The death of June Havoc took me back 90 years. That’s when I saw her vaudeville act in my home town of Lock Haven, Pennsylvania.
You know it was small time when an act played Lock Haven. The vaudeville circuit was the Gus Sun Time, most obscure of all vaudeville circuits. You couldn’t boo the girls in the act with June because they kept waving American flags all the time. This was during World War I and you didn’t boo the flag.
I didn’t meet Mama Rose or June’s sister Gypsy Rose Lee at the time. I was only five or six years old when I saw June’s act. I remember my Aunt Clare took me to the Garden Theater for the vaudeville show.
I didn’t meet Gypsy Rose Lee until she became famous. Gypsy told me the secret of her success was that although most strippers took off all of their clothes, she decided to leave everything on. With her wit and beauty and tantalizing act, she became a sensational performer, a real character. She became the darling of the intellectual crowd.
Gypsy had a torrid love affair with director Otto Preminger, who was married at the time, and had a son with him. During World War II, the son was drafted and sent to Germany with his infantry unit. Gypsy told me that her son wrote letters to her complaining about his commanding generals. He wrote Gypsy that his commanding officer prohibited soldiers from posting pictures of scantily clad women on their lockers.
When the general ordered Gypsy’s son to take down a cheesecake photo from his locker, the son replied, “That’s my mother.”
Gypsy was always photographed scantily clothed.
The officer didn’t buy his explanation and the photo came down.
When it came time for discharge, Gypsy told me, her son was in charge of cleaning the latrines. Gypsy said she advised him to spread mustard on the latrine seats to hasten his discharge. She told me it worked.
June Havoc was only one of show business’ celebrated performers who got their start on the Gus Sun Time circuit. Gus Sun was the name circus juggler Gustave Klotz took when he went into the booking business.
Bob Hope was one who started his vaudeville career with Gus.
Hope told me he made his small time debut with a comedian partner in1928 in Chicago, in the midst of the Capone era. Here’s the joke:
“My brother took a poke at Al Capone. My partner said, ‘I’d like to shake his hand. I told him, ‘We’re not going to dig him up for that.’”
The Marx Brothers also toured the Gus Sun Time circuit.
When I once told Groucho I was from Lock Haven, Pennsylvania, he asked me if it was near Renova, Pa.
He told me that the Marx Brothers were playing there during the 1918 flu epidemic and they were quarantined in their hotel room.
They had an upcoming engagement in St.Mary’s, Pa., which they didn’t want to miss. Groucho said the brothers tied the hotel bed sheets together to slip out of the hotel unseen. They had to walk 40 miles up the railroad tracks to St. Mary’s, where they kept the engagement.
Jackie Gleason, after he became world famous, still had a trunk packed back at the Empire burlesque theater in Newark, New Jersey. It was addressed to “Jackie, wherever he may be.” It contained a hundred dollar bill and clothing. He told me he kept it for safety, in case he ever flopped on the wrote and went broke.
Fortunately, he never had need of it.
Jack Benny was the most famous star on CBS radio. The studio called him in one day to sign a multi-million dollar contract. All his pals around the comedians table at Hillcrest Country Club sat waiting for him to come back with details of the signing and how many millions he would receive.
When Benny finally arrived at Hillcrest, his first words were, “By driving 40 miles an hour you can drive up Pico boulevard and hit every green light.”
That’s not what the other comedians wanted to hear. They wanted to know how much money he’d get. But Jack never told them.
He once told me that money didn’t mean that much to him, just so he had enough to make a living. He said he signed for $10 million in that contract that covered his future foray into television.
George Burns used to tell the best story. He recalled how in the early days of vaudeville if you took a girl partner on the road for 40 weeks you had to marry her.
“I had one Italian partner who did not shave the hair under her armpits,” he told me. “I married her and for 40 weeks when we danced it looked like I was swinging two rabbis.”
“The tour ended and I never saw the girl again.”
He also used to tell a story about a guy who danced wearing yellow shoes.
After he finished his act, he would place the yellow shoes behind the curtain, with just the toes pointing out. He’d walk away listening to the applause.
One night, the dancer died shortly after his performance. Of course, no yellow shoes were placed under the curtain, to the great disappointment of the vaudeville audience.
While George’s listeners were entranced and saddened by the story, George confessed, “The whole thing is a lie. I made up the whole story. There were no yellow shoes.”
The other night as I was watching that great film “Lawrence of Arabia” on TV, I was reminded of my first meeting with its star, Peter O’Toole.
I was scheduled to interview him at a picture he was doing in the small Irish village of Bray. I arrived there on time and the director, J. Lee Thompson told me O’Toole was in jail.
It seems that O’Toole had tried to enter a pub at three o’clock in the morning, despite the fact that its closing time had been at eleven o’clock the previous night. O’Toole put up a terrific fight when he was refused entry to the shuttered bar. The owner called the cops. They promptly put O’Toole in jail.
That’s where he was the rest of the day. I had an appointment the next day and had to leave before O’Toole was released.
I finally met Peter on another picture, “Man Of La Mancha“, which was being shot in Tuscany. Peter was playing Don Quixote.
I reminded Peter of the Bray incident and O’Toole replied:
“I’m not a native Irishman. I was born in Leeds, England. How was I to know of Ireland’s silly closing laws?”
I reminded him that England had the same closing law. He shrugged that off.
I had another encounter with O’Toole one afternoon in a pub in London’s Barclay Square.
O’Toole was having lunch, which consisted mostly of Scotch. I was concerned because I knew Peter was to open in Hamlet that night.
I left the pub with Peter still drinking. I was catching a plane to New York later that day. When I arrived in New York, I picked up the New York Times which had a review of O’Toole’s “Hamlet.”
The Times critic and most of the London critics had given Peter’s performance a rave review.
Don’t underestimate the Irish.
O’Toole had a peculiar fetish about always challenging Richard Burton to a drinking contest.
I was present one day in Shepperton Studios outside London when O’Toole came in with a bottle of Irish whiskey. He challenged Burton and Richard replied, Okay, luv, you go first.”
O’Toole took a healthy swig of the Irish whiskey and immediately fell flat on his back, passed out.
Burton never took a drink. He just commented: “Another victory by default.”
O’Toole has said he was never certain whether his birthplace was Leeds, England or County Galway in Ireland.
Leeds is a city filled with Irish. In earlier times, it was their first stop after they had left Ireland en route to America.
In fact, my own grandfather stopped their, met and married his wife there and had two children. He earned enough money in Leeds to pay for steerage for himself to New York in 1879. He had to leave his family behind.
In New York he found work as a skilled stone mason helping to build the Brooklyn Bridge and St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Only then was he able to bring his family to America.