Funnymen (40 page)

Ziggy had told me that Danny and Sally had once been very serious about each other, but you wouldn't have known it; although once in a while I would catch Danny sneaking a peek at her and at other times her sneaking one at him. Come to think of it, that happened a lot, so maybe you would have known it.

ARNIE LATCHKEY:
Oh, we were clicking again! That fan
tab
ulous,
fun
derful magic and manic energy was back. We had a map up on the wall of the United States and Sally had put pins in at all our upcoming stops. Bertie called one day and asked us how we'd like it if Morty Geist from L.A. went
along on the tour and I said to him, “Has he calmed down yet?” I mean, you could hear Morty sweating over the phone.

The thing began at the Luxor. On the marquee above the title of the movie—which was your typical Devane snoozefest that did decent box office—it said
FISSION FUNNYMEN FOUNTAIN
&
BLISS.
Four shows a day they did. Morty and Bertie really played up the “dare angle,” that's what they called it. The ads said something like “In the last five years, over fifty people have had to be taken to the hospital during a Fountain and Bliss show. Can
you
handle it?” They had ten ambulances outside, they had a hundred tanks of oxygen inside as well as real doctors and nurses (supposedly). But the coup was they had about ten plants there, people to fake being taken ill. One woman—this was Morty's brainstorm—had a little thermos of water . . . at some point during the show, she would pour the water over herself and then go running out. She had just tinkled herself from laughing, it looked like! After two nights, though, we didn't need her because there were about five or so people every show who really would wet themselves with laughter.

Before we left town Fritz Devane showed up and came out for a bow and said a few words. Nobody knew this was going to happen. Devane is talking to about two thousand people and the boys are backstage and Vic said to Ziggy, “Hey, partner, remember what we did to that magician at the Circle Theater in Indy? Well, let's do it again with this son of a bitch.” And they were on the stage behind Fritzy and he had no goddamn idea. They were doing this pantomime thing, making funny gestures and moves, and Fritz was getting laughs and had no idea why. His motion picture was like
The Best Years of Our Lives
but with music, and Devane was going on about how we should remember our nation's veterans and war dead and their sacrifices and how
he
should be remembered come Oscar time, but people are rolling in the aisles! Fritz couldn't figure out why—he even checked to see if his fly was zipped! Then he turns around and sees the boys doing their shtick and storms off.

• • •

CATHERINE RICCI:
I remember we had Vic and Lulu over for dinner one night. Vic was a little fidgety . . . he'd get up and make a few phone calls now and then. Carmine told me he thought Vic was being rude but I said, “He's my little brother and he's famous, he's not rude.”

When we were at the table I was going on and on about our son Paul, about how smart he was. And Lulu was talking about her plans for her kid, once he was born. (Of course, it turned out to be a she; it was Vicki.) I asked Lulu which hospital she was going to give birth in and just then, Vic
came back to the table, told us all that he'd just won three hundred bucks on a race in Hialeah, and sat down. Lulu said, “French Hospital. Dr. Williams there promises me they're very good.” Vic says, “French Hospital? Huh?” And Lu said, “Right, that's where we're having the baby.” And Vic said, “Who is? Huh? Oh yeah. That.”

JANE WHITE:
Every day before that big tour I would get presents from Ziggy. It became almost a joke with me and my doormen. Ziggy and I had tea one day on Fifty-seventh Street and I told him how much I loved the china there and—lo and behold—the next day I get the very same china. One time I complained about a blister on my foot and wouldn't you know it, every day for a week there were new shoes waiting downstairs for me.

We'd be in the paper every now and then, as a gossip item. The pictures were not always so flattering, but it wasn't my fault. I was three inches taller than him, I was skinny and perky, and I had the brightest smile in Manhattan, and he . . . well, he was Ziggy. My father talked to me about going out with him, and my mom told me that Mitch George had called asking about me. But I told them that just being with Ziggy and meeting all these famous people—he introduced me to Joe DiMaggio once!—just about beat anything that boring old Mitch George could come up with. My mother warned me . . . she said to be careful with Ziggy.

