A Conversation with the Mann (17 page)

F
RAN'S SINGLE GOT RELEASED
. After the expense of the recording session there was no money behind it, no promotion, and little air play to go with it.
Even as a redheaded stepchild, the song charted in the top sixty before it went away.

I
T'S THE SAME AS WITH YOUR FIRST CAR
, or kiss. Your first girlfriend. They're with you always—always in your memory, and the memory always good.

Thursday night. The Village Vanguard. Late in the show. That clear it is to me. I was doing a bit, almost a throwaway line,
about a guy I saw at a restaurant smoking
while
he was eating. What's the point of that? To give your food a nice hickory-smoke flavor? Guess it's just for people who are
too busy to barbecue. Me, going into a gravelly voice: “Just gimme some raw meat and a pack of Camels. I gotta go.”

An applause break is what comics call it. It's when you say some thing so funny the audience has got to do more than just
laugh. They've got to sit and whistle and clap while they get themselves back together: catch a breath, dry their eyes that
are pouring with tears from the thing you said that was so damn hysterical. That night—Thursday night. Village Vanguard. Late
in the show—with that line I earned my very first applause break. And like I'd do so many times with the breaks I'd earn in
the years that followed, I stopped and I stood and waited for the people to finish clapping, deep breathing, and wiping their
eyes. I stood and I waited and I soaked up their applause and affection.

Affection.

Affection that I had otherwise gone most my entire life not being familiar with any other way. Affection and adulation and
admiration and appreciation. They loved me. For saying something funny a slew of people I did not know, had never met before,
had no attachment to, loved me.

Can you understand why a guy, alone, backed only with the wits in his head and the mike in his grip, would go up in front
of a pack of people and dare to impress them? To stand onstage, not spinning plates or spitting nickels. Talking. Just talking.
But what you say and how you say it has a way … It has a way, and it affects people so that they can't help but laugh. They
cannot help it. When you can do that—when you can make people want you strictly for the things that come spilling from your
mouth—it is a feeling like no other. Not like drink or drugs. Not even like women. It's a high that goes unmatched, and that
you're forever forced to chase.

T
IME SPENT WITH
T
OMMY
was spent in the clouds. Time spent with Tommy was time spent free of my father. Still living at home, any reason was reason
enough to be away from him. Being with Tommy was more than enough. Over a bunch of months the two of us had put together a
relationship that worked despite our differences. She was a walk-in-the-park chick, a stay-at-home-and-snuggle girl to my
staying out late and cruising the clubs. If there was a scene to be made, I wanted to make it. I wanted to be in with the
in crowd. Tommy wanted nothing to do with them. We were opposites, yeah, but me and her were opposites attracting at speeds
up to one hundred miles an hour. Point of impact: love. What we got from each other is what we gave to each other. Tommy gave
me a sense of being, a sense of worth. Except that I tried to make her feel like a princess every moment I could, I don't
know I gave Tommy much of anything. Didn't have much to give. She loved me just the same.

And jokes. That was the other thing Tommy gave me, jokes for the act. A couple of times she came up with some bits she thought
were funny, pitched them to me. Because I was her guy, and it's the kind of thing a guy does for his girl, I used one once.
It got no laughs. It made her happy I'd even tried it. One thing more Tommy and I didn't have in common: what we thought was
funny.

“You're not laughing,” I said.

“It's not funny,” she said back.

On the Zenith in her apartment: Milton Berle in drag, flopping around onstage in glorious black and white. It did nothing
for her.

I tried to school Tommy in Caesar and Gleason and Kovacs and Berle. She didn't particularly go for them. She especially didn't
go for Berle, taking to his show about as well as a Muslim to a Jolson concert.

Tommy, head laid over my chest as we sat on her couch, gave more attention to something across the room than to what was on
the TV.

“This is classic stuff.”

“A guy in a dress?”

“Yeah, a guy in a dress. It's funny. Eveiybody loves this bit.”

Tommy, dry: “If everybody else loves it, it's funny?”

“I'm just saying if a lot of people like something, there must be a reason. Come up with a bit that goes over big, that's
how you get somewhere.”

On the Zenith: Berle swatting some stooge with a purse. The studio audience was busting up. And right then thirty-five million
people around the country were busting up with them.

Tommy not included. “A lot of people like something, so what? Doesn't mean it's good.”

“Okay, yeah, but … It's like …” What was it like? “It's like blues and popular music, right? Blues is better music; it's real
music, but nobody digs it.”

Tommy's head came up off my body and her gaze got trained on a spot right between my eyes. “
I
dig it.” A bullet couldn't have hit harder. “And I'd rather be doing something that's real than something that's just popular.”

“I'd rather go somewhere.”

“You want to go somewhere? Go to hell!”

Discord jamming itself between me and Tommy. Sometimes opposites attract. Sometimes they just slam into each other.

