In Such Good Company, page 19
The dress rehearsal began, and when I came out for the usual Q&A at the top of the show and announced that she was our guest, the audience went crazy. When she made her entrance in the Brown Derby sketch, looking gorgeous, she received a standing ovation. The same thing happened on the second show.
Rita must have felt the love pouring out to her from the studio audience, because she more than rose to the occasion. She was right at home during the sketch and our duet. The finale was played back to the audience on the TV monitors, and there was major applause for her when the number was over. Rita was beaming during the bows. We all were so very happy for her. She was so very sweet to everyone that week, and all of the angst that had been felt became a dim memory. Sadly, she succumbed to Alzheimer’s disease at the age of sixty-eight.
Vicki and me as the successful Doily Sisters.
“The Doily Sisters”
One of the most popular musical movies of the forties was the Betty Grable classic The Dolly Sisters, starring Betty, John Payne, and June Haver. I remember seeing it with my grandmother, never dreaming that I would one day get to “be” my favorite female movie star, Betty Grable, in a send-up of the movie. We called ours “The Doily Sisters,” and we closely followed the actual plot of the real movie.
This was one particular parody that took up the entire show, with the exception of a brief finale where I was the Charwoman. This was one of my all-time favorites, and I wasn’t alone in loving it.
After the show aired, I got a call from Jimmy and Gloria Stewart: “We absolutely loved it!”
PART 1 THE BUDAPEST CAFÉ. NEW YORK, 1912
Harry Handsome (Harvey) is the singing entertainer in the Budapest Café. He’s upset because his opening act has left. Enter Rosie and Jenny Doily (Vicki and me), blond twins, who just got off the boat from Hungary, looking for work. They sing and dance, and Harry hires them to be the backup singers in his act. The sisters ask him, “What do you do?” He chuckles and says, “I write a song!”—and proceeds to sing (the only song he ever writes) “Hey, Mr. Moon.” Dim-witted Rosie thinks he stinks, but Jenny is smitten with him and he reciprocates the feeling.
(Harvey was uncomfortable, at first, having to sing and look like the actor John Payne, who was as pretty as Betty Grable! But then, after he got into the brunet wig, with a curl in the middle of his forehead, and a cleft penciled onto his chin, he channeled John Payne, just as he did Clark Gable in our takeoff on Gone With the Wind.)
PART 2
Harry performs “Hey, Mr. Moon” with the sisters as his backup chorus, in vaudeville, and after their number, a talent agent, Bernie Bernie (Lyle), wants to sign them up…but he’s looking for a “duet,” not a “trio.”
Dim-witted Rosie wants to know where they are going to find another person.
Jenny patiently explains that one more would be a “quartet” and Bernie Bernie wants one less—a duo. Rosie throws a tantrum, thinking her sister Jenny will leave her to go with Harry and won’t take care of her like she promised their papa! Feeling guilty, Jenny decides to stay with Rosie. A hurt and angry Harry leaves, saying he at least has his song, “Mr. Moon…”
(Harvey was absolutely brilliant in this role and, for ages, when anything would go wrong, he would joke that “No matter what, at least I have my song—‘Hey, Mr. Moon.’ ”)
PART 3
We see a montage with the Doily Sisters and dancers touring on the road in a huge production number, “Two Natural Beauties,” without makeup or fancy costumes, and then becoming more and more elaborately made up and bathed in sequins by the time they wind up starring at the Palace Theater in New York. They become the toast of the town.
PART 4
We next see poor Harry playing and singing (to a disinterested audience at a posh cocktail party in a fancy penthouse apartment) his one and only song, “Hey, Mr. Moon.” The party perks up when the now famous Doily Sisters enter. Jenny spots Harry at the piano and tells him she still loves him and wants them to be together. He says he can’t be with her because she’s a huge star now and he’s only…
She puts her hand over his mouth and finishes the sentence for him: “A nobody?”
He says it’s over between them because he doesn’t want to be known only as “Mister Doily.” She tells Harry that she’ll give up everything if he’ll marry her and they can start all over at the bottom, as a couple of nobodies. He’s thrilled and bends Jenny back for a kiss. A uniformed soldier enters declaring that World War I has just been declared. Harry insists that these world events must take precedence and leaves to enlist, dropping Jenny on the floor.
