How I Got This Way Page 12

  Last year, on our show, I asked him if he remembered that interview and got the same Rickles I’d first met those fifty years earlier—pure Rickles: “Yeah,” he said, his eyes rolling up into his head. “You had a blue tie. And I had brown cuff links. I didn’t forget it. And that’s how our life began. And now I can’t dump you. I’m trying to get rid of you, and I can’t.”

  Our next go-round came after I left San Diego for my first national television hosting job (yes, the Westinghouse debacle). My producers asked me who’d I love to have on my new show. I began with Don Rickles. They called his manager, Joe Scandore, who made a deal not for one appearance but for three. I was thrilled. I didn’t think he remembered me, but I didn’t care. This was the guy I wanted on my show. I knew enough to position us on two stools facing the audience up close. Let them share the pain, I thought. I knew what fun he would have with them, and it worked. They were his sitting ducks, in row after row. He gave me the best experience that I would have on that show.

  A few years later on The Joey Bishop Show, Don was booked as a guest, but Joey was leery of him. Rickles was unpredictable. He would get off on an opening rant about me and then turn to Joey. That meant it was Joey’s turn to take the heat. Comedians, as I’ve mentioned, can be very competitive when sharing the spotlight, and Joey, who was as competitive as they got, knew that whatever he’d say to Rickles would be turned around into a joking attack on him. So Joey went on the defensive. He realized that the less he said to Rickles, the less ammunition Rickles would have. Finally, at one point, he actually said nothing. At all. The silence was deafening. I was getting nervous until Rickles leaned over to Joey and said, “What’s the matter with you . . . are you a mute?” I never forgot that line and the laughs it produced, which I’m pretty sure did not thrill Joey.

  The sixties brought quite the influx of comedians from New York to Los Angeles, which was, after all, closer to Vegas, where stand-up jobs were so often popping up. Plus, in L.A., maybe they could get a movie, maybe a TV series or regular guest shots on other shows. It was a new world of opportunity. One of the best results of this westward movement was the way they would assemble for all the showbiz banquets or luncheons or, funniest of all, the Friars Roasts, which featured all the greats—Jack Benny, George Burns, Danny Thomas—the list could go on. Most of them had marvelous stories that they’d perfected over the years. Routines that were built line by line, with steady laughs in between, and as each story progressed, it would get funnier and funnier until they reached the punch line, which was usually a scream. Everybody who took the podium was dynamite, but the one who would always close the show was Don Rickles. And that’s because no one could follow him. And they all knew it.

  In the seventies, I’d gone back to news and become the entertainment director of KABC-TV. That meant a routine of doing movie reviews and also regular interviews with Hollywood stars. My favorite target to chase down, of course, was Don. I tried to make a point of covering most every function he attended, and our interviews dependably became great fun for both of us. Soon enough, we got to be friends. I found him to be a classy guy, always very well dressed, and he had a lovely wife, Barbara, who was perfect for him. Once I took a camera crew to Las Vegas to spend an afternoon in his suite with him before his show that night, talking about his life and his recent trip to England with Bob Hope for a royal performance and how Bob held his breath when Rickles got up to speak before the queen. Everything worked out—even the queen laughed. But I noticed, then and always, that everywhere Rickles went, there, too, would be his dear friend and valet, Harry Goins. Harry was a sweet, quiet man who’d met Rickles when he was a bartender at the old Slate Brothers Club on La Cienega Boulevard in Los Angeles, where Rickles had played many times. Don formed a warm bond with Harry and told him if his break into the big time ever came, he would take Harry along with him. Well, one day when that break arrived, Don did not forget his promise. He called Harry, and they were together from that point forward, with Harry keeping Don’s life organized both at home and on the road. Harry was family, even a part of the act. One thing I learned during that Vegas trip was that despite all of his antics, Rickles was the kind of friend who stayed loyal and faithful.

