Eighty Is Not Enough: One Actor's Journey Through American Entertainment (8 page)

I was twelve years old when my aunts took me to an America First rally at Madison Square Garden in 1941. I still recall the impassioned speech of an actor named Eddie Bracken, who clearly believed his outspoken support of the movement would destroy his career. That night he told the Garden crowd: “I’ll never work again.” But the cause, he insisted, was important enough that he was willing to make the sacrifice. As it turns out, Bracken did work again and actually had his biggest hit film,
The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek
, only a few years later in 1944. He continued to have a successful career, ultimately receiving two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. But that night, he definitely felt he was putting his career in jeopardy, and regardless of whether his position was ultimately correct—and I believe it was not—he, nevertheless, followed his conscience.

Coincidentally, years later, I worked with Eddie on an episode of the
The New Dick Van Dyke Show
. He was a very nice man, and I was tempted to mention having seen him at the Garden, but I decided against it.

Several months after
The American Way
opened, Hitler invaded Poland. I recall the massive headlines announcing the invasion. With the start of the war, the questions raised by Moss Hart when he first drafted the play had now become even more relevant to the audiences at the Center Theater, who, like everyone, struggled with the question of whether or not to take up arms in Europe.

Even at age ten, I understood that this play, like
The Eternal Road
, was something more than just entertainment. It was clear that theater could actually affect people’s lives. I imagine Fredric March understood exactly that when he told me to get my mind off the boxing match and on the play. There were important things happening in the world, and a play like
The American Way
became a part of the public conversation about those events. In its own way, it helped to shape the manner in which people understood the world that seemed to be crashing in on them. Looking back, I realize that this was theater at its best.

But, of course, I was still a kid. And foremost on my mind in early 1939 was not impending war, but the arrival of the New York World’s Fair. In fact, everyone awaited with great anticipation the Grand Opening on April 30, 1939. President Franklin Roosevelt inaugurated the fair by delivering one of the first televised speeches ever, viewed by some two-hundred people with televisions sets in the New York area. The fair was also a source of work in the Depression, and a lot of the kids on
The American Way
left for better pay in a play called
The American Jubilee
, at the World’s Fair.

The fair was held at Corona Park in Flushing Meadow, Queens—the same location as the 1965 fair. That was just a short distance from our home in Kew Gardens, and after school let out, I went to the fair nearly every day. My favorite place was the Amusement Area where each day they put on different shows.

For some reason I’ve always had an odd attraction to the bizarre. And there was plenty of that at the fair. As often as possible, I would go see Olga, the Headless Girl. They said Olga had been in a train crash, lost her head, and miraculously was still living without it. They even had a giant picture of the train wreck. There wasn’t much to the show—just Olga sitting there with a tube coming out of her neck.

It may be that Olga really did have a head, but they sure fooled me. I honestly believed it was true; that this girl was living without a head. It sounds crazy, but it looked absolutely real. Years later a magician told me it was all done with mirrors. If so, that was some trick. It was so convincing that I never missed a chance to see headless Olga at the fair.

My other favorite exhibit would be considered tasteless today—and properly so. It was the Midget Village—an entire miniature town, with houses and everything, where little people lived. At the time, it simply didn’t occur to me that this was cruel or insensitive. Again, it appealed to my penchant for oddities, something that has stayed with me my whole life.

On a typical day I hustled from Olga to the Midget Village and then to the Parachute Jump, where they raised you 250 feet in the air with your feet dangling, and then dropped you like a rock. The plummet was an incredible rush. Today with bungee jumping, skydiving, soldiers parachuting from airplanes, and swat teams rappelling down the sides of buildings, the Parachute Jump may not seem so extraordinary. But in 1939 nobody had ever heard of anything like a free-fall from the sky in a parachute. In fact, on opening day of the fair, the Parachute Jump generated its own controversy when the pulleys malfunctioned, and a young couple was stuck at the top for seven hours. The next day there was a picture on the front page of the
Daily News
of the terrified lovers. After the World’s Fair ended, they moved the Parachute Jump to Coney Island, and I used to take the plunge over there as often as possible.

I also loved Billy Rose’s Aquacade, which starred Rose’s wife, Eleanor Holm. The show was performed in a tremendous pool. At the outset, the pool was empty. Then, suddenly, it filled with water. At the same time some fifteen girls suddenly appeared in the pool. Everyone was amazed, wondering how they all got in there. Later I learned the girls entered from trap doors placed underneath the pool. The women performed synchronized swimming, which would become popular in a series of MGM films in the 1940s starring Esther Williams.

For me, the world’s greatest comedians were Abbott and Costello. They also performed at the 1939 World’s Fair, in a show called
Streets of Paris
. I was just eleven, and Bud and Lou were not yet famous. In fact, their very first movie,
A Night in the Tropics
, came a year later in 1940, and top billing actually went to the leading man, Allan Jones, who had worked with The Marx Brothers in
Night at the Opera
. In
Streets of Paris
, Abbott and Costello were billed only as “radio sensations.” But their ascent to the top had just begun, and a year later in Buck Private, a war movie, they exploded into national stardom.

Their rise began with a Broadway version of
Streets of Paris
—as things turned out that production at the Broadhurst Theater would be their only Broadway show. It was only modestly successful on Broadway, but then they were hired to do four shows a day at the World’s Fair. The fair had become such a tremendous event that all the entertainers were trying to get in it.

Streets of Paris
was essentially a burlesque, and it co-starred the famous stripper Gypsy Rose Lee. It also had Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, the wonderful dance partner of Shirley Temple. I used to hear the barker yell out: “Come and see the world’s funniest comedy team and ten beautiful girls with nothing on but a great big smile.” I was dying to get in, but I was underage. I thought about trying to sneak in, but never got past the barker. Anyway, it whetted my appetite to see these two new comics.

