In Such Good Company, page 9
We figured he had to have rehearsed this bit of business on the set when it was in the shop, where no one could see him. It was a brilliant piece of shtick.
—
Whenever there was a Tim and Harvey sketch in the show, we would start a pool where we all put in a dollar, not to bet whether Harvey would break up, but to bet how far into the sketch they would get before Tim got him.
Harvey is utterly helpless and, according to Tim, wetting his pants.
The dentist sketch with Harvey as Tim’s hapless patient is one of the funniest pieces of comedy ever performed. It should go in the time capsule. It started out with the premise that Tim, as a nervous new graduate fresh out of dental college, would accidentally stick himself in the hand with the Novocain needle. Tim took it from there and added several bits of business by sticking himself in his hip, his leg, and finally his forehead while Harvey was stuck in the chair helplessly losing it. I was watching the sketch on the monitor in my dressing room and screaming with laughter. I ran to the backstage area and watched the rest of it from the wings where I could also see the audience. They were exploding. Our cameramen were howling. There was not a dry eye—or seat—in the house.
I looked over at Harvey and he couldn’t move. Lying in the dentist’s chair, he was utterly helpless and laughing hysterically. He tried to keep it together, but tears began rolling down his cheeks. Tim was relentless, and swears Harvey wet his pants.
But that wasn’t the norm. Out of 276 shows, I’d say we cracked up around 7 percent of the time. Honest.
I absolutely loved doing her. She was this crazy old lady in the park who liked to feed the pigeons. She had a snaggletoothed smile, stringy gray hair peeking out from under an old torn brown felt hat, a ragged sweater, a faded dress, gloves with fingers missing, sagging stockings, and worn-out sandals.
The sketch usually started with Tim, a trim, wealthy-looking, spiffy old man, Mr. Purdy, being wheeled into the park by his nurse, Leona, who helps him get settled on a bench, leaving him there for a few minutes to enjoy reading his newspaper in the sun. This peaceful scene is always interrupted by an old bag lady, who shuffles in with a sack full of birdseed, tossing the food to the pigeons, and calling to the birds, “Here pigie, pigie, here pigie.” She plops herself next to the hapless Mr. Purdy—who is bench-bound and can’t get away from her—and strikes up a bizarre conversation. This was a sketch where I did all the talking, becoming crazier and crazier. Mr. Purdy hardly spoke, except when he looked off camera and weakly called to his nurse for help.
After Tim’s outrageous ad-lib about the Siamese elephants during a “Family” sketch earlier that season, I decided that I was going get back at him with my own unrehearsed and outrageous elephant story. This would be the perfect revenge as Tim’s character had very few lines and was stuck sitting there with nowhere to go. He was at my mercy this time. Here’s how it went…
The Pigeon Lady enters and sits on the park bench next to a wary Mr. Purdy. She says she has just come from a lecture at the civic auditorium on past lives.
(The first part of what follows is what we rehearsed all week. You’ll know when I go off script.)
PIGEON LADY: “They had this psychic today givin’ this lecture on reincarnation, y’know, how ever’ body lived a bunch of different lives, things like that. Shoot…you know Sylvia Armbruster, that big heavyset woman, whose husband is in the escrow business?”
MR. PURDY: (Warily) “No…no I don’t.”
PIGEON LADY: “That’s the one. Well, right in the middle of this throng of thousands of people, Sylvia Armbruster stands up just as big as you please and she says, ‘In a previous lifetime, I was Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt!’ (Cackles) “I ’bout died! Boy, was she sucked in! Can you imagine Sylvia Armbruster, Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt?” (Cackles) “NO WAY…I was!”
MR. PURDY: (Weakly calling out) “Leona!”
PIGEON LADY: “Egypt was nice. It was a little bit like Idaho, but without the mountains and the Winnebagos.”
She goes on to describe her life with Julius Caesar.
PIGEON LADY: “Boy, for a guy who used to run around all day in the forum in a dress, at night he made Burt Reynolds look like Mr. Whipple.”
MR. PURDY: “Leona…”
Making matters worse, she rattles on that in yet another lifetime she was married to Attila the Hun.
