We'll Be Here For the Rest of Our Lives (9 page)

Once in a great while we would escape the deep freeze and vacation in warmer parts of the world. A most memorable trip unfolded in the Bahamas. We went to Nassau and stayed at the Royal Victoria Hotel. My dad, of course, was eager to hear jazz and discovered a club on the wrong side of the tracks. He took me and Mom to hear a hip revue where a big band wailed on “Slaughter on Tenth Avenue,” complete with a smokin’ Hammond B3 organist. Nassau’d gone funky, and I soaked it all in.

The next day Dad spotted Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., by the pool. The great leader was in matching shirt-and-bathing-suit cabana attire. My father approached him and said, “My family and I greatly admire you and would be honored if we could take your picture.”

“With pleasure,” said Dr. King.

Dad snapped the photo. We all shook hands and went to the lounge chairs. A few minutes later, Dr. King entered the pool from the deep end while I entered from the shallow. Just like that, the dozen or so vacationers, white people all, who were in the pool suddenly got out, as if the water had been contaminated. Dr. King and I stayed in and swam for the next twenty minutes or so.

When I got out, my father took me aside and said, “We’re changing hotels. I’m not staying anywhere the guests display this kind of racist behavior.”

An hour later we checked out and headed for the Nassau Beach Hotel, a little outside of town. There we were given a lovely room with an ocean view. The next morning we all went for a swim. This time we ran into Harry Belafonte who, together with his daughter Shari, was about to take a dip. “May we have a photo, Mr. Belafonte,” said Dad, “for the
kin-der?”

“Of course,” said the singer, who often sang in Yiddish. “For the
kin-der.”

Decades later I was musical director for a charity concert produced by Joseph Papp. Belafonte appeared. I went up to him and said, “It’s great to see you again, Mr. Belafonte. Last time was a million years ago at the Nassau Beach Hotel. We were all vacationing there.”

“Impossible,” said Belafonte. “I’ve never been to Nassau. You must be thinking of Sidney Poitier.”

Oh God
, I thought to myself,
I’ve committed some terrible racial blunder, confusing one famous black entertainer for another
.

Belafonte stood for several seconds, allowing me to die this slow death, before breaking into a smile and saying, “Just kidding. I was in Nassau, but I can’t honestly say that I recall the Family Shaffer.”

I was relieved.

When I told this story to my son, Will, who was nine at the time and studying the civil rights movement in school, he was puzzled and said, “Dad, how could Dr. King stay at that hotel when there were segregation laws?”

“Those laws were in the United States, son,” I said. “That’s why to vacation comfortably, he had to leave his own country.”

You hadn’t lived till you’d watched Sullivan with the Shaffers. Back in the sixties, neighborhood kids would come over just for the experience of viewing the show with Bernie and Shirley, Thunder Bay’s most sophisticated show-biz observers.

Sullivan brought us million-dollar stars; my parents’ critiques of those stars: priceless. However, even though it was the musical stars that held my attention, I was also intrigued by Ed himself. It might have been his absolute squareness, especially in contrast to the hip acts he presented, that gave me an early understanding of irony. I immediately took to the concept. In fact, when Ed hosted the Beatles—the starkest possible contrast between an old-time presenter and a newfangled act—I was nearly as intrigued by his introduction as I was by their performance. After listening to it again and again, I memorized Ed’s exact words and, to this day, give a credible impersonation of Sullivan—the nationally syndicated columnist for the
New York Daily News
—as he brought on the Fab Four:

“Well now yesterday and today our theater’s been jammed
with newspapermen and photographers from across the country, and these veterans agree with me that the city has never seen the kind of excitement generated by these four youngsters from Liverpool who call themselves the Beatles. Now tonight you’ll twice be entertained by them …”

“Twice be entertained”—that was one hell of a construction that Ed formulated, something like “twice cooked Chinese pork.” In any event, the Beatles came out and tore the roof off the very theater where, three decades later, I’d be leading a band, and, from time to time, at the request of my boss, David Letterman, doing my imitation of Sullivan introducing the Beatles.

