Funnymen (7 page)

Guy got out of the car and—I guess in the accident the door had broken because he couldn't open the door—he pulled Ted Duncan out right through the window. This was much harder than it sounds because all the glass was broken and a lot of the glass was scraping his skin as he was being wriggled through it.

Then Guy and Vic helped Teddy up the pathway to this house.

I checked my watch and called out, “Two minutes, boys!”

It was still raining out and very dark and I lost sight of them. And they were only maybe fifteen yards away. I heard a noise . . . it was the thud of the people opening the front door. And then a few seconds later Victor and Guy emerged from the rain and fog and were back in the car.

I felt just like a bandit, like Bonnie Parker or Ma Barker. Because I really “stepped on it,” as they say, and we made it to the Newburyport Lounge with about thirty seconds to spare.

HUGH BERRIDGE:
Backstage I pulled Jack Enright's secretary aside immediately. “Where's Teddy?” I demanded of the girl. I have to tell you: months before when I'd met her in Jack Enright's office . . . she would chase Rowlie around, wait for him outside his house at all hours of the night, had somehow got into her head that he was going to marry her. But in these last few weeks she'd really fallen into disfavor.

“Teddy just quit,” she told me.

I looked around. Vic had slipped his vest on. A clarinetist was licking his reed, the tenor saxophonist was screwing the mouthpiece in. I noticed something about Vic's vest. Instead of there being three domino pips on it, now there were only two.

“He quit?” I asked the girl, understandably incredulous.

“Here,” she said. “Slip it on quick.” And she handed me a new vest, also suddenly with but two pips on it.

Good God, it was all a devious scheme!

“We got a minute before we're on, Hugo,” Vic said to me. “I think some polo horse may have kicked Duncan in the head. It's too bad.”

Hugo. He'd forgotten my name.

Quickly, I had two belts of scotch—one for Rowlie, one for Teddy—and then a third, for all of Humanity itself. And I joined Vic onstage.

RAY FONTANA:
Cecil Newcombe comes on the radio and says something like this: “Folks, we were supposed to have an exciting new trio, the Three Threes, sing tonight, but I'm afraid we have some news . . .”

Sal and Tony [Fontana] and Pop had to restrain Mom. You know how those old-time radios, they had cloth covering the grille? Where the noise comes out? When my mother hears Newcombe say he's afraid he has some news, she starts clawing the cloth off the grille . . . it was confetti in three seconds. She's yelling, “I'll kill you!” and I asked Cathy, “
Who's
she gonna kill?” but then I remembered that Mamma always thought the tubes inside the thing were little men.

But the news was just that the Three Threes were now the Two Threes.

CATHERINE RICCI:
They sang three songs and then Cecil Newcombe interviewed them. When we heard Vic talking on the radio it was just amazing. It was the first time Papa ever really paid attention to the radio other than to shut it off or listen to Mussolini or
NBC Symphony
. He was so proud.

Cecil Newcombe asked Vic about the group and then that man Hugh started to say something, but Vic jumped in and explained how they'd gotten together. The audience chuckled when Vic spoke . . . not just 'cause Vic was funny but because he was funny-sounding. They'd never heard the son of a fisherman talk before, I guess. Newcombe asked another question and Hugh began to answer it and then Vic interrupted again and he got more laughs. But this time because he
was
funny! Cecil Newcombe asked why [Ted Duncan] had quit the group and Vic said he'd had a croquet accident. Except he pronounced it “croquette.” Newcombe asked what the future held for these two young singers. Vic told him that a nightclub act was ephemeral but that being on the radio was really for posterity.

Mamma was in tears. Papa was smiling but also crying.

• • •

SALLY KLEIN:
We took a bus from Camden to Trenton and then from Trenton to New York. They had a two-day break before an engagement in Buffalo and wanted to spend some time at home.

I had dinner at home with Harry and Flo. Ziggy went out . . . he didn't tell us he was going anywhere, he just went. And he didn't come back until the next morning.

I was asleep when he came in, asleep on the couch in the living room. It was maybe eight in the morning and he looked like hell.

I said, “Where've you been? Is everything okay?”

“No, Sal,” he said, “everything is
not
okay . . .”

Well, he'd done a few things. He went to Jerome Milton's office and demanded to look at the contract that Milton had with Harry and Flo. When Milton told him he'd ripped the paperwork up, Ziggy went nuts and grabbed Milton by the collar. Now, I know Ziggy was only eighteen years old and on the fat side but he was always very strong. He was
much
stronger than Vic Fountain and that's a fact. Vic never got in a fistfight in his entire life unless he had Guy Puglia, Hunny Gannett, or Ices Andy around.

I asked Ziggy, “Why do you care so much about the paperwork? You should be glad Milton ripped it up.”

“I just wanted to make sure he ripped it up, Sal,” he told me with that mischievous baby grin he had. You know, smiling with one corner of his mouth.

He had turned over file cabinets, flung open every drawer in the office, just to make sure.

“I asked one of the girls in the office to have dinner wit' me,” he said. “And she said no dice.”

I told him, “Well, you'd just ransacked their office and made a spectacle-of yourself! Do you think that's the way to make a nice impression?”

He didn't hear me. Some things filtered in but if he didn't want to hear something, it went straight in the other direction.

