B00C4I7LJE EBOK (20 page)

Sometimes Bob and I talked until nearly sunrise. It didn’t matter how late I stayed up—I could sleep all day if I wanted to. It was turning into a pretty laid-back gig.

Because Phyllis didn’t do a lot of work during this time, I was in and out of the dressing room just long enough to make sure she had everything she needed. Sometimes, during Barbara’s numbers, we’d run through the mail quickly. With Warde hanging around being smarmy as hell, I got out of there as soon as I could. Whenever possible I’d go downstairs to listen to Barbara and watch her onstage.

One night I asked Phyllis, “Why is it I’ve never heard of her before?” I’d been around a bit since the day when I hadn’t heard of Totie Fields and felt that by then I was at least acquainted with most of the names in our end of show business.

“She’s got a problem,” Phyllis said.

I knew it couldn’t be drugs. Phyllis was death on drugs, and I was sure she would never knowingly consent to work with someone who indulged in that poison.

“What kind of problem?”

“You’ve seen her boyfriend?” she asked as she fished distractedly through the bowl of potato chips.

“The short, not very attractive man who’s always hanging around? That’s her boyfriend?”

“That’s the one.”

I frowned. They were definitely not a matched pair. “What about him?” I asked, hoping she’d fill me in before Warde got back from wherever he’d disappeared to.

“Well, he can’t fly and he won’t let her travel alone, so she has to take the train everywhere. Or they drive. You know that can kill a road trip.”

I thought of our upcoming two-month, nonstop tour that would take us from the West Coast to the East, down to Puerto Rico and back to Chicago, all in one grueling circuit. “Why can’t he fly? Does he have a phobia?”

“He carries a gun.”

I stared at her for a moment. “A gun? Why does he carry a gun?”

Phyllis looked at me as if I were being purposely obtuse. She had been dancing around the question for several minutes and obviously was loath to come right out and say it.

“Why do you think he carries a gun?”

“Well, I don’t think he’s a cop. So, he’s a . . .” I looked at Phyllis to finish the sentence.

She just nodded.

“He’s a mobster?”

Phyllis shrugged but said nothing.

I slumped in my chair, stunned into silence. How could someone as lovely and so sweet get mixed up with someone like that? Maybe she wasn’t as lovely and sweet as I’d thought. But there was no doubt she was stunningly gorgeous and a wonderful singer. What a shame. What a damned shame.

After we left Las Vegas, I watched for Barbara McNair’s name in the trade papers, but she didn’t appear often.

I felt a little sorry when we left the Riviera. I knew I’d miss Bob and some of the late-night adventures, like the lodge up at Mount Charleston, which was open twenty-four hours a day. I loved the lodge, with its circular fireplace. The first night Bob took me there, somebody had a guitar and the half-dozen people still there at 3:00 A.M. sang old folk songs. The night before we left, Bob took me there again. The moon was full and glittered on the snow—who would think that barely an hour out of the neon jungle we’d be in beautiful pine forests with waist-high snow? Yeah, I was going to miss Bob. On the other hand, I was glad to get away from Barbara McNair’s group of creepy hangers-on who were always with her. I just hoped it all worked out for her.

26

A
fter we returned from Las Vegas, we had one day in L.A. before leaving on the longest continuous trip I’d ever imagined. It was a nine-week, forty-suitcase trip, starting and ending in Chicago, with Georgia, New York, New Jersey, Puerto Rico, and Arkansas in between. It’s not that we hadn’t been on the road for long periods before, but nine weeks without coming home seemed like a marathon.

That first day we flew into Chicago, then drove a couple of hours to a cute little dinner theater called “Pheasant Run.” The place was barely a wide spot in the road, with a motel at one end and the Pheasant Run Dinner Theater at the other. Connecting the two were a handful of “country stores” selling crafts and souvenirs, a dress shop that had some lovely things—including some outrageously priced bathing suits—a small deli, a sort of drugstore, and a restaurant. The motel had a swimming pool, both indoors and out—one could swim under a glass partition to get to the outside part.

Phyllis’s youngest daughter, Stephanie, and Warde were doing a play together called
Forty Carats
. That was the first time I had seen Warde work other than the time he’d opened for Phyllis in Pittsburgh.

We stayed a few days—long enough for Phyllis to get her family settled into a big, old farmhouse she had rented a few miles away. Once again, I was thrilled that I would not be staying at the house with them—I had a cute little room at the Pheasant Run Inn. I went down to the theater and watched the rehearsals a couple of days, pleasantly surprised that both Warde and Stephanie seemed quite at home on the stage. Opening night went swimmingly, the audience responded with much laughter and applause, and the cast was rewarded with several curtain calls. Everyone was in a good mood. The theater owner, Carl Stone, threw a party backstage, and I joined in for a bit, congratulating everyone involved. I’d expected Warde to be arrogant and condescending, but he was relaxed and gracious. For the first time I could see the man Phyllis had been attracted to and was touched by her absolute delight in his success. Perhaps once everyone could see he wasn’t just “Mr. Phyllis Diller,” he felt better about life.

Phyllis would have liked to have stayed at Pheasant Run a few more days and enjoy family time with her daughter, but she had places to go and shows to do.

The next day, the limo picked me up shortly after dawn. A brief detour took us to the farmhouse where Phyllis was waiting. The driver stuffed as many suitcases as possible into the trunk, and the rest shared the back seat with Phyllis. We arrived at O’Hare Airport in Chicago in plenty of time; Phyllis liked to be early. From Chicago we flew to Atlanta, where we changed to a private plane that took us to Albany, Georgia. Phyllis had a one-night appearance at the Chamber of Commerce banquet.

The pilot of the small plane stayed overnight in Albany and flew us back to Atlanta early in the morning. Two early-morning flights in a row, changing planes, rehearsal the day before, and a full day ahead of us had us both dragging. And, gee, this was just the beginning of our marathon. Thank goodness there was a passenger service representative to smooth the way as we headed for that 10:15 flight to New York. Phyllis’s regular chauffeur, Jimmy Simpson, met us and I breathed a little easier. Jimmy knew exactly how Phyllis liked things done. Phyllis had a one-night stand the following night, and that afternoon she taped a couple of radio commercials. Radio, thank goodness, was nothing like television and took only a couple of hours. She had looked over the scripts on the plane.

“Won’t they ever realize that one person can only say so much in thirty seconds?” She shook her head over the manuscript. “Look at this. The basic rule is one word a second. There must be fifty words there.”

I counted them. “Forty-eight.”

“Forty-eight words and how many laughs?”

“Three laughs.”

“One laugh takes about three seconds. That’s going to be tough.”

We went directly to the hotel—my room was next to hers at the Plaza. We had just enough time to check in and get lunch from room service. The taping started at 3:00, and on the way to the studio, Phyllis rehearsed the scripts. It was a tribute to Jimmy’s iron nerves that he didn’t plow us into a fire hydrant. Phyllis’s three-laughs-per-thirty-seconds in the enclosed confines of the car were positively riveting.

At the studio, Phyllis romped through the rehearsals. In spite of the forty-eight words and three laughs, she managed to get it all in clearly. One of Phyllis’s favorite words was “precise.” Her diction for these commercials would be “precise,” she told me. And “crisp.” She liked “crisp.” She sailed right through the taping and finished up well before six o’clock.

“Phone Mr. B and tell him we’re leaving for Sardi’s,” she told me as we were getting ready to leave the studio. Earlier she had talked with Mr. B, her attorney and business manager, and they had agreed to a dinner meeting.

Jimmy drove us to Sardi’s, where I had already reserved a table. Warde wasn’t with us, so I was included because Phyllis was never alone in a public place. Sardi’s fascinated me—a true New York legend. It wasn’t elaborate, but it had been the gathering place of show people for decades. I could hardly wait to write to my parents and to Ingrid and tell them all about it. When we were seated, I automatically grabbed the two books of matches in the ashtrays and pocketed them. I didn’t smoke, but Ingrid had a matchbook collection and asked me to bring matches from wherever we went. Phyllis had even begun doing it, routinely gathering matchbooks from hotel rooms, restaurants, and dinner theaters for Ingrid’s collection.

When Phyllis noticed me putting the matchbooks in my purse, she said, “I think we can do better than that.” She summoned the waiter and explained what she wanted. In less than a minute the waiter returned with an entire unopened box of Sardi’s matchbooks.