PIGEON LADY: “I met old Attila in a singles bar. He made me a charm bracelet once out of genuine ‘people teeth.’ An’ ever’ time we had an anniversary, he’d add another little charm to it.”
By this time, Mr. Purdy is desperate and weakly tries whistling for Leona, to no avail.
PIGEON LADY: (Continuing) “He gave me a rock once. It must’ve been yea big. It wasn’t your ordinary rock at all. It happened when he was pillaging through Italy. Got it at Gucci’s. Yep, he was a swell little provider.”
(Now I go off script.)
PIGEON LADY: “An’ then for transportation once, he gave me this pair of elephants. They was Siamese…” (The crew starts to laugh, and Tim begins to realize he’s in for it. The audience catches on right away because they remember the time Tim had us at his mercy with his elephant story.) “They was joined at the trunk, an’ when one of ’em had to go somewhere, the other one would have to run backwards! Then one of ’em caught a cold, and sneezed, an’ blew both their brains out!”
We did another one of these sketches the following season, and I decided I would come up with yet a different elephant story to get Tim.
Mr. Purdy’s nurse, Leona, helps him onto the park bench before she exits. He’s calmly reading his newspaper when the Pigeon Lady enters and plops down next to him.
PIGEON LADY: “Here pigie, pigie. Eat all yer corn an’ I’ll tell you where there’s a new statue.” (She looks at Mr. Purdy) “Nice day, isn’t it?” (He nods politely) “What’s yer sign?”
MR. PURDY: “Sagittarius.”
PIGEON LADY: “Oh.” (Grins at him happily) “I hear tell that a ‘Sage’ makes a good lover!” (He’s becoming uncomfortable) “I’m a Leo, y’know, like the lion? Grrrrr!”
Mr. Purdy looks off for Leona.
PIGEON LADY: “You married?” (He shakes his head no) “Well you’re all alike. I lived with this guy once, named AR-MAN-DO. I lived with him an’ he split on me without so much as leavin’ me a dime. I moved in with him one morning. I gave him everything I had…an’ he split that afternoon.”
While Mr. Purdy is looking off for Leona to come save him, the Pigeon Lady rattles on about how she met Armando when he was in the navy and how she used to play the trumpet for all the “gobs” on the ship, “the SS Burgoyne.” She shows him a snapshot of her, Armando, and the gobs.
PIGEON LADY: “That’s me there. You can tell by my smile.” (Flashes her snaggletoothed grin) “One time I played ‘Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy from Company B’ for three solid hours! Yep, I blew enough wind to sail that sucker to Guam!”
She calls his attention to Armando’s little sister, Alexandra, who is also in the snapshot.
PIGEON LADY: “She was a gob, too! All the other gobs called her ‘Alexandra the Great!’ She was a little bitty thing, no bigger’n a milk bottle. All of us used to go up on deck and play with her. We’d play ‘Spin the Gob!’ ”
(At this point, I went off script and started to spin a whole other story.)
PIGEON LADY: (Continuing) “Then after she got out of the navy, Alexandra went into the circus.” (Tim starts to catch on and stifles a grin. The audience, along with our crew, is in on it, too.) “She became the world’s littlest elephant trainer. She’d play ‘Spin the Trunk!’ Well, this big ol’ elephant got real mad at her an’ one day he stepped on Alexandra, an’ he killed her! She was just a spot in the sawdust. An’ that elephant was charged with murder…an’ he went to trial…an’ the jury came back with a verdict of ‘Guilty, of premeditated murder’…an’ they hung that elephant…as a deterrent to other elephants!”
At this point, Tim looked into the camera, shook his head back and forth, and rolled his eyes to heaven, all the while stifling a laugh.
I had a ball doing this to him!
“There was this pair of elephants.”
In the mid-seventies a close friend of mine asked me to attend a lecture at UCLA on parapsychology being given by a woman named Thelma Moss. She spoke about “Kirlian photography,” which claims to be able to photograph the “auras” of various plants and even inanimate objects such as coins. More interesting to me was the claim that this technique can photograph human auras. After her lecture, I was introduced to Ms. Moss, who asked me if I would take part in a little “experiment” in her lab at the university.
