Funnymen (37 page)

An hour later we're at the track sitting next to Genghis Kahn himself. The man is five foot three and dresses like a millionaire, which he was, of course, and he's got these solid gold binoculars around his neck. He barely looks at us the entire day. He's got a flunky there, maybe an assistant producer or something . . . Gus studies the racing form, tells this flunky to go bet so much on so-and-so, and then off the guy goes. Well, Gus is blowing hot and cold today, winning and losing. Me and Vic start betting but we cannot believe the sums that Kahn is wagering. “A thousand on the three horse, Bill,” he says. “Put two grand on the nine horse,” he says. Every time he does this, me, Ziggy, and Vic turn to each other in awe. But Gus don't see this, because the man is just glued to those binoculars. At one point he says to us, “I hear you guys are hilarious. Is it true?” Ziggy says, “Yeah, we can be pretty funny.” “I saw you at Club 18 a few years ago,” Gus says, “and I did notice that you were of a humorous bent. Bill, let's get serious now. Eight grand on Wayfarer to win. The five horse, that big roan colt.” And off goes Bill the flunky while me, Zig, and Vic are cowering in our seats at the quantity of brass in this guy's balls. “Are you going to do that dunce picture for Columbia?” Kahn asks us. I told him we didn't know yet. Kahn tells us it had been a Galaxy property at one point. He said a short comedy about two dance teachers was a nifty premise for a picture; a few songs, some clownin' around and romance, a pretty girl . . . it could launch a movie career like you were shot out of a howitzer. He said he wished he still had it. If Cohn was willing to sell him back the property, he said, he'd buy it for top dollar and turn it into a full-length picture. Maybe get Gene Kelly and Betty Grable. I asked him if Clarence L. Gilbert was reliable and he said, “Oh, there's no one better than Ned. No one. He'll make the boys look like a million bucks.”

Bill the flunky comes back and says the bet's been placed. The horse finishes dead last.

Gus says to Bill the flunky, “Bill, this is what we're doing . . . I'm buyin' this horse. Today. Buy it for three grand. And the minute he's mine, I want him destroyed.”

Still shuddering from that, that night I canceled the meeting at Paramount.

“We'll do the picture,” I told Harry Cohn the next day. “When can we get started?”

SALLY KLEIN:
It was the first real argument I had with Arnie. He was blinded by the easy money, I'm sure he'll admit that. I read the script and I could just tell this thing was a stinker.

“The only way the boys should do this,” I told him, “is if Sid and Norman can work some of their magic with it. Although I doubt anyone's wand is that big.”

“Why them? Columbia has a hundred writers on their staff,” he said.

“That's the problem. This thing has been through the mill already.”

“You want Danny to look at this, don't you?”

“I think,” I said slowly, “that he could help too. Arnie, they know Ziggy and Vic better than anyone. This script is not Fountain and Bliss.”

“How do I know you just don't want Danny back in the fold?”

“Don't you too?”

He nodded. “Look,” he said, “it's a short picture, it's an easy twenty grand. I say we cancel our engagement at the Blue Beret and just have the boys do this thing.”

“Can you at least
send
it to Sidney and Norman? Please?”

I got that out of him. They got the script the same day. And we got it back that night at the hotel. Sid Stone had written on a note: “I work with a typewriter, not gasoline and matches. That's what this screenplay needs. All the very best, Sid.”

LULU FOUNTAIN:
I was all set to come in to New York to see Vic at the Blue Beret. But Estelle calls me and says that they've canceled so that they could make a movie. I was pretty angry. Estelle has to call me? Vic can't? For three days I walked around and I could've killed Vic if he was around. Then Dominick says to me, “Vic's making movies now, Lu. That's very serious business.” And I realized that I was now engaged to a movie star.

FRANK LUDLAM [assistant director of
Shall We Dunce?
]:
It was not the worst piece of garbage I was ever involved in, but it was certainly in the same heap. The behind-the-scenes people were either very new, such as myself, or were old veterans on the way out. The director was Clarence Gilbert; Ned had never directed a movie before. He was about fifty-five years old then and was Columbia's second-string makeup and wardrobe test director. You want to see how Rhonda Fleming or George Montgomery looks with a new coat, a new hairdo, or different makeup,
you shoot twenty seconds of it with different lighting. That's what Ned Gilbert did.

