Funnymen (13 page)

Gannett was behind on points. In between rounds when Gussie Beck, his trainer, held out a bucket and implored him, “Liquid! Spit! Spit out some liquid!” Gannett uttered to him the now-classic corner quip: “Gussie, the only liquid I got left is my checking account!”

Kid Burcham was exhausted; he'd run a marathon, he'd fought a war, he'd spent it all. Pops Deegan was about to throw in the towel for him, but this doomed blond gladiator wouldn't have it. The bell in the final round tolled—almost mournfully, some said—and Burcham staggered to the center of the ring, where Gannett strode with no small measure of gallantry to meet him, almost slipping on the five humors he'd shed. Burcham could barely lift his own arms. “Come on, Kid,” Hunny said to him, “come on and lick me.” He raised his gloves at this point, beckoning for Burcham's fists—the first time Hunny's hands had been lifted above his waist since he'd shaken his opponent's hand and wished him luck. But, above his own desperate wheezing, the Kid couldn't hear anything Gannett was saying.

They stood there for a minute.

“All right then,” Hunny said, keenly aware of the ticking clock.

Hunny reared back with his right and swung flush into Kid Burcham's forehead. There was no whiplash, no sudden snapping. “The roof came clean off of Kid Burcham's house, as if blown off by a tornado whirling inside it,” some scribe in the
Daily News
wrote, “and all the belongings came exploding out.” There was a god-awful, terrible silence. A stentorian silence. Burcham fell like he'd been thrown down a garbage chute.

The bell sounded as the referee was counting him out. Kid Burcham was saved by the bell. He was dead. Hunny had killed him, had rent his head in twain, but the Kid had won on points. And Gannett got to keep his hundred dollars.

GUY PUGLIA:
The Kid Burcham fight was like sitting in on spleen surgery done with tire irons. When it was over, there was no noise, no clappin' or cheers or nothin'. A few people stood around the ring to officially pronounce the Ohio Apollo dead. I looked down . . . I was gonna say a prayer. Then I saw that I was covered with blood and stuff. I elbow Vic and I say, “Get a load of this!” And Vic looks at me and then at himself. And he's got it all over him too.

There were little strands of stuff on me, like macaroni. And worse stuff, much worse stuff. I bend over in my seat and I start retching . . . Vic's vomiting too. And while we're doing that we looked over to Don Leslie and Ruth Whitley and they're covered with the same muck. They got it worse than we did—it looked like someone had tossed two gallons of Maypo on each of 'em. You couldn't see one speckle of white on Don Leslie's tuxedo. They were both passed out.

The next day when Vic showed up to rehearse he was fired.

And a week after that we was back in Codport again.

• • •

SALLY KLEIN:
After Ziggy got rid of Dolly, he started to go crazy with girls. He wasn't famous yet and he wasn't good-looking—he wasn't
ever
good-looking—but with some women, if you just put a microphone in front of a man, even if he looks like three-week-old gefilte fish, he becomes Clark Gable.

There were girls in the towns in the Catskills—I don't even know if you could say they were call girls; I doubt they had phones or knew how to use them. Somehow he found them.

I called Rosie Baer in Pennsylvania . . . I really was at the end of my rope. All that tension. Harry, Flo, and Ziggy . . . such arguing like you've never heard. Rosie told me that if it was really too much for me I should quit. Then she mentioned how much the act was bringing in a week. Now,
it wasn't thousands, don't get me wrong, they were not living like the Rockefellers. But it was a lot. Rosie said that Harry and Flo's old manager [Jerome Milton] was getting suspicious now; he'd ripped up all the contracts but by now he'd heard how well they were doing. And Rosie had even gotten calls from Joe Gersh from MCA and Murray Katz from Worldwide American . . . those sharks were flitting around.

So there was all this money and excitement now. But Rosie said that if I wanted to quit I should quit.

My mother told me that if I dropped out, someone else would take my place. They reminded me that this was my own family, my cousin and my aunt and uncle.

I didn't know what to do.

I was having dinner with Ziggy and I just came out with it. I told him I had no life, that my life was making sure that Harry and Flo didn't have nervous breakdowns. I didn't have a boyfriend and I wasn't in school and this wasn't really a job. He said, “Sal, when things fall into place I'll have either Joe or Murray put you on the payroll. Until then, I'll add another thirty bucks a week to your salary.”

