Call Me Lumpy: My Leave It to Beaver Days and Other Wild Hollywood Life (9 page)

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Authors: Frank Bank,Gibu Twyman

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BOOK: Call Me Lumpy: My Leave It to Beaver Days and Other Wild Hollywood Life
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Page 44
on the show was kind of a sandy guy. He wasn't dark, but he wasn't blond either. Gettin' dark.
So now Leonard brings home this Fargo-talking, blonde, Lutheran Norwegian shiksa from someplace called Northfield, and his family is not exactly wildly enthusiastic.
I mean, later on, when my mom converted, she took the 999-yard plunge. She became a zealot. But back then, she was still an infidel, as far as Leonard's folks were concerned.
That would not fly. So Leonard and Sylvia took off. I don't think you could exactly say they eloped. They didn't have enough bread for an official elopement. They just were married by a justice of the peace and ran away.
This was in 1926.
Now, when they run away, my dad, in order to get something going so they could eat . . . he starts off on a thing people called "walkathons."
Or marathon dances.
They made a movie about it: "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?" Jane Fonda. Gig Young. Fantastic movie.
The movie could have been about Leonard and Sylvia, in many ways.
My dad was the promoter and he was the emcee of these marathon dances.
He was the "Yowsa-yowsa" man.
He was doing OK at it, but to show you he wasn't always the sharpest pencil in the box, one of his favorite stories is how he turned down Red Skelton for a job in the walkathons.
When he told me that, I said, "You what?"
And he said, "I didn't think he was funny."
I said, "Dad, that's why you didn't make it in the walkathon business. Red Skelton is a riot. I mean, Clem Kaddiddlhopper, Heathcliffe and Gertrude . . . all that stuff? C'mon."
Red Skelton was a sweet man. A wonderful comic. I'd tell my dad this.
He'd shrug.
"So shoot me . . . I didn't think so," his expression said.
In spite of brilliant moves like rejecting Red Skelton, my dad and mom are doing pretty well at the walkathons. They are going around the Midwest. They're staying in all these halfway decent places. They're starting to save up some money. And now they're taking their act westward.
That's where it all ended for them, in Ogden, Utah.
They're in a hotel room in Ogden, Utah, with my brother, Doug, who is 15 years older than I am, sleeping in a dresser drawer.
Someone knocks at the door.
My dad thinks it's room service.
He opens the door.
 
Page 45
It is not room service.
It is bad news knocking.
Leonard is looking at Al Capone.
Looking him straight in the Scarface.
May God strike me dead.
Al Capone walks into the room with a couple of his muscle guys and informs my dad and my mom that they are hereby formerly out of the walkathon business.
Dad told me it was a scene right out of "The Untouchables." Big Al is wearing this huge cashmere trenchcoat, a wide fedora hat, and he's got this 5-mile long stogie with the ashes falling all over the place.
My mom takes one look and immediately hightails it across the room to where Doug, who is about 1, is sleeping in the drawer. She slams the drawer shut.
No gangster is getting her baby, not matter how tough he thinks he is.
But Scarface definitely gets what he came for.
Eighty-sixing Leonard and Sylvia from the marathons.
His first words are something to the effect, "Youse are outta here."
Now, my dad may have been known as Vicious Bank back in Minnesota, but he was not also known as Bonehead Bank.
He did not question Al Capone's authority in the matter. I guess that should go without saying from the movies we've seen about him and all.
But back then there were no movies to go by. Just reputation. And in those times, the worlds of the jocks, the bootleggers, the gangsters and entertainers kind of flowed together (come to think of it, not much has really changed nowadays, has it?).
My dad knew enough that a visit from Big Ala personal visit, at thatwas more cue than he needed to exit, stage right, from the walkathons.
You know how in the gangster movies, one of the bad guys says, "He took sick" and that's why so-and-so didn't show up for some gangster gathering?
Well, Leonard and Sylvia just took sick. They are no longer showing up for the marathons.
I guess Capone didn't already have enough going with the booze and prostitution and other stuff, so Big Al needed to corner the walkathon racket, too.
I mean, you never see it on "The Untouchables," guys rat-tat-tatting the Tommy-guns out of those old black cars while the announcer goes: "Meanwhile, Ness speeds over to Nitti's hideout on the way to busting up Capone's walkathon joints."
But even though it wasn't talked about in the movies, the Mob did take over the walkathons.
 
