Call Me Lumpy: My Leave It to Beaver Days and Other Wild Hollywood Life (42 page)

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Authors: Frank Bank,Gibu Twyman

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BOOK: Call Me Lumpy: My Leave It to Beaver Days and Other Wild Hollywood Life
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Page 209
It's gone downhill a lot, in so many ways.
Now that I'm back out here, I see the changes, some bad, some good.
I drive down Melrose, and it's the hippest street in the country now.
It was not hip growing up.
It was old and Jewish.
I drive by the original Johnny Rockets, and it reminds me of Sylvia.
She passed away at the Golden Age Retirement Center there.
I made a deal with Johnny Rockets to bring my mother food across the street.
That way she didn't have to eat the crummy food at the home all the time.
My mother loved burgers and stuff like that.
I drive from there over to Santa Monica Boulevard now, and all you see are 2,000 degenerates and the Pussycat Theater and the Pleasure Chest sex store.
Go down Sunset, and you get a couple hundred hookers.
Hollywood Boulevard, the scene of so many wonderful, unbelievable nights, is a trash heap now, tantamount to skid row.
But I'll never drive around these places without thinking of the good times.
Good?
Hell, they were great times.
I'll never, ever forget my days in the Knights.
They've never really become bygone days.
I never quit being a Knight.
I am president today of the Knights Alumni Club.
I was the Most Valuable Member once, an honor my fellow Knights bestowed on me my senior year.
There are hundreds of Knights out there.
We still see each other.
We've had reunions.
Enormous ones.
The club only lasted about nine years.
But at its height, it was the ultimate expression of that time of life for kids growing up in Southern California
The Knights meant, you know, I wasn't worrying about staying home and not having any friends.
Man, I had thousands of friends.
And they weren't fake friends.
They were good friends.
I earned them.
And they earned my friendship back.
I learned a lot of love and loyalty from my friends.
Even though a lot of times the stuff we did wasn't the most commendable
 
Page 210
or meaningful, the relationships meant something.
They meant everything.
If someone is good to you, then you gotta be good back to them. Those were our mottos.
There's like 200 Knights that have been in and out of that club.
If any one of them ever called me for a favor or ever needed me for anything, to this day, I would be there for them.
I'd go to the wall for them. Because they're my club brothers.
The experiences we had, they stick with you.
So does some other stuff.
I talked about some of the putzes in the acting field.
There were some princes, too.
I loved Slim Pickens. He used to sit out in front of the stages with us, telling us stories.
Slim was one of the neatest guys I ever met. He loved kids. He loved 'em. He was such a nice guy.
He'd talk about how we should grow up and respect our parents. And learn all we could from books. And don't put too much faith in show business, because it'll only break your heart, stuff like that.
I cried like a baby when Slim died.
He was a man, being nice to kids . . . he could have sat there and played Hollywood Movie Star or Veteran Hollywood Feature Character Actor all he wanted. But he sat there and took time out to come and sit with us. And we were kids then.
He was doing all kinds of movies at Universal. He was always around.
Slim was in everything. He was one workin' actor.
I mean, I used to see Slim at least twice a month.
He'd sit out there smoking cigarettes in his cowboy boots and cowboy hats.
And he did say, "Shee-ut."
He'd go, "Weh, bo-ahs."
Meaning, "Well, boys."
He had that Southern-fried accent you could cut with a knife.
You wanted to just put your head in his chest and go, "Take care of me, Slim."
He was so cool.
He was from "Tee-ex-as."
I don't know that for a fact, but I would have to guess.
He just told us to stay straight and walk the line and be a good person and do everything right.
And the good guys would win.
Kinda like Leonard.
 
Page 211
Kinda like my dad.
There was a lotta Leonard in Slim.
You always had to be the good guy and you had to wear the white hat.
Slim was sweet.
And, of course, no one meant more than the cast of "Beaver."
Even back in the days of civil unrest, it used to cause me great unrest when rebels my age would dog Ward and June.
When they didn't respect June Cleaver's pearls, I said, 'Leave me out. That's it.
"You wanna fight about it?"
You have to be true to your beliefs.
And I believe in Barbara and Hugh and Ward and June and Tony and Wally and Kenny and Eddie and Jerry and the Beaver.
I believe in 'Beaver."
I believe it'll always live.
It'll always be a special part of the American tapestry.
Part of our self-portrait.
Part of our feeling about what makes us great.
There was a time when I didn't want to be known as Lumpy.
Even though I wasn't the big star of the show, it used to bug me when I'd go out and people felt like they could invade your privacy.
I grew a beard just for that reason. I was able to travel around pretty anonymously.
I remember one time I was at the top of the Washington Monument with my first wife.
These four kids cornered me.
They were really giving me grief.
They were goin', "Beaver's a big fag."
All that kinda stuff.
And they go, "Oh, Lumpy, you weren't so tough.
"You weren't so cool,"
And I wanted to go, "You know, I could take you pitiful little punks and throw you down the stairs."
But I didn't.
I figured, "OK, I'm still a public figure." Even though I'd been out of "Beaver" for a year or two.
I grew the beard and I kept it for 25 years.
I did it so I wouldn't be recognized. I wouldn't have to go through any of that crap.
Whether it be good stuff or bad stuff, it wouldn't involve my life as an actor.
I figured, "I'm not in showbiz anymore."
 
