When I was television
editor of the Houston Post back in the Fifties, I did many long
distance phone interviews with stars, some of which I have written
about. But I did just as many interviews face to face when celebrities
visited Houston or when I was in New York or Los Angeles. My favorite
interview was with Sid Caesar, also my favorite performer.
I arrived at his New
York offices late one afternoon right after rehearsals for his
show. Carl Reiner and Howie Morris were still there, as if waiting
for me. Reiner said, worried and warning, “You know, he doesn’t
do good interviews. He’s shy.” Morris looked at his watch and
said, “I have to get home for dinner. My wife is making pot roast.”
Was he trying to tell me something, too?
I went into Caesar’s
office, where he was waiting. He got up from his seat behind a
big desk and shook my hand, a little stiff. In his last show there’d
been some unusual background music, unusual because it was classical,
something very familiar. I can’t remember, exactly. Beethoven’s
Fifth, Tschaikovsky’s Pathetique?Anyhow, I asked him how
he’d picked that? He brightened immediately.
“Oh, you noticed.”
After that the interview
went like a charm.
I mentioned how much
everyone liked his foreign movie parodies, when he and his cast
spoke pseudo-Italian or French. Caesar said he’d just seen his
first Japanese movie, “The Gate of Hell” (Jigokumon), the first
Japanese film widely released in the U.S., and they were rehearsing
their first Japanese movie parody. Would I like to hear some of
it?
Would I!
So he got to his feet
and roaming his office did all the roles for me, an audience of
one. Hilarious. I was a great audience. When he finished he sat
down behind his desk and we talked of more personal things. He
like to lift weights and to shoot a .22 rifle at cans of water.
He took out a huge cigar and lit up. He must have noticed me slavering
a little because he asked me if I smoked cigars. I said I sure
did so he gave me one. Then he got up amd went to a long cabinet
and slid the door open. It was stacked with boxes of cigars. He
gave me a box of cigars. The cigars were so large the box held
only ten.
When I finally emerged,
grinning, Reiner and Morris were still there, anxious and hovering.
“How did it go?” Morris
asked.
“Best interview I ever
had,” I said.
They exchanged glances.
As if they didn’t believe me. I held up the box of cigars.
“He gave me these,”
I said.
They believed me.
Then there was Zsa
Zsa Gabor. I interviewed her along with four or five other reporters
from Houston’s three newspapers. She was dazzling--beautiful,
quick-witted. And the only thing I can remember her saying was,
“Sixteen carats.” Anyway, some big number. We had been questioning
her for 15 minutes or so, during which I couldn’t stop looking
at her, when the female TV editor of another paper asked, “Miss
Gabor, how big is that diamond?” Zsa Zsa held up her hand looked
at her ring as if she hadn’t been aware she was wearing one, and
said, “Sixteen carats.”
You know, I had been
staring at her for more than 15 minutes and hadn’t even noticed
she was wearing a ring. Great dress, though.
Remember Clint Walker,
that big guy who starred in the “Cheyenne” TV series? I interviewed
him in his suite at the Shamrock Hotel in Houston. He had the
widest shoulders and narrowest hips and biggest feet. I noticed
his feet becaause he had his cowboy boots propped on a hassock
in front of his armchair.
“What size are your
boots?” I asked him.
He gazed at them a
moment and said, “My size, I gues.”
(He wasn’t playing
dumb cowboy. He really didn’t know. They were custom-made.)
Many of my out-of-town
interviews were on TV junkets arranged by networks or ad agencies,
which paid the major expenses. On some of them, to places like
Los Angeles and San Francisco, I took Dody along, paying her expenses.
It was a good deal. The tour sponsor paid for a single room. When
I took Dody I took a double room and only had to pay the junket
sponsor (or the Post if it was a newspaper trip) the difference
between single and double room rates. I often took her on interviews
with me. Interviewees seemed more responsive when she was with
me. And she never spoke unless spoken to.
Anyway.
One memorable interview
was at lunch with Dinah Shore, her press agent, Charles Pomerantz
(who also represented Lucille Ball and Gale Storm); Dinah’s long-time
piano accompanist, Ticker Freeman, and a network PR person, at
Hollywood’s Brown Derby. (Pomerantz told me a Brown Derby-related
anecdote I cherish to this day. He said Ed Wynn was having lunch
with his agent at the Derby when the agent pointed out a very
homely man at a nearby table and said, “Do you know who that is?”
Wynn shook his head.
After decades as a
venerated comedian, Wynn at an advanced age had made his dramatic
debut in “Requiem For a Heavyweight” on TV and gotten rave reviews
everywhere. Except from a reviewer for one of Hollywood’s trade
newspapers, who savaged him and his performance. “That’s the man
who gave you that bad review.” Wyann regarded the man’s extraordinarily
ugly face for a long moment, then said, “I’m glad.”)
Back to our lunch.
When we finished, Dinah asked for dessert menus. She told everyone
to order a different dessert. We did. As we sat there, all six
of us with a dessert before us, she said, “Now we’ll have a circle.
What we did was, everybody took a bite of the dessert in front
of him and passed the dish to his left. Which we kept doing until
the desserts were finished.
On a trip to Las Vegas,
I was interviewing Joey Bishop pool-side at one of the big Strip
hotels. He was in a lounge chair in swim trunks next to an attractive
lady in a relatively modest swim suit in another chair. Bishop
had us all laughing. Dody, who ordinarily didn’t ask questions
at an interview, said to the young woman, “Is he this funny at
home?”
She said, “I wouldn’t
know. I’m not his wife.”