Vic Fountain and Ziggy Bliss were never anything less than professional. I think they were too scared to “act up.” When the hairdresser poured a ton of Vitalis on Ziggy's hair, he did not protest. There were a few of us, myself included, who knew right then that this little movie would die . . . to do that to Ziggy Bliss's hair would be like shaving Charlie Chaplin's mustache.

The lead actress was Frances Alcott, who was our model for wardrobe and hairstyle test shoots, filling in when the actual stars couldn't make it. I had coffee with her one day and she said to me, “Where the hell did Harry find these two?” When I told her they were big on the nightclub circuit, Frances rolled her eyes—she merely wanted to finish this job.

There were two songs in the movie; both were written by Ernie Beasley. Vic Fountain was already quite adept when it came to lip-synching. He did have some trouble memorizing his lines though. One very brief scene required about ten takes; I remember Vic Fountain saying to Ned, “Hey, I only read this thing this morning, buddy!” But there was never any fooling around or destructive behavior on the set, as characterized their later films.

When the filming was over, their manager, Arnold Latchkey, walked up to Ned and asked him how he thought it went. Ned said they were very good to work with and it'd be interesting to see how they'd look with the makeup and wardrobe.

DANNY McGLUE:
They looked utterly lost up there. It was about twenty minutes too long and it was only a twenty-two minute film. I'm not saying this out of sour grapes, but the screenplay was a mess. It was a little Three Stooges, a little Ritz Brothers, a little Abbott and Costello. It was like cooking with all your leftovers: chicken chow mein, lasagna, a burrito—it's going to end up one stinkorama of a meal. The only thing this movie is memorable for is that Vic got to sing Ernie Beasley's “The Hang of It.” [
Singing:
]
“Now, I've got the hang of it, I've got that Sturm and Drang of it, I've got the yin and yang of it . . .”

Ziggy looked like a gibbon up there. They didn't know what to do with him—the director, the screenwriter, the makeup and wardrobe departments. They tried to tame his hair, but once in a while a strand or two would spring up, which made him look like he had horns.

“I thought these two were supposed to be funny,” a guy sitting behind me in the theater said to his date.

Snuffy said to me, “Danny boy, if Zig and Vic wanted to kill any chance they ever had at a successful movie career, man, did they ever choose the right vehicle.”

• • •

ARNIE LATCHKEY:
Now, Hunny Gannett knew Max Rosenbloom, the prizefighter who opened up Slapsie Maxie's in L.A. (When he was just a light heavyweight, Hunny had gotten pummeled by Max.) Maxie and the club bumped an act and let Fountain and Bliss do a week. We had to cancel a week at the Blue Beret, which did not go over well. “This is very, very unprofessional!” Pete Conifer said over the phone. “Oh, I realize that, Pete,” I said. What was I going to do—deny it? I told him that the opportunity to do a movie had come up. Pete said, “Well, it better be good.” And I forewarned him that, no, it would not be. Pete had to scramble to get a replacement. He wanted a comic. Vic said to me, “Pete could get Snuff for the week . . . he'd do it.” Ziggy said, “No. Snuffy can't work a room that size.” I said to Ziggy I thought Snuffy could handle it. Ziggy said, “No. I know Snuffy, I know his limitations. If Pete signs him, it's his own funeral.” So Pete got a singer instead, I think it was Tony Martin or Al Martino.

SALLY KLEIN:
My third date with Jack, we went to see Fountain and Bliss at Maxie's. The first two dates, Jack had taken me to the Brown Derby and House of Murphy. He was fifteen years older than me, was thin and bald, and his wife had died two years earlier. He'd already had one heart attack. When we sat down at our table at Slapsie Maxie's a terrible thought occurred to me: Oh my God, what if this Jack Klein laughs so much he has a heart attack and dies? Well, he
was
laughing his head off, the whole audience was, but fortunately he survived the show.

Jack was very polite, very quiet. When I took him backstage to meet the boys, Vic was effusive and polite and doing the Vic thing, joking around and pinching Jack's cheeks, but Ziggy was aloof and sort of wary. I wanted to say to him, So if this Jack Klein fella isn't good enough for you, then I might as well go back to Danny McGlue!

