Steve Allen

            On Wednesday I went to bed around 1:40 and got to sleep fairly soon after that. I woke up at 4:00 to pee and slept until the alarm went off at 5:00. After yoga I checked for bedbugs and there were a few adults stuck to the carpet tape on the floor at the head of my bed while a few babies were crawling above them on the old exit door. 

            I transcribed the poem from 1998 that’s in the Love Poems document stuck in Protected View and started revising it.

            I worked out the chords for the instrumental intro and the first line of “Jules Bonnot c'était pas n'importe qui” (Jules Bonnot Was Not Just Anybody) by Boris Vian. 

            I worked out the chords for the second, third, and fourth verses of “Docteur Faust” by Serge Gainsbourg. 

            I weighed 91.65 kilos before breakfast. 

            I played my Gibson Les Paul Studio during song practice and it stayed in tune most of the time.

            Around midday I walked over to Home Hardware and bought two rolls of two-sided carpet tape. I put strips at the top, bottom and both sides of the old exit door at the head of my bed. 

            I weighed 92.8 kilos before lunch. I had peanut butter and five-year-old cheddar on saltines with a glass of lemonade. 

            I took a siesta and slept 40 minutes longer than usual. It was too late to take a bike ride downtown but not to ride to Ossington and Bloor. 

            I weighed 92.45 kilos at 17:50. 

            I was a day behind in my journal and worked on getting caught up. 

            I made pizza on a slice of multigrain sandwich bread with marinara, tomato pesto, a chopped ground beef burger, and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a glass of Creemore lager while watching an interview with Tim Conway. 

            Tim says if he did any of his characters again it would have to be with the people he originally did them, like with Carol Burnett in the Tudball and Wiggins sketches or anything he did with Harvey Korman. They both could improve anything written in a script. 

            Tim secretly tricked Harvey on Dick Clark’s Bloopers and Blunders and he was set up to believe there was not only a buyer for the losing racehorse he co-owned with Tim, but one willing to pay three times the original price. Harvey was in ecstasy when they were about to close the deal until suddenly the buyer’s grandson said he wanted a different coloured horse and they walked away. Tim took Harvey over to a two-way mirror and said, “You know Dick Clark?” The minute he said, “Dick Clark” Harvey said, “Cheap guy! Never pays anybody anything!” Tim says that wasn’t true but Harvey just went off like that sometimes. Harvey goes on to say that Clark’s program about the bloopers never works. Nobody falls for it. Harvey had been growing a beard for a movie but before this fake deal Tim convinced him to shave it so he’d look like Harvey. After he found out he’d been pranked he didn’t speak to Tim for two months. 

            One time when Tim and Harvey were flying from New York to California they stopped for fuel in Arizona. After taking off again Tim says to Harvey that he’d noticed that when they fueled up the guy put the gas cap on the wing but didn’t screw it back on and now it’s fallen off the wing. Harvey goes up and bangs on the door of the pilot’s cabin to tell him that his gas cap fell off while other passengers are overhearing. The pilot tells him that there’s no gas cap on a plane. 

            Tim says if Ken Berry had been born at an earlier time he would have been right up there with Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly. He says he was just as good as them. I don’t think so. 

            Of the writers on The Carol Burnett Show nobody is funnier than Ken Solms in real life so Tim didn’t know why he wasn’t performing. He and his partner Gail Parent were two of the funniest writers on the show. 

            Tim says a lot of people married off Carol’s show. Tim married Charlene, who he met when she was working as Carol’s assistant. He got the idea for the first Mrs. Wiggins sketch from Charlene’s difficulty in using the intercom. 

            Carol was never really the “boss” boss. He never heard her get cross with anyone even though there were some real lemons on the show. 

            Tim understands why Carol worshipped Lucille Ball but really Carol had already taken comedy beyond Lucy. He thinks she’s the funniest comedienne that ever came down the pike. 

            Tim started out as a jockey because his father was training horses in Cleveland. 

            When Tim got out of the army a friend of his was in radio and invited him to write jokes for an announcer. Tim started out just copying jokes from a joke book. He and Ernie Anderson were writing and doing TV commercials together. Rosemarie thought they were pretty funny, so she pointed them out to Steve Allen. Then Allen had Tim on his show a couple of times which led to him being invited to co-star on McHale’s Navy. 

            The first time Tim made Harvey laugh was when he played a fireman and Harvey was a victim who needed mouth to mouth. Tim was holding Harvey and then asked, “So where ya from?” 

            He thinks Carol is the funniest and most creative person he’s ever met. She thinks and does funny. 

            One time Tim wrapped himself in toilet paper like a mummy and took a picture then put it on his drivers license. He drove home with the toilet paper still on his face and a cop pulled him over and asked to see his license. That’s the one he showed him. The cop just told him to be careful from now on.

            Carol would bite her nails to keep from laughing during the Tudball-Wiggins sketches. 

            Tim said Steve Allen was his favourite show when it was on. 

            Steve Allen’s mother Belle Montrose was considered to be the funniest woman in vaudeville.

            Steve ran away from home at 16 and when he got hungry he took to begging. 

            He became an LA radio announcer in 1946 and also had a comedy show called Smile Time for five nights a week. His show became so popular that the studio audiences were standing room only. He started going into the audience with a microphone to ad lib. 

            When Steve Allen was a TV commentator for professional wrestling he used to make up the names of many wrestling holds. Nobody ever told him he was wrong and some of his names are still in use. He would also throw jokes into his commentary that made it very popular. 

            His first Steve Allen Show ran from 1950 to 1952. 

            His first album was Steve Allen at the Piano in 1951. 

            He was a guest host on Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts for which the sponsor was Lipton tea and soup. Steve made Lipton tea and soup on camera and then poured it into Godfrey’s iconic ukalele. TV audiences, including Godfrey thought it was hilarious. 

            While a regular panelist on What’s My Line? in 1953 he coined the question, “Is it bigger than a breadbox?” 

            He created and was the first host of The Tonight Show in 1953 on which he pioneered the “Man on the street” segments that became a late night staple.

            He wrote the lyrics for “Theme from Picnic” in 1955 and it reached #13. 

            He hosted The Steve Allen Show in 1956 and his guest on episode 2 was Elvis. His show was more popular with college students than The Tonight Show. Steve played piano during sight gags; invited audience members to select three notes and he would use them to write a song on the spot; He did a regular satire on radio’s popular The Answer Man; and he would over-dramatically read newspaper letters to the editor. He did live commercials for Polaroid and made a killