Still Talking (11 page)

When he came out of the sanatorium, he was more than ever an outsider, kept at home, nursed by black servants, educated by a tutor. And then a relapse sent him back to Neelspoort.

His escape during his adolescence and young manhood was reading theater biographies and playing over and over the songs of Noel Coward and Cole Porter. So he was

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thrilled when, to be close to relatives in the New York area, the family moved in 1948 to America, the very seat of show business.

Starting as a night clerk in a bookstore, Edgar moved on to an advertising agency, and then made it into show business. He was hired at NBC as a production supervisor and coordinator, planning and arranging the labor, materials, and equipment. As the expediter and budget controller, he was involved in every move in a production, and eventually became a troubleshooter for the semilegendary producer Mannie Sachs. During those early days of television, Edgar wrote the network’s first handbook for production supervisors.

That was the perfect job for Edgar-details, details, details, checking, checking, checking. He must have been brilliant. My secretary found an NBC

memo thanking Edgar for his job on a Martin and Lewis telethon-“a rare combination of long range planning, continued rechecking, and talent that had appeal, sincerity and dignity.”

In 1954 he joined an NBC subsidiary as a full-fledged producer, doing closed-circuit TV shows for demonstrations and sales meetings at major corporations like Pan American, Ford Motor Company, Humble Oil. During that time he had become good friends with Tom Rosenberg, the son of Anna Rosenberg, who sold his mother on hiring Edgar to add television expertise to the office, and considered him “one of the most creative guys I’ve ever seen, prolific with ideas, many of them first-rate. “

The decision to do the show began the fusion of my career with Edgar’s.

That was not our plan. It just happened. I was frightened by the responsibility of carrying a show on my shoulders, and Edgar and I obsessively hashed out every decision. I had a joke based on the truth”My marriage is wonderful because when I wake up in the morning, I’m thinking of me and so is he.” Still in bed, Edgar would say, “I figured out during the night that the contract should read … “

Telling me, “You deserve better,” he handled the agents. He was the one who said, “No, she won’t go into Mr. Kelly’s for less than a thousand dollars a week; that’s

what George Carlin got. She’s headlining and she’s hot and she’s on the Carson show. She doesn’t have to prove herself. ” I was in the background saying, “Oh, we’re going to lose the job.” And he was saying to the agent, “… and we want a car to pick her up at the airport.” But by God, we got what he asked.

And he was the one saying to the William Morris Agency, “You’re making more for packaging the show than we are for doing it. You’ve got to take less.”

And they did.

Increasingly the romance in my life was my career. My lover was my career.

My career gave me the flowers and the candy. And that is the way-twenty-four hours a day of wondering and worrying-you have to be if you are going to stay in the mainstream.

I did not worry about any flaws in the marriage. As my mother used to tell me, nothing is perfect, and this marriage was working. A lot of people, I think, go into marriage expecting it to be all honeymoon and huggy-kissy the rest of their lives-but the passion goes, and the lucky ones end up with the best friend, the trusted confidant who shares everything and gets the jokes. In my career Edgar and I had a common interest like nothing in the world, one that consumed us-and the child we loved.

Particularly in show business, marriage is a long-term commitment to somebody you dare turn your back on. Edgar knew my history and knew the fears, knew the enemies and was there to protect me, whether or not I was in the room.

I was so lucky. My husband may have secondguessed everybody and annoyed everybody-but he did something right. I look at, for example, the LaughIn kids, wonderful talents who were coming up at the same time-Jo Anne Worley, Ruth Buzzi, Arte Johnson. In the long run, they needed an Edgar.

We named our show That Show, and designed it to be one of two transition shows between the 1968 Today Show and the morning game programs. In five major cities we were on NBC. For the pilot, which sold the show to the inde-

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pendent stations, we asked Johnny Carson to be a guest. At the time he was in delicate contract negotiations with NBC, but he ignored his lawyers’

advice and did us this tremendous favor.

I wanted to thank him with a present-but you can’t go to Tiffany and buy him a cigarette box. He already had six. We asked ourselves what we could give Johnny that he didn’t have. The answer was Melissa.

