I Shouldn't Even Be Doing This: And Other Things That Strike Me as Funny (12 page)

The one night I thought would go well didn’t. My first guest was Bobby Morse, who had starred in the movie version of
How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.
Bobby was a friend of mine, but the problem turned out to be that we knew each other’s stories. Everything fell flat. Nothing worked. The poor audience who had gotten their tickets six months in advance to see Johnny were watching Bobby Morse and me tank. It was so silent that you could hear the air conditioner.

Finally the segment ended, and we went to commercial. I had never been so relieved. I knew the segment bombed, but at least it was over. Next up was an organ player. During the three-minute commercial break, the stagehands wheeled out the organ. They plugged in the organ and smoke began billowing from the top.

“Bob,” the producer said, “do another slug with Bobby.”

And so we did.

When the torture finally ended, Ed McMahon chimed in, “Have you two ever considered writing a book?”

I used to love to sit home at night and watch Johnny go down in flames. There was nothing better.

John—it’s hard to call him Johnny—became a good friend of mine over the years. I hosted the show dozens of times. For a while, we were neighbors at the beach.

My fondest memories are from the seventies. After doing the show, John, Ed McMahon, Doc Severinsen, me, and all of our wives would go to a little joint on Sunset called Sneaky Pete’s and unwind. After last call, we would all come back to my house and laugh it up.

One night when John and I were playing the drums in my den, Ginnie announced that she needed to go upstairs and go to bed because she had to wake up early to take the kids to school.

The following day, John bought an old army cot and had it delivered to the house. The note read: “For Mrs. Newhart.” So she could sleep downstairs.

There was a devilish side to Johnny, but he wasn’t cruel. On the air, he wouldn’t put an ingénue starring in the latest romantic comedy on the spot. He would only try to befuddle people he knew could handle it. He knew that I would go along with him. He trusted me, and he would never let me look bad.

But he loved to push me to the edge. He loved to toss out a random question that wasn’t in the pre-interview, such as, “Do you ever ski?” and I’d have to pick it up from there. First, I’d give him a look: you sonofabitch.

Once, when I filled in at the last minute for Dennis Hopper, Johnny asked me the questions prepared for Dennis Hopper. I knew right away where he was going.

Him: “What was your favorite experience making a movie?”

Me: “I’d have to say
Easy Rider
, at least the part I remember of it. I was so bombed during filming that I’ve forgotten a lot of it.”

It took the audience a while, but they caught on.

I wasn’t opposed to returning the favor, and I once did. It came during the time when Johnny’s show aired for an hour and a half.

During these years, the last guest would be a writer or author of some kind. I was usually the first guest, so I would come out and have my exchange with Johnny and then move down one seat on the couch. After the second guest finished, he would take my seat and I would move further down the couch. Ed was always at the end, next to a table that held a faceless clock used by Johnny to determine how long it was until the end of the show.

One night, the author guest was particularly boring. During the author’s segment, I was sitting next to Ed. Whenever Johnny looked away, I motioned to Ed to move the clock back five minutes. As Johnny’s exchange with the author grew more and more boring, Johnny glanced at the clock. Each time he would get a weird expression on his face that seemed to say, “There can’t possibly be twenty more minutes left.” Finally, at the point when Johnny thought that there were still fifteen minutes left, producer Freddy DeCordova gave the signal and Doc played the
Tonight Show
theme.

There was no friendly retribution from Johnny for this— though the next time I appeared on
The Tonight Show
I noticed that they had put a glass face over the clock so no one could change the time.

On the night of November 15, 1990, Johnny’s monologue died, and I was his first guest. I knew from his sly introduction, in which he weaved together the facts that I was the voice of Bernard the Mouse in
The Rescuers Down Under
and the grand marshal of the Rose Parade, that I was in trouble. So after I was introduced and the curtain opened, I stayed put. I wanted Johnny to think, just for a second, that I might not come out.

Of course, I did. Here’s our exchange:

I said, “This is important to me. I don’t have a show anymore. I don’t have a check coming in every week. I’ve got to score here tonight or it could all be over.”

“It can’t all be over when you’re Bernard the Mouse. The bidding for your services must have been incredible … Bernard the Mouse and the grand marshal … I know you were back there screaming your head off, watching me die,” Johnny said.

“That’s right, nobody does it better,” I said.

“You’ve had these nights—”

“Not really, no. … It’s quite an honor to be the grand marshal. Frank Sinatra was the grand marshal. Gregory Peck was the grand marshal. I’m only the third comedian to be grand marshal, aside from politicians. I was amazed when I saw the list of grand marshals that your name was not among them. … I’ve always considered you a much bigger star than I am.”

“The reason was that they probably caught me on a night like tonight and said, ‘Maybe we should forget that man and call Newhart.’ ”

“It could have been the ‘D’ word.”

“Sinatra remarried and he was the grand marshal.”

“That’s true,” I said. “My theory is out the window. I guess they just never thought of you. … Were you offered?”

“My schedule is so busy here I probably wouldn’t have had time to go over there anyway. … What is the theme of the parade this year, blinking? … They usually have a theme.”

“Yes, they have a theme. It’s called fun and games, and I am the fun.”

“I know you are riding in the parade, and you have to get up quite early—”

“There are a number of duties.”

“What are the duties? This I wouldn’t know, having never been asked to—”

“That’s amazing. … Really.”

“I know it is.”

“It’s shocking.”

“You have to attend various functions, and you have to have your picture taken with the Rose Bowl queen, who is a very beautiful young girl.”

“Who is the Rose Bowl queen?”

Here I drew a blank. “Sorry, uh …”

“Aren’t you the grand marshal?”

“I am the grand marshal, and we had pictures taken the other day …”

“Who is the Rose Bowl queen?”