(I have said that I survived many a sketch’s physicality with, at most, a minor bruise, but when Harvey dropped me—his fervor for becoming a doughboy was perhaps a little too evident—I landed right on my tail bone and was sore for days!)
PART 5
“A Typical Trench Somewhere in France,” finds WWI doughboys behind sandbags, firing their rifles at the enemy while Harry complains about all the noise because he is singing and playing “Hey, Mr. Moon” on a beat-up piano in the trench. Bernie enters with the news that Jenny and dim-witted Rosie are somewhere in France, entertaining the troops, and says wouldn’t it be swell if they, somehow, showed up in this particular trench.
Voilà! The girls show up!
Harry asks them how they found him and Rosie says they couldn’t hear his song for all of the noise, but they could smell it.
The sisters then proceed to “cheer up” the soldiers by singing “Go Get ’Em, Doughboys!”—winding up with that promise that Uncle Sam will call on all of them again when they get home, IF they get home!
(This leaves all the soldiers weeping and wailing uncontrollably.)
Harry tells Jenny that the war has changed everything and that he will feel equal to her success because he has been chosen to lead the next charge against the enemy, and he’ll be a hero! The colonel approaches Jenny, asking if the Doily Sisters will lead the charge instead, thereby boosting morale. Jenny happily agrees, and she and Rosie march over the hill to fight the enemy, leaving an emasculated Harry, while the sisters lead the charge singing a rousing song about the stinky old Kaiser!
PART 6
The war is over thanks to the heroism of the Doily Sisters! Headline: THE KAISER CAPITULATES!
It’s two years later, and Jenny, Rosie, and Bernie are in a Monte Carlo casino, where Jenny is drinking heavily because Bernie has told her Harry doesn’t want to have anything to do with her ever again. Rosie and Bernie get engaged, and Jenny sings a torch song about happiness being for everyone else and misery is hers, all the while winning a fortune at roulette.
A German count proposes to the distraught and drunken Jenny, and they leave to get into his car with Jenny insisting on driving. There is a crash…
PART 7
Harry, who is now a big Broadway star (still with only one song to his credit), has rushed to the French hospital, where he meets Bernie in Jenny’s room. Jenny’s bed is hidden by a screen, and Bernie warns Harry that she was pretty badly smashed up in the car wreck and that he must be strong because there is a chance he won’t recognize her.
Bernie pulls the screen away to reveal: a perfectly made up and coiffed Jenny with a tiny Band-Aid on her cheek. Harry is horrified!
(In the original movie, Betty Grable’s head was swathed in a bandage, but her face was fully made up…eyelashes, rouge, and lipstick! Hysterical! Betty called me after she saw this takeoff and said she laughed her head off…especially over this particular scene. She told me she argued with the studio head about having to look so perfectly made up after such a horrific car crash, and the studio argued, “Your fans want to see you beautiful at all times! Besides, this is a MUSICAL!”)
The doctor enters and reveals that Jenny is going to be all right…she just has—he struggles for the word—amnesia.
Jenny comes to and doesn’t recognize Harry, asking, “Hello, who are you?” Harry tries desperately to make her remember, to no avail.
HARRY: “Does the name ‘Harry’ mean anything to you?”
JENNY: “My name is Harry!”
HARRY: “No, I’m Harry!”
JENNY: (Pleased) “OH, we’re both named Harry!”
HARRY: “No! Don’t you remember the Doily Sisters on old Broadway?”
JENNY: “Nooo…but hum a few bars and I’ll try to fake it.”
HARRY: (Distraught) “It’s amazing, she only remembers old jokes!”
Harry tells Jenny he’s now a big star, but the whole thing doesn’t mean anything without her.
He asks her to marry him for the second time, and all she can do is ask him again, “Hello, who are you?”
Crestfallen, Harry sees Rosie in the next bed, dressed like Jenny, with a small Band-Aid on her cheek.
