How I Got This Way (6 page)

Chapter Six

SYDNEY OMARR

A
ll right, as you can probably tell by now, my path has intersected with people who not only impressed, delighted, or inspired me—there have also been those who’ve just plain amazed me. Maybe looming larger than any other in that category was the late remarkable astrologer Sydney Omarr, whose name is still revered in the mysterious realm of reading the stars via charts and birth dates, numerology, and mystical powers. He was a man who would later tell me things that guys like me should never begin to know!

Anyway, as you’re well aware, that plug in the Winchell column did not go unnoticed. And flattered as I was, I also sensed that my life was in for some dramatic changes, probably much sooner than later. I mean, the great Winchell himself had suggested so very boldly that I was ready for bigger things than my beloved little Saturday-night talkfest in quiet San Diego. And though, frankly, a part of me didn’t want to believe it—not just yet, anyway—next there would actually come a glowing review of our Saturday show in no less than the showbiz bible
Variety,
as written by correspondent Don Freeman. (Yes, that would be the same Don Freeman who wrote for the
San Diego Union-Tribune
and whom I’d long admired, even if I never did muster up the courage to talk to him when I first had the chance!) So within a span of just months, I found myself headed to Hollywood to take over the nightly show started by the great and inventive Steve Allen. My debut had been set for the second Monday in October 1964. Here at last—because I had yearned for this moment as much as I’d sort of feared it—was the first truly huge break of my career. It would end up being a break that came and went so fast, nobody ever remembers it. But I, of course, would never forget it, as hard as I may have tried over the years.

For sure, nothing about this supposedly exciting new show resembled anything I’d done in San Diego. No, this was the big time, and suddenly I had a full staff (as opposed to relying solely on myself and my director friend Tom Battista, as I had done before). The staff included producers, talent bookers, and production assistants as well as two writers to load me up with monologue jokes. Well, honest to God, I’d never told a joke on camera in my life! I had always just come out, sat on a stool, and shared whatever stories had captured my fancy during the week. Plus, in San Diego we aired live, which meant I could talk about various things that had virtually just happened hours earlier. But now, for some reason, this new show ran on
a two-week tape delay
. (In those days that’s how syndicated programs worked.) No joke writer alive could come up with material that would feel topical or fresh under those circumstances. My television career had always been about immediacy—and now I had to operate in a strange time warp.

And if that wasn’t bad enough, Westinghouse had only aligned a grand total of thirteen stations around the country to run the show, which meant we never really had a chance to begin with. But none of us knew that at the time.

Well, I take that back.

One person knew.

And he would make it very clear during the first national broadcast of what the decision makers had jazzily titled
That Regis Philbin Show
. In case you haven’t guessed, I’m referring to Sydney Omarr. What’s really wild about it all is that he appeared at my own request. I thought it would be fun for our debut airing—plus original and kind of risky—to have an astrologer come out and forecast the future of the show. So we booked Sydney, whose syndicated horoscope column was a staple in newspapers from coast to coast. And on opening night, out he came to give me his reading. I’d supplied him with all of my birth data to work with. And now he was sitting next to me—my very first guest on my first national program. I was quite excited at the prospect of what he would predict.

“So tell me, Sydney,” I said. “Win or lose, how are we going to do?” Sydney fixed a haunted gaze on me and said, “This show will fail. There’s a fight going on right now behind the scenes as to what direction the show should go. It will not become your show. Others will take it from you. You won’t make it.”

Well, this had to be an all-time first for an opening segment of a brand-new show. I was, to say the least, humbled and disturbed. But in my heart I knew he was probably right. It just wasn’t the same kind of show format for me. I’d already more than sensed that the top brass wanted me to be an altogether different personality than the one they’d discovered in San Diego. Sydney was exhorting me—right on the spot—to take control, to make the show mine, but I didn’t know how. And furthermore, it wasn’t my decision to make. During a commercial break, he asked if he could see me alone after we were done taping—as if what he had already said wasn’t painful enough. And that was when he steadily informed me that the next few years would be the worst period of my life. There would be ongoing drastic changes all around me. In fact, he said, the earth would literally move under my feet. What he was telling me was simply incomprehensible.

Nevertheless, we were renewed after our first thirteen weeks, which came as a very happy surprise. And the patience and loyalty of Chet Collier, my executive producer and Westinghouse’s key man on the show, were equally uplifting. He’d seen enough of my work in San Diego to believe in my potential. With the renewal, my confidence once again climbed, if not exactly soared. I felt like maybe we did have a chance, after all. The shows were definitely getting better and better. Feeling just a little bit cocky, I even asked for Omarr to come back. I wanted to hear what he thought now. So he returned, and I said to him, “Sydney, much of what you said was true. We did have storms. We did have some terrible times. But now we’ve been renewed. We’re getting better. I see blue sky ahead. What do you see?”

And Sydney looked at me, his expression dark and soulful, and told me, “I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings every time I’m with you, but this show is going off the air within forty-eight hours.”

