Still Talking (6 page)

In show business everything is credentials, and in France Edgar was the one with the credentials, the producer from America, a man to be cultivated.

Sam Spiegel’s yacht was in Monaco, and he invited Edgar and the little wife aboard. It was huge, part of a herd of white trillion-dollar whales docked side by side. Onassis’s yacht was there too. On the blue water the yachts were like scudding white birds. As dusk flowed across the hills of Monaco, topped by the Palace, the green slopes were laced with lights.

Spiegel’s upper-deck salon was packed with the international crowd-people telling amusing stories about the Windsors, Onassis, everybody witty in several languages.

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David Niven and his wife were aboard-and Nureyev, who had just defected and was on the cover of Time magazine.

Edgar could deal with Niven by talking about history. He remembered what Nureyev had danced. It was natural that he went off and talked business with Spiegel. This was one reason I had married him. But I was left alone with those tall, thin, wonderfully coiffed and made-up women who to this day make me feel dumpy and intimidated. As I have done ever since I was a fat child, I played the Shadow and pretended I was invisible and just watched.

Nureyev was beautiful, his white shirt open, goldenbrown skin, perfectly muscled, wearing white ducks and loafers with no socks-as though a Greek god had come aboard, charming and laughing, just returned from visiting Bacchus for a while. Suddenly the hostess plopped him next to me. He said something in French. I tried out, “Le livre est sur la table. ” He got up and left.

David Niven was the grand, elegant movie star with mustache and ascot. The missus was a society woman, exquisitely groomed, perfectly dressed in silk slacks and silk shirt, thin as a rail with that smooth Riviera tan that comes from months of being outside for just twelve minutes a day. She was in a group next to me talking about vacations, about New Year’s Eve at the Plaza Athenee in Paris, Easter with Grace and Rainier. Suddenly Mrs. Niven turned to me with a gracious smile and said, “If we’re not in Marrakech, it just isn’t Christmas.”

I did not know what to say, except “Me, too.” The smile never left her face, but her gaze passed over my left shoulder and never returned. There was no way I could cry out, “Would somebody please ask me about Henry James-or Ed McMahon? And I can tell funny stories about my father and his patients. “

From below deck came two goldenbrown girls with long blond hair and beautiful lithe bodies, no bras, and little boobies poking against see-through shirts. Sam Spiegel never introduced these languid water girls.

I was agog, sitting there so proper, in my head feeling as though I were wearing a hat and gloves and holding a handbag.

As we drove back to the hotel, Edgar said, “I feel sorry for Sam, he’s such a lonely man.”

I said, “If he wants to be happy, that crowd is never going to do it. If he wants happy, I’ve got my aunt Lucy who’s living in New York. She’s sixty-four and a really well-to-do widow. And she’s got a pair of deck shoes. “

Edgar told me I didn’t understand. Sam was a man who couldn’t let anybody get close. I now realize he was identifying strongly with Spiegel. I said, “You don’t understand. There’s a fool back there on that boat with those stupid girls and those senseless people. ” We had a major fight-really because I was furious that I could not handle that crowd, and Edgar was furious that I had not clicked with them. We always pretended we did not care if we fit in-but we both desperately wanted to be accepted.

I could only stay with Edgar in Monaco for a week; I had performance dates in the United States and was glad to leave. On my flight back alone from Nice, I changed planes in Paris and, while I waited, through the lounge swept a fabulous woman in a beige turban, a beige cape, long beige gloves, a radiant rush of glamour. I did not know who she was.

I boarded the plane and was sitting in first class when in came two lesbians, butch beyond anything, rough trade in leather and short-cropped hair. They stowed luggage in the overhead, and behind them came that woman, who 1 now realized was Marlene Dietrich. One of the leather ladies kissed her on the lips, and then Dietrich sat down next to me.

I was hysterical. I was sitting next to Marlene Dietrich. She was all the glamour of the movies-a m-o-o-v-ie star. I had seen her when my mother took me to the movies. Now, I had reached the height in life of sitting next to Marlene Dietrich on a plane from Paris to New York. Incredible!

