Hoag: That’s where you got your stage name?
Day: True story. Half the people in the neighborhood thought we were named Day anyway. It was a long narrow place. Movie magazines, comics on one wall. Cigar stand. Candy. And he had a soda fountain in there, too. Did egg creams, malteds, coffee and sinkers. Mel and me both worked there after school and on weekends. That’s how I got the short-order routine Gabe and I used in Jerks. Mel and I did it as kids. You know, one guy crouches behind the other and sticks his arms out, and the guy in front is waiting on customers, only it’s not his hands he’s using, so he keeps knocking everybody’s coffee over.
Hoag: We used to imitate that in the school cafeteria.
Day: You watched my movies?
Hoag: I loved your movies.
Day: I didn’t know that. Gee, now I think less of you. (laughs) Mel and I were always fooling around like that to entertain ourselves. Mel, see, was my first partner. My best partner.
Hoag: What do you mean by best? Most talented?
Day: I guess.
Hoag: That’s not good enough.
Day: (long silence) There was real deep love and trust between us. I guess that’s what I mean. Deep down, I was always looking for that from Gabe. And it wasn’t there.
Hoag: Excellent. That’s the kind of answer I’m looking for.
Day: Do I get a cookie?
Hoag: Did you have friends?
Day: Friends? Pally, I had a gang. Bed-Sty was a tough neighborhood—half Jewish, half black. We used to beat the crap out of each other. Of course, nobody had guns or knives in those days. Just your fists. And your feet. You had to be in a gang, to protect each other. I went to Boys High, you know. It was a badge of honor graduating from Boys High with all your teeth. Yeah, I got in plenty of fights. Won some of them, too. I didn’t get pushed around by nobody. That’s also where I learned to lip.
Hoag: Lip?
Day: When I was maybe twelve this big black kid used to wait on the corner every morning to beat the crap outta me on my way to school. “Hey, Jew boy,” he’d say, “what makes you so fat?” And I’d say, “Eating your momma’s pussy.” Subtle stuff like that. Laughter was a weapon in the old neighborhood. As long as you’re lipping, you’re not punching. That’s how come so many slum kids got to be good at stand-up comedy. Kept ’em alive.
Hoag: Did your gang have a name?
Day: Yeah, the Seetags. That’s Gates spelled backwards, with an extra e because it sounded better.
Hoag: Did you have jackets?
Day: What do you think this was, Park Avenue? We made it to Park Avenue, though. You know who was in that gang? Aside from me and Mel, there was Harry Selwyn, who became chief of neurosurgery at Mount Sinai. Harry’s brother Nathan, who’s a violinist with the New York Philharmonic. Izzy Sapperstein, Dizzy Izzy, who was captain of the Long Island University basketball team. And Heshie Roth. Heshie was the brightest of all of us, and the only one who got in any real trouble. His old man was hooked up with the Jewish mob on the Lower East Side, with Meyer Lansky Heshie kinda worked part-time in the family business. He got himself nailed for being part of some extortion racket in the garment district. But they greased a few palms and got him off. Took good care of him, too, because he kept his mouth shut. Put him through law school. Made sure he passed the state bar exam.
Hoag: Whatever happened to him? A guy like that?
Day: Heshie? He became my manager. Gabe and mine’s. His associations came in handy, too. The clubs were all mob-run. And he got us into Vegas early on. We were among the first. He still handles me. Two kids from the old neighborhood.
Hoag: I’d love to talk to him.
Day: Absolutely. Heshie’s the top entertainment lawyer in the country. Got an empire. His name is Harmon Wright now.
Hoag: The Harmon Wright Agency? You’re kidding.
Day: True story.
Hoag: But I’m an HWA client myself—in the New York office.
Day: So he’ll have to be nice to you.
Hoag: I didn’t know he personally represented anyone anymore.
Day: He doesn’t represent anyone. He represents Sonny Day. Hey, Maria made us a chicken salad. Let’s take a break, huh? We can eat outside, read the paper. Unless you’d rather keep working … boss.
(end tape)
(Tape #2 with Sonny Day. Recorded in his study, February 15.)
Hoag: We were talking about your childhood yesterday. So far, it seems relatively …
Day: Happy? I was just like any other kid in the neighborhood. But that was before the Depression.
