Funnymen (2 page)

• • •

RAY FONTANA:
Vic was my mother's favorite kid, there was no question about that. I got hand-me-downs from Sal. But Vic always got new clothing. That kid was the best-dressed second grader you ever saw. His diapers were tailor-made—I ain't kiddin'—by this Milanese tailor downtown. And the crease was always in the right place.

It was not a musical family, no. There was no piano, nobody ever took violin lessons, nothing like that. The thought of one of us going into show business? Forget it. The thought of anybody in that town going into any business other then fish . . . you might as well talk about getting elected president.

CATHERINE RICCI:
Vic really got the looks. My mother used to tell him that angels had dipped him in a lake of honey and then brought him to our house.

And the hair. Under the light sometimes it could look blue . . . it was just like Superman in the comics.

At the dinner table Vic sat closest to Mamma and half the time she had her hand in his hair or was pinching his earlobe and saying,
“Faccia bella.”
She would then wrap her big arms around him and pull him into her chest and he'd stay in there for a while.

As a kid, Vic liked listening to the radio. Bing Crosby, Russ Columbo, Basil Fomeen. Fritz Devane, “the Grand Forks Golden Boy,” was his favorite. He hated Vaughan Monroe, the man who sang “Racing With the Moon” and sounded like a hound being strangled.

Father Claro was the priest [when] Vic was about ten or eleven. He came to our house one night and asked Mamma if Vic could join the choir. My mother and father went into the kitchen to talk about it—I think Papa thought that any boy who sang in a choir was an
effeminato,
a sissy. They came out of the kitchen and Mamma says to Father Claro, “How did you know my boy can sing? We never hear him sing. Can Vic sing?” And Father Claro says, “Signora Fontana, with a face like this, he could honk like a dying goose but we'd still want him.”

A few weeks later, every woman leaving the church would tell Father Claro how much better the choir sounded now that Vic was in it. You couldn't find a seat in that place. The women and the girls all loved to watch Vic sing.

TONY FERRO:
He really stood out in the choir. All the other boys wore these wrinkly gray choir uniforms but Vic's was sky blue—his mother saw to that—and not a wrinkle to be seen. And the other thing was, he didn't sing, he mouthed the words. He told me he wasn't supposed to sing; Father Claro had told him to just move his lips.

ARNIE LATCHKEY:
The first time Vic ever had to lip-synch a song, the director asked him if he needed help or instructions. “Are you kiddin'?” Vic said. “I did this for three years in church!”

• • •

LENNY PEARL:
Archie Bratton fired me one day when we were in Columbus, Ohio. I went back to the hotel to pack and I was thinking, Okay,
bubeleh,
now what? You're eighteen years old and your mother's a cripple and your father sells used tea kettles on Orchard Street and your sister's married to a door-to-door comb salesman who stutters.

It turns out that Bratton did that to all of us, fired
everyone
one by one. The Beaumonts, a tap-dancing and tango act, Billy and Mary . . . he calls Billy Beaumont in and says, “Billy, hit the road. You're out. You're a cancer on the show. Go. Mary stays, you're gone.” Then a few minutes later Bratton calls Mary in, told her she was fired and that Billy was staying. Now, he could've done the brave thing and lined us all up and said, “Guys, gals, the company is bankrupt, it's kaput. I'm sorry. Good luck.” But he had to get one last shot in.

So I'm on the train that night back to New York and when I get to Grand Central the next morning I pick up a copy of
Metronome
and read to my great relief that Archibald J. Bratton had been shot three times in the head at the Southern Hotel in Columbus.

Whoever did it, God bless 'em.

SALLY KLEIN:
Harry and Flo went back to Echo Beach. My mother told me Harry was humiliated, distraught . . . she thought it would kill him.

Years later, Ziggy told me it was the happiest he'd ever been. For the first time, he had his parents around for a long stretch. And I found that strange. Because, if you think about it, Uncle Harry and Aunt Flo were devastated—they'd been performing their whole adult lives and now they had absolutely nothing. But Ziggy remembered it as a great time.