Sure, why not? I showed up at the appointed time the next day, and she said she was going to photograph my hand using the Kirlian method. She asked me to relax, and I placed my hand on a flat plate of some kind. A photograph was taken, and she showed me the results. There were shooting lights surrounding each finger. Okay…but what did that mean? Then she explained the experiment she had in mind.
“I want you to imagine some of the characters you portray when you do your show, and I’ll photograph them individually. Don’t tell me which ones you’re doing. Just write down the character’s name and the order in which their pictures are taken, so you’ll remember.” Okay. The first one I thought of doing was Eunice from the “Family” sketches. Ms. Moss said, “Try to conjure up the way you feel when you’re acting as the character…Take your time, and when you’re ready, place your hand on the plate.” I put myself in Eunice’s shoes, thinking of her frustrations and her temper tantrums and the constant disappointments in her life…and put my hand on the plate.
The next character I conjured up was Charo, the bubbly, outgoing, and happy Latin bombshell I often had fun doing. Hand on plate. Then I did Nora Desmond, the over-the-top crazy-as-a-loon silent screen movie star. Hand on plate.
Ms. Moss and I looked at the three photographs, and each one had totally different “auras” surrounding the fingers. Okay…but then she described each character’s personality and nailed each one. Looking at the Eunice photo, she said, “This is a very angry and sad person who is closed and hampered by her own doing.” (Eunice’s aura was close to her fingers, no “shooting lights” to be seen.)
She described the second character (Charo) as a free soul, happy and perhaps “musical.” Charo’s aura was shooting out all over the place.
Nora was described as someone who was somewhat “unhinged.” The fingers of her aura were uneven and kind of spikey.
Pretty amazing, huh?
Kirlian photography has been debunked by science, but it sure was a fun experiment.
I was practically raised in a movie theater. My dad managed a small one for a while in San Antonio, Texas. In April 1933, my mother was sitting in the back row, watching a second run of Rasputin and the Empress, when she went into labor with me. One of my first memories is sitting in the dark and watching cartoons when I was about three. When the grown-up movie started, Daddy would pick me up and I’d take a nap in his small office. Years later, in the 1940s, when I was living in Hollywood with Nanny, we would save our pennies and hit Hollywood Boulevard, sometimes seeing as many as eight movies a week! In those days, we would go to the “second-run” houses, where they would be showing a double feature, along with cartoons, newsreels, and coming attractions. (More bang for your buck.) Actually, the ticket prices were twelve cents for me (under twelve years old) and a quarter for Nanny IF we got in before the prices went up at 6:00 p.m. So, going to four theaters in one week…Bang! Eight movies! That was when I fell in love with the likes of James Stewart, Betty Grable, Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland, Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Humphrey Bogart, and Rita Hayworth, to name some favorites.
My best friend, Ilomay, and I would often pretend like we were these stars and act out the movies. Little did I dream that one day I’d have my own show and REALLY get to “act out” and lovingly satirize these films, complete with gorgeous costumes, sets, and a twenty-eight-piece orchestra, on television! Of course not! How could I? There was no television in those days!
Fast-forward to our variety show. It was a given that I’d want to send up the films I grew up on, plus others that impressed me as I got older.
I have to stress here that we never intended to satirize the actors personally, even though we would be dressed and made up to look like them, wigs and all. We only wanted to kid the movie itself, or the genre. However, there were a few actors who weren’t too happy with our takeoffs.
“Mildred Fierce” and “Torchy Song”
In 1976, we did a spoof of the famous Warner Bros. movie Mildred Pierce, starring Joan Crawford, for which she won an Academy Award in 1946. The original movie is the story of a hardworking mother, the long-suffering Mildred, who adores her selfish daughter, Veda, and spoils her rotten. Veda goads her mother about their lack of money, and in response, Mildred proposes opening a small restaurant, which disgusts Veda even more. Mildred is introduced to the oily Monte Beragon, a wealthy playboy. Mildred marries him for Veda’s sake even though she doesn’t love him.
The story is basically a triangle involving a loving mother, her two-timing husband, and her self-centered daughter, which leads to tragedy.
