Rickles' Book (8 page)

S
he was seated behind a desk. She was beautiful, she was polite, she was sweet, she was serious. She was absolutely irresistible. She was a highly efficient and intelligent professional, and she wanted no part of me.

She was the secretary to my movie agent, Jack Gilardi.

I walked in the office and said, “I’d like to see Mr. Gilardi.”

She asked, “What is it in regard to?”

“I’m a butcher. I wanna know if he wants porterhouse or sirloin.”

She looked back at me without a smile. Her face was gorgeous.

“Being a wise guy,” she said, “will not get you in to see Mr. Gilardi.”

“Tell him I need to take out his secretary immediately.”

“That’s hardly his concern.”

“But it’s my concern, and I don’t even know his secretary’s name.”

“Barbara,” she said.

“A beautiful name,” I said. “Now can you get me in to see Gilardi?”

“Will you tell me what’s it about?”

“Take a guess. Work. With actors, it’s always about work.”

In this case, though, it turned out to be about Barbara.

I had been dating for years. My specialty was female singers. I loved them. I especially loved it when they sang to me in intimate settings. But in spite of their lovely voices, I always knew these arrangements were temporary.

Barbara was different. I couldn’t get her out of my mind.

She was poised, she was smart, she was the picture of elegance, she was everything I wanted in a woman.

“Go out with me,” I begged her.

“Go out with a butcher?”

“A butcher, a baker, a candlestick maker. What difference does it make? We need to have dinner together.”

“Sorry, the timing isn’t right.”

When would it be?

I pursued her like crazy. Couldn’t stop calling her for a date. Couldn’t take no for an answer. Couldn’t stop thinking about the beautiful Barbara.

I was getting nowhere fast.

Then one weekend in Vegas, I happened to notice her with a girlfriend, the two of them trying to get into my show at the Sahara. They were standing behind the rope.

“Oh, Don,” Barbara said, “can you help us get a table?”

“I’m busy now, sweetheart,” I said. “Ask Mr. Gilardi.”

She laughed. “I deserve that,” she said.

“You deserve only the best,” I said before getting her a great table.

Little by little, she gave in to my persistence.

We had our first date. We hit it off pretty good.

We had our second date. We hit it off better.

By our third date, I knew I had a chance.

With Barbara, life would be good. Without her, I was sunk.

Y
ou don’t consider
Bikini Beach
a distinguished work of art?

You don’t think
Muscle Beach Party
and
Beach Blanket Bingo
are great American movies?

Personally, I was glad to drag myself up to Malibu and work with Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon in the hot sand. I’m not saying my dramatic interpretations rivaled Sir Laurence Olivier’s, but I did my job.

Listen to the names of the characters I played:

Man, this was class.

If you don’t believe me, look at the other actors who played alongside me, everyone from Dorothy Lamour to Buster Keaton to Morey Amsterdam to Paul Lynde to Buddy Hackett to Linda Evans to Little Stevie Wonder blowing his harmonica on top of some sand dune.

These films weren’t exactly
Gone with the Wind
, but they were big box office. Plus, I got a kick out of ribbing Babyface Avalon while he ran up and down the beach like a yo-yo. And for this, believe it or not, he made a bundle.

Back in the sixties, beach flicks were America’s last gasp at innocence—before the protesters, the hippies and the whole counterculture thing. Besides, they’d shoot the entire picture in a couple of weeks. Fourteen days from start to finish. Not bad for great art.

I loved the employment and I knew it wasn’t a bad idea to keep my face on the big screen. Only one problem: I was working clubs up in Hollywood at the same time. I’d get home at 4, grab an hour’s sleep and head out at 5 for a 6
A.M.
call at the Malibu Pier. When the cameras started rolling, my eyes started rolling back. I was out of it.

But I did it. I played the schlub who didn’t understand the kids. I was the grumpy heavy. I got the laughs.

Other films had me actually working on a soundstage. I did
X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes
with Ray Milland. Some see it as an early masterpiece from director Roger Corman. I saw it as a way to get to know Milland, an icon from the classic films of the forties and fifties. Milland was a classy guy. Funny thing, though, was how they squirted weird dye in his eyes to get the effect of a man who could see through walls.

Ray was a pro and didn’t mind stumbling around in the dark.

Eyeball to eyeball with
The Man with the X-Ray Eyes
(Ray Milland)
.

“They’re going to mistake Ray Milland for Ray Charles,” I told him.

“Not when I start singing,” he said.

Milland, like Gable, was a strict five o’clock man. When the clock hit five, work stopped and recreation began. Ray liked to relax with a little taste and, no matter how much Corman complained, Milland’s routine could not be disturbed. This was old-school Hollywood. I loved being a part of it, although my part was pretty damn small.

Meanwhile, back to the beach.

The beach movies were paying my bills, and the bikinis were keeping me interested in the scenery. It was fun to observe the antics of the young. The youth culture was changing. The change seemed to happen almost overnight. And I got a taste of it one night when I was playing the lounge at the Deauville Hotel in Miami Beach.

