Funnymen (51 page)

Celebrities would come in—it wasn't just raincoat artists jackin' themselves off. Marlon Brando had just done
Julius Caesar
, he'd come by a lot. Liz Taylor, Desi Arnaz, and Nat Cole. Lots of doctors too, with their nurses. There was a motel across the street and you had lots of married couples drifting in and out, but they usually weren't married to each other.

Ziggy dropped in one Saturday night at the Ruby and, man, I really needed to put a show on. You know who's there? Jack Entratter from the Sands. Joe DeWolfe from the Aladdin. Moe Dalitz is there too, so's Lee Rosenfeld from the Tidal Wave Hotel, which had just opened on the [Vegas] Strip. All these hotshots who could book me into joints in the blink of an eye. Ziggy's with this girl who used to do blue movies, her name was Nina Mellon, but the real last name was Melendez, I think. Ziggy was addicted to these movies, he had a vault full of 'em. So all these big shots are in the crowd and I know I gotta load up all the guns, I'm gonna go all out and murder every single person in that room. And I've got the act down. I relate anecdotes, I tell stories, no punch lines, no mugging, no Catskills shtick. It's me being me and if I screw up, then execute me. And none of that flop sweat—that's when the audience sees you working so hard to make you love them that they wind up hating your fucking guts. There's none of that. I'm gonna hurt 'em so much they're gonna love me.

But I'm five minutes into my set and suddenly Ziggy bounces onto the stage. Jesus Christ, this is the last thing I need! I need this like I wanna team up with Mahatma Gandhi and we sing love songs to each other like Sandler and fucking Young. Now, what's the worst thing I can do at this point? If I tell Ziggy to take a hike, it makes me look so bad it's like I'm erased right in front of your eyes. So I gotta just roll with this. I gotta roll with it and run with it and play along. Except for this: It wasn't rolling, it wasn't running, it wasn't playing. This was death. You ever wonder why there's a
straight man and a funnyman and not
two
funnymen? Well, if so, you should've been at the Ruby that night. It was like bringing Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams up to the plate at the same time! You got a righty and a lefty and do they hit the ball? Nope, they wind up banging each other's brains to applesauce with the first swing. Absolute death.

I went to my dressing room afterward. I had my door open because I was just too
festunkt
to close it. And all these strippers are walking by with their getups, it was like I was in a bird zoo or something, all these feathers and stuff.
This could've been my night!
I had all those heavy hitters out there! And I got flattened, I'm a latke underneath a steamroller.

Ziggy came in. He said, “Snuffles, remember all them years I wanted to double with you?”

“How could I forget?” I said.

“I guess it was a good thing it never happened, huh?”

“Joe DeWolfe and Jack Entratter were in the audience tonight.”

“Izzat right?”

“Yeah, they were,” I said. “Lee Rosenfeld too, from the Tidal Wave.”

“Tonight? Just now?”

“They were probably scouting me.”

“I didn't know that, Snuff.”

Well, I found out that wasn't true. Because Debbie had seen Ziggy and Joe DeWolfe talking to each other five minutes before I came on. The liar.

“Well, anyways, Snuff, maybe you'll kinda bathe in my refracted glory,” he says.

Bathe?
I almost got drowned in it.

“What are those?” he asked me.

“These?” I said. “Oh, they're just pep pills. I got another set to do. They help me do it.”

“So what is it? It's like coffee?”

“Yeah, it's like coffee. Like lots of fuckin' coffee.”

“Could I get a few of those, Snuffles? I got the movies and the clubs and everything.”

I passed him about ten bennies.

“So how do you get this funny fuel?” he asked. Great name for the stuff, huh?

“Doctors come in all the time. After a set, I sit with them, make them giggle, they write me a script.”

“Oh yeah? They do that for you? Just for makin' 'em laugh?”

“What, you think all those girls with big tits fuck you because they
love
you?”

Two hours later I'm all keyed up for the second set. But all of the big shots were gone.

ARNIE LATCHKEY:
The Ego and the Idiot
was a slapsticky farce about psychiatry and mistaken identities. It was the Three Stooges meet
Spellbound
—in other words, a catastrophic head-on collision. Ziggy played Sigmund Floyd, a Viennese analyst but actually a schizo bricklayer from Milwaukee. Vic was a crooner—a real stretch, huh?—who suffered from stage fright and needed help. Penny Rhodes and Sondra Webb, who Ziggy and Vic, respectively, were
shtupping
on the side, were the female leads. George Collier was helming again, but this time he never warned the boys about goofing around on the set. So they went crazy. Vic doesn't rehearse and has to do five takes to get a sentence out. Ziggy gets impatient and screws around with the camera, the script girl, the props. He did this thing with the mike boom one day; he pretended to be rowing with it and swung it around, right into Collier's eye. Smashed his glasses.

So now the man finally had the eye patch.

The boys were being overworked, no doubt about it. They took on more than they could handle. Sometimes on the weekends, they'd fly to New York to do the Copa or to Florida to play the Fontainebleau. It was crazy, believe me. They played three shows at the Hollywood Bowl. Shep Lane worked a clause into the contracts so they could break if they had a week-long club date lined up. They did, they broke, the filming was all
farkakte.

It began to wear on them. They did a week at Ciro's during the last week of the
Idiot
flick. They were lackluster shows. I'd never seen them so off. Now, it could've been because they were just so tired from all the shooting, the drinking and carousing, and from being husbands and fathers, which they did manage to squeeze in every now and then, but it also could have been because . . . they were getting along with each other! They were allies now, they were buddies, you could almost say.
Almost.

