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Ninety Years—A Report Card
Ninety Years—A Report Card

For some reason people think I am a conservative. This has been the case for many years. I don’t know what I have said or done to create that impression. But when I walk into a restaurant, a shopping mall, or an airport terminal, the same thing happens. A certain type of person makes a beeline to me, apologizes for interrupting, and then launches into a monologue: “Here’s what we need to do about the immigration problem!” Or, “The gays—what are we going to do about them, Dick?” Or, “Remember when this country was great?”

As a matter of fact, I do remember what this country was like over the past ninety years. I have witnessed more events, changes, and innovations than most of the 300 million people situated between Malibu and Maine. There used to be an attraction at Disneyland called Walt Disney’s Carousel of Progress that showed the technological
advances in homes through the decades as the world modernized. I have experienced that in real life.

When I was born, Calvin Coolidge was the president of the United States, the dust from World War I was still settling, construction on the Empire State building was just beginning, John Dillinger and Bonnie and Clyde were kind of public heroes—celebrities of the day, if you will—and the entire population of Danville, Illinois, where I grew up, used to run outside and look skyward on those rare occasions when an airplane flew overhead. In other words, I have seen a lot of changes in my time.

Here’s my take on some of the headline-making people and events that have mattered to me from 1925 to the present (keep in mind that the grades are my opinion—but hey, it’s my book):

1925

Tennessee schoolteacher John T. Scopes, who was born in Kentucky but coincidentally raised in my hometown of Danville, was arrested for violating state law against teaching the theory of evolution in class. This was but an initial chapter of a long-running debate that continues to pit fundamentalists against science. The reason behind his arrest:
A

The country’s malingering failure to separate fact from fiction in the classroom ninety years later:
F

The 1960 movie loosely based on the Scopes trial,
Inherit the Wind,
starring Spencer Tracy:
A

The Great Gatsby
by F. Scott Fitzgerald was published. I tried reading it once when I was younger. I made it halfway through, but I enjoyed it:
A

Mein Kampf
by Adolf Hitler was published. Never read it. Don’t plan to. The world could have done without it:
F

Al Capone took over the Chicago bootlegging racket. Combining ambition and bullets, he kept Americans liquored up during the Prohibition Era and laid the groundwork for numerous books and movies:
F

1927

Philo Farnsworth invented the television, and thank goodness he did. In the 1940s and 1950s it enabled me to feed my family. Then with
The Dick Van Dyke Show,
it changed my life in every way imaginable—and some you can’t imagine. Like the first time I realized people recognized me.

It was soon after the show began airing and I was driving my family to Las Vegas. We stopped in Barstow for breakfast, and on the way out of the restaurant a group of teenage girls ran toward us, screaming, “It’s him. He’s on TV.” It scared the hell out of us. We got in the car and plowed out of there.

But being on TV was the greatest thing that ever happened to me. In general it has defined our lives and given humanity shared experiences. We’ve cried together, we’ve gasped together, and we have laughed together. My taste and sensibilities are rooted in a different era,
but I appreciate the choices we have now, and I’m in awe at the way we can summon shows from the cloud and stream them on computers, tablets, and phones:
A

1930

My parents took me to see Al Jolson in
The Jazz Singer,
the first real “talkie.” I was hooked:
A

1932

Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected the thirty-second president of the United States. I remember the election results broadcast on the radio and the jubilation that followed his victory. The country was in the thick of the Great Depression. They needed a leader, someone to believe in, and FDR was the man. The big song was “Happy Days Are Here Again,” and you heard it everywhere, playing on the radio:
A

1933

FDR got rid of the Volstead Act right away and launched the New Deal. My father hated him. He would yell at the radio, “People, go out and get a job! Don’t live off the government!” I loved Roosevelt. Even at eight years old, I thought he was a good orator. He had gravitas. He was solid. As I listened to him, I would say to myself, “This is a good president.” And as time went on, I thought he got better. I lived across the street from a public park where I took music lessons, participated in shows, got on a sports team, and did art—everything was free. It was
all WPA sponsored, and I took advantage of it. I didn’t understand why my father and other Republicans hated him so much. I thought FDR was saving the country’s ass:
A

The Marx Brothers released
Duck Soup,
and Laurel and Hardy released
Sons of the Desert.
The Marx Brothers’ jokes were a little over my head—I didn’t quite get them, except for the physical part. I loved Laurel and Hardy. From the get-go Stan Laurel was my comic idol:
A+

1934

John Dillinger was killed. I remember hearing news reports about Bonnie and Clyde, Baby Face Nelson, and Pretty Boy Floyd, but Dillinger was the most notorious of all these bank robbers. I was listening to the radio when I heard that the FBI had shot him in a Chicago movie theater. I thought,
Wow, they got him.
Dillinger:
D

FBI Agent Melvin Purvis:
A

1935

The Benny Goodman Jazz Orchestra plays on the
Let’s Dance
radio program for the first time. I don’t remember that specific broadcast, probably because it came on late at night, but I do remember my dad introducing me to swing. I was hooked immediately. I loved music. I was always an enthusiastic singer, whether at home, in the church choir, or in the school chorus. In sixth grade
my voice changed to a bass, and I had to sing with the eighth-grade music class.

