by Tim Conway
Joe Hamilton was both the best golfer and the best-dressed of our quartet. He belonged to the Bel-Air Country Club and on one occasion invited us to play there. Later that same week, he received a letter from the front office suggesting that he not invite his friends to return. The fact that it took Harvey something like twenty-eight strokes on the ninth hole to get the ball into the cup, had a lot to do with the management’s request. Behind us was an extended line of golfers, all club members, waiting for our group to move on. The problem stemmed from Harvey’s first shot, which rolled off the green and into a sand trap. I can still see him standing in that trap whacking away at the ball, sand flying all over, until the green looked like the beach at Santa Monica. As if that weren’t enough, his next shot landed on a drainage ditch and rolled back down toward the previous hole. To top it off, when he finally got the ball back on the green, he had the nerve to ask the caddy which way the green broke.
Ernie spent most of the game in the woods because that’s where his ball usually came to rest. When he went searching for it, he never came out of the woods until he’d found at least three other balls. One time, the ball rolled under a thorn bush. When he reached in to pick it up, he stabbed his thumb. Ernie yanked his hand away and pulled out the thorn. But he didn’t get it all out. A small piece broke off and remained embedded in his flesh. Holding the damaged hand out in front of him, he emerged from the woods, told us what had happened, and announced that he was afraid that his wound would become infected.
“Someone’s got to drive me to the doctor’s to get it out.”
The three of us looked at him.
“What?” he said after a while.
We continued to stare.
“Ernie,” I said breaking the silence, “we’re just on the third hole.”
“So?” he said.
We kept staring. Then my better nature took over. I felt sorry for the guy.
“Okay,” I said, “you can take my golf cart back to your car.”
“You mean to tell me, “ he said slowly, “that nobody is going to drive me?”
We continued to stare until again, I broke down.
“All right, I’ll drive you,” I said. Adding, “to your car.”
So Ernie and I got into the cart, I drove him to his car, and he drove himself to the doctor. Harvey and Joe were furious with me for interrupting the game, but I felt it was the right thing to do. (Perhaps only a golfer can appreciate this story.)
I really was crazy about the game; I think everyone who plays is crazy about golf. The idea gets in your head that all you have to do is get that ball into the cup. Eventually you do, but you’ve taken so many strokes to do it, it doesn’t matter. Also, the grand game of golf became a worthwhile means to an end for me. For the twenty-five years that I worked with the United Cerebral Palsy Spastic Children’s Foundation, I sponsored a tournament at the Westlake Golf Course. Once a year, some of the nicest people in the business would show up on a Sunday afternoon to play eighteen holes of the wackiest game in which they were ever likely to participate. But charity was the name of this game. We got Roger Barkley, a local disc jockey, the old-fashioned type of DJ—who makes sense and is funny—to interview the celebrity participants. The first year of the tournament, we set up a two-man tent at the first hole. Roger interviewed the players as they teed off. That’s right, he talked to them while they took their swings. Again, golfers will read this and cringe. Nobody’s supposed to talk to a golfer teeing off. But this was a charity tournament, and the idea of someone forced to chat while he swings is funny. Well, it’s supposed to be funny.
Roger was Don Rickles–like in his confrontations. One time he asked Sammy Davis Jr., who had a glass eye, which eye he kept on the ball. Another time he arranged for “The Star Spangled Banner” to play when President Gerald Ford went into his swing. The president stopped the club in midair to stand at attention while the entire anthem blasted from the loudspeaker. Dick Martin didn’t need Roger’s kibitzing; he sauntered on the green with a martini in hand, took out the olive, shook it, and placed it on the tee. Handing his glass to Roger, he took his swing. The olive went a little farther than his usual drives. And when the chief of police got ready to swing, Roger asked him how often he had dinner at Hugh Hefner’s house and did he have any phone numbers to share? The biggest laugh of the day didn’t need any prompting from Roger Barkley. All Harvey Korman had to do was show his golf swing, and the thousands in the galley burst into laughter. Juvenile? Silly? Definitely. The outcome? People had a good time. More important, we raised enough money to provide care for the kids we were swinging for.
The Birth of Dorf
In the summer of 1987, Harvey and I were trying to salvage a sketch I’d written for the Burnett show. It was a take-off on the popular dramatic series Fantasy Island, which starred Ricardo Montalban and Hervé Villechaize. The former played Mr. Roarke, the tall, handsome host, and the latter played his assistant, Tattoo. Villechaize was barely four feet tall. Can you guess who was going to play whom in our sketch? In order for me to look even shorter, I knelt on the floor and slipped a pair of shoes under my kneecaps. I didn’t look like a little person; I looked like a man on his knees. The sketch wasn’t clicking. About all we had was me yelling, “Boss, da plane, da plane.” After that, it was downhill. I was on my knees pondering, when I looked down at my knee-feet and something occurred to me.
“You know,” I said to Harvey, “if they cut two holes in the floor, I could put my legs through them up to my knees. And I could cut out the center of the shoes so it would look as though my legs ended at my knees.”
“Are you nuts?” said Harvey.
