The Man Who Died Laughing

by David Handler

  In the fifties, nobody was more popular than Knight & Day. Their movies made millions. They had their own hit TV variety show on CBS. They headlined in the top nightclubs and in Las Vegas, where they were charter members of the Rat Pack. They were gold. Of the two, it was always Sonny who got the acclaim. Sonny was the biggest of them all. Milton Berle was Uncle Miltie, Jackie Gleason was The Great One. Sonny Day was The One. Gabe Knight was a good-looking straight man who got very lucky, or so everyone thought.

  “Here’s the best part,” my agent said. “He’s agreed to tell what The Fight was about.”

  Knight & Day broke up in 1958. Their fight—The Fight—was probably the most famous in show business history. It happened in Chasen’s in front of half the stars and moguls in Hollywood. Sonny and Gabe had to be pulled apart after actually throwing punches at one another and drawing blood. They split up the next day. They never appeared together again. Jerry Lewis tried to reunite them on his telethon twenty-five years later, but Sonny refused to show.

  Ordinarily, there are no secrets when celebrities are involved. I know. I used to be one. But nobody knew the real reason Knight & Day broke up. Neither of them would tell. If anyone close knew, they kept quiet. It wasn’t the most important secret around, like who really shot JFK or what’s the mystery of Oil of Olay. But a lot of people did still wonder about it.

  Especially when you considered what happened to the two of them. Gabe surprised everyone by proving that Sonny hadn’t carried him all of those years. He starred in a Broadway musical. He recorded a string of easy-listening platinum records. He produced and starred in his own long-running TV sitcom, The Gabe Knight Show, in which he played a harried small-town portrait photographer with a wife, two kids, and a pet elephant, Roland. Gabe blossomed into a Beverly Hills squire. He was prosperous, dignified, well-liked—a man, in short, who had a Palm Springs celebrity tennis tournament of his very own. The biggest charities and political fund-raisers sought him out as an after-dinner speaker. Most recently, the President had gone so far as to nominate him as America’s envoy to France. Ambassador Gabriel Knight. It seemed an entirely appropriate choice now that the French were getting their own Disney World—though I personally would have gone all the way and named Annette.

  Certainly it was Gabe’s highly publicized stride into public service that had spurred some publisher’s interest in a book by Sonny Day. Sonny, after all, went the opposite direction of Gabe after The Fight.

  He became, as Lenny Bruce coined it, “the man who put the ick in shtick.” Starting with The Boy in the Gray Flannel Suit, Sonny made a string of films on his own—wrote them, directed them, starred in them. He even sang. Horribly. His films were all disasters, not just because they were bad—and even his fans knew they were bad—but because he’d lost the sweet, naive charm that had made him so lovable. Sonny no longer wanted to be Sonny the klutz. He wanted to be Sonny the smoothie, too, down to the Hollywood tan, the nail gloss, the fancy clothes. He wanted to get the girl. His ego demanded it. The box office demise of his grand comic history of organized crime, Moider, Inc., which he wrote, directed, and played five roles in, finished him as a filmmaker. I never saw it. Like most of America, I had stopped going to Sonny Day movies by then.

  Nobody wanted to work with him after that. He was arrogant and difficult. He hosted his own short-lived TV variety show, and an even shorter-lived syndicated talk show. He became a regular for a while on The Hollywood Squares, always smoking a big cigar and wearing an obnoxious leer. He popped up on Laugh-In, dressed like Spanky McFarland. He did a solo act in Las Vegas and grew into more and more of a monster. One night in Vegas he jumped off the stage and punched some guy who was heckling him. They settled out of court. Another time someone parked their car in his space at a TV studio and Sonny emptied a loaded revolver into it. He became an ugly kind of celebrity, the kind who thinks he can get away with anything. He clashed constantly with the press, which got even by reporting his stormy personal life in gleeful detail. In the mid-sixties he divorced his first wife, actress Connie Morgan, so he could marry Tracy St. Claire, a starlet barely out of her teens. She soon became an international film star. And promptly dumped Sonny. What little press Sonny got after that was mostly due to his daughter, Wanda, a model, an actress, and briefly, a singer, thanks to her hit bossa nova version of “Night and Day.” Wanda appeared nude in a Roger Vadim film and in Playboy. Sonny called her a “slut” in the Enquirer, denied it, sued, and lost. Then she went on the Tonight show and told America she’d taken LSD more than a hundred times. She married a rock star and got her ankle tattooed, then she moved in with a member of the Black Panthers. Wanda was a wild and crazy gal. Seriously crazy. There were a couple of botched suicide attempts. When my agent called, Wanda had been out of the public eye for several years. Sonny had been getting less and less attention himself, other than for the odd celebrity roast, until a few months before, when it was revealed he’d checked into the Betty Ford Clinic. Turned out he’d been addicted to liquor and pills for a long time. Now he was on the road back.

  “They say he’s really picked himself up off the floor,” my agent assured me. “He’s supposed to be a changed man.”

  “Think he’s looking to stick it to Gabe?”

  She chuckled devilishly. “I’d say it’s an excellent possibility.”

  “He’ll be candid about the fight?”