She got up quickly and started to move away. I was steps behind her. As worked up as she was about what I'd said, I was the
same about her not seeing my meaning. Firm, I took her arm in my hand. Gentle, I pulled her to me.

“Baby, I'm not saying it's right. That's just the way it is. Like with Uncle Milty; that's the way comedy's always been; that's
the way it's always going to be.”

“So one day you'll wear a dress?” Her eyes were hot. Her chest rose and fell against mine. She was angry. Anger made her sexy.
Sexier.

“If they were paying me the kind of bread they're paying him …”

Tommy's hands went to her skull, her fingers wide and groping, trying to swallow it whole. She moaned at me: “Jesus, you make
my head hurt!”

She wasn't kidding about that. The girl was migraining bad. You could catch her temples throbbing without even a hard look.

Weak, tired, Tommy bled from my hands, went back to the couch, back to watching the comic-in-a-dress. She didn't laugh or
smile; she didn't do anything more than soak in monochrome light. Compliance and protest in the same act. She gave in to me,
but giving in was the same as slapping my face: Here, I'm watching. I'm faking like I care. Happy?

I wasn't happy. I hadn't meant to, but I'd hurt her. Hurting Tommy was the same as taking a razor to a part of myself—her
pain was mine.

Tommy was done talking to me, but the conversation was only stalled, not over. From then on it would be with us always—art
versus commerce.
Being
something versus
saying
something. For Tommy and me the argument was our bastard child that could never long be left alone.

“
CBS? CBS!
” I would've said it again if I could've come up with one more version of surprise and excitement. Instead, I gave some surprise
and excitement to: “Friday? This Friday!”

Sid: “Jackie …”

Fran got grabbed up in my arms, swung around Sid's small office.

“CBS is coming to see us!”

“I heard,” Fran squealed, eyes shut to keep from going dizzy.

“Jackie …” Sid's voice barely reaching me where I was.

Where I was was a Sunday night a couple of weeks, or a month's time in the future. Where I was was onstage with Ed Sullivan,
who was trying—trying hard but not getting the job done—to quiet a busting-up audience after I'd just finished my first coast-to-coast
television broadcast. And let me tell you, just as fast as that day-dream had come into my head, it was suddenly too small
for me. A guest on a program? How about my own program? How about the
Colgate-Jackie Mann Variety Hour?
How about the
Gillette-Jackie Mann Cavalcade?
My fantasies didn't care that up till then Nat King Cole was the only black to ever have his own television program, and
he had to be one of the biggest stars in America to get it, and once he'd gotten it America got his black behind off the airwaves
fast as they could. The King was a star, sure, a natural talent, but the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave … they'd
rather catch Lassie.

Maybe I had that history working against me, but my daydreams were tougher than anything reality could put in my way. “CBS!
This is great, Sid. Isn't this …”

I let Fran down. She slid out of my arms, woozied to a wall, and steadied herself. I didn't really register any of that, though.
I was looking at Sid. Sid didn't look good. For all the excitement I was throwing around, Sid looked just about sick.

“What?” I asked, scared to ask any more.

“It's … The thing is …” With all the effort he put into getting just that much out, Sid made talking come off as torture.

“What!”

“They're coming to see Frances. … Only Frances.”

Just like that.

“I didn't want you to hear it secondhand. I didn't want … You and Frances are best friends, and I didn't want you to think
…”

Just like that. For a moment I'd let my fantasies come alive, and just like that they were grabbed from me and made useless.
My eyes dodged Sid and Fran. I couldn't look at them, was too embarrassed after the little show I'd put on, giving off girlish
shrieks from thinking for even one hot second that some television executive or talent scout would ever want to be in the
Jackie Mann business. Why would they? Why would anyone want to have anything to do with … with a little black nothing.

I hurt. I physically hurt. A razor-wired mile of humiliation wrapped around me and I twisted in it. As bad as from any pounding
I'd ever received from my father, his punches to the head were soft next to this blow to my soul.

Voices.

Voices above me. Fran and Sid. I heard them from the bottom of the pit where I'd sunk.

“Can't you talk to them?”

“I tried. I tried to ta—”

“Three minutes. You tell them to watch just three minutes of Jackie's—”

“They know Jackie, know about him.”

“Then they know he's funny. So what's it going to hurt for them to watch a couple of minutes of—”

“It's not that they don't … What they said … They told me they don't—”

I mumbled: “They don't have anything for Negroes.” The truth. I got tired of them talking around it, so I just said it. “It's
not about being funny, Fran. It's about being Negro. They're not looking to put Negroes on TV, are they, Sid?”

“… No.”

No. You better believe they weren't. But if I were Lassie …

Fran didn't hear any of that, or if she did she didn't care. “You talk to these guys, Sid. You tell them that if they don't
look at Jackie, then they don't—”