“This will make a nice souvenir,” Phyllis said as she handed it to me. “This is going to be a collector’s item.”

“I’m going to tell Ingrid that if she ever so much as removes one of these books of matches, I’m going to break her arm,” I said as I tucked the box safely inside my briefcase.

Mr. B approached the table just in time to hear my last few words and hesitated a moment, looking from me to Phyllis. I don’t know if he thought I was threatening her or what, but the situation tickled Phyllis, and she threw back her head and laughed that famous laugh for probably the fiftieth time that day. But that one was from her heart.

Mr. B sat down and we ordered dinner, but it was not an enjoyable occasion. The conversation was all business. I was glad when it ended. Phyllis made it an early night, as we’d been on the road since early that morning.

The next day, Phyllis spent a good deal of time on the phone with Warde and Stephanie. We’d only been gone a couple of days, but she missed them and wanted to know how the play was going. When I came into the suite, Phyllis had some new publicity photos that she was scrutinizing.

“What do you think?” she asked as she handed me a “contact sheet” of small pictures, along with a magnifying glass.
Who travels with a magnifying glass?

I looked at them carefully. Some were head shots and some full body. She had tamed the fright wig and in the head shots she actually looked pretty. Since her face-lift, she wanted pictures that were a little more glamorous. I didn’t know which to choose.

“You always take a good picture,” I said. “This is a whole new image.”

Sure, she’d made her living poking fun at herself as a flat-chested, skinny-legged, funny-looking misfit, but what woman doesn’t want to be pretty? I couldn’t blame her for flaunting her new face. I shook my head as I handed her back the photo sheet and the magnifying glass. “I think you could use any one of them.”

She looked at them one more time, then set the sheet aside and picked up the schedule.

“Have you called the Playboy Club-Hotel in New Jersey?” she asked.

“Yes, their limo will pick us up tomorrow at noon.”

“Okay. I’m going to rest awhile and go over my act. Come back at seven. You told Jimmy seven-thirty, right?”

“Right.”

This would be an easy show. There was no music, just her stand-up act for a convention of beauticians. “My favorite audience!” she’d quipped when Roy told her about it. It was, actually, perfect for her. She had a whole slew of jokes on the subject: “I went into a beauty parlor that had a money-back guarantee; they paid me in advance.” “My going to a beauty parlor makes about as much sense as an ashtray on a motorcycle.” “I’m on my fifth year of a five-day beauty plan.” And about her hairdresser, Mr. Nancy: “Hell, he’s prettier than I am! One day he was teasing my hair and it bit him!” That always got a huge laugh.

I had about four hours before Jimmy would pick us up, so I went for a walk. Being in New York alone wasn’t as much fun as it had been with Karen, but I still liked looking in the big department stores. The weather was downright cold. I went into Saks Fifth Avenue and Lord and Taylor as much to get warm as to actually shop. I couldn’t fit another thing in my suitcase anyway—besides, I’d spent all my money on Christmas.

When I got back to the hotel, I ordered a club sandwich from room service. It was still way above my price range, but I couldn’t afford any of the restaurants, and I wasn’t dressed for fine dining. The sandwich was a perfectly good, five-dollar sandwich, although it had cost nearly four times that. Plus tip. Plus service charge. I was glad we were leaving in the morning. I couldn’t afford to eat in New York!

Jimmy was waiting for us when we got downstairs that evening. The hotel doorman hurried ahead of us and opened the limo door. Phyllis got in the back and I stood there for a few seconds waiting for her to scoot over. She didn’t. When the doorman realized she wasn’t going to scoot, he closed her door and opened the front passenger door for me. I handed him the small suitcase and the wig box to put in the trunk and was grateful for the warm blast of air coming from the car’s heater. Even standing outside in that icy air for just a minute made me appreciate the warm car. Wow, what did people do who had to take the subway and walk to work?

The show was as simple as we’d expected. Phyllis did her act, was wildly applauded, got a standing ovation, and was done. She actually did something unusual—she wore her costume back to the hotel. There was no reason to change—she just put on her long fur coat. I grabbed the little suitcase with her street clothes and the wig box from the dressing room, and we were in the limo almost as soon as the applause had died down.

Phyllis opened the door to her suite and said goodnight, and I turned thankfully into my room. Although the hour was not late, I was ready for bed.