B00C4I7LJE EBOK (15 page)

M
onday morning we packed up and left the Playboy Club-Hotel in Lake Geneva. I felt sort of sad. It had turned out to be a good time, as Karen predicted.

I’m gonna put those tennis lessons to good use
, I told myself as I settled into my seat on the airplane. It was fun, and a tennis racquet was a lot more portable than a set of golf clubs.

I actually slept on the plane, which was good, because with the two-hour time change I still had an afternoon’s work ahead of me. Maria was happy to have me back and eager for all the news. Like Phyllis, she always hoped that I would “meet someone nice.” I don’t know what good that would’ve done. In all likelihood I’d never see him again.

“You have to get ready for Las Vegas,” she told me as she opened the office bags. Maria was very proprietary about the office bags. “You leave day after tomorrow.”

She immediately began replenishing supplies, mostly the photos and books Phyllis used as thank-you gifts.

Maria kept talking to me—or perhaps herself—as she checked both staplers. “I must fill those up,” she said, setting them aside. She carefully wrapped a rubber band around a box of paper clips. “You have to be careful about the paper clips. If the rubber band comes loose, they get all over the suitcase.”

“Okay. I’ll be more careful.”

“How do you go through so many scratch pads?” she asked.

“No idea.”

“I’ll have to order more. Did you like the Playboy Club-Hotel?”

I filled her in on the overall picture.

“I’m glad you had such a good time. It’s good that you enjoy the travel.” Maria apparently had no desire to go anywhere but between her apartment and Phyllis’s house.

That evening at home I emptied my suitcase and stuffed two weeks’ worth of dirty clothes into the washer. The next day, Phyllis taped a
Sonny and Cher Show
in L.A. Thankfully, Karen had returned from Hawaii and went with her, so I was able to spend the day organizing the correspondence that had come in while we were gone.

Las Vegas would not be hectic, and I had begun to really enjoy the travel-with-no-work gigs.
If we could just spend all our time in Las Vegas, I’d be a very happy secretary!

I verified the plane and limo reservations and made sure I had the contract in my briefcase. A quick glance at the contract told me the Riviera was paying Phyllis $50,000 a week.
A week!
That was more money than I would earn in many years. She told me not to discuss it with anyone, which made me think that she was being paid more than other entertainers—something, perhaps, the hotel wouldn’t want known in that very competitive business.

My suitcase held all my summer clothes and a couple of bathing suits. August isn’t the choice time to be in Las Vegas unless you want to spend all your time by the pool or gambling, both of which are best done in moderation. Phyllis and Warde stayed in the house she owned. It was nothing like the mansion in L.A., just an ordinary three-bedroom home on a nondescript street in an unassuming neighborhood.

Phyllis decided that Karen should stay at the house with them, which Karen hated. I hated that, too. It meant that unless she took a taxi and came to spend the day at the hotel, she was stuck in the house, and I was kicking around by myself.

One day Phyllis told Karen she could have the car for the day. Karen called me at the hotel.
“I’ll pick you up in twenty minutes.”

I waited in the air-conditioned vestibule and dashed outside as I saw the car pull up.

“Where to?” Karen asked.

 “What about going out to Lake Mead?” I suggested.

We had only a hazy idea of how to get there. We found a street called Lake Mead Boulevard and foolishly assumed we would end up at Lake Mead. After three hours of driving through the desert, we gave up and headed back to the Riviera, thoroughly frustrated and unhappy. We never got even a glimpse of the lake.

 Although the temperature was always well over 100 degrees, I spent part of each afternoon by the pool. Boy, did I get a great tan! When I got back to L.A. and my mother saw me, she gasped and suggested I stay out of the sun for the rest of the year. Looking at the photos later, I could see why she reacted as she did—I looked like a whole different person.

John Davidson again opened for Phyllis. I stood in the wings nearly every night to watch his show. Sometimes he stopped by Phyllis’s dressing room afterward, but he never stayed long. Occasionally I saw him out by the pool with his wife and son. I concluded that, like me, he was a “day” person who got trapped in the wrong time slot.