“Apparently you think it’s fun to make fun of someone in the advanced stages of Alzheimer’s. …”

“You are going for the sympathy routine. … It’s understandable, you are in for a quickie picture. It probably just escaped your mind.”

“And some of the other duties. I ride in the float and wave for about three miles. You flip the coin for two teams—and you get to keep the coin. … It’s quite an honor.”

“It is. … That’s all there is to it?”

“That’s quite a bit, really.”

“This goes to many countries all over the world.”

“Over three hundred million people will see this.”

“My goodness …”

“You know, envy doesn’t become you,” I said. “If the ta bles had been reversed, I would have said how thrilled I was for you.”

“Sure, and I would’ve known who the Rose Bowl queen was.”

Johnny took a commercial break and then we finished up on my being the grand marshal of the Rose Bowl Parade.

“I feel terrible,” I began. “I was going to look up the name of the queen, but then I said to myself, ‘He’ll never ask that, so why look it up?’ I didn’t know that the monologue was going to go into the dumper and once again the captain of the ship was taking the crew down with him.”

“That’s the way it works.”

Through all the appearances on
The Tonight Show,
Ginnie and I became good friends with Janet and Freddy DeCordova. Freddy’s previous claim to fame was directing Ronald Reagan in
Bedtime for Bonzo
, which Johnny continually kidded him about.

Then, through Janet and Freddy, we met and became good friends with the legendary agent Irving Lazar and his wife, Mary. We spent many wonderful evenings being regaled by their fascinating accounts of Hollywood in the forties and fifties. I miss those times with them,

CHAPTER SEVEN

You Can Get Out of This

Buddy Hackett and I were backstage at a charity event in Los Angeles, waiting to go on and perform our respective routines.

“You’re Catholic, right?” Buddy asked me.

“Yes, Buddy. I’m Catholic. Born and raised,” I said.

I waited for the punch line, but Buddy took things in a different direction. “I got a girl for you,” he said. “She’s Catholic. The two of you belong together. I’m gonna fix you up with her.”

Her name was Virginia Quinn—Ginnie—and it turned out that she knew something about the entertainment business. A college student at the time, she was working as an extra at Paramount, a pretty typical part-time job in Los Angeles. Her father, Bill Quinn, was a well-known actor. But my newfound fame as a comedian with the No. 1 and No. 2 albums on the
Billboard
charts didn’t matter much to her. She had never heard of me.

On our first date, I took her out to dinner. I had already eaten, so I told her to go ahead and eat. I ordered a drink and watched her eat dinner. She dripped mayonnaise on her purple dress, which, of course, I didn’t notice.

She thought my behavior was strange, but it seemed normal to me at the time. Being a comedian, I didn’t have the manners back then that I have now.

After dinner, I told her we were going to Carl Reiner’s house. Mel Brooks was going to be there. The two of them had written and recorded
The 2000 Year Old Man
, and they were going to play it for us. Instead of being excited, Ginnie said, “You didn’t tell me we were going to someone’s house.” I guess I forgot.

The night went well enough that we began dating, though I’m sad to report not exclusively. The relationship didn’t seem to be going anywhere. On my birthday, she gave me an ID bracelet for a present and said, “I want you to have this, but I’m seeing someone else.” So we broke up.

Buddy called a few days later and invited me to a party with a bunch of nurses. I declined. Knowing how Buddy’s mind worked, I was sure that Ginnie was invited to this alleged nurse party, so I called her and told her about Buddy’s ploy. It turned out that Ginnie wasn’t going to the party—maybe it really was going to be a roomful of nurses—but she suggested we get together and talk.

Ginnie came over to my apartment, and we talked out the issues. Afterward, we were walking to the market to buy some food so she could cook us dinner. I mentioned that I had a performance coming up in St. Louis and asked her if she would like to come with me.

“You know, you missed the last trip and we almost didn’t make it as a couple, so this might be a good idea,” I said. “What do you think?”

“My parents would never let me go with you to St. Louis,” she said.

“What if you had a ring?”

“Are you saying what I think you’re saying?” she asked.

That’s what you call the minimalist proposal. The next day, we picked out an engagement ring for her and made it official.

On January 12, 1963, we made it to the altar. As we took our places, before the procession began, character actor Joe Flynn took one look at Ginnie’s dad and quipped, “Look who they got to play the father.”

That wasn’t as bad as the last thing my soon-to-be father-in-law whispered to his daughter before walking her down the aisle. “Sweetheart,” he said, “I can still get you out of this.”

But the biggest hurdle of the day was yet to come.

After the reception, Ginnie and I climbed into our car to drive away from the country club as our friends waved to us. I dreaded this moment because, despite the fact that I was thirty-two years old, I still didn’t have a driver’s license.

Once I became a working comedian, I was on the road forty or fifty weeks a year, so there was no reason to buy a car and let it sit in a garage. When I traveled to a performance, I always stayed in a hotel near the venue and took cabs around so I didn’t have to rent a car. Even when I finally moved to Los Angeles, with the crisscrossing ribbons of freeways, I managed to get around town with a combination of public transportation and catching rides with friends.

However, I knew that it would look silly if the bride drove the groom away from the church, so as we walked out of the reception, I told Ginnie that I was going to drive. I put the bride in the passenger side of the car and then climbed behind the wheel of my T-Bird—a car she had encouraged me to buy.

I imagined what I
thought
it would be like driving a car. Like Mrs. Webb had been taught by Frank Dexter in “The Driving Instructor,” I checked my rearview mirror. Slowly, I pulled away from the country club, basically driving in a straight line. After two blocks, I stopped the car. Ginnie and I switched places, and she drove us back to our apartment.