“Is that _all_ I have to do?”
Yuk-yuk-yuk. “No. You also have to pitch all your potential contestants on the ’58 Oldsmobile line. And no jigaboos or beatniks, Dick. I run a clean family show”
“I’ll do it if you throw in two hundred a week.”
“A hundred and fifty, but off-the-books with no withholding.”
I stuck my hand out.
* * *
Work:
The Oldsmobile Dealers Convention at the downtown Statler. Dig it: five hundred car hucksters and a busload of hookers chaperoned by a V.D. doctor. Bob Yeakel opened for me–shtick featuring “Peaches, The Drag Queen With An Overbite.” Chris Staples sang, “You Belong to Me,” and “Baby, Baby, All the Time”–Yeakel ogled her and cracked jokes about her “Tail Fins.” I killed the booze-fried crowd with a forty-minute set and closed with the “Rocket to Stardom” theme song.
Work:
Birthday parties–Cisco Andrade’s son, Mickey Cohen’s niece. The Cisco gig was East L.A. SRO–Mex fighters and their families wowed by Dick Contino as “Chucko the Birthday Clown.” Degrading?–yeah–but the guests shot me close to a C-note in tips. The Cohen job was more swank: a catered affair at Mickey’s pad. Check the guest list: Lana Turner and Johnny Stompanato, Mike Romanoff, Moe Dalitz, Meyer Lansky, Julius La Rosa, and the Reverend Wesley Swift–who explained that Jesus Christ was an Aryan, not a Jew, and that _Mein Kampf_ was the lost book of the Bible. No gratuities, but Johnny Stomp kicked loose two dozen cases of Gerber’s Baby Food–he bankrolled a fur van hijack, and his guys hit the wrong truck.
Work–long days at the Yeakel Olds lot.
I called the girls in to help me: Leigh, Chrissy, Nancy Ankrum, Kay Van Obst. Word spread quick: Mr. Accordion and female coterie LIVE at Oldsmobile showroom!
We bullshitted with browsers and referred hard prospects to salesmen; we spritzed the ’58 Olds line-up non-stop. We grilled burgers on a hibachi and fed the mechanics and Bud Brown and his repo crew.
Nancy, Kay and Leigh screened “Rocket to Stardom” applicants–I wanted to weed out the more egregious geeks before I began formal auditions. Bob Yeakel drooled whenever Chris Staples slinked by–I convinced him to put her on payroll as my assistant. Grateful Chrissy gave Bob a thank-you gift: her _Nugget Magazine_ fold-out preserved via laminated wall plaque.
My Yeakel run nine days in: a righteous fucking blast.
Nine days sans “Draft Dodger” jive–some kind of Contino world record.
We held auditions in a tent behind the lube rack; Bud Brown stood watchdog to keep obvious lunatics out. The girls had compiled a list: forty-odd individuals and acts to be winnowed down to six spots per show
Our first finalist: an old geezer who sang grand opera. I asked him to belt a few bars of _Pagliacci_; he said that he possessed the world’s largest penis. He whipped it out before I could comment– it was of average length and girth. Chrissy applauded anyway–she said it reminded her of her ex-husband’s.
Bud hustled the old guy out. Pops was gone–but he’d set a certain tone.
Check this sampling:
Two roller skating bull terriers–sharklike dogs with plastic fins attached to their backs. Their master was a Lloyd Bridges lookalike–the whole thing was a goof on the TV show “Sea Hunt.”
Nix.
An off-key woman accordionist who tried to slip me her phone number with Leigh right there.
Nix.
A comic with patter on Ike’s golf game–epic Snoresville.
Nix.
A guy who performed silk scarf tricks. Deft and boring: he cinched sashes into hangman’s knots.
Nix.
Over two dozen male and female vocalists: flat, screechy, shrill, hoarse–dud Presley and Patti Page would-be’s.
A junkie tenor sax, who nodded out halfway through a flubbednote “Body and Soul.” Bud Brown dumped him in a demo car; the fucker woke up convulsing and kicked the windshield out. Chrissy summoned an ambulance; the medics hustled the hophead off.
I confronted Nancy. She said, “You should have seen the ones that _didn’t_ make the cut. I wish the ‘West Hollywood Whipcord’ had a viable talent–it would be fun to put him on the show”
Only Nancy found sash cord strangling/bumperjack bashing fiends alluring.
I braced Bud Brown. “Bud, the show’s forty-eight hours off, and we’ve got nobody.”