TALES FROM THE SCRIPT: THE BEHIND-THE-CAMERA ADVENTURES OF A TV COMEDY WRITER (4 page)

The older gentleman next to me smiled proudly and said, “Cocker
Spaniel.”
i said, “Oh,” and went back to my private rehearsal.
“Here’s a German Shepherd,” he said and barked again. it sounded
a lot like a Cocker Spaniel only louder. Without comment, i returned
to my reading. He tugged at my sleeve and said, “Here’s a Cocker Spaniel and a German Shepherd fighting.” The noises emanating from that
man turned many heads. One tuxedoed lad reacted quite strongly when
the barking and growling scared a dove that was hidden in his pocket.
My new friend proudly said, “i can do a rooster,” and he did. He
said, “i can do a cat,” and he did. He even boasted, “i can do a cat
falling from a building,” and he did. i had never heard a cat falling
from a building, but i supposed if i had it would’ve sounded just like
that man. The young magician had probably never heard a cat falling
from a building either and i’m sure that none of his doves ever had.
The magician had to go into the men’s room at the end of the corridor
because his tuxedo was becoming very active.
“i’m an animal impersonator,” my seat mate finally said.
“Really?” i asked, as if i needed confirmation that a man who just
barked several times, meowed, squealed, and cock-a-doodle-dooed
would be anything other than an animal impersonator.
“Oh yeah,” he said. i got my confirmation.
He said, “i do over 400 different types of animals.” i hoped my
name would be called before he got past number 166.
“i was on the Ted Mack Amateur Hour, you know.”
i didn’t know that and told him so.
“Yeah, but they put me on new Year’s Eve.” He was obviously annoyed at that. “Who watches on new Year’s Eve?”
i withdrew into my own fantasy for my own amusement and to
shut out the noises coming out of that man’s mouth as he did his act,
“Animals from A to Z.” He started with the aardvark.
My mind began to imagine what would’ve happened if he’d been
given a shot on Ted Mack’s show on a night with more viewers. He
would’ve been a smash. He would’ve gone on to great heights. i
pictured him opening in Las Vegas in a glitzy tuxedo, wowing the
audience. i fantasized about him taking a breather from the performance—somewhere between the Hippopotamus and the iguana—
sipping a little bit of scotch like Dean Martin, unloosening his tie like
Sammy Davis, and hearing his adoring fans shout out requests.
“Do the porcupine sliding along an icy road,” one would yell.
“Do the impersonation of the elephant impersonating Jimmy
Durante,” another hollered.
“i’ll do them all folks. You ain’t heard nothing, yet,” that master
showman would reply.
Then, someone called my name and released me from my reverie. i shook hands with the impersonator and wished him luck in
his career. He whimpered and rubbed up against my leg. “Miniature
poodle,” he said.
i hastened in to my audition—and i died. i wasn’t assigned to any
of the traveling troupes. Once again, it wasn’t my fault. i would’ve been
great if i hadn’t been distracted by the Rich Little of the Animal World.
One person was impressed with my performance, though. it was
an aspiring singer, who thought we could do an act together. “With
my voice and your comic talents we’d be great. We’d be another Martin and Lewis,” he said.
Finally, someone recognizes great talent!
Except for the billing,
which should have been, “With your comic talents and my voice,” i
agreed with everything he said.
So we teamed up. i wrote a Martin and Lewis type of act. it
opened with him singing “Put On a Happy Face,” and from there on,
it was hilarious mayhem. His voice was not that great, but it didn’t
matter. The comedy was brilliant enough to overcome that slight
flaw, just like Jerry Lewis had remarkably carried Dean Martin.
That time, my partner had a friend who had a friend who had a
friend who knew a guy who owned a club. One of those friends got us
booked into the club on a Saturday night—for no money, of course.
One night, my partner and i sat in my kitchen planning how we
would approach our theatrical debut. i said, “i usually like to work in
a tuxedo.”
My wife, who was preparing some snacks or something in the
kitchen at the time observed, “What do you mean ‘usually’? You’ve
never worked before.”
We agreed that business suits, which we
wouldn’t have to rent, would be sufficient.
Remembering the Knights of Columbus fiasco, i didn’t invite
anyone to the opening. My singing friend, though, invited several.
When we got to the club, we saw that it was just a tiny little bar on
the outskirts of the outskirts of Philadelphia. A three-piece combo
was seated behind the bar playing to three patrons in the bar, counting the one who had his head on the bar and was taking a nap.
i wrote a big act with enough action and motion to fill a Las Vegas
stage. it required a stage larger than that entire bar, and it wasn’t going
to work.
“Let’s just call this a bad idea,” i told my partner.
He said, “What are you talking about? When the band takes a
break, we’ll rehearse with them and then we’re on.”
We rehearsed with the band and then we were on stage.
The stage was the bar itself. it was a long, elliptical bar. The two
awake patrons and one comatose patron sat facing the far wall, where
the other end of the ellipse was. The band sat behind the bar and we
worked on the bar.
Fortunately, the singer opened the act. The bartender introduced
him to the three patrons. The “voice” part of our tandem climbed onto
the bar and actually straddled the cash register while performing. The
band started playing “Put on a Happy Face,” and my partner started
crooning. At rehearsals, he was fine, but in front of an audience, stage
fright got him. He sang the entire song using only one note.
During the song, the bartender rang up drinks on the cash register that was between the singer’s legs. i sat at the end of the bar
wondering if my whole show business career would be that bizarre.