Ziggy and I had not yet consummated. Now, I was a virgin, I hope you'll mention that . . . and it wasn't easy. (Both Jimmy Hetfield and Mitch George had put much, much pressure on me, not only separately but together.) We had tried to consummate. But there were problems. Physical problems. It was frustrating for him and it hurt me too. I would cry like a sorry duck. I wanted to make him happy. But you cannot put a square peg in a round hole, especially when the square peg is a baseball bat and the round hole was the eye of a needle.

Before he left on the big tour, he gave me the phone number of a doctor on Park Avenue. “It's Howie Baer, I've known this guy since I was just a little runt in the Poconos,” Ziggy told me. “He'll take care of you good.”

SALLY KLEIN:
Jack was in New York a few days before we set off. He and I and Jane and Ziggy were going to eat at “21” for dinner. Ziggy had moved to Fifth Avenue and Sixty-second Street now; he had a ten-room apartment with a lovely view of the park. Jack and I waited ten minutes downstairs but Ziggy didn't show, which was unusual. The doorman let me up and I rang Ziggy's door. His maid Ruth let me in and I saw Ziggy and Jane sitting with a girl who I recognized. It was Julie Mansell, the Nightingale of Berkeley Square. There were a few tears running down her
cheeks and she was holding some tissue. Jane was holding her hand when I walked in. Jane walked up to me and I asked her what was going on.

“Your cousin has the sweetest heart there ever was, Sally,” Jane said to me.

“Huh? Which cousin? My cousin Julius in Miami Beach?”

“You know which one. That's Julie Mansell and—”

“Yes, I know who it is.”

“Ziggy felt so bad about what he did to her. It's been costing him so much sleep just thinking about it and regretting it.”

I braced myself. What had he done?

“He got her signed with MCA,” she told me, “and she has a record deal now. And Joe Gersh has her booked at El Morocco and at Mocambo in Los Angeles and so, so many other wonderful places!”

I looked at the Nightingale. She was a very talented singer and seemed like a nice girl. But I couldn't tell if she was crying out of real gratitude or because she was simply disgusted at herself for accepting all this.

“And wait till you see the sable coat he got her,” Jane said. “Isn't he just wonderful, Sally?”

“We're going to be late for dinner.”

RAY FONTANA:
Look, I never asked Vic for nothing. Not one time. But I knew that Vic had bought Cathy and Carmine a new turquoise blue Chevy Styleline Deluxe, and when I heard that, well, you know, I got a little envious, sure. And he'd gotten Guy Puglia a car too, a big blue Cadillac Fleetwood. Beautiful car. And Guy wasn't even Vic's own blood. But I never asked Vic for nothing. So one Saturday morning my wife goes outside to pick up the milk and she calls out to me, “Ray, why's there a brand-new blue Coupe de Ville in our driveway?” And right away I knew . . . my little brother had come through.

He couldn't give Pop anything though—Pop was too proud to take it. So he'd just send cash to my mother. She'd get envelopes with thousands in it sometimes. It was one thing if Vic drove up in a new Caddy and said, Here, it's yours. That wouldn't fly. But if all of a sudden Mom goes to a dealership in New Bedford and plunks down a few grand for one, then it's okay.

• • •

MICKEY KNOTT:
Before I got my own band, the last band I toured with was Billy Ross's. Yeah, the Fountain and Bliss Express. It was the lush life all right, lush and luxurious. We stayed at the best hotels, ate the best food, smoked the best tea, played the best joints, and the chicks were superb. I
knew Vic from bumming around band to band from years before, and he gave me a call when Billy needed a new skins man.

