I'm Not Dead... Yet! (5 page)
Every night during the show, as I would go up the stairwell to my dressing room, I would round the corner on the second floor and two dressing room doors would be wide open. One dressing room was filled with the most beautiful women in New York who were dancers in the show—and they would change costumes with the door open. Naked. Eight times a week. My permeable young mind was being filled with an esoteric farrago of sexuality on a daily basis.
Every night I would see these gorgeous naked bodies standing 6 feet from me, who would catch my eye and just smile or wink. In the other dressing room, licking a lollipop, was a Tony Award winning predator, err—actor, who would wink as well, but eight shows a week he’d also whisper, “I’ll suck your cock if you’ll suck mine.” Gorgeous naked women in one room and a pedophile in the other.
I felt I was expected to behave with an ‘old school’ attitude; my performance and allegiance to the show came first. If I told anyone what this man was saying to me, it would make its way back to my father—and my father would simply kill this man. There was no doubt about that, so silence was necessary. I was becoming a pro at being silent.
One day in between shows, I was bouncing a ball in front of the Lunt-Fontanne Theater and a man in his 30s, dressed in a cheap pinstripe jump suit came out of a club next to the theater. He was escorting his ‘woman’ and to impress her, accused me of trying to hit his ‘woman’ with my pink hand ball. As a New Yorker, I began to say ‘F.U.’ but couldn’t even get to the last consonants of the curse word before his fist connected so solidly with my chin that my head exploded on the side of the curb. When I awoke minutes later, I saw the entire cast of
The Rothschilds
staring down at me in horror. I tried to look around. I was covered in blood, and chunks of skull and pieces of hair were close to my head. The real fear was hoping to somehow hide this from my dad. If my dad found out, he would kill this man. No doubt about it. Of course, my parents eventually found out.
“Hello, Ma? Dad? Don’t worry. I’m okay. I only needed 15 stitches and I shouldn’t go to sleep tonight after the show because the doctor thinks I may have a concussion.”
“Robby—what are you talking about?”
No one from the theater bothered to call my folks. The man in the pinstripes was never heard from again. I couldn’t help wondering if my dad called in a chit with the people he was writing comedy material for—‘old school’ in that world meant the mob—and some of my dad’s clients were managed by the… ‘old school-teachers.’
The most exciting thing that happened to me during
The Rothschilds
was appearing on
The Ed Sullivan Show
.
Back in the late 60’s and early 70’s there were two shows on TV that I’d never miss—
Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color
(on our black and white TV set)—and
The Ed Sullivan Show
.
Today, The Ed Sullivan Theater is where David Letterman tapes his shows, but back then it was where everyone from The Beatles to Topo Gigio would perform and all of America would watch. And now I was going to be singing live on
Ed Sullivan!
During rehearsal Mr. Sullivan shook
The Rothschild’s
Tony Award-winning star Hal Linden’s hand (a wonderful actor and a better man), but not any of the boys who played the young sons. Since I was the ‘alpha’ actor among the boys, I got up the nerve to go to the great-and-powerful Mr. Sullivan’s dressing room, knock on his door, and ask if he would call us over and shake our hands as well when the song finished.
Before my entrance on live TV, I was sweating and noticed I couldn’t move and I could not feel any part of my body. It was the most stage fright I’ve ever had. I heard my cue… The next thing I knew I was singing and making people laugh with a little crack in my voice that I invented as a comedy bit because my voice was changing—so why not get a laugh?
When the number was over, Ed Sullivan called Hal Linden over and began to shake his hand. Just before he threw the show to commercial, he smiled, looked at
me
and waved the boys over—and I got to shake Ed Sullivan’s hand on national television.
A few months into the run, a very handsome woman in the chorus, in her early forties, offered to stay late and give me singing lessons in the empty theater. Let’s just say, I got a whole lot more than ‘singing lessons.’ Broadway. Old school.
I’m not sure of the affects to my heart and my spirit, but call it even when it comes to
The Rothschilds
. Kind of like a long game of tug-of-war with my heart. No one really wins but the heart has plenty of stretchmarks.
