B00C4I7LJE EBOK (14 page)

When we’d first arrived, I’d told the bellman to take Phyllis’s costume bags to the dressing room. There they all were, waiting to be unpacked. I unlocked them, Phyllis took out her wigs, and we both began hanging up the costumes and laying out the accessories. In no time at all we had everything ready.

“Almost as if Karen had done it,” Phyllis remarked as she surveyed the neatly arranged rows of false eyelashes, the large pocket watch, the lipsticks, cigarette holders, and dog collars. We’d arrange the gloves by pairs in the drawers and the boots underneath the correct costumes, with the headdresses on the shelf above.

“Yeah, almost.”

“Don’t worry, you’ll soon make friends here,” Phyllis said. It was as though she had read my mind. She looked at the schedule and added, “Two shows a night, but you’ll have your days free. Maybe you can learn to play golf. Or tennis.”

Not a bad idea.

We had only a short time before the first show, so I went back to my room and set up the “office” on top of the dresser—my typewriter, a stack of typing paper, and a package of Phyllis’s current favorite stationery, along with paper clips, scratch pads, Scotch tape, and stapler. From my briefcase I took my shorthand notebook and a couple of pens. I also had scratch pads and pens in different colors for the dressing room, the way Phyllis liked it.

Karen wasn’t there, so I helped Phyllis with her costume. As we worked, I enjoyed listening to the singer—a young woman from Chicago. She had a good voice and a great figure, and fit much more into the style of what I thought a Playboy Club should have as entertainment. Phyllis Diller just didn’t fit the Playboy vision, as far as I could see.

Between shows that first night, Phyllis and Warde would have dinner in their room. As the first show wound up, Warde said, “You should try one of the gourmet rooms. The food is fantastic.”

“I hate to eat by myself.”

He glanced at me with his lopsided grin, which looked very close to a leer. “I’m sure you could meet some nice gentleman who would be delighted to buy you dinner.”

Warde was attempting to be nice, so I just smiled and shrugged. I wandered around, looking at the shops. There were some nice places to spend money, no doubt about that. There were also several places to eat. But in the end, I bought some crackers and cheese at the little “country store” and wished there were someplace to get fresh fruit. Phyllis’s suite had a fruit basket, but nothing in the dressing room where I could get to it.

By the end of the second show, I practically fell asleep on my feet. Traveling without Karen made it harder—I was responsible for everything. We’d had a three-and-a-half-hour flight, a worse-than-usual time at the airport corralling all the bags, then the hour’s drive to Lake Geneva. After Phyllis and I got the dressing room set up, I was ready for a break, but by then we were getting ready for the first show.

Besides that, the first night was always tense, when anything that could go wrong would go wrong, but thank heaven, it hadn’t that night. When I got back to my room, I threw my clothes over the chair, told the hotel operator not to ring my room under any circumstance, and dropped into bed.

I slept until noon. It must have been the fresh air—people from L.A. weren’t used to breathing fresh air. When I woke, I noted that the message light on my phone wasn’t blinking.
Thank heaven.
I showered and dressed as quickly as possible and headed for the coffee shop. I wanted to get out of there before I got a call from next door. Oh, my gosh, did that breakfast taste good. I hadn’t even eaten lunch the day before, and those cheese and crackers had been a sparse dinner. I felt life seeping back into my veins, via my stomach.

I went outside to explore. I strolled around the golf course until some angry golfer, who had been yelling “fore” for about thirty seconds, finally started speaking English and yelled, “Get outta the way!” I realized I was standing right in the middle of the fairway. Burning with humiliation, I retreated to the path.

I put as much distance between myself and the golf course as possible and ended up at the tennis courts on the other side of the hotel. Beyond that I saw an airstrip. Some people rode by on horses and it looked like they were having a good time. For just an instant I regretted that horses and I shared a mutual antipathy. When I was a Girl Scout, our entire troop aimed for the “horsemanship” badge. We learned to ride—or at least the rest of them learned—at Verdugo Stables near my house in North Hollywood. I remembered being pointed toward a large, brown animal that towered over me. It looked at me with total disdain, and there was no doubt it was thinking, “This little pip-squeak thinks she can tell me what to do?” I mounted the horse as instructed and held the reins the way the riding master demonstrated.