God bless him, my partner continued singing as if he was Dean
Martin. i just stared at him with wide open eyes, unbelieving. i had
never heard anything so awful in my life.
At the end of his song, the microphone disassembled and fell with
a loud clunk onto the stage. The bartender tried to fix it, but couldn’t,
so he said, “Just tell me what you want to say and i’ll tell the people.”
He told the bartender to announce me. He did. i refused to get
off my bar stool. Our debut was over.
Again, i died, but that time i blamed it on my faux-Dean Martin
associate and on the room. no matter what my wife said, we would
have been better in tuxedos.
Some good things happened along the way, too. A friend had a
friend who had a friend who knew Cozy Morley. Well, in fact, everybody knew Cozy Morley. He was an entertainer, who was very
popular in the Philadelphia and Wildwood areas. He sang, played
instruments, and told jokes, but the real secret of his success was
that he knew everyone by name. He owned a club in the Wildwood
area where he entertained during the summer season. He learned
the name of anyone who came into the club and remembered it the
following summer when they came back. Everybody flocked to see
Cozy because he was a personal friend.
He read some of my jokes and wanted me to write material for
him. Cozy had been doing the same jokes since he was in high school,
so he wanted some new ones.
We settled on a fee of $100 a week. That was the first money i
earned as a comedy writer, so i couldn’t really afford a lawyer. i drew
up the contract myself, and it was easy. Cozy was the party of the first
part and i was the party of the second part, or visa versa. it didn’t really matter.
i threw in a whole bunch of “whereases” and “wherefors” and
used a big word anytime i could think of one to replace a little word.
The document appeared legal and we both signed it.
After that, the document just withered away as did the agreement.
Cozy never did any of the new jokes because the old ones were much
more comfortable for him. i never saw any of the $100s i was supposed to receive each week. We both just forgot about it.
However, another friend had a friend who had a friend who personally knew Mickey Shaughnessy. That friend used to work with
Mickey around town. Shaughnessy was another local favorite, who
had recently had some success in Hollywood. He appeared in
From
Here to Eternity
and in several Glenn Ford pictures like
Pocketful of
Miracles
and the
Sheepherder.
Mickey read my stuff and liked it. He immediately hired me to
write some special material for a show he was going to do in Cleveland. i’d get $100 for my work.
i was thrilled.
Then Shaughnessy cancelled the appearance.
i was unthrilled.
However, he did want to meet me. He was appearing at the Venus
Lounge in South Philadelphia. He invited me to see his act and then
we could sit and talk about a working arrangement.
The day of the meeting, i was ill. i had a severely upset stomach, but i didn’t want to miss that opportunity. i talked a good friend
from GE into accompanying me. Actually, i talked him into taking
me there because i was too ill to drive.
We sat in the audience, while Shaughnessy performed. My friend
drank bourbon and i drank Pepto Bismol. i had thought to bring a
bottle with me.
We talked to Mickey after the show and he was very enthusiastic
about my material. i set up another meeting, this one at my house.
Shaughnessy was going to come and have a spaghetti dinner with my
family, and then we would finalize our comedian-writer relationship.
He cancelled that meeting, too.
i never really did write a line or make one penny from Mickey
Shaughnessy, but he was influential in the development of my career.
He recommended me and my work to Rex Morgan.
Rex Morgan was a local TV personality, who had a morning show
on WFiL-TV. Shaughnessy showed him some of my jokes and recommended me as a writer. Morgan called me and invited me into a
taping of his show, and then he asked me to write some topical lines
for him to use. i wrote for him for about two weeks—for no money,
of course. That was an audition again.
Morgan took my lines to his bosses at the station and asked for a
salary for me as a regular writer for his show. The brass turned him,
and me, down. “They said if they give me money for a writer, all the
people here will want writers,” Morgan explained to me.
So, that gig fell through.
However, Rex Morgan wanted to use my material to initiate a
column in the
Philadelphia Inquirer,
the city’s morning paper. He
planned to call it “Over a Second Cup of Coffee” by Rex Morgan. i
wouldn’t get credit, but i’d probably get a little bit of money.
The
Philadelphia Inquirer
wasn’t interested.
Rex Morgan had a guest on his morning show, who happened to
read some of my material upside down while it sat on Morgan’s desk.
He was a comedian, who was always looking for good writers. He
asked Morgan if he would contact me.
Morgan called me, and on the telephone, introduced me to a comedian named Slappy White, but i don’t think we had a real good
connection.
Slappy said, “i like the stuff you wrote and i’d like you to write for me.”
“Great,” i said.
Slappy said, “Can you meet me at my hotel and we’ll talk about
the material?”
“Sure,” i said.
So we set up the meeting, and in closing, Slappy said, “Oh, and
by the way, my name’s ‘Slappy,’ not ‘Sloppy.’” i had been calling him
“Sloppy” throughout our phone conversation.
We did meet, though, and we did agree to a contract, but a less
formal one than the one i wrote for Cozy Morley. We did work together.
At last, i got my revenge against all the rejections i’d received. i
could tell Vaughn Meader, London Lee, WFiL-TV, the Drexelbrook
inn, and all the others to go to hell. i didn’t need them anymore. i
was now a professional comedy writer, pulling down a hefty $30 a
week. Finally, i had gotten to the “What the hell, i might as well make
a buck at it” phase of my career.

