Dr. Feelgood (11 page)

Dwayne Hickman, Cummings’s co-star on
The Bob Cummings Show
, who later starred in his own television series,
The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis
, based on Max Shulman’s collection of short stories by the same name, was the first to reveal Bob’s dark side. Hickman remembered a publicity jaunt for the series when he accompanied Cummings to New York, where Bob took Hickman for a visit to his favorite physician:

Bob told me this doctor gave him health injections that were loaded with vitamins, sheep sperm, and monkey gonads. He told me that this was this doctor’s discovery of the fountain of youth. What was unusual about his office was that the patients that were in the office included Anthony Quinn, Tennessee Williams, and others that Bob pointed out to me. The doctor came out to greet Bob, and his lab coat was rather filthy and spotted with blood. It was a long day, and Bob kind of dragged along with the doctor. When he came out of the office about thirty minutes later, there was a definite bounce to his step. He had tremendous energy. He offered me an injection and said, “Chuck, I’ll pay for a treatment for you,” to which I politely declined.
²¹

Dwayne’s revelation about Cummings’s addiction to methamphetamines opened the floodgates, and friends, family, and fellow actors finally came clean about the sordid last years of Cummings’s life, which were the direct result of Jacobson’s treatment.

Celebrated television host Art Linkletter, who defined audience-participation television in the 1950s and who hosted
House Party
and
Kids Say the Darndest Things
, was instrumental in helping save his longtime friend’s life:

Bob and I had been the closest of friends for many years. . . . Starting in the late 1950s and early 1960s I noticed a strong change in Bob’s personality. . . . He was like a megalomaniac and quite belligerent. He really had these delusions of grandeur. He was rather a happy-go-lucky type of guy, but he would argue till he was blue in the face about his strong belief in health foods that he learned from his father. When I told Mary [Bob’s wife] about this, she broke down about the drugs he was taking. I stayed out of the fray, but noticed that Bob was getting progressively worse. I never discussed the drugs or who was supplying him. I know I should have, as I later learned with my daughter’s suicide [Linkletter’s daughter, Diane, committed suicide after consuming drugs and jumping from her apartment window in 1969]. Later, around 1965, Mary asked [for] my help with Bob. There were no drug confrontations [interventions] as there are today, so I arranged for Bob to be committed to a psychiatric hospital. I came over to their house, and Bob was dressing for an awards dinner. I remember this clearly, as Bob fought hard as they put him in a straight-jacket and took him off screaming. Our relationship was severely strained after that. I think he blamed Mary for this as well, and he never forgave her. He was in the clinic for a couple months, as I remember. I don’t think he ever got off the drugs. It truly destroyed his life.
²²

As Bob’s addiction from Jacobson’s drugs spiraled out of control, his life began to unravel. Because Bob lived on the West Coast and Jacobson was in New York, Jacobson had his son, Dr. Thomas Jacobson, deliver the magic potion. By this time, Bob was self-injecting the drug in his ankle and had gone far beyond Max’s prescribed dose. Julie Newmar, who played the Catwoman on the series
Batman
and who was Bob’s costar in the short-lived 1960s television series
My Living Doll
, said that Bob had frantically pushed her to self-inject the magic elixir as well, but she refused. On that series, Bob constantly fought with producers because he was competing for camera time with the young and vivacious Newmar, even as he was hobbled by his reliance on meth injections. He became erratic and soon was confronting everyone on the set.

According to television producer Bob Finkel, the executive producer of the new Cummings show:

Bob was very erratic to deal with. I was hired by Lew Wasserman and MCA/Universal to produce the series. Bob tried to direct every episode and was incredibly moody. I had heard only good things about him, so I was rather surprised. It was a very difficult series to mount. I remember this poor little guy named Eddie Rubin, who worked for Bob as his assistant. Bob would send him over with new directives, and he would be quite submissive with his approach. I was not aware of Bob’s drug problem, and it would have explained many of the problems we had with him.
²³

Cummings’s life continued to unravel. His wife Mary had invested much of their fortune in supposedly “tax-free” Swiss bank accounts. The IRS began a long investigation into their investments, which turned out to be illegal avoidance schemes. All of this played heavily on Cummings’s psyche, pushing him further into a depression that was only made worse by the methamphetamines.

