Master of Ceremonies: A Memoir (9 page)

Having been betrayed by Paul
and
my mother, two adults I loved very much, I wondered who I could trust. The answer was clear: only me. My mother turned away from me—literally running away—when I needed her most. Now I needed to take care of myself.

I didn’t want the audience to think I got the job just ’cause I was the boss’s kid.

CHAPTER FOUR

Dressed in a ten-gallon hat, woolly chaps, and a borscht-colored cowboy shirt with
BAR MITZVAH RANCH
emblazoned across it, my father did his best imitation of an Arkansas hog caller by way of Chelm. Audience members clapped to the frenetic klezmer tune and laughed to the point of tears as Dad performed his hit “Yiddish Square Dance.”

Yiddle mitten fiddle

Yankel mitten bass

Cum shpilt a little

Oifen mitten gahs

Seated in the center of the third row, I was struck by the juxtaposition of the ecstatic Jewish audience and the refined, decidedly not-at-all-Jewish theater in which my father put it on. The Wilshire Ebell, in the tony neighborhood of Hancock Park, was originally a women’s club that dated from the nineteenth century, ancient history by LA standards. The mahogany-paneled theater, which the society ladies rented out for cultural events, was an odd goyish atmosphere for such a totally haimish celebration. This theater—where a young Judy Garland was discovered singing with her sisters—now hosted my dad’s English-Yiddish stage revue,
Borscht Capades
.

The show—which played every weekend night (the only nights the theater was rentable) to sold-out audiences—was the brainchild of Father’s canny manager and childhood friend, Hal Zeiger, who was looking to capitalize on the success of Dad’s first hit song. “Haim Afen Range,” my father’s Yiddish parody of “Home on the Range,” was the most unlikely chart-topper in
Billboard
history.

Even as a teenager, Dad always liked to write parodies, such as “Little Red Rosenberg,” for fun. But it wasn’t until a happy accident occurred during a recording session for Spike Jones that he considered them anything more than a way of entertaining his friends and family. During a break in the session, my father sang one of his parodies for a Jewish trumpet player, who laughed until he could barely breathe. Dad didn’t know that the mike was open, and that the RCA executives in the control room were also listening. Even though they were Gentile and didn’t understand a word of Yiddish, they found the sounds and idea of Yiddishizing a classic American song so hysterical that they suggested he make a Yiddish comedy single.

Dad threw himself into the project. To record “Haim Afen Range,” he gathered the very best from the world of Jewish musicians, including his friend and composer Al Sack. Al, a fellow Clevelander and the musical director for Dinah Shore’s radio show, wrote the song’s musical arrangement. The elite musicians, who typically played the scores for the biggest movie studios of the day, performed “Haim Afen Range” as if their souls had been yearning for it. They were thrilled to play the music of their forefathers instead of the theme to
Ben-Hur
. When Dad heard the final product, he realized some kind of magic had been created and quickly wrote “Yiddish Square Dance” for the flip side of the record.

His instincts turned out to be right on the money. In the fall of 1947, RCA released 10,000 copies in New York City, and the 78 rpm recording sold out in three days—with orders for 25,000 more! The record eventually hit upward of 200,000 copies. Mickey Katz had a smash! On the heels of its meteoric sales, Colony Records played my dad’s first solo record from loudspeakers that blared onto Broadway.

Oy geb mir a haim

(oh, give me a home)

Mit a viabele shain

(with a pretty wife)

Vu de sheps und die tziggelach lafen

(where the sheep and lambs run)

Oy geb mir a hois

(oh, give me a house)

Mit gesundte cowboys

(with healthy cowboys)

Und a por hundred cattle tzu far kafen

(and a couple of hundred cattle to sell)

Hundreds of people of every ethnicity walking down Broadway stopped to listen to the virtuosic freilach and Dad’s outrageous delivery. Jew, Irish, Italian, black—it sounded funny to everyone even if they, like the original RCA execs who commissioned the album, didn’t totally understand it.

Dad was thrilled, and so was Mom, who found validation in all the attention and opportunity that song brought. This one hit made it clear that Mickey was going places, which is what she always thought about him, even when he was just a sixteen-year-old horn-blower in Cleveland. Dad’s newfound success couldn’t have come at a better time for my mother. True to my word, I kept my distance from her after the cantor affair. It had been months after the Paul and Linda drama before I could even be in the same room with her. In the space left by my emotional absence came this big new presence: fame. She was getting what she needed, and she did need it.

On the heels of “Haim Afen Range,” RCA Victor offered my father a recording contract. “Tico, Tico”—the song recorded and made famous by Carmen Miranda after she performed it in the film
Copacabana
—became “Tickle, Tickle.” The Spike Jones hit “Chloe” was Yiddishized into “Chloya.”

“Barber of Schlemiel,” “That Pickle in the Window,” and “She’ll Be Coming ’Round the Katzkills” were more than just entertaining. In light of the larger geopolitical events raging around him—World War II and the Holocaust—Dad’s zany little songs were actually an act of bravery. There was a tremendous amount of fear in being Jewish, even in the US, which was far from immune to anti-Semitism. Many American Jews, particularly those who had found success, wanted to assimilate, not highlight their background. This was a time when there were still Gentile-only country clubs, law firms, and hospitals. We were here but not entirely welcome.

Yiddish for some Jews was death. My father breathed life back into it, and for that he was considered by many to be a hero. But my father didn’t record his parodies just because he thought it would be good for the Jews. Though he loved the idea of giving people a sense of their heritage, because he was so proud of it himself, his sense of humor drove his music. Yet by parodying the hit songs of the day—such as “Shrimp Boats” (it became “Herring Boats”) and “Kiss of Fire” (“Kiss of Meyer”)—which everyone, both Jew and Gentile, knew, he was inviting the larger American society into the beauty and hilarity of Jewish culture. He was inserting Jews into pop culture, so that we belonged, too.

