Funnymen (71 page)

[Ziggy had to] affect a Cockney accent in the play and he did not need any coaching at all—it was miraculous how he just did it. And he had no problem committing the words to memory. Even though he was the only actor in the play, there was much for him to say—he interacts with props, such as chairs, shoes, a wireless, a broom, and with unseen creatures such as mice, cockroaches, and the ghosts of his lover and others. It's no exaggeration to say that after reading the play three times and rehearsing it but twice, he knew the play as well as the playwright himself. “It's almost as if he himself had written it,” Clive told Ken Tynan. “At last, I have found my amanuensis [
sic
]! He makes my words sing, he dances my dance with limbs of fire.”

There were two weeks of previews and things went very well in the first week. An audience usually left a Clive Bonteen play disturbed and dismayed, sometimes disgusted even, and this was Clive's desired effect. “No person should ever desire to see one of my plays twice,” he once said. “If that happens, I have failed miserably.” He told John Osborne once that he knew he'd succeeded if he ever saw a patron retching immediately upon leaving the theater. However, just a few days before the play opened—it was at the Old Vic, by the way—Ziggy granted an interview to the
Evening Standard
and told the reporter that he had no idea what the play was about, other than a man talking to a broom. “No idea at all, Mr. Bliss?” the reporter inquired. “Can you not even tell us the basic thrust?” “It's basically about me making a paycheck,” Ziggy said. Clive read this but was not bothered by it—he even told Ziggy he appreciated that sort of ironical detachment. “He entirely inhabits his character off the stage,” he wrote to Ken Tynan, “and it is frightening.” However, two nights before the play opened, Ziggy gave another interview—it was to the
Guardian
this time—and he took it several steps further. He said that Clive had tried to write slapstick and vaudevillianesque sight gags but had failed embarrassingly. “I'm supposed to dance with a broom in a certain way, to do like a tango,” Ziggy said, “and I do, just like Bonteen tells me to. But if it was up to me, I'd do it my own way and I'd get five times the laughs.” The reporter asked him, “Mr. Bliss, do you know what the play is
about?
” and Ziggy Bliss replied, “Oh yeah . . . it's about forty-five minutes too long.”

Well, Clive and he had a real, old-fashioned row about it the night before the premiere, a slanging match the likes of which I'd never seen
before or since. When Ziggy raised his voice, it really was like a cannonade . . . he even broke the stage manager's glasses. Ziggy stuck to his guns; he told Clive that he really did not understand the play, that he thought when it tried to be tragic it was funny, and when it tried to be funny it was tragic. Clive at first refused to believe this but then he accepted it and said, “All right . . . but please do not tell every person in London that you do not understand it! It makes you look the
idjit
you apparently are!” Further complicating the matter, Ziggy was refusing to wear the cushion he was supposed to wrap around his waist; he said it was making him sweat too much. But Clive insisted that he wear it. “Without the cushion,” Clive screamed at him, “you just look like any fifty-five-year-old Yid wasting away!”

They shouted and railed at each other for nearly an hour. It was brutal, absolutely brutal. Clive could not stop stroking his beard, and Ziggy said to him, “Keep lookin', Bonteen—maybe you'll find a cigarette in there.” “You were my vision and now you're nothing but an arsehole!” Clive yelled at him, and Ziggy yelled back, “Hey, maybe it ain't me, maybe it's your vision.”

Well, Ziggy wore the lard cushion for opening night. For the first act only. Actually, he took it off in the
middle
of the first act . . . and I must say, this got the most laughter all night. “I don't need this girdle,” he said as he stripped himself of it. The audience thought it was part of the play and erupted in laughter. I whispered to Clive, “Perhaps you should keep that in, darling.” But he said, “Shut the bloody hell up, Annie.”

• • •

SALLY KLEIN:
In 1973 my son and Vince were on LSD together in Los Angeles, at a friend of their's house. I knew that Vince was doing drugs and I knew that Donny and he were friends, but it didn't occur to me that Donny was into that garbage too. He didn't dress like a hippie, he didn't talk like one. He had a job, he had short hair, he wore a suit and tie, and was a college graduate. It just didn't occur to me. When a policeman called me and told me that my son was in the hospital because he had jumped out of a window—even then it didn't occur to me.

