by Ted Heller
The worse Vic's health got, the more she pushed him. A few months after his second stroke—and this one was not so tiny—she began dragging him around the country. A Night With Vic was the name of the show. At first he could do his shows standing up but then—I read about it in People —he had to do them sitting down on the stage, with the microphone pulled halfway down. He would sing, tell jokes. Sometimes you could hardly hear him, he spoke in a hoarse whisper, very slowly. All the cigarettes, all the drinks, the strokes, his age. People would leave his shows and they hadn't been entertained, they'd been horrified.
Vicki tried lawyer after lawyer. Vic's remaining brother and sister did the same. They spent so much money. They tried to show that Vic was being tortured, abused. Joe Yung was the only one of the household staff to testify to that effect, the others just fell in line with Reina. Of course they did!—she controlled the purse strings. They wheeled Vic up to the witness stand, and the attorneys and the judge spoke to him. He denied being abused. He said he loved Reina. They asked him if Reina forced him to perform at clubs and in theaters against his will, and Vic summoned up enough strength to say, “You call that performing?”
“Apparently, Mr. Fountain,” the judge said, “you fall asleep sometimes while singing?”
“Your Honor,” Vic replied, “I was doing that forty years ago too.”
The court ruled for Reina.
I think it was in 1996 . . . Reina launched a Vic Fountain Web site. I don't have a computer but I was told that for $19.99 you could watch tapes of Vic from thirty years ago at the Oceanfront, tapes from Pete Conifer's stash. The tapes were of him gallivanting about in bed with a few showgirls. They had videotapes of him alone with Ginger too, them telling each other how much they loved each other.
I had dinner with Lulu a few weeks before Vic did that celebrity cruise. Poor Lu. “He's lost to me now,” she cried. “I've been lying to myself my whole life.”
ARNIE LATCHKEY: I couldn't believe when I saw the ad in the paper. Don't forget how Vic hated the water! The man never ate seafood in his life, not so much as a prawn. I remember I once said to him, “The world is your oyster,” and he told me never to use that expression ever again. He was serious. He'd been living in Los Angeles for almost fifty years and the closest he'd ever been to the beach was when Gussie Kahn's chauffeur took us there. And I pick up a paper now and I see that Vic Fountain is going to perform on some celebrity cruise ship?!
Estelle and I drove to Guy's shack one day, in Venice. Except now it was called Two Guys Seafood Shack, 'cause Vincent's kid, Little Guy, worked there. I showed Guy the ad in the paper. I said, “How the hell is Vic going to go on a boat?! We couldn't get him to do swashbuckler movies and that wasn't even real water! How's he gonna do this?!” All Guy could do was shake his head.
FREDDY BLISS: I boarded the ship in New York, and the first time I saw Vic was in the dining room. He and Reina Harbin had a table all to themselves. So did the other talent. Vic was the biggest name of all the entertainers, by far—there was an impressionist who couldn't even imitate himself, he was so bad, and a few other lesser talents. Reina would wheel Vic around the ship and the passengers would walk up to him, ask him for his autograph. There weren't too many young passengers, to tell the truth. “I really love you, Vic,” an elderly woman would say as she shook his hand. “I saw you sing once at the Smokestack Lounge, Vinegar Hill, Brooklyn,” a man said, “and now here we are on a big ship.” But Vic had no idea what or where the Smokestack Lounge was. Some old guy would grab Vic by the shoulder and say, “Mr. Fountain, I want to thank you for recording ‘Lost and Lonely Again.’ It saved my life.” And Vic would nod and try to smile. But by then the right half of his face was paralyzed. After three days at sea, nobody would approach Vic anymore—they just watched Reina wheel him around, and the passengers would look at each other. They couldn't believe how old he looked. They were pitying him, putting their hands to their hearts, shaking their heads and pitying him.
Reina would wheel him over to the edge of the deck and leave him there. She'd go off for as much as an hour at a time. Sometimes she put the brake on the wheelchair, so he wouldn't slide around. But two times she didn't. The first time, I caught him . . . just as the chair was sliding back. He looked completely terrified. His eyes . . . he looked so helpless and scared. I caught the chair and turned him away from the water and put the brake on. He didn't recognize me. The second time it happened, I saw a man pop out of nowhere and catch the chair. He put the brake on and turned Vic away from the water, just as I'd done.