That’s all I had to hear. Anytime I had an idea and someone asked me that question, I knew I was on to something. So, instead of making a trap door, the carpenters drilled a couple of trap holes in the floor of Studio 33, and I was lowered into them. There was a platform beneath the surface on which I actually stood. It was just the ticket. I fell into place and so did everything else, including the sketch. The audience laughed it up. Everyone was talking about the “little fellow,” whom I’d dubbed Dorf. Why Dorf? I don’t remember. Maybe it was because it sounded like dwarf. Whatever the reason, a half-star was born.
Once I’d created the weird little guy with the weird toupee and the weird accent, I began to think of all the different situations I could put him in. I didn’t have to think for too long. Dorf and I went to the Westlake golf course where we filmed a video, in which Dorf demonstrated his golf skills. I’m almost embarrassed to tell you that the resulting DVD, Dorf on Golf, has sold millions of copies. It was a super success and spawned many, many more discs, with Dorf as a fisherman, a hunter, a baseball player, etc. The one I loved doing best starred Sam Snead as Dorf’s golfing partner.
We called Snead out of the blue and asked if he’d come in for a couple of days to film a video with Dorf. We were thrilled when he said okay. He arrived the night before the shoot. Lang Elliott, with whom I’d worked on The Private Eyes and other films, was the producer. He and I invited Snead to join us for dinner. We met at a local restaurant and had a drink in the cocktail lounge. About twenty minutes into the cocktail hour, Sam asked if Dorf was going to join us for dinner. Only then did Lang and I realize Sam didn’t know who or what Dorf was. All he knew was that he was going to make a golf film with him. (We must have paid him a lot of money.) Neither Lang nor I was sure about what to do. How do you explain to the most well-known golfer of the day that he was going to be horsing around with a four-foot clown? Lang and I looked at each other. Implicit in our respective gazes was the shared notion to say nothing.
The next day when Sam appeared on the course, I was already buried in the ground on the eighteenth hole. Lang brought him up to me. Sam leaned over and shook my hand. He took in everything, from my height, to the square moustache under my nose, to the bad rug on my head, and made a pleasant comment about what a beautiful day it was. He had no idea that we’d had dinner the night before.
>
“Sam,” I said looking up. “It’s Tim Conway.”
He looked down again, checked under the toupee, and with a grin a mile wide, grabbed my hand and, laughing aloud, shook it again.
We began shooting and came to the scene where I was to hit the ball across a pond. The ball was supposed to ricochet off a tree and bounce back into the water. In the past, without wanting to, I’d hit that tree dozens of times and watched as the ball caromed into the water. This time I didn’t even come close. I could not hit that tree. We even tried it with special effects by shooting the ball out of an air gun. But nothing worked.
“What are you trying to do?” Sam finally asked.
“We’re trying to hit that tree with the ball and have it drop back into the lake.”
“Oh,” said Sam, “give me the ball and turn on the camera.”
I handed him a ball. Sam put it down, stepped back, took a beautiful swing, and hit the ball. The ball soared across the water, hit the tree, and bounced back into the pond. Sam turned around and said, “Like that?”
What a terrific guy Sam Snead was. We had a blast that afternoon. I’ve never heard anyone tell as great a bunch of golf stories. And, boy, have I dined out on my Yes-I-played-golf-with-Sam Snead experience. That day will always be special for me and for my annuity, Dorf.
Trodding the Boards
While I’ve alluded to my theatre experiences, it might come as a shock to learn that I’ve been working on the legitimate stage for almost as long as I’ve been on the illegitimate stage, if that’s what you call television and movies. I’ve appeared quite a bit on the summer stock circuit, in regional theatre, yet, for a number of reasons, I’ve never appeared on Broadway. First reason, nobody ever asked me. I guess you don’t need any more reasons than that. Then, too, there’s an important word connected with the theatre. The word is discipline. You really have to have it when you’re performing on the legitimate stage. It was different on the Burnett show. That’s not to say we weren’t disciplined; we were, but only up to a point and, as I’ve pointed out, we had permission to vary the script. But you can’t mess with words when you’re on the stage. Never mind the playwright, it’s not fair to your fellow actors. Despite the restrictions, I enjoy working in the theatre because I get an instant reaction and every performance is different in some way. I never know what’s going to happen. And, whatever does happen, I’m stuck with it. In my legitimate career I had to impose a lot of discipline on myself and I did, most of the time. There were, of course, moments when I strayed.
I was appearing in a three-character comedy called Wally’s Cafe by Sam Bobrick and Ron Clark. It opened on Broadway in 1981, without me in the cast. I did it a few years later in summer stock.
I made my entrance in the first act and was given my cue by Yvonne Wilder, who played a waitress.
“What would you like to drink, Wally?” Yvonne asked.
“I’ll have milk,” I said.
Yvonne looked at me. I could tell by the way her eyes suddenly opened wide that something was wrong.
“Wally, wouldn’t you rather have orange juice?” she asked.
“No, why?” I responded, innocently.
