Still Talking (17 page)

Backstage Bob Hope was pacing up and down saying, “Get her off. She’s wearing them out.” Angry. Pacing. “Get her off!” When I came off high from that audience, he

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stalked past me, went to the microphone, and said, “That girl is too funny for her own good,” then did a whole routine of his own to make them forget me, to show that he was better.

Nobody wants to admit these great icons are killers. When I dared cross Johnny Carson to go to Fox, he came on like a gutter fighter-and let his representatives do the talking. Bob Hope could not even say my name. To succeed in this rough business, we all have to be killersmyself included.

God knows what any of those people came out of and how hard they had to fight, what humiliations they suffered. Johnny Carson once said, “I started in Bakersfield, doing magic off the back of a truck to guys standing in cornfields. “

I know how Bob Hope must have felt. Here was a funny young woman-and it’s known he does not like funny women-doing humor he did not understand, and the audience was having a very good time. Nobody was looking at his wristwatch waiting for Bob Hope. I am sure he was wondering, “Will my jokes still work? Can I top her with, `I wouldn’t say it’s hot in Vegas, but . .

.’ “

I did a show for the Cancer Society last year and was backstage talking with close friends, waiting to go onstage. Suddenly I stopped and turned and listened to the opening act, a twentysix-year-old girl who was terrific, the way I was twentyfive years ago, fresh and still a surprise.

Here was somebody who was going to take over. The Dauphine is born. My body tightened. I was totally focused on her. If somebody had cut off my hand, I would not have felt it. You smell the threat. It is animal. And it is very hard to be gracious.

But I smiled and went out and said, “Wasn’t she fabulous.” The little bitch. Then I took off. A-I material came out. Oh, did I work hard. She stayed and watched me. Afterward we talked together, and she was exceedingly nice-but she knew she had done well. I complimented her and told her she was wonderful-because I knew I had won.

I really hate to be admired by young comics. I am not ready. I am still one of you guys. I have not peaked yet. I

do not know my full potential-maybe stage or movie acting, maybe directing or writing. I suspect no star, no matter how big, wants to be put on a pedestal. Then you are a monument to yourself, by definition part of the past. I still think of myself as absolutely the present.

As I grew stronger onstage in Las Vegas, my contract time went from twentyfive to thirty to thirtyfive to forty minutes. When the hotels wanted me to move to closing act, I refused. I did not care about the glory.

I was getting headliner money, equal billing, three quarters of the perks, and none of the pressure. If I walked onstage and the room was full, I thought, Gee, it’s me. If the room was empty, I’d think, Poor So-and-so, he’s slipping.

I was enjoying myself so much onstage, playing with my fans, loving my audiences, I began to feel an obligation to them and stretched my time longer than the prescribed forty minutes. The hotels were using me with stars who needed support, so I knew a lot of people were there to see me, and they should not get shortchanged.

The smart headliners like Neil Sedaka did not care because I could bring in that extra five hundred people. Andy Williams was a great gentleman to me.

Robert Goulet was wonderful, and spent a dear, sweet Christmas with us in Vegas because his marriage had failed and he was alone. Lola Falana was so sweet backstage and always came over to say, “I’m enjoying your show. ” One closing night Helen Reddy brought a chair out onstage and watched my act, laughing and applauding. Another time, at the end, I joined her chorus line.

But a few stars treated me as a threat, hard to follow. Paul Anka must be about three foot two, and when I came offstage filled with excitement, there would be this little man screaming into my chest, “Too long! Too long! Too long!” I never saw anything but the top of his head.

Shirley MacLaine used to pace backstage complaining over and over, “She’s going long. She’s wearing them out.” This was the first time two women had been booked together, and her act, singing and dancing, was wonderful. But I found her a cold, strong, driven woman. One

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night my dressingroom door opened, and it was Shirley. She stood in the doorway and said, “I just came in to say hello. ” She looked me over for a second and left. Didn’t even say good-bye.

After the engagement her tips to the stagehands and band were not the usual envelopes containing fifty dollars. Instead, she handed out tiny pocketknives inscribed LOVE, SHIRLEY. So with my envelopes I passed out stainless-steel knives from the coffee shop, with LOVE, JOAN printed in nail polish.

