Master of Ceremonies: A Memoir (3 page)

Right out of high school, Dad was hired to go on the road with Phil Spitalny (one of the talented Spitalny brothers, who both were composers and orchestra leaders from Cleveland). It was while waiting at the train station to leave for the tour that my seventeen-year-old dad met and fell instantly in love with my mother (“The most beautiful thing I’d ever seen in my life,” he said). She was fourteen, and after they married, two years later, they were hardly ever apart again.

By the time I was born—and Ronnie, four years later—Dad had become a fixture in the Cleveland music scene. As a kid, I loved to tag along with Dad to the RKO Palace Theatre, where he played in the orchestra under the direction of Maurice Spitalny, Phil’s brother, who was well known for the tight white flannel pants he wore to show off his “manhood” while conducting. There was no more magnificent destination than the vaudeville theater and picture house. You couldn’t get any grander than the two sweeping staircases of white marble, imported crystal chandeliers, and hand-woven, 67-foot gray carpet adorned with roses. And that was just the lobby! The gigantic, 2,800-seat theater with its vaulted ceilings of painted friezes and gold leaf could have been a real palace. It was nice enough for the famous comedians George Burns and Gracie Allen to get married there.

I never saw the show from the audience, but I couldn’t have cared less. As far as I was concerned, the view from the orchestra pit underneath the stage was the best one in the house. Hidden off to the side, I kept true to my promise to be quiet and not “get in the way” of stagehands, wardrobe people, performers, and anyone else running around. There was no way I would have ever misbehaved—I just so loved being there. (That’s why Ronnie wasn’t allowed to go; he was too little to be quiet.) I watched the supporting acts come onstage, which could be as many as ten in a night. There were magicians such as Ade Duval, who could make a cocktail shaker disappear and brought scarves to life in his “Rhapsody in Silk” act, and dancers such as Toy & Wing, formerly of the tap-dancing trio the Three Mahjongs, who were dubbed “the Chinese Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers.” I marveled at the pageant of comics, animal trainers, opera singers, mentalists, and more, all introduced one after the other by big, electrically operated name cards, just as they were in nearly every vaudeville house across the country.

The bright lights were always changing, changing, changing as I tried to see what was going on and who was doing what. When the card would flip to the name of the famous headliner—Jean Harlow, Edith Piaf, Sophie Tucker, Jack Benny, Milton Berle—the excitement and applause would rise to a delicious crescendo. It was something I wanted to be a part of, although I didn’t know why or how.

I loved being around Dad when he was at work. He was not only a virtuosic clarinetist, but I could tell that his fellow musicians absolutely adored him. Whether it was the other players in the RKO orchestra; the members of the big band he used to play with at the Golden Pheasant Chinese restaurant; or the klezmer musicians with whom he did bar mitzvahs and weddings, they all wanted to hang around him, because he had a story for everyone.

My father made it his business to listen to and collect stories during the week. He’d regale the other musicians with them while they were changing into their tuxes in the dressing room or were tuning up in the pit. My father’s repertoire—which came from comedy acts, the music store where he bought his reeds, or even our family—fit perfectly into the scene. Everyone crowded around him, laughing at his jokes and praising his musicianship. My father’s stories were hilarious but never vulgar or mean; that just wasn’t his style. Dad was a very sympathetic person, the kind of guy who always stuck up for the underdog or tried to help when there was a problem. Once, while playing on the steamer
Goodtime,
a pleasure boat that went from Cleveland to Put-in-Bay, he witnessed a black couple being told they were not allowed to dance. His response was to stop the band. “If they can’t dance, then I’m not playing,” he said.

The admiration and affection my father received from his bandmates and countless audience members each night differed vastly from the lack of respect he got at home. Mother, who believed her station in life was elevated because she had married a creative type, was ambitious for him and found the sound of his clarinet as vibrant and soulful as anyone else. And my father worked hard—three or four jobs a day, seven days a week—to be a serious provider in a tough field for a family man. Yet behind closed doors, she chastised him for a litany of flaws that included his thinning hair, paunch, and inability to buy a house. She even criticized him for his personal pleasures, such as smoking cigars.

