A Conversation with the Mann (47 page)

I
T WAS UNREAL
. It was that way in a couple of meanings. It was unreal—surreal—the feeling: Is this happening? Is this truly, finally …
And it was unreal—not real: Viewed not through the milky reception of a Zenith, but seen up close, the sets looked like what
they were—painted plywood and decorated muslin. Lighting cables— giant black snakes lying dead to the world—zigzagged across
the massive space. All around were union guys, beefy in size and in the volume of sweat and stink they produced despite the
fact most of them seemed to draw a paycheck for standing around watching everybody else do something. But not even them, with
their workman, day-laborer presence, could plane the luster from the moment. To me it was all some-kind-of magic. The moment
remained unreal. Surreal. It was Oz. It was Shangri-la. It was the TV studio from where Fran's show was broadcast, and it
was, right then, the place more than any other where I most wanted to be.

The lights, the cameras—big, four-eyed RCA monsters—the disarray, people shouting at each other, wanting this done or that
changed, or wanting to know why in the hell they were just then finding out about something and all of them running around
like ants in a fire. Chaos breeding confusion. And this was still twenty-four hours prior to broadcast. The insanity was contagious.
My heart was a metronome that rapid-fired in time to the organized riot happening around me.

Fran was onstage. I'd seen Frances on television, sure, but it hadn't been since my pop's funeral that I'd seen Frances in
the flesh. She'd changed. Or, rather, she'd been changed. She'd slimmed down some, and at the same time got blonded up and
coiffed. She didn't wear clothes, she wore high fashion from designers all too happy to give her their best stuff on the off
chance she might sport it on the air. These days Frances didn't look like a kid from Williamsburg. She'd been Doris Dayed
into a suburban white chick at-a-moment's-notice-ready to head to a PTA meeting.

She was saying, as she would be saying in a day's time: “This next gentleman I'm so very glad to be welcoming to the stage
not only because he's a dear friend, he's also the most sensational young comic around. Making his television debut, please
welcome Jackie Mann.”

From the wings I strutted myself onto the stage, getting a play-by-play from the floor manager every step of the way.

“You come right around here, Jackie,” he directed. “Keep walking over to Fran …”

I did as told. Fran took my hands in hers, squeezed hard, gave me a kiss on the cheek for luck. Except that we were in a soundstage
with all that broadcast equipment, dozens of technicians and suits watching the rehearsal, making sure everything ran smooth
as silk, it was just like Fran and I were back on Fourteenth Street.

The floor manager: “Okay, Fran steps away …”

She did.

“Jackie, you hit your mark.” He pointed down at a star painted on the floor. “Then you look right into the camera and be funny
for twenty-two million Americans.”

“But no pressure, right?”

“Hey, that's not the cocksure Jackie I remember.” Fran had a reassuring hand on my arm, a calming light in her eyes.

I corrected her. “The way I recall, it used to be us standing on a street corner, me scared as hell of tomorrow, and you going
on about how everything's going to be okeydoke.”

“We're a long way from a street corner, Jackie.”

I nodded to that. We passed a smile back and forth.

Fran gave my arm a good grip, a shot of confidence.

“Frances.” Across the stage, a couple of guys in suits calling for Fran.

Her expression went sour. With her head she made a couple of quick side-to-side shakes while her eyes did “oh, please” circles.

“Be right back.” She crossed to the suits.

“Didn't mean to get you at all nervous,” the stage manager was saying. “Fran's talked you up a lot. I'm sure you're going
to do great.”

“Can I ask you something? Twenty-two million people, that's really how many are going to be watching?”

“Well, a little more than half that live. The rest of the country gets it on the West Coast rebroadcast.”

My heart found another gear and pumped out an exhaust of sweat over my palms. I had a bad case of the heebie-jeebies, and
I knew they were going to be on me like a shadow for the next day.