We called ours “Mildred Fierce” and stuck pretty close to the original screenplay. As Mildred, I wore a brunette wig and heavy black eyebrows made of real hair, which we glued on, and every outfit was fitted with huge shoulder pads just like those Joan Crawford wore in the movie. Harvey was a brilliantly smarmy Zachary Scott (Monte), and Vicki was equally brilliant as Mildred’s scheming money-hungry daughter, Veda, played by Ann Blyth in the film.
We open with Mildred in a police station confessing a murder she committed to the captain (Tim). She’s told to wait her turn because there’s an old lady ahead of her reporting her lost parakeet.
My glued-on “Joan Crawford” eyebrows were truly expressive.
The captain calls Mildred to his desk and she begins to tell her story…
In a flashback throughout the sketch, we see Mildred spoiling her “precious” daughter rotten. Veda rules the roost, and Mildred is a wimp where her daughter is concerned. Veda hates her mother and insults her at every turn.
At one point, determined to run away, Veda rifles through Mildred’s purse for money. “I belong in a mansion! I’m not hanging around this dump any longer!” Mildred pleads with her rotten daughter to stay, and before she walks out the door, Veda hauls off and slaps her mother silly.
MILDRED: (To herself, still reeling from the slap, but forever forgiving Veda) “I know a little girl who got out on the wrong side of the bed this morning!”
Enter Monte Slick (Harvey), a lecherous millionaire playboy who makes a play for Mildred.
MONTE: “Why don’t you come out to my beach house and I’ll show you the ocean.”
MILDRED: “I’ve seen the ocean, chum.”
MONTE: “Not my hunk of it.”
As Mildred asks him to leave, Veda returns wanting more money.
VEDA: “Honestly, Mother, these are only twenties!” (Seeing Monte, she lays on the sweetness) “Oh, hi, sir.”
MONTE: (Coming on to Veda) “Well hell-o! Don’t tell me this enchanting child is yours, Mrs. Fierce.”
MILDRED: “Yes, she is enchanting, isn’t she?”
Mildred introduces them. Veda is very impressed.
VEDA: “The Monte Slick? The irresponsible, lecherous playboy and owner of the Slick Mansion?”
MONTE: “In the glorious flesh.” (Turning to Mildred) “Let’s stop playing games. How about that little jaunt to my beach house?”
Mildred rebuffs his advances and Veda takes her mother aside.
VEDA: (Baby talk) “Mommy, you want your wittle baby Veda wif you forever, don’t you?”
MILDRED: “Of course I do! You know that, my darling!”
VEDA: “Well, this is your big chance, dimwit! This is your chance to get your wittle Veda a mansion and a beach house and furs and jewels…and a new daddy!”
MILDRED: (Stunned) “You mean…?”
VEDA: “That’s right. Marry this joker quick before he gets a real good look at you.”
Mildred thinks that wouldn’t be forthright because she doesn’t love Monte.
VEDA: “Mother, ‘forthright’ does not buy Ferraris!” (Bordering on a tantrum) “Can’t you just do me this one little favor?”
MILDRED: (Giving in) “All right. I’ll try.”
She turns back to Monte and says she’ll accept his invitation but that she “plays for keeps.”
MONTE: “Marriage?”
MILDRED: “Yes.”
MONTE: “One of those decent dames, eh?”
MILDRED: “You make ‘decent’ sound ‘indecent.’ ”
MONTE: “I can also make ‘indecent’…pretty ‘decent.’ But let’s get down to cases. You’re saying that no marriage, no beach house?”
MILDRED: “That’s right. No hanky, no panky.”
MONTE: “No contract, no contact?”
MILDRED: “No ring, no ring-a-ding-ding.”
Monte says marriage is not for him. Veda takes the bull by the horns and comes on to him.
VEDA:“I don’t blame you, Mr. Slick. You’d be taking on a wife AND a daughter…in the flower of her youth, both living there in the same mansion with you!”
Monte changes his mind. This is a great suggestion. As he hugs Mildred, he reaches over her shoulder and plants a kiss on Veda.
Time passes, and Mildred, now a rich and successful businesswoman, returning home to the beach house, discovers Monte and Veda in a passionate embrace. Veda hits Mildred with the news that she and Monte are in love and will marry after he gets a divorce! Humiliated, Mildred accepts this news and exits, saying, “All right. I don’t need a brick to fall on my head.” As she’s walking out the door, a brick falls on her head.