Page 212
I want Frank Bank back.
But then I found out it's pretty stupid to run from all that.
Running into Becka helped.
I knew she loved me for being just Frank. Nothing else.
She always tells anyone, "I didn't marry Frank Bank, the actor. I married Frank Bank."
That sort of freed me up to love the actor that was in the past.
It allowed me to take full joy in the beautiful thing that "Beaver" was.
Today, I enjoy being Lumpy, just as much as I enjoy being Frank.
It's not an ego thing.
It's a comfort thing.
I'm comfortable with all the things that happened in my life, good, bad, ugly.
Lumpy was a good thing.
Call me Lumpy.
As to the bad stuff you've discovered in this book, I'm sorry for it.
Wish I hadn't been so callous.
Wish I hadn't been so selfish.
Wish I hadn't been so unkind.
But I'm also grateful for the good times with good people who feel like I've been good to them.
Because I've wanted to.
I wanted to wear the white hat.
Even when I was wearing cheese for a hat.
That happened when I had my heart attack in '96.
I guess I didn't tell you much about that yet, did I?
It was in K.C.
I guess it was a pretty serious one.
They said so.
Even though it never seemed like it was to me at the time.
It started so innocently.
Sunday night, September 30, 1996.
The Dodgers had just lost their third game in a row to San Diego. Now, each night I went down to the basement, to my big movie theater down there, to watch the Dodger game in peace and quiet.
Because I didn't want to disturb my animals. I didn't want to disturb my family, or anyone else.
Because I knew I'd be yellin' and screamin'.
Don't tell me I don't know what's important in life.
Anyway, as ludicrous as it sounds, the Dodgers lost three 1-run games to San Diego. All they had to do was win one game out of three to win the National League West pennant.
They lost all three.
 
Page 213
I was so upset, I can't begin to tell you.
I came upstairs just in time to watch the Chiefs lose their first game of the year to the Chargers after they were 4-and-0.
I had a really lousy Sunday with the curse of San Diego and all that.
But I didn't know how bad it was gonna get.
It was gonna get worse.
Becka made dinner. She made this really good pasta.
Along about 9 o'clock, I started feeling very anxious. I couldn't sit still. Then I started feeling kind of a heatness, a burning in my chest.
It wasn't pain. It was heat.
And I figured, ''Oh, well, it mighta been too much hot pepper in the pasta that I ate," because I always put lots of hot chili pepper on pasta.
So I said, "I'm gonna go upstairs to take a Zantac for the burning. And while I'm up there, I'm gonna take a Xanax. Because I'm feelin' really antsy. I'm really upset about the games."
So I do that, and I come downstairs and we're watchin' the news. About an hour goes by.
For some crazy reason, it wasn't clearing up. I could just feel this warmth along my chest, kind of like someone had laid a warm compress on me.
And all of a sudden, I sorta I broke out in a cold sweat. It's about 11 o'clock.
I said to Becka, "Well, I can do one of two things here. I could go upstairs, take another Zantac and another Xanax and crawl under the covers, cuz I got a big day at the office tomorrow."
But I said, "Here's what I'm gonna do, Beck"and I don't know what possessed me to think about doing this, but I said, "I think I'm gonna go jump in the car and drive down State Line to St. Joseph's Hospital.
"And let them give me something, because they've got something a little stronger to get rid of this anxiety attack."
I mean, I'm really nervous as a cat.
That's all it was.
I wasn't hurtin'.
I wasn't having any heart attack.
That's the last thing I ever thought of.
First, Becka says, "We can't do that."
She wanted to call 911.
And I go, "Well, I'm not callin' 911. I don't want to wake up the neighbors on a Sunday night."
She couldn't drive me down there, because she'd just had foot surgery and she couldn't walk. It was all wrapped up.
So I said, "I tell ya what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna dial our home number on the car phone."

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