I walked up to him the next day and said, “I saw what you did for Vic Fountain. Thanks.”
He shrugged and walked away.
I went up to the ship's captain the next day. I told him that I thought Vic's wife was trying to scare him into having a heart attack. He didn't believe me. He thought I was crazy.
The next night in the lounge, it was “Vic Fountain Night.” Reina wheeled Vic up to the stage. He got lots of applause. I was surrounded by a bunch of alter kockers, Italians and Jews and Irish and everything else. I was the youngest person at the table by thirty years.
“His wig is backwards,” an old man said. “She's got his wig on backwards.”
Vic told some jokes, told some stories, sang three songs. I don't think he got too many words right. Before the last song Reina and Vic tried to engage in some funny banter, but it just didn't work. They had this bit about how she was hard up for sex and he was too old to perform. It didn't get too many laughs from that crowd. Then they sang a duet of “Makin' Whoopee” and Vic moved his hands up and down, like a baby in a highchair. Reina was really hamming it up, shaking her hips and swinging her chest and her gold necklace, and Vic was just moving his lips. That necklace of hers was straight out of The Land of the Pharaohs and her hips were nothing to be shaking, believe me. Especially on a boat.
There was a small band. A drummer, a bassist, a pianist, a trumpeter and a saxophonist, and a guitarist.
The boat was going to pull into Florida the next morning, and after the show I was walking around, keeping an eye on everything. We were on the top deck . . . I saw Reina wheel Vic out. It was drizzling out and very windy and there was nobody else outside. All I could make out were a half-moon and shadows. She put the brake on the chair. I heard Vic trying to say something, something like, “Please . . . don't . . . please . . . oh, God . . .”
A few seconds later I heard steps coming up the stairs and another shadow appeared with Reina. It was a tall man, tall and round. The two of them whispered to each other, I couldn't hear a thing. The man was carrying something. It was—I didn't make it out at the time but it all came out in the investigation afterward—a trumpet case. He opened it and pulled out a pearl-handled gun.
I had to do something. I had to. This was it. But it was a gun! When Guy had called me from Los Angeles and told me to take this celebrity cruise and keep an eye on Vic, I had no idea it was going to be like this! You have to remember: I'm a klutz. I can barely tie my own shoes or balance a checkbook or do anything!
I started to step toward them, toward their shadows. I heard her say, “Don't use a gun! We'll use this.” And she took her belt off. They were going to strangle him and throw him overboard. But Floyd Lomax, who I recognized as the trumpeter in the band I'd seen an hour before, said, “I wanna use the gun. This is unfinished business.”
I was about ten feet away. I wasn't thinking . . . I was just scared. I said, “Freeze! Don't move.”
Floyd Lomax said, “Fuck off.”
Reina wrapped the belt around Vic's neck and I heard Floyd cock the gun. He was aiming it at me.
From out of nowhere, from out of the drizzle and the darkness and the wind, I saw another shadow . . . Floyd Lomax turned to it and the shadow kicked him in the crotch. I ran up to Vic's wheelchair and pulled Reina and her belt off of Vic. I heard Vic wheezing, gasping. I wrestled Reina to the ground, right near where Lomax was doubled over with the pain from the kick.
> I was out of breath. Vic was okay. I think I was more out of breath than he was.
“Vic, it's me, Freddy. Freddy Bliss.”
“Ziggy's boy?”
“Yeah. Him.”
“Freddy!” he said feebly. A tear was in his eye. “Freddy . . .”
He smiled and reached for my wrist and gave it a squeeze.
In the small red EXIT light on the wall near us, I could make out the face of the man who had kicked Floyd Lomax. It was the same old guy who'd stopped Vic's chair from rolling a few days before.
“Who are you?” this man asked me.
“My name's Freddy Bliss.”
“Ziggy Bliss's son?” he said. “I knew your father. Years ago.”
“What's your name?”
“Your father and Vic,” he told me, “used to call me Cat.”
