It was all simple enough. “When I squeeze your shoulder, you say your lines,” explained Joey Bishop, as he applied the pressure to make sure there was no misunderstanding. We were on stage for a rehearsal for the comedy skit I was to participate in that evening, April 17, 1967. It was a big deal, the premiere of the comedian’s new late night TV program on ABC to compete with Johnny Carson on NBC. It would be broadcast live later that evening to the east coast from the ABC Vine Street studios in Hollywood, then delayed for airing on the west coast three hours later, which was customary.
I was 13 years old going on 14, a seventh grader at Emerson Junior High School in West L.A. I got the day off school, and had told all my classmates what was going on. Several of them assured me that they would ask their parents for permission to stay up late to watch me.
Guests on the show were then-California Governor Ronald Reagan, Danny Thomas and Debbie Reynolds. A very young Regis Philbin was his announcer and sidekick. At the time Joey was pretty hot stuff, coming off a sitcom where he played a fictional talk show host. He was also a card-carrying member of Frank Sinatra’s Rat Pack, which was the essence of cool before the Beatles took a sledgehammer to early 1960s chic.
My father was Joey’s agent—and however it happened, I was suggested for this part. I don’t think I was hired for my looks—whatever cuteness I had as a young child evaporated into the ugly-duckling-ness of a pre-pubescent. I was chubby, a mild stutterer, a nail biter and had mastered the art of the annoying kind of attention-thirsty, sometimes sarcastic comedic interrupting that amused an audience of one (myself). Adding to this unattractiveness was a raccoon mask of freckles and scalp of unruly cowlicks that made my short brown hair a tempest. It is not an easy age to be even if your self-esteem happened to be high.
I was dressed in an uncomfortable suit and given fake horned rimmed glasses to wear, along with a headset and a clipboard as props. I was in the role of Joey’s producer. Next up were three chimpanzees portraying Joey’s writers. Needless to say, it was hardly highbrow comedy. Maybe that’s why hardly anyone under the age of 50 or 60 today remembers Joey Bishop. The show that I acted on that night was eventually canceled after two seasons because of low ratings, replaced by the better-remembered Dick Cavett.
My spoken part consisted of two sentences. “Thank you, Mr. Bishop. I’m glad to be aboard.” For that, I would get a scale payment of $254 (which was a lot of money back then) and who knows, maybe a big shot at a whole new career. Show business was, after all, in my blood.
My first contact with real stardom happened very early on in my life while still swimming inside my mother. My mother Florence and my fetal self were guests on the set at Paramount Studios of Alfred Hitchcock’s classic thriller Rear Window. Her sister, stage name Sara Berner (or Aunt Lil as she was known to us), was a character actress and voice artist. In that film, Aunt Lil was the neighbor who lowered the little dog in a pulley drawn basket from the upstairs balcony to do its business in the yard. The villain Lars Thorwall played by Raymond Burr got upset with the dog, not because of peeing on his petunias but because it was sniffing around where its nose had no business (where we think he buried his wife’s butchered remains). My aunt let out a harrowing scream every film buff remembers as she pulled up the basket to find a dead dog in it. She did dozens of voices for Warner Brothers’ Merrie Melodies/Looney Toons, including the stuttering Petunia Pig, plus many more. Her amazing versatility in doing accents and animal-like voices made her a much in demand actor on radio during its golden age. She was notably as a cast member in the Jack Benny radio and television shows as the ditsy telephone switchboard operator Gertrude Gearshift who listened in on everybody’s conversations. In one of the television episodes, she has a great scene with Humphrey Bogart that still holds up well on YouTube.
Aunt Lil was an early wake up call about the perils of show business. She was always working. My understanding was that she developed a bit of an amphetamine habit to keep herself going with a demanding schedule. She ended up burning a lot of bridges behind her. My cousins also told me that she had a drinking problem as well, recounting a nightmarish weekend babysitting experience under her care when she was on a bender. She was always nice to me but her energy was very intense just like that woman on the balcony. So I kept a cautious distance from her.