Harry asks Bernie if she was hurt, too, and he’s basically told that she’s just sympathizing with her sister. Harry leaves, heartbroken. Bernie tells Rosie that it would cost the sisters every cent they have for Jenny’s treatment. She doesn’t care, she will do anything for her sister, until Bernie reminds her that Jenny doesn’t recognize her.
ROSIE: “Oh…well, I’m not gonna put myself out for a total stranger. I’m no dummy.”
(Vicki, as Rosie, spoke all her lines in a high, childish, whiny voice that she often used in other sketches, such as “Caged Dames,” with great comedic results. Even if the line was a straight one, she would get a laugh by the way she delivered it.)
Who are you? I wonder as I sing the “Amnesia Song.”
Bernie and Rosie exit. Jenny looks at herself in a hand mirror and sings the “Amnesia Song,” in which she tells herself that she remembers all of the parts of the face staring back at her and parts of the body, too, but she still doesn’t know who that woman in the mirror is. She ends the number with a plaintive, “Hello, who are you?”
(The writer who got the idea for this song in this spot wrote it the night before we taped the show. I loved it. Peter Matz quickly did the orchestration, and we were able to get it done and rehearsed before the early show!)
PART 8
Five years later. Harry is being honored at an awards banquet in a New York ballroom, where he’ll perform his only composition, “Hey, Mr. Moon.” A confused Jenny wanders in and is hired as a waitress. Harry is introduced and laces into his song. Jenny is accidentally hit in the head by a tray and, upon hearing “Hey, Mr. Moon,” begins to sing along with Harry, her memory restored! Harry jumps off the bandstand, and he and Jenny are happily reunited and engaged to be married, until…Rosie appears and has a crying jag, saying Bernie ran off and she has no one, laying heaps of guilt on Jenny.
Jenny asks Harry if he would do her a favor…“Will you marry the both of us?” Smiling, Harry responds, “Whatever!” Jenny, Rosie, and Harry and the banquet customers all sing “Hey, Mr. Moon.” The three of them are carrying a suitcase that says, JUST MARRIED, MARRIED.
THE END
—
We did all of the above in less than two hours for our studio audience, just like a Broadway show.
Betty Grable
Betty Grable was one of the most popular movie stars in the 1940s, when I was growing up. My grandmother and I never missed one of her movies. Those 20th Century Fox musicals starring Betty along with her various leading men, Tyrone Power, Dan Dailey, John Payne, Victor Mature, Don Ameche, etc., were always variations of the same plot, but it didn’t matter, because Betty was in them. Betty Grable, the servicemen’s favorite pinup girl during World War II—Betty Grable, whose beautiful legs had been insured for $1,000,000 by Lloyds of London—was going to be a guest on my show!
That week in February 1968, our other guest was Martha Raye, one of America’s funniest comediennes (known for her outrageous mugging). She and Betty had known each other for years and were good friends. Martha, as usual, was over-the-top hysterical both off stage and on camera, and Betty was equally funny in a much more subtle way. This week was the first time we did our soap opera takeoff, “As the Stomach Turns.”
I remember Betty was a Coca-Cola addict, drinking several Cokes a day, all that week, which resulted in unrestrained (I might say, loud) belching, which evidently was the outcome she was aiming for. Come showtime that Friday, Betty, Martha, and I were in our finale costumes waiting for the set to change, and Betty took a final swig of her Coke and came out with a doozy of a belch, causing Martha to pipe up, “Jesus Christ, Betty, why don’t you just fart and save your teeth?” I lost it. Needless to say, I had a blast working with the two of them.
Betty’s song-and-dance number on our show was “Hello, Dolly” in a barn setting with our dancers. Naturally, Bob Mackie dressed her in a costume that featured those gorgeous legs. She was still a terrific hoofer, and with her looking great at fifty-one, the audience ate her up.
Betty and her gams bring down the house.
Betty, Martha, our dancer, Jackie, Lyle, and Harvey in the leg contest. The winner was…Harvey!