Cummings not only continued but accelerated his injections of Max’s elixir. However, his TV likability quotient was still very high. When television producer Jack Chertok was asked to create a highconcept series like
Bewitched
, he created
My Living Doll
, which was about a gorgeous female robot who lived with an Army psychiatrist. CBS hired actress Julie Newmar for the female lead, and Chertok wanted either Efrem Zimbalist Jr. of
77 Sunset Strip
or Bob Crane of
Hogan’s Heroes
to play the male lead. The head of CBS insisted on Cummings, and even though the concept for the show was good, Cummings proved to be unreliable.

Cummings’s use of methamphetamine was out of control by the time the series started filming in August 1964. Not only was Cummings getting too old for the male romantic leads he was playing, but he was also depressed, and Jacobson’s drugs were seriously impairing his behavior, professionally as well as personally.

“I had directed Bob earlier in his career, but by the time I directed him in
Beach Party
(1963),” he had changed,” said William Asher, the celebrated director of
I Love Lucy
and
Bewitched
. “I did not hear of the drug use until much later, but at that time I was not aware.”
²⁴

By the time Bob was starring in
My Living Doll
, he was completely out of control on the set. He fought with directors, writers, and the producer, Jack Chertok. It was as if there was something else directing his behavior, said his costar, Julie Newmar.

Newmar says she still has painful memories of Cummings on the series:

I clearly knew that he was using drugs. He called them “vitamin shots.” However, I saw him clearly injecting the syringes. He had a mad burst of energy soon thereafter. He ruined many scenes that were quite difficult. He offered me the injections. I worked hard to conquer the role of Rhonda, but he ruined many scenes. He was outdated. His type of shtick was old hat. Everyone was aware of his drug use and his erratic behavior. There was no doubt his intent was to try to take the focus off my character and make him[self] the central core of the show. It was a very difficult situation. Bob was unhappy that I was drawing more attention. I think he felt he was being pushed into a secondary role and his career was slipping away. It became so difficult, I rented an apartment across from the studio as I spent all of my hours devoted to the show. I was a method-trained actress from the Actor’s Studio. I studied with Strasberg, and my style clashed with him. He had that ’50’s type of shtick. He wanted to be the writer, director, and producer. He clashed with everyone on the production.”
²⁵

Cummings demanded a meeting with Chertok about his spec script and his role on the series. He was going to force his hand, as he felt he was the star of the program. However, CBS boss Jim Aubrey was keeping an eye on the ratings, which were fading fast. Aubrey also admired the talent of young Julie Newmar and believed that Cummings was excess baggage and had to be eliminated to salvage the show. When Cummings walked into the meeting, he was surprised to find not only Chertok but also Aubrey waiting for him.

Cummings, his career in steep decline, an anachronism in television comedy, and completely compromised by his addiction to Max Jacobson’s injections, was now going to face the same treatment that others in show business had before him. Cummings gave his ultimatum: either they produce his spec script and change the focus of the show or he was walking. Cummings had set himself up, and Aubrey pounced. He told Cummings that he was aware of his drug use and his relationship with Dr. Feelgood, and that not only was he firing Cummings from the series, but he was also going to spread the news throughout the industry that Cummings was a drug addict. And, true to his word, Aubrey did just that. Cummings became persona non grata in the industry, uninsurable and undependable, and, ultimately, unhirable. It was a precipitous fall from grace.

Disconsolate and living from injection to injection, Cummings took a job in a cheap Hong Kong karate film called
Five Golden Dragons.
On the set, he met a young script girl named Gina (or GeeGee) Fong. Cummings and Fong became inseparable. When Cummings called his wife to ask whether he could bring Fong home to work as his secretary, Mary was amenable, but it was a decision she would later regret. After Mary learned that Cummings was having an affair with Fong and Font was pregnant with his child, Cummings moved out of their Beverly Hills home to live with Fong and her daughter in a cramped apartment.

After nearly forty years in films, television, and radio, Cummings had no career. In desperate need of money, he purchased an RV and took Fong and her daughter, whom he had adopted, on the road, picking up gigs wherever he could by following the nomadic life of an actor playing small parts in dinner theaters across the United States. He kept working because he needed money, not only for his new family but also for his ongoing drug addiction through his supplier Dr. Jacobson.

