“I never measure him,” confessed Bellew. “He loves to eat, among a lot of other things, Monte Cristo sandwiches. Other costumers did their job but when it was time to check his girth, they’d get fired — you know, shoot the messenger. So I caught on fast. After every concert I get hold of his pants and let ’em out a little. I know he knows it isn’t true but we both keep up the charade his pants still have a thirty-two-inch waist. In reality, I think they’re probably closer to fifty-two.”
Despite the slam on the King, Andy loved the story and had Bill repeat it from time to time. Some months after Elvis was gone, Andy ran into Bellew and asked a curious question. “You think he faked his death?”
Bill Bellew didn’t hesitate. “No. He’s dead, no question about it. Nobody could eat that many Monte Cristos and live.” Case closed. That must have ignited in Andy some fears of overconsumption, for soon after, he took me aside and, looking slightly alarmed, said, “You think I eat too much chocolate?”
Andy did consume an extraordinary amount of chocolate — lots of chocolate during the day topped off by a bowl of chocolate ice cream after every dinner — but I didn’t think it was harmful because he didn’t seem to show any effects, unlike Elvis. “No, I don’t think so. Why, you think you eat too much?”
“Apparently not.” He shrugged and that was the end of it. He never ceased his prodigious chocolate ingestion, but the cautionary nature of Bellew’s story must have remained in the back of his mind. Years later, when he lay dying in his hospital bed at Cedars-Sinai Hospital, he looked at me and summed it up. “Chocolate has killed me.”
The second childhood dream Andy saw come true through his ABC special was being able to work with Howdy Doody. In December 1947, a thirty-year-old guy who had changed his name From Robert Schmidt to Buffalo Bob Smith went on the air with television’s first children’s show and made entertainment as well as cultural history. Though there were only twenty thousand television sets nationwide when the show began,
Howdy Doody
would go on to enchant that generation of baby boomers, and would eventually build an audience of more than ten million loyal fans per week.
Andy, of course, was one of them, but his identification with the little wooden sideman of Bob’s, the puppet that became known as Howdy Doody, was more than just that of an ardent fan: Andy truly believed that Howdy possessed a life of his own. So when Andy had the power to put nearly anyone he pleased on his ABC special, it was somehow fitting that the first choice of the man who was still a kid was not even a flesh-and-blood person but rather an animated figment from the dawn of television and the dawn of Andy’s cognizance of the art of entertainment.
Booking Howdy Doody on his show was a dream come true for Andy. “He was the first real star of television,” Andy said to me, the reverence in his voice and on his face no sham, so honestly in awe was he of getting the little wooden man as his guest. As a lonely kid in Great Neck, while the other kids played outdoors, Andy would sit in front of the television accompanied by his imaginary friends, transfixed by the interplay between Buffalo Bob and Howdy. When Howdy spoke Andy felt it was to him and him alone. Andy even appeared on
Howdy Doody
as a member of the Peanut Gallery.
Howdy Doody
would become the spiritual foundation for many of our future productions, including that ABC special.
Once the edict from Andy went out that we would have Howdy Doody on the show, the first miracle to be performed was finding him and Buffalo Bob.
Howdy Doody
had ended its run in 1960, and though Smith and the producers engineered a kitsch resurgence of Howdy appearances on college campuses in the early seventies — along with a short-lived revival on the airwaves — Howdy and Bob had more or less disappeared.
Andy had a friend named Burt Dubrow from their days together in Grahm College’s television department, and Andy recalled Burt once telling him that from the time he was about ten years old he had known Buffalo Bob. Andy called Burt, and with his help we found Bob and arranged to have him, Howdy, and the puppeteer fly out to Hollywood to tape the show. Andy wanted only Howdy on camera with him, so the plan was for Bob to lay down Howdy’s voice track, and for the puppeteer to provide the action.
When Howdy (in his box) and the puppeteer, Pady Blackwood, arrived at the studio, we cleared the soundstage of all personnel. This was going to be a big moment for Andy and he wanted privacy. After Pady had unboxed Howdy and propped him up for the meeting, I went to get Andy, who was holed up in his dressing room, waiting nervously for the big moment.
“Is he there?” he asked me, shaking. I knew that he hadn’t slept the night before, so anxious was he over the prospect of facing his entire childhood in the form of a small, wooden marionette.