I said to him, “Joe Gersh or Murray Katz?”

And now I knew those sharks were flitting around because Ziggy had contacted them. He was trying to dump Rosie Baer.

LENNY PEARL:
To me, radio was a big racket. I never felt like such a
gonif
in all my life. After vaudeville and burlesque, radio was a day at the beach! I had writers, producers, engineers, I had three or four other people on the air with me, like [announcer, singer] Billy Quinn, who was a dear man. And Viceroy [cigarettes] was paying me more money than I knew what to do with. A real racket.

My producer [Tony Freedman] comes into my dressing room one day and says, “Do you know anyone named Rosie Baer?” And I said, yeah, sure I did. And I get on the phone and Rosie and I exchange pleasantries and she tells me how good the Battling Blissmans were doing. I thought it was April Fool's Day! She might as well have been trying to tell me Hitler was good for the Jews. She tells me that it wasn't the Battling Blissmans now, she says that Harry and Flo had taken a backseat, to which I replied, “Can anybody even see them sitting back there?”

I sent one of Tony Freedman's assistants up to Marx's over the weekend to catch the act. He calls me from the hotel, tells me that the act is hilarious. I said, “Hey, are you
sure
you went to the right hotel?”

So then I sent Tony Freedman himself up and, son of a gun, he actually called me
during
the act. He said, “Lenny, we gotta put them on.”

I was baffled. Because you have to understand, when I think of Harry
and Flo I think of people snoring and getting up to leave. And now my producer is urging me to give them air time!

“All right,” I said. “Let's put 'em on. What the hell.”

GLENN PETTIBON [assistant to the producer of
The Viceroy Hour
]:
Lenny Pearl didn't ever rehearse. I read something once where he said that that took away all the spontaneity—well, that's hogwash. He didn't like to rehearse because he had other things to do, such as nap and play pinochle, chase girls, and ignore his wife. So we'd take turns filling in for him at the rehearsals. A lot of time it was Billy Quinn, who detested Lenny. He'd make fun of Lenny while standing in for him . . . and it was hilarious. He did the New Yorky accent, he flubbed the lines, he'd do some off-color material—it was the funniest comedy they ever had on the show and of course nobody outside the studio ever heard a word of it.

Tony had allotted about ten minutes of airtime to the Blissmans. If you went over by one second it was considered high treason. They had eight minutes to do their material, and then Lenny would shoot the breeze with them for two, and then they broke for Viceroy advertising. So for our first rehearsal Billy Quinn—he died in North Africa in the war, by the way—“was” Lenny Pearl. Ziggy and his parents had a routine: he wanted a pet parrot and his parents were against it. So they're doing the routine and it just wasn't going anywhere. Tony calls for a break and asks them what's wrong. See, they were used to all sorts of pandemonium, to chaos and adlibbing, but now they were in a studio and they
had
to do their act in eight minutes. (I saw Fountain and Bliss a few years later in Miami Beach and they couldn't put out a cigarette in eight minutes!)

They took it from the top and tried to play it a little looser but now it was as if they were
playing
at being looser and freer. It just wasn't natural. So Tony talked to them again and Ziggy was sweating up a monsoon. Billy Quinn came over to me and said, “Who are these pip-squeaks anyway?” And I said, “I heard they were funny,” and he said, “Well, they're not.”

The night before we went on the air we did the last rehearsal and I stood in for Lenny Pearl. The Blissmans had gotten no better, Ziggy was fidgety and sweaty—it was as if you'd locked a wolverine in a tight cage. He was squirming.

I said to Billy, “They're going to stink. Lenny's going to have a stroke.”

“Good!” Billy said. He really hated him that much.

SNUFFY DUBIN:
I was at Jimmy Dooley's [bar] on Eighth Avenue with Zig an hour before he went on. He was beefing about how's he supposed to do the act in eight minutes, how's he supposed to be himself? I know
exactly where he was coming from. My Vegas act was an hour, an hour and a half sometimes if I was really
on
. I go on Carson, I get five minutes. I do Merv Griffin, Mike Douglas, I get enough time for a hiccup. It's like trying to get twenty pounds of chopped liver on one fucking saltine. She ain't gonna hold.

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!”