SEYMOUR GREENSTEIN:
Kids from all over Brooklyn would come to our neighborhood just to see this kid Sigmund Blissman. He was a sight to behold, all round and red. And that wild Brillo hair of his, even back then.
Kids from Coney Island, Brighton Beach, Flatbush, wherever. One social club from Poseidon Avenue had a contest called Count Ziggy's Freckles. I think he was about ten at the time. They called Ziggy into where the club met and they stripped Ziggy down. They started counting his freckles and Ziggy stood there patiently. As it was dawning on them that they weren't ever going to be able to count them all, Ziggy says, “Wait. You forgot to count
these.
” And he pulled down his underwear.

ARNIE LATCHKEY:
Some of the showgirls in Vegas used to call him “the Hose.” Or maybe it was “the Horse.” His real last name should've been
Blessed-
man.

• • •

CATHERINE RICCI:
No girl ever had to worry about whether Vic's mother was going to like her when he brought her home because after a while, Vic never could bring a girl home. Mamma would've gone after her with a chopping knife or her infamous rolling pin.

If he'd brought home the Virgin Mary, Mom would've complained about her having a bad reputation.

RAY FONTANA:
Vic always had a ton of girls around. All the dates I ever had, I think it was just 'cause they wanted me to introduce them to my good-looking kid brother. I dated this girl Ann McGee maybe two dates. My mother loved her, thought she was terrific. Her family was from Flounder Heights, the ritzy lace-curtain-Irish section. A few months after I took her out, she drops by. I say, “Hey, Annie, where you been?” She brushes right by me and heads toward Vic.

And then my mother tells me that Ann McGee is the biggest
puttana
in America. All 'cause she was now with Vic.

TONY FERRO:
He was working half the women in Codport. A lot of these women, Vic was pals with their husbands around town. Guys at the pool hall, at Jiggs's, on the piers. Vic would joke around with them and all but meanwhile he was givin' it to their wives.

I remember once he told me to pick him up outside of Joe Ravelli's house. Joe was a good guy; he used to sell Italian ices in the summer for extra dough but he'd always give the kids ices for free. He was off fishing and the wife was home. The door opened and I saw Mrs. Ravelli in the doorway, in the shadows, adjusting the belt of her robe, which was green. Vic gave her a nice love slap on the ass—you could hear it twenty yards
away. He come outta there with a little smile, he straightened his hair out with a comb, and then he flashed me a crisp new ten-dollar bill.

ANGELA CROSETTI [friend of Vic Fountain in Codport]:
My mom and me would go to Jiggs Cudahy's soda parlor almost every day after school. We'd sit at the counter and Vic would make us an ice-cream soda or a malted. My mother would apply her lipstick and eye shadow for an hour beforehand at her vanity table, till everything was perfect. When she was ready she looked gorgeous. People always compared her to Rita Hayworth.

She and her friends called Vic
il ragazzo con i capelli blu come la notte.
The boy with the hair as blue as the night.

TONY FERRO:
The storeroom was between Jiggs's office and the soda fountain. But Vic had set it up so's there was a nice space on the floor in there. He used about a mile of cotton for a mattress. Actually it was Jiggs who set it up. 'Cause there was a hole in the wall that divided Jiggs's office from the storeroom. One afternoon Vic is in there doing his thing—I think it was Angie Crosetti's mom, who was a real hairy cow—and I walk into Jiggs's office and there he is, this fat red Irishman with his
cazzo
in his hands, peekin' through the hole in the wall.

“We could charge money for this view, Tony,” Jiggs said to me.

One day Jiggs's wife is sick, she's got an upset stomach. Jiggs comes over and says to me, “Hey, Tony, can you run these pills over to my wife on your way home?” I tell him, “Flounder Heights ain't on my way home, and besides, I don't deliver the stuff ever. That's Vic's job. Have him do it.” He rubs his chins a couple times and says he'll just bring it over himself when he goes home.

So I've got an hour left in the day and I notice that Jiggs just isn't concentrating. Then Vic leaves to deliver the pills to Mrs. Cudahy, he takes off his white mesh hat and is on his way. Jiggs waits two minutes and he says, “Okay, Tony. Out! We're closing up!”