Ten years later, I would come to know Lou Costello personally, mostly because of our mutual penchant for a good card game. After
Streets of Paris
, Lou moved to Hollywood to pursue his movie career. But he often returned to New York, and in the 1950s, he would call me up and ask if I could put together a game of cards. I would immediately round up a bunch of guys, and we headed to Lou’s suite at the Essex House where we played all night. Lou was a serious player, and he was in every pot. For me, win or lose, I was just happy to be around the man who was, in my view, the funniest comedian in America.

You get to know people pretty well at the poker table. But, in all the time I spent with Lou Costello, I never once saw any evidence of the deep tragedy he carried with him through most of his adult life. It was a well-known story. The whole country seemed to be in shock when Lou’s first child, Lou Jr., drowned in their swimming pool a few days short of his first birthday. What compounded the shock, and mystified many, was that Lou insisted on going on air that night for the regular broadcast of
The Abbott and Costello
radio show. I remember listening to the program, and like everyone else, I noticed nothing out of the ordinary. Lou seemed to be his regular hilarious self.

When it was over, Lou left the studio, and Bud Abbott took the mike and told the audience he had some personal comments. Bud then informed millions of radio listeners that Lou’s child had died earlier in the day. It was one of those moments you never forget—like a presidential assassination or the moon landing. In her book,
Lou’s on First
, Lou’s daughter, Chris Costello, provides a moving account of the whole day, including Abbott’s speech. Bud explained: “Ladies and Gentlemen, now that the program is over, and we have done our best to entertain you I would like to take a moment to pay tribute to my best friend, and to a man who has more courage than I have ever seen displayed in the theater. Tonight the old expression, ‘The show must go on’ was brought home to us on this program more clearly than ever before. Just a short time before this broadcast started, Lou Costello was told that his baby son—who would have been one year old in a couple of days—had died.”

Through the years I’ve heard people wonder how in the world Lou could have performed that night. His son had just died. It seemed inconceivable that anyone could perform, much less perform comedy, under such circumstances. But Bud Abbott explained after the broadcast that Lou performed so that “you, the audience, would not be disappointed.” I’m sure there is much truth in that. Lou was the consummate professional. As Fredric March taught me, the show is the important thing.

At the same time, I wonder if there might have been some small relief for Lou in stepping away, if only momentarily, from the crushing reality that must have overwhelmed him on that terrible day. Afterwards, Lou’s celebrity status continued rising, as he made over twenty-five films in the fifteen years after his son’s death. And in the contact we had in those all-night card games at the Essex House, I never saw any sign of depression or lingering sadness. But it was always present. His daughter, Chris, tells us that, for Lou, the child’s death “clouded everything else he did for the rest of his life.” As the father of three boys, I have no doubt that’s true.

Lou Costello came from Paterson, New Jersey, and today there is a statue downtown in Costello Park. Lou richly deserves it.

I loved the Polo Grounds. Home of the New York Giants baseball team, it had one of America’s greatest sporting traditions dating back to the days of John McGraw, Leo Durocher, later Willie Mays and finally the New York Mets who, in the early 1960s, played their first three seasons there while awaiting the construction of Shea Stadium.

On a chilly December day, I went to see the Dodgers and Giants with my Grandfather’s brother, Uncle Mickey, and my cousins, Donald, Richard and Renee. Younger sports fans might be wondering why those two great New York baseball rivals would be playing in December. But old-time New Yorkers will recall that there were actually two professional football teams in New York City, and they were also named the Dodgers and the Giants. The Giants, of course, still play in Giant Stadium across the river in New Jersey’s Meadowlands, but the Brooklyn Dodgers football franchise closed in 1944.

We were sitting in the upper deck of the Polo Grounds that afternoon, and I honestly don’t remember who won the game. But when it ended, it took a few minutes for us to make our way out of the stadium and into the streets of Harlem. When we emerged, we were immediately struck by a tremendous excitement out on the streets. Above the din, newspaper vendors were shouting in that distinctive voice unique to their trade: “Extree! Extree! Read all about it! America bombed by the Japanese!”

Like everyone there, we wanted a newspaper. But it wasn’t so easy. For the first and only time in my life, I saw a massive line of people trying to buy one as they exited the Polo Grounds and heard the news. I doubt many people there had even heard of Pearl Harbor—I know I hadn’t. But as we waited in line it became more and more clear that the Japanese had attacked us. I was two days short of my thirteenth birthday, and while I didn’t comprehend the full import of the news—nor did anyone else at the time—I did realize that the debate over the conflict had now been decided by the enemy: the United States would be entering the war. The next day we huddled around the radio at home and once again listened anxiously as the familiar voice of Franklin Roosevelt explained that the day before “was a day that will live in infamy.”

I’ve mentioned how my maternal aunts Lucille and Beatrice had taken me to an
America First
rally at Madison Square Garden where a number of celebrities, including actor Eddie Bracken, had opposed our involvement in the Second World War. Coming from an Italian family, many of whom had been brought up in immigrant communities along the Lower East Side, there were strong feelings among some family members against involvement in a war that might pit us against Italy and potentially in a fight against family members still back in Potenza. As
The American Way
had shown, these divided feelings run deep in a country of immigrants.

But the attack on Pearl Harbor put an end to that. Much like what occurred in the aftermath of September 11, 2001, most of the country put its differences aside and united in a joint cause against the Japanese military dictators as well as the European Fascists. Regrettably, not everyone acted perfectly as actions were taken by the government against Japanese Americans, who were interned in California. Notwithstanding this, the country was united as never before.