It's So Hard To Type With A Gun In My Mouth (44 page)

So I arrive at the hotel and check in. The girl checking me in seems a bit nervous. I sense this as she stalls while getting my key.  "Hon, what's seems to be the matter?" I ask. "Um...ah..." Not a good answer. "Well, sir."  Oh-oh she's using the sir thing.  I'm in deep shit. "It appears Mr. Brown has not vacated your room." James Brown closed the night before and they were giving me his room. "Oh that's ok" I say, "I'll just wait until he's out."  "That's the problem. He won't leave and he won't answer the phone."  So James Brown had my room and the only room available was some little crappy room facing a brick wall. I took it with the promise that they would move me when The King of Soul moved. Ha! Evidently Papa had a brand new bag and he didn't want to pack it.

As I remember it, it was a two-week gig. I had driven myself to Vegas so I would have my car there. It’s horrible to be trapped in a hotel with nothing to do, a car is a great asset.  James Brown remained in the room and the hotel gave me another suite. It was a lovely room at the back of the hotel, very private, very large, very nice. I was in heaven.

We opened and the shows were going well. I got along with Sha Na Na, the reviews were good, we had packed houses every night, they were receptive to the music and my comedy, my friends Mike Churukian; the plastic surgeon, and his wife Wendy, came up to see the show, some friends from college showed up, some friends from high school... it was a great week. Then I got a call from Wendy. Mike can't come to the show tonight, he's too sick. Sick? He picked up some bug in Vegas and it had him laid up in bed the rest of the trip. I felt horrible for him.  Two days later I felt horrible for me.

I woke up a couple of days later with what appeared to be a cold. I was stuffed up and had body aches. I had chronic bronchitis as a child and so I knew the routine. I got the O.J., I got the pills; I started drinking lots of water...nothing helped. I got sicker and sicker. I drove myself to the pharmacy and as I took a left hand turn, right in the middle of the intersection, my brand new car died. The computer lights came on and that fucker was dead as nails. I was sick as a dog as I pushed my car out of the intersection. Jews don't push cars. We're not built for it.

I sat in my car waiting for a miracle. About twenty minutes later it came. For some unknown reason, the car simply started again. I drove back to the hotel and immediately found a dealership. They couldn't take me for six days. I was beside myself and asked to speak to the service manager. This is all I said, "This is Steve Bluestein. I'm working the Sands. My car died and I'm coming down with the flu. I've got one dark night before we open for our second week. I can't bring my car in! Please. Can you help me?"  And he said "No problem. I'll send someone out to get your car." And that's exactly what they did. If the man had sent fifty thousand dollars in gold bullion to my room I couldn't have been more appreciative. They fixed my car, took my credit card over the phone and delivered it back to me. And this is why I love working Vegas; they understand entertainers and they take care of us. When the gig was over I sent the service manager a thank you gift and comps to The Sands. But my condition was to get a lot worse before it got better.

I did the two shows on Saturday night. Sunday we were dark, no show. I went back to my room to sleep it off and sometime during the night I woke up so sick I thought I was going to die. Whatever had gotten Mike had now gotten me. I was in agony. I ached.  I was running a fever.  I was throwing up. I was so congested I could barely breathe and I was coughing up small throw pillows....which this room really needed, I might add.

Around six p.m. I called room service and begged them to bring me soup and Jello. It's not on the menu. They weren't going to do it. I explained how sick I was and when they realized I was in the show, they not only got me the food, but they also brought it to the room and all but fed it to me. The rest of the night was a living hell. Coughing, aching, fever, chills... and I was all alone. Then the next day almost 24 hours to the minute that it began, the symptoms lessened. I was better but weak as a kitten. I had a show Monday night but I figured if I stayed in bed all day I'd be fine. I was not. Comes show time and I can barely speak. The flu symptoms were gone but the hacking cold and congestion were still here. The stage manager calls my room. "You're doing the show, right?" He wasn't asking he was telling me. "Sure but I can't walk to the showroom. Can you send someone to get me?"