I winced. How could this possibly be true? This time even the great Sydney Omarr had to be wrong. Somehow we got through the rest of the broadcast. Two days later—actually it was thirty-six hours later—I got the call from Chet, whose voice dripped with gloom. “What is it, Chet?” I remember asking. “Did Henry Fonda drop out?” He was slated to be our top guest that night. Instead, Chet asked me to immediately get over to the Beverly Hills Hotel, where the Westinghouse brain trust had all convened. I rushed over there, and in no time flat, they lowered the boom. We’d been canceled. I was out. They wanted to go in “a different direction”—that notorious phrase that spells certain doom in show business—this time with Merv Griffin. And that was that. Omarr had nailed it from the get-go and reconfirmed it just two days earlier. It was a struggle to get through the show that night, knowing we were dead in the water. My friend Tom Battista was in the audience. I didn’t have a chance to talk to him before the show, but one look at my face, and he knew immediately it was over for me. That’s how it started for Merv and how it almost ended forever for me.

Worse yet, the rest of Sydney Omarr’s predictions came true, too. Personally and professionally, I was in the dumper. In those days, new talk shows were few and far between. It wouldn’t be easy to get another show during the next few years, and further, there would be one personal crisis after another. My brave son, Dan, was born with complicated congenital anomalies, and my failing marriage to his mother, with whom I’d already had a wonderful daughter named Amy, finally ended. And as for the earth moving under my feet? That happened, too. In February of 1968, it rained for two straight weeks in Los Angeles. Day and night, it was a heavy, unrelenting downpour. It wouldn’t let up. I had a home on a hillside overlooking Universal City, and during one of those rainy days, half of the backyard slid down the canyon. City officials ordered the house evacuated, and when I couldn’t pay the bills to shore up the property, I lost the house entirely. No, wait a minute, the city of Los Angeles paid one dollar for the house and what was left of the lot. And I took it. Yes, old Sydney had seen it all, a little too clearly, I’m afraid.

But there’s one more Sydney Omarr prediction I need to share with you. It happened on the final broadcast of
The Joey Bishop Show
in 1969. Joey had left the show a few weeks earlier, and a variety of people pinch-hit for him as the remaining weeks wound down. I also hosted now and again during those final weeks, which included the very last broadcast we ever did. And for that particular farewell show, guess who I asked to be booked as a guest? Sydney Omarr. I figured,
Why not? What else could happen to me?
As usual, I asked him about the future, then braced myself—out of habit at this point! And Sydney proceeded to stun me once again, but in an altogether new way. He said, “You will become a household name in America. Your name will be known everywhere. You will have great success.”

Well, this was more than I had hoped for. Now I really got excited. Sydney Omarr with good news? What could be more of a pleasant shock? Naturally, my next question was “When, Sydney? When?” He proceeded to tell me that it wouldn’t happen right away, that it would take some time.

“That’s okay,” I said. “I can wait. But how long will it take? Six months? A year? Two?” And he looked right into my eyes and said, “It will take twenty years.”

“Twenty years?”
I screamed. Murderers get out of prison faster than that! Twenty years might as well have been forever! Twenty years would never come, I figured.

“That’s what I see,” said Omarr with certain resolve. But keep this in mind: His two-decade pronouncement was made in December of 1969. In September of 1988, our local New York morning show had just gone national. And although Regis Philbin and Kathie Lee Gifford might not have been household names by 1989, we were well on our way to making that twenty-year prediction come true. Anyway, we were close enough. Omarr, I’m sure, was very proud of himself.

Chapter Seven

CARY GRANT

T
hroughout my fifty years of hosting talk shows, I’ve been lucky enough to get to know and chat with so many unforgettable show business greats, some of them bigger than big—icons whose work will live on forever. Though I never did get that chance with one of my all-time favorites: Cary Grant.

But it’s not like we didn’t try.

And by
we,
I’m really referring to a young man named Marshall Lichterman, who came into my life the day I returned to Hollywood in 1964 to host that ill-fated Westinghouse show. Marshall Lichterman was a holdover from Steve Allen’s staff. And although he was really just a kid starting out by doing various mundane tasks around the office, he had somehow become a great fan of mine. So on that first day, he asked if there was anything—
anything!
—he could do for me. . . . For instance, was there any particular guest I wanted him to get for the show, never mind that the talent-booking process wasn’t even remotely part of his job! But he was so sincere, so earnest, so unbelievably
persuasive
that I couldn’t resist. I thought,
Okay, why not give this hungry kid a chance to show me what he’s got?

“Marshall,” I said, probably only half seriously, “let’s just shoot for the moon. Let’s get the one guy who has never done a television interview. Let’s get Cary Grant! I love all of his movies, I love him—he’s simply the best there is. So, Marshall, I want you to go get him!”

Why, you may wonder, had I instantly thought of Cary Grant as the perfect target? Well, besides having never seen him in an interview situation, he had made an enormous impact on me in one of the first films I ever saw as a kid,
Gunga Din
. A classic among classics, this movie featured Grant as one of three fearless, brawling, hell-raising sergeants in the British Army stationed in India during the nineteenth century. But moreover, it was also the story of a young water carrier for their troops who wanted desperately to be a soldier, too. And Grant and the actor Sam Jaffe, who beautifully portrayed this water carrier named Gunga Din, had a wonderful chemistry together on-screen.