Since both Betty and Martha Raye had gorgeous gams, we decided to have a “Leg Contest.” We see five pairs of beautiful legs in sheer dark hose and high heels. The top halves of the owners of the legs are hidden by a curtain. I hold my hand above each pair of legs and the audience votes for the best pair by applauding. Number 5 gets the most applause. The curtain is raised and we see the contestants. Number 1 is Martha Raye. Number 2 is Betty Grable. Number 3 is one of our female dancers, Jackie Powers, and Numbers 4 and 5 turn out to be Lyle and Harvey in tuxedo jackets and black ties! Harvey, the proud winner, wielding a cigar, and Lyle exit, trying their best to saunter off stage comfortably in their high heels. The audience screamed. (So they wouldn’t have to shave their legs for this bit, Bob Mackie had Harvey and Lyle wear flesh-colored tights under their sheer dark hose.)
When Joe and I moved out to California, we put a down payment on, and finally bought, a house in Beverly Hills. Guess whose house it had been in the forties? Yep! Betty and her then husband, the extraordinarily talented musician and trumpet player Harry James, had lived there with their two young daughters many years before. So we invited her to come by the house for a drink one day after rehearsals. She walked through the rooms and I saw tears in her eyes.
Five short years later, she died of lung cancer. She was quite a “dame” in the best sense of the word, and I treasure the time I got to play with her in the sandbox.
Nanny would’ve been thrilled.
I have a theory that our bodies don’t know if we’re acting, or not.
I would feel so good whenever I portrayed Eunice having one of her tantrums, or yelling as Tarzan. I would energetically squeal, wiggle, squirm, bump, and grind as Charo, or do a wild and crazy over-the-top Nora Desmond. Phew!
Calm. Serene. I think because, personally, I was never one to raise my voice or give in to feelings of anger or rage, so in doing these characters in these sketches, I allowed myself to really let go and vent. Even though I was acting, my body didn’t know it and I would wind up totally relaxed. I’m sure that if I’d had a trace of high blood pressure before, it would have been significantly lower afterward.
Even now, if I’m frustrated or ticked off about something, I’ll go somewhere quiet, where no one can hear me, and cut loose with a Tarzan yell, and immediately feel relief.
It works. At least for me.
After the final show of each season was taped, our cast and crew would go upstairs to the large rehearsal hall that had been turned into a restaurant, with a bar at one end and a catered buffet from Chasen’s restaurant at the other. Then after everyone had finished eating and drinking, we would all return to Studio 33 and put on a show just for us.
When their seasons wrap, most TV shows throw a cast party, which features an “outtake reel” highlighting some of the funny goofs, etc., that occurred on their shows during the year. We did that, too, showing a few outtakes, but then went beyond the norm and proceeded to put on a live show!
The Annual Flip Show was fashioned to be a takeoff on the season we had just finished. I was the “producer,” and the performers could be anyone connected with our show, from the cameramen to the backstage crew and even the ushers. About three weeks before the last show was taped, I would announce: “Okay, everybody, let me know if you want to perform in the Flip Show this year. Come to me with your idea and I’ll put you on the bill. If someone else has come to me first with the same idea, you’ll have to think of something else to parody.”
The fun of it was, nobody knew what was coming…not even me. I just had a list of the names of the people who would be performing and a vague idea of what they planned to parody. As the emcee, I would simply announce who was on next, and then be surprised along with everybody else.
The first year, one of the “acts” was our three cameramen doing a takeoff on the number “Hey, Big Spender” that I had done with our guests Eileen Farrell and Marilyn Horne that year. The curtain parted, and there were our three big guys, in full drag, lip-synching to our voices and doing the same choreography! They had secretly worked with Ernie Flatt to get the moves right. In fact, everybody who was in the show would rehearse in secret, weeks before, and every act was a surprise.
That first year, Bob Wright, our associate producer, also got into drag. Dressed like Lana Turner, in her same flowing white gown, to which Bob Mackie had added extra material so the waistline would fit, he sailed around the floor in full makeup and a blond wig, partnering with Don Crichton and the dancers while lip-synching to Lana’s recording of “Heavenly Music.” At first, no one recognized him, but when we did, we were doubled over in laughter because Bob Wright was the farthest thing from being a drag queen!
