Flying Funny: My Life without a Net

by Dudley Riggs

  It started to rain, and the road was getting slippery. On one curve I could see the trailer section growing larger in my side mirror as the heavier end tried to catch up and pass the tractor end. I started to brake, but luckily I accidently hit the gas, which, like magic, straightened the whole unit, and I made the curve.

  That could have been fatal, I thought. This trip could be my last. This had been a whole series of my lasts. If I make a last mistake, I could be responsible for the deaths of two humans and a lot of exotic endangered wildlife.

  After five hours of steady white-knuckle travel, I saw the sign for Watson’s Lake Ferry Crossing.

  Ta-da! I made it!

  It was almost eleven o’clock. Such a great feeling. I felt like taking a bow.

  But as I made it down toward the lake, the bigger trucks were passing me, their drivers looking angry as they rushed to get a place in the line. All the trucks that passed me were now parked in a single file on a fifteen-foot-wide roadbed that had been bulldozed through the very dense forest sloping down to the L-shaped ferry landing. A Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer, in full uniform and with a flashlight and clipboard, was telling each new arrival what was required. He pointed across the river and yelled:

  “The only way to get off the ferry over there is to drive straight off. That means you have to back your semi up onto the ferry now.” There was a collective groan as he pointed toward the boat. “I know it’s real narrow, but you guys are all first-class drivers or you wouldn’t be here, right?“

  Not quite right.

  I started to argue with myself. What to do? I’m in deep trouble. No way can I back this truck onto that boat. I haven’t ever been able to back it up at all. I’ll go over the side, sink in the lake, and never be seen again. The show will fold, and if I am ever seen again, it will be in some Canadian jail for impersonating a truck driver.

  Then I had a change of trouble.

  The trucks were starting to move again, and I would soon be first in line.

  Some drivers were quarrelsome, yelling to get the line moving, eager to beat the midnight deadline. The truck behind my Mack was a huge Peterbilt loaded with giant logs. Its driver, also huge, was dressed in black studded leather and a cap with the name “Skagg” embroidered on the visor. He was telling his buddy, “Mack’s not a real truck.” He acted offended. “That sissy rig shouldn’t even be in the company of serious work trucks.”

  He was looking directly at me. He knew that I could hear him.

  So it looked like he wanted to hold court and have a little fun on my tab. He gestured toward me, nodded to the other drivers, said something under his breath, and they all laughed.

  Damn! After such a fun trip, now I get to meet the rough trade. I’m up to my nose in trouble. What to do?

  My only thought: “Don’t sing.”

  I took a deep breath and walked back past my trailer toward the men and said, “Hi there.”

  Skagg just stared. I walked closer and said, “How long have you been driving truck?”

  “Whaat?” His face flushed up.

  The other drivers moved in closer, mumbling confusion and speculation, clearly hoping to see some action.

  Now I really was in trouble.

  I found my deepest and loudest voice. “HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN DRIVING TRUCK?”

  “Sixteen years, not that it’s any of your damned business!”

  “Well, sir,” I said in a very quiet voice, “I have been driving this truck for only five hours, and that is the total of my truck-driving experience. I really don’t know how to drive it, and I absolutely know that I will not be able to back it down that narrow gangway. I will not be able to get on that ferry and that ferry is going to go soon.”

  What’d he say? What’s going on? Everybody was edging for a fight or laughing at me.

  I made a loud announcement: “I do not know how to back up this truck!”

  I moved up to Skagg.

  “So I think you should do us both a big favor and back my truck onto the ferry. I’m next, and if I don’t get on . . . none of you get on.”

  I took three steps back, and for some unknown reason, slapped the side curtain for emphasis.

  This woke the sleeping cats.

  Raja did a spitting hiss and lunged against the bars, shaking the cage. That caused the leopards to answer the growls. I slapped other cage covers until King, the big male lion, woke up his pride and decided to drown out the other cats. Soon all four breeds of jungle cats were drowning out the jeering laughter. Things had changed.