I got myself over to the craft services table, tried to make a cup of tea but shook so badly, I couldn't get it to my mouth
without scalding my hand. Food was out of the question. To my stomach—steely for the stage but new to television—the deli
platter sitting out looked about as inviting as razors on rye.

A thought came to me, again: Maybe Sid was right. Maybe I wasn't ready for Sullivan yet. I wished he'd been there. Said he
was feeling under the weather. Yeah. I took it for meaning he had to go and get himself clean.

I tried to never-mind my nerves, tried to focus on what Sammy had told me when I first met him back in Vegas: that I was strictly
a star now. Stars don't get nervous. I went for a sip of my tea. My shirt took most of it.

“Jackie?”

There was a guy suddenly behind me. I hadn't heard him walk up, I hadn't caught any movement out of the corner of my eye.
There was just a guy suddenly behind me like he had risen up from the ground. He was a kid-faced fellow. Well manicured. Clean-cut.
Clean everything. He looked like he could slide headfirst through a cow pasture and come up wrinkle-free and sweet-smelling.
And he had a smile. He wore a big old grin for no apparent reason except that maybe grinning was what he got paid to do. I
sort of recognized him as one of the suits Fran was talking with not but a few minutes earlier.

“Jackie Mann? Les Eisner.” He took my hand, shook it without giving me any choice in the matter. “Fatima cigarettes. We sponsor
the program. Listen, Jackie, I was wondering if we could have a talk about a few things.”

“Y
OU'RE CRAZY
, do you know that? Both of you, you're both … you're …” Fran was red hot. Hot with anger and red from the hard-pumped blood
surging her veins, making her fair skin flush. “You're just crazy! ”

There were four of us in an office. Fran, me, Les—his grin had downgraded into a condescending smile—and right next to him
some CBS guy, the other suit I'd seen Fran talking with. Just about as clean-cut as Les but on a budget. He wasn't smiling
at all.

The CBS suit said: “Frances, it's just a kiss.”

“That's right. It's just a kiss. So do you want to tell me why I can't kiss my friend—”

“Frances,” Les started.

“
My
friend on
my
television show?”

“Frances, I can understand your fe—”

“It's
The Fran Clark Show
. And if I wan—”

“It's
The Fran Clark Show
, sponsored by Fatima cigarettes.” Now it was Les who was doing the cutting-off. “And the fact of the matter is there are
some people who are not going to be pleased by the sight of you kissing a colored.”

“Colored?” Fran mocked. “Is it nineteen forty-eight where you live? The word is
Negro
.”

Actually, according to Mo and the militant fringe, it was
black
. But I just kept my mouth shut and did some quiet hoping that things would get worked out.

“Whatever you call him—”

“I call him Jackie.” Fran turned away from Les like he was no longer worth conversing with and made her appeals to the network
suit. “It took me this long to get you to
let me
have Jackie on the show, and now you're telling me I can't kiss him?”

All the suit had to say for himself was “Frances …”

“I kiss him all the time.” To prove it, Fran crossed the office, came low, and gave me a kiss. No cheek this time. Mouth to
mouth. Very firm. Very intense. Long, not short. Her anger equaled passion. I'd never before realized what a good kisser Fran
was. Breaking from me, to the room: “How's that? You like that?”

“Quite provocative,” Les said. “And what you do here in this office is your business. My business is selling Fatima cigarettes,
and selling Fatima cigarettes is going to be difficult to do in a large part of the country if we are identified with race
mixing.”

Fran snapped back with “Well, I'll tell you what: I'll put on a white hood and do a couple of ads for you. Think that'll move
a few packs?”

Les's smile remained constant.

The CBS guy weaseled his way back into the conversation. “Frances …”

“Stop saying my name! ”

“Do you remember when Sammy Davis, Jr. was on the Eddie Cantor show? He shook his hand. That's all Eddie did was shake Sammy's
hand. Do you know what kind of a hit Colgate sales took?”

“And that was how many years ago? It's almost nineteen sixty-one. Things are changing. Things
have
changed.”