She was still an infant at the time, so we dressed her up beautifully. The nurse in full uniform and cape took her over to NBC and actually got right through to Johnny, who was in a meeting with his whole staff. “Mr. Carson,”

she announced, “this is for you.” The joke around the show was, Johnny went white because he thought maybe the baby was his.

He read the note pinned to Melissa, which said, Dear Mr. Carson, my parents don’t know how to thank you for what you did for my mother, so they wanted to give you something they really love, and that’s me. My name is Melissa Rosenberg. 1 weigh 12 pounds. 1 eat very little. Please bring me up Jewish.

The color came back into Johnny’s face, and he laughed and cradled her; she fell asleep gripping his little finger. He finished the meeting with Melissa in his arms.

That Show ran from 9:30 to 10:00 A.m. Barbara Walters had a show then too, and we ran back-to-back and shared a hairdresser. Ours was a tiny, inexpensive little effort; what we saved out of the production fee was our profit. We hired writers so young, the writers’ room smelled of Clearasil.

Edgar did everything. He assembled the contracts and the budget and the lawyers and got the meetings going and worried whether they spent twelve dollars for the typewriter rental. He made himself the senior member of the show’s units, and he probably drove people crazy micromanaging each detail.

But the machinery ran like clockwork. His decisions were right, he found the guests we needed.

When he was working for NBC, people would sit around the casting table and say, “This is a part for So-and-so,

but he’ll never do it.” At which time Edgar’s boss, Mannie Sachs, would say-“Did you call Sinatra?” He meant, always try for the best first. Never assume you’ll be turned down. In our meetings, if somebody would say, “Of course, Robert Wagner’ll never come on,” Edgar said, “Did you call Sinatra?”

We taped three shows one day and two the next-which gave me time for club dates, and in January of 1969 I became a regular guest host on The Tonight Show. All I had to do for my own show was read the books, learn my notes, show up, and put on the clothes they gave me. It was a proud, happy time for everybody.

Doing the show, I was one of the first hosts to go out into the audience for my opening monologue. In one of the first shows I said, “Today our guests are Don Rickles, star of his own network series, and Mr. Vidal Sassoon, hairstylist extraordinaire and author of the book Sorry I Kept You Waiting, Madam.

“Do I look different today? I just spent the entire day at the beauty shop.

They really dolled me up. They worked on my hair, not the color because I happen to be a natural blond. True, the roots are black, but that’s just because my hair grows faster than my color. When they finished with me, I looked great. They gave me fake fingernails, false eyelashes, a wig, and a padded bra. For once I felt like the real me. When I got home, Edgar took me in his arms and kissed me and made love to me like never before. Then he drew me close and whispered, `You better get out of here before Joan comes home.’ “

After the commercial I sat down in a little French set with three chairs and two armoires. Don Rickles came out, and we talked about his show-he was brilliantly funny, insulting everybody. Then Vidal Sassoon came on and talked about hair. The ladies got some laughs, some celebrity, and some practical hints-which was very important because they didn’t feel guilty about wasting part of their morning.

We had an expert on marital fights along with James Earl Jones, and he and I improvised a fight-“Where, Jimmy, did we lose the magic?” When we had on the old-

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movie actress Joan Bennett, I was thrilled. One of my earliest memories was licking Joan Bennett’s face. As a child, I had bought ice cream in Dixie cups with a star’s picture on the inside of the top. Amy Vanderbilt was booked to talk about etiquette-but the day before our show, she got a better offer and canceled. I talked about that on my show, on Carson, everywhere I went, saying, “Let’s talk about manners, shall we, Amy?”

Getting Ed Sullivan as a guest was a major coup, and frightening because he was more than a little dotty by then. So we put all the questions up on a board where he could see them. On the show he got what we called “perky”-“Watch out, Ed’s had a nap. He’s perky”-and when I asked the first question, he decided it was funny to give the answer to the second question. Catching up to him was impossible. I went to the third question, and he went to the fourth answer. Soon he was totally confused, the audience was totally bewildered, and I was panicked. “There goes The Ed Sullivan Show. ” But Ed was having a great time, and nobody said a thing.

