Funnymen (58 page)

“How'd you know about my old man?”

“Huh?”

“I didn't tell nobody my old man was sick.”

Hunny said, “Vic, you told me Bruno was sick.”

“Ziggy, I didn't tell nobody my old man had a tumor.”

Hunny said, “You told me he had a brain tumor too, Vic. And you told me not to never tell no—”

“Quiet, Hunny. Jesus!”

Vic gave Ziggy the strangest look. Ziggy just looked down at his crab cakes and then Vic left, utterly bewildered.

REYNOLDS CATLEDGE IV:
Several months into the surveillance, Vic summoned me to the Ambassador Hotel. I had to act as though I hadn't ever been on the premises before—I had been, of course, since, dressed as an exterminator, I'd placed two microphones there. This suite was entirely the antithesis of Ziggy's, in terms of decor. Some sort of martini machine was built into the wall. Vic would press an array of buttons and levers and a martini would be made; however, as this was the 1950s and automation was in its infancy, it really did seem like more work than to have merely shaken up the cocktail by hand.

At this meeting Vic was with an individual that I recognized from the newspapers as Tony Fratelli, whose brother at that time was serving time for assaulting an aggressive fan of Vic's. The fan had wanted an autograph and Jimmy, as per Vic's suggestion, took care of the woman, who was in her seventies.

“Cat, remember Los Alamos and that big party and that big bomb goin' off?” Vic said to me.

“I certainly do,” I informed him.

“Man, that was some kinda blast, wasn't it?”

I said to him, “It sure was, Vic,” but I could not discern whether he meant the big party in the mess hall or the actual explosion of the bomb. I knew that he was off the base for the latter, but I did not know if he was still cognizant of that fact.

He got down to business. He told me he thought that Ziggy was snooping-around, spying on him. “The guy's a complete nut job, Cat,” he told me. “He's got more screws loose than Tony's goddamn Edsel.” Whereupon he and Tony Fratelli almost choked to death laughing. I immediately recognized Mr. Fratelli's hearty laughter from the tapes.

“Look, we spy on the Russians, right?” he asked me. “We probably got some kinda microphone in Khrushchev's vodka cabinet.”

“That is probably the case,” I said, “yes.”

“Right. So this is what I want you to do . . .”

Within a week, Casper Nuñez and I had tapped Ziggy's house as well as his suite at the Biltmore. This was quite easy to do and we did not have to pay anyone off or dress in various guises to do so. Rather, we secreted these new bugs while Ziggy was himself occupied listening to the tapes of Vic.

Casper Nuñez and I had a problem now but it was easily rectifiable. For Vic, we had to delete the tapes of Ziggy listening to the tapes of Vic, and for Ziggy, we had to delete the tapes of Vic listening to the tapes of Ziggy.

Of particular interest to Vic—and also to myself and Casper Nuñez—was Ziggy's wife, Jane White. At the time the surveillance was under way, she was engaged in a lesbianistic relationship with a neighbor of hers named Joan Pierce. The two women, who served on assorted committees of Episcopalian women in the Los Angeles area, would watch silent movies and then proceed to enjoy sapphist relations. “Listen to this broad go—she sounds like a cowboy on a buckin' bronco,” Vic would say as the Texas-born Mrs. Pierce would have coitus with Jane White. (I should mention that Jane White, after much consultation and agonizing with Mrs. Pierce, decided to surgically reverse the effects of an operation that a Dr. Howard Baer had performed on her some years before.) Of lesser interest was Ziggy ranting and railing to his wife, to his young son, and to his household staff and other individuals, about Vic. We would hear Ziggy making statements like “Do you hear this song?! He's gonna put the whole world to sleep!” and “It took Vic ten takes today to button his shirt!” I would look at Vic while he listened to this but he registered little expression. On more than one occasion he admitted, “Well, the guy's right, you know.”

After eight months Vic had us remove the bugs in Ziggy's suite at the Biltmore and in the dining room, living room, and bedroom at his Beverly Hills home. After an additional two months we removed the one in Jane White's private screening room.