—
Whenever there was a Tim and Harvey sketch in the show, we would start a pool where we all put in a dollar, not to bet whether Harvey would break up, but to bet how far into the sketch they would get before Tim got him.
Harvey is utterly helpless and, according to Tim, wetting his pants.
The dentist sketch with Harvey as Tim’s hapless patient is one of the funniest pieces of comedy ever performed. It should go in the time capsule. It started out with the premise that Tim, as a nervous new graduate fresh out of dental college, would accidentally stick himself in the hand with the Novocain needle. Tim took it from there and added several bits of business by sticking himself in his hip, his leg, and finally his forehead while Harvey was stuck in the chair helplessly losing it. I was watching the sketch on the monitor in my dressing room and screaming with laughter. I ran to the backstage area and watched the rest of it from the wings where I could also see the audience. They were exploding. Our cameramen were howling. There was not a dry eye—or seat—in the house.
I looked over at Harvey and he couldn’t move. Lying in the dentist’s chair, he was utterly helpless and laughing hysterically. He tried to keep it together, but tears began rolling down his cheeks. Tim was relentless, and swears Harvey wet his pants.
But that wasn’t the norm. Out of 276 shows, I’d say we cracked up around 7 percent of the time. Honest.
I absolutely loved doing her. She was this crazy old lady in the park who liked to feed the pigeons. She had a snaggletoothed smile, stringy gray hair peeking out from under an old torn brown felt hat, a ragged sweater, a faded dress, gloves with fingers missing, sagging stockings, and worn-out sandals.
The sketch usually started with Tim, a trim, wealthy-looking, spiffy old man, Mr. Purdy, being wheeled into the park by his nurse, Leona, who helps him get settled on a bench, leaving him there for a few minutes to enjoy reading his newspaper in the sun. This peaceful scene is always interrupted by an old bag lady, who shuffles in with a sack full of birdseed, tossing the food to the pigeons, and calling to the birds, “Here pigie, pigie, here pigie.” She plops herself next to the hapless Mr. Purdy—who is bench-bound and can’t get away from her—and strikes up a bizarre conversation. This was a sketch where I did all the talking, becoming crazier and crazier. Mr. Purdy hardly spoke, except when he looked off camera and weakly called to his nurse for help.
After Tim’s outrageous ad-lib about the Siamese elephants during a “Family” sketch earlier that season, I decided that I was going get back at him with my own unrehearsed and outrageous elephant story. This would be the perfect revenge as Tim’s character had very few lines and was stuck sitting there with nowhere to go. He was at my mercy this time. Here’s how it went…
The Pigeon Lady enters and sits on the park bench next to a wary Mr. Purdy. She says she has just come from a lecture at the civic auditorium on past lives.
(The first part of what follows is what we rehearsed all week. You’ll know when I go off script.)
PIGEON LADY: “They had this psychic today givin’ this lecture on reincarnation, y’know, how ever’ body lived a bunch of different lives, things like that. Shoot…you know Sylvia Armbruster, that big heavyset woman, whose husband is in the escrow business?”
MR. PURDY: (Warily) “No…no I don’t.”
PIGEON LADY: “That’s the one. Well, right in the middle of this throng of thousands of people, Sylvia Armbruster stands up just as big as you please and she says, ‘In a previous lifetime, I was Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt!’ (Cackles) “I ’bout died! Boy, was she sucked in! Can you imagine Sylvia Armbruster, Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt?” (Cackles) “NO WAY…I was!”
MR. PURDY: (Weakly calling out) “Leona!”
PIGEON LADY: “Egypt was nice. It was a little bit like Idaho, but without the mountains and the Winnebagos.”
She goes on to describe her life with Julius Caesar.
PIGEON LADY: “Boy, for a guy who used to run around all day in the forum in a dress, at night he made Burt Reynolds look like Mr. Whipple.”
MR. PURDY: “Leona…”
Making matters worse, she rattles on that in yet another lifetime she was married to Attila the Hun.
PIGEON LADY: “I met old Attila in a singles bar. He made me a charm bracelet once out of genuine ‘people teeth.’ An’ ever’ time we had an anniversary, he’d add another little charm to it.”