GUY PUGLIA: Freddy Bliss sure come through all right, didn't he? He come to Los Angeles a few weeks afterwards and the old gang showed him the best time he ever had. Reina and Lomax were in jail, and Vicki and Joe Yung and Ices Andy was taking care of Vic again. That Reynolds Catledge was a big hero too, he was all over the papers. I think it's the first time the guy ever cracked a smile in his life, and it must have lasted a whole week.
A few months after the cruise, me and Little Guy are in the shack. It's about six at night and the sun is setting. Little Guy, he always has the radio on, and him and me, we argue about the music. He listens to the rock 'n' roll thing and me, I like the oldies. So we were doing that and he was steamin' some clams and out our little window I see a van drive up. It comes to a stop and Joe Yung and Andy Ravelli get out. “Hey, Ices Andy!” I yell out, and the two of 'em look at me. Joe Yung opens up the rear door and meanwhile Ices Andy is helping Vic Fountain out of his seat. Joe pulls out the wheelchair and Ices Andy lifts Vic up and they put him in it, real delicate-like.
They wheel Vic up to the shack. Little Guy's mouth is dropped open, he can't believe it any more than me.
I hadn't seen Vic in a while, a really long while. And he didn't look too good.
“Hey, paisan,” I said.
“Goomba Guy,” he says to me very weakly. “Goomba Guy.”
I put my hand on his shoulder and he put his hand on my hand. His hand was trembling and I started to tremble too. I clutched his hand with mine, I gave it a tight squeeze.
He nodded his head . . . he was lookin' at something. I turned around. He was looking at the swordfish on the outside of the shack. I saw half of his face smile. His hand and my hands were still clutching.
“That old fish,” he said. I could hardly hear him, I had to lean in real close.
“Hey, Gramps,” Little Guy said, and he kissed his granddad's forehead and Vic smiled again, as much as he could.
“What'll it be, Vic?” I said. I could hardly talk, the lump in my throat was so big.
Vic said something but I couldn't hear it. I says to him, “Can you say that again?” I leaned in real close so's I could hear him.
“A bucket of steamers,” he whispered, “and a lobster roll, please.”
He could barely eke it out.
Three minutes later, Joe Yung was opening a steamer for him and dipping it in the butter, and Ices Andy was putting it in his mouth. They were sliding down his throat like liquid pearls. Vic nodded. Little Guy put the tip of the lobster roll in his mouth and Vic chewed on it. We watched him. Vic widened his eyes and we could tell he wanted another bite. Hell, he wanted the whole goddamn thing! “This is marvelous,” he whispered to me slowly.
They wheeled him up to the beach. Little Guy got a blanket from the van and wrapped it around his nonno's shoulders. He was still eatin' that lobster roll.
He looked out at the beach. There were boys and girls, men and women, walkin' around, running around, in their bathing suits. Some kids were playing volleyball. The waves were big, big and very blue and gray, and they made that thunder sound when they smacked down, and it was the biggest reddest sunset you ever seen in your life. Vic looked out at the ocean and at that red sun settin' and he shook his head and said again, “This is just marvelous.”
When they put him back in the van I said to him, “You be sure and come here again.”
But that was the last time I ever seen my best friend. Five days later he was dead.
ARNIE LATCHKEY: Vic's funeral was just as he would've wanted it, with more than just a touch of the opulent about it. Garish might even be the word. But Vic would've loved it, he would've eaten it up. Ernie Beasley even said at the memorial, “Vic said to me, ‘Make sure it's a blast, baby.’” They sent out invites to every single celebrity who ever was and most of 'em turned out. Vic, Shep Lane's kids told me, had wanted to be buried at the Pebble Beach golf course but they wouldn't allow that up there, those momzers. So Vic's buried next to Vince and his mother, at Forest Lawn, three generations of Fontanas all in a row. Vic's stone is made of Iranian turquoise, and once a week for the next thousand years, they'll polish it. The man took care of everything.
On the stone it says il ragazzo con i capelli blu come la notte.
Hunny Gannett was flown in from his hospital in Vegas. Guy and Edie wheeled him up to the tombstone and Hunny let drop a red rose.
Vic was paying all of Hun's hospital bills, it turned out. Danny said to me that Hunny will probably outlive all of us—he just won't realize it.
