B00C4I7LJE EBOK (5 page)

“They’re in the other room,” he said finally and waved casually toward a door. I slipped past him as quickly as possible. I was not used to seeing strange men walking about nearly nude. (When I told Karen, she couldn’t resist saying, “They don’t come any stranger than Warde.”)

The scene in the next room wasn’t a great deal better. Phyllis sat at the dressing table putting on her stage makeup, wearing nothing but panty hose and bra. Thank heaven Karen was fully clothed. Phyllis and Karen looked surprised to see me.

“Didn’t you get my message?” Phyllis asked.

“Yes, but I didn’t know what else to do.”

“Well, there’s nothing for you to do right now. Why don’t you go wait in the other room.” Her tone was not unfriendly, just practical.

At that moment, Warde came in and pulled a short robe out of the closet. He slipped into it and checked himself out in the mirror. The thing barely covered his butt, but it was certainly an improvement over the skimpy briefs.

Warde turned to go back into the living room and I followed. He settled into a chair and started watching TV. He made no attempt at conversation, thank God. I sat stiffly on the couch and grabbed the only thing to read—a hotel guide for the eastern half of the United States—and studied it as if I were getting ready for a final exam.

Finally, the door to the adjoining room opened. “Honey, don’t you think you’d better get ready?” Phyllis asked. It turned out that Warde was a singer and her opening act.

Warde got up and I averted my eyes as he passed in front of me on his way to the dressing room. A few minutes later, the adjoining door opened again. Karen poked her head out and said to me, “C’mon in.”

Warde was just leaving, heading downstairs. He had changed into a beautifully cut suit and a white silk shirt open at the collar. He cut a very dashing figure. I later found out that he loved shopping at expensive men’s stores in Beverly Hills. This was certainly not some off-the-rack suit. He looked elegant and every bit the star.

Phyllis still had on her underwear, although she had completed her makeup and donned her wig. I sat quietly while Phyllis scanned her correspondence and Karen rearranged some of the accessories to her satisfaction.

Through the speaker in the dressing room we listened as Warde went through his act. I perked up, surprised to hear a beautiful tenor voice as he began “On a Clear Day.” I wondered why he had never made it in the big time. He had no doubt been extremely handsome twenty years earlier and still looked good.

After about twenty minutes, Phyllis put her papers down. Evidently that was the signal to get moving.

“Robin, will you hand me Phyllis’s costume?” Karen asked as she selected a pair of gloves from the array on the dressing table. “It’s there in the closet.”

When I handed over the sequined dress, I understood why Phyllis waited until the last minute to put it on—it must have weighed twenty pounds. Once Phyllis was dressed, Karen gave her the matching gloves and the famous prop cigarette holder. Warde was nearing the end of his act, and I trailed Phyllis and Karen down the stairs and stood in the wings while he took his bows and the stage manager introduced Phyllis.

“C’mon,” Karen said, once Phyllis was onstage. “Let’s sit out front and watch the show. We don’t want to go back up to the suite.”

Oh, yeah. Just the idea of sitting in a room with Warde for the next forty-five minutes gave me the willies. Karen led the way out a side door and we found some seats toward the back.

As we watched Phyllis onstage, I laughed so hard that I gasped for breath. Karen chuckled occasionally.

“Don’t you like her act?” I managed to ask.

“Yeah,” Karen answered with a quick smile, “but I’ve heard it a couple hundred times.”

When it ended, we slipped backstage to escort Phyllis up to the suite. Phyllis ordered dinner for all of us. I was glad since I had already realized the $10 per diem wasn’t going to cover much if I had to eat in hotels.

We finished dinner, went through the second show and headed for home. The limo dropped Karen and me off at the hotel before it took Phyllis and Warde to the apartment. Karen came to my room and even though it was late, we settled in to talk. Karen had worked for Phyllis for over a year. She originally got the job when her friend, Ruth, started as Phyllis’s secretary. Ruth had quit after only a short time; she had no patience with Warde.

“So, did Phyllis get Ruth through an agency?” I asked.

“No, Ruth is from New York. She’s a friend of Phyllis’s lawyer. I think you’re the first secretary Phyllis got through an agency.”