By this time, Mr. Purdy is desperate and weakly tries whistling for Leona, to no avail.
PIGEON LADY: (Continuing) “He gave me a rock once. It must’ve been yea big. It wasn’t your ordinary rock at all. It happened when he was pillaging through Italy. Got it at Gucci’s. Yep, he was a swell little provider.”
(Now I go off script.)
PIGEON LADY: “An’ then for transportation once, he gave me this pair of elephants. They was Siamese…” (The crew starts to laugh, and Tim begins to realize he’s in for it. The audience catches on right away because they remember the time Tim had us at his mercy with his elephant story.) “They was joined at the trunk, an’ when one of ’em had to go somewhere, the other one would have to run backwards! Then one of ’em caught a cold, and sneezed, an’ blew both their brains out!”
We did another one of these sketches the following season, and I decided I would come up with yet a different elephant story to get Tim.
Mr. Purdy’s nurse, Leona, helps him onto the park bench before she exits. He’s calmly reading his newspaper when the Pigeon Lady enters and plops down next to him.
PIGEON LADY: “Here pigie, pigie. Eat all yer corn an’ I’ll tell you where there’s a new statue.” (She looks at Mr. Purdy) “Nice day, isn’t it?” (He nods politely) “What’s yer sign?”
MR. PURDY: “Sagittarius.”
PIGEON LADY: “Oh.” (Grins at him happily) “I hear tell that a ‘Sage’ makes a good lover!” (He’s becoming uncomfortable) “I’m a Leo, y’know, like the lion? Grrrrr!”
Mr. Purdy looks off for Leona.
PIGEON LADY: “You married?” (He shakes his head no) “Well you’re all alike. I lived with this guy once, named AR-MAN-DO. I lived with him an’ he split on me without so much as leavin’ me a dime. I moved in with him one morning. I gave him everything I had…an’ he split that afternoon.”
While Mr. Purdy is looking off for Leona to come save him, the Pigeon Lady rattles on about how she met Armando when he was in the navy and how she used to play the trumpet for all the “gobs” on the ship, “the SS Burgoyne.” She shows him a snapshot of her, Armando, and the gobs.
PIGEON LADY: “That’s me there. You can tell by my smile.” (Flashes her snaggletoothed grin) “One time I played ‘Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy from Company B’ for three solid hours! Yep, I blew enough wind to sail that sucker to Guam!”
She calls his attention to Armando’s little sister, Alexandra, who is also in the snapshot.
PIGEON LADY: “She was a gob, too! All the other gobs called her ‘Alexandra the Great!’ She was a little bitty thing, no bigger’n a milk bottle. All of us used to go up on deck and play with her. We’d play ‘Spin the Gob!’ ”
(At this point, I went off script and started to spin a whole other story.)
PIGEON LADY: (Continuing) “Then after she got out of the navy, Alexandra went into the circus.” (Tim starts to catch on and stifles a grin. The audience, along with our crew, is in on it, too.) “She became the world’s littlest elephant trainer. She’d play ‘Spin the Trunk!’ Well, this big ol’ elephant got real mad at her an’ one day he stepped on Alexandra, an’ he killed her! She was just a spot in the sawdust. An’ that elephant was charged with murder…an’ he went to trial…an’ the jury came back with a verdict of ‘Guilty, of premeditated murder’…an’ they hung that elephant…as a deterrent to other elephants!”
At this point, Tim looked into the camera, shook his head back and forth, and rolled his eyes to heaven, all the while stifling a laugh.
I had a ball doing this to him!
“There was this pair of elephants.”
In the mid-seventies a close friend of mine asked me to attend a lecture at UCLA on parapsychology being given by a woman named Thelma Moss. She spoke about “Kirlian photography,” which claims to be able to photograph the “auras” of various plants and even inanimate objects such as coins. More interesting to me was the claim that this technique can photograph human auras. After her lecture, I was introduced to Ms. Moss, who asked me if I would take part in a little “experiment” in her lab at the university.
Sure, why not? I showed up at the appointed time the next day, and she said she was going to photograph my hand using the Kirlian method. She asked me to relax, and I placed my hand on a flat plate of some kind. A photograph was taken, and she showed me the results. There were shooting lights surrounding each finger. Okay…but what did that mean? Then she explained the experiment she had in mind.
