. I’d never seen anyone like her. She was in her early twenties and had been in Kabuki since the age of nine.
I went back after the performance and introduced myself. Miko didn’t speak a word of English and I didn’t speak a word of Japanese, but we had no trouble communicating. We saw each other every night for the next week. Before long, we’d decided that we wanted to be together and that she would come to America, but first we had to go to Miko’s home in Osaka to get her parents’ permission.
They were lovely people, but they didn’t speak English either. Miko’s brother did speak a few words and he interpreted for us. I told them that I wanted to bring Miko back to America with me. At first they wouldn’t hear of it, but after a while they realized that she might have a career in American show business.
Miko loved Hollywood. She did a couple of movies and a bunch of television shows and played Yeoman Tamura in the original Star Trek. She learned to speak English by watching Bugs Bunny cartoons. The first thing she ever said to me in her adopted language was “What’s up, doc?”
I knew my father had spent three years in Japan after the war, but I didn’t dream that would cause a problem, so I brought Miko to Florida to meet him and my mom. The first thing he said was “What are you gonna do, open a restaurant?”
I let it go, even though I was furious. I grabbed Miko and left.
Miko and I lived together for four years, until I met the woman I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with.
—
I KEPT HEARING that Dinah Shore wanted to have me on her daytime show, Dinah’s Place. I didn’t get it, but I thought, Well, okay, sure. I’d seen the show and thought it was terrific. The set was a replica of Dinah’s house, so viewers felt like they were invited into her home. She’d often be cooking as she chatted with a guest. But it wasn’t all fluff. Dinah always did her homework for interviews. After Walter Cronkite was a guest, he said he’d never been interviewed better by professional journalists. Like Johnny Carson, Dinah was always on the side of the guest, and whenever someone said anything embarrassing, she’d rush to their defense and try to help them cover.
There was a spot on the show where Dinah would open the closet door and be surprised by a guest. The staff didn’t tell her who it would be. They arranged for me to be in the closet and somehow kept it a secret from Dinah. When she opened the door, I came out and grabbed her. I know it sounds crazy, but a shock went up my back. That had never happened before.
We sat down and just laughed and giggled. I forgot I was on a television show. It was just Dinah and me. We talked like two old friends, about the South and football and Bear Bryant, who had made a huge pass at her. He kept dropping by her house.
“He was so niiiice,” she said.
“I’m sure he was,” I said.
Finally I looked at her and blurted out, “Would you like to go to Palm Springs with me?”
She smiled and said yes without missing a beat.
“This weekend okay?”
“Perfect.”
That’s how it started, and it never stopped.
We did go to Palm Springs that weekend. Dinah was in a golf tournament and I was her caddie. We had a wonderful time, laughing and trading stories about our lives. We both knew we were already in love, but we didn’t rush. We were savoring every moment. For the first time in my life I actually wanted a courtsh
ip to go slowly, respectfully. But in truth it wasn’t my decision, because Dinah wasn’t the kind of lady who jumped in the sack on the first date.
I followed her from city to city on a promotional tour for her show. At one point I had to leave her to do a play in Chicago. On opening night I looked out and she was in the audience. She invited me to her hotel after the show. We drank champagne and made love for the first time. It was a new experience for me. For the first time I was sharing intimacy with my heart full of genuine, unconditional love. I not only loved Dinah but admired her. I’d never felt that way about a woman before.
—
DINAH WAS ACCOMPLISHED in so many ways, yet she was humble and unaffected. The closest she ever got to boasting was when she said, “I know a lot of people because I have the best tennis court in Hollywood—and the best food!”
True on both counts. The court was always being resurfaced and repainted, and tennis pros used it free of charge to practice and for lessons. Whenever my jock friends would come over and we’d try to play tennis with her, she’d beat us all. She knew how to put the ball where you weren’t. Getting beat by a woman wasn’t thrilling for professional football players, but then she’d cook for everybody and all would be forgiven. She loved to cook, and no matter what time it was—three o’clock in the morning or whatever, she’d say, “Are you hungry?” and I’d say, “Well, um, I guess so,” and she’d whip up a fabulous three-o’clock-in-the-morning dinner. She could cook anything and everything, including my favorite Southern dishes: hominy grits, black-eyed peas, turnip greens, hush puppies . . . and the desserts, of course: key lime pie, peach cobbler, pecan pie.