I says, “Huh? It's five o'clock, how are we closing?” And he says, “'Cause we just are!”

He locks up and puts the
CLOSED
sign on the door. I see him start walking up the hill toward Irish Town and he was huffin' and puffin' 'cause even though it was April it was still cold out and the smoke was coming out his mouth.

That night, Jiggs flipped his lid. He set fire to the drugstore . . . nothing-was standing except the soda fountain and the chrome stools at the counter. Everything else was ashes. And Jiggs sawed his wife's head off in her sleep. How they know it was in her sleep, I don't know—you'd
think that would wake her up. That was the end of her and the end of him too.

• • •

SALLY KLEIN:
One day my mother gets off the phone and she's looking very sad and I ask her why and she says, “It's bad news, Sal. The Battling Blissmans are back in business.”

There was a hotel in the Poconos called the Baer Lodge. Rosie McCoy was an old-time hoofer who'd married “Big” Sid Baer, who owned the place, and she and her husband opened up a nightclub there called the Den. Rosie was the entertainment director and she contacted all her old friends from when she was a dancer. Singers, actors, all kinds. The Beaumonts, Smith and Schmidt, the contortionist act Twyst and Tern, Lenny Pearl. And, of course, Harry and Flo.

They moved into our cottage in Delaware for a while and rehearsed their act. I'd see them in the backyard going through their paces. The only time I ever heard anything was when Flo sang. What a belter. The furniture would rattle when she sang, like there was an earthquake.

Ziggy was not staying with us at the time. You know, it might make us sound cheap but to save money to reupholster and recarpet all the places where Ziggy had “gone,” well, as I said, my father manufactured brassieres and girdles and corsets—he just used lace from the factory. For ten years our entire house looked like one big brassiere-and-girdle set.

Some psychologist might say this is where Ziggy got his big-boob fetish. But I really don't know.

DR. HOWARD BAER [Rosie McCoy Baer's nephew]:
Aunt Rosie booked the Blissmans on a bill with the Beaumonts. I was young then and I had a big crush on Mary Beaumont. She would lean over and hand me candy in her dressing room; it was and still is the most exciting thing that's ever happened to me. The bellhops called her Mary Cantaloupes.

The Blissman act lasted maybe twenty minutes . . . I couldn't tell if it was supposed to be funny. Aunt Rosie had once booked this actor named Lionel Gostin who had done Shakespeare and was very respected. Gostin would get onstage dressed in black and the lights would dim until you could see only his face. He'd do scenes from
Hamlet
and
Othello
. He'd play to the thousandth row, but there
was
no thousandth row. There was usually a plant in the crowd, some guy who'd stand up and yell “Bravo! Bravo!” and get five bucks for it. Now I knew that Lionel Gostin was not onstage to get laughs. He was doing drama. But I never could figure out what the Blissmans were doing.

Except at the end. Florence would sing. It was as if she was punishing the audience. “Okay, you made it through our lousy comedy act. Think you're so tough? Now I'm going to puncture your eardrums and shatter your eyeglasses.”

• • •

HUGH BERRIDGE:
I was a vocalist in a Boston trio called the Three Threes. [We wore] woolen vests that had the trey from a domino on them and would play at social functions such as balls, weddings, and once in a while we opened up for big bands—Basil Fomeen and Isham Jones and the like. We had regular jobs or were going to college. Rowland Toomey worked in insurance and was quite the expert at death benefits, Teddy Duncan had a degree in law from Harvard. I too was studying law at Harvard.

One night we were in Codport performing, and a rather middling tenpiece band was supporting us. Unbeknownst to us, the theater manager had written on the advertisements that there would be an “open mike” contest—the Three Threes would take on anyone willing to sing with us. Most of our audience that week was comprised of kids, teenagers only a few years younger than ourselves. And they were quite shy and therefore reluctant. A few did come onstage, and they'd never been on that side of a microphone before . . . they sang a few bars and then trotted off, quite red in the face.