The movie was actually based on an epic poem by Rudyard Kipling. At the film’s great climax, Gunga Din saved the British troops when he climbed to the top of a tower and blew a trumpet to warn them of an impending ambush. Of course, in that moment, Gunga Din became the most important soldier of them all. But earlier in the film, we would see that while the troops were going through their afternoon drills at the base, Din would hide behind the barracks to privately simulate answering all the same commands. He wanted to be something more than he was—he wanted to be a soldier, a good one. One afternoon, the sergeant Grant was playing spied Din doing this and began giving him the same set of commands that the troops had been answering during those drills. Din was proud to demonstrate perfectly all the correct moves he had studied. Then finally Grant’s character brought him to “attention,” and Din snapped off a proper military salute to the sergeant, who complimented him in that crisp cockney accent Grant was so well known for,
“Very regimental, Din, very regimental!”
For many years afterward I would quietly repeat Grant’s bolstering line to myself, usually when something I’d done had gone well; it always made me feel better. Anyway, the sergeant then walked away, while Din stiffened even more so and held firm his salute with a triumphant smile, clearly pleased to have impressed this dashing role model. He was, in effect, a soldier at last. Of course, those who know the film’s dramatic ending recall that, after trumpeting the warning to save his “fellow” soldiers from attack, Din was shot down off that tower and fell to his death. Before the final credits rolled, a key portion of Kipling’s poem was recited:

Tho’ I’ve belted you an’ flayed you,

By the livin’ Gawd that made you,

You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din!

Very moving, very touching. I never forgot it.

And that was my earliest introduction to Cary Grant, whose career continued to dazzle me throughout his parade of terrific movies over the decades—
His Girl Friday,
The Philadelphia Story,
Penny Serenade,
Suspicion,
Arsenic and Old Lace,
My Favorite Wife,
Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House,
An Affair to Remember,
Indiscreet,
North by Northwest,
and so on. I loved them all, but mostly I loved the way he talked, the way he walked, the charm he exuded. Whenever I stepped out of a theater after any Cary Grant movie, I felt just for a moment—as did so many other men—like I too was Cary Grant. And it was always a great feeling—while it lasted, anyway. (As it is, I’ve always been accused—especially by a certain cohost named Kelly “Pippa” Ripa—of trying to sound just like Cary Grant every time I attempt a British accent. I guess that’s how huge an impression he made on me, okay?)

But now I was in Hollywood, about to launch into my biggest break to date. And here before me was this intent and purposeful kid, Marshall Lichterman, swearing how he would get my new show off to a great start and bring me Cary Grant. It was fate, I thought. Marshall vowed that Cary Grant would be ours! He so eagerly wanted to prove himself to me that, by God, he actually began to remind me of Gunga Din!

The next day he reported that he’d been able to secure Mr. Grant’s phone number. And that he called it. And that he in fact had gotten the great movie star on the line! Well, that’s when I found myself both shocked and also very excited. And seeing my excitement, Marshall was by now beside himself. He said, “I told Mr. Grant that this was a brand-new TV show and Mr. Philbin is the new host and his very first request was for an appearance by Cary Grant.” First of all, I couldn’t believe this young kid was able to get Cary Grant on the phone, much less actually talk to him. But somehow it happened. Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to get Grant to commit to the interview. Though Marshall did say that they had a nice talk and that Mr. Grant was very charming. Well, I could see the handwriting on the wall, so I said, “Nice try, Marshall, but I think we should move on to someone else.”

But Marshall didn’t want to hear that. He would not give up. He needed to show me, to totally impress me!
Hello, Gunga Din!
So apparently he called Cary Grant the next day and practically every day for the next two weeks—and Grant was always charming but remained noncommittal. Of course, I didn’t realize that Marshall’s pursuit of Cary Grant had continued for as long as it did. When I found out, I was totally embarrassed. Even mortified. “You simply cannot call Cary Grant ever again!” I told him. “You must cease and desist!”

But even after my little tirade, I couldn’t help myself: I simply had to ask Marshall, “Just between us, what did he sound like? What did he say during all those calls? Did he ever get annoyed that you kept after him so relentlessly?”

“No,” Marshall said. “He never got angry. He always remained charming and patient but firm. And over and over again, he would explain that he just never gave interviews because he feared he would be a terrible guest. He would say, ‘Now, please, Marshall, please—explain that to Mr. Philbin and tell him that I wish him the very best for his new show and the rest of his career.’”

And so ended our adventures in trying to get Cary Grant as a guest. I forbid Marshall to ever call him again and told him that if he did, he would lose his job. But Cary Grant has stayed an important part of my life; practically every day I still check to see if any of his movies might be airing on TCM—and if one is, I try to stay home and watch it. Because nothing else will be better on television that night. Of that I am absolutely sure. But let me add just one more thing. I don’t care what he said—Cary Grant would have simply been a terrific guest on any TV talk show. Anywhere, anytime.