  “It’s in his contract. Face it, Day has no career right now. An honest book will get him right back on the circuit—Carson, Donahue. Look what it did for Sid Caesar. He even has his own shape-up tape now. What do you think, Hoagy? Shall I tell them you’re interested?”

  “What made you think of me?”

  “He wants someone serious and distinguished.”

  “Like I said, what made you think of me?”

  “Stop it, Hoagy. Want to meet him?”

  “I don’t think so. I’m no ghostwriter.”

  “I know. But this might be just the thing to get you started really writing again. It’ll get you out of the house, give you some focus. And it won’t be hard work. All you have to do is sit by his pool for a couple of months with a tape recorder. You can even leave your name off. What do you think?”

  I wavered. Sonny Day wanted America’s sympathy and understanding. Sonny Day wanted to be loved again. I wasn’t sure I wanted to help him. He was pretty much my idea of a pig. I also wasn’t so sure I wanted to be a ghost. Ignore the blurbs on the book jackets—there’s no such thing as an honest memoir. There’s only the celebrity subject’s own memory, and while memory doesn’t exactly lie, it does preserve, protect, and defend against all painful truths. The ghost is brought in to make the celebrity’s writing style, anecdotes, and various uplifting personal revelations seem candid and authentic, even if they aren’t. The ghost also has to make the celebrity feel good about the book so that he or she or it will go on tour to promote it and the publisher will have some hope of breaking even on its seven-figure investment. I’d always equated ghosting with prostate trouble—I never thought it would happen to me. I wasn’t even sure I could pull it off. I’m not very good with people. I became a writer so I wouldn’t have to be around them. I’m also not very good at telling my ego to go on vacation. Actually, I tell it just fine, but it refuses to listen to me.

  But it wasn’t like I had much of a choice. I was on a first-name basis with the Ty-D-Bol man. I was desperate. So I told my agent it was okay to send Sonny a copy of Our Family Enterprise. She said she’d messenger it right over to the Essex House. Sonny was in town to roast Mickey Rooney.

  “What could it hurt?” she said.

  “What could it hurt?” I agreed.

  CHAPTER TWO

  LULU AND I FLEW OUT to L.A. three days later. We rode first class. No matter what Sonny’s financial situation was like, he always went first class. Lulu even got her own seat next to me, though she had to stay in her carrier. It wasn’t much of a flight. The food was gluey, the stewardess ornery. Clouds covered t
he entire Midwest. Flying just doesn’t seem as exciting as it used to be. But then nothing in the world does, except maybe baseball.

  I spent most of the flight reading You Are the One, a gossipy, unauthorized biography of “those fun-loving, swinging partners who kept the fifties laughing.” It had been written in the late sixties and was filled with the ego clashes, feuds, and jealousy that went on between Gabe and Sonny. There were lots of stories about money and how they blew it. Like how they went out and bought matching red Cadillac convertibles with their first big money—and paid for them with ten-dollar bills. Like how Sonny owned as many as five hundred pairs of shoes at a time and gave them away as soon as he’d worn each pair once. Mostly, I was interested in the reason the writer gave for The Fight. His theory was that Sonny, who was a compulsive gambler, owed somebody a lot of money and used the team as a kind of promissory note—forcing Gabe to work with him at a mob-owned Las Vegas casino for no money or be blackballed.

  That didn’t sound right to me. Maybe something like that had happened, but I didn’t think it was why they fought. For one thing, that sort of dealing goes on all the time in entertainment business. Merilee told me stories about Broadway you wouldn’t believe. Partners wouldn’t roll around on the rug at Chasen’s over something like that.

  The other reason I didn’t think it was true was that Sonny wouldn’t be coming forward now with what actually was true.

  I had a job ahead of me. It wasn’t a particularly dignified one, but if I didn’t do it well, I’d have to start giving serious thought to dental school. I needed to do more than just string together Sonny’s funniest anecdotes. I needed to humanize him. That meant understanding him. And that meant getting him to really open up to me. There was the job. Still, the more I got used to the idea the more I believed I could make Sonny Day’s book into something special. I was, after all, no ordinary ghost.

  Like I said, my ego wears earplugs.

  Big Vic was waiting for me at the airport, wearing a windbreaker and a Dodger cap and holding a piece of cardboard that said “HOAG” on it, just in case I didn’t recognize him.

  “Sonny’s at the therapist,” he told me, taking Lulu’s carrier. She growled softly. “Said he’ll be back by lunchtime. Give you a chance to get settled.”

  We took the long moving sidewalk to the baggage claim area.

  “So how long have you worked for Sonny?” I asked him.

  “I’ve been with him eleven years now.” Vic spoke in a droning monotone, as if he were reciting. “He followed me when I played ball at UCLA and read about how I enlisted in the Marines instead of playing pro ball. There was an article in the Times about me when I got back. He called me up and offered me a job. See, I got hurt over in Nam. I have a plate in my head.”

  “Bother you much?”

  “Occasional headaches. On windy days I can pick up the Super Station.”

  I looked at him blankly.

  “Sonny’s joke,” he explained.

  “Of course.”

  “You make it over there, Hoag?”

  “No, I was against it, actually.”