“Do you have to smoke that awful cigar in the house?” she said.

“Sweetheart, you know I love my ACs,” he said, referring to his preferred brand of Antonio Y Cleopatra cigars.

“You’re getting the ashes all over. And it stinks.”

“Grace…”

“And pull up your pants. Your stomach’s hanging out.”

She was following Grandma Fanny’s example of cruelty, although Mom would have been mortified at the suggestion. My mother, hardly an analytical type, was completely unaware that she was treating Dad exactly as her mother had treated her own father—and so was I. As she picked on every one of his vulnerabilities, including those over which he had no control, such as his bad stomach, I watched and worried.

Dinner was a particularly worrying time of the day. Mother, who lavished the same attention, time, and skill on the food she prepared that she did on her appearance, was an exceptional cook. The menu for the wonderful dinners we sat down to every single night could include anything and everything. But it was always a many-course meal: roast beef with Lyonnaise potatoes, steamed asparagus with hollandaise sauce, and apple pie for dessert.
The Settlement Cook Book
was her bible, and she devoured its recipes for meat, salads, puddings, and cakes. But she was also adventurous and of-the-moment in her culinary efforts (there was never a discussion of our keeping kosher, since neither of my parents had grown up in strict kosher households). If there were a new recipe in the paper—Waldorf salad or curried lamb—she was the first to try it. Besides her looks and sense of style, Mother’s cooking was a big part of her appeal, all the more proof of just how very special she was.

But when my father’s stomach was upset, which it often was, and he couldn’t eat a bite of what she made, Mother acted as if it were a personal attack.

“But Mickey, you have no idea how good this is, and how hard I worked on it,” she said as we quietly dug into a soufflé while my father had white rice with a little cinnamon and sugar, or plain toast.

The way my mother treated my father—who always took it, barely fighting back and never blowing up—made Ronnie and me even more upset. But I was caught between disapproving of her meanness and needing her approval. The more she laid into my father, the more it seemed I was safe from her castigations. So I often took her side.
She’s right
, I’d think.
Dad’s a slob
. But not without guilt for betraying him.

I also acted like my mother by splitting my dad into two men: the brilliant musician who was honored and beloved at the Palace, and the henpecked man at home who allowed my mom to treat him poorly. Throughout their entire relationship, Mother always loved to watch Dad perform. That never changed. She admired his talent, but she also craved the attention that she received when she went to see my dad at places such as the Alpine Village supper club, where people came up to her to say how wonderful her husband was.

So, although I knew I wanted to be a performer, like my dad, and loved to watch him when he was working as much as my mother did, I definitely didn’t want to be a musician. I rebelled against the piano lessons I was given, which was fine with Mother.

“You’re your mother’s son,” she would say. “You’re just like me.”

She claimed me for herself by saying that we had the same temperament, taste, and talent. I was yet another reflection of how wonderful she was, her prized possession for whom nothing was too good. She had named me after her favorite leading man, the handsome movie star Joel McCrea. Mother always made sure I was impeccably dressed and my hair was perfectly combed. It was her habit to dress me so that I caught people’s attention just as she did.

In the outfits my mother made for me (in one photo, I am in a white sailor suit with a tiny gold band around my little three-year-old ring finger—I never found out what that ring was about), I definitely got noticed. Being watched was not an unusual phenomenon for me. My first memory of what it meant to capture a crowd’s attention begins when I was six, performing the duty of ring bearer at the wedding of my father’s baby sister, Estelle. As I walked down the aisle carrying the ring on a small pillow, everybody oohed and aahed at my perfect white satin tail suit.

Even at home I commanded an audience—albeit one not as willing. Ronnie was constantly being shushed by Mother while I played the perfect son. She dressed up Ronnie, too. With his olive skin, almond eyes, and dark hair, he was gorgeous and looked more like her than I did. Still, he was more of a set piece, while I had the speaking part.

