Funnymen

by Ted Heller

  So I say to Ziggy, “What the fuck do you care about Lenny Pearl? Just be yourself. He gives you eight minutes, take a week. He gives you a week, you take a decade. Do what you wanna do and the hell with him.”

  Yeah, it's all my fault. Mea fucking culpa.

  GLENN PETTIBON: Tony Freedman finally told Lenny that the Blissmans, Ziggy included, was a subpar act. This wasn't easy for Tony—he was the one who suggested they put them on. And Lenny was steaming . . . he was just irate. “So it's like it was years ago!” he was yelling. “The crowd used to rise like it was the National Anthem and walk out! Except now half of America is going to leave America!” Of course, half of America wasn't listening; The Viceroy Hour was not a popular show. But still . . .

  The show began and Billy sang a song and kidded around with Lenny, and Lenny did a few jokes and then brought out the Macy Twins, who sang a song. And now it's the Blissmans' turn. Lenny brought up how he knew the parents from his days in vaudeville and now they had “something resembling a child and they shtuck him into the act because no one else would have him.” Then he stepped aside and they were on the air.

  Ten seconds into the routine I realized: This isn't what they rehearsed! Tony Freedman was looking at the clock, praying this new material went under ten minutes. Billy Quinn had this mischievous glint in his eye. The only one there who didn't know something strange was going on was Lenny . . . because he'd never been to one single rehearsal! I even heard Lenny whisper to Tony, “Hey, what the hell were you worrying about? They're damn good.”

  Soon everything was in chaos. Ziggy was being Ziggy and the parents were rolling with it. I thought Tony Freedman was going to faint. There was no routine anymore—it was just Ziggy. Lenny whispered to Tony at one point, “Did he forget about the parents? This is the bit?”

  Eight minutes passed and this was when Lenny was supposed to come back on and talk to his guests. But Ziggy doesn't let him! He's joking around and when Lenny tries to wrest the mike away, Ziggy engaged in some funny wrestling. It was going over well with everyone . . . everyone but Lenny Pearl. I remember Ziggy said to him, “Hey, my folks said they knew you when you was nothin',” and Lenny said, “That's true. That was years and years ago.” And then Ziggy said, “No, they meant last week.”

  Tony Freedman signaled Billy Quinn to announce they were breaking for a commercial, but Ziggy wouldn't let him. He started joking around with Billy and while that was going on Lenny was trying to get a few words in edgewise. To no avail.

  Lenny was furious. He wasn't in control . . . this was a nightmare for him.

  Ziggy started clowning around with the Macy Twins and flirting with them. Everyone was going with it! Billy Quinn was, the Macys were . . . nobody did anything, nobody helped Lenny. There would be absolute hell to pay the next few weeks but while it was going on, seeing him shake and go red like that, well, it was kind of worth it.

  LENNY PEARL:I wasn't angry! I loved it! I ate it up! I thought it was a little unprofessional, yeah sure. But Lenny Pearl knows funny when he sees it.

  Let me tell you, though, there is a time and a place for everything. What they did, yes, it was humorous, but it was wrong. And I don't know what it was that held me back but I was going to wring that little fat bastard's neck on live radio and say, “Your real old man isn't this midget over here, it's some foreign Armenian magician your mother banged on the sly!”

  Now that would've been something, huh? You want unprofessional, that would've been it. That fat red son of a bitch!

  SALLY KLEIN: Everybody was calling and writing . . . they wanted Harry and Flo and Ziggy back on. NBC was deluged. But Lenny Pearl didn't want to invite them back.

  ARNIE LATCHKEY: Screwing around live on Lenny Pearl's Viceroy radio show was fantabulous publicity! It was the first time I'd ever heard of Ziggy Blissman. I pick up a Variety and there's this little article about all the mayhem some kid had caused on NBC. They ran a picture of him, his eyes bulging out in ten different locations. I examined the photograph carefully and I thought, Gee, this must be some sort of misprint.

  GLENN PETTIBON: I'd never seen Lenny angrier. He usually daubed about a half pound of pomade on his hair . . . this glop smelled like turpentine and peach brandy but it lasted about six hours. Well, when Tony was in Lenny's dressing room after the radio show, all the pomade was gone and Lenny's hair was just going everywhere. “He looks like a Jewish Medusa,” Billy said.

  But Tony Freedman wasn't dumb. He knew that there was going to be a lot of what today they would call “buzz” over this whole thing. So Tony had to do two things: keep Lenny from having a stroke, and try to convince him to get the Blissmans on again.