 “The first thing you want to do,” he told us, “is let the horse know who’s the boss.” I swear that horse snickered. He turned his head toward me and we locked eyes. No contest. After a few turns around the paddock, we headed out onto the bridle trail. It took all of three minutes for that horse to dump me and trot right back to the stable. The riding master scowled at me; nor were my parents pleased when they had to take me to the emergency room to treat a badly sprained ankle. I concluded that horses are much better in concept than horses in reality.

The tennis looked interesting, though.
Lessons might be in order.
Karen and I had taken our racquets to Las Vegas, although neither of us played well, and she’d urged me to pack mine for this trip. “You’re going to have a lot of time there. Maybe you’ll find someone to play tennis with,” she said.

As I returned to my room thinking of tennis, the first thing I saw was the blinking message light.
Drat.

For a moment I thought about ignoring it but figured I might as well find out what Phyllis wanted. She wanted to work.
Double drat
.

Reluctantly, I went next door with my shorthand notebook. We spent the rest of the afternoon answering mail, with Phyllis dictating replies—some serious, some humorous—to both business and personal mail. I knew what I’d be doing the following morning—typing letters. Once we finished, it was time to dress and get down to the Cabaret.

Between shows that night the stage manager poked his head into the dressing room. “I just wanted to let you know what a pleasure it is to have you here, Miss Diller.”

Phyllis, like everyone else, is not unappreciative of compliments. We had nearly half an hour before the next show started, so she invited him in.

“You and your secretary are such ladies,” he continued, “and so professional. It’s really a pleasure working with people like you.”

We all chatted for a few minutes, then he looked at his watch. “Gotta call fifteen minutes,” he said as he got up. The door closed behind him.

“Well,” Phyllis remarked, “he certainly does like you.”

“He does?”

“I don’t think it’s me he’s interested in.”

I hadn’t paid particular attention to him, but, yeah, he was a rather nice-looking man about my age.

“Maybe he’ll ask you to dinner,” Phyllis suggested. She was by nature a matchmaker and always pleased when she thought I had a little romance going.

As it turned out, the entire stage crew and hotel staff were friendly. They were all as shy of me as I had been of them. They thought that because I worked for a celebrity and traveled a lot I would be stuck-up. The stage manager, Harvey, was attentive whenever we were backstage, but he never made a move to ask me out. Of course, the fact that we both worked nights sort of put the kibosh on that. When Phyllis was onstage, I hung out with him and learned that he’d lived in Wisconsin all his life, divorced with two kids who lived with his ex. Nothing serious, just a nice guy who liked to chat. Everyone at the Playboy Club-Hotel seemed really nice. The resort sure wasn’t what I’d expected.

Despite its name, the only bunnies in the Playboy Club-Hotel were in the Cabaret or the bars; the place was not the showcase for scantily clad women I’d anticipated. We were out in the country, and there were no interviews or appearances other than her twice-nightly show, so Phyllis chose to spend part of every afternoon working with me, a goal she always strived for but seldom achieved—until then. I’d scheduled tennis lessons for the first time in my life. I knew I would enjoy learning to play. However, I spent a good part of every day either with Phyllis or back in my room typing correspondence. By the end of the week I’d hardly had a chance to get outdoors at all. I canceled the tennis lessons.

Some vacation
.
Wait till I get hold of Karen!

On Mondays, the Cabaret was dark, and Phyllis was booked for an appearance on the
Irv Kupcinet Radio Show
in Chicago. We took a small plane that used the airstrip behind the tennis courts. The woods came very close to the airstrip on one side; the other side was bordered by a cow pasture.

“What do you do if the cows wander onto the strip when you’re trying to land?” Phyllis asked the pilot as we took off.

“I buzz the field, try to scare them off. Or else I hope someone will see I’m trying to land and come shoo them away.”

“I suppose at night you could put flashlights in their mouths and line them all up alongside if you wanted to come in after dark,” she suggested.

