How to Talk Dirty and Influence People Page 6

  The sad thing was that the women these men got to dance with were Mary and my mother.

  There were lots of rooms over the dancing school that were condemned. The whole building, in fact, was condemned, except for the lower loft. I loved to hang out in my own special “condemned room.” I would indulge myself in bizarre melodramatic fantasies, the spell usually being broken by my mother’s request to empty the garbage.

  If it was Monday I would take the garbage with me to the VA building, because to empty the garbage downstairs you had to separate the cans from the papers. The landlord insisted that you put the cans in one container and the papers in another. He was a real twisted nut in regard to his refuse-filing system.

  “Miss Clark, check in the files of May 18, 1950, and bring me the eggshells and the coffee grounds and one orange peel . . .”

  My reason for going to the Veteran’s Administration (where I would just dump all the garbage, unsegregated, into a big wire basket) was the 52–20 Club. The Government gave all ex-GIs $20 a week for a year or until they could find a job. The accepted smart-thing-to-do was to find an employer who didn’t report your wages or take out withholding tax, and then you could grab the $20 plus your salary.

  I would fill out a report form, swearing that I had tried to find work that week. Which was true. I had asked my mother and Mema and two guys that sat next to me in a movie if they knew of any jobs.

  When I finished filling out the weekly report, I noticed ink all over my fingers from one of those scratchy post-office pens. The man who invented them is the same guy who invented the wax napkins they give you with hot dogs. It doesn’t wipe the mustard off; it rubs it in—like flavored Man-Tan.

  I used a piece of newspaper to wipe the excess ink off my fingers. It contained a glowing account of Father Divine and all the money he was making. I stared at his picture and the amount. Then I went back to my “condemned room,” carrying the work light from the dancing school. There was no electricity above the school floor; you just plugged in downstairs and carried up the extension.

  I had my Fred Astaire fantasy, dancing up the steps with the light in my hand.

  One day, while my mother was going through her “stuff”—four or five earrings that didn’t match; six pairs of platform shoes in simulated lizard that she never wore; numerous bras with broken straps that she intended to mend some day; and, always, five or six crumpled-up Kleenex with traces of lipstick—she told me that she had decided to study eccentric dancing.

  It was called “Legomania” or “Rubber Legs.”

  There was a fellow by the name of Joe Clooney who rented the studio to limber up early in the morning, for which he gave my mother a couple of dollars. After a while, he started trading her Legomania lessons for limbering-up space.

  Within six months, Joe and my mother were doing an act together.

  They started out by working hospitals and benefits, and then progressed to Saturday-night joints in Brooklyn; on Bergen Street, Ocean Parkway, or Coney Island. A short time later, Joe left the act and my mother was doing a single. The shows consisted of a comedian-master of ceremonies, a girl singer, a ballroom team, and my mother.

  On one particular night, at the Victory Club on Ocean Parkway, the master of ceremonies didn’t show up. He had trouble with his car . . . they found half-a-pound of pot in the trunk.

  The owner asked my mother to m.c. She was petrified. She had never spoken a single line on the stage before. Moreover, audiences were not used to seeing a woman m.c. I had seen the master of ceremonies lots of times, so I asked my mother if I could do it—what was so hard about, “Say, how ’bout a nice hand for the so-and-sos, folks?”

  What with a quick meeting with the boss, and the law of supply and demand, I was given my entree into show business.

  It was about 15 minutes before showtime. I went into the men’s room to comb my hair. I pushed my pompadour as high as I could get it, and I put a little burnt match on the mustache that I was sporting at the time. I was really dap, with my sharp brown-suede shoes from A.S. Beck and a one-button-roll suit from Buddy Lee’s. It was bar-mizvah blue. I had a Billy Eckstine collar, a black knit tie, and a five-point handkerchief, hand-rolled, made in the Philippines, with the sticker still on it.

  Should I wear my discharge button? No, I’ll make it on talent alone.

  Then I suddenly realized—I don’t have any make-up! My first show and no make-up. The men’s-room attendant (sign, MY SALARY IS YOUR TIPS, THANK YOU) had a can of white after-shave talc. I put that on, and in the rush I dropped it and spilled it all over my brown-suede shoes. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried getting white talcum off brown-suede shoes, but it’s worse than trying to use leaves in the woods.