It was often a tricky assignment and one had to constantly be on one's toes. I played a tape to Ziggy about Vic belittling Ziggy's sexual prowess. Vic stated to his acquaintances Ernie Beasley and Hunny Gannett that Ziggy “may have the salami, but he uses it like a toothpick.” Ziggy heard that and then commented to his friends, comedians Snuffy Dubin and Buzzy Brevetto, that he knew that Vic went around badmouthing his sexual technique. Casper Nuñez played that tape for Vic, who could not quite figure things out. There was also a segment, for example, wherein Ziggy told his son's nanny that Vic used blue hair dye to dye his hair. When Vic heard that, he looked at me suspiciously. Yes, it was very tricky.

When both assignments were terminated, Casper Nuñez and I were very relieved.

• • •

DANNY McGLUE:
Ziggy and Vic treated the writers with so much disrespect, it nauseated you. The writers couldn't sleep, they were angry, they were humiliated constantly. I was the head writer and was spared this cruelty, but what they did to those guys was sadistic. But you know, only two guys ever quit. They were making more money than they had in their entire lives. We'd be up for three days straight sometimes without sleep, fine-tuning
the script. We'd craft these funny sketches and then Ziggy would scrap them, just for the sake of scrapping them.

I'd go to bat for the writers but it was no use. In the final season, we had ten writers and none of them had ever met Fountain and Bliss face-to-face. There was this guy Tommy Orso—he wound up making a fortune in TV in the sixties and seventies. He'd been with the show since day one. After two dozen shows I went to Vic and said, “Tom Orso would really like to meet you.” And he had no idea who I was talking about.

Ziggy told Artie [Conway] that he didn't want any more Dr. Louie Kablooie sketches. Artie knew not to fight Ziggy. We all did. So Artie told us and we did as Ziggy wished. Then at the last minute, two days before we went on, we got the order to come up with a Louie Kablooie sketch. Tommy Orso said, “You know, I don't need this crap. I'm walking.” And the other nine writers got up and walked out too. I told Artie and he and I went to Ziggy's suite at the Sherry-Netherland. Ziggy told us to call each writer and have them come in. He would, he said, show up at the meeting tomorrow and personally apologize. He'd done wrong, he knew.

So the next day the guys are all assembled and Millie Roth pops in. She tells us to go downstairs. The writers pile into the elevator and then we're on Broadway and what's there? Ten new cars! Ziggy—who didn't ever apologize to us—had arranged it with the sponsor, which was Pontiac by then, to get ten new Bonneville convertibles, one for each of us.

“What a real sweetheart that bastard is,” Tom Orso said.

ARNIE LATCHKEY:
After the fourth or fifth movie in the Galaxy deal, everything caved in like an outhouse getting bombed. Nobody wanted to work on the crew; we couldn't get a cameraman or a key grip or anything. I mean, if you worked on one Fountain and Bliss picture then that was it—you wouldn't do another. Gus Kahn was livid. George Collier—or what was left of him—had given up, and we even had trouble getting a director. It took a while but Ezra Gorman, who was still producing the movies, scraped something together.

Around this same time I thought our ship might sink. The theory was that if any single one of us—Vic, Sally, Ziggy, myself—gets off the ship, then the whole damn thing would sink. And now someone—oh, we'll call him Samuel Goldwyn—approached Vic, through me, about starring in the movie version of
Guys and Dolls.
[Director] Joe Mankiewicz and [writer] Abe Burrows were really touting him to Goldwyn. Now, I could've turned it down flat and never even mentioned the offer to Vic, but I didn't do that. Why? Because of my profound conscience? Because I knew I had to do good by my talent? No. It was because I knew he'd have found out about it and chewed my head off for not telling him.

So I told him about Goldwyn's interest and, much to my dread, his face lit up. He'd seen the play. He said the Nathan Detroit role was perfectly suited to him. “That's me, baby!” he said. “I could do that part in my sleep.”

Well, now my face also lit up too. “And you want I should tell them that?” I said.

“Yeah, tell them that.”

