700 Sundays (5 page)

CHAPTER 6

A
round 3:00 on a Sunday, Dad would take out his mandolin and he’d play. He’d sit in the living room, at the end of the couch, the afternoon sun would come streaming through the Venetian blinds, making him look like he was playing the mandolin in prison. We always gave him this time, even if it ate into our day. If it was an hour out of our Sunday, what difference did it make? He worked so hard all week. He deserved an hour to do what he wanted to do. So as soon as he picked up the mandolin, everybody left him alone . . . except me. I would come down the hallway, and I would sit at the edge of the living room where he couldn’t see me, just out of sight around this column, and I would watch him play the mandolin at three o’clock on a Sunday. I don’t think he ever saw me, but I always like to think that he knew that I was there.

He was a fascinating man to me. He was a St. John’s University Law School graduate, class of 1931, but he never practiced. He gave it up because he fell in love with two things: Dixieland jazz, and my mother.

They were so different. Dad was a very quiet man. He was very witty. Everybody loved him. He was a very charming guy, and kind. But as kind as he was, he also could be quick-tempered and he could look dour a little bit, sad sometimes. He had Duke Ellington eyes. My mom had a smile like Times Square. She could light up a room with her big personality. For all of her bravado, however, she was also very sentimental. She was a wonderful singer and dancer, a natural performer. I think she could have been a terrific actress. Together, they were both very athletic. Dad was good at anything, and Mom was a strong golfer, bowler, and a graceful swimmer.

They met at Macy’s in 1935. They both worked there. Dad was in the legal department and my mom was in notions. She had this little notions counter where she sold stray thoughts, concepts and ideas. Mom was in the Macy’s theater group, which did plays and musicals, and for a few years was the voice of Minnie Mouse in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Those big forty-foot-high floats would come down Broadway, and Mom would sit inside the float with a microphone and sing Minnie Mouse’s favorite song, “I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles,” with thousands of people lining the boulevard.

They were very affectionate with each other. Always holding hands in front of us, a kiss on the cheek, arm around each other. It was always nice to feel that your parents were still in love.

When he was done with the mandolin, he’d put it down and pick up this book by Will Durant,
The Life of Greece.
He was fascinated by the Greeks. He thought they were the greatest civilization of all. Everything about the Greeks interested him—the mythology, the democracy, the plays, the tragedies, the comedies, Euripides, Socrates, Aeschylus, Plato. He knew the islands, Mykonos, Santorini, and Crete, like the palm of his hand. He talked about them like he had been there several times. So when it came time for us to take the one family trip that we would get to take together, there was really only one place for us to go . . . the Catskills.

We jumped in the Belvedere, made three left turns, and headed north. I grabbed the camera and started taking pictures of the countryside on our way to the legendary Catskills, the only mountain range in the world that if Osama bin Laden was hiding there, somebody would say to him, “Oh, so you’re single!”

We got to Kutscher’s. My first hotel. That huge pool . . . so much room for me to hang on to the side and pee. And they had this gigantic dining room. The energy was astounding, a thousand Jews fighting over end cuts. In that week there were things that totally changed my life. That’s when I first rode a horse, becoming a real city slicker. I saw my parents taking mambo lessons in public, and I saw Wilt Chamberlain wearing the uniform of the Harlem Globetrotters. That’s the team he played with the year before he came into the NBA. Wilt, a former bellboy at Kutscher’s, was there playing with other pros in a basketball clinic.

But on Saturday nights in the Catskills, the comedian is the king. I had never seen a comic in person before. Holding on to my pop’s hand, we walked into the Kutscher’s nightclub, and that’s when I saw my very first comedian. He was introduced, the combo played him on, and there he was, in a spotlight, doing a funny walk, cigarette in one hand, looking so confident, and almost regal.

“Good evening, ladies and Jews. What a night. Oh, I had a rough night. I came home and found my wife in bed with my best friend. So I said, ‘Lenny, I have to, but you?’”

My first rim shot. The combo onstage laughed, I saw them looking at each other. Somehow I thought that was cool. It was all so exciting.

“This guy goes to the doctor. He says, ‘Doc I have five penises!’ The doctor said, ‘How do your pants fit?’ He said, ‘Like a glove!’”