Back in the sixties, while Ed was presenting the Beatles to their hordes of screaming fans, he was also hosting an older generation—Sullivan’s own generation—of entertainers. This included everyone from Kate Smith to Jerry Vale to Jan Peerce. Jan Peerce, the operatic tenor, was of special interest to the Shaffers because he once came to Thunder Bay to perform a recital. It was a grand occasion, and the city’s Jewry, knowing Peerce was a member of the tribe, invited him to our
shul
for a reception.

“Mr. Peerce,” asked a member of our congregation, “would you be good enough to honor us with a musical selection?”

The great star looked straight in the man’s eyes and said, “Sir, may I ask what you do for a living?”

“I’m a doctor.”

“Well, Doctor,” said Peerce, “if I were to invite you to my party and then ask you to take out my gallbladder, what would you say?”

The doctor said nothing.

Some years later, the good people of Shaarey Shomayim had the chance to be entertained by another celebrity whom we knew from Sullivan. Going from the sublime to the ridiculous,
we would be hosting Ricky Layne and Velvel, a ventriloquist and his Jewish dummy.

Ricky and Velvel, like Myron Cohen, were among Sullivan’s favorites. Ed had a fondness for Catskills chicken-soup humor, and of course my parents and I got a special kick out of Velvel, who actually spoke Yiddish. Starting in the fifties, Ed had been introducing middle America to the ways of funny Jews, thus preparing the country for an era when our brand of humor, from Woody Allen to Jerry Seinfeld, would prove popular with the masses. Back in the sixties, precisely because of Sullivan, Ricky Layne and Velvel were extremely popular. I was a fan. And when I learned that they would be coming to our synagogue to put on a show in support of an Israel bond drive, I was thrilled.

So was the whole town. Ricky Layne and Velvel were so massive, the Israel bond drive couldn’t be contained. It had to be opened up to the goyim, including the mayor and the Pattersons, one of our city’s leading families. The Pattersons were our Kennedys, and my parents were proud to be included in their social circle. I had even fancied one of the Patterson daughters when we were in our early teens, but I was too shy to make a move. I may have missed a golden opportunity to relieve myself of what would become a burdensome virginity.

On the eve of the bond drive, our
shul
was filled to the brim with Jews and gentiles alike. It was almost as if Ed Sullivan himself had come to Thunder Bay to present one of his favorite acts. But the irony was this: instead of Ed introducing the man and his dummy, the opening act was a Hasidic rabbi bent on selling Israel bonds.

I can’t recall the name of the rabbi. But I can recall the power and passion of his plea for money. He was extraordinary, detailing the progress Israel had made while dramatizing the extreme
danger the country still faced. When he was through, he asked for pledges, and though a few came dribbling in, they were modest. After all, this was Thunder Bay, not Manhattan. The rabbi wound up again and delivered another strong pitch, this time heightening the drama and raising the volume of his voice. The congregation responded, but only slightly.

The rabbi got pissed.
Real
pissed. He let go with a stream of vituperative accusations and flung insults at the integrity of Canadian Jewry. We were irresponsible. We were cheap. We were cowardly. We were misinformed. We were shaming our forefathers. We were shaming ourselves. And as the rabbi went a little nuts in his chastisements, his Yiddish-accented English grew more Yiddish. Seated next to the very goyish Pattersons, my assimilated parents slid down in their chairs, hoping this would soon end. But the more the rabbi’s mission faltered, the less giving the crowd, the crazier the rabbi became. By the end, he was shouting in our faces and crying real tears.

During the ordeal, my eye had been on the dummy whose face peeked out of the case carried by Ricky. While the rabbi was ranting, I quietly slipped over to take a better look at the dormant Velvel, the very doll I had seen so often on Sullivan. Just then, the rabbi, still raging, concluded his pitch. I watched as Ricky leaned down under the table, brought the dummy out of the case and slipped his hand up Velvel’s ass. Ricky looked at the man sitting next to him, the president of our congregation, and asked, “How the fuck am I supposed to do shtick now that this goddamn rabbi has reamed out the room?”

“Don’t worry,” said our president. “After that, we’ll laugh at anything.”

And we did.

Ricky Layne and Velvel bring to mind Andy Kaufman. Both acts operated from a unique and bizarre perspective. Ricky Layne’s was the first novelty act with which I had personal contact. Andy came much later in my life, but was perhaps the greatest novelty act of his time. Like Ricky, Andy had an alter ego. As it turned out, that alter ego bumped up against my actual ego.