The engagement got some wonderful press . . . Bobby Hale of the
Examiner
went a few times and gave it raves, and Billy Wilkerson of
The Hollywood Reporter
was a big fan. Many celebrities turned out. Orson Welles, Ava Gardner, who was just so gorgeous, Cary Grant, the Gary Coopers. You should have seen Vic imitating Gary Cooper. It was really priceless. You know that an act is doing very well when the waiters, busboys, and hatcheck girls are cracking up. On the final night, Clark Gable came backstage and said, “I heard you guys did a picture for Columbia. Congratulations.” Ziggy said, “Yeah, Ned Gilbert directed it.” “Gee, sorry, guys,” Gable said and then slunked out with a queasy look on his face.

SNUFFY DUBIN:
[Agent] Leo Silver calls me and says he hears the Blue Beret needs a comic for five nights. My life is at a new low now—I'm drinking too much, I'm playing dives, I'm picking up junkie chicks and taking them home with me and they're getting sick in my bed. But out of all this misery, pain, and loneliness, I'm slowly finding a new voice in my act. Before, when I was just a raw comic, I did
jokes.
Myron Cohen, Henny Youngman stuff. My room was so small, my wife is so ugly, my taxi driver was so bad, man walks into a psychiatrist's office, horse walks into a bar. What I'm trying to do now, though, is tell
stories.
The story itself is the funny thing; the way I tell it is funny. The problem is, though, the places I'm playing, nobody is liking it. I play the China Doll on Broadway or the Town and Country Club in Brooklyn, I get booed out the door. They're too drunk, they're too stupid, they got their hands up their secretary's skirt at their table. They want the dumb psychiatrist-walks-into-a-horse jokes. The only good thing about the China Doll was that Charlie the bartender had a good pill connection, some quiff-fiend pharmacist from Jackson Heights he used to set up with the girls working the bar.

I call Pete Conifer and told him word had gotten to me that the Blue Beret needed someone. But that pervert iced me. He said they got a singer in to replace Ziggy and Vic. I said, I'll open for the singer. He said, Snuff, I can't do this. I said, Pete, I'm on my knees in my apartment right now, listen to me, I'm fucking begging. I'll work the club, you just give me ten bucks a night. He said, Snuffy, I can't do this. I say, I'll do it for free, Pete, for free. He says, Snuffy, I can't do it. I ask him, Pete, is this Pete Conifer talking to me or is this Fountain and Bliss talking through you? And he says, I can't do this, Snuffy.

I got off the phone and I popped a pill, poured myself a scotch, and fell asleep.

• • •

LULU FOUNTAIN:
I'm not gonna lie. I got lucky marrying Vic. If it wasn't for him, I might've married some guy who fishes for cod or maybe even not got married at all. I wasn't the prettiest girl on Buzzard's Bay . . . but somehow I wound up living in Beverly Hills, going to fancy restaurants, and meeting all these big stars.

I know the things people used to say when they'd see me with Vic. I know 'cause I heard it sometimes. I was at Serge's [Beauty Parlor] one day and some lady under a dryer is looking at
Photoplay,
which had a picture of me, Vic, and Vic's mom. This woman says to her friend, “I can't tell which one's the mother and which one's the wife.” Everyone always wondered why he married me.

[Vic and I] were married at the Church of Saint Vincent Ferrer on Lexington-Avenue. Vic picked the place and when he told me the name, I thought Vincent Ferrer was some actor or singer buddy of his with a church named after him. Vic's mom picked out the gown for me but when I tried it on in New York, Jane White and Sally told me I couldn't wear it. I said to 'em, I can't not wear it, Violetta Fontana picked it out! She's going to be my mother-in-law! You can't wear black wool, they told me. I said to 'em, Look, I come from Codport, I'm not from New York. I don't read
Harper's Bazaar.
Estelle says to me, But, Lu, you're going to be living in New York, there will be photographers there, this will be in the papers, Vic is a big deal. They offered to take me to Saks and Lord & Taylor's, said they would get me something suitable. I didn't like the way they was talking to me, especially Jane. She spent more on clothes in a day than most families do on food in a year. I just wanted to get married, move into my new home, and start a big family.