“I want you to imagine some of the characters you portray when you do your show, and I’ll photograph them individually. Don’t tell me which ones you’re doing. Just write down the character’s name and the order in which their pictures are taken, so you’ll remember.” Okay. The first one I thought of doing was Eunice from the “Family” sketches. Ms. Moss said, “Try to conjure up the way you feel when you’re acting as the character…Take your time, and when you’re ready, place your hand on the plate.” I put myself in Eunice’s shoes, thinking of her frustrations and her temper tantrums and the constant disappointments in her life…and put my hand on the plate.
The next character I conjured up was Charo, the bubbly, outgoing, and happy Latin bombshell I often had fun doing. Hand on plate. Then I did Nora Desmond, the over-the-top crazy-as-a-loon silent screen movie star. Hand on plate.
Ms. Moss and I looked at the three photographs, and each one had totally different “auras” surrounding the fingers. Okay…but then she described each character’s personality and nailed each one. Looking at the Eunice photo, she said, “This is a very angry and sad person who is closed and hampered by her own doing.” (Eunice’s aura was close to her fingers, no “shooting lights” to be seen.)
She described the second character (Charo) as a free soul, happy and perhaps “musical.” Charo’s aura was shooting out all over the place.
Nora was described as someone who was somewhat “unhinged.” The fingers of her aura were uneven and kind of spikey.
Pretty amazing, huh?
Kirlian photography has been debunked by science, but it sure was a fun experiment.
I was practically raised in a movie theater. My dad managed a small one for a while in San Antonio, Texas. In April 1933, my mother was sitting in the back row, watching a second run of Rasputin and the Empress, when she went into labor with me. One of my first memories is sitting in the dark and watching cartoons when I was about three. When the grown-up movie started, Daddy would pick me up and I’d take a nap in his small office. Years later, in the 1940s, when I was living in Hollywood with Nanny, we would save our pennies and hit Hollywood Boulevard, sometimes seeing as many as eight movies a week! In those days, we would go to the “second-run” houses, where they would be showing a double feature, along with cartoons, newsreels, and coming attractions. (More bang for your buck.) Actually, the ticket prices were twelve cents for me (under twelve years old) and a quarter for Nanny IF we got in before the prices went up at 6:00 p.m. So, going to four theaters in one week…Bang! Eight movies! That was when I fell in love with the likes of James Stewart, Betty Grable, Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland, Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Humphrey Bogart, and Rita Hayworth, to name some favorites.
My best friend, Ilomay, and I would often pretend like we were these stars and act out the movies. Little did I dream that one day I’d have my own show and REALLY get to “act out” and lovingly satirize these films, complete with gorgeous costumes, sets, and a twenty-eight-piece orchestra, on television! Of course not! How could I? There was no television in those days!
Fast-forward to our variety show. It was a given that I’d want to send up the films I grew up on, plus others that impressed me as I got older.
I have to stress here that we never intended to satirize the actors personally, even though we would be dressed and made up to look like them, wigs and all. We only wanted to kid the movie itself, or the genre. However, there were a few actors who weren’t too happy with our takeoffs.
“Mildred Fierce” and “Torchy Song”
In 1976, we did a spoof of the famous Warner Bros. movie Mildred Pierce, starring Joan Crawford, for which she won an Academy Award in 1946. The original movie is the story of a hardworking mother, the long-suffering Mildred, who adores her selfish daughter, Veda, and spoils her rotten. Veda goads her mother about their lack of money, and in response, Mildred proposes opening a small restaurant, which disgusts Veda even more. Mildred is introduced to the oily Monte Beragon, a wealthy playboy. Mildred marries him for Veda’s sake even though she doesn’t love him.
The story is basically a triangle involving a loving mother, her two-timing husband, and her self-centered daughter, which leads to tragedy.
We called ours “Mildred Fierce” and stuck pretty close to the original screenplay. As Mildred, I wore a brunette wig and heavy black eyebrows made of real hair, which we glued on, and every outfit was fitted with huge shoulder pads just like those Joan Crawford wore in the movie. Harvey was a brilliantly smarmy Zachary Scott (Monte), and Vicki was equally brilliant as Mildred’s scheming money-hungry daughter, Veda, played by Ann Blyth in the film.