Donny had severed his spine—he'd broken his legs and ruptured his spleen too. He was paralyzed. I didn't tell Jack that night . . . it would've killed him for sure. I went to the hospital alone and I saw Donny in his bed and he didn't open his eyes and I kissed him on his hair—he had such beautiful brown curly hair. I spent the whole night holding his hand. Vince was there and they had him on tranquilizers. The policeman told me what had happened . . . there was a party, there were drugs, Donny was having a bad LSD trip and freaking out or whatever you call it. And he jumped out the
window. My beautiful, wonderful boy lived for six months more but then he caught pneumonia and died.

When I told Jack that Donny was paralyzed he took it like he always took bad news. He kept it in. He didn't scream, he didn't cry or throw anything. He just withdrew into himself. To tell you the truth, after this happened, he didn't really say much afterward. He just kept to himself. He stopped going to the track, stopped reading the papers. He was a sad, broken man.

Ziggy was in Germany when Donny died and flew over with Pernilla for the funeral. Vic was at the funeral, so were his sister Cathy and his mother and many people from the old days: Billy Ross, Mickey Knott, Marty Miller. Vic and Ziggy did not exchange a word to each other, they didn't shake hands or hug or anything. Vince had trouble looking me in the face. He felt guilty and I don't blame him. Ziggy came over and hugged me. I looked at him and it was the first time I saw him as an adult, as a man, not as my funny-looking cousin from Echo Beach who peed on my father's couch. He was crying and he said, “Sally . . . poor Cousin Sally. I love you so much.” He was devastated. Me, I wasn't devastated. You know what I was? I was dead inside.

Vic sent Guy Puglia over to me. Guy was also in tears. He and Donny had played softball and run on the beach together when Donny was a kid. And when we'd eat at Guy's restaurant he always put Donny on his shoulders and brought him into the kitchen. Guy gave me a hug and said he'd come over to sit shivah but that Vic couldn't. Because he knew that Ziggy would be there and that he didn't want to create an awkward situation. “He doesn't want to create one or he doesn't want to
be
in one?” I asked, and Guy shrugged.

Three months after this, I went to London to see Ziggy in that silly play he was doing for that nutty playwright. It had gotten tepid reviews. I'd seen a Clive Bonteen play in Los Angeles years before; it was about two mental patients in an insane asylum who turn out to be the same person, I think. Leaving the theater I'd asked Jack, “So? What did you think?” And he said, “I was thinking about the Dodgers, frankly.”

But by the time I saw
Laughter in the Can
it wasn't really a Bonteen play anymore. He'd disavowed it, he had his name taken off the marquee and off the ads in the papers. You really would have thought that nobody wrote the play; the marquee just said
ZIGGY BLISS IN
. . . The play would never be staged again—no great loss. And it was funny now! I suppose Ziggy sort of kept to the script at first but then he just made the play his own. He gave it all he had—well, he was taking the pills then and I think that was a big part of it. He'd be dancing with a broom and then he'd toss the broom down and then he'd bring girls from the audience up on the
stage and dance with them. He would lead games of Simon Says with the audience, and you know what else he did? He would sing “The Itty-Bitty Ditty,” Danny's old song. And, of course, he'd toss in a few Vic references as well, like putting a noose around his head and singing “The Hang of It.” Ziggy would be doing some of the original Bonteen dialogue—I guess you'd call it a monologue, since it was a one-man play—and then break into Yiddish or other accents. There were some people who'd seen the show four or five times, Ziggy told me, because you never did know what would happen. But after three months, Clive Bonteen closed it down—it wasn't his show anymore. And it was a good thing because I think it was exhausting Ziggy.

He came back to the States and toured with
Bam-Bam-Bamboozled
again. He had Hank Stanco contact Bonteen—for a brief while it looked like Ziggy might be able to put together a musical version of the Jack Benny bomb
The Horn Blows at Midnight.
Ziggy for some reason thought that Clive Bonteen might want to write the book for it. “The man loved it,” Ziggy told me. “He said it was utterly magnificent.” But Bonteen never returned Hank's calls.