  Anyway, our Vegas interview stretched into a three-parter, which concluded with the cameras following us down in the elevator to the Sahara Hotel’s show room, by way of navigating through the massive kitchen, where Rickles gently chided the help with threats of deportation, and then on to the side of the show room to capture those waiting moments before his grand entrance. Finally, with that trademark trumpet blaring his toreador theme, he made his way like a bullfighter through the raucous crowd, which was already on fire, cheering him on, wanting their inimitable Rickles experience, which he was about to unleash on them.

  So went our Hollywood days, but even after I returned to New York in 1983, our relationship continued to grow, both on and off camera. Every time he passed through Manhattan we’d do another interview, and eventually began something of a ritual where we’d go at it, one-on-one, in the Bull & Bear saloon at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. We would each take a bar stool, and once the tape rolled, no one would be safe—the camera crew, Gelman, the bartender, whoever was around him. Rickles was always dynamite, starting the very first time we did it back in 1994. He then happened to be on the road with Sinatra, who was also headquartered at the Waldorf, which made for an irresistible topic. That exchange went like this:

  DON: Sinatra’s up in his suite, and I said, “Frank, you wanna come downstairs with me and do Regis Philbin?” He threw up his breakfast.

  ME: What if we went upstairs and barged in on Frank? Don, I’ve never asked you for anything. I’d love to see Frank. How about it?

  DON: You have two daughters, right? Would you like to see them again?

  Over the years when he came to town, we always found time to go dine with our wives, Barbara and Joy, among other friends and new acquaintances. One night he wanted to go to Rao’s, the most difficult restaurant in New York to get into. Located way up in East Harlem, it had for many years been a notorious gangster hangout, and even now, it still maintains that original mystique: the same tables and chairs, the same bar, the same slightly forbidding charm. Happily enough, Sonny Grosso, one of the New York cops who broke up the French Connection gang, invited us to join him at his regular Monday-night table there. Naturally, Rickles loved the place, and the small, exclusive crowd was thrilled by his presence. In no time, he was on his feet doling insults out around the room, with everybody loving it and Don loving it even more.

  Somewhere along the way, with the help of the famed William Morris agent Lee Solomon, I developed my own nightclub act. Slowly, it began in the waning years of the Catskills resort show rooms, then moved on to New Jersey’s Club Bene, before I started becoming an opening act in Atlantic City for the likes of Steve and Eydie, Sergio Franchi, Tony Bennett, and, yes, God help me, one weekend with Don. Having seen him at work and knowing him all those years, the idea of suddenly sharing the same stage with him gave me the terrors. Just knowing he’d be backstage watching me perform was almost enough to keep me at home hiding under the bed. But he was wonderfully encouraging in private. On the other hand, since this was such a major kick for me, it made for a fun chance to tape an interview with him during the course of our special premiere, weekend engagement together. I would ask him to give a review of my act, something we could run on Live! the following week.

  Here, for the record, is a little snippet from that warmhearted appraisal: “Hey, Regis, can I tell you something?” he began. “If we work together again, so help me, I’m going to the VA, and I’m going to ask to be sent back to Vietnam. The war’s over, but I’m going to just stay there in the jungle and blacken my face so nobody finds me. I never want to see you again, Regis. Really. Don’t come around anymore.” Of course, I was cracking up, even as he started playfully shoving me out of his dressing room. Not that he was finished w
ith me yet: “The voice is weak! You stink! How’s that, Regis? You stink. You’re not good. You stink. And stay out of my life, Regis. I never want to see you again! I hope you get a boil on your neck!”

  But the double billing of our acts was terrific fun—I loved it—and through the years we worked together at various places all over the country. Those were nights I will always remember. The show he’d put on backstage was just as good as whatever happened later onstage, with Rickles in his formal shirt swaddled under a bathrobe, minus his pants. (It’s the old-school showbiz rule: Pants go on last, before heading to the stage, so the pleats won’t be disturbed.) Sometime before, Harry Goins had sadly passed away, and Don luckily enlisted the help and watchful guidance of Tony Oppedisano, known to all as Tony O, who had accompanied Sinatra, in his later years, all over the world as his road manager and dedicated compatriot. But by now, Frank was gone. So were most of those great comedians from the sixties. But here was Don Rickles, heading toward his mid-eighties, still going out there onstage and firing away at his multigenerational audiences, giving them what they expected, a brash and feisty night full of laughs, the way no one else ever could.