Fascinated and disturbed is a good way of describing how I felt growing up in and around the entertainment industry of the 1950s and 1960s. I can only count on one hand the number of famous people I had met that seemed to be a real mensch (or a decent, caring, loving human being). One was most certainly Danny Thomas, one of my father’s biggest clients, the actor/singer who went on to be an industry mogul in the first decades of television. He started St. Jude’s Hospital in Memphis to fulfill a promise he made in his prayers to do something for children if he ever made it in show business. The highlight of my childhood was his annual Christmas parties. He treated kids with heart as real people and not as bothersome flies to be shushed away.
What I found particularly loathsome were the gatherings each weekend poolside at our home. Over would come aspiring actors mostly who wanted to be friends with my father in the hopes that good fortune would directly come their way. I became a pawn in that game and I learned by the time I was four years old not to trust any of them farther than I could throw a nickel. “I’ll take you flying in my airplane” and the like they would promise me to gain favor but never deliver. Don’t hold your breath.
One of the most colorful, authentic and more winsome regular guests was Gypsy Boots, an actor and early health food pioneer who would always come over with a big crate of fresh fruits, vegetables, funky-tasting food bars and juices to give us. He was a hippie before anyone knew of such a thing and is said to have inspired a major hit song, Nature Boy, by Nat King Cole in 1948. He was a big personality, full of vitality and enthusiasm. My father was hardly into healthy foods at the time, so I could never put two and two together why he appeared a couple of Saturday afternoons each month over the years. But some message must have stuck with me because so I would surprisingly morph into a teenaged and young adult version of him, a long-haired vegetarian myself.
The appearance on The Joey Bishop Show was not my first attempt at a career in front of the camera. Sometime around 1958, my mother took me to an audition for a Crest toothpaste commercial when I was still cute. I remember being in a line of other cute children and mothers. We were instructed to run down a long hallway, stop at a desk at the end and say with boundless enthusiasm, “Look Mom, no cavities.” I did not get the part. My mother decided that she had better use of her time than to do this ever again.
There were hours to go between my rehearsal and show time. Never before in my short life had the clock moved slower. I took a walk down Vine Street past the Brown Derby and got a roast beef sandwich at Arby’s across the street, which was not greeted well by a nervous stomach. Back at the studio, I paced the hallways, rehearsing my lines, experimenting with various inflections, trying out a pause here or there for more dramatic effect.
Finally, the studio came to life. There was music from Johnny Mann and his orchestra to warm up the audience. A producer came to get me and waited with me until it was time to find my taped mark on the stage and do my job.
I walked out as instructed, and Joey Bishop came and stood next to me. Addressing the audience, he played it for all it was worth as he introduced me as his brilliant young producer. He then squeezed my shoulder. He squeezed it again. And maybe he did it a third time. “Well, ladies and gentlemen, he’s a little choked up!”
I can’t really explain why it happened, but I became completely paralyzed for a few moments. I couldn’t see the audience but could hear their laughter at my incompetence. All I saw was darkness permeated by the red light on top of the camera in front of me. My brother David recalls that Joey gave me a consoling hug when he realized that I had bombed. Before I was hustled off the stage, I did mutter a rushed and probably slurred version of “thank-you-Mr.-Bishop-I’m-glad-to-be-aboard.” Fortunately, no tape exists of this debacle, so I don’t know for sure.
As I recovered backstage, dejected and humiliated at the thought of having to go to school the next day and suffer the ridicule of my classmates, Regis Philbin came up to me. “Hey, sonny, you did a great job. It was much funnier the way you did it!” Decades later, I thanked him for helping pick me off the floor. He not only remembered doing that, but seemed to have a photographic memory of the rest of the skit and the whole evening.
Just like that, the door to stardom slammed shut, but thinking about all the unhappy show business people I had met, not to mention the screwed up child stars, I think it was the hand of caring guardian angel who said, “Son, the performing life is not for you.” The kids at school next day were miraculously benevolent. I cashed the check. I didn’t look back.