DANNY McGLUE:
Ziggy was always coming up with projects, with ideas. He tried to get a revival of
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
going but couldn't. He wanted to do something with
The Shop Around the Corner
but nobody would talk to him. He and I would meet at his house and start writing a play, but after a few scenes he'd lose interest. We tried TV, we tried movies, but he always eventually lost interest. He'd do a
Love Boat
or
Fantasy Island
once in a while. One time he did a
Circus of the Stars
show and I couldn't look at it, it was too excruciating to watch. Don Rickles had that
CPO Sharkey
show for a few seasons and that really burned Ziggy because he'd wanted to do a
Sergeant Bilko-
type show, but he couldn't get any network people to show interest. He couldn't get one meeting. So he'd tour with the
Bamboozled
play and open up for Steve and Eydie or for [singer] Julie Budd somewhere. That's how he put food on the table. That and those silly German movies, with all the blondes leaning over, holding beer steins and jiggling, and him doing voices, making faces and crossing his eyes.

• • •

VICKI FOUNTAIN:
You know, despite the rock 'n' roll and those psychedelic motorcycle movies I made, I never once took any drug other than penicillin. But Andy Ravelli told me that Dad took LSD two times. Before he married Taffy McBain, he had a wild year or two. You know, he once
substitute-hosted
The Tonight Show
for Johnny Carson and came out in a Nehru jacket and love beads. People forget that. Now, he hated rock 'n' roll music but this was like a second childhood for him. He was going out with Imogen Driscoll, the British model, at the time—she was the famous Rodolfo Negri model. Cary Grant had told Daddy about LSD and Dad had said, “Sounds like a few Manhattans too many. That don't scare me.” He asked Vincent if he knew where he could get some and, an hour later, Daddy had some. He made sure, though, to never tell the press that he'd taken it. I guess he understood that he was a role model; back then you expected your role models to drink a lot, to chase girls and gamble and fight, but that was it.

He and Imogen took the LSD together. “This stuff has got me all wacky,” he said. Ices Andy was there with them—he didn't take anything, just in case there was trouble.

“You okay, Vic?” Andy would ask him.

“Oh, baby, I'm soarin' all over the place over here, man,” Dad said.

Everybody said Imogen was gorgeous, they called her the British Verushka, but I thought she was just a little too stringy. And it would've helped, a shower every now and then.

“You okay, Imogen?” Andy asked her.

“Everything's just smashing over here, luv,” she said.

“Hey, puddin',” Vic suggested, “let's fly to Vegas. Right now.”

“Oh, God no,” Imogen said. “Let's not.”

“Hey, Ices, put on some of my old music,” Daddy said. “Let's see how ‘Malibu Moon' sounds on this zany stuff.”

“Oh, God no,” Imogen said again. “Let's not.”

I think after that experience, he got rid of Imogen Driscoll.

I married Johnny Hylan in 1973. Dad didn't like Johnny, but I don't think he ever approved of any of my boyfriends or husbands. Johnny was a child star, he'd been on
The Big Ranch
on NBC when he was a kid and had done a couple of movies since then. He was very, very handsome but he drank a lot. He was moody and had a horrible temper.

We'd been married for two years and one night, for no reason at all, Johnny hit me. Well, it wasn't for no reason—I knew he was cheating on me with [actress] Pam Newford. Now, to be honest, I'd been no angel either,
but he had no idea about that!
So I accused him about Pam—who was my friend—and he hit me and then, as soon as he hit me, he ran out of the house. I called Dad and he wasn't home but Joe Yung picked me up and brought me over. When Andy Ravelli saw the way I looked, well, he knew what'd happened. I asked him where Daddy was and he said that Pete Conifer had died and that Daddy was in Vegas. (Pete had died in one of those autoerotic stunts; he was doing something to himself with a
toaster and another thing with panties around his neck.) Joe Yung put some ice on my face to ease the swelling, and I asked him, “So what's in the cellar here?” He said, “I not know, I not know. No one allow down there.” I said, “Let's go check it out.” He shook his head and waved his hands and said, “No one allow down there.” I asked Joe if my father ever went down there and he said, “Yes. Many times. He in cellar many times. But he always alone.”