From the moment “Haim Afen Range” hit, his life turned around. Mickey Katz became a bona fide recording star. So in 1948, when he and Hal worked on the idea for
Borscht Capades
, Dad was of course the draw, the headliner. Hal, who became one of the first big promoters of rock in the fifties, later represented and promoted everyone from Frank Zappa to Lenny Bruce to Ray Charles. In this period, he was devoted to my dad even though they were complete opposites. Hal, who towered over my small, slight father, was a tough guy, while there was no bigger softy than my father. Hal was the muscle, the businessman, and liked taking care of Dad.

Up until this point, Dad never had to carry a show. Other than the occasional bit he did while part of the Palace orchestra in Cleveland, such as the one where he played Jean Harlow’s cuckolded lover, Dad was at heart a musician—not an actor, personality, or emcee. But this was the time of
The Ed Sullivan Show
, when people expected a host to guide them through an evening’s entertainment. That meant he had to entertain not only by playing his hits but also by introducing the acts. He had to become a master of ceremonies.

Funny and sweet, he proved to be a great emcee—even if he didn’t love the part. He would have preferred simply to play with his band, because that was his passion. Yet his desire and his temperament, self-deprecating without acting the fool, made him a natural.

Borscht Capades
became the talk of LA, from Beverly Hills to Boyle Heights—it was
that
good. The revue offered something that couldn’t be found anywhere else. For all those people who had no place to hear klezmer music, Yiddish humor, and freilachs, the Wilshire Ebell was it.

The show had something for everyone: Women swooned over a handsome tenor singing “
Ich hob dir tzu fil leibt
” (“I love you much too much”); men laughed at the ventriloquist Rickie Layne and his Yiddish-speaking dummy, Velvel; and everyone stood solemnly when Dad and his six-piece band ended the show with Israel’s national anthem, “Hatikvah.” Tickets became a hot commodity with scalpers selling them for top dollar. Meanwhile, my father, whose home number was listed in the phone book, took reservations from the public from our living room.

“Hello, I’d like to speak to Mickey about tickets,” a woman said when I answered the phone. Everyone called him Mickey, as if they knew him. I passed the receiver to my dad.

“Mrs. Goldberg, I have four seats in the fifth row,” he said.

“This seat is going to be fine,” he continued.

I didn’t need to hear Mrs. Goldberg’s side of the conversation to know what she was saying; everyone wanted to be in the first four rows. And they all had an excuse—a bad foot, bad hearing, a very important person from “the community.” But who could fit all these people into the first four rows?

Our
family always sat in the first four rows. Mother, all dressed up and gorgeous, was there every night in a different outfit, of course. She wouldn’t miss an opportunity to take bows after the show as admirers came up to congratulate the lovely Mrs. Mickey Katz. And it wasn’t just Mother; my aunts, uncles, and grandparents, all having followed our family out to LA, had to be at the show as well.

The Epsteins made the exodus to Hollywood at about the same time as my father’s success with
Borscht Capades
. They had to make sure that Mother didn’t have anything that they didn’t have, too. Hearing about Grace’s wonderful life was just too much for them to take—when they received the photos Mother had sent of herself in a bathing suit, posed like a screen siren in our backyard in February, they immediately sold everything in Cleveland and came out to California. The Sisters—who were all married by that time, even Beverly the baby—arrived on the West Coast within weeks of one another.

With husbands and kids in tow, they invaded the Westside, where we lived. There was Fritzi and her husband, Eddie Volk, and their two kids, Jackie and Robin (who later changed his name to Bobby). Helen and Irv, Burton’s parents, started up a hamburger joint near the Farmers Market.

Grandpa Morris wasn’t feeling well when he made the move, and not long afterward he was diagnosed with cancer from which he soon died. Fanny didn’t waste any time grieving. A year later, she married Harry Brody, whom she schlepped along wherever she wanted, and took his name.

Dad’s family, who came out after the Epsteins, also lived on the Westside. (Between the Katzes and Epsteins, about forty citizens left Cleveland for good.) Abe, now Al, continued to work as a pharmacist, and Aunt Jeannie married Morris Schneider, whose religion and profession were both a little cloudy. Although it was a constant topic of family conversation, we never knew what Uncle Morris did for a living or if he was really Jewish. Esther and her husband Eddie opened Katz’s Finer Foods, on Pico.

With the Westside colonized by my entire extended family, life in California shared a lot of similarities to what I knew back East. There was, however, one major exception: I no longer had a theater to act in.

Before we left Cleveland, K. Lowe recommended that my mom bring me to the Pasadena Playhouse, a historically important theater that mounted productions of Shakespeare as well as the Southern California premieres of works by Eugene O’Neill, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Noël Coward, and Tennessee Williams.

Located in a low 1920s Spanish Colonial Revival building around a gracious arcaded courtyard, the “talent factory,” as it was known in LA, was certainly professional. I auditioned and landed a part in
Dear Octopus
, an English drawing-room comedy by the playwright and novelist Dodie Smith about three generations of a family, hoping that I might re-create my experience back in Cleveland. But the Play House was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that turned out to be impossible to replicate. With K., Miss Paxton, and the rest, I was not only inspired creatively but also nurtured emotionally. At the Pasadena Playhouse I was just in a play. After
Dear Octopus
finished its run, I didn’t return.

I auditioned for some radio jobs. Radio was big, big, big back then. The one job I got was on
Red Ryder
, a radio show based on a popular Western comic strip. I was the understudy for Little Beaver, whose big line was “You betchum, Red Ryder.” Otherwise, acting in school plays and working with Mrs. Montague composed the sum total of my acting experience in LA.