  “Never. Never. Never ever ever ever,” Lenny bellowed. “And if you ask me ever ever again, I will have you smoked, sliced, and eaten!”

  Over the next few days, though, it was in all the papers: Ziggy Blissman had made quite an impression. It was in Bud Hatch's column and Grayling Greene's . . . it really was everywhere! And then Viceroy's people told Lenny Pearl: Put them back on or we take you off.

  • • •

  DOMINICK MANGIAPANE [Lulu Fountain's (Vic's first wife) older brother]: I never liked Vic. I didn't like Vic when he cheated at marbles in the street and I still didn't like him when he hit it big.

  Yeah, I begrudge it to you that he was different with Lulu than with most other girls. See, there were two types of women with Vic Fountain: girls and broads. Lulu was for him a girl. But most of them was just broads.

  [He] sent flowers to Lulu when he returned [to Codport] and got her a nice hat with a kind of a fur trim. That really bowled her over. Lulu's first boyfriend was Vic Fountain. And her last.

  ARNIE LATCHKEY: People asked me for years and years what was it about Lulu that tickled Vic's fancy, and the definitive answer is: I have no idea. She wasn't a great beauty or a great cook and she wasn't particularly sweet. She wasn't great at anything except being very plain.

  But they were a handsome couple. Vic was strong, very tall, and dark. And Lulu was also dark. And very thin. So maybe any person who walks around with Vic—it doesn't matter if it's Esther Williams or Ethel Waters—it's a handsome couple. You sort of bathed in that glow.

  Cut to: Tenafly, New Jersey. Murray Katz calls us at a hotel in Tenafly; he knows the Lomax band's got a few dates free. He says, How'd you like to open for Fritz Devane in New Bedford? Now, Floyd hated Devane, the band hated Devane, I hated him. Most everyone did—he was probably the most unpopular–most popular singer of the twentieth century. But Floyd Lomax knew that old Fritz could pack 'em in. So onto the bus and up to New Bedford we go.

  Devane was really one of the most repulsive characters I ever came across, and that does include people I've met in show business. The man must have been allergic to soap and mouthwash—you walked into a big room and you breathed in, shuddered, and said, “Hey, was Fritz Devane here within the last twenty minutes?” Linda Darnell—maybe the most beautiful woman I've ever met in person—filmed a kissing scene with him for Dashing D'Artagnan, and after they yelled “cut,” it was right into the shower just trying to rub the Fritz off her pores. That must've been one long shower, believe you me.

  I admit it, the man could sing though. At one time. But after 1937, say, it was all coasting. By 1955 he was a living legend but not one single person could remember why.

  And you wanna talk cheap? Jack Benny had his ongoing skinflint gag going but Fritz Devane was so cheap that nobody could ever joke about it. One time he finds a parking space in New York on Broadway, pulls in and parks, puts a quarter in the meter because he didn't have any nickels on him. He goes into his tailor, gets back the socks he had mended, then gets back in the car. He waits twenty-eight minutes so he can get all his money's worth out of the parking meter. And when the needle points to zero and it clicks, then and only then does he proceed onward to the emergency room at Roosevelt Hospital so his grandson can receive treatment for a fractured skull.

  RAY FONTANA: It was a hot tick
et, Fritz Devane at the New Bedford Ritz. It was me, Tony Ferro, and my brothers Sal and Vic, who almost didn't go because he was involved in some three-day-long pool game at Kitty's Korner. Sal went into Kitty's and dragged him out by the ear. “You're going,” he said.

  It was a good show. The Lomax band did about forty minutes. Dick Fain sang a few tunes . . . I remember he did “Without a Song.” We were all the way in the back but even from there you could tell that Fain was in some kind of pain. He had eyes and cheekbones like they'd been hollowed out with a vacuum cleaner.

  Then Devane came on. Oh, how Vic used to worship him! Growing up and all. That was the voice, the style that really impressed him. Devane did “My Sunny Day Has Gone,” “Broken-Hearted and Blue,” and “Just One More Chance.” He made a few jokes about whales that someone had written for him because it was New Bedford. But he wasn't using up much gas, he was really loafing—he was so famous, it didn't matter. The crowd was in his pocket.

  TONY FERRO: We're in the parking lot outside the theater and it's nighttime and we're going to head back to Codport. “I got a pool game I could get back into,” Vic says.

  Sal said to him, “Just come home. Mamma don't like you staying up so late.”