I wondered if she had seen me on TV and knew that I was not just a civilian. I prayed that she would speak to me in that voice, even say, “Excuse me,” and get up. I decided not to talk to her unless she talked to me.

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Marlene Dietrich did not say one word. All she did for ten hours was eat-eat as though she were going to her death. This beautiful woman became a German hausfrau, constantly calling for food. There was pastry wrapped in paper, and she scraped the icing off the paper with a fork. The sad thing was, when this epitome of glamour fell asleep, everything sagged, the skin on her face, her hands, everything. She crumpled into an old lady. Doria Gray.

Very early Edgar became my unofficial manager-because we both saw him as the one person in my life who was 150 percent in my corner, the man who would protect me from all those people in show business who try to use and exploit you. My official manager was Roy Silver. He was hip, funny, brash and full of energy. After John F. Kennedy’s assassination, when the security was at its highest, Roy put on a dinner jacket and crashed a reception for Lyndon Johnson. He even managed to have his picture taken with Johnson. That was Roy.

Roy, God bless him, had promoted me onto that original Tonight Show in 1965, and then moved me right ahead during that year-into headlining at the Bitter End in Greenwich Village, onto The Mike Douglas Show, into Mr.

Kelly’s in Chicago as headliner, back onto Carson, into the hungry i in San Francisco, back on Mike Douglas. He signed me up for my first comedy record. Roy managed me brilliantly. With him I became the country’s hot young comedienne.

But not long after my marriage, Roy began living my success-which often happens. Booking agents and especially managers work intimately with the artist, shaping their acts, steering the careers, listening to the problemsbecoming the mother superiors and father confessors. Many times managers and other members of your inner circle come to believe that the performer cannot work without them, that they are the power, and the limos and suites and press conferences are as much for them as for you.

I had a hairdresser for years named Jason Dyl, who traveled with me everywhere, always first class. One time

we stayed over at a motel on Cape Cod, everybody settling into duplicate rooms. Suddenly I got a call from the front desk. Jason was standing there screaming that his room was “unacceptable.”

The fact is, nobody in the entourage is essential. Sinatra does not need the lights. Or the conductor. Everything is augmentation. The performer needs only one thing: Talent.

When Roy Silver booked me into Mr. Kelly’s, he escorted me to Chicago, where he settled into a suite in the best hotel, the Ambassador East, at my expense. “You will need a suitable place to meet the press,” he explained.

I said nothing and moved into the kitchenette rooming house where Id lived when I was with the improvisation group Second City. I still had my old grateful struggle mentality and thought I was not yet entitled to a suite.

Roy, who got 15 percent of my fees, began rushing me onto the big-money fast track long before I was ready. I had been developing my fragile little act in front of audiences of two hundred adoring people, who allowed me to be different from the average slick comic. Suddenly I found myself opening for Jack Jones in a huge place in Pittsburgh, and during my act they gave out bowling awards in the back of the hall-“And now for the woman with the most strikes … ‘

Roy sold me to the vast Basin Street East for two thousand dollars a week, big money then. I was terrified. Edgar was leaving for Europe on business and had a huge La-Z-Boy lounger delivered to my matchbox of a dressing room so I could rest-and it filled the room. I had to sit in it during makeup.

The audiences at Basin Street were hip sharpies, guys with big cuff links, the Copacabana crowd, not there for comedy but for Duke Ellington and Mel Torme-who were warring with each other over who got top billing. I was the rest period between their performances, and they refused to use each other’s band setups, so during my act, right behind me on the stage, no curtain, Torme’s band moved its equipment off, and Ellington’s musicians set up.

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While the drums and music stands crashed and banged, I was up there telling the crowd how I was such an ugly baby when I was born, I had to slap myself; that I went to a wig farm and bought the runt of the litter and taught it tricks-“Curl! Set!” When I looked out over the audience, all eyes were riveted on Louis Bellson setting up his drums. When I paused for emphasis in a joke, I could hear the buzz of audience talk. I felt invisible.

One night after coming offstage, I stood crying on the sidewalk with Roy, telling him I was not ready for this. He said, “Don’t worry, baby, it’s all in your head. You can do it. You’ve got to. This is the big time.”