We open with Mildred in a police station confessing a murder she committed to the captain (Tim). She’s told to wait her turn because there’s an old lady ahead of her reporting her lost parakeet.
My glued-on “Joan Crawford” eyebrows were truly expressive.
The captain calls Mildred to his desk and she begins to tell her story…
In a flashback throughout the sketch, we see Mildred spoiling her “precious” daughter rotten. Veda rules the roost, and Mildred is a wimp where her daughter is concerned. Veda hates her mother and insults her at every turn.
At one point, determined to run away, Veda rifles through Mildred’s purse for money. “I belong in a mansion! I’m not hanging around this dump any longer!” Mildred pleads with her rotten daughter to stay, and before she walks out the door, Veda hauls off and slaps her mother silly.
MILDRED: (To herself, still reeling from the slap, but forever forgiving Veda) “I know a little girl who got out on the wrong side of the bed this morning!”
Enter Monte Slick (Harvey), a lecherous millionaire playboy who makes a play for Mildred.
MONTE: “Why don’t you come out to my beach house and I’ll show you the ocean.”
MILDRED: “I’ve seen the ocean, chum.”
MONTE: “Not my hunk of it.”
As Mildred asks him to leave, Veda returns wanting more money.
VEDA: “Honestly, Mother, these are only twenties!” (Seeing Monte, she lays on the sweetness) “Oh, hi, sir.”
MONTE: (Coming on to Veda) “Well hell-o! Don’t tell me this enchanting child is yours, Mrs. Fierce.”
MILDRED: “Yes, she is enchanting, isn’t she?”
Mildred introduces them. Veda is very impressed.
VEDA: “The Monte Slick? The irresponsible, lecherous playboy and owner of the Slick Mansion?”
MONTE: “In the glorious flesh.” (Turning to Mildred) “Let’s stop playing games. How about that little jaunt to my beach house?”
Mildred rebuffs his advances and Veda takes her mother aside.
VEDA: (Baby talk) “Mommy, you want your wittle baby Veda wif you forever, don’t you?”
MILDRED: “Of course I do! You know that, my darling!”
VEDA: “Well, this is your big chance, dimwit! This is your chance to get your wittle Veda a mansion and a beach house and furs and jewels…and a new daddy!”
MILDRED: (Stunned) “You mean…?”
VEDA: “That’s right. Marry this joker quick before he gets a real good look at you.”
Mildred thinks that wouldn’t be forthright because she doesn’t love Monte.
VEDA: “Mother, ‘forthright’ does not buy Ferraris!” (Bordering on a tantrum) “Can’t you just do me this one little favor?”
MILDRED: (Giving in) “All right. I’ll try.”
She turns back to Monte and says she’ll accept his invitation but that she “plays for keeps.”
MONTE: “Marriage?”
MILDRED: “Yes.”
MONTE: “One of those decent dames, eh?”
MILDRED: “You make ‘decent’ sound ‘indecent.’ ”
MONTE: “I can also make ‘indecent’…pretty ‘decent.’ But let’s get down to cases. You’re saying that no marriage, no beach house?”
MILDRED: “That’s right. No hanky, no panky.”
MONTE: “No contract, no contact?”
MILDRED: “No ring, no ring-a-ding-ding.”
Monte says marriage is not for him. Veda takes the bull by the horns and comes on to him.
VEDA:“I don’t blame you, Mr. Slick. You’d be taking on a wife AND a daughter…in the flower of her youth, both living there in the same mansion with you!”
Monte changes his mind. This is a great suggestion. As he hugs Mildred, he reaches over her shoulder and plants a kiss on Veda.
Time passes, and Mildred, now a rich and successful businesswoman, returning home to the beach house, discovers Monte and Veda in a passionate embrace. Veda hits Mildred with the news that she and Monte are in love and will marry after he gets a divorce! Humiliated, Mildred accepts this news and exits, saying, “All right. I don’t need a brick to fall on my head.” As she’s walking out the door, a brick falls on her head.