  Vic says to him, “Hey, it's not like she's sitting up by the window till fiveA.M.waiting for me to come home.”

  “She is, Vic,” Sal says.

  Just then who do we see coming our way but the Grand Forks Golden Boy himself, Fritz Devane. He's next to this big fellow, like a bodyguard. Devane's got his trademark tweed racing cap on and a beige cashmere coat.

  “Hey, Vic, look,” Ray said. Jabbin' us with his elbow.

  Vic turns around and he sees him. His boyhood idol.

  “Go say hello,” Sal says. He was the oldest of all of us.

  “Nah,” Vic says.

  “C'mon. Go ahead.”

  Vic cleared his throat and called out, “Hey, Mr. Devane? Mr. Devane?” His voice squeaking like a thirteen-year-old boy.

  Devane's bodyguard said, “Get the hell away.”

  “Introduce yourself to Devane,” Sal said to Vic.

  Me, Sal, Vic, and Ray stop Devane and his guy in their tracks. There was a big fancy Studebaker Commander with white walls . . . that's where they was headed to.

  “Hey, Mr. Devane,” Vic says. “I'm a big fan of yours.” Vic sticks out his hand and Devane lets it die there, in the air. “I do some singing myself,” Vic says, his voice still squeaking.

  “Oh, really?” Devane says. “So does my Labrador.”

  “No, no. Really. I've sung in some bands. On the radio. In New York and Boston.”

  Devane says to his guy, “Billy, get this greaseball away from me. I'm going to have to wring my jacket out just from looking at him.”

  And now this Billy guy reaches into his jacket, like he's got a gun in there. Who knows if he had one? But he had that kind of flattened, squashed-in nose which made you think he did. So we backed off, and they got in the car and drove away.

  “That skinny famous fuck,” Sal says. Sal was tough. Nothing much impressed Sal.

  “I can't believe it,” Vic says. “That was Fritz Devane!”

  Sal got really mad. He grabs Vic and says, “Yeah, that was Fritz Devane and he just called you a greaseball! You shouldn't let nobody treat you like that!”

  “Goddamn stronzo,” Ray said.

  It took ten minutes to get Vic as mad as we were. But it worked. Man, did it work.

  We drove to the Grand Spouter Inn, figuring that was where Devane was staying. Vic was cursing him out the whole way. Sure enough, there's his Studebaker Commander in the parking lot. What a gorgeous car! It's two in the morning, no one around. We work the front door of the car open and pile in. Except Sal. Sal's working on the engine, me and Vic and Ray are doing everything we can inside the car itself. We redid that old Stu from the running boards up, everything but the rearview mirror. By 4:00A.M.it wasn't worth ten bucks. This hotel dick, an Irishman, comes up to us—out of nowhere—and says, “And what do you think you lads are doing?”

  Sal says to him, “We're from Codport . . . we work on the piers.”

  “Yeah?” the dick says . . . he's taking in what's left of the car.

  “Our dads work on the piers too,” Sal says.

  “This car belonged to Fritz Devane,” the dick says. Belonged.

  Vic says to him, “Fritz Devane called me a greaseball. To my face.”

  “He did, did he now?” Twirling his billy club, he told us: “My wife is a maid at this hotel. She cleaned Mr. Devane's room only this morning. Mr. Devane took out a ten-dollar bill and asked her, ‘Miss, do you like your job?’ My wife said, ‘I love my job, Mr. Devane.’ And then he said, ‘Well, then it seems you certainly won't be needing this ten dollars.’”

  The dick takes his billy club and crack! The rearview mirror was gone now too.

  GUY PUGLIA: We're shooting nine ball at Kitty's one night and this Greek guy I know comes waddling over and says, “You gotta check out this fella shooting pool.” Vic says, “Why? What's so special about him?” And Georgie K. says, “Oh, nothin'. Nothin's special if you don't think having sixteen fingers is something special.”

  PIP GRUNDY [guitarist]: I was once a short order cook in Council Bluffs, where I grew up. I didn't always make the right orders and they weren't the best eggs or sandwiches in town but I could serve ten people in a minute. I've always, whether it be as a chef, a musician, or a sculptor, tried to make my handicap work for me.

  Vic said, “Hey, I recognize you. You play guitar for Floyd Lomax's outfit.”

  He told me he'd sung with a few bands and I pricked up my ears. He told me that he and a few of his pals had recently given Fritz Devane's car a real going-over.

  “Admirable,” I told him.