  Wild jungle cats were blocking their semis.

  Skagg didn’t say a word. He pushed past me, climbed aboard my Mack, fired up the engine, gave a blast on the air horns, and backed the truck onto the ferry.

  Four hundred uneventful miles later, Charlie was once again sober. We stopped at a truck stop, and he got cleaned up, bought a new shirt, and pointedly stayed away from the beer cooler. I turned over the keys only after we exchanged promises: I promised not to tell the boss about his drinking and the Hoy Toy Hotel. He promised not to tell the owner that I knew anything about driving a semi.

  We arrived in Saskatoon a day late and only a few dollars short. I wondered if I should go back to college, or maybe, change the act.

  12

  Change the Act?

  “This is not the circus anymore!”

  VAUDEVILLE DIES AGAIN!

  That was the headline I kept seeing as I was growing up. More vaudeville theaters were dropping the stage show and going to movie-only policies.

  The Riggs family had, out of financial necessity, always taken both vaudeville and circus engagements, trying to never have any downtime. When the work moved to fairs, festivals, and nightclubs, we followed the available work. The nightclub business was growing, hiring big bands and variety acts for supper-club stage productions. “Dining, Dancing, and an All-Star Stage Revue” read the ads.

  Even though I was in college, I kept calling the agents, looking for employment possibilities. I thought that nightclub revue would be a step up, The New Big Time. Vaudeville and circus were designed for the masses, to attract every class and “children of all ages.” Revue would be different. Revue venues served alcohol: children and prudes were banned; we could produce sophisticated entertainment for a sedate, literate audience. Revue was class!

  To meet the demands of this new market, The Riggs Brothers would have to change their act.

  “Change the act?” Doc responded to that profanity in disbelief.

  We had always had some comic patter in the acts, but we were still filling the stage with gymnastic apparatus and The Mighty Magic Trunk. I wanted the new act to be a “suitcase act” that could accept bookings anywhere. A modern act that could be booked on television. By the next year, I was telling agents that we had blended our circus act, our old vaudeville act, and added a fresh “talk” act. The Sacco Agency agreed to list us in their advertising and promised to wire a contract. Now I had to actually produce something that deserved to be called a revue.

  But two pantomime clowns do not a revue make.

  To live up to our new billing we needed to hire more talent. Doc brought in Paul Bornjorno, our old friend from the World’s Fair, a charming “little person,” who I remembered mostly because he was so notoriously popular with the ladies. He was built like a prizefighter, with a barrel chest, eighteen-inch biceps, and a high sense of style. It was Paul’s talent, charming manner, and easy smile that made him the center of attention, not his forty-two-inch height. Bornjorno did big illusions, such as “The Lady Is Turned into a Tiger,” a mostly silent presentation with big fanfare music. But he was at his best when he spoke to the audience, and people forgot his size and felt all the energy he brought to the room.

  I said I wanted to hire Marylyn Rice. Doc and Marylyn had been friends for years, though their close friendship had waned. Doc made it clear that I would have to be the one making the job offer. Because I was so keen on building a new act, I would
be in charge and responsible for payroll. Doc said, “I do not want to complicate old relationships if your revue idea flops.” (Thanks, Dad.)

  I was certain that Marylyn, the best all-around female variety talent I had ever met, was perfect casting and not just a woman to stand the act. When she entered the room, it was as if she brought the light. You could not not look at her. She had danced chorus, could do acrobatics, had a trained singing voice, and projected the kind of confidence that most women thought they weren’t supposed to have. Marylyn’s beauty, taste, and intelligence would make the act.

  And, of course, the Bernie Sailor Trio was more than the usual piano, bass, and drums. Fresh out of some Ivy school of music, they could play a wide repertory, classical to popular, but also enjoyed making up calypso songs and limericks from scratch. And they all could double in brass. With nine instruments, the perfect band for a variety revue.