“How do entertainers usually get their secretaries?”

Karen shrugged. “All I know is that Phyllis always found someone who knew someone who wanted a job. The housekeeper’s niece or something like that. It never worked out. Take Louise, for instance—the one that left in New Orleans. She was a great secretary but hated to travel. She got ulcers. The one before that loved traveling and being Phyllis Diller’s secretary, but she didn’t want to work. One day I discovered she was throwing all the mail in the wastebasket. I told Phyllis and that was the end of her. The one before her was real young. The only thing she wanted was to go to bed with Perry. So, anyway,” Karen concluded, “Phyllis decided to go to an agency and get a professional.”

I stopped myself just in time from asking who that was. She was talking about me!

“I couldn’t believe it tonight when I went downstairs and the doorman told me you had already left!” I said.

“Phyllis likes punctuality.”

“Really?” I said, thinking of the one o’clock interview that had begun at four o’clock.

“Actually, Phyllis was impressed that you’d taken the initiative to come out to the club. She said it showed dedication.”

“So what am I going to be doing out there?”

“Oh, I’m sure Phyllis will want to dictate letters, go over stuff. It’s just that opening night we’re getting everything set up. I’ll bet you’ll have plenty to do the rest of the time. By the way, take the cab fare out of petty cash,” Karen said.

“I can’t do that. It wasn’t Phyllis’s fault that I wasn’t downstairs.”

“Well, it wasn’t yours, either. Don’t pay for that out of your own pocket. That’s part of miscellaneous expenses.” I argued halfheartedly, but then acquiesced.

“Hey,” I said, wanting to change the subject, “I was really impressed with Warde’s act. He’s a terrific singer. Why isn’t he better known?”

“You’ll see.” Karen refused to say more.

Two nights later, we were in the suite, Phyllis half-dressed and going over the next day’s schedule, when her head shot up.

“He’s doing it!” she barked, staring at the speaker. “Karen, quick!”

Karen was ahead of her, holding out the costume for Phyllis to step into. The dog collar came next, then they were out the door, Phyllis pulling on her gloves as she pounded down the stairs with Karen close behind, grasping the cigarette holder.

I had been taken totally off guard. Warde had been onstage only a few minutes.

“What’s happening?” I whispered to Karen when I caught up.

“That’s his closing number,” she said and nodded toward the stage.

“How come?”

She shrugged. Then Warde came offstage, heading for the stairs, and the stage manager introduced Phyllis. As soon as Phyllis took the stage, Karen grabbed me and headed outside.

“We don’t want to be around for the fireworks,” she said. We went to the coffee shop and ordered dinner.

“Why did he stop in the middle of his act?” I asked as soon as we were seated.

Karen shook her head. “Phyllis calls it ‘attitude.’ He acts as though these people are a bunch of yokels, and it comes across.”

I remembered his sneer and condescending attitude the first day I met him.

“He doesn’t like them, and they don’t like him,” Karen added. “A couple of times he’s actually been booed off the stage.”

Our dinners came. Karen dug into her spaghetti, but I’d lost my appetite and simply toyed with my food.
This isn’t good. Not good at all.

We prudently waited until after Warde had gone onstage for the second show before returning to the suite. Phyllis was in a towering rage. She sat at the dressing table, picking up makeup bottles and slamming them down so hard I thought they might break. She got up and paced the room. “That’s it!” she snapped. She paused midpace and turned to look at me. I cringed as anger radiated from her. “That’s the last time he does this to me. He’s never going to work with me again. I’ve told him and told him.” She drew her mouth into a thin line. I wondered if she might hurl one of those bottles across the room, but I realized she had a tight rein on her emotions.

 “Do you know how hard it is to follow something like that?” she said and continued to glare at me. I gulped and shook my head.

“Do you know what that does to an audience?” she persisted.

Rhetorical question,
I told myself, and kept my mouth shut.

 “By the time I get out there, they are so hostile that I have to work twice as hard. I might as well throw away the first half of my act—it takes that long to bring them around. The opening act is supposed to warm up the audience!”

She resumed pacing. “By the time I get out there, those people should be relaxed and in a good mood. That’s what they paid for!”