Rim shot! Screams from the crowd. Mom and Dad looked a little uncomfortable, I was giggling like crazy because he said Penis on stage, Joel and Rip were going nuts.

“This little boy is playing with his testicles. He says, ‘Mommy, are these my brains?’ She says, ‘Not yet!’”

I watched him prowl the stage like a panther in a sharkskin suit. His timing was unbelievable. He wore the audience down. The audience was six inches shorter when they left the show. And as I’m sitting there at nine years old, watching this comic, I have this epiphany. I say to myself, I could never play baseball like Mickey Mantle ever, but this I could do. I memorized his act instantly.

The next weekend, all the relatives were coming over to the house. There could be thirty-five or forty of them sitting right there in the living room, which to me meant: Show time. I took the comic’s act that I’d just seen, and I changed it just a little bit to suit my crowd.

“Well, good evening, family of Jews. Boy, Grandpa had a rough day. I mean, rough. He came home and found Grandma in bed with Uncle Mac. He said, ‘Mac, I have to, what’s new?’ (I then made two fart noises and coughed three times. They roared.)

“Uncle Barney came over and said, ‘I got a new pair of pants.’ I said, ‘How do they fit?’ And he said, ‘I don’t know, I can’t get them on, I have five penises.’”

The rim shot went off in my mind. I did a take and held it, just like the comic had. The room was alive to me, the relatives laughing.

“Grandpa went to the doctor. The doctor said, ‘Julius, we’ll need a sample of your urine, blood and stool.’ He said, ‘Fine. Take my underwear.’”

Pow! Huge laugh. I was out of jokes. “What a family. You’ve been a great family.”

Oh, my God. Oh, my God. I ran to my room. The laughter went right into my soul. Oh, it felt so good. Destiny had come to me. I was only nine years old, but it’s clear what I was going to be. I was going to be a comedian. There was no confusion. This is what I was going to do with my life. I had never been happier.

Until. I heard my parents in the next room in their bedroom through the paper-thin walls.

“Jack, you’re going to have to talk to him. Five penises? What the hell was that?”

“Helen, he took the comic’s act and he changed it.”

“I know. But take my underwear, urine, blood and stool? That’s my father.”

“I know. Helen, he just did the comic’s act, and he—”

“I know, but my mother is crying. Schtupp Uncle Mac? That’s her brother-in-law! She doesn’t even like Uncle Mac. That’s my mother he’s talking about.”

“I know. I know.”

“I mean, you have to talk to him.”

“I will talk—”

“I want you to talk to—”

“I will talk—”

“I want you to talk—”

“I’m going to talk to him, but I’m not going to talk to him tonight, Helen. He was so happy. Did you see how happy Billy was? I’ll talk to him tomorrow.”

I heard that whole thing. And it taught me a very important lesson. Live in a house with thicker walls. Who needed to hear this shit? I was funny.

The next day Dad took me aside. “Billy, Bill—” He stared at me for a few seconds, and then he burst out laughing. “You were really funny. But listen. You got to know your audience, kid. Know your audience.”

“Pop, listen. I want to be a comedian. Is that crazy? I loved it. I just loved it. I want to be a comedian.”

“Billy, it’s not crazy because I think you can be one, and I’m going to help you.”

The next day, Dad brought home something from the store that really started to change my life. He brought home a tape recorder. A Webcor reel-to-reel tape recorder. It was profound for us because then there was no videotape or anything like that. This was the only way we could hear ourselves back. We could make up our own TV shows and radio shows, practice our imitations. We would do our shows in the living room for the relatives, and hear them back. This was the way to develop our own timing.

Then Dad started taking the time to show us the really funny people on television to inspire us. He would let us stay up late on school nights, to watch Ernie Kovacs, the great Steve Allen with Tom Poston and Don Knotts and Louis Nye, and the greatest comedian ever to grace television, Sid Caesar. The first time I saw Sid’s show, I remember they were doing the “This Is Your Life” sketch. And Sid, playing the man whose life was being honored, was having a tearful reunion with his “Uncle Goopy” (Howard Morris). They would wrestle each other, crying and overcome with emotion. Every time Sid would leave the embrace, Uncle Goopy would leap at him, and mighty Sid would carry him around the room.