Hoag: What happened then?
Day: Loss and shame, pally. Unblocking it has been a big part of my therapy. My doctors tell me a lot of my problems—my insecurities, my fears—they date from this period of my life. For years I couldn’t face it at all. Didn’t mention it to nobody, except Connie. It still ain’t easy.
Hoag: I understand. And I want to remind you I’m not a reporter, I’m here to help you tell your own story as honestly as possible.
Day: I appreciate you saying that. And I trust you. At least, I think I do. I don’t really know you … (silence)
Hoag: This was when?
Day: It was 1933, ’34. It was before I was Bar Mitzvah. I know because my old man was falling down drunk at my Bar Mitzvah. I never went near a shul after that. Haven’t been inside one in fifty years. True story.
Hoag: Did he drink before that?
Day: Not a drop. Losing the store did it. That damn store was his dream. When it went under, he broke inside. Started to drink. He got angry, bitter. Beat up on the old lady, beat up on me and Mel, too. When I began to drink too much, when things were going bad for me and I started to lash out at people I loved, I thought of my old man a lot. I thought—I’m just like him. It terrified me. It made me sick. There was this pool hall on the corner of Gates and Sumner. Nice Jewish boys were always told to stay away from it. Bums hang around there, my father had always told me. I’ll never forget the day I walked by there and looked in and saw the bums drinking beer and shooting pool in the middle of the day, and one of those bums was my old man.
Hoag: How did you feel?
Day: It was a shonda. I was ashamed.
Hoag: Did he work?
Day: No.
Hoag: How did you get by?
Day: My mother. She was the hero. She stuck by him. She kept the family together. Never complained. Took in wash. Ironed. She worked for a time as a housekeeper for a rich family on Central Park West. One year they gave her an old hand-me-down squirrel coat. It was real ratty. She knew it—her old man was a furrier, remember. But she wore that damn coat, and she wore it proudly. I swore to her someday I’d buy her the most beautiful sable coat in New York. And I did, with the first dough I made.
Hoag: I thought you bought a red Cadillac convertible with your first big money.
Day: That story’s a lie! I bought my mother a sable coat. Ten thou if it was a dime. The old man was dead by then. Died when I was in the service, a shriveled old man. Forty-five years old. You know, I wanted to make a movie about my mother after Gabe and I … when I was on my own. You’d think after all the money I made for those sonsabitches—They told me no. It was too real. What the hell does that mean?
Hoag: She supported the family?
Day: We supported the family. Mel worked after school at a grocery store. I sold papers, shined shoes. Lots of shoes.
Hoag: Is that why you always give away your shoes after you break them in?
Day: You work a rag over so many crummy, cracked old shoes, worn-out shoes—some guy spits on your head for a lousy nickel. … I like new shoes. Can’t help it. What size do you wear?
Hoag: Meanwhile, your father drank all day at the pool hall?
Day: No, when it was cold out he drank all day at the Luxor Baths on Graham Street. He’d sit in the steam playing pinochle, drinking buckets of beer and schnapps. It was one of those old-time places where the attendants beat you with the eucalyptus leav
es. I used to have to go fetch him and bring him home. The smell of that eucalyptus still … it still makes me sick. When I built this house there were eucalyptus trees all over the property. I had each and every one of them yanked out of the ground and carted out of here. You’ll find no eucalyptus on this property. Maybe, someday, I’ll be strong enough to handle the smell …
Hoag: Did you know then what you wanted to be in life?
Day: Somebody who … somebody else. Hoagy, I … I—I can’t talk about this anymore. Can we … ?
Hoag: I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you cry. You done good. C’mon, I’ll buy you a juice.
(end tape)
(Tape #3 with Sonny Day. Recorded in his study, February 16.)
Day: You got good color today. Getting rid of your New York pallor. You also look … different. Why is that? I got it—you shaved off your mustache! That’s it!
Hoag: Got in the way of my tan. (silence) What do you think?
Day: You look young.
Hoag: I’m not. I was walking down Columbus Avenue the other day, all of those yushies rushing by me, fresh, eager—
Day: What’s a yushie?
Hoag: Young urban shithead. Anyway, it hit me that I’m not one of them. I’m too old to qualify.
Day: And how did you feel?