Jerry Lewis, when he was a movie star, came on our dumb little show like the big king, demanding everything. He arrived late, full of being Jerry Lewis. He wanted a bigger dressing room. He wanted champagne. He wanted flowers. Two thirds of the way through the show, he looked at his watch and said, “I’ve got to go,” and walked out.

His was the arrogance of the big star: When I get there, the show starts, and it ends when I leave. I followed Jerry Lewis at a club in Detroit, and the hotel put me in the room he had used. Lewis had made them redecorate it just for his stay. Yul Brynner used to make places repaint his room for him in brown. The Sands in Las Vegas rebuilt a dressing room overnight to keep Sinatra happy.

Arthur Godfrey came to talk about air pollution, and was so rude and demanding to the talent booker who handled him, she ended up in tears.

Edgar asked me to go cheer Godfrey up. When I reached his dressingroom door, the voice I had grown up with was calling somebody fourletter words, and I had to go in and say how thrilled we were to have him, and how I was such a fan of his.

But whatever it takes to get the show on you do. You accept that you’re a slave to the show. I wanted to get Whitney Houston as a guest for my present show, and was told her father was the best route to her. When I got him on the phone, he made me feel like a piece of dirt, dismissing me with, “No way. No way.” But you shake that off, and an hour later you’re trying somebody else-and the pleading and prostrating keeps you healthily humble.

In the middle of the first season, That Show was getting good ratings when it was in its proper morning time slot. But in syndication you have no control over when a show is aired. The stations that bought the show were little kingdoms making their own decisions, willing to do anything to get higher ratings. If one of their slots had terrible numbers, they would put me into that time and hope for the best-“She’s doing great in the morning, maybe she can win against the soaps in the afternoon. ” We found ourselves, a little morning show, put on in the afternoon and even in prime time against shows like The Hollywood Palace and The Carol Burnett Show. There would be Carol on CBS, an hour of stars, music, and skits, and over here Joan Rivers was asking, “How do you make a Danish sandwich?” When, sure enough, that didn’t work, I was dropped entirely because there was now another show in my old morning slot.

After our first season we lost a lot of stations. Edgar was extremely upset, and I was very tired. NBC, which had kept me in my morning slot on its own stations, was happy with us, and we were part of a big New York Times ad the network ran for its fall schedule. But I wanted to retire. I was very young, very cavalier, and thought this was just a way station to bigger things. I was still performing at night at the Downstairs at the Upstairs, three shows on weekends, and I was bored doing a half hour on how to pack a suitcase. So we pulled the show off the air ourselves.

Though I had stayed at the Downstairs at the Upstairs, I was not “happening”

on the comedy circuit around the country. Our booking agent, William Morris, was com-

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pletely discouraging, telling me, “You’re too New York. You’re too Jewish.”

Edgar said, “Find us the hardest place in America for a Jewish comedienne to work.” The agent said, “Milwaukee,” which was a center for GermanAmericans.

They booked me into the Pfister Hotel, and I opened in a tiny little showroom next to the swimming pool on the roof. The crowds were so big, they overflowed into the pool area. I played to women with falling hairdos and men with limp collars. Within days, they moved me to the main ballroom-and William Morris believed.

For the next year and a half we were in and out of New York, performing in showrooms throughout the country. I began appearing as an opening act in Las Vegas, and had guest shots with Carol Burnett, Jim Nabors, and Flip Wilson. But I was still frustrated by the lack of acting offers, even though I had done well in The Swimmer and had toured successfully one summer in the play Luv with Dom Deluise and Mickey Rooney.

Well, I believe you can do anything if you are willing to try hard enough, so, in a moment of chutzpah, with only one unproduced movie script under my belt, I decided in early 1970 to write my own stage comedy, starring me. I had read all the backstage sagas about putting on a play, but nothing could prepare me for surviving what turned out to be a definitive turning point in my life and particularly Edgar’s.