After returning from Las Vegas, we left almost immediately for Missouri, where Phyllis played a fair in Sedalia. John Davidson was entertaining there, too, and just seeing the familiar faces of his band and his manager made it special. In Las Vegas, we’d been nodding acquaintances, but out in this “foreign place,” his roadies and I became best friends. Between shows we ate hot dogs and cotton candy and wandered around the fair, looking at the prize livestock and playing the midway games. Whenever one of them won a prize—a stuffed animal or big beach ball—they’d turn around and give it to some kid who was passing by. Really, what would any of us do with a suitcase full of stuffed animals?

By the time we got back to L.A., I was exhausted. We had been traveling almost continuously since early June, when we’d gone to England. There’d been only one two-week break, and there was another full schedule ahead of us. For someone who liked to travel, I had a hard time coming to grips with the knot in the pit of my stomach as I glanced at all the new dates.

In September we had a ten-day tour of U.S. Air Force bases in Texas, with only one day off and sometimes two shows a night at different locations. Two days after that, Phyllis appeared at the Circle Star Theatre in San Carlos, California, for a week. Then a week in Chicago, and in the middle of that she had an afternoon appearance in Milwaukee for the American Horticultural Society. (We took a private plane that got us in and out for the hour-long performance and back just in time for Phyllis to go onstage in Chicago.)

At least we had a couple of weeks off in October before she went back to the Holiday House in Pittsburgh. At that point I would have been with Phyllis for an entire year. It was time to take a vacation, but the last thing I wanted was to get on a plane and go somewhere. Just hanging out at home sounded wonderful. I’d sleep late, go shopping, maybe take in an opera at the L.A. Music Center, and visit a couple of friends I hadn’t seen in a while. Oh, yeah, that was exactly what I needed, and that’s exactly what I did for an entire week.

19

D
uring the time I worked for her, Phyllis made two television commercials—one for the Milk Board and one for Lipton Cup-A-Soup. The milk commercial was filmed at her home, one of a series featuring celebrities drinking a glass of milk and assuring viewers that “You never outgrow your need for milk.” The strange thing was that they taped the commercial just before Phyllis had her famous face-lift, but she looked so good that people assumed the commercial had been made afterward. Which all went to prove a point: a good makeup artist can work miracles.

Phyllis had found an absolute wizard and insisted that whenever she appeared on television he did her makeup. I would have been more astonished at the transformation were it not for the fact that when I lived in London I had gone to Guerlain for a facial and had my makeup professionally done by a French lady who transformed me into the most beautiful thing I had ever seen in a mirror. The astonishing part was that when she finished, I didn’t look made up at all. So when Phyllis’s artist finished with her and the milk commercial aired, it did not surprise me to hear people comment how well Phyllis looked after her face-lift. They didn’t know the commercial had been taped two weeks before.

When Phyllis decided to have a face-lift, her publicist, Frank, almost had apoplexy.

“You’ll ruin your image!” he protested.

“Frank, I’m tired of having bags under my eyes. Pretty soon they’ll be so big that the airline will charge me for extra luggage!”

While Phyllis laughed uproariously, Frank sputtered ineffectually. “You’re not supposed to be pretty!”

“Nonsense!” she said. “People see what they want to see. When I tell them I’m ugly and flat-chested, they believe me.”

“Well, maybe they won’t realize there’s a difference.”

“Oh, no, Frank. I’m going to publicize it. I want you to put out a press release.”

“What?” I judged that Frank was very near to having a stroke. “Phyllis, you can’t do that,” he said. “You’re crazy. People don’t talk about having face-lifts. It’s like . . . it’s as bad as . . .” He stumbled around searching for an analogy.

“Well, I’m going to be the first.”

“. . . as having a sex change!” Frank finished, adamant although not exactly triumphant.

“Frank, think of the publicity.”

“I
am
thinking of the publicity.”

“The first celebrity to admit to having a face-lift. Not only admit,” Phyllis exulted, “but to publicize it! People have been doing it for years and I’m going to be the one to bring it out of the closet!”

“It’ll be a disaster.”

The argument raged back and forth, but it was a foregone conclusion that Phyllis would get her way. Frank just had to get used to the idea.

It took a while.

But as usual, Phyllis was right. The publicity did a great deal more good than harm, and I think the face-lift did as much for her morale as it did for her looks. It also became a wonderful topic of conversation on talk shows and for magazine articles. She even used it in her stage act.