Ladies and gentlemen…

T
he British have landed.

I’m happy to see them, mainly because the minute John Lennon and George Harrison appear, the lounge at the Deauville fills up. The Beatles are the new sensation, and everyone wants to see them. They take a table off to the side, and the girls start screaming.

But the Beatles aren’t staying. They’re only here for a quick hello and a few pictures with yours truly. Just like that, they get up and leave. And just like that, the room goes from full to empty, and I’m up there entertaining me.

The culture might have been changing with the Rolling Stones and the Beatles, but the old guard was hanging tough.

Back in Vegas, Judy Garland was starring at the Sahara Congo Room and would occasionally come to see me in the lounge.

Judy loved laughing. She had great spirit, and when she laughed, you felt the whole room shake.

“Judy,” I said when I saw her in the audience. “A grown woman skipping down the road with Bert Lahr in a lion’s suit isn’t exactly normal. And that Tin Man business…please, that’s really pushing it. I happen to know that Toto the dog has a drug problem. And in case you haven’t heard, the Yellow Brick Road is now in a lousy neighborhood. So please just sing ‘Over the Rainbow’ and we’ll all go home early.”

Judy loved it but expressed her appreciation in a peculiar way. After the show, she came backstage holding a glass of Liebfraumilch and poured it all over my head. Laughingly, she said, “Don, I baptize you in the name of Mickey Rooney.”

The stagehands howled.

I howled.

I smelled of Liebfraumilch so bad a winery wanted to cork me.

I
t was happening and it was beautiful.

I had proposed, my Barbara had accepted and we were getting married.

Mom and I went with Barbara to Philadelphia to meet Barb’s mother, Eleanor Sklar. Mom Sklar was a lovely woman who lived in a beautiful two-story house. We were all sitting on the couch in the living room, making small talk, when their maid walked down the stairs.

“Look at this,” my mother whispered in my ear, “they have a maid. They must have money.”

Two weeks later, they were borrowing.

Meanwhile, pals wanted to throw me a stag party, and why not?

Red Buttons showed up in drag dressed as my mother. He was brilliant, but scary. I thought he was my mother.

A week later, my cousing Allen and I were at the Lexington Hotel in New York, preparing for the wedding. We didn’t fall asleep until 3
A.M.
Then at 4, the phone rang.

This was taken on the top of the cake.

It was Cantor Yavneh, from my childhood synagogue in Jackson Heights, who was scheduled to sing at my wedding in a few hours.

“Anything wrong, Cantor?” I asked.

“Everything’s fine, Don. I just want you and Allen to get dressed and meet me downstairs in a half-hour.”

“Now? At four in the morning?”

“Yes, now. Please.”

Rubbing sleep from our eyes, we got downstairs just as the cantor drove up in his old Chrysler. “Get in, boys,” he said.

“Where are we going, Cantor?” asked Allen.

“You’ll see soon enough,” he said.

Silently we drove through the sleeping city until we reached Elmont, Long Island. When I saw the cemetery where my dad was buried, I understood.

We got out of the car. The air was thick with fog. The atmosphere was eerie, chilling. We walked past dozens of graves until we found my dad’s. The cantor put on his white robe and prayer shawl. In the still of morning, standing over my dear father’s grave, he sang the Hebrew prayer for the dead. He wailed; he sang with such tender feeling and heartfelt anguish that I felt the presence of God Almighty in every fiber of my being. Afterward, we recited the Kaddish, the Jewish mourners’ prayer, our words melting the morning fog to tears.

Before we left, the cantor sang a prayer in Hebrew, inviting Dad to my wedding. Then he finished by saying, “May your soul be with us forever.”

B
ack to Brooklyn.

Back to Ocean Parkway.

Back to the Elegante nightclub.

Back to Joe Scandore, looking sharp and greeting guests at the door.

Back to Rocky helping me on with my tux.

Back to the place filling up with hundreds of people.

Back to the scene of my first real success.

Back to my mom, Etta, beaming with pride.

Back to feeling that everyone’s rooting for me, that everyone cares.

Only this time I’m not kidding around.

Barbara and I have just been married in an Orthodox synagogue, Young Israel of Flatbush.

Now we’re at the reception, held at the Elegante, where Scandore has done the place over—new carpets, fancy drapes—just to let me know how much he cares. For once in his life, Rickles is speechless.

Jerry and Rita Vale congratulate us. Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme get up and start singing, “More than the greatest love the world has known…” By the time they get to the second verse, I’m a mess. My tears are flowing; my life has turned to gold. My Barbara will be with me always.

I’m thirty-eight and couldn’t be happier.

A few minutes after Stevie and Eydie pour out “More,” I’m back to form.

“Stevie and Eydie,” I say, “you sang beautifully. But I had no idea you’d ask for money.”