Lulu stood with Sally. Sally had her arm around her. Did you know that in the last three days of Vic's life, he'd moved back in with Lu? It's true. The woman finally got her wish, and he died in her arms.
Some wiseass in the press said that Vic had died as he sang: in his sleep. I gotta admit: It's a great line. But Vic Fountain wrung more out of one second of life, asleep or awake, than most people do in twenty years. It's just that, I admit it, sometimes he wrung it the wrong way.
He got about two minutes on the newscast the night he died. They played his records, his hits, for a few seconds. They showed him when he was a kid, they had a picture of him with that barbershop quartet trio he was in, then with the Don Leslie band; they showed clips from all the lousy movies.
“He was so gorgeous,” Estelle said to me.
Yeah. He sure was.
A few days after Vic was buried, his sister and his brother were going through the mansion in Beverly Hills. Vicki was there, so was Joe Yung. They came to the cellar door and couldn't open it. “Where's the key?” Cathy asked, and Joe Yung went to the liquor cabinet and found it. He tells them he's never been down there either. Joe opens the door and they walk down these steps, it's like a goddamn horror movie, boy, they don't know what or who's down there.
Joe Yung feels for a light switch and finds one and flicks it. One by one, lights go on. Their eyes were almost blinded by the glowing silver and white. There wasn't one speck of dust, and everything—the red leather stools, the long shiny counter, the tiles—was perfect and in its place and the chrome was radiant.
“Oh, my God,” Cathy gasped. She and her brother Ray couldn't believe their eyes.
“It was a soda fountain,” Cathy told me. “A soda fountain right out of the 1930s. It was an exact copy of the one he used to work at. Jiggs Cudahy's place.”
When Vic died, my phone rang off the hook for a few days. Every vulture and jackal and termite wanted to know about Vic, about Ziggy, about Fountain and Bliss; they're asking me this question and that question. How'd they meet? When was it? Did they ever get along? What made them click? I realized, after the ten thousandth question, Hey, I don't even have to answer this stuff anymore. What the hell? So I didn't.
However, this one reporter asked me one particular question. And it was something that hadn't ever occurred to me, which is rare, because a lot occurs to Arnold Latchkey, which is maybe my problem.
He said, “A lot of entertainers are not very happy people. They're insecure and lonely, they're often miserable.”
“I'm well aware of it,” I said.
“A lot of comedians aren't very happy. Or funny.”
“I'm quite, quite familiar with it.”
And he asked me if I thought that Ziggy and Vic were funny—that anyone at all is funny—because of the pain. Because of some searing pain deep inside. Do people become funny because of some inner agony, some gnawing emptiness or torment?
I said to him, “Who do I look like to you? Henri Bergson? Sigmund Freud you think I am? I'm just a goddamn business manager!”
After I hung up on the guy, I started thinking about it. Was it so? Is that what makes people funny? I've known a lot of funny people who weren't ever in any kind of agony, who weren't ever miserable or lonely, and I've known lots of unfunny people, believe me, who were.
So the answer to this $64 question is this: No, being miserable and knowing pain, torment, loneliness, and emptiness does not make you funny. It doesn't.
But, you know, it probably helps.
IMPORTANT PEOPLE
WHO APPEAR IN THIS TEXT
Enzo Aquilino —voice teacher
Barney Arundel —nightclub owner
Ginger Bacon —dancer, Vic's mistress
Harry/Harriet Bacon —musician
“Big” Sid Baer —Rosie McCoy's husband, a hotelier
Dr. Howard Baer —gynecologist
Rosie McCoy Baer —hoofer, entertainment director, and wife of “Big” Sid Baer
Ernie Beasley —songwriter, friend of Vic's
Billy and Mary Beaumont —dancing partners
Hugh Berridge —member, with Teddy Duncan, Rowland Toomey, and Vic Fountain, of the Three Fours
Louis Bingham —bandleader, radio host
Bobby Bishop —record executive
Freddy Bliss —Ziggy's son
Harry and Florence Blissman —Ziggy's parents, entertainers
Ziggy Bliss, born Sigmund Blissman —entertainer
Mike Boley —guitarist
Thalia Boneem —Floyd Lomax's girlfriend
Clive Bonteen —playwright, existentialist