  Paul and Doc were a little leery about what Paul called “class differences,” and they clearly resented the Trio’s educated authority. They were used to the circus, with its “departments” and the top-down pecking order. I wasn’t sure we could afford him, but Bernie accepted.

  He said that he loved variety but knew that things had to change. He was very protective of performers’ feelings and egos when he took me aside and asked, “How much of this act is cast in stone? I mean, can you change anything without throwing Doc and Paul into apoplexy?”

  I said I wasn’t familiar with apoplexy. I was worried that Bernie’s “new broom” attitude might make things worse, but he gently pressed on.

  “Don’t you think the audience is smart enough to imagine the setting and furniture just from the voice-over? You don’t have to have all those scene sets.”

  He was right, we were putting a lot of stage time and energy into the setting. “More is sometimes less,” he said. He was always saying things like that.

  Bernie had suggestions about how to drag our act out from under three generations of Riggs family tradition. Of course, not all of his ideas worked. But that didn’t really matter because Doc mellowed and stopped insisting that we only do “what had always worked.”

  We spent a lot of time talking about old comedy and what Bernie said might be called “new comedy” because it was less joke-dependent. He said that what he had learned in music had given him a greater respect for honesty and spontaneity in comedy.

  “Not everything has to be a joke. If you do a good honest character, the audience will give you time to develop the humor truthfully and spontaneously.”

  “Maybe you should tell Bernie to stick to what he knows and loves,” Paul said, knowing that we had all heard his sarcastic remark. I gave him what I thought was a cool-it look.

  Marylyn said she admired musicians who could pass musical ideas back and forth, taking and giving, creating new sounds seemingly without a lot of rules or rehearsal.

  “That’s one of the nice things about jazz. There are no mistakes in jazz. When I make a mistake I play it in; I repeat it and that becomes the new sound. We create new riffs on our mistakes, so I end with no regrets,” Bernie said with his best happy face.

  Paul was catty. “I, for one, love rehearsal. Missing this rehearsal would have been a big mistake. I would have missed this lecture.”

  That was the beginning of what became our big makeover.

  I started planning the New Riggs Revue. We would offer the acts as a “Crazy House” combination comedy and acrobatic act with our horizontal bar gymnastic act as the second turn. We billed it as Riggs & Riggs and The Crazy Carpenters.

  Doc had built what he called The Mighty Magic Trunk, a large steamer trunk on wheels. Props, costumes, wigs, and some fiery stage magic all came from this one black box in the center of the dance floor. Now we could combine circus and vaudeville in the big rooms, but the act wasn’t quite right. We added Paul’s magic tricks, my juggling, and Marylyn’s quick-change “transitions” routine. To support her characters, I added some mock radio bulletins and newspaper commentary, which became my signature shtick. The trunk made the fast move from a “newsroom” to a “bedroom” to an “operating room” or the “flight deck of an airliner” workable. Doc bragged, “Now in the blink of an eye, we can be anywhere!”

  I thought that we might be able to create a new sketch, one without a script, working a little Fliffus into the revue, if we could pool our ideas.

  “All of us are smarter than any one of us,” said Bernie.

  “While you pool all of that intelligence, you won’t want to read my mind,” said Paul.

  Doc’s vision sounded a lot like the old revue. “They play us in with ‘Galloping Comedians.’ We flood the stage with acrobatic energy and variety, then we surprise them with our quiet, hopefully thought-provoking, and funny little sketch. Then it fires up again with a shrill whistle blast from Paul as he circles the dance floor on roller skates. He’s shouting, ‘Extra, Extra, read all about it!’”

  (A dwarf on roller skates?)

  Paul said, “Ya, me on roller skates! I hand Dudley the paper, very formal, ‘Here’s tomorrow’s news, sir.’ Then you start making comments on headlines, but Doc snatches the paper, crosses the stage, and balances it on his nose. Then I roll back by and light it on fire with flash paper. Puff!”

  Amid all of this wild, physical movement, quick character impressions, and madcap acrobatics, we’d pause for the sketch, then action erupted again. Doc and Paul said that combining all of these talents showed our versatility and would keep the audience guessing.