They sent a golf cart to my room. I got dressed in my room, got on the golf cart with a blanket wrapped around me. They drove the golf cart to the stage and I got off at the mike, behind the curtain. I stood there as they announced the show (rather than entering from the wings) and when the curtain parted, there I was... the nasal congested comedian.  I did my show and it was obvious that I was sick. I told the audience and they laughed when I said, "It's Vegas.  I didn't want to miss a show... they break legs."  Little did they know I wasn't joking. Halfway through the show I started coughing and I couldn't stop. I look out into the audience and say, "Does anyone have Vicks?" Another big laugh and, while they're laughing, a woman comes up to the stage and hands me a box of Vicks cough drops. "Oh God bless you" I screamed to a huge laugh as I go to kiss her and she runs from me.

The show ended to huge applause. The curtain closes and the golf cart came on stage to take me back to the room. Second show, same routine.  The following night I was well enough to walk to the showroom myself. We closed a few nights later.  And as I drove home to L.A., I remember saying to myself "THIS is what I wanted all my life, to be deathly sick in a hotel room in Vegas with no one to take care of me? THIS is my show business dream?" The rose was dying on the vine. The writing was on the wall. The ship had left the dock and other clichés that describe my life.

Many years later when I watched them implode the Sands. My mind was flooded with memories of that gig and I was saddened that another piece of Vegas history was disappearing. Yet, I knew that life is change and for Vegas to survive the old had to give way to the new. It grieved me but I knew it had to be. And as I watched the tower fall on to its side and a cloud of dust rise into the Vegas air, I wondered when they blew up the hotel if James Brown was still in his room. 

Ta tat tat ta taa taa... There's no business like show business like no business I know.... Oh eat me.

OCTOBER 22, 2006 -
MORRISTOWN, TN.

In my senior year in college, after I studied in Europe for the first half of the summer, I did summer stock. That's right. I did summer stock in the tradition of all the great actors of my time. I trod the boards of a summer theater... in Morristown, Tennessee, cultural capital of the south. I had a professor named Bob Ankrom and he and his wife Ellie, had this theater. He asked certain students to join him that summer. I was over the moon because I had been asked to join the ensemble. Bob said to me once, "I expect big things from you in the theater, Steve."  When I told my mother this, she screamed at me, "They're paid to say those things."  So I went to summer stock knowing that I didn't belong there and I wasn't really as good as the rest of the cast.

I get to Morristown and how shall I describe it, Hootersville without the flash. Victorville was a metropolis in comparison. There was one main drag. They called it the main drag because that's where they would tie Jews to the back of their pickup trucks and drag them down the street. There was no supermarket, no major store, no drive-in. There was Fred's Grain Silo and an Ihop. However Morristown had gotten a grant from the federal government for urban renewal. They built a "sky walk" a second tier sidewalk that gave access to the second story of all the buildings downtown. The only problem, there were only two buildings with second stories. You'd go up there and be looking at the roofs of the businesses in town. An unfortunate side effect of the project; a spike in second story break-ins. It appears the walkway had given thieves direct access to the roofs and their skylights of all the businesses. So much for urban renewal.

When we arrived in town it was big news, real actors from real big cities. Real actors... the only REAL actor in the group was Robin St. Elizabeth Rose Hunter. Her mother, Ruth Hunter, had appeared on Broadway in Tobacco Road and held the record for most continuous appearances by an actress on Broadway. Robbie was the closest thing to real show business. She had experience and a powerful singing voice a la Carol Burnett.  Robbie and I were like the united duo. We did everything together, there was a connection that we held that was more than friends or lovers. It was two people who could feel each other’s souls.  And we loved to laugh… and laugh we did.

