Funnymen (21 page)

When I heard that, boy, that's when I knew we'd really hit it big.

ARNIE LATCHKEY:
Bernie Heine came to my hotel room at midnight, after that first show, his face still borscht pink from laughing. He said, “Arnie, that was the most sensational, scintillating thing I've ever witnessed in this hotel or in any other.”

Now, I didn't go to the Wharton School of Business. I have no business degree in anything other than swingin' deals off the seat of my pants. But I knew to play this thing so nonchalant that a nurse, had there been one on the premises, would've checked my body for vital signs and not found a single one. I said to Bernie, who'd already played his hand, “Oh really, Bernie? I suppose it
was
rather funny, wasn't it?” I added a yawn at the end for good measure.

He said, “Vic is booked through the week, you know. So is Ziggy Blissman.”

“And Vic is ready to fulfill that. But what that Blissman kid does, that's his business.” I don't let on for one second that I realize Bernie is famished like a third-world country for more Ziggy and Vic.

“You've got to talk to them, Arnie! You've got to get them to do this again. And again.” The man is on the verge of drooling on one of his own oriental rugs.

“Bernie, could you help me get this shoe off?” I said, and sure enough the man who'd once fired me because my
tummling
act was like a graceful lemming dive into a vat of boiling tar is now kneeling down before me and wriggling the shoe off my foot, his nostrils crinkling and blanching. I'm eating this thing up, I don't mind telling you.

“Perhaps I'll talk to this Blissman kid and see what I can do,” I told Bernie. “But, you know, he's all bereaved right now.”

SALLY KLEIN:
Ziggy, who was shaking terribly, and I were in his bungalow, just after his parents died. “We have to make some arrangements now,” I told him solemnly. “The sooner the better.” He had on what he always had on after a show: a cold towel with ice draped over his head.

“I know, Sal, I know,” he said.

I was thinking, Did Harry and Flo ever tell him how they wanted to be buried? Did they ever talk of cremation? Would they want to be buried in Brooklyn?

“I never thought it would end like this,” I said. I gave him another minute. He was flushed all over, still sweaty and shaking, and the ice was melting over his forehead. “Well?” I asked him. “What should I do?”

“This is what you do, Sal. Find out what room an Arnie Latchkey is staying in . . .”

I thought:
Who?
I'd never heard Arnie's name before! I'm thinking that Arnie Latchkey is a funeral director or an undertaker or maybe he's a rabbi staying at the hotel.

“Tell him to come down here right away,” Ziggy said. “Tell him the sooner we get this done, the better for all parties involved.”

I went to the front desk and found out what room this Arnie Latchkey person was staying in. It occurred to me in the elevator that Ziggy had said “all parties involved.” I couldn't figure that one out. Two of the parties involved were dead.

I knock on the door and Arnie answers in his plaid bathrobe, which was sort of ratty. He looks at me—I'm five foot three, I've got cat's-eye eyeglasses on, I'm eighteen years old but look sixteen—and he says, “Honey, Vic ain't here and besides, you don't look like you even had your bas mitzvah yet,” and starts to close the door. I put my foot in the door so it didn't close and said, “Ziggy Blissman needs to see you in his bungalow. Now.”

“Tell him,” he said very seriously, “I know what he wants. I understand. I'll be down in five minutes.”

So I take the elevator back down to Ziggy, convinced that Arnie Latchkey is an undertaker!

I told Ziggy that Arnie would be down any minute. By now he's stopped shaking. I imagine he might have had two belts of Dewar's by then. Beneath the chair he sat on there was a big puddle—it was the ice melting, mixed in with his own natural
shvitz.

“I'd like you to be here when this Latchkey guy comes,” Ziggy said.

“I'll be here for you, Ziggy,” I said.

“These things can get ugly. If he asks for too much, we'll forget about them.”

While I was wondering what he meant by this, there was a knock. I was expecting Arnie to be dressed in black or at least dark gray, but he was decked out in his usual powder blue.

“Ziggy,” he said.

Ziggy said, “You've met my cousin Sally.” Arnie and I nodded to each other. “Isn't she pretty?” Ziggy said. He was always doing that, always trying
to fix me up with the wrong
shlub
. Well, I wanted a boyfriend and eventually a husband, yes, but not a funeral director.

“Look, let's make this short but sweet. I've had a rough day,” Ziggy said.

“I should say so!” Arnie chimed in.

“Vic's signed for the rest of the week and so am I.”

“I'm familiar with it.”

“But I lost two sets of parents tonight . . . my stage ones and my real ones.”

“I'm aware of it. My condolences, by the way, as regards both sets.”

“Yeah, sure,” Ziggy said. “What's this Vic Feldbaum's future look like right now?”

“I'll be honest with you, Ziggy,” Arnie said, sitting down. “If it's not dark, then it's indeed quite dim.”

“That's what I was hoping.”

Arnie undid a button on his shirt and said, “And
your
future, might I be so impertinent enough to ask? What's the forecast there, in terms of light?”