  An engagement at the Chez Paree in Chicago was set for early summer, with a warm-up date at the Silver Frolics in Calumet City. In the meantime, Doc and Paul were still doing indoor circus dates for Gil Gray. Doc said they were working on props and wardrobe and that they would be ready by our first revue engagement. Their “sight act” pieces and short blackouts were to be woven into the revue lineup when they returned. They were working only on the traditional variety bits. “The ones that always work,” said Doc.

  I thought I could get a head start working on Fliffus ideas.

  Working with Bernie and Marylyn forced me to finally grow up. I was now the youngest member of the ensemble but expected to lead these seasoned performers through an untested production. I worked hard to maintain my excitement as we went into rehearsals, but I worried that I might be out of my depth.

  13

  Yes . . . Please!

  “Comedy is based on negation,” said Paul.

  “No. Comedy is based on truth,” countered Bernie.

  “Comedy is based on timing,” I said.

  Nothing from my past qualified me for this.

  The circus had rules, I was used to rules. The circus has a hierarchy that dictates clear instructions and expects that all orders will be followed exactly. The traditional circus is successful only because each of the departments has a person in charge who makes that department succeed. And all of the many departments come together to forge a successful, entertaining performance under the direction of the ringmaster.

  I told everyone to come to rehearsal with at least ten new ideas. “Everything that you think should be included in a big-time nightclub revue.”

  Doc, Paul, Marylyn, and I were from the circus. Bernie came from jazz. I’d added Robin Mack and Don Engels, “kids”—though they were probably just a few years older than I—from the local student theater crowd. All show-business people. People “with it” enough to know what was expected. I said, “This is a group think rehearsal. Just shout it out.”

  Everybody was smiling but nobody spoke. I said, “Don’t be shy!”

  Marylyn began to explain her idea for a scene and got quickly interrupted. Don was laughing at her. This happened a few more times before she lost her smile. Nothing at that moment was funny or even pleasant, so she just stopped. “What’s the use? This is not the circus. This thing of yours won’t work as a top-down system.”

  That got my attention.

  I was embarrassed. I t
hought, “I’m in charge! Why am I feeling like a schmuck?” I walked away, talking to myself (quietly) . . . “I hire smart, talented people. I hire them to be creative, then I kill their creativity? If I want their talent and ideas, I have to give them control, not some control, real control. To be the boss, in fact ‘I can’t be the boss.’”

  Circus tradition got eighty-sixed in the middle of my first rehearsal.

  I rolled out the blackboard and reminded the performers that I had asked them to show up today with ideas.

  “The goal of today is to collect ideas. Not to judge ideas. We need lots and lots of ideas. All ideas, even crazy things, improper things, nasty things. Ideas you can’t tell your mother. Nothing censored, everything gained.”

  Marylyn wrote down some of what I had just said and kept adding comments. Problem was, no one was listening or connecting to each other. Then came individual monologues. Each performer glommed onto an idea from the board, made some funny remarks, and erased the item. It was like sitting through an hour of auditions.

  Bernie and I did a demonstration of Word Jazz as a warm-up for Don and Robin, the new kids. They giggled. “Now we’re auditioning for them?” Bernie smiled.

  Don suggested “passing the talking stick,” something he learned in the Boy Scouts. Bernie liked cueing the next speaker by a touch, but that had a halting stop–go rhythm and wouldn’t work across a stage.

  “We know two-person riffing works . . . sometimes. But when you get everybody talking at once, interrupting, not knowing when to speak, it’s just a waste of time. Can we work on something else?” said Bernie.

  “Maybe we need a conductor . . . or a traffic cop,” I said.

  Marylyn laughed that great infectious laugh and said, “Let us think more . . . simply. We have a problem: how to control stop and go?” She paused, then said, “A visa, permission, a tollgate. No. A gatekeeper! And a password. Maybe all you need is a password.”