  Vic told me he'd sung with the Don Leslie band. Well, I'd seen them perform and then I realized it: I'd seen him too. He started telling me about bouncing around from band to band and club to club, and I could tell that he was still quite hungry to sing. Some people, after they've had a taste of the limelight, it's as insidious as a narcotic. When I left I was glad. It was like marrying off a fat daughter.

  “You know,” I said to him, “I've heard Johnny Nelson is looking for a male vocal.”

  “The Nelson band . . . in Philly?” he asked me.

  I told him who to call. I believe it was Joe Gersh at MCA.

  GUY PUGLIA: When Vic called Joe Gersh, Gersh told him he'd heard him sing, he knew him from this band and that band and had seen him at the Ambassador. We borrowed Sal's car and drove down to Philly, Vic and me did. He'd sold his Buick 'cause he needed the spending money.

  I took in a few of Vic's suits to be pressed before we left—nope, you know, I ironed 'em myself—and Vic did the audition and got the job.

  RAY FONTANA: There it was: the Johnny Nelson Orchestra with Victor Fontaine, as he was then known, and who's opening for them? The Blissmans!

  You want irony? The first couple nights, Vic never caught the opening act.

  Lulu had seen them, though, and she told Vic they were ripping up the joint. “Those are three crazy Jews,” she said.

  SNUFFY DUBIN: I've heard a thousand stories about the first time Ziggy and Vic met. Two thousand maybe. [Columnist] Earl Wilson wrote they met at Handelman's in New York two years before they actually met! I remember Ziggy once had somebody ghostwrite something for him for Parade magazine, like an autobiographical thing. In that, Ziggy said he met Vic outside a church. No way that happened.

  Vic once told me he had no idea where or when he first met Ziggy. I believe it.

  MICKEY KNOTT [bandleader; drummer with Johnny Nelson's band]: Vic and I walked into the Hacienda [in Philadelphia] and the Blissmans were onstage. “I wanna see this, Mickey,” he said. “My girl told me they was funny.”

  So we looked at the act. Ziggy had a trumpet in his hands and was trying to play it. His mother was matching him note for note with that voice of hers. (Shit, thirty yea
rs later he was doing the same thing. I was on The Tonight Show guest-drumming with Milton DeLugg and the band, and Ziggy was going note for note with Ethel Merman.)

  “This is our opener, huh?” Vic said.

  “The Blissmans,” I told him. “The kid's a pisser but the parents are just hanging on.”

  Ziggy's mother then started to sing a song, some really corny number from about 1880. She's doing that and Ziggy goes into the audience, like he's trying to hide from that noise, which sounded like an air-raid siren inside your skull. And Ziggy is going under the table, standing on tables, spritzing himself with seltzer water. Then he comes over to Vic and me—we're way in the back, against the wall. And he looked up at Vic and Vic looks down at Ziggy—don't forget, Vic was one foot taller and about ten yards handsomer—and Ziggy's about to do something for a laugh, like maybe cut Vic's tie or step on his foot or jump into his arms. Vic muttered—real low so no one in the crowd could hear it—he said to him, “Don't even think about it, kid.”

  And Ziggy slunked [ sic] off and went back onto the stage.

  He did that thing he did at the end of his performances: he apologized and told everyone how sorry he was if he hurt anyone's feelings. Sentimental, syrupy, a total horseshit Vegas thing. But tonight he was just “off.” The second after he'd seen Vic. When he was making his way back to the stage, he stopped and turned two times to look back at Victor Fontaine. Two times. He could barely make the syrupy speech.

  He'd been thunderstruck, you could say. You know, I haven't ever thought of this until now . . . but you ever see Ben-Hur? You know when that mysterious shadow falls over Charlton Heston? In the boat and in the leper colony? It was really as dramatic as that.

  ARNIE LATCHKEY: So how, where, and when did I first formally meet Vic Fountain? Well, it was—as so many other great things aren't —in Camden, New Jersey, in 1930-blah-blah-blah, Year of Our Lord. The Lomax band was playing the Duplex. I'm going over some piddling business things with this terrifying brutish gent named Lou Manganese, who just so happens to be Al Pompiere's son-in-law. Now why Al Pompiere, who could have “persuaded” Casanova himself to come back from the dead to marry his daughter, let her marry this lowlands gorilla I don't know, but then again she wasn't the prettiest primate herself. So this King Kong in spats is telling me this and that and I'm agreeing with everything he said because the inspired notion had just struck me of keeping both my testicles inside their scrotum where they belonged.