“Yeah, he’s there. Howdy’s ready to meet you,” I said.
Andy wrung his hands expectantly and slowly rose. His trembling was no joke. He looked at me with a slightly stricken expression. “What if he doesn’t like me?”
As surreal as that question was, I resisted the temptation to make a crack, for I realized this meeting was possibly bigger for Andy than his brush with Elvis. “Andy,” I said gently, “he’ll love you. You’re making him a star again.”
That convinced Andy that it would be all right, so he ventured out into the hallway and headed toward the big stage door. The cast and crew were assembled outside as Andy slowly swung back the door and entered the lighted studio in a scene not unlike that when Richard Dreyfuss enters the alien vessel in
Close Encounters.
I closed the door and waited for the historic meeting to begin. Not twenty seconds had passed when the silence was shattered by a blood-chilling scream and Andy burst through the door, headed for the security of his dressing room. “That’s not Howdy Doody! That’s an impostor!” he yelled in a rage.
I followed him to his door, but it was locked. “Andy, what’s wrong?”
“That’s not Howdy, that’s the impostor, Photo Doody!” He spat the words angrily.
I went into the studio and found Pady Blackwood, who was quite shaken by the incident. I pointed at the alleged Howdy Doody. “Is this the real Howdy Doody?”
“Yes, of course it is,” he said. “It’s the same marionette we’ve been using for years.”
I looked him straight in the eye. “You can honestly guarantee that this is the
original
Howdy Doody? What’s Photo Doody?”
The guy paused for a moment as if considering his next words. “Well, actually, this
is
Photo Doody. He’s just like the other marionette only he’s used for still photographs and so on. He’s got better cosmetics than the original and no strings to get in the way. The other puppet I brought for the taping is the same only with strings. Hardly anybody can tell the difference between these two and the original.”
Andy Kaufman could. I went back to Andy’s room and, when he finally calmed down, explained the situation. After a short meeting we decided that the real Howdy would be brought to Hollywood immediately.
On the day of the taping, Andy walked out onto the stage toward the original Howdy, who was propped up, patiently waiting for him. Andy had apparently done a lot of meditation over this moment, for when he first saw Howdy it was magical. Before we got the take used in the special, we could see Andy in the monitors gazing lovingly at Howdy in crystal-clear sincerity, the man-child revealing the true depth of his feelings for this small wooden man, probably his only real friend as a child. Andy was actually choked up. After he recovered his emotions, we brought in Pady the puppeteer, and the scene went perfectly.
A few days before we got around to shooting that precious moment, Buffalo Bob arrived to lay down Howdy’s audio track. Andy had anticipated a charismatic and delightful older man, clad in his frontiersman outfit, dispensing sage advice to all the “girls and boys” on the set. What he got was an old guy wearing a rumpled leisure suit, sucking up cigarettes, and apparently hung-over. Andy was startled by Bob’s appearance, but the coup de grâce came two minutes after they met when Bob launched into a barrage of foulmouthed “pussy” jokes. I could see Andy’s face noticeably flush. Had Tony Clifton been around, he and Bob would have gotten along famously, hut Andy couldn’t wait to get away from the guy. During the taping Bob broke into an uncontrollable hacking cough that infused the recording booth with the foul odor of cigarette residue and the booze still in his system. Once he had the cough under control he looked at Andy, shaking his head. “I hate that fucking Howdy voice. It kills my throat.” Once the voice tracks were done Andy left and did not speak to Bob again.
An even less fortunate has-been was poor Gail Slobodkin. Andy was friends with the young, struggling actress and offered her a part in the ABC special. A cute, perky honey-blonde, Gail had once played in
The Sound of Music
on Broadway but enjoyed little success afterward. Thus credited, we bestowed upon Gail the honor of being the first candidate for our nationally televised debut of the Has-Been Corner. The tape rolled just as she was about to perform her segment, and to create believability that she was truly a has-been, Andy asked her something on-camera that he never would have said even in private: “When was the first time you realized you’d never make it?”