When I opened for Tony Bennett at the Sands, I wanted no trouble about stretching, so I had forty minutes written into my contract with Walter Kane, the head of entertainment for Howard Hughes’s hotel. But Bennett was constantly late, and I would have to keep stretching until I saw him backstage. Then he would do only twenty minutes and come off. So I stretched even more to give people their money’s worth.

Tony noticed. During this time my father was ill after a heart attack, and I would leave a Do Not Disturb notice at the switchboard-unless it was an emergency call from my husband or father. So in the middle of the night when the phone rang, my whole body clenched. I picked up the receiver, trembling. It was Tony Bennett. “Joanie. Tony. Hey, babe, you’re going way over. I’d appreciate it if you just did what you’re supposed to do-twenty-five. ” I said, “I’m supposed to do forty.” “Well, I’d appreciate it if you just did twentyfive.” Click.

Edgar called Walter Kane, who said I should do as long as I wanted. I did my forty. In the middle of the next night the phone rang again. “Joanie.

Tony. I’m not pleased. You’re not listening. I want twentyfive. ” Again Walter Kane said, “Do what you want to do.” I decided Tony Bennett needed a lesson. I called him and said, “I promise you, I’ll be off in twentyfive.” “Thanks, babe.”

That night I came off in twentyfive. He was not even in the theater. Our dressing rooms were ground-floor suites, and we had to walk through the kitchen and the coffee shop and across a sort of garden. Ann Pierce, my beloved dresser, and I reached the coffee shop-behind us

in the showroom a drumroll was sounding-“Now, ladies and gentlemen, Tony Bennett”-the longest drumroll in the history of Las Vegas-it should be in the Guiness Book of World Records-and through the coffee-shop window we could see Tony Bennett, strolling along a garden path, not a care in the world.

Ann and I hid, giggling like two little girls. I went back to doing my forty and stretching and never heard from him again. Much later he performed again in Vegas and was marvelous.

You get crazy playing three weeks in the glitzy limbo of Vegas, no days off, no sense of time. You get giggly and silly. You do anything to shake the cabin fever. I once played a funny trick on Sergio Franchi, a great singer and total gentleman, a class act if ever there was one. Very elegant. Absolutely straight.

I was trying a series of crazy endings to my act. For a long time during Watergate and the Nixon tapes, I went offstage and reappeared pulling a tableau of the famous painting of George Washington crossing the Delaware.

George is staring toward the shore, and I would say, “He’s looking for the missing eighteen minutes.” One of several chorus boys who played George Washington left after the first week. Shortly thereafter a man came to see me from the Board of Health and said that this young man had the clap, and anybody who was with him sexually should come downtown for treatment-“Tell them to call me and I will be very discreet. Just say they’re from the MGM.

“

We penciled Please call me on the health officer’s card and pinned it to Sergio Franchi’s dressingroom door. Now you know the officer said, “Yes, Mr. Franchi, this is something we had better discuss privately when you come downtown. ” And when Sergio, this European gentleman, got there, the man said, “Mr. Franchi, I understand you slept with George Washington.”

During the 1970s, Vegas was VEGAS. Until the end of the 1970s there were at least fifteen showrooms at the hotels, each with major stars at their height doing two shows a night. Vegas even attracted Marlene Dietrich, Tallulah

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Bankhead, Noel Coward. Edgar researched a book, never published, on night life, and interviewed several dozen performers, including Dan Rowan and Dick Martin. They opened for Jane Russell, who got twentyfive thousand dollars a week for a nonact that began with her being carried onstage lying on a couch. They came off the first night and told her, “The audience was great.”

Jane said, “Fuck ‘em.” You’ve got to love her.

The hotels wooed stars for promotion. Movie-studio publicity men set up star junkets. Jack Entrater brought Humphrey Bogart, Judy Garland, Lee J.

Cobb, and Sinatra to Joey Bishop’s opening at the Sands. One evening Jayne Mansfield got into an elevator stark naked under her open mink coat. Later that night a doctor was called to treat her for a cold.