  And as the years go by, I realize more and more what a beautiful friend he is. We still work together now and again. And we talk on the phone all the time. If he doesn’t hear from me for a while, he’ll call up and start yelling at me, half seriously, about keeping in steadier touch—but only showing again what a wonderfully sensitive guy he really is. A true gentleman—and gentle man. I couldn’t have ever imagined Don as my friend fifty years ago when I sat in on that San Diego advertising meeting, but that’s the way it worked out. I never did stay out of his life, after all. And I love him.

  WHAT I TOOK AWAY FROM IT ALL

  Loyalty to others tends to ensure that your loyalty will always be returned in kind.

  Know how to take a ribbing, especially from people who obviously care about you—as well as those who do it for a living and mean you no harm. It’s really a compliment that they thought enough of you to talk about you in the first place.

  Chapter Thirteen

  JOHN SEVERINO

  This is a business where the same person can keep coming back to be a key part of your life over and over again. Especially from behind the scenes in those executive suites—which was where this particular guy repeatedly brought about some of the most important changes my life has ever known. For sure, he was fiery and unpredictable, which our special relationship eventually would reflect through the years. Oh God, would it ever! But maybe I should have expected that long before we actually worked together. I mean, the first time we literally crossed paths, he signaled to me, as only he could, that he was nobody’s pushover. . . .

  So how about this for a first impression: As I’ve told you, when I left San Diego in 1964 to take over Steve Allen’s national Westinghouse program, the big bosses insisted on parading me around that October on a promotional tour of all the cities whose stations would be carrying our show. First stop was Boston’s WBZ-TV, a very important station in the chain. As the plane landed at the airport there, I looked out the window and saw a high school band lined up on the tarmac playing the Notre Dame fight song. I was not used to this kind of fanfare, to say the least, and felt my panic rising when the Westinghouse vice president Jim Allen told me that these kids had been trotted out there to salute me, never mind that they had no idea who I was. I was totally embarrassed. Then came a procession of cars through the rainy streets of Boston on the way to the Ritz-Carlton Hotel. That’s when I began to spot what turned out to be WBZ employees standing on every street corner leading to the hotel, each of them holding up a placard saying: “Welcome Regis! You’re going to be great!” Riding along in the car with a group of upbeat Westinghouse and station execs, I was overwhelmed and even touched by this display of support—in the rain, yet! But then something happened to bring me back to reality. There was one guy out on a corner who wasn’t holding up a sign as we drove by; instead, I saw him hold up something else. Yes, it was his middle finger. I couldn’t miss it. I asked the execs, “Who was that guy?” They said, “Oh, that’s John Severino. He’s starting a new job at ABC Chicago tomorrow, but we asked him to come out here today to greet you along with everyone else. And he’s probably not too happy about standing out in the rain. Don’t worry about it. You’ll never see him again, anyway.”

  Those, by the way, are the sorts of offhand statements that people like to call “famous last words”—the kind that never turn out to be even close to the truth.