  “Me, too.”

  “Then why did you join the Marines?”

  “To finish it,” he said simply.

  I got my suitcases and, with some embarrassment, the two cases of the only food in the world Lulu will eat—9 Lives Mackerel Dinner for cats and very, very strange dogs. A gray Lincoln stretch limo with personalized plates that said “THE ONE” was parked at curbside. A ticket fluttered on the windshield. Vic pocketed it and put the stuff in the trunk. I got in front with him.

  The L.A. airport had been redesigned for the Olympics, seemingly by an architect who had cut his teeth on ant farms. But it was a lot easier getting out than it used to be. Vic had no problems maneuvering his way to the San Diego Freeway, his big, football-scarred mitts planted firmly on the wheel, his massive shoulders squared. We headed north. It was the best kind of day they can have in L.A. There had been some rain, and then the wind had blown the clouds and smog out to sea. Now the sky was bright blue and it was so clear I could see the snow on Mount Baldy. The sun was warm and everything looked clean and shiny and new.

  I rolled down my window. “Mind if I let Lulu out of her carrier?”

  “Go right ahead.”

  I opened the carrier door. She ambled out happily, planted her back paws firmly in my groin, and stood up so she could stick her big black nose out the window.

  “So you’re what they call a bodyguard?” I asked, to say something.

  “I do whatever he needs me to do. I drive. Run errands. Keep track of his appointments. And yeah, security. Course, Sonny doesn’t go out that much in public anymore. It isn’t worth it for him. He gets pestered too much. He needs a controlled environment. He stays in most nights now. He likes to read self-help books. He’s a big fan of that Leo Buscaglia. Or we rent movies from the video places. Paul Muni is his favorite. John Garfield, Jimmy Cagney …”

  “How about his own movies, the Knight and Day movies? Does he ever watch those?”

  “Never. He has no interest in them. Or the past. He doesn’t see his old friends, either. He used to entertain a lot. You know, dinner parties. The Dean Martins used to come by. Sammy and Altovese. The Jack Webbs. Jennings Lang. Sonny doesn’t see any of them anymore. Connie, his ex-wife, drops by once in a while. That’s it. He’s kind of a recluse now, I guess you could say. And I’ll tell you something, he’s a heckuva lot more fun to be around now than he was before, when he was drinking and popping pills.”

  “What was he like then?”

  Vic shrugged. “Take your pick—depressed, sentimental, suicidal, nasty, violent. He threw tantrums. A couple of times I had to belt him or he’d have hurt somebody. Most nights he’d drink his way through all of his different moods, then he’d pass out. I’d carry him to bed. Some nights he’d get hyped up and try to slip out the back door on me, take a car out god knows where. It got so I had to take off the distributor caps every night. It broke me up inside to see what he was doing to himself. See, I’m an orphan. I owe that man a lot. No, it’s more than that. I love him like a father. You know where I’m coming from?”

  “Fully.”

  “Sonny’s a gifted man, real proud, real insecure. Things are a lot better with him now. He takes care of himself. We work out together. Run. Swim. Eat right. I give him a rub. We have a lot more fun now.” He glanced over at me, then back at the road. “Listen, I think this book is a good thing for him. But you better not mess him up.”

  “Me? How?”

  “You drink, don’t you?”

  “No more than any other failed writer.”

  “Well, don’t try to get him started again. It’s been a tough, hard road for him. He gets knocked off of it, I’ll be very upset. Understand?”

  “Yes, I do, Vic. And I appreciate your candor.”

  Vic got off the freeway at Sunset and followed its winding path into Beverly Hills, where it wasn’t winter. Lawns were green. Flowers bloomed. The tops of the Mercedes 450SLs were down. Lulu kept her nose out the window. She seemed to like the smell of Beverly Hills. She’s always had pretty high-class taste for somebody who likes to eat canned mackerel.

  “So you live with Sonny?” I asked.

  “I have a room downstairs, TV, bath, everything. There’s also Maria, the housekeeper. A secretary comes in part-time. So does the gardener. Of course, Wanda’s living with us right now, too.”

  That was news. The way I remembered it, father and daughter couldn’t stand one another.

  “She is?”

  “Yeah, they’re getting along much better. Boy, they used to have some fights. She was a real wild kid in the old days, I guess. That’s before I came along. When she was an actress. Remember the scene in that French movie Paradise when she sneaks into the count’s bed in the middle of the night, stark naked, and starts humping him, and he wakes up and doesn’t know what—”

  “I remember it, yeah.”

  “
In my opinion, that’s just about the most erotic scene in motion picture history.” He said it respectfully.

  “What is she doing now?”

  “Studying for her real estate license.”

  Vic turned off Sunset at Canon, took that to Benedict Canyon, and started climbing. The road got narrower the farther up we went—and bumpier when we passed out of the Beverly Hills city limits.

  “I think you’ll like Wanda,” Vic droned on. “We’ve had some good talks. She’s been through a lot herself. She was institutionalized a couple of times, you know.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “But she’s got a pretty solid sense of where she’s at now. She’s pushing forty, after all. She’s a survivor. She and Sonny are a lot alike. At least, that’s my opinion.”