Hoag: I asked my feelings to get lost a while ago.
Day: And?
Hoag: And they did.
Day: Have you thought about finding them?
Hoag: I thought I was the one doing the interviewing.
Day: You forget, I used to have my own talk show. Not that I was a threat to Carson. Or Joey Bishop.
Hoag: How were you doing in school through all of this with your father?
Day: I did okay. I had my buddies. I was pretty bright.
Hoag: Did you know you wanted to be a comic?
Day: I wasn’t a class-clown type. Too afraid of the teacher, I guess. I liked math and science. Mel, he was always the talented one. A fine trumpet player. By the time I was ready to take up an instrument, there was no money left for me.
Hoag: So how did you get into performing?
Day: The Catskills, pally. That’s how we all got started. Mel played trumpet in the dance band every summer up at Pine Tree Manor. All the resort hotels had dance bands—Kutcher’s, Avon Lodge, Vacationland, the Parkston. Comics, too. These old-timers who’d been in burlesque since the year 3. Mel got me work up there as a busboy the summer of ’38, I think. Yeah, I was sixteen. Got me out of the city and away from the old man. They had a lake there, rowboats. I set up tables, cleared ’em. That first summer I got up at five every morning to fresh-squeeze orange juice for three hundred people. My fingers are still wrinkled. All of us lived up in the attic of the main building. Twelve of us to a room. The girls were in the rooms right across the hall. They worked as chambermaids and mothers’ helpers. Lots of hanky-panky went on. Not me, of course. I was still very heavy then, real shy with girls. But I had a good time up there. I was with Mel.
Hoag: How did you get started performing?
Day: I fell into it. (silence) That’s a joke.
Hoag: Tell me about it.
Day: Okay. True story. Like I said, they had these lousy comics up there. The guy at the Pine Tree was named Frankie Faye. Real class—loud plaid jacket, accordion, bad Al Jolson imitation, flop sweat by the gallon, Jack Carter is Ricardo Montalban next to this guy, okay? So one night he’s up there on stage dying. I mean, if anyone in the audience has a loaded gun, the man’s long gone. I’m still clearing my tables and bringing out the desserts during his act. I’m carrying—get this—a tray with twelve orders of strawberry, cream pie on it. True story. So I’m on my way to my table … big tray on my hand …I’m right smack-dab in the middle of the dining room—and guess what?—somebody left a fork on the floor. You know what a header is, Hoagy? Well, I took the most beautiful header you ever saw. Varoooom—up in the air I went. And bam—I went down … dishes, silverware, and twelve orders of strawberry cream pie all over me. Well, this stops Frankie’s act cold. It’s also the only laughter that’s been heard in the room all season. Now, dumb he’s not. He milks it. He starts making fun of what a big fat klutz I am. I’m sitting there on the floor with this shit all over me, red-faced, and he’s going, “Hey, Sonny. You oughta be in the ballet. You’d look great in a tutu. Only you’d need a three-three.” The audience is eating it up. The biggest laughs Frankie’s gotten since the McKinley administration. He won’t let me go. For five minutes I gotta take it. It was humiliating. Anyway, after the show he finds me in the kitchen. I start to apologize, and before I can say a word, he slips me a coupla bucks and asks me if I’d mind taking a fall like that every night in the middle of his act. So I said okay.
Hoag: Even though it was humiliating?
Day: It ain’t humiliating if you’re getting paid for it. So every night I’d come through with a big tray, and he’d say, “Hey, Sonny, what kind of pie is that?” or “‘Hey, Sonny, what time is it?” and I’d take a header and he’d make fun of me. That’s how I got started in show business. I was Frankie Faye’s stooge. How I got my nickname, too—Sonny. Fit together with Day pretty good. Sonny Day.
Hoag: You were how old?
Day: Sixteen. Now, while this was happening, Mel and me were still doing our old routines together for fun. We used to do ’em up in the room to keep the other boys entertained. Mel was the straight man. I was the clumsy kid brother. Just like real life. We did our old short-order routine. A dentist’s chair routine. And some new stuff we picked up around Pine Tree. We did one where Mel’s this very high-toned guest with a big cigar and I’m this nervous new waiter trying to light it for him, only I end up lighting it in the middle instead of at the tip. Jerry Lewis stole that from us. All he did was make it more physical. I guess if I had a nine-inch jaw span, I’d make everything more physical, too. He was always on roller skates, throwing cream pies. Did you know I never threw a pie? Ever?