It was breathtakingly funny. Our whole family roared with laughter as we watched. That’s how I went to sleep every night for months afterward. I was Uncle Goopy and Dad was Sid, and he would carry me, laughing hysterically, to bed. He’d put me in bed, only to have me leap on him and start all over again. Watching Sid with Carl Reiner, Imogene Coca, and Howard Morris made me want to be a comedian. I was just a little boy, but it was hilarious to me. No wonder, some of the writers were Larry Gelbart, Neil Simon, Mel Brooks, Woody Allen, and Carl Reiner.

Every Sunday night, Ed Sullivan would have a comedian on, and that comedian was always Alan King. There was
Bilko
, and
The Honeymooners,
Red Skelton, even a funny game show in the afternoon hosted by a hilarious young man named Johnny Carson.

Every day after school, I would watch Laurel and Hardy, hosted by Chuck McCann. I would learn about old movies and show business by watching
Memory Lane
with Joe Franklin. And Dad would let me stay up to watch Jack Paar, especially when crazy Jonathan Winters was on. And I would take my chair and put it next to the old black and white TV set, and I would look like I was Jack Paar’s next guest. You might say, What’s a young kid doing watching these sophisticated shows? It was Dad’s taste. He pointed us in the right direction, and we loved it.

CHAPTER 7

A
round this time Uncle Berns really entered our lives, and he would forever change them. A wild man, a Zero Mostel kind of personality, Berns was a mystical man with shoulder-length white hair, and a long white beard, a Santa Claus on acid. He could do magic tricks, and mime. He loved to be silly and make people laugh. Everyone was pulled to him, as if he were a magnet. He is an artist, and an art dealer, who actually represented Zero, who was a talented painter. Berns taught us about color and expression. He equated comedy and art. “Who’s funnier than Picasso? Everyone has three eyes and six tits!”

He had his own art gallery in Manhattan, so on an occasional Sunday, we’d go visit him in the gallery, and sit with some of his painters, and listen to their stories. Berns would take us to museums, and point out the “moments” in a painting, almost as if they were movements of a symphony. It was never boring, because he was such a great teacher. Berns touched all of us in different ways. It was like we were all the best parts of him. Joel could always draw and paint, so Berns and he would sketch together. Rip could sing beautifully and Berns had a big baritone voice, so they would sing spirituals together. And Berns and I? We were just funny together. He loved to perform for anybody, never self-conscious, always totally free, a silly kind of genius, and he gave us the courage to get up and perform in almost any situation. As I think back, Dad was never threatened by our relationship with his brother. He loved seeing us play with this St. Bernard of an uncle. In a way, Berns was one of the best gifts he ever gave us.

Then one day, Dad brought home this record from the Commodore Music Shop. It was a Spike Jones record. These were novelty records. Spike would have all different kinds of sound effects, gunshots, whistles, dog barks, all perfectly integrated into his arrangements. I never heard such crazy stuff in my life. Uncle Berns said, “Lip-sync it and do it for the family.” I memorized every moment of “You Always Hurt the One You Love,” got it down perfectly, every whistle, gunshot and scream. They all loved it. The living room was my room now.

The three of us were always performing for the family. Rip would sing, Joel and I would do something together, and then I would close the show. It’s still the best room I have ever worked. Every family event was an opening night to us. Mom would even pack our props in a small suitcase if we were going “on the road” to Grandma’s house, or an uncle’s home. It was expected of us.

There would be a great meal, and after the cake and cigars would be the show. We would get paid with change. My cousin Edith would give me dimes, and I would stick them on my perspiring forehead. When my forehead was full, the show was over. Mom and Dad were always the best audience.

That’s how you really start. You want to make your folks laugh. Dad saw something else in us . . . we weren’t just his kids, we were good. Oftentimes he would improvise with us on the tape recorder. It was so great to spend this kind of time with him. There are other ways of “having a catch.” One day he came home with the record that Ernie Kovacs used for his hilarious “Nairobi Trio” routine, and three gorilla masks. The Trio were three derby-wearing apes, a piano player (me), one with two large mallets (Rip), and the leader, who had a small baton and kept time (Joel). As the piece progressed, the mallet man would turn as if he was in a music box, and slam the leader on the head with the mallets. The leader never seemed to be looking as he got hit, and couldn’t understand who hit him. It was hilarious, and we did it perfectly. It was such a great feeling to do this with my big brothers. I’ll never forget how excited we would be, getting into our costumes, as you could hear the relatives saying to each other, “Sit down already, the show is going to start.”