Her home in Beverly Hills was known as “Dinah’s Bar and Grill.” I can’t count the number of times it wasn’t meant to be a dinner or lunch but ended up that way. Whenever somebody came to the house, she’d find out where they were from and what their favorite dish was, and not only did she know how to make it, often as not they said she made it better than anybody else. Nobody who knew Dinah was surprised when she wrote a series of bestselling cookbooks.
Dinah’s friends included some of the greats of show business: Mary and Jack Benny, George Burns and Gracie Allen, Mel Tormé, Ella Fitzgerald, and Groucho Marx. Groucho was hilarious, of course, and sarcastic as hell. I’d loved him since I was a boy. He was even funnier in person, when he was uncensored and uninhibited, than he was on his television show You Bet Your Life. His wife at the time—I’m not sure now which one—was studying with an acting teacher, and they put on a show of scenes. I went to see it with Groucho and his running commentary was hilarious, but so brutal it made me cringe.
I grew up listening to Jack Benny on the radio, so it was a thrill to not only meet him but get to know him. The first time I saw him in person, Dinah and I were at a screening. Jack came over, kissed me on the cheek, and said, “Forgive me, Dinah, but I have to go for the young ones.” He was wonderful to me. Then again, he was such a mensch, he was nice to everybody. I could usually make him laugh, and I thought it was ironic that he thought I was funny.
Jack was in London when I was doing a TV show there and I asked him to come on and do a cameo. He looked right into the camera and said, “Burt Reynolds? Who is that?”
George Burns was terrific, too, but I don’t think he liked me at first. Maybe he saw me as a young guy using Dinah to get ahead. He made a point of telling me that he’d never seen any of my movies. He eventually accepted me because of The Tonight Show. He mentioned one night that he’d seen me guest-host and thought I was funny, and from then on he was a lot friendlier.
Dinah and Ella Fitzgerald were good friends, and I knew Ella, too, because we were neighbors. She was a giant in the world of music, one of the great jazz singers of all time, yet she had no ego. I’d go to see her whenever she was playing at the Crescendo or other clubs around town. My sister, Nancy Ann, loved Ella, and once when she was in town visiting, we caught Ella’s show and went backstage afterward. Ella couldn’t have been nicer. She and Nancy Ann talked about all kinds of things. She was so warm, there was never a hint of “Well, time’s up.”
Ella and Dinah sang together often. Ella would come over and they’d have a piano player and sing all night. Most people don’t know that Dinah could sing the blues. It goes back to her upbringing in Tennessee. But every so often I’d get her to sing a country song and we’d all be hysterical.
Mel Tormé was another “regular” at Dinah’s. What a giant talent. He had that “Velvet Fog” voice and brilliant musicianship, but he was insecure. He’d sing and be phenomenal and then ask you fourteen times, “Was it all right?”
Mel and Ella were at Dinah’s one night and he told me, “I’m not gonna sing tonight.”
“Okay, Mel,” I said.
“No, seriously, I’m not gonna sing.”
A little later, as soon as Ella went to the piano and started singing, Mel came over and said, “Can I sing, too?”
“I thought you didn’t want to!” I said.
“Where’d you get that idea?” he said.
—
DINAH WAS BORN Frances Rose Shore in Winchester, Tennessee. Her parents were Russian Jewish immigrants. Her father, Solomon, owned a small department store; her mother, Anna, was an aspiring opera singer. The Shores were the only Jewish family in town. One of Dinah’s most vivid memories was of standing on their front porch watching a Ku Klux Klan parade. She was frightened by the sight of the figures in sheets and hoods, and as they marched by, her father named one man after another. Many of them were neighbors, and he recognized them by the shoes he’d sold them in the store.
