Funnymen (45 page)

“Los Angeles,” I told him.

The plane was from 1930 or so. There were no numbers on it and there was hardly even a cockpit—the pilot was just sitting right in front of us.

“Where you guys going?” he asked us when we'd been aloft for a few minutes.

“Los Angeles,” I told him. “I told you that already!”

“Oh yeah.”

“Arnie and Ziggy are going to be mad at you, Vic,” I warned Vic.

“Why? 'Cause I didn't let 'em watch me with Vera Langley?”

“It's Veda Lankford,” I reminded him.

“Can you believe it, Gaetano? I used to cop a feel with Angela Crosetti in Codport at the gazebo and now I got Veda Lankford's
sticchio
all over my finger.”

The plane was bouncing up and down and the pilot told us it was just an air pocket. “You sure you know how to fly this thing?” Hunny asked the pilot, and the pilot said, turning around to us (which I most certainly did
not
appreciate), “Oh sure . . . I was shot down three times in the First World War.” As though that was reassuring.

The plane kept bouncing and everyone except the pilot and Vic was terrorized.

“Shouldn't we have brought Veda back with us?” I asked. “Gus Kahn is going to wonder what we did with her.”

“Well, first I started kissin' her, right? And then I lifted up her skirt and—”

“Gee, I hope we don't have to ditch this thing,” the pilot said.

“Aw, fuck, I'm gonna die,” Hunny said. His huge head was turning a greenish white.

“What decides whether you have to ditch the thing or not?” I asked the pilot.

“All sorts of factors,” he said. “But I don't remember what they are.”

“Got any tequila in there, Smilin' Jack?” Vic asked him. And sure enough, he passed Vic back a bottle. “If you gotta go, you gotta go, ain't that right, Hun? At least I got to bang a movie star first.”

“But
I
didn't!” Hunny told him.

The pilot said to me, “Could you open that little drawer down there and see what's inside?” I opened a drawer and there was a parachute bag. I passed it to the pilot, who strapped it on.

“Only one?” I asked him.

“We'll make it . . . I've made it before in bad weather,” the pilot said.

“But the weather isn't bad,” I said.

Guy was praying, saying the Hail Mary over and over again. I did what I always do when I'm scared: I sang songs to myself. The same lyric again and again. I was singing “Just One of Those Things.” But I must have been singing aloud because Vic told me, “Will you knock it off about them gossamer wings, Bease?”

“Where are you guys going?” the pilot asked.

I told him, “Vic's supposed to be at the Pantages Theater in about ten minutes.”

“Where's that?”

“In Los Angeles! I told you we were going there!”

“No, I mean, where in the city is it? I'll take you right there.”

Vic took a big swig and handed him the bottle and I looked out the window and we were coming down through the clouds. We were in Hollywood, going right over Argyle. I could make out Vine up ahead and I told the pilot to hang a right there.

“I'm gonna die,” Hunny said again. “I always thought I'd die in the ring.”

I could make out Hollywood Boulevard and then the theater came into view. Traffic was light and we were descending very, very quickly. The long line into the Pantages was snaking in. Then there was a tremendous bump
when we hit the asphalt and we were right behind a Cadillac. I wish you could have seen the expressions on all the drivers' faces! The plane skidded and turned around two times and then stopped . . . we were about ten yards from the theater. And you can't imagine how many people were staring at us and how many horns were honking!

“Hey, thanks, buddy!” Vic said and he handed the pilot some money.

Vic and I had to jostle Hunny awake because he'd fainted. I nudged Vic in the ribs because I saw about a half a dozen photographers running toward us. When he saw that, Vic grabbed the tequila from the pilot.

We were soon surrounded by photographers snapping Vic's picture, the lights going off in our faces, dazzling us. Properly sensing the moment, Vic made exactly like John Wayne getting out of the plane and strutting with manly bravado to the theater with the bottle of tequila . . . oh my, you should have seen it. It was right out of Douglas Sirk's
The Tarnished Angels!

We went around the back and the man at the door recognized Vic and let us in. Vic was combing his hair back and dusting himself off on his way to his dressing room. I saw a tall shadow with a cigar down the corridor. It was Arnie Latchkey. He was holding a tuxedo and he handed it to Vic and said, “Awful
muy grande
of you to show up.”

“Where's Zig?” Vic asked, slipping into the tux.

“He's onstage now. Dying a horrible death. Oh, just forget the goddamn cummerbund!”

SALLY KLEIN:
“I'll kill him! I'll kill him!” Ziggy was hissing to me in his dressing room. “Sal, if I go on alone, I'll die. I'll
die!”

We waited and waited for Vic and I never told Ziggy that he was in Mexico. I said to him, “I have to ask you a tough question.” He looked like he didn't have one drop of energy inside of him, like he was drained by all his waiting and worrying. I said, “How long do you think Fountain and Bliss is going to last? Do you want to be with him for thirty years?”

“I don't know if I can take another thirty days of this, Sal. Why?”

“Let's say you two split up . . . what do you imagine yourself doing?”