What I had done was take a line from the second act and plunk it in the first. My response was supposed to be, “I’ll have orange juice.” The orange juice line in the first act was essential to the plot and would be used again in the last act to bring the play to its conclusion. Bringing the play to a conclusion one minute into the first act was a bit premature. Poor Yvonne had to prompt me a couple of more times before I realized what I’d done. I recovered brilliantly by saying something like, “Wait a minute, I think I’d rather have orange juice.” We were back on track. Over the years, whenever I run into Yvonne, we exchange those lines before we even say hello.
I went up on my lines in Wally’s Cafe, which isn’t quite the same as deliberately mucking with the script. As you might guess, I did that, too. One summer, I appeared in Mr. Roberts at the Chagrin Falls Little Theatre. I was in McHale’s Navy then, and it seemed a natural for Ensign Parker to play Ensign Pulver in his hometown. The director was wonderful. However, during rehearsals he did suggest that it would be a good idea for me to stick to the script. Obviously, he knew my work. I agreed and promised to be on my best behavior.
In the 1950s, Mr. Roberts was a huge success, first on Broadway and then as a movie. Hank Fonda played the title role in both instances. Mr. Roberts was a good man who protected his crew from the tyrannical Captain Morton. Ensign Pulver was a good man, too, but a jackanapes. (Do you like this word? I do. I’m going to look it up now.) The play was so popular, productions blossomed everywhere: from Broadway, to regional theatres, to summer stock, to schools. Audiences were so familiar with it people could recite the lines along with the performers, and they often did. Near the end of the play, Mr. Roberts has left the ship to join a combat troop. Pulver is standing on deck with the other members of the crew. He receives a radiogram and learns that Mr. Roberts has been killed. One of the crew sees the pained expression on Pulver’s face, and asks, “What is it?”
“It’s Mr. Roberts.”
“What happened?”
“He was killed in action,” says Pulver.
“Oh no,” cries the crewmember, and he buries his head in his hands to hide his tears. It’s very moving, a foolproof scene. Ah, but things can happen when a fool is involved.
One evening we got to the big scene. I took the radiogram, read it to myself, looked up, and projected a pained look of disbelief. Jack Riley, who was playing the sailor, said his line.
“What is it?”
“It’s Mr. Roberts,” I said slowly.
“What happened?”
“They repossessed his car.”
“Oh no,” Jack responded. His eyes widened.
“What?” he asked again.
I looked down at the radiogram.
“Oh, and he was killed in action, too.”
Let me assure you no one in the audience caught my improvised remark. They were too busy saying the lines to themselves, as I knew they would be.
I spent several summers appearing in The Odd Couple along with Tom Poston and Pat Harrington. Those two brilliant actors were from Steve Allen’s stable of funny guys, and we had a ball during the show’s run. Trust me, audiences were treated to performances of The Odd Couple that will never be duplicated. That is if Neil Simon has anything to say about it.
Speaking of Neil Simon, I’ve written a few plays myself. One was called Just for Laughs, and Tom Poston starred in it opposite me. In the play, Tom portrayed my partner, but he didn’t want to be my partner in backing the play. He wouldn’t invest his money because he didn’t think the play would make it. But he was willing to appear in it as a paid performer. Tom was no dummy. We opened in Florida at the Burt Reynolds Jupiter Theatre. After the first week, we decided to take it on the road. Tom suggested that when we got it on the road, we run over it. I stonewalled that proposal. That’s a key to my personality; the more people say something can’t be done, the more I try to do it. It makes for an interesting life.
With the exception of Connecticut, we played to audiences that enjoyed and applauded our efforts. Connecticut is too close to New York; they know good theater when they see it. The best week’s run was in San Antonio, Texas, except for the fact that we arrived with a bang and left with a whimper. Our sets were carried on a large truck that had been parked outside the theatre all week, waiting to reload after the final performance on Sunday evening. From there we were going to Vegas. We did the afternoon show and went out for an early dinner. We returned, did the evening performance and then, carrying our luggage, we went outside to supervise the loading of the sets. Surprise! There was no truck. It seems that a new driver had come in the night before. He didn’t realize there were two Sunday performances and thought everything had been loaded after the matinee. He didn’t bother to check the back of the truck but just hopped into the cab and drove off. We stood
there on the sidewalk when someone said, “Tim, do something.”
“What?”
“Call the driver and tell him to come back for the sets.”
“Great. Who’s got his number?
Would you like to guess the answer to that question?
“Well, call the company and tell them to get a hold of the driver.”
“Tim, what’s the name of the company?”
“Aaah,” I began, “I don’t know the name of the company.”
There followed a series of mild expletives and suggestions as to what I should do with myself. There seemed to be nothing else to do except wait to hear from the driver. We returned to the hotel and checked back in. The next evening around ten, the driver called. He was at a weigh station two hundred miles outside of Vegas. He said that the guy at the station noticed that the weight listed on the papers was way more than the truck actually weighed. So they opened the truck doors.
“You’ll never guess what,” said the driver.
“Oh, I think I might have a good guess,” I replied. “I’ll just betcha the truck was empty.”
“Hey, you’re right,” said the astonished driver.
So he turned around and drove back to San Antonio to pick up the sets. We were a day late for the Vegas run, but everything ran smoothly after that. The play was successful, I made back the money and then some. On Broadway they call this a Happy Ending.