Around this time, Joel developed a bad case of mono. He would actually miss two years of high school because of it, running a high fever all the time, which they couldn’t get under control. He was in a tough place, sixteen years old, and homebound for so long. He took all his classes at home from tutors. Not many friends would come to visit him. He was very down, because this illness had robbed him of his high school years. So after school I would come home and we’d spend hours improvising on the tape recorder. Being funny together, watching funny people on television, and listening to comedy albums was a great medicine, maybe the only one that was working for him.

This was a particularly wonderful time for comedy records.
My Son the Folk Singer
, Jonathan Winters did a few great albums,
The First Family
,
Nichols and May Live on Broadway
,
The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart
, Stan Freberg’s
America
, which was an original musical about American history, and the daddy of them all,
The 2,000 Year Old Man
. Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner.

This is all we did now. It was either watch a ballgame, play baseball, improvise on the tape recorder, listen to jazz, or a great “live” comedy album. They always printed that on the album jacket—“Recorded Live at the Bitter End,” “Recorded Live at Carnegie Hall.” Of course it was “live.” Who’s gonna buy “Recorded Dead at the Troubadour”? I devoured those records. I could feel the magic of being in front of an audience, just by listening to these masters. I learned about timing by listening to the way the comic would wait for the laugh to die down, and then hit the crowd with the topper. It was like surfing, riding the wave and taking it wherever it was going. Sitting on the top of it, with all of that power, gliding you almost gently to the shore only to start all over again. Not only could I hear it, I could see it, I could feel it. It really was my rock and roll.

This was an important time to be laughing. We needed laughter, because we were in the middle of the Cold War. We had a president who was an aging war hero, and a first lady too old to wear bangs. We were terrified of the Russians. It all started in 1957 with Walter Cronkite telling us, “This is the sound from Outer Space.” We heard a few electronic beeps, it was Sputnik, the first satellite to orbit the earth. What the hell is this thing? Eighteen inches around with a bunch of small knitting-needle-type prongs protruding from it. We’re doomed, we all thought. It’s a death ray!

Nikita Khrushchev came into our lives then. A squat, scary little bald man, and his equally scary wife, and the fact that Khrushchev didn’t speak English made him even scarier, so I became even more frightened of his interpreter. How did we know this interpreter was getting it right? Khrushchev came to the U.N. He took off his shoe and banged it on the table and screamed at us, “WE WILL BURY YOU!” At least, that’s what they told us he said, what he really said, was, “THESE ARE NOT MY SHOES! WHO STOLE MY SHOES?”

“The Bomb” was on our minds all the time. We watched films in elementary school, showing us what nuclear explosions looked like, what they could do to a city. Horrifying. People were building fallout shelters all across the country. It wasn’t a matter of
if
the Russians would bomb us, it seemed like
when
. We were practicing duck-and-cover drills in school, in case of an enemy attack. They would hurry us into the hallway, we’d sit on the floor with our arms folded, our heads down, our legs crossed. This position was surely going to save me when the Russians dropped the big one on us.

At the end of Long Beach, in a place called Lido Beach, about two miles or so from my house, was a Nike missile base. Every day at noon the air raid alarms would go off and the Nike missiles would rise up and point to the sky. You could see them from the street. I would be playing ball on the mall in front of our house, and flatbed trucks with new missiles on them would pass us. Sometimes they would stop at the light, and I would just stare at these weapons of mass destruction, and the military men guarding them, just feet from me. Terrifying.

It’s also terrifying to think that we accepted it as just the way things were. The early sixties was a stunning time. Kennedy was elected. I was thirteen, and he got me interested in politics. I thought he was amazing, a president you could relate to, and the wife was pretty cute too. Then came 1961, the summer of Maris and Mantle, Yuri Gagarin orbited the earth, the first man in space. While the Yankees were winning the pennant race, we were losing the space race. The Mercury Seven astronauts, Alan Shepard, John Glenn, were now huge stars. “We’re going to go to the moon first,” JFK promised. The Bay of Pigs came, the Cuban blockade, Kennedy vs. Khrushchev. The aerial photographs of the Russian missiles just ninety miles from Florida. The Russian ships bearing down on our destroyers. They will bury us! Duck and cover, duck and cover . . . At the last moment, the Russians turned back.

