from eating in the hotel. Warde didn’t say much, and the atmosphere in the dressing room before the second show was almost convivial.
During the second week, I was lying by the pool when I heard someone mention “the earthquake in California this morning.” As a native of the San Fernando Valley, I was used to quakes, which occurred from time to time, so I thought nothing of it until I passed the newsstand on the way to my room.
“Major California Quake!” a headline screamed, followed by “Freeway Collapses!” on the second line. Newspapers always exaggerate. I just smiled when I overheard a couple exclaiming over the paper. Obviously not westerners. After I showered and dressed, I switched on the television as I sorted through the afternoon mail. The on-screen images featured ambulances with screaming sirens. Yeah, yeah, must be a slow news day. It did not perturb me until the announcer said, “The phone company has asked that you not try to call your friends in the San Fernando Valley. The phone lines are down.”
I stared at the screen for a moment as his words sank in, then lunged for the phone to call my parents. I dialed several times but only got a fast busy signal indicating trouble on the line. I tried to tell myself that the press was just playing it up as they always do.
Then the phone rang. My parents. They wanted to reassure me. The quake was nowhere near them, nothing was broken, no one was hurt. Of course, I’d known it all along, I told them, as I felt my breathing return to normal.
That weekend, Las Vegas got especially busy—a lot of people decided to put a few hundred miles between themselves and the San Andreas Fault.
15
W e’d been back from Las Vegas only two days when I answered a call from Phyllis’s agent. “Ask Phyllis if she’ll fill in for Debbie Reynolds at the Desert Inn,” he said without preamble. “Debbie’s sick and needs a couple of nights off.”
I was reluctant to buzz Phyllis. She might still be asleep. I did it anyway and she answered immediately.
“Mr. Moch wants to know if you’ll go back to Vegas. He’s on line two.” In less than a minute, her voice came over the intercom.
“We’re going to Vegas. Make reservations for the four of us.”
It was the middle of the week, so there were plenty of open flights. Karen and I went home and packed, and agreed to meet at the airport at 3:30. Perry would drive Phyllis and Warde.
As I left the office, I picked up a handful of incoming mail, including pages of jokes that people had sent to Phyllis in hopes of selling them, and stuffed it all into my briefcase. Phyllis wrote about half of her material. The rest she bought from writers who sent in pages of one-liners. Phyllis read through them and circled any she wanted. She paid $5.00 a gag. Maria wrote the check and typed the gag on a 3x5 index card. Ingrid then filed it in Phyllis’s huge card file. Comics are very possessive of their material. Once Phyllis bought a gag, she would be angry if she heard another comedian using it. That happened only a couple of times, and who knew whether it was an unscrupulous writer selling the same gag over again, or someone had simply appropriated her material for their own. Once she used a gag on television or it appeared in the newspaper, she took it out of her stage act.
“It’s not fair to make people pay to hear jokes they already know,” she said. She also tried to be very careful about which lines she used in interviews with writers who would quote her.
As we boarded the plane, I asked Phyllis, “What’s wrong with Debbie, do you know?”
“Vegas Throat,” she said.
It was the bane of singers in Las Vegas, caused by a combination of the arid climate, air conditioning, and smoke-filled showrooms. Put that together with two shows a night for two weeks with no nights off, and it was enough to push a singer who had been on the go for a long time right over the edge. The only cure was rest.
The limo
During the second week, I was lying by the pool when I heard someone mention “the earthquake in California this morning.” As a native of the San Fernando Valley, I was used to quakes, which occurred from time to time, so I thought nothing of it until I passed the newsstand on the way to my room.
“Major California Quake!” a headline screamed, followed by “Freeway Collapses!” on the second line. Newspapers always exaggerate. I just smiled when I overheard a couple exclaiming over the paper. Obviously not westerners. After I showered and dressed, I switched on the television as I sorted through the afternoon mail. The on-screen images featured ambulances with screaming sirens. Yeah, yeah, must be a slow news day. It did not perturb me until the announcer said, “The phone company has asked that you not try to call your friends in the San Fernando Valley. The phone lines are down.”
I stared at the screen for a moment as his words sank in, then lunged for the phone to call my parents. I dialed several times but only got a fast busy signal indicating trouble on the line. I tried to tell myself that the press was just playing it up as they always do.
Then the phone rang. My parents. They wanted to reassure me. The quake was nowhere near them, nothing was broken, no one was hurt. Of course, I’d known it all along, I told them, as I felt my breathing return to normal.
That weekend, Las Vegas got especially busy—a lot of people decided to put a few hundred miles between themselves and the San Andreas Fault.
15
W e’d been back from Las Vegas only two days when I answered a call from Phyllis’s agent. “Ask Phyllis if she’ll fill in for Debbie Reynolds at the Desert Inn,” he said without preamble. “Debbie’s sick and needs a couple of nights off.”
I was reluctant to buzz Phyllis. She might still be asleep. I did it anyway and she answered immediately.
“Mr. Moch wants to know if you’ll go back to Vegas. He’s on line two.” In less than a minute, her voice came over the intercom.
“We’re going to Vegas. Make reservations for the four of us.”
It was the middle of the week, so there were plenty of open flights. Karen and I went home and packed, and agreed to meet at the airport at 3:30. Perry would drive Phyllis and Warde.
As I left the office, I picked up a handful of incoming mail, including pages of jokes that people had sent to Phyllis in hopes of selling them, and stuffed it all into my briefcase. Phyllis wrote about half of her material. The rest she bought from writers who sent in pages of one-liners. Phyllis read through them and circled any she wanted. She paid $5.00 a gag. Maria wrote the check and typed the gag on a 3x5 index card. Ingrid then filed it in Phyllis’s huge card file. Comics are very possessive of their material. Once Phyllis bought a gag, she would be angry if she heard another comedian using it. That happened only a couple of times, and who knew whether it was an unscrupulous writer selling the same gag over again, or someone had simply appropriated her material for their own. Once she used a gag on television or it appeared in the newspaper, she took it out of her stage act.
“It’s not fair to make people pay to hear jokes they already know,” she said. She also tried to be very careful about which lines she used in interviews with writers who would quote her.
As we boarded the plane, I asked Phyllis, “What’s wrong with Debbie, do you know?”
“Vegas Throat,” she said.
It was the bane of singers in Las Vegas, caused by a combination of the arid climate, air conditioning, and smoke-filled showrooms. Put that together with two shows a night for two weeks with no nights off, and it was enough to push a singer who had been on the go for a long time right over the edge. The only cure was rest.
The limo
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