  The men’s-room attendant started getting nervous and staring at me. I laughed it off and exited with my now brown-and-white-suede shoes.

  The bandleader who was going to introduce me was doing a warm-up and getting laughs. Loud laughs. He was using his clarinet in a manner that was beyond mere phallic symbolism; he was swinging it between his legs and singing “He’s My Queer Racketeer . . .”

  The cashier asked, “You nervous—want a brandy before you go on?”

  “No, thanks. I don’t know what the hell everybody is worrying about. I’ve m.c.’d a million shows.”

  The ballroom team gave me their cues for applause. “Now, when I drop the one knee, she comes up . . .”

  Suddenly my feet began to get cold, and I was in the men’s room, throwing up. I was scared to death, and the attendant was flipping. It was five minutes before showtime, all the waiters had been alerted, and a few of the “regular” customers had developed anticipatory neurosis.

  My mother looked at me from the opposite side of the room and pantomimed: “Your shoes are dirty!”

  I again retreated to the men’s room, but the attendant blocked my entrance this time, and I threw up on a customer who was exiting.

  I heard the strains of “Hi, Neighbor”—one of the standard night-club music intros—and I fled to the wings. My mother took one look at my powdered face and took me by the hand. I bolted away from her and into the ladies’ room for one last purge.

  I felt a wave of self-pity and identified with Aruzza, Manolete, Belmonte, and every other bullfighter—scared not of the bull but of the crowd. A crowd that waits: to be entertained, to view, to judge.

  I heard the bandleader:

  “Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. As you may know, our regular master of ceremonies, Tutti Morgan, is ill, due to a service-connected injury. Luckily, folks, show business has a big heart. A friend of his, Lenny Marsalle, a famous comic in his own right, who was in Guadalcanal with Tutti Morgan, is here in town to do the Ed Sullivan show, and when he heard that Tutti was sick he came right over to fill in—so how about it, folks, let’s hear it for a great comedian and a great guy—Lenny Marsalle!”

  I wiped my mouth with the square sheet of toilet paper that came in the container marked Onliwon, and made my grand entrance onto the stage direct from the ladies’ room.

  Actually, my function was quite simple. I was going out there and I was merely to say “Good evening,” do a few straight lines and introduce the girl singer. But why did that bandleader have to say I was a “great comedian” and all that dishonest stuff about the Ed Sullivan show? Now they were all waiting for a great comedian.

  But he also said I was a “great guy.” Maybe, I hoped, that was more important to the audience, my being a “great guy” stuff. Maybe I could have my mother go out and say, “He’s really a ‘great guy’” and everybody would believe her because a mother knows her son better than anyone.

  I saw a strange, silver, rather grotesque looking ball in front of my nose. It was a microphone. I was onstage.

  “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen———”

  “Bring on the broads!” cut me short. Oh, my God, a heckler! The angry request came from one of two guys standing near the bar; with them were two Lerner-clad ladies with th
e let-out hems, brown-and-white spectator pumps and whoopee socks, cloth coats with silver-fox collars that were a little too tight, and the final unique touch: lipstick on their teeth.

  It shocked me into reality.

  I looked at my mother and I saw a helpless smile. Her son, her baby that she nursed through chicken pox, working as a maid to sustain the both of us. Her child was in trouble and she couldn’t help him.

  Ma, help me; that boy hit me, Ma; gimme a quarter, Ma; I’m in trouble, Ma; I’m alone, help me, Ma . . .

  “Bring on the broads!”

  This time the request was more positive and energetic. The heckler must have sensed a weak, inexperienced prey. The two girls and the man with him bathed in his reflected glory. His friend joined him and they screamed in unison: “Bring on the broads!” Their lady friends shrieked with ecstasy.

  “I’d like to, but then you wouldn’t have any company at the bar.”

  My first laugh.

  It was like the flash that I have heard morphine addicts describe, a warm sensual blanket that comes after a cold, sick rejection.

  I was hooked.

  My mother looked at me and really schepped nachis (which is the Jewish equivalent of “That’s my boy!”).