This struck the pilot as wonderfully funny, and he laughed so hard I was afraid the plane would crash. “Tell you what,” he said when he’d caught his breath, “on the way back I’ll fly you over the nudist camp.”

“There’s a nudist camp out here?” Warde had suddenly come alive.

“Sure is. Only thirty miles or so from the hotel. Way out in the woods.”

True to his word, the pilot took a slight detour on the return flight and we made a low pass over a compound that he assured us was full of nude people. From our height it was impossible to tell if the few people lying around the pool were nude or not, but we all pressed our noses to the windows as he made another pass.

We got back at dusk, and Phyllis and Warde went immediately to their suite to change for dinner. One of the Playboy bigwigs had invited them to dine with him in the gourmet room.

When I got to my room, I had a message to call Diane, one of the front-desk clerks.

“Oh, good,” she said when I identified myself. “I was hoping you’d get back soon. We’re all going into town for dinner. Meet us in the lobby at seven. Mr. Hefner’s buying.”

Oh my gosh. Dinner! In a restaurant! With people!

I was in the lobby by seven. Earlier, actually. I didn’t want to take a chance. I was so excited to be getting out.
This is pathetic,
I told myself.

Eight of us gathered, including Diane and two others from the front-desk staff. I didn’t know the other four, all men. Diane introduced us, but I was still hazy. They worked somewhere around the hotel, but I really didn’t care. I just knew I was going out to dinner.

 “What about Harvey?” I asked.

“He never comes in on Monday. It’s his night off,” Diane said.

Didn’t matter. I’d have had a terrific evening if I’d been with Dracula and the Abominable Snowman.

We went to an old ranch-style place that specialized in steaks. I didn’t expect that Hugh Hefner would be there in person (and certainly would have been startled if he had!), but Diane’s assurance that he was buying encouraged me to jump in with several of the others who ordered the biggest steak on the menu. When it came I caught my breath. The thing covered the entire plate—the potato and veggies were served on the side.

“You’ll never be able to eat it all,” one of the girls said. The really embarrassing thing was that I knew I could. The talk turned inevitably to my job.

“What’s it like working for Phyllis Diller?” somebody asked.

This was something everyone wanted to know.

“She’s great,” I told them. “And I really like the traveling.”

“I’ve never been further than Chicago,” one of the girls said. “Have you ever been to a foreign country?”

“I’ve been to London with Phyllis twice.”

She looked at me with such yearning that I didn’t have the heart to tell her I’d lived there and in South Africa.

“Someday I’m going to London,” she said.

I thought she sounded rather wistful. “What’s it like working at the Playboy Club-Hotel?” I asked. “I gotta tell you, it’s not at all what I figured.”

One of the guys had just finished putting away most of that huge steak. “Yeah, it’s not what most people think,” he said.

“It really is a family destination,” someone else said.

“So, what other celebrities have you had?” I asked.

“Oh, gosh, lots. George Gobel, Diahann Carroll, Dyan Cannon, Cyd Charisse. Just lots and lots.”

“Those were the nice ones,” another added, “but not everyone’s as nice as that. Some of them are really arrogant and just downright nasty. But you guys are the best.”

I was happy to hear that and knew Phyllis would be, too.

When I returned to my room, I thought about some of the things they’d said. Phyllis was demanding and not always in a good mood, but she had plenty of good qualities. She didn’t use foul language, she didn’t throw temper tantrums, she could be generous when it suited her, and mostly gave credit where it was due. She was invariably pleasant to the people we worked with, and she tried to remember to give Karen and me free time when we were on the road. I had it pretty good.

As if to validate my kind thoughts, Phyllis suddenly lost her desire to work, so my remaining days were marvelously free. I put them to good use on the tennis court, taking lessons for the rest of the week. I was just starting to get the hang of it when it was time to pack up and head for home.

The last night the stage manager gave me a present—a cut-crystal egg with the Playboy bunny etched into it. “This is from all of us,” Harvey said. “You’ve been so much fun. We just wish everyone were as nice as you and Miss Diller.”

I keep it as a reminder of all the friends I made across the country, most of whom I will never see again.

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