She stopped and sat down. Her shoulders sagged. There was near total silence in the dressing room for several minutes. I could still hear Warde over the speakers, but they’d been turned way down.

“Here’s your dress,” Karen said.

“Do you know what else this means?” Phyllis asked quietly as she stood up and stepped into the costume. “This means that I have to be ready half an hour early every night and sit around sweating, just in case he decides to quit.” I wondered how she’d ever be able to go onstage and be funny.

She sighed. “We might as well go on down. I don’t want to have to race down those stairs again. One of these days I’m going to trip and break my neck.”

When we got backstage, Phyllis stood in a corner by herself, absently returning smiles from the stage crew and obviously psyching herself.

Warde finished—he did his whole act. The introduction played and Phyllis dashed onstage. A minute later she was telling “the truth” about her dress: “I used to be a lampshade in a whorehouse. Couldn’t get one of the good jobs. Listen, you think my legs are skinny? Colonel Sanders is crazy about them . . .” She laughed and cavorted, telling silly stories and having a wonderful time. The audience loved every minute.

   On the ride home, Warde was determined to make Phyllis understand what had compelled him to walk offstage. Phyllis kept saying, “We’ll talk about it when we get home,” but he insisted on explaining to her how bad the audience was, how they didn’t pay attention, didn’t appreciate talent, how somebody like him just couldn’t deal with it and on and on.

“Warde, we will discuss this when we’re alone,” she repeated.

Warde pretended to be startled, as if he hadn’t realized there were other people in the car. He tried hard to pretend that the hired help didn’t exist. He referred to this as having “class.” I came to find out he talked about it often, trying to convince somebody that he had some.

If he weren’t such a nasty human being, I decided, I could almost have felt sorry for him. But he was, and I didn’t.

8

O
utside of the Big Fight, which they made up, there were two other incidents that week that stand out in my mind. Phyllis was scheduled to be the half-time entertainment for a football game in Three Rivers Stadium. At Phyllis’s request, Warde had been asked to sing the national anthem for the game’s opening. It turned into a mortifying embarrassment when halfway through
The Star Spangled Banner
he forgot the words. He ad-libbed something that at least rhymed and hoped nobody would notice. Afterward, he brushed it off, saying he hadn’t sung it for ages.

The other incident occurred during a radio talk show, where people phoned in. Most of the callers said more or less the same thing—how much they liked Phyllis—or asked predictable questions, such as how did she get into show business? Or did she write her own material? One call, however, shook everyone up. A man said he wanted to talk to Phyllis Diller. Everything was on speaker phones so Phyllis and the DJ could be on at the same time and the caller’s voice could be heard by everyone in the studio.

“I’m here,” chirped Phyllis.

“I just wanted you to know,” the man said, “that I’m going to kill you.”

Immediately the DJ pushed the disconnect button and announced it was time for a commercial break. It was a live show, so it had a ten-second delay and the call never went out over the air, but Phyllis had become ashen and visibly shaken.

Although it shocked everyone, the DJ apparently had experienced that kind of thing before. He poured Phyllis a fresh glass of water and kept up a smooth flow of soothing chatter. The break ended quickly and in another ninety seconds they were back on the air. He thanked Phyllis for coming down to the studio and reminded the listeners that she would be at the Holiday House Supper Club for three more nights.

As we left the studio, the staff was reassuring and thoughtful. One of them went downstairs and hailed us a cab. It was my first introduction to the pathetic losers who got their thrills from threatening celebrities.

We went from the cab to the elevator and into the apartment without seeing anyone. Phyllis went straight to the kitchen.

“I’m cooking dinner for you,” she announced. “Do you like garlic?”

Phyllis got out her knives and started chopping cloves and immediately the room filled with the pungent scent of garlic. I realized that it didn’t matter whether I liked garlic or not. That’s what we were having.

Warde came in while she was filling a huge pan with water. “How’d it go?” he asked, picking up a lime and cutting it in half.

“Fine, Warde.”

He added ice cubes to a glass and reached for the gin. “Did you remember to plug the Holiday House?”

Phyllis didn’t respond, and I picked up the three-day-old newspaper from the table.