How I Got This Way

by Regis Philbin

  WHAT I TOOK AWAY FROM IT ALL

  Astrology isn’t for sissies. Those stars do seem to know things we don’t—and maybe never should.

  Great things can happen much later than you might have hoped. But even then, great things are still great—and always worth appreciating—so don’t give up.

  Chapter Seven

  CARY GRANT

  Throughout my fifty years of hosting talk shows, I’ve been lucky enough to get to know and chat with so many unforgettable show business greats, some of them bigger than big—icons whose work will live on forever. Though I never did get that chance with one of my all-time favorites: Cary Grant.

  But it’s not like we didn’t try.

  And by we, I’m really referring to a young man named Marshall Lichterman, who came into my life the day I returned to Hollywood in 1964 to host that ill-fated Westinghouse show. Marshall Lichterman was a holdover from Steve Allen’s staff. And although he was really just a kid starting out by doing various mundane tasks around the office, he had somehow become a great fan of mine. So on that first day, he asked if there was anything—anything!—he could do for me. . . . For instance, was there any particular guest I wanted him to get for the show, never mind that the talent-booking process wasn’t even remotely part of his job! But he was so sincere, so earnest, so unbelievably persuasive that I couldn’t resist. I thought, Okay, why not give this hungry kid a chance to show me what he’s got?

  “Marshall,” I said, probably only half seriously, “let’s just shoot for the moon. Let’s get the one guy who has never done a television interview. Let’s get Cary Grant! I love all of his movies, I love him—he’s simply the best there is. So, Marshall, I want you to go get him!”

  Why, you may wonder, had I instantly thought of Cary Grant as the perfect target? Well, besides having never seen him in an interview situation, he had made an enormous impact on me in one of the first films I ever saw as a kid, Gunga Din. A classic among classics, this movie featured Grant as one of three fearless, brawling, hell-raising sergeants in the British Army stationed in India during the nineteenth century. But moreover, it was also the story of a young water carrier for their troops who wanted desperately to be a soldier, too. And Grant and the actor Sam Jaffe, who beautifully portrayed this water carrier named Gunga Din, had a wonderful chemistry together on-screen.

  The movie was actually based on an epic poem by Rudyard Kipling. At the film’s great climax, Gunga Din saved the British troops when he climbed to the top of a tower and blew a trumpet to warn them of an impending ambush. Of course, in that moment, Gunga Din became the most important soldier of them all. But earlier in the film, we would see that while the troops were going through their afternoon drills at the base, Din would hide behind the barracks to privately simulate answering all the same commands. He wanted to be something more than he was—he wanted to be a soldier, a good one. One afternoon, the sergeant Grant was playing spied Din doing this and began giving him the same set of commands that the troops had been answering during those drills. Din was proud to demonstrate perfectly all the correct moves he had studied. Then finally Grant’s character brought him to “attention,” and Din snapped off a proper military salute to the sergeant, who complimented him in that crisp cockney accent Grant was so well known for, “Very regimental, Din, very regimental!” For many years afterward I would quietly repeat Grant’s bolstering line to myself, usually when something I’d done had gone well; it always made me feel better. Anyway, the sergeant then walked away, while Din stiffened even more so and held firm his salute with a triumphant smile, clearly pleased to have impressed this dashing role model. He was, in effect, a soldier at last. Of course, those who know the film’s dramatic ending recall that, after trumpeting the warning to save his “fellow” soldiers from attack, Din was shot down off that tower and fell to his death. Before the final credits rolled, a key portion of Kipling’s poem was recited:

  Tho’ I’ve belted you an’ flayed you,

  By the livin’ Gawd that made you,

  You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din!

  Very moving, very touching. I never forgot it.