  Now let’s skip ahead ten years, during which time the Bishop Show had come and gone, and I had been picking up work wherever I could—from hosting a weekly talk show on KHJ in Los Angeles to doing the same thing on Saturday nights for KMOX-TV in St. Louis, which, I’ll confess, made for quite a rugged ongoing commute from my L.A. home. And there was the six-week stint filling in for an ailing Denver sportscaster, too. You get the picture. Then, like a flash, it was on to Chicago where I’d just gotten an urgent call from WLS-TV station manager Chris Duffy. He needed me to immediately come and take over the local early-morning talk show as the summer (and possibly more permanent) replacement for its popular host Bob Kennedy, who had suddenly died. When I arrived—wouldn’t you know it?—the general manager and top boss there was a guy named . . . John Severino. Turned out, however, that my first day in Chicago was (once again) to be his last day at the station: He would leave town within twenty-four hours to go run KABC-TV in Los Angeles. Anyway, he watched my first Chicago show that final day before heading west and told Duffy that he very much liked what he saw. (Apparently, giving me the finger ten years earlier had less to do with his opinion of me and more to do with getting soaked in the rain!) Frankly, I was lucky that he’d still been there and was able to see me do my thing, if only for that one morning. Somehow, whatever he enjoyed about my work then stuck in his head and would pay off for me in a surprising way months later. Because at the end of that summer in Chicago, I didn’t get the permanent replacement hosting job after all. Bitterly disappointed, I returned to Los Angeles, again with no prospects for work. Many bleak weeks followed until, on the Wednesday morning before Thanksgiving, I got a call from John Severino’s office at KABC. Could I come in and see him that afternoon? I was both stunned and thrilled. So I showed up at his office promptly at four in the afternoon only to see that his secretary, Verla, was a girl I had known way back in the fifties during my KCOP stagehand days. (See? All kinds of people keep turning up again when you work in the television business.)

  Verla said that Mr. Severino had just returned from a luncheon party and was waiting for me in his office. I opened the door and walked in. The room was dark. Shades pulled halfway down. He wasn’t at his desk. I turned to look around, and there he was lying on his couch. That must have been some party at lunch, I thought. “Oh, hi,” I probably blurted. “I didn’t see you there.” Severino cut right to the chase. He said, “Can you do the same crap David Sheehan does?” Sheehan was one of the first reporters in the country to critique movies on local newscasts; his work in town over at Channel 2 had always been top-notch.

  I said, “You mean review the movies?”

  “Yeah,” he answered, barely opening his eyes.

  “I’d love to do it,” I said.

  I needed that job and was about to continue my pitch when Severino simply said, “Okay. Be here Monday. Check in at the newsroom that morning.” And that was that. It was back to scale pay, just like I was starting all over again. Nineteen years in the business—and . . . I . . . was . . . starting . . . all . . . over . . . again. Still, I did need that job. Which would not only include movie reviewing but also general entertainment reporting. I hit the ground running that first day: I took in a movie, rushed back to the studio, edited a clip, wrote a review, and delivered it on the 6 p.m. news. Then I hurried home for a quick supper with Joy and the girls before having to dash off with a camera crew to cover
some star-studded Hollywood event for the eleven o’clock news. After a few months, the station sales manager told me the news ratings were up and viewers seemed to enjoy what I was doing. Everybody was happy.

  During the next year, though, the host of the KABC morning talk show decided to take a job in Atlanta. And that’s when I saw my opportunity. I went to Sev and reminded him that that’s what I really did, and what I had always done best—hosting talk shows. He did recall liking me in that role on his last morning in Chicago, which was why he’d hired me here in the first place. But, he said, there’d been an upward ratings spike in our newscasts, on which I’d become such a dependable team member, and he didn’t want anything to interfere with that. So I told him I could do all three: the ninety-minute talk show in the morning, the movie review for the early-evening broadcast, and an entertainment-world piece at eleven at night. Yes, a fifteen-hour day. And I did it. But it didn’t take too long before the morning show, A.M. Los Angeles, became a big hit. And even though the news ratings had never been higher, I was wearing down hard with this killer schedule. So after a year of pounding away on that all-day-and-night treadmill, I went back to him and admitted I couldn’t keep up the breakneck pace. I was running out of steam. He took me off the eleven o’clock news, but he didn’t like doing it one bit.

  Now most people feared Sev. Probably for good reason. He was a fierce and calculating competitor, bursting with gruff Italian machismo. He could chew out anyone who displeased him like no one else I’ve ever encountered. He was a tough guy all right, but from the start he was very supportive of me, maybe because I had gained a little national recognition working with Joey Bishop on our ABC network a handful of years earlier. Who knows? Every afternoon at five, after I got my movie review ready for the six o’clock news, I would go over to his office to shoot the breeze with him. He would set up a tray of cheese and crackers and serve up a couple of cold Cokes and we’d have a lot of laughs.