  I introduced the first act, and an hour later, at the end of the show, when I was bringing my mother back for an encore, I said, “How about that, folks, Sally Marsalle—isn’t she great?”

  How about that for silliness? I’m telling a group of strangers: “Isn’t my mother wonderful?” I had a dangerous desire to extend the tribute: “Yes sir, folks, not only can she dance, but she makes great chicken soup, and sweet lima beans, and when I’m sick she rubs my chest with Vicks.”

  When the evening was over, to my surprise the owner did not assume the Eduardo Ciannelli posture with the dialog that I had been conditioned to expect in the movie scene where the novice succeeds. Lyle Talbot always nods to Eugene Pallette: “You’ve done it again, Mr. Florenzo, this kid’s sensational! We’d better sign him up before the Tio Bamba gets him.”

  I received no such gratification. As a matter of fact, he charged me for a meat-ball sandwich and ginger ale.

  And when I stood on the subway platform and reached into my pocket for a dime, I found that the men’s-room attendant had gotten even. I won’t go into the scatological details; I threw the coat into the trash can.

  But I’d had a smell of it and the aroma lingered.

  Well, that’s show business.

  Chapter Seven

  I began to make the rounds of agents in Manhattan, and got in with Buddy Friar, an amateur agent with an office in the Roseland Building, now torn down.

  There were 15 or 20 clubs—such as Squires in Long Island, the Clay Theater in New Jersey, George’s Corners in Greenwich Village, the Blue Haven in Jackson Heights—that would put on amateur shows to fill in on slow nights. Supposedly, people from the audience would be called on as contestants. Actually, we were the forerunners of the rigged quiz shows.

  The prizes were $100, $50, and $25. We “amateurs” would sit around the club, and when they called for volunteers we would get up. We were paid $2 apiece, carfare and, if we won, an empty envelope.

  One of the other “amateurs” was a waiter from the Bronx who always sang Sorrento. When he reached the last four bars his face used to get red and his neck blue. I think he got a hand from the audience just for the fact that he lived through the number.

  There was also some nut from Rye, New York, whose act consisted of standing on a chair, jumping straight up into the air and then diving and landing square on his head. Not on his hands, mind you; they were held tight to his sides. No, he would land smack on his goddamn head. It was a short act but it certainly was a hell of an opener.

  There was another guy who played the sweet potato, doing a medley of patriotic songs like The Caissons Go Rolling Along. Then there was a performer known as “Al Jolson, Jr.”—he was about 65 years old. And there was a girl acrobatic dancer who used to come to the club with all her lights, costumes, props, and her mother. I always wondered why no one ever caught on. Did they think that she just happened to drop in that night lugging all her paraphernalia?

  Sometimes legitimate amateurs would try to get on, but they would be told that there wasn’t enough time.

  The winner was selected by holding a hand over the contestant’s head and asking for applause. I never won. The sweet potato usually did. He had a limp and wore a double-size ruptured duck he had made especially for himself: you could see it from anywhere in the house. This gave me an idea for the first bit of material I ever did that caused controversy.

  My agent had a pro date to fill on a Saturday night in Staten Island, at a place called The Melody Club. Since it had struck me funny that anyone who had been in the service would use that fact to gain rapport with the audience, I had a picture taken of all my campaign ribbons and medals (including a Presidential Unit Citation), had it enlarged, and put it on. I had the band play a big fanfare and Anchors Aweigh. Then I came out and said, “I stole this routine from Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler.”

  Right away one guy wanted to punch me in the nose for making fun of the ribbons. It was the first time I felt real hostility from an audience. And they’d missed the point.

  The owner asked me to take the bit out for the second show. I tried to explain that I was trying to make fun of a guy who would do such a thing, not of the ribbons. He replied, “When in Rome do as the Romans do.”

  “OK, but I’ll never play Rome again.”

  And I haven’t played Staten Island since.

  After four or five months of these amateur gigs, I wrote a little act for myself which eventually refined into the Hitler bit, wherein the dictator was discovered and handled by MCA. And I did all the standard impressions—Cagney, Lorre, Bogart—in double-talk German.