Hoag: What about in Suburbia? At the wedding party when the punch got spiked and Gabe said, “Let me have it.”
Day: Except in Suburbia. And that wasn’t me. That was the gag.
Hoag: What’s the difference?
Day: The script called for it.
Hoag: That’s a genuine bullshit answer, Sonny. You appeared in a movie in which you threw a pie. Fact. Don’t jerk me around, okay? This isn’t a fan magazine piece.
Day: You’re right. I apologize. I’ve made that statement so many times through the years I’ve started to believe it myself. Forget I said anything about pies.
Hoag: It’s struck from the record.
Day: Where was I? Oh, yeah, me and Mel. We did another routine where I’m afraid to ask this pretty girl to dance, so he shows me how, with me playing the girl. Remember the scene in Ship to Shore where I don’t have the nerve to ask Lois Maxwell to dance, so I go back to my stateroom and dance with an invisible girl? It still makes people cry, that scene. It was the old Pine Tree routine Mel and me did. Anyway, the social director at Pine Tree was this little putz named Len Fine. He liked Mel and he thought I was funny stooging for Frankie. So he started letting us tummel after lunch in front of the guests. No pay. Nothing formal. If people wanted to ignore you, they could. And they did. Then one night we got our big break—Frankie’s car broke down on the way up from the city. So Mr. Fine put up a sign and suddenly it was the annual New Talent Night at Pine Tree Manor. We billed ourselves as Day to Day. And on we went after dinner, knees knocking.
Hoag: Did you bring down the house?
Day: Yeah. Around us. We bombed, pally. Baby, were we terrible. Total amateurs. I mean, we actually giggled at our own material. See, there’s a big difference between being funny in front of your friends and being funny in front of a roomful of strangers. They don’t already know you, or like you. Half of ’em don’t even want to like you. So you gotta make ’em. That means every little thing you do up there has to work for you. You can’t have no weak spots or you�
�ll lose ’em. Standup comedy is just like being in a prize fight. One mistake and—pow—you’re flat on the canvas. We grew up a lot that night. We learned you gotta throw stuff out, replace it with better stuff, polish it, polish it again, work on your pacing, your delivery, your mannerisms. It’s a performance up there, and you’re a performer. You’re not you. You’ve got to find your stage personality, your—
Hoag: Your mask?
Day: Exactly. And once you put it on, you don’t take it off. That’s harder than it sounds, especially when your material is bombing. The temptation then is to break proscenium, wink at the audience, and tell ’em, “Hey, that shit I just did? That ain’t me.” Watch those kids on Saturday Night Live. They do that all the time—disown their material. Or get dirty, the easy way out. Professional comedy is very hard work. But you never let the audience see the work. If you do …
Hoag: Then you’re Frankie Faye.
Day: You’re catching on. Anyway, we bombed that first night. But Mr. Fine, he saw something. He encouraged us to keep at it over the winter. And we did. We added some new stuff. Refined it. By the next summer our routines were pretty funny for a couple of kids who didn’t know what the hell we was doing. We were good. We didn’t know how good, though, until one night the social director of Vacationland, a fellow named Don Appel, caught our act and offered us fifty dollars a week to perform there. That was good money in those days. We went to Mr. Fine and told him he’d have to match it or we’d be moving on. He matched it.
Hoag: Did you like getting laughs? Did you like the attention?
Day: It beat being a busboy or a shine. It was fun, sure. People came up to us. Patted us on the back. Told us to look ’em up if we was ever interested in getting into plumbing fixtures.
Hoag: Did you know this was what you wanted to do with your life?
Day: No, absolutely not. Mel was going to City College, saving up to go to dental school. Me, I wasn’t old enough to think about anything but my face clearing up. We were a couple of kids. We were having fun. There were a lot of kids up there like us—Red Buttons was doing stand-up then at the Parkston, Sid Caesar was at Vacationland, playing the saxophone. Mel Brooks was up there. He was from Brooklyn. A real nudnick. A pest.
The Man Who Died Laughing Page 5