“Not enough,” the suit said. “They'll never change that much. Fra—” He started to say her name but remembered Fran's edict.
Getting right to his point: “Look, kiss Jackie, make babies with Jackie … I don't care what you do with Jackie as long as
it's not Tuesday night at eight-thirty Eastern Standard Time on the Columbia Broadcasting System.”

Les turned his smile toward me. “Speaking of Jackie, we haven't even asked him how he feels. After all, he is part of this.”

He was sly bringing me into things. I'd tried to stay out of the discussion, and Les knew why. Like loaded dice, he knew which
way I would tumble. And after I hesitated in answering, so did Frances.

Sid. If Sid were here, he could have found a way out of this for me.

There was a beat, one heartbreaking beat, then:

“Jackie …” Fran pleaded. “Oh, Jackie, don't. Is it that important to you?” Her voice was full with ache. Just having to ask
me this question was causing her pain. “Is getting on TV more important than …” She crossed back over the room in a stride,
took my arms in her hands, took them and squeezed them until her finger struck bone as if, by touch alone, she could give
me an IV of inner strength. In a desperate beg she said: “Stand up for yourself! One time,just one time, would you please
stand up for yourself!”

Was she saying that to me? Was she really saying …?

I had. I had.

I'd stood up for myself years back when Sid said he wanted to rep a comic but not a singer. I'd stood up for myself and told
Sid if he didn't take on Frances Kligman, he couldn't take on me. So he took on Frances. And Sid got Fran the record deal
that got her the CBS audition that got her the CBS pilot that got her her own show. What had standing up for myself gotten
me? It'd bought me a window seat to someone else's skyrocketing career. It'd gotten me into a tight spot in a back office
squeezed between a couple of suits and Fran Clark, who was telling me to stand up for myself. Just one time, stand up for
myself.

“Fran it… it's just a kiss. … ” I looked away from her when I said it.

I shouldn't have said anything.

What I should have done was open up my hand, open it wide, and with the whole of it slap sweet Frances hard as I could across
the face. The effect would have been the same. Maybe the hurt would have been a little less.

Fran moved away from me. She stood in the middle of the room, staring at me same as if she were trying, without success, to
recognize someone she used to know. Her face was pure confusion. A thousand years of study wouldn't begin to help her understand
the strange thing I'd become.

God, Sid, why aren't you … You could've handled this. You could've …

Fran turned to the other two men in the room.

Fran said: “It is my show, and if I want to, I will kiss him.”

Him, she said. Him, like I didn't have a name anymore. Like I was no longer a person, just a symbolic object that's only purpose
was for Fran to rally her convictions around.

A new volley of arguing started up. I left the room, unnoticed by the others, so that the chips could fall. I left the room
feeling like a snake slithering its way through weeded grass.

I
DIDN'T DO THE SHOW
. Sid told me, later—feeling better—he tried talking to Fran, tried working out a compromise, but that she wouldn't back down
and neither would the sponsor. And even though the Fatima guy and the CBS suit were pretty sure I'd play along, they figured
Fran would kiss me out of spite, and as the show was broadcast live, that meant a good chunk of the country would see some
real-time race mixing. So I didn't do the show.

It was just a kiss. I know to Frances it was a sign of friendship, and friendship wasn't anything that you tossed away just
because some guy is afraid he isn't going to be able to push as many smokes next week as he did last week. But to me it was
just a kiss, just a touch of lip to cheek that was standing in the way of myself and twenty-two million people. I tried to
tell Fran that, tried to explain my thinking: It was just a kiss.

She wouldn't take my call.

I wrote her a letter.

Sid hand-delivered it.

He told me Frances tore it up without reading it. She tore it up; then she cried.

Fran had been my best friend, and twice I'd done her wrong. My jealousy over her making it, getting Sullivan when I didn't,
she could forgive. My betrayal she couldn't.

In that office, her clutching arms, telling me to stand up for myself: It was the last time Frances and I ever spoke.