“Ronnie, be quiet; your brother is singing.”

“Ronnie, please, your brother is explaining what the teacher told him.”

When her girlfriends would come over to play mah-jongg, or “mahj,” as they called it, Mom would introduce me, her talented son, and I would do everything but curtsy. Meanwhile, my brother, who had learned not to talk so much, sat in his chair like a lox. I seemed to be the most important thing in her life, certainly more than my baby brother and maybe even more than my dad.

A family story had it that I was born with that something special. According to the tale told by my father’s side of the family, I was just three weeks old, with everyone hovering around the bassinet, staring down at me, when I raised my arms and spread my fingers in the unique fashion of the Kohanim blessing a congregation. My grandfather and father, both well-known members of these descendants of the high priests of ancient Israel, agreed that it signaled I was someone for whom they could have big expectations.

If in the house of my father’s parents I was a blessing, in that of my mother’s family I was a deadly troublemaker. The Epsteins had their own story about me they liked to repeat over and over. It went like this:

When my mother was giving birth to me, she had terrible difficulties. After sixteen hours of excruciating labor, the obstetrician entered the waiting room to report to my father and Grandma Fanny that the baby’s head was too large to get through the birth canal. It looked like only one of us would survive.

“Who should we save?” the doctor asked. “The mother or the baby?”

My father fainted, but Fanny answered without hesitation: “Save de tree. There’ll be more branches.”

Luckily the doctor’s prognosis turned out to be wrong, but The Sisters never let me forget how I had almost killed my mother. No matter how many times my aunts told and retold the story of my birth, it never lost its ability to wound. Particularly since my mother, who always listened to the story without comment, never stopped her sisters from telling it. She never protected me, just as, I would bet, her mother didn’t protect her. Shame was the Epsteins’ way—they shamed my mother for thinking she was better and having a different nature. (“Who does she think she is?”) And they shamed me for the pain I caused Mother.

I thought that The Sisters were right about me—that I was bad. What else could explain Mother’s terrible moods, which came and went unexpectedly? Ronnie and I never knew how long they might last—maybe hours, maybe a day—but her displeasure was always announced the same way, with a low, off-key humming through clenched teeth. She often chose the haunting melody from “Summertime
.
” But sometimes I would hear her humming and half-singing the plaintive Yiddish song “Vos geven iz geven iz nito.”

“What was, was, and is no more.”

And then you’d better not talk to her.

The same mother who meticulously dressed me in starched shorts and a matching collared shirt with a little gold ring; who made my favorite chocolate cake with six layers of creamy frosting; who told me I was
hers
: This same woman wouldn’t even look at me. Stiff-armed, she would stare out the kitchen window at cold Cleveland, humming her mournful tunes.

Being shunned by the most important person in my life was painful, but the alternative was even worse. If she wasn’t glum, she was wrathful.

“Get over here,” she’d say, but we knew better.

That guttural timbre of her voice, that low tone, was her introduction to rage. It was a sound that she saved for only these moments.

When we heard the flip in her voice, we would make a run for it. Unlike my father, neither of us would willingly step forward for punishment. Instead, we would bolt down the long hallway of our apartment and dive under our beds, screaming, “No, please!” Then it was chaos. She’d come after us with a broom, jabbing it furiously under the bed to route us out, yelling, “You bad children … bad … How did I end up with such brats!”

The bristles hurt when they hit my arms and legs, but that was nothing compared with the beating I knew I would receive if I surrendered.

“Get out from under there!”

I never understood what we could have done to make her so angry. I was always so careful.
Always
. But it had to be something. Maybe we didn’t clean up the dishes when we were supposed to, or we didn’t wash them well enough. Or maybe we spilled something on the sofa. Whatever it was, I knew I deserved it—just as my father deserved her ridicule for being who he was.

After a time, the broom would retreat and so would Mother. Still, I would wait before coming out from under the bed to make sure that it was safe. When it was and my mother’s mood had passed, I would return to my role of the perfect son.