Page 46
It actually was Al Capone at my dad's door.
This was in 1928. Ogden, Utah.
What was Al Capone doing in Ogden, Utah, in 1928, you say?
He was chasing my old man out of the walkathon business, that's what.
Other than that, I don't have a clue.
I think that visit from Scarface took some of the starch out of my old man's shorts. That started the seven-year period when he didn't work and my mother supported the family.
My mom was a dish. But she was very pragmatic. She was a go-getter and a hustler. She worked hard.
Times were tough. There was a year, my brother lived on sardines. My brother would never eat sardines as an adult because he ate them every day of his life. They were a nickel a can or something. I mean, that's what they could afford.
I know it was killin' my dad, though, that he wasn't working. This was still before I came along, in the late '30s. Because of my mom's jobs, they somehow scraped enough credit together, and borrowed from friends, to open a little store, And they lived behind the store.
It was just a corner grocery store. They had one ice box that they kept milk and soda pop inwhatever. They had one meat case. Some shelves with bread and canned goods.
It was a tiny mom-and-pop store. It was called Bank's Grocery.
It was on Santa Fe in Huntington Park. That's in the middle of the barrio now, but back then it was a major Jewish section.
Now the store is going OK. Things are sort of on an even keel and I come along. I told you I was a master of timing. No daily freakin' sardines for me. Uh-uh. I come along and life is pretty decent. Leonard and Sylvia are on their feet. They're not rich or anything. Not even close. But they are doing all right.
And I was lucky because my dad was by then in a position to be a great father to me.
You know all this hype about the country going down the tubes because of the lack of a father figure . . . it's true.
I saw my father's weaknesses. I wasn't blind. But I saw his virtues more than his weaknesses.
His main virtue was that he was my best friend.
We talked sports, morning, noon and night. He took me to every ball game that I could possibly go to. He took me to the Rams-Browns championship at the L.A. Coliseum in 1951. The Rams won the championship, and I got to see it with my dad.
He used to take me to Gilmore Field in the late '40s to watch the Hollywood Stars minor-league baseball team.
 
Page 47
He used to sit right behind Al Jolson and became friends with Jolie.
Jolson would bring a big basket to the ball game. And that basket was filled with salamis and rye bread and pickles and all this other stuff. It wouldn't be a small salami eitherit'd be one of those 5-pounders which would stick way out of the basket. He'd have a big pot of potato salad in there, too.
See, the Stars ballpark was just one block from the Borscht Belt, with all the delicatessens along in there.
You'd see guys bringing in these big strings of knockwurst, all linked together. They didn't have anything but waxed paper to carry it in at the time, so it got all greasy and slimy.
They'd have this stick they'd dip into this big old jar of mustard and they'd slather it all over the wursts and the salami.
Jolie had this block of about 50 seatsit only cost a quarter apiece to get inwhich he'd picked for himself and his cronies.
These seats were behind the Stars dugout and you'd see Jolie and his crew down there in their straw hats and fedoras and suspenders with no jacket, no tie.
Leonard-the-Sport was one of those guys.
He wasn't really tight with Jolson or anything. More like a second-banana.
But he was a guy Jolson knew.
He'd give a wave, ''Hi, Len, how are ya?"
Jolson joked with everybody.
And yet, this was pretty much kiss-my-ring stuff, with everybody kind of catering to Jolson. Guys would go get him beers and stuff. They wanted to be around him.
That's where I came in.
Every now and then, Jolson would kind of bark, "Hey kid, go get some sodas."
I wasn't sure what kid he meant, but, what the heck, I was only maybe 5, 6 years old at the time. I was pretty excited to go run some errands for Mr. Jolson.
And, not incidentally, I was also able to turn this experience into my first profit as an entrepreneur.
I'd go up and buy a whole case of sodas, and when you did that, they'd give you a discount and sell 'em to you for a nickel apiece. I'd turn around and peddle 'em for 7 cents.
So my time among Jolie and his gang was fairly memorable.
So was some of his byplay with the players. He used to keep up a running commentary and critique of the players. Frankie Kelleher, guys like thatJolie was always on 'em.
 
Page 48
And they'd be back at him.
Once this guy from the StarsI don't remember who it was, but it was a guy Jolson had been ridin' pretty goodhit a home run. And when he comes across the plate, he takes about two or three steps and slides down onto one knee like Jolson did in his act.
You know:
"Mammy!"
The guy spreads his hands out at Jolson, like: Take that, wiseguy.
Jolson cracked up.
Everybody did.
Moments like that were the reasons my old man loved to hang around jocks.
He loved rubbing elbows with the fighters. He was kind of a street guy. One of his buds was Benny Leonard. Benny Leonard held three world boxing championships at one time. Of course, my father told me Benny was much better than Joe Louis.
"Better than any Schwartzer," Leonard used to say. Which is to say a black guy.
I mean, Benny was Jewish and there ain't an Irish guy or a black guy alive can lick this Jew, right?
My dad was friends with Slapsie Maxie Rosenbloom, the fighter. And then there was this one guy my dad said was the greatest fighter you never heard of. His name was King Lavinsky. King Lavinsky was a big-time fighter in the '30s. Dad said he packed a right cross that was just the greatest.
This was my dad. He ran his little meat businesswith Sylvia's help. My dad never drank. He didn't carouse. Because he loved my mother. But he loved to be with the guys.
There are some guys . . . they're . . . out with the guys. That was my dad. Even when I was growing up, my dad had a night out with the boys. He was either playing poker or they were going to Hollywood Park for the ponies.
So that was our family, Leonard and Sylvia and me and Doug and Teddy the dog. He was a Spitz. Teddy was a cool, cool dog.
And Doug was pretty cool in his own way. There were 15 years between us, so we never got close as we might have otherwise. In fact, we never really got along because he had a drinking problem.
It used to burn my butt because I didn't like to see him that way, and I also didn't like the strain that his alcoholism put on Mom and Dad.
But Doug was a very talented, very bright guy. He lived his own fascinating life.
He was named Doug after Douglas Fairbanks, because my mother had the hots for Douglas Fairbanks.
Doug was the valedictorian of his graduating class at the University of

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