He told me that after leaving the Milton office he made a few rounds. He went to the Bursley-Bates publicity agency and met some people, including [publicist] Bertie Kahn. Then he went to a bunch of newspapers. He demanded to see Walter Winchell, he demanded to see Westbrook Pegler, he wanted to see Grayling Greene and Lee Mortimer and Bud Hatch. All the
ganzer machers
on Broadway and in gossip. He wanted to spread the word around, tell them he was going to play Buffalo in a few days.

“I just cannot see,” I told him, “Grayling Greene or Westbrook Pegler getting on a train to Buffalo to see the Blissmans!”

“Get out, Sal,” he said.

I didn't think he was serious and so I didn't budge.

He yelled at the top of his lungs. “Get the hell outta my house!”

Harry and Flo ran out of the bedroom. They were in—they had to wear kiddie pajamas because that was the only clothing that would fit them.

“Ziggy! Why are you yelling at your cousin?” Flo asked him.

Ziggy said to her, “Don't you ever raise your voice at me.”

“I will raise my voice as loud as I want to,” she said back. Which, believe me, was a frightening proposition . . . I started thinking, Uh-oh, I might have to get a new pair of glasses.

Harry said, “Can we all go back to sleep here?”

And then Ziggy really let them have it. He shouted and shouted, he called them every name in the book. He called them “old vaudeville midgets.” He said he was ashamed to know them. He said one day he was going to sleep with Betty Grable, Rita Hayworth, Hedy Lamarr, and Myrna Loy. I remember Harry saying, “What the hell's Myrna Loy doing on that list?” Ziggy just cursed them out some more.

I tried to tell myself, Okay, he's eighteen years old, he's talking about conquering the world. But he's also Cousin Ziggy. Years and years later [husband] Jack said to me that the child part of him which should have been underdeveloped was overdeveloped, and the adult part of him which should have been overdeveloped had never developed at all. So he was way, way off-kilter.

I was young too, so I don't know if I realized it then . . . that Ziggy was lonely, he was very, very lonely. He absolutely
craved
love. And attention, which he often mistook for love. He never had much of either when he was a baby or a child. He just wanted to be loved. And here he was, alienating the only two people who cared about him.

Aunt Florence was weeping and Harry had to hold her up.

“Look what you did to your mother!” Harry said. “Look what you did!”

Ziggy stormed out.

“What did we do so wrong?” Flo was asking Harry.

He shook his head and muttered something I didn't understand: “That goddamn magician.”

DICK HARVEY [assistant manager at the Erie Lounge]:
The week before the Blissmans played Buffalo, Dick Fain and Connie Bishop had performed with the Floyd Lomax band. We'd had a hard time of it, those of us working there, because Mr. Fain was not easy to deal with. Ever try and stop a guy from sticking his finger in a wall socket? People used to call him the Prince of Pain.

The Blissmans had performed at the club before and hadn't done too well. But now with this fat kid with the crazy red hair, they really had a strong show.

Their final night was the broadcast night. The Blissmans were opening for the Dick Saxon Orchestra. There were some reporters, entertainment reporters from the local papers, there that night.

The first few nights Ziggy had gone into the audience and done some gags—but on
this
night? It was as if his life depended on it. The house was in stitches. He even got a bunch of waiters and busboys involved! It was hilarious.

The mother sang a song at the end. Someone from the radio station had to put up a screen in front of the mike so people at home wouldn't have their fine china busted. In the club, people's ears were ringing. Then everybody thought the show was over and the lights came up. The radio announcer was about to go to a commercial and all of a sudden Ziggy was back on the stage.

He wrested the mike away from the announcer and started talking about his parents. He said that though they were short of stature, they were giants where it counted, in their hearts. They'd risen up from nothing, from nowhere, he said, they'd done vaudeville and burlesque and eaten cold soup and stayed in hotels that no rat should ever be caught dead in.

He was almost weeping. His parents were right next to him.

An hour later Ziggy came out of the dressing room. He goes over to Bud Hatch, the old
Globe
columnist, and says to him, “I hope you newspaper guys got all that Mommy and Poppy stuff.”

• • •

HUGH BERRIDGE:
We got back to Boston and everything started happening so quickly. Jack Enright's secretary called to say that Jack had lined up a few more engagements. There was one in Boston and one as far away as Camden, New Jersey, opening up for Floyd Lomax's band.

But then it all fell apart.

Vic and I had a rehearsal at the studio. We waited outside in the corridor but Vern didn't show up. Vic forced open the door. Nobody was there. More startlingly, neither was Vern's piano. From what I understand, both had abruptly moved to Texarkana, Texas.

Several days after that, I made a decision that I have not regretted for a single day: I retired as a vocalist. I devoted myself to the law and time has proved that this was the smart thing to do. For I'd come to feel that being an entertainer was not advantageous to my health. I feared, I admit, waking up one morning with a badminton shuttlecock embedded in my midbrain.

MAEVE CLARITY:
I showed up one morning at the office and let myself in. I sat at my desk, put on some lipstick, and waited for Mr. Enright and Mr. Flynn to show up.

At about noon I started getting worried. I went into Mr. Enright's office
and saw that the room was stripped bare, no desk, no chairs, not even a lightbulb. It was the same with Mr. Flynn's office.