When Edgar arrived home from Europe, he found his bride miserable and stuttering and bombing, losing all the assurance I had built in the six months since hitting on Carson. When you lose confidence, you lose yourself, your persona, your timing, your humor. When people are not laughing at what you think is funny, you begin doubting that you are funny, you begin to wither.

Onstage you must communicate total assurance, which tells the audience that you are funny, gives them permission to laugh whenever they want. They do not have to make a judgment call. The same line out of the mouth of Joe Blow will get a totally different reaction when spoken by Robin Williams.

Edgar understood everything immediately. In the corridor outside the dressing room, he bawled out my booking agent, a man named Bendett. They began pushing each other, then went into the alley behind the club, and Edgar began punching the guy out-while I held on to his jacket, screaming, “Edgar, stop it.” It was wonderful. My knight was wearing my colors into battle.

My contract was up with Roy Silver, and Edgar hired one of the top managers in the field, Jack Rollins, who handled Woody Allen. This was a definitive movement. Not realizing how it would take over our relationship, I had put myself permanently in Edgar’s hands and thought this a great perk of my marriage. With Edgar behind me, I could become that carefree, crazy madcap I had imagined myself.

Edgar was a tiger for details, and I was not. Throughout our life together he ran the business side-balanced my checkbook, filled out the checks for me to sign, picked my photographs, answered the mail, met with the accountants, invested the money that was starting to come in, handled the bank transfers. So I would not be upset and distracted, he solved problems he never told me about. He protected me by reading all the contracts, and amazed the lawyers by spotting the weaknesses, by knowing nuances, the legal difference between “and” and “or.” The lawyers, the best he could find, chafed under the secondguessing, but had to admit, “Yeah, you’re right.”

He trusted no one. He always said, “Have three lawyers. ” He got independent opinions on everything. The lawyers did not like that, but too bad. Edgar cared only that the deal was solid. He taught me to always go to the top, go to the person who can give the answer, get the action. If you go too low, everybody up the ladder makes the decision over and over, one by one. I would worry about alienating the underlings. Not Edgar.

Edgar’s judgment on building my success was continually sound. A career is a succession of choices, and he worried about them all-is the publicity right, is it better to be inside People magazine or on the cover of Us? He had a rule: Never perform in a city more than once every three years, so you don’t wear out your welcome.

He brought me along slowly, so I would not burn out. He believed I should never go after the most money: I should only do what was right for the career. Because we did not feel I was ready for the pressure of Las Vegas, which really was the big time, I turned down an eightythousand-dollar offer and continued in New York developing my material. Without Edgar, I would not have had the strength to say no.

When Jack Rollins took me on, he insisted I go back to my roots to develop my act, and he put me into a little hothouse club called the Downstairs at the Upstairs, where Mabel Mercer had been appearing. Throughout the rest of the sixties and early seventies, except for prearranged

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blocks of time when I toured, it was my base of operations where I worked five nights a week.

The Downstairs at the Upstairs was an exotic little jewel box of a cabaret in the old Wanamaker mansion on East Fifty-sixth Street, all oranges and pinks and art deco. On weekends limos delivered lacquered women in mink coats who climbed the grand curving staircase to the tiny upstairs showroom where five interchangeable, superpersonable preppies in evening clothes sang bitchy, sneering, snotty, trendy songs. Sort of a Spy magazine with music. Downstairs in an even smaller room, I reigned under a tiny stained-glass canopy over the little stage.

In the Downstairs my act was still evolving, but getting stronger. It seems I was voicing more and more what people were thinking but were too embarrassed to say. When the wedding pictures of Jackie and Ari appeared in the Post, she was so much taller than he was, I came onstage that night and said, “Did you see the picture? All I kept thinking was, Please God, let them be standing on a hill.” That got a huge laugh. Pretty soon I was saying, “Jackie O. spent twenty-eight million dollars her first year with Ari. Can you imagine the trading stamps she has? She can get a Naugahyde suitcase with those.” America hated her for the marriage to Onassis. We wanted her to be the Queen Victoria of our generation.