That summer in 1967 was the last time I saw her (except briefly in 1984 when she came to LA with her family) and she and I have sent each other Christmas cards and Easter cards every year since. With the internet we contact with each other more frequently but we never miss a holiday to renew our friendship and our love. It's so weird. We have followed each other's lives through the mail. The birth of her children, my nervous breakdown, the building of her house in Florida, my other nervous breakdown and then her move to Pennsylvania, the marriage of her children, my nervous breakdown ...the birth of her grandchildren and all done through the mail. Why? Because when I find a friend like Robbie, I don't let go. And neither does she… thank God.

Anyway, Morristown. There were quite a few actors in that group. The only one I remember was my friend Susan Herzberg and a woman named Peggy something from Miami. Thinking back on the group, there were some very gifted actors there...and me. I didn't belong. I was a mercy booking. The tapes never stopped in my head the whole time I was there. I wasn’t good enough. I shouldn’t be there. I never let up on myself.

Our productions were met with open arms, despite what I felt about myself. We were the cultural center of the South to those people. Every show was sold out and every show was met with rave reviews.  We were also becoming the "people to invite" when having a social occasion. There was one lady, Mimi Schnitman, who lived in Morristown and appeared to be the only Jew in a six hundred mile radius. She would have us over to her house and feed us. There were others but I just can't remember their names. However, I do remember the dieting that went on that summer.

Before I left for Europe I sent the costume department, ha! Costume department, the lady with the sewing machine, I sent her my measurements but while studying in Europe it appears I had put on quite a bit of weight... so much weight that none of the costumes they made for me fit. I went on a crash diet of Metrical and cottage cheese. By the end of the summer I had lost about 20 pounds. I came back to Boston looking quite handsome, if I had to say so myself.  That lasted about six minutes when I got home. "You're too thin. You look sick." There was no chance for me to feel good about myself, none.

It was a summer that I would remember for the rest of my life. It was that summer that I started my scrapbook, which now is in two volumes and covered in mud from a mudslide that attempted to take it all from me. Wait. Something just came to me. Ya want to hear something I just figured out by writing this? I'm sharing this with you for the first time because it's the first time I realized it. I kept everything pertaining to my childhood... books, pictures, articles, awards... ya want to see my honorable mention medal for the 9th grade science fair? I’ve got it.   I put it all in scrapbooks. I never knew why I did it but as I wrote this paragraph it finally came to me.   My parents were too involved in their own insanity and so I had to parent myself. I had to save this stuff because they wouldn't or couldn't or were too busy fighting with each other to put my needs first.  I'm sitting here with my mouth open because I have just made that realization as I type. Wow! Talk about seeing the light.

Ya wanna hear a funny story that happened to me that summer in Morristown?  We had just finished our show that week and had struck the set (took it down). We were tired, so tired we couldn't go to sleep so we went to Ihop. We took a table in the back and were laughing and carrying on. This was a Saturday night and all the farm hands were in town for a "good time." I noticed a guy who looked like a fat Lil Abner sitting at the counter. Whenever we would laugh he would act as if it bothered him. I didn't think anything of it and we kept on talking, laughing, acting the fool.

We finished our midnight snack and headed out to our car. As we were walking in the parking lot, a strong hand spun me around. It was Lil Abner and he was rip snorting drunk. "YOU-ALL DEM ACTORS FROM UP NORTH?" "Yes, we are." "Well we don't want you around these parts. You are CHICKEN SHIT. Ya hear me! YOU ARE CHICKEN SHIT. YOU ARE CHICKEN SHIT."  I was about to get an ass whipping and I needed to think fast so I said, without missing a beat, "You are absolutely right." And walked past him and got into my car. The guy was standing there like, "Huh? Where's my fight?"  I turned on the motor and sped out the parking lot as I opened the window and screamed.... "AND YOU'RE A RED NECKED FAT FUCK."  We laughed all the way back to the room, where we shut the lights, boarded the windows and pushed furniture against the door.