Seemingly taken aback, Gail was nevertheless pleasant despite Andy’s cold-blooded question. Andy, undeterred, pressed on. “Gail,” he asked, “what’s it like being a has-been?” The sweet girl was gut-shot by his remarks but cheerfully defended herself and her decision to return to showbiz. Andy summed it up, “Well, I hope you make it … but I don’t think you will.” And with that rousing introduction Gail sang a selection from
The Sound of Music,
the charming “Lonely Goatherd.” As Gail gamely belted out her song, Andy was in the background conducting an “angry” discussion with the floor director, me. When he’d notice the camera on him he’d shove me away and let Gail continue. We did this twice, then Gail finished.
During the taping Gail was obviously hurt by Andy’s mean comments and reacted by giving him a gentle slap. It was done more out of her own pain than to inflict pain on Andy. She kept her chin up, did the show, and left the building. Three days later a distraught Gail checked into a low-rent Hollywood motel, took a hot bath, ratcheted open a can of Van Camp’s pork and beans, shoveled the cold beans down her throat with a plastic spoon, then cut that throat with the jagged can lid. Her body was discovered by the housekeeper the next morning. Her suicide note blamed Andy for his cold-hearted mockery of her on national television. The LAPD finally passed the note on to Andy, who kept it by his framed picture of the Maharishi. Only once did I summon the courage to ask him about his feelings surrounding Gail’s death.
He never answered because it never happened.
You’ve just been had. Gail Slobodkin not only is still alive but is living happily in southern California. It was all a put-on. Gail’s reactions were all carefully staged and her feelings were intact. The point of the story was to demonstrate to you, the reader, the feeling of being Kaufmanized. This was the same emotion Andy and I sought to evoke not only in audiences but often when we were out in public, just the two of us. A mass Kaufmanization of an audience was fun, but the process itself was the rush, and to befuddle just one person was often just as thrilling.
The Gail Slobodkin story is an example of the tomfoolery Andy and I attempted to perpetrate with our special, but the executives at ABC were reluctant to become victims of Kaufmanization and resisted many of our suggestions about elements of the special. For instance, psychological games were one thing, but fucking around with the God-given technology of our medium? Well, it was unthinkable. When Andy told the network brass that we wanted to cause the picture to roll at one point during the telecast so people would think that their sets needed adjusting or that there was some interference from beyond their living rooms, the TV execs wet themselves. Andy told them he wanted the rolling to endure for as long as three minutes. The suits became terrified that people might switch channels to check what was wrong and not come back. They obviously had a lot of faith in the ability of our material to hold people’s attention. After a lot of wrangling we finally acknowledged that three minutes might push the limits of even the most ardent Andy fan, so we limited the rolling picture to about thirty seconds — just long enough to irritate but not completely lose our viewers. It was typical Kaufman brinkmanship, not only in the picture rolling itself, but in the process of scaring the executives with the inflated estimate of the time the effect would last. We never intended the rolling to last three minutes, we just used Kaufmanization to soften them up.
Another offbeat routine that I wrote for that special was a musical interlude where Andy played the congas backed by four burly, bad-ass-looking brothers. The song? Disney’s “It’s a Small World after All.” The juxtaposition of a children’s song and tough guys as the singers was Kaufman and Zmuda at their best.
When the special was complete we proudly handed it over to ABC, sat back, and waited for a time slot in the near future. Fred Silverman, ABC’s president and the man who would later go on to be recognized as the savior of NBC, scrutinized the pilot in his office with a gaggle of ass-kissing programming executives. Had Silverman been a medieval king with the power of life and death, he first would have chosen the rack for us and then chopped off our heads and put them on pikes for all the vassals of the Kingdom of Hollywood to see and fear. Since he couldn’t do that, he exercised his next best option: he proclaimed that our special was “unairable” and that “people in Kansas wouldn’t understand it.” He promptly banned it from his network. We were crushed.
After letting the dust settle for a year, Shapiro/West took the program to NBC, but lo and behold, Fred had taken his court there, and once again we were stymied. I was deeply depressed and hurt at the time, feeling that our rejection stemmed from having gone in such a strange, unconventional direction. I was certain the fruits of our labors — of which we were very proud — would never see the light of cathode ray tubes across the country. Then, about a year after the NBC pass, Shapiro/West again knocked on ABC’s door. This time the castle was in the hands of Tony Thomopoulos, who, bless his heart, loved our special.