When people discover i write comedy, they usually say, “Say something funny.” When they do, i take out a pad, a pen, and say, “All right,
who do i send the bill to?” Professional comedy writers get paid for
writing gags. My personal definition of a joke is that it’s “a series of
words that ends in a paycheck.”

The first joke i sold was to
Parade
, a magazine that came each
week as part of our Sunday paper. The joke read: “There’s no such
thing as a Sunday driver anymore. They’re all Friday drivers still looking for a parking space.”

The check was nice, but the big thrill was that the gag was printed
on a page facing a big article about Bob Hope, my idol. The gods of
comedy seemed to be dropping me a prophetic hint. At least, i took
it that way.

Cash was a powerful incentive. Jokes began to flow more regularly once i learned that people would pay for them. At that time,
Kiplinger Magazine
used to feature a page of topical one-liners called
“Changing Times.” They began accepting my submissions regularly
and paying $5 a joke.

who was going to hire me, but he never actually did. no money ever
changed hands. Since, by my definition, a joke is a series of words
that ends in a paycheck, i never really wrote any jokes for Mickey
Shaughnessy.

The contract i had with Cozy Morley was a faux document. it was
a quasi-legal agreement that i wrote myself. Whereas the party of the
first part never did any of the jokes that were written by the party of the
second part, and whereas the party of the second part doesn’t remember ever receiving a check from the party of the first part, be it therefore
understood that this agreement hereto didn’t amount to a hill of beans.