  And that was my earliest introduction to Cary Grant, whose career continued to dazzle me throughout his parade of terrific movies over the decades—His Girl Friday, The Philadelphia Story, Penny Serenade, Suspicion, Arsenic and Old Lace, My Favorite Wife, Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, An Affair to Remember, Indiscreet, North by Northwest, and so on. I loved them all, but mostly I loved the way he talked, the way he walked, the charm he exuded. Whenever I stepped out of a theater after any Cary Grant movie, I felt just for a moment—as did so many other men—like I too was Cary Grant. And it was always a great feeling—while it lasted, anyway. (As it is, I’ve always been accused—especially by a certain cohost named Kelly “Pippa” Ripa—of trying to sound just like Cary Grant every time I attempt a British accent. I guess that’s how huge an impression he made on me, okay?)

  But now I was in Hollywood, about to launch into my biggest break to date. And here before me was this intent and purposeful kid, Marshall Lichterman, swearing how he would get my new show off to a great start and bring me Cary Grant. It was fate, I thought. Marshall vowed that Cary Grant would be ours! He so eagerly wanted to prove himself to me that, by God, he actually began to remind me of Gunga Din!

  The next day he reported that he’d been able to secure Mr. Grant’s phone number. And that he called it. And that he in fact had gotten the great movie star on the line! Well, that’s when I found myself both shocked and also very excited. And seeing my excitement, Marshall was by now beside himself. He said, “I told Mr. Grant that this was a brand-new TV show and Mr. Philbin is the new host and his very first request was for an appearance by Cary Grant.” First of all, I couldn’t believe this young kid was able to get Cary Grant on the phone, much less actually talk to him. But somehow it happened. Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to get Grant to commit to the interview. Though Marshall did say that they had a nice talk and that Mr. Grant was very charming. Well, I could see the handwriting on the wall, so I said, “Nice try, Marshall, but I think we should move on to someone else.”

  But Marshall didn’t want to hear that. He would not give up. He needed to show me, to totally impress me! Hello, Gunga Din! So apparently he called Cary Grant the next day and practically every day for the next two weeks—and Grant was always charming but remained noncommittal. Of course, I didn’t realize that Marshall’s pursuit of Cary Grant had continued for as long as it did. When I found out, I was totally embarrassed. Even mortified. “You simply cannot call Cary Grant ever again!” I told him. “You must cease and desist!”

  But even after my little tirade, I couldn’t help myself: I simply had to ask Marshall, “Just between us, what did he sound like? What did he say during all those calls? Did he ever get annoyed that you kept after him so relentlessly?”

  “No,” Marshall said. “He never got angry. He always remained charming and patient but firm. And over and over again, he would explain that he just never gave interviews because he feared he would be a terrible guest. He would say, ‘Now, please, Marshall, please—explain that to Mr. Philbin and tell him that I wish him the very best for his new show and the rest of his career.’”

  And so ended our adventures in trying to get Cary Grant as a guest. I forbid Marshall to ever call him again and told him that if he did, he would lose his job. But Cary Grant has stayed an important part of my life; practically every day I still check to see if any of his movies might be airing on TCM—and if one is, I try to stay home and watch it. Because nothing else will be better on television that night. Of that I am absolutely sure. But let me add just one more thing. I don’t care what he said—Cary Grant would have simply been a terrific guest on any TV talk show. Anywhere, anytime.

  WHAT I TOOK AWAY FROM IT ALL

  All men should study the charm of Cary Grant in the movies whenever
possible. You may not become Grant, but you’ll be inspired to be a better man.

  No really does mean no, especially if the same person keeps telling you so every single day for weeks on end.

  Chapter Eight

  JACK PAAR

  How I got to be the way I am—especially in front of television cameras—is mostly due to the inspiration I took from one special man. I’ve never made a secret of that fact. But in truth, nobody could ever do things the way he did them. It was my mother who first called my attention to Jack Paar. She wrote me a letter while I was in the navy mentioning how impressed she was with his chatty style and personality—and keep in mind, this was well before he became the original king of late night on NBC-TV’s Tonight Show. Back then, in the early fifties, she’d only seen Jack host The Morning Show for the CBS network out of New York, where he worked with a battery of news correspondents and always kept things lively throughout. Before getting her letter, I’d barely heard of him, but now I was very curious. Then, soon enough, our squadron was ported in San Diego, and the TV happened to be turned on in our LSM wardroom, where the commodore was holding his standard meeting. Somehow, maybe out of a little boredom, my gaze drifted toward that TV screen, and there was the show my mother had told me about. The one with Jack Paar. And I could see that my sainted mother was right again. Paar was a natural. You couldn’t take your eyes off him. (For the record, my mother had always been pretty good at spotting talent before they made it big: About a decade earlier, for instance, she heard a sixteen-year-old Brooklyn kid named Vic Damone singing over the radio on The Carnation Hour. Right on the spot, she announced he would become a musical sensation—and, of course, he did.)