In junior high I was the first trombone in the school band. I was taller than anyone, so they figured I had the reach. I was given the first seat only because my good buddy, Al Hoss, who sat in the second chair, didn’t read music as quickly as me. But I envied his tone. My downfall as a player was the state band championship. We got to the state finals, where our number featured a trombone solo. I had practiced it numerous times and had the piece down. But when it counted, I stepped forward, looked out at the audience, which seemed like thousands of people to me, and froze. It was pure stage fright. I didn’t play a note. The conductor looked like he wanted to kill me. I never played another note on the trombone again.

I played the piano instead. We had an old upright at home, and from the time I was a little kid, I would sit on the bench and figure out how to read the music. One day after choir practice at church, the organist heard me fooling around on the church piano. I was playing “Claire de Lune” before it changes keys.

He said, “You have talent. I’ll give you free piano lessons.” I only went twice, one of the mistakes of my life because I would love to play with proper technique today. But I still played all the time. In high school my buddy and I played four-handed boogie woogie. We were the boogie woogie kings of our school. So Benny Goodman, swing, and jazz:
A+

This was also the year my grandfather died. He went into the hospital one day for a tonsillectomy, suffered a burst aneurysm, and dropped dead on the spot. He was only fifty-five years old and seemingly in perfect shape, if not still physically imposing from his job in the railroad’s tool shop. I was busted up. I remember talking to my brother about it. Jerry was only five years old at the time, and I tried to explain death to him. He didn’t understand that our grandfather was gone—it was too hard for him to grasp. I don’t know that I came to terms with it either. I looked at the obituaries every day without finding his name. As far as I know, my grandfather was never listed. It bothered me. My grandfather:
A

Death:
F

The mid-1930s was the heyday of Jack Benny’s radio show. Around this time he went from CBS to NBC, and the American public went with him. Television hadn’t come along yet. On a summer evening you could sit outside, and all you would hear were porch swings creaking, crickets chirping, and Jack Benny coming from every house up and down the street. Jack Benny:
A

1939

World War II broke out with Nazi Germany’s invasion of Poland and France, and England declared war on Germany. At age fourteen, I remember thinking that it was about time. Fighting across Europe had been going on for
a while, and then the big escalation: Hitler bombed London fiat, and I was terribly bothered that the United States wasn’t doing anything. As France fell to Germany and Italy, I remember wondering what we were waiting for. Were they waiting until Hitler got to the United States?

We listened to reports every night on the radio and watched newsreels at the movie theater. Our entry into the war seemed inevitable, though the wait for Washington to make a move seemed interminable—so much was at stake. The early years of World War II:
C

1941

December 7: Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, “a date which will live in infamy.” It was a Sunday, and some friends and I had gone to the movies that afternoon. As we walked out of the theater we sensed something was different even before we heard the news. It was that big. But everybody on the street was talking about it. Pearl Harbor had been bombed. I had never heard of Pearl Harbor before. No one knew we had a base in Hawaii. Then suddenly everybody knew. Pearl Harbor:
F

1943

I joined the Air Force. Entering the military was something I never pictured for myself. I was still fifteen when the United States entered the war and thought it would be over before I reached draft age. Then in February, as the war dragged on and I looked ahead to my eighteenth birthday, I told my mother I was thinking of signing up before I came of draft age later that year.

In the biggest surprise of my life to that point, she said I was already eighteen. She explained that I had been born prematurely and that it was something not worth sharing. Well, my grandmother nearly spit out her coffee when she heard me recount that story. She told me the truth: I was born out of wedlock. Regardless, I hurried to the nearest Air Force recruiting center before I was drafted and sent to the front lines. Instead, I went into the special services, for entertainers. Avoiding the front lines:
A

Me as a soldier:
C

1945

The war ended. I was let out of the service because I was no longer of service. I remember hearing news that Hitler had killed himself. I was shocked and sickened by the reports and the pictures of the death camps where Nazi soldiers had murdered millions of Jews. It was incomprehensible. Nobody could believe that human beings could be so horrific in our modern times. War:
F

Victory:
A

Discharge from the service:
A

In August the United States dropped atomic bombs on two Japanese cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. For some reason I don’t remember where I was either of those times, but I do recall a heaviness of spirit, a feeling of
dullness from the ensuing victory and thinking it was a sad time for the country. However, I admired President Truman for making a tough decision, and by God, when he ran again, I voted for him. He wasn’t a great orator, but he spoke the simple truth—and he didn’t lie. “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.” America’s war effort:
A

Truman’s effort:
A

My effort in war:
C
(I did my best, but it can’t compare with those who fought.)

1947

I bought my first TV. I was in Los Angeles and came home with one of those early sets with the seven-inch screen. There wasn’t much to watch, mostly news and serials. At night the networks shut down and put on a test pattern. But I was glued to it. It was radio with pictures, and I knew it was going to catch on.

1949

I happened to be in New York City during the original Broadway run of Arthur Miller’s
Death of a Salesman.
It was a sensation out of the box, I recall, with wonderful reviews, and I went to see it the first chance I had. Gene Lockhart had taken over the role of Willy Loman from Lee J. Cobb, and he was a force on that stage—too much for me. Willy Loman was my father, a traveling
salesman. It was so close to my own childhood. I was depressed for a month.
A

1952

Singing in the Rain,
starring Gene Kelly, Donald O’Connor, and Debbie Reynolds, was released. I was working at the Million Dollar Theatre in downtown Los Angeles doing five-a-day vaudeville shows with my partner, Phil Erickson. We called ourselves the Merry Mutes. I must have seen
Singing in the Rain
twenty times, and it never got old. I think it’s the best movie musical ever made.
A