Bob’s seven children were also acutely aware of Bob’s addiction. They all watched as their father went from being an A-list star with a substantial income who lived in a beautiful home in Beverly Hills to near-poverty at the end of his life, when he lived at the shabby Horace Heidt Apartments in Sherman Oaks subsisting on only his pension.

After Bob moved out of the family home in Beverly Hills, Mary hired noted divorce attorney Marvin Mitchelson in what became one of the most bitter public divorces of the 1960s. Their divorce, granted on January 15, 1970, was one of the first finalized under California’s “no fault” divorce law, where they divided what was left in community property assets of approximately $700,000. As the parties fought over the assets of the marriage, the IRS seized the Cummings’ Beverly Hills home, took title, and evicted Mary and the children who still remained at home. The IRS also seized much of Cummings’s substantial fortune for back taxes owed on funds invested in offshore accounts that were not recorded and for huge penalties assessed on the money that was owed in taxes but never paid.

Cummings fled from Los Angeles, and by the early 1970s he and his new family had moved to the Marin County area of San Francisco. When Jacobson stopped distributing around 1975, Bob went to the Bahamas to hook up a new connection for meth.

By the mid-1980s, Bob had been forgotten in Hollywood. His health had spiraled downward with the combination of his continued drug use and a diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease. Fong, who was about thirty-five years younger than Bob, was not about to be slowed down by this now aged partner, and she divorced Cummings in 1987.

Alone and very depressed, Cummings moved into the Horace Heidt Magnolia Estates apartment complex that was built by radio bandleader Horace Heidt for retired and “down on their luck” musicians in Sherman Oaks. A longtime resident said about the complex, “This place is so kitsch that it’s hard to believe it’s withstood the test of time. Imagine a miniature golf course, a retirement community, and ‘It’s a Small World’ all rolled into one.”

Bob had a difficult time living without assistance after his onset of Parkinson’s disease and his continued drug use. Longtime friend Milton Berle observed this. He went through the fan mail that Bob received and told him he would select a new wife from his list of fans—someone who could take care of Bob.

“I picked some girl from . . . Tennessee that was a cashier at a Piggly Wiggly store. Bob loved big tits, so I picked this cashier who sent her picture. We took her information to his astrologer, who approved of the match. We paid for this . . . hillbilly to fly out here and marry Bob and become his caretaker. She was a real . . . mieskeit.”
²⁶

Thus Martha “Janie” Burzynski became the fifth and final Mrs. Robert Cummings, having flown out to Los Angeles and married the aging Cummings. She had had stars in her eyes and believed her dream of living the Hollywood life had come true. However, she had not married the suave Bob Cummings of television and movies. Instead, she wound up with “Grandpa Collins,” a semi-invalid drug addict who had been forced into a twilight retirement by his addiction. It was not a match made in heaven. Instead, the angry Janie Cummings tormented her aged husband who, when he realized the intensity of her distress at the marriage and began to suffer the physical abuse she inflicted on him, lived in constant terror of this cashier from the Piggly Wiggly.

Cummings, now tired of the abuse he was receiving from the belligerent Janie, filed for divorce. Bob then entered the Motion Picture Home in Woodland Hills, California, where he died on December 2, 1990. Although his death certificate claimed his death occurred from renal failure, his body was battered from the effect of Parkinson’s and more than thirty years of the effects of methamphetamines.

It was a tragic ending for one of Hollywood’s greatest stars, whose television career had earned him worldwide fame and millions of dollars per year with both his ownership and fees of
Love That Bob
. Many of Cummings’s friends and family say this sad tale was just one of many that was triggered by the magic elixir of Dr. Max Jacobson.

The ever-blunt Milton Berle said of Jacobson, “That [jerk] killed him. I met that [piece of trash] with Fisher in Vegas. That [jerk] should have been hung up by his . . . balls for what he did.” (Obscenities replaced by editor.)
²⁷
By then, however, Max Jacobson had become responsible, both directly and indirectly, for many more deaths. The hypergrandiosity brought on by the drugs he was self-injecting would drive Jacobson’s needle into the throat of senator and Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kennedy.