[George S. Collier's] lawyer called Shep Lane because he wanted damages for the eye, and I tell Shep, Okay, why fight this thing, we'll give Cyclops B. DeMille what he wants. The sum they settled on I could buy ten new eyes with! While that was going on, Bobby Hale ravaged Fountain and Bliss in the
Examiner.
He said that that they were almost as bad at Ciro's as they were on screen. Vic had just released his first LP,
Midnight With Vic,
and Hale really let him have it about that. He said Vic had three modes when he sang: sleepy, very sleepy, and fast asleep. Vic was really the target—he mostly left Ziggy alone.

GUY PUGLIA:
I went to the
The Ego and the Idiot
premiere at the Egyptian [Theater]. After the movie there was a party at Johnny D'Antibes's joint, where Ziggy and Vic got up and thanked everybody for coming and for putting up with the movie, which I guess they could tell wasn't so great. I was walkin' around this party—man, there were so many famous people and
beautiful girls there—and I run into Lulu, she's with Bruno, who now wears black sunglasses all the time, and Violetta. And alls of a sudden Ernie Beasley walks past and he's got Ginger on his arm.

Ernie was already pretty smashed—what else is new?—and Ginger had had a few too. Ernie introduces Ginger to everybody and says she had a bit part in the
Idiot
movie, which was true, she's in it for maybe four scenes as a nurse.

“. . . And this is Lulu Fountain, Vic's wife,” Ernie said.

Ginger extended her hand and Lulu didn't shake it.

“Oh, you're Vic's whore, right?” Lu said.

Ginger looked straight down.

“You wanna screw him,” Lu said, “I don't care. Do a good job, keep him happy. But don't think for a second you can take him away from my kids and me.”

She and Bruno and Violetta walked away.

“Maybe we should leave, baby,” Ernie said.

“Maybe we should have another drink,” Ginger said.

About a week after that, Chinese Joe Yung had to drive Ginger to Mexico-to get an abortion.

LULU FOUNTAIN:
I felt sorry for that Ginger girl. She thought she was somethin' special to Vic, but she wasn't. She was a piece of meat. I could've sat down with her and set her straight. But, I figured, the best thing to do is just let Vic break her heart.

ERNIE BEASLEY:
Guy's Seafood Joint in Malibu had been open for a few months and Vic was there one night with me, those Fratelli brothers, who always frightened me, and Hunny and Ginger. And Bobby Hale and his wife walked in.

Near the end of our meal, Vic went to the bathroom, returned to the table, and called the waiter over. He said to the waiter, “Bring this over to Mr. Hale's table, tell him it's compliments of Vic Fountain. And tell him no hard feelings.” He handed the waiter a rolled-up napkin and I don't have to tell you what was in there.

“Just watch this,” Vic said.

“He don't need a napkin,” Hunny said. “He's already got one.”

“Okay, Hunny. Sure.”

The waiter presented the napkin to Bobby Hale, and Bobby raised his glass to us. For a moment he must have thought Vic the magnanimous sort. His wife snuggled up close to him, wondering what was inside. They couldn't smell it—Vic told me he'd poured some of Ginger's Chanel on it.

I will
never
as long as I live forget the look on Bobby Hale and his wife's
faces when they unrolled it. Before they could stand up to leave, Vic was right over them, yelling. He yelled at Bobby Hale's wife, “You actually let this stinkin' piece of shit fuck you? 'Cause that's what he is!” and to Bobby Hale, “Who the hell do you think you are to rip me like that?!
Vafancul'!”

For some reason, Hunny and one of the Fratellis joined Vic at the table. It became this whole macho thing, a pissing contest.

“Vic, this is disgusting,” Hale said. “We're leaving.”

But Vic wouldn't let the two of them go.

“You're not even man enough to fight me!” Vic said. “You insult me in your paper but now that I'm here you're too afraid to have a go at me.”

I thought Vic was going to shove Bobby Hale or grab his collar but he never did.

“Come on, Bobby, be a man. Come on, pussy!” Vic said.

“Honey, let's go,” Bobby said, and he and his wife stood up.

But Hunny mistook “honey” for “Hunny,” I guess. He started messing with Bobby Hale. By now, Guy and some waiters are over at the table and he's urging Vic to back off. The last thing he wants is a big scene. “Just let 'em go, Vic, okay?” Guy was urging.

Before anybody knew it, Hunny had leveled Bobby Hale. He was unconscious on the floor. One of the Fratellis started kicking him in the ribs but Bobby Hale's wife restrained him and so did Guy, who was very, very strong.

It was in the papers the next day. There were pictures of the ambulance outside the restaurant, which, by the way, was just fabulous publicity for the place! And all the reporters had it that hot-tempered singer/actor Vic Fountain had gotten into a fierce brawl. Nobody had it right, that someone else had fought Vic's battle for him.

• • •

GUY PUGLIA:
I had this lovely setting in Malibu, right on the water, and Vic was my big backer. For years he tried to get me to take lobster and oysters off the menu but I told him that a place called Guy's Seafood Joint that didn't serve any seafood wouldn't really draw too many people. He wasn't thrilled I served seafood but, hey, seafood is what I know. The chef would always have food special for him, like veal, steak, or pasta. I had to go along with this one thing of his, though, or he wouldn't ever have put up the dough—the place looked onto the ocean and the beach, it was a great view. People would've killed for that view. But Vic said he didn't want to see the water. Windows on the highway outside, that was fine, but none onto the water. So on that I caved in. Instead of windows, there was a mural of Mount Vesuvius erupting all over Pompeii covering the whole
wall. And there was another thing: My sister Franny sent me a big plastic swordfish to hang on the wall. When we knew Vic was comin'—or when he just popped in—we had to take it off the wall.