“Honest, I never thought about it.”

“Well, think about it. Because if you're not with Vic, then you're going to be alone. So you better get used to performing alone. Or else you're stuck here. Why don't you just give it a shot?”

“No!”

“Please. Just try it!”

“No!”

I picked up a copy of the
Examiner
off the table and turned to the interview he'd done with Bobby Hale. I started reading him back excerpts from it, how
he
was the funny guy, how
he
got the laughs, how
he
did all
the work. “This is all a load of malarkey!” I said. “Look at you, Ziggy! Without Vic, you're nothing!” And I stormed out.

One minute later he walked out of his dressing room, wiping his forehead, and ambled onto the stage. Poor Billy Ross didn't know what to do. He started up “Malibu Moon” and Ziggy actually sang the song . . .
imitating Vic!
It got some laughs but still, people were wondering: Where's Vic? Ziggy stood by the mike and kept adjusting it . . . he pulled it up, he pushed it down, he brought it here and there. He kept wiping his head with a handkerchief. He twitched a little, kept shaking his head and blinking his eyes. I'd seen this before and knew we were in big trouble.

“We have to get him off, Arnie,” I whispered backstage. “He'll have a stroke.”

“Sally, listen to that . . . LISTEN!” he said to me.

The audience was going crazy for it! They thought it was part of the routine. His gestures, his twitches and eye blinks—they thought he was doing a pansy act! Every time he moved his head they burst out laughing! The microphone picked up these faint wheezing sounds and when they heard that, they were on the floor.

I heard a loud commotion from outside the theater—horns honking, people-cheering—and Arnie slipped backstage. Ziggy was frozen and pale and the crowd kept eating it up, and all of a sudden Vic was standing next to me.

“Oh, if it isn't the Italian cavalry just in time,” I said to him.

“Hey, Ziggy's doing great without me,” Vic said. He wasn't too pleased.

Arnie pushed Vic out there and it was a while before Ziggy even noticed him.

“Nice of you to show up, Vic,” Ziggy said to him.

“I thought I'd just drop in, see how you were doing.”

“And?”

“It looks like you don't need me no more.”

“I guess I don't.”

“Except maybe to clean that puddle you made that you're standing in.”

About four thousand eyes all looked to Ziggy's feet. (Of course, there
was
no puddle.)

“I sunged ‘Malibu Moon' without you, Vic,” Ziggy said, “I'll have you know.”

“Oh yeah? How'd it go over?”

“Well, for the first time ever, the audience was awake at the end of it.”

It only took two minutes before they began to click and when they clicked, it was explosive.

The Pantages shows were all sold out, every night. There were fights outside the theater to get tickets. Vic told everybody—including dozens of
reporters—that
he
had flown the plane from Mexico because the pilot was too drunk, that he had landed the plane on Hollywood Boulevard to get to the theater on time. Morty Geist said, “Gee, I wish I'd thought that one up!” The photo of Vic getting out of the plane with the bottle was everywhere! The
Examiner
had a headline “
ON A SING AND A PRAYER!”
and
Variety
went
“CROONER'S CRAFT CRASHES PANTAGES BASH.”
Estelle called from New York to tell me the
Daily News
ran the photo on their cover with the headline “40
SECONDS OVER JOKE-E-O.”

DANNY McGLUE:
Every few years I'd ask Vic, “Did you really fly the plane that night?” And he'd tell me that he did. When I asked Guy and Hunny, they'd shrug and tell me to ask Vic.

Betsy arrived in L.A. only a few days before the plane thing and she stayed with me at the hotel. She had quit
A Date With Judy
—they were giving her only a line a week now—and it was a very rough time for her.

“So is it
always
this exciting with Ziggy and Vic?” she asked me.

“Unfortunately, yes.”

I took Betsy to Vendôme . . . we ordered a bottle of expensive wine and were just about to enjoy a pleasant dinner when the waiter told me I had a phone call. I went to the bar and it was Ziggy on the other end.

“This plane thing is blowing up in our faces, Danny!” he told me. “That was some stunt Vic pulled!”

“You're sold out at the Pantages, you've been extended a week at Ciro's, and Arnie is cooking up something in Vegas . . . if this is blowing up, then maybe we should have more of it.”

“Well, I'm all for it if the plane crashes a little harder next time,” he said.

“Don't talk like that. I really don't think Vic crashed the plane to boost his career. If he was really flying it, that is.”

“It worked for Knute Rockne, Danny,” he said to me. “If Rockne's plane don't crash, they don't make that movie with Pat O'Brien.”

“Ziggy, my snails just showed up . . . I'm with Betsy,” I told him.

“I put an ad in
Variety,
a full-page ad,” he told me. “And it's gonna run elsewheres too. The
Globe
in New York and—”

“An ad?” I said.

“Yeah, you'll see it. Enjoy your snails.”

When I got back to the table, the snails were indeed there but most of the wine wasn't. Betsy had knocked back about two-thirds of it. “Sorry about that, honey,” I said to her.