We started out in A.C. [Atlantic City] at Skinny D'Amato's 500 Club and Vic and Ziggy blew everyone away, man. They smoked. The musicians and Vic and Ziggy and Arnie Latchkey and everyone stayed on the same floor . . . there was so much craziness going on there, though, that they didn't make that mistake again. I mean, you know how these rock stars and rap stars trash hotel rooms? They had us all on the tenth floor but the next morning there wasn't a tenth floor left. Anybody who wanted to get a night's sleep in that hotel, it just wasn't gonna happen. You know, maybe that wasn't A.C., it may have been Boston.

I turned Vic on to pot then, in Philly after the Earl Theater shows. It's three in the morning and we're bullshitting about the grand old days and how they really stank and I whip out this monster reefer. Wait, maybe this was in Baltimore. “You're not going to do that in here, are you, Mick?” he asks me and I said, “Why, you wanna step out on the terrace with me and do it?” Before I knew it he was puffing on this bone and his head was lost in a cloud of smoke. “Hey, this stuff ain't half bad,” he told me.

ARNIE LATCHKEY:
We would often send Morty Geist to the next city we were going to a week ahead of time, to get the feel for the place and create some ballyhoo. He always made sure to have doctors and nurses and ambulances around. We traveled around with stretchers and tanks of oxygen (the tanks
said
oxygen but they were probably empty). He'd always hire plants for the crowd, screamers and laughers and people to run out because they were in so much pain supposedly. He got the idea for the Boston engagement to plant the rumor that the whole tour was like a wrecking ball, that hotel owners and restaurateurs were complaining the whole operation was out of control. You know, create this air of danger. Morty made up things . . . he told a columnist in the
Boston Herald
that in Philly Vic didn't like the hotel bed so he threw the whole thing—frame and mattress—out the window, fifteen flights down. He told them that when Ziggy heard that, he dragged the dresser to the window and tossed that out too. What happens? The Boston hotel we're supposed to be staying at, they cancel our reservations. Which gave us even more publicity. Morty was counting on that happening, so much so that we were already booked into another joint.

You know what happened? We were opening a motion picture in Miami, it was
She Wore a Yellow Ribbon.
And the distributor withdrew the picture! Because the word had gotten out that after sitting through Fountain and Bliss, nobody had any interest in the movie. We had a week in Florida and every night Vic and some of the boys in the band would go
to Frank Costello's Colonial Inn in Hallandale to gamble and chase skirts. I went there once and what a sight it was, Vic throwin' dice with a girl and a grand in each hand. “Fifty the hard way!” he'd yell out. “A hundred on all the tough guys!” This was a big step up from the dice games he would have with the Lomax band in the parking lots of some of the joints we played. I couldn't believe the bets he was making! A hundred on hard six! This is insane asylum stuff. And the tips?! A cocktail waitress could make more in one minute from Vic than she did the rest of the month.

DANNY McGLUE:
It was on this tour that Vic discovered what would become the passion of his life. Fishing, stamp collecting, Impressionist art? No, it was being with more than one girl at a time—what he called the Vic Fountain Double-Decker Sandwich. Mickey Knott, who was a wild man all to himself, told me about it in a coffee shop near the Chez Paree in Chicago. He'd just walked in on Vic with two girls in his hotel bed, in
Mickey's
bed! I said to him, “Mick, what can a fella do with two girls? I mean, there's only so much he can do, right?” And he said, “Maybe Vic gets creative. All I know is I walked in and I thought I was looking at a big pretzel on my bed, man, and then it started to move. It was Vic, a blonde, and a high-yellow broad.”

It was a difficult tour for me sometimes. Sally was always staying at the same hotel that I was. In every city. We'd eat with Arnie a lot, sometimes with Ziggy too, and Ernie Beasley, who was having a little fling with Mike Boley, the guitarist. Many times Sally and I would wind up alone together . . . after dinner, after a show, in the elevator. But I was seeing Betsy [Cantwell] now and Sally was going with Jack. So many times I'd be opening my hotel room door to get some coffee or get a paper and she'd be coming out of her room too. Every time that happened, I felt my heart skip a beat.

I admit it . . . sometimes I'd hear a door open and know it was her, so I left my room too, just to run into her.