I told Goldwyn that Vic felt he could do the part in his sleep. As I'd hoped, he didn't seem very happy. He relayed the line to Mankiewicz and Burrows. And Frank Sinatra—who they weren't worried about being awake or not—got the part.

• • •

DAVID GRAN [employee at Galaxy]:
I started working at Galaxy in their commissary as a busboy. One day Arnie Latchkey plucked me out of the commissary and asked me if I'd like to work on the set of
Two Goofballs.
I said, “Wow! Sure! When can I start?!” and the man said to me, “Please . . . don't get too excited, kid.”

Before you know it I was a best boy for a Fountain and Bliss movie.

Now, even in the commissary I'd heard that they could be difficult. I'd hear it when people were on line with their trays. You could tell from people's expressions that they were working on a Fountain and Bliss picture, just from their dazed looks and silences. Still, I jumped at the opportunity.

Latchkey told me my job was simple: “The director wants you to tell Ziggy and Vic something, you tell Ziggy. If Ziggy then wants you to tell Vic something, then you tell it to me first. If Vic wants to say something to Ziggy, either tell me or the director.”

The director—it was Stanley London—rarely addressed them both publicly at the same time. Or privately. Ezra Gorman didn't either. Fountain and Bliss almost never talked to each other. A lot went through me. There were times when I honestly felt I was by far the most important person on the set of the movie. And I was making less than anyone there.

There was one very serious complication on this picture. Every Fountain and Bliss movie had a large musical number, but Gorman could not convince any choreographer to work on the movie. So one day a woman showed up and was introduced to us as the choreographer. She was in her late fifties and her name was Mary Beaumont. She'd choreographed some Broadway musicals and done summer stock too.

For some reason, this did not sit well with Ziggy Bliss. He refused to come out of his trailer if Mrs. Beaumont was to choreograph the big dance number. The set closed down for a week. I had to relay messages from him to Gorman to London to Arnie Latchkey and then back to Ziggy. Ziggy
said that
he
would choreograph the dance. Finally he gave up. He walked onto the set to meet Mrs. Beaumont. “Hi, Mary. 'Member me?” he said, talking like a baby. And she said, “Ziggy, how could I ever, ever forget you! Please, give an old flame a kiss!” Ziggy stood on his toes to reach up to kiss her—she was in remarkable physical shape—and Mary spat on his face. “There! I've wanted to do that for years!” she said and then triumphantly walked off.

In the end, there was no big musical number in
Two Goofballs.

• • •

VICKI FOUNTAIN:
You can imagine what it was like growing up Vic Fountain's daughter. I had everything I could ever ask for. Edith Head and Irene, the MGM designer, used to design clothing for my dolls, and every day a driver would drop me off at school in a Rolls. Vincent wasn't nearly as pampered as I was. Dad really lavished most of the presents and attention on me. He always called me his little princess.

I remember when I was not named homecoming queen in my senior year. Dad went berserk. He got Tony and Jimmy Fratelli, who were in business with [gangster] Mickey Cohen, to accompany him to the school. He plucked me out of a science class and brought me down to the principal's office with the Fratellis. He was yelling at [principal] Mr. Armstrong and he was pinching my face. “How could she not be the queen?!” he was screaming. “Look at this
faccia bella!
” Mr. Armstrong was frightened, he didn't know what the Fratelli brothers would do. “It wasn't really up to me, Mr. Fountain,” he told Dad. “Dad, please, it's okay!” I told him. I was in tears almost, but I appreciated his love and concern and, of course, I still wanted to be homecoming queen too. Dad told Tony Fratelli to find Katie Cornwell, the girl who'd won, and Tony went stomping off. Jimmy said, “Vic, we can't have Tony beatin' up seventeen-year-old girls he don't even know! I mean, if it was a girl he knew . . . let's get outta here!” Dad grabbed the lamp on Mr. Armstrong's desk and threw it against the wall. Then Tony burst in and he had Katie by the hair. Tony said, “Hey, you know, she
is
kinda pretty, Vic. I don't wanna have to mess anything up here.” By that time Dad had lost his interest and he and the Fratellis just left.