20

L
ipton Cup-A-Soup was then a brand-new product. Two thirty-second spots were to be taped the same day. I don’t know what I expected, but I certainly didn’t anticipate it being an all-day affair. I mean, it’s only for thirty seconds, right?

When we arrived at the studio—a nondescript building in Hollywood —I was surprised to see it full of people. Not only were there the crews for the camera, lights, and sound, there was the grip, the prop man, and the script girl, as well as the director. Add to that, two account executives from the advertising agency for Lipton, a couple of people from the soup company, and of course Phyllis’s agent from the William Morris Agency. Roy Gerber, her manager, came by for a few minutes, too. When Phyllis, Warde, Karen, and I arrived, the little studio almost certainly exceeded occupancy limit. I hoped the fire marshal wouldn’t decide to drop in.

The set was a breakfast bar at which Phyllis would sit and extol the virtues of Cup-A-Soup in front of a flat that looked like the interior of a kitchen. Behind the cameras were a couple of rows of chairs where the entourage could sit and watch.

I accompanied Phyllis and Karen to the tiny dressing room but quickly realized I would be underfoot there, so I went back to the studio. Karen came out with an armload of Phyllis’s costumes and stood in front of the breakfast bar. She held up one costume after another for the director to choose.

“Too glittery,” he said, and condemned another with “bad color.” On it went until a costume had been chosen. Phyllis, meanwhile, was being made up for the camera and Warde talked to her agent. Finally, Phyllis came out and the cameraman got his turn. “I’m getting too much glare off that dog collar,” he shouted to someone—I had no idea who. The script girl produced a can of spray something-or-other that cut the glare.

“Smells awful,” Phyllis said as Karen hooked the still shiny but not so sparkly piece of costume jewelry back in place.

Satisfied at last, the cameraman and the director began the walk-through. “Okay, quiet everybody,” the director called.

“Quiet, everyone,” his assistant echoed.

“Quiet on the set!” the script girl hollered.

I thought it would have gotten quiet a lot sooner if everyone hadn’t been yelling for quiet.

The script called for Phyllis to pick up the box of soup from the kitchen counter, walk to the breakfast bar, enumerate the virtues of the soup that “cooks up in a cup instantly!” while the scene cut to a close-up of hot water being poured into a cup. Phyllis did not do the actual pouring—that had been taped earlier. By a professional water-pourer, I imagined. Phyllis would then pick up the mug of steaming soup and pronounce it “Delicious!” The cup would not have hot soup in it—just a small chunk of dry ice in the bottom of the cup to give the steaming effect.

As soon as the walk-through started, I began to appreciate the intricacies of taping a commercial.

“I’m getting too much swish from the dress,” the sound man called. The beads on the dress clashed as she walked. Onstage that little bit of noise would not be noticeable, but in the recording studio the sensitive microphone picked up every slight sound. The director went into a huddle with Phyllis and Karen. They settled on the dress that the director had originally rejected as the wrong color. Instead of beads it had fringe.

Phyllis changed costumes and the rehearsal continued. As she reached the breakfast bar, she was to perch on one of the bar stools. However, no matter how she tried, the business of hoisting herself onto the stool looked clumsy.

“Why don’t you just stand there?” the director suggested. That had to be cleared with the ad execs who had written the commercial and the Lipton people, who never spoke another word the entire day. They agreed, the bar stools were removed, and the rehearsal continued.

“I’m getting too much glare from the box of soup,” the cameraman called as Phyllis held up the box.

“Try tipping it down just a little,” the director said. Phyllis tipped it down a little and the results were satisfactory, but each time they did a “take” after that, the cameraman had to keep saying “more down,” or “more up” to get the exact angle.

Phyllis’s line, “The soup that cooks up in a cup instantly,” took a lot of work. It’s difficult to say quickly and distinctly. I had already learned from Phyllis that anything to be taped called for immaculate diction. Ordinary speech over the airwaves sounds mushy. Every letter has to be precisely spoken and
p
’s are especially difficult. Then, to say it with a perky smile and convey the idea that one has just discovered something as amazing as the Hope Diamond isn’t easy—especially after the tenth time.