  Marvin Worth, who later became a writer on the Steve Allen Show, had a lot of faith in my comedy prowess and decided to be my manager. He and his partner, Whitey Martin, and another agent, Bob Starr, got me on Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts show, which I won.

  Within a few months I became “hot”—I was making $450 a week and working everything “good”—the Strand on Broadway, the Tick Tock in Milwaukee—and, around 1951, the consensus of showbiz opinion was, “Anybody can get a laugh with dirty toilet jokes; it takes talent to get laughs with clean stuff. You’ll go a long way, Lenny, you’re funny and clean.”

  Tears filtered through my lashes and rivered along each side of my nose. I was overcome with emotion—for I was blessed with talent; I didn’t have to resort to dirty toilet jokes.

  Then I started worrying . . . how dirty is my toilet?

  I lay in bed, thinking about the “dirty-resort-to-anything-for-a-laugh” comedian. This could be the start of making the word “resort” dirty. Comedians who work resorts, entertaining people who go to resorts, are certainly resorting.

  I couldn’t contain my religious fervor. I exploded from the bedroom, thundered down the hall and threw open the door to that odious place—the “resort.”

  I screamed, “You dirty, filthy, stinky, crappy, Commie, dopey toilet! Thank God I don’t have to resort to you to make people laugh. It’s just a shame that there aren’t laws to keep you and your kind out of a decent community. Why don’t you go back where you came from? Take the tub and the sink and that jellyfish hamper with you! Even though their names aren’t as dirty as yours, anybody who’d live with a toilet must be resort-addicted. Purists don’t even go to the toilet. All I can say to you, toilet, is—it’s lucky you’re white!”

  After theaters started closing and night clubs felt the absence of war, some show people couldn’t get work and actually did have to resort to toilets. Not discussing them; cleaning them.

  The first performers to feel the pressure were the magic acts. The agents’ postwar cry was: “If I had a job, don’t you think I’d be glad to give it to ya? They’re not buying magic acts anymore. They’re not buying dan
ce teams anymore.” The only place they could get a club date was at some broken-down Kiwanis hall, and even those were getting scarce.

  What happens to people whose vocation becomes outmoded? (Elevator operators who are replaced by buttons—“What kind of a guy would want to be an elevator operator anyway?” Maybe some guy who just wants to return to a womb with a door he can open and close at different floors.)

  Take Horace and Hilda, a dance team. They were a by-product of World War Two. Not a very good dance team; everything good was sent overseas to be killed. Horace handled the business, making the rounds of agents: Horace, fighting for breath in the abundance of the icy wind that trilled and wheezed around the Brill Building, echoing with the sound of a behemoth Goliath with bronchitis.

  Horace and Hilda had met at the Arcadia Ballroom—“Dancing nitely, fun for all ages, no minors allowed.” Hilda had been fortunate; she had a classical-ballet background received at the Borough Hall YWCA every Tuesday between eight and nine P.M., immediately after the public-speaking-salesmanship class.

  She had a big keester and no nay-nays. She was built like a pear. Ballet helped her so she didn’t have any fat. Rather, she was very muscular. A muscular pear. With shoes from Kitty Kelly’s, net stockings that had been sewn so many times they looked like varicose veins, and black satin tights, the crotch not exactly split, but giving.

  The top of her outfit was solid sequined—she loved it and the dry cleaner hated it. A tap dancer had sold it to her when Horace and Hilda were playing the State Theatre in Baltimore. The tap dancer said she wasn’t going to use it anymore because a choreographer was planning to set a new number for her with college sweaters and megaphones, so Hilda got it at a steal for eight dollars. The hoofer had originally bought it from a drag queen she worked with at the Greenwich Village Inn when they had straight acts. They had female impersonators and then the straight acts would work in between. The drag queen said he paid $12 at Maharam’s for the sequins alone.

  Horace lived flamenco and spent all of his time in the rehearsal halls striking the classic flamenco pose. The way he stood looked to Hilda as if he were applauding his ass. Horace was a faggot, an out-and-out flaming faggot. He didn’t swish but he was sort of like an old auntie. He was so obvious that everyone knew he was a faggot except Hilda and her family. They didn’t know because they were very religious and Horace acted just like a lot of ministers she had seen in her formative years.