  Anyway, when I came back to San Diego in the late fifties—this time working as a young broadcaster reporting the news—I saw Jack Paar again, but now as host of The Tonight Show. And again I was knocked out by him: same spontaneity, same charm, and the same engaging interviewing skills I’d seen earlier. But what impressed me most was his opening monologue. Every night at eleven fifteen he would come out, sometimes sit on the edge of his desk, and just talk into the camera—directly to those of us watching at home. He created an intimacy with viewers like nobody I’d seen before. His openings were never simply a compilation of jokes (although I later learned that he did keep a stable of writers on staff). Instead, he was just telling his audience stories about where he had been that day, who he had met, what fun or crazy mishap he had along the way. To me, he was beyond different and always fascinating. Even though I was just getting my feet wet on the TV news side of things, I’d still been wondering what my future would hold in this business. And then I saw Paar, who made whatever he did on camera seem so personal, so unpredictable, so funny, and mainly so very real. It was marvelous. It was what I wanted to do, and he showed me how. Because in my heart, I somehow felt that I had the ability to do that, too. So with Jack’s influence planted firmly in mind—and once I got my own Saturday-night talk show in October 1961 on San Diego’s KOGO-TV—I was determined to open every one of those live broadcasts in exactly the same way. I told stories of what had happened in my life during the week, all very similar to the kind of stuff Jack was doing nationally night after night. And happily enough, it came across pretty smoothly for me—so much so that for the next fifty years I’ve never stopped doing it that way. That is, except for those few detours I made after moving on from San Diego, the most well known of which was my run as second banana/sidekick on ABC’s The Joey Bishop Show in Hollywood. But even then, part of my job was to banter with Joey about things going on in daily life—although it was mostly Joey’s daily life that we were focusing on. It was, after all, his show.

  Joey, along with everyone else who ever tried, had his struggles competing against Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show, which was still based out of New York and then as always the dominant force in late night. Carson, of course, had taken over as host once Jack Paar had decided, after not quite five years at that job, to escape the nonstop rigamarole of making nightly television. Starting in late 1962, he opted to scale back and simply limit himself to hosting a popular Friday-night prime-time interview show—which he also later chose to give up, this time after three years. But even then, and for the rest of his post–Tonight Show life, he had mainly shunned all requests to be a guest on anyone else’s talk show.

  But that was all about to change, if only for one unforgettable night. Turned out, not long after we started the Bishop show in the spring of 1967, we got word that Jack had come to Los Angeles to visit friends. Immediately, Joey knew it would be a coup—and would also help make a sizable dent in Johnny’s great ratings—to coax Jack into coming on as his guest. He already knew Jack slightly, having gone on Paar’s old show a couple times. So on the night that we’d heard Jack had come to town, Joey went to the Beverly Hills Hotel where Jack was staying. And unannounced, knocked on Jack’s door, got inside, and pleaded his case. He needed a big boost for our show, and Jack would be it, absolutely. No one had seen him on television for a couple of years, and Joey wouldn’t leave until Jack agreed—which to everyone’s amazement he did. And to raise the stakes further, we even scheduled Jack’s appearance for what turned out to be the very same night that Carson would come back to The Tonight Show after a nearly monthlong standoff with his NBC bosses over contract issues; Johnny went so far as to declare that he was done forever with the show, then disappeared from the air, a bold move that commanded headlines for all those weeks. NBC finally gave in to Johnny’s demands, but Joey knew that having Jack as his special guest would steal some significant spotlight away from Carson’s eagerly awaited return. This, by the way, was what TV people would call “counterprogramming” to the extreme!