Terrifying. We thought the Russians were the enemy. They thought we were the enemy. And we were both wrong. It’s the French.

And then Dad brought home an album called
Bill Cosby Is a Very Funny Fellow, Right!
I loved Bill Cosby. I thought Bill was the greatest comedian of that time, and the most important one to me. I could relate to Cosby. He had brothers. I had brothers. He played ball at Temple. I belonged to a temple. So there was a bond.

On that album—I think it’s the finest piece of recorded comedy ever—is a routine called “Noah,” and it’s about the building of the Ark. It was an amazing piece. So I took that recording, and I memorized it, and I did it in the school show called “The Swing Show” at Long Beach High School. It was a variety show . . . a big band, singers, and I was the comic. And it was the only time that my dad ever got to see me perform in a sport jacket, “live,” in front of an audience that wasn’t relatives.

I was a smash. Well, I was doing Cosby’s stuff, but I didn’t think that I was stealing. I was fourteen years old. I just did it word for word in front of an audience. Is that stealing? In Hollywood, they call that an homage. And then years later, friends were now listening to Cosby and they’d say to me, “Billy, there’s this guy, Cosby. He’s doing your stuff!”

I loved being in front of audiences. It always felt like one of the safest places for me to be. Fielding ground balls, and being on a stage, that’s where I really felt most at home. My friends would come over and listen to these records. One of them, Joel Robins, would become my comedy partner. He was hilarious. A moon face, with great timing. We started doing things together. We would imitate Laurel and Hardy, derby hats and all the trimmings, and do their routines and others we would come up with. We lip-synced the entire Stan Freberg
America
album, over an hour long, playing all the characters, perfectly lip-syncing all of the songs. He and I performed together at sweet sixteens, “The Swing Show,” in the hallway, and basically at the drop of a laugh. Comedy was becoming more and more important to me. If I couldn’t be the Yankees’ shortstop, I was going to be a comedian. Or better yet, the funniest shortstop the Yankees ever had.

Uncle Milt was always my mentor. He always had great advice and stories of the giants that he was working with at Decca Records. Uncle Milt always made sure to take the time to tell me something that would inspire me. He never discouraged me. Never said, “It’s a tough business. Have something to fall back on.” He always made me feel that I could be funny anyplace, not just the living room. He’d say, “Listen, Billy. I’m producing a guy now. I think he’s a genius. You must watch him. His name is Sammy Davis, Jr. He can do everything. He sings great, he dances better than anybody, and he does great impressions. If you want to be a performer, great, but try to do a lot of things. Not just one thing. Watch Sammy Davis, Jr.”

Ironically, Sammy was the star of the first Broadway show that I ever saw,
Mr. Wonderful
, which also starred Jack Carter. Dad got tickets from his friend,
The Daily News
critic Douglas Watt, and we sat in the front row. I remember the house lights coming down, the orchestra playing the overture, and then Sammy walking out to a great ovation, and I also remember feeling I wanted it to be me.

I watched Sammy every chance I got, never once thinking that someday I not only would become his opening act, but that I would also become Sammy Davis, Jr. Opening for Sammy was the greatest thrill, we became good friends, and I would watch his show every night. We did three weeks together at Harrah’s hotel, in Lake Tahoe. I went on at 8:00
P.M.
, and I would get to the dressing room, around 7:00 or so. Sammy had been there since 6:00. I would always go in to say hello, and we’d play backgammon and talk. The stories he would tell were priceless. He was mesmerizing. Listening to his history and firsthand accounts of the biggest stars in the business was simply sensational . . . that’s how I developed my impression of him. I couldn’t help but absorb him, and many a night I would leave his dressing room with his sound, his inflections, his “thing,” man, ringing in my head. And Sammy could do something I never could do. He could tap-dance with both legs.

But then I discovered something that made me forget Sammy, made me forget Cosby, made me forget
The 2,000 Year Old Man
, made me forget the Yankees, made me forget everything that I cared about because I discovered my penis. This was the greatest discovery of all. I discovered mine six, seven, eight, ten times a day. I wonder what the record is. The penis is not a good thing to get addicted to. Let’s face it. It’s a weapon of self-destruction and you don’t need U.N. inspectors to find it. You know right where it is every second.