Stars mingled with civilians in the casinos. When Joe E. Lewis took Eydie Gorme gambling, he said, “Boy, I hope I win tonight.” Eydie said, “I hope I break even. I need the money. ” Grace Kelly could be seen playing 21.

Woody Allen used to deal poker sometimes, and I liked to deal 21. The dealer would let me go behind the table, and I changed the cards for people; they laughed, and a crowd gathered, and it was fun for everybody-publicity the casino could not buy.

Elvis Presley, when he was young, came up to see the shows. He never drank and asked people with him not to smoke. When he did start performing regularly, he was king of the Strip, the first to have guards with walkie-talkies.

During Elvis’s show, he had two bodyguards on each end of the stage, to deal with the girls who would be trying to get close to him. They’d climb up onstage, and the bodyguards just threw them off, whoppo, tossed them back into the audience like rag dolls-and they came right back.

I did not particularly like Elvis’s music, but what magic, what charm, what self-mocking humor! Elvis knew it was all a crock of shit. When stars begin taking themselves seriously, begin thinking they really are the image they present to the public-that is when they start to slip.

Elvis came to my show and afterward backstage. First

six men arrived and said, “Elvis is coming. Elvis will be here in a minute.

Please don’t go anywhere.” Then there was buzz buzz buzz. “Elvis is coming.

Elvis is coming.” Then in he walks, very much the star. Still, he was being a charming country boy, so much a part of his allure-in a black velvet Prince Valiant cape. “Ma’am, how nice to see you. Enjoyed your show. How’s Melissa?” He knew we were all waiting for him. And we were.

When Elvis left, the energy went out of the room. Vegas was where I learned about energy. I started there as the Young Turk feeling superior to the golden oldies. But Edgar cautioned me, “Don’t smirk at Dean Martin. See why he’s been able to hold that stage for thirty years.” After my act I would pile into a car with Edgar and run through the casinos to see those great performers with years of experience walking on a stage and dealing with their audiences. I saw that one thing Martin, Elvis, Trini Lopez at his height, and Wayne Newton shared was energy.

I learned. Onstage I got up off my stool, got myself a cordless mike, and stalked that huge stage, making sure those people over on the side saw me up close, working the audience, letting people know I was killing myself for them. If you take a breather in those big rooms, a thousand people are restless. The act became a little like music, a kind of dance. It was the same for all those men.

Every show puts your reputation on the line. Those people are going to walk out there and talk about you to seven other people. I think one reason I am still around is I have known the ground rules-no coasting, no saying, “Here I am. Aren’t you lucky. ” I have never had the great talent, the sparkling wit. Jokes take me forever to write. So I try to work as though each performance is my last show on earth.

In Las Vegas then, gaming made all the profits and everything else was to attract the gamblers, especially the highrolling Texas and Oklahoma oilmen who sat behind stacks of black hundred-dollar chips. Regular folks paid twentysix dollars for a round-trip plane ticket and flew up from Los Angeles for an evening. Pit bosses gave big losers a

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bus ticket home, and free drinks were handed out at the slot machines. Rooms were cheap. The shows charged little or no cover or minimum, only the price of food and drinks.

Each hotel was run by one man who had a personal relationship with the performers. At the Frontier, where I was opening for Juliet Prowse, I mentioned to Walter Kane that there was no shower in the opening-act bathroom, and he put one in overnight. Hotels gave out presents-one gave a mink coat to Judy Garland. A Rolls-Royce was wheeled out onstage for Anthony Newley. Diana Ross received a pair of diamond earrings and returned them for a larger size.

Diahann Carroll was opening at Caesars Palace for Sammy Davis, Jr., and in the middle of his engagement he got sick. They asked me to fill in for headliner money that night, and I just made the airplane. The Caesars head of entertainment met me in Vegas, and as we were hurrying through the airport, he said to me, “Diahann Carroll won’t open for you. She feels she is a bigger star [which she was]. If you don’t want to go on, we will understand and pay you anyway.” He was wonderful.

I said, “Put me anywhere. I don’t care.” I opened the two shows that night.

After the second one a fifty-dollar gold piece surrounded by diamonds arrived in the dressing room with a thankyou note. That was why stars loved to come to Vegas.