  Well, when I heard that Jack Paar was booked on our show, I was simply thrilled. I would finally meet this guy who had changed my life, who had shown me how to do it, who inspired me. I couldn’t wait to shake his hand and to thank him for what his work and his style had meant to me. The booking was already getting a lot of press. The ratings were bound to be much bigger than usual. But that day Joey’s producer, Paul Orr, who years earlier had also been Jack’s producer, approached me and said, kind of tentatively, “You know, Joey and Jack are both very nervous about this.” Then he added, “I think they would probably feel more at ease if you didn’t sit with them on the couch, if you’d just let them go at it one-on-one tonight.” I couldn’t believe it. All those years, and now I still wouldn’t have my chance to thank Jack Paar. That’s all I’d wanted to do. Not even on the air, heaven forbid, but during a commercial break, when no one but the two of us would know. I told Paul Orr what Paar meant to me, but he assured me not to worry. “I promise you,” he said, “when the show is over I’ll make sure you meet him.”

  So the show went on, with me kind of awkwardly stationed on the sidelines and well away from the two of them. And yes, they clearly were nervous. Both were actually a little hesitant with each other during the interview. And as soon as the show was over—guess what?—Jack got up, rushed to the nearest exit, and was gone into the night! Joey, meanwhile, disappeared directly into his dressing room, probably because it hadn’t exactly turned out the way he’d hoped. And that was that. It took me a while to get over it.

  To be honest, I never did entirely get over it . . . until at long last I was finally given a second chance to meet Jack. And when I say “at long last,” I’m talking about nearly two decades later! It happened just a few years after I returned to New York to start a morning talk show that I hoped would lead to national syndication. During those interim years I held many assorted jobs—one of which brought me to Chicago in the summer of 1974 to take over the local morning show on ABC’s WLS-TV after its host, Bob Kennedy, suddenly passed away. The producer on that show was a smart, funny young guy named Rick Ludwin, who would eventually become the top executive at NBC for all prime-time specials and late-night programming, among other duties. Anyway, in 1986 Rick called to tell me t
hat NBC was preparing a nostalgic special titled Jack Paar Comes Home, to be taped in New York. It would feature Jack presiding over a parade of clips from some of his greatest interview moments. Rick remembered what a fan of Paar’s I had always been and asked if I’d like to be part of the studio audience for the taping. My answer, naturally: “Absolutely! I’d love nothing more!”

  How great it would be just to see Jack in person again! I was seated about ten rows up, right on the aisle, and directly behind a blond lady who at one point turned and gave me a warm smile like she knew me. I smiled back, but I was sure we’d never met. Then the show started: Jack came out, as charming and spontaneous as always. Now in his early sixties, everything about him looked and felt ageless. There, right onstage in front of me, I could see all of his famous little mannerisms that I’d enjoyed since I first watched him so long ago—plus his electric warmth when telling hilarious “inside” stories and setting up clips of his best exchanges with all those great guests: “Wait till you see me here with Richard Burton!” It was wonderful television, all the more special because we were reliving Jack’s work right along with him.

  Of course, being in his presence also brought back memories of that night on the Bishop show when I never did get to shake his hand. And frankly, it didn’t look like it would happen on this night either. But at the end of the show, with the band playing his rousing theme song, “Everything’s Coming Up Roses,” and the crowd applauding wildly, he began to walk up the steps into the audience—shaking hands with people on the aisle seats! My God, I thought, he’s heading right toward me. Here was my chance! I was terribly excited, but also afraid he might stop after only a few steps up and then turn around to make his exit. But he didn’t. He just kept coming! What luck to have this seat, I realized. And then suddenly he stopped right at the row in front of me. He bent over and kissed the blond lady, gallantly helping her up from her chair, and together they walked down the steps and out the door. That blond woman was, of course, his beloved wife, Miriam. And while I was happy to see them share his moment of postshow triumph—it had happened again! I had come so close . . . but once more, no cigar. I mean, I swear—all I wanted to do was just tell him thanks!