“Murky at best, gloomy at worst.”

Ziggy poured Arnie a Dewar's . . . that's when I got my first taste of the table manners of Arnie Latchkey. The loudest drinker, chewer, and swallower in the history of the Catskills, which really is saying an awful lot.

“You know what I'm aiming at, don't you, Arn? You know what I'm talkin' about over here?” Ziggy said.

“I believe I do.”

“How do you think Vic's gonna feel about it?”

“On behalf of my sole client, my opinion is that, as he probably doesn't really give a shit, I'm sure he'll see things your way—
our way
—as to this one regard.”

“Are you going to ask him tonight or—” Ziggy began.

“I've already interrupted him with one girl tonight, Ziggy. Two times, I think he might go for my carotid artery. This can wait.”

“Let me know first thing tomorrow, wouldja?”

“Will do, Zig.”

Arnie got up and walked to the door, and Ziggy—he's still got the turban on even though the ice has melted—walks over to him.

“There's the little matter of percentages, you know?” Arnie said.

By this time, of course, I realized that Arnie was not a rabbi or a funeral director. So I was expecting Ziggy to throw out something like 70/30 or maybe 60/40, in his own favor. What I heard, though, staggered me, considering that this was Ziggy Blissman, who could never be moved to give even his parents a fair deal.

“Arnie, we split things fifty/fifty down the line, all the way. I hope your sole client is amiable to that.”

“Fantabulous,” Arnie said. “And you mean ‘amenable,' I believe.”

“As for your and Sally's cut, I'd like—”

Arnie waved his hand—that discussion would wait until a better time. They shook hands and Arnie walked out, then Ziggy sat down and let go a big sigh.

“There's the little matter now,” I reminded him, “of burying your parents . . .”

“Oh yeah . . . them,” he said.

They were buried side by side not too far from Grossinger's. I had to arrange “kiddie coffins” for them because they were so small. There was one tombstone; it said “The Blissmans” and the years of their births and deaths. Seeing their names that way reminded me of when they were in vaudeville and their names were up on a marquee. But then I remembered that their names never did make it to a marquee.

Years later, Ziggy had them moved to Home of Peace [Cemetery in Los Angeles], to a very grand mausoleum, something fit for royalty. Whether he ever visited it or not, I don't know.

SNUFFY DUBIN:
I get a telegram the next day from Ziggy. Something to the effect of: “Snuffles stop Have struck Italian gold stop Remember our nonexistent plans to double stop Well, plans are off stop Who needs you anyways, you big putz stop Ever heard of Vic Fountain from Floyd Lomax band stop We're a duo now stop Can you come to Heine's PDQ stop PS On sad note, parents dead.”

I was playing the Shea Theater in Buffalo and I told the manager I couldn't make the next show due to a death in the family. I used that excuse a lot—man, I think I must've killed off about eighty aunts and uncles that way.

I drove to Heine's and caught the act. I'd seen Vic sing before and by now his voice and his style had gotten a lot better. He was talking to the crowd now too, relating to them. In the fourth song Ziggy came onstage and that's where it began. They didn't do jokes, they didn't do gags. There were no punch lines. It wasn't the Ritz Brothers, it wasn't Burns and Allen, it wasn't Groucho and Chico. It wasn't like anything I'd ever seen before.

ARNIE LATCHKEY:
I called Vic at ten in the morning and to my surprise he was awake. Probably, though, he hadn't fallen asleep that night. I told him to meet me right away in the coffee shop right off the lobby. He said, “Latch, do I have to?” And I told him, yeah, he really did.

Ten minutes later we're sitting at a table and having coffee. There are about thirty other people there and as Vic and I confab, they're all looking at us. This was my very first taste of this. They're looking and leaning
toward each other to whisper and sort of pointing at us. What they were saying was:
“That's Vic! The guy who was so funny last night!”

“Ziggy Blissman wants to do a double with you,” I told him.

“Oh yeah?” Vic said.

“Yeah, like a song and comedy thing. Mostly comedy.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him I would talk to you.”

“Well, tell the kid sure. Sure,” Vic said. He was thinking it over as he was talking. Or maybe it was like he heard his own voice coming out his maw and he happened to agree with it. “It's a really good idea. I think it'd work out. Sure.”

“There's all kinds of stuff to go over,” I said to him. “There's stuff with Murray Katz and Joe Gersh and all kinds of people.”

“I don't wanna know about that,” he said. “I'll sing. I'll play with the kid. I'll do whatever. The only paperwork I want you to give me has George Washington on it.”

“Gotcha, Vic.”

You know, I never had any kind of deal with Fountain and Bliss. There was a handshake but I'm not even certain we shook hands all around; I shook Vic's hand and Ziggy's too, but I'm not too sure if they ever shook each other's. If you're picturing
The Oath of the Horatii
or the Three Musketeers hoisting up one big “all for one and one for all,” boy, you got it all wrong.