I never played much tennis before I met Dinah, but I played a lot with her and it got old losing every time. She knew not to let me win, but she kept encouraging me: “You’re getting better all the time,” she’d say. I noticed that she’d start limping after a few games. I asked about it and she told me that she had polio as a child, but it was never “poor me.” Self-pity wasn’t Dinah’s style.
She’d had a rough time of it when she was a girl. She was stricken at the age of eighteen months. Her right leg and foot were paralyzed. She was devastated by it, and her parents made her feel worse. They never mentioned polio out loud, but were always whispering about it, so Dinah was never allowed to forget that she was crippled. After a long course of painful treatments, she eventually recovered. But she was left with a limp that gave her an inferiority complex that I don’t think she ever completely overcame.
Dinah was determined to get rid of the limp through exercise and physical therapy. She began swimming and playing tennis; she joined the fencing team, ran track, and took ballet lessons. By the time she was nine, her right leg was almost normal again and she could walk short distances without limping. The experience made her constantly strive to prove herself. She felt she had to compensate by running faster and jumping higher than everyone else.
Dinah began singing at an early age. She had an African-American nursemaid who was part of the family. Her name was Lillian Taylor, but everyone called her Paw-Paw. Dinah told me flat out that it was Paw-Paw who taught her to sing. She took Dinah to her church to hear the spirituals and sang Dinah the songs her mother sang to her when she was small. Paw-Paw called it “noodling.”
Paw-Paw stayed with Dinah for the rest of Dinah’s life. Nobody knew how old she was, but she was ageless. And fiercely protective of Dinah. She had an opinion about everyone in Dinah’s life, and I was happy I came down on her good side.
By the time the Shores moved from Winchester to Nashville, Dinah had decided to become a professional singer. At first she had to study voice secretly, because her father disapproved. Later on, in addition to regular lessons, at the suggestion of her voice coach, Dinah sang in the choir at the First Presbyterian Church.
When Dinah was fourteen she talked the manager of a Nashville nightclub called the Pines into giving her a singing gig for ten dollars. She
didn’t dare tell her parents because she knew her father would forbid it. She borrowed her sister’s prom dress and talked a boy into driving her to the club. She took a deep breath, walked up to the microphone, and launched into the one song she’d rehearsed, “Under a Blanket of Blue.” Halfway through the number she looked out and saw her mother and father, who’d been tipped off. Her father told her she was too young to be a torch singer and that she’d have to finish high school and go to college.
While majoring in sociology at Vanderbilt University, she was a regular on a local radio show in Nashville. She sang the show’s theme song, the old standard “Dinah,” and people began calling her “the ‘Dinah’ girl.” She’d always hated the name Frances, so when she landed an audition on WNEW Radio in New York, she renamed herself Dinah Shore. That’s where she met a skinny young crooner from Hoboken named Frank Sinatra. They didn’t get along at first—she thought he was arrogant, he didn’t much care for her “magnolia accent”—but they eventually became friends.
In 1940 Dinah had her first hit records, “The Breeze and I” (with Xavier Cugat’s orchestra) and “Yes, My Darling Daughter.” Over the next fifteen years she had seventy more hits, including “Blues in the Night,” “I’ll Walk Alone,” “The Anniversary Song,” “Buttons and Bows,” and “Dear Hearts and Gentle People.”
During World War II she entertained the troops at USO shows and traveled to service hospitals to sing solo at the bedsides of wounded soldiers, and she was one of the first entertainers to visit GIs on the front lines.
When Dinah went to Hollywood in 1943 to make her first movie, the studio bobbed her nose, capped her teeth, and dyed her brown hair blond. She made seven pictures in all, including Up in Arms (1944) with Danny Kaye and Till the Clouds Roll By (1946), before she called it quits. She always said that she wasn’t good on the big screen, that she’d failed as a movie star because she wasn’t “photogenic,” but I disagree. I thought she was a natural.
But Enough About Me: A Memoir Page 11