My first encounter with Andy was during the debut of
SNL
in 1975; it was a performance that ignited Kaufman’s career. As a painfully shy boy, he stood in front of a phonograph and simply dropped the needle on a record. Out came the Mighty Mouse theme. Rather than dance or even move, Andy simply stood there, like a little boy. At the chorus, though, he suddenly came alive and mouthed the words “Here I come to save the day.” For those few seconds, he transformed into a superhero—his facial and body language pulsating with heroic masculinity—only to return to his listless state of awkwardness once the short chorus had ended. This strange little act was a sensation and put Andy on the map.

For a period, Andy went to any length to make audiences love him. In concert venues, he invited the entire crowd to join him for milk and cookies. Then he led them to a convoy of buses parked outside the auditorium—and off they went to a restaurant, where Andy would treat every last patron.

Conversely, or perversely, he went through another period where his solitary aim was to incur the audience’s wrath. Now he wanted to be hated, and he succeeded by avoiding any semblance of entertainment in his act. All he would do was read a crushingly dull book out loud. The book would have no relevance. Andy would simply stand there and read until he was booed. When the booing stopped, people would start throwing things at his head. When the throwing stopped, the crowd would get up and leave. And when the last audience member walked out in disgust, Andy felt he had triumphed. He was hated.

His need to be despised darkened over the years. He got into the habit of insulting women and accusing them of inferior intelligence and strength. To prove his claim, he invited women to wrestle him onstage. Several were willing. In some cases the women—who may or may not have been shills—were injured, thus antagonizing the audience even more.

Andy Kaufman was a performance artist who trafficked in unpredictability. When he did a parody of a talk show, for instance, he placed his desk eight feet high so that he literally talked down to his guests. The piece was brilliant.

He was a semi-regular on the Letterman show in the early eighties. In a famous appearance, he showed up with wrestler Jerry “The King” Lawler. At one point, Kaufman began cursing Lawler, who, in turn, reacted violently. They lunged at each other, spilling Dave’s coffee and scalding him. Andy looked to
be seriously injured. Everyone was concerned for his health. But when he and Lawler were spotted having dinner later that same evening, we knew we’d been had.

Then came the week that Andy was scheduled to appear on Letterman two successive nights. The first night he would come on as himself, the second as Tony Clifton, his alter ego, a highly obnoxious Las Vegas—style lounge singer. He went so far as to have a latex application that altered his entire visage. In Clifton, he created a character who was not only abusive to the audience but to his accompanying musicians as well. One false note and Tony might attack you.

After his first night, Andy as Andy came over to me and said, “Tony Clifton will be here tomorrow. Now listen—he’s notoriously tough on piano players. If you don’t know your stuff, he’s likely to punch out your lights.”

“Oh, I can handle Tony,” I said. “I’ve been backing lounge lizards my entire life.”

“Well, you better have your shit together, Shaffer,” he said, “or Tony will ream you a new asshole.”

The next day I was careful to arrive early for rehearsal. Tony showed up at 2 p.m. sharp, in full regalia—shiny Vegas show suit, coal-black wig, latex mask, patent leather shoes.

“Okay, Shaffer,” he said, “I don’t know what I’m going to sing until I sing it, so you better fuckin’ follow me or you’ll wind up on the floor.”

He started into a lounge medley where he threw a half dozen songs in my direction. I knew every one. When he skipped to the bridge, I was there with him; when he sang an extra chorus, I played the extra chorus; when he cut a lyric or improvised a verse, I didn’t miss a beat.

“Damn, Shaffer,” said Tony, “you know what you’re doing.”

“I try,” I said. “Well, you succeed.”

When Andy played Tony, I sensed a sweetness that I never felt when Andy played Andy. In fact, I liked working with Tony Clifton a lot more than working with Andy Kaufman, whom I viewed with a degree of pity. During the actual show that night, the musical rapport between Clifton and Shaffer was silky smooth. The medley came off without a hitch.

Thereafter, Andy’s career was marked by an increasing predilection toward pain. The pain became alarmingly real when he developed cancer and died tragically in 1984. He was thirty-five. Even now, though, there are those who say his death was the final hoax and that somewhere, in Indianapolis or Indonesia, he lives incognito as a plumber or rug salesman.