Valuable Life Lesson:
Survive at all costs. Ed Sullivan was a man of his word. Singing lessons actually don’t have anything to do with the area of the body below the diaphragm. Oh—and don’t take candy from strangers.
When I was almost 15,
along came an opportunity to play a cowboy, ride horses and star in
Jory
, a movie that was to be shot in Mexico. Could it get any better? More exciting? More romantic? It was one more ‘Get Out Of School Free’ card—but I had to get the part first. I literally camped out at the office of producer Joseph E. Levine, who had just made
The Graduate
, and this was to be his next blockbuster.
For every audition and every call-back I’d get to the office before the cleaning crew. I memorized the entire script.
An actress I was working with on
Search For Tomorrow
had a farm in upstate New York, and I asked if I could ride her horses. (I didn’t tell her I had never ridden a horse before.) She said okay, if I was willing to paint her barn. I rode her thoroughbreds without a saddle because I didn’t know how to put a saddle on a horse, and these were English saddles and I was doing a western, so—a saddle? Unnecessary. I didn’t know how to put on a bridle or reins either, so I learned to ride by holding onto the mane of a 100,000 dollar horse, galloping out of control through the woods and onto the paved street. I once almost rode onto the freeway.
From sheer determination I got the title role in
Jory
. That same determination fascinated the Mexican caballeros who took pride, pleasure and gambled to see if I could do more and more dangerous tricks on a horse, some of the tricks the stuntmen wouldn’t try (which made it more appealing to me), and eat the hottest jalapeno (which I did, and still do!). By the time the movie was over I could do every trick I’ve ever seen in a western, including riding at a full gallop while standing on the horse’s bare back, jumping off and back on again—while picking up my cowboy hat from the dirt. This came at the expense of once flying head first into cactus. I picked out every needle and no one ever knew. I did learn that the poison in the needles of a cactus can sting for days. But it was best to just never tell anyone.
Every morning for breakfast, I ate homemade tamales sold from the back of a bicycle by an older Mexican lady. I got food poisoning at least once a week. But I still ate the tamales to the delight of the Mexican cowboys. I also went nose-to-nose with Mr. Levine, and with pure determination got him to fly in Linda Purl as my love interest. I had worked with Linda in Japan doing
Oliver
at the Imperial Theater when I was 13. I had a big-time crush on her and I wouldn’t let up. Finally they flew her in, all the way from Japan to Mexico, and gave her the role. And I
never
lost a contest to the Mexican stuntmen when it came to ‘who could eat the hottest jalapeno.’ That was nothing more than a war of wills. I would never lose that battle. No skill involved, just personal pain. Pain? Ha! No problemo. I had that covered, to their delight.
John Marley, who received an Oscar nomination as the dad in
Love Story
(but is best remembered as the studio chief who wakes up with his horse’s head in his bed in
The Godfather
), was in
Jory
. He became my mentor and a dear friend. He taught me so much about the film business. (Old school. He was a John Cassavetes favorite.) He also told me the worst thing that could happen to any actor in show business was “being known for having heart trouble.” John Marley was fighting that fight when I first met him. He said if anyone ever found out he had a bad heart, he could never be insured and his career would be
over.
He smiled that pock-holed smile and rubbed my head and told me, “Thank goodness you’ll never have to worry about that, kid.” I agreed… silently!
My memory of the doctor telling my parents I had a heart murmur came back to haunt me. I was
scared
. I had to be quiet—
never
tell anyone about the doctor or my heart murmur. Never. Shh...
Valuable Life Lesson:
If you are determined to fight for what you believe in, you might actually get it. And don’t eat tamales that come from the back of a bicycle. Oh—and
never tell anyone that you have a heart problem
. That could be the end of your career.
Jeremy
was a great opportunity
to star in a movie made in New York City... and get out of school.
I was cast as Jeremy at age 15 by writer-director Joe Brooks. He had hired me to sing and play guitar on a string of national commercial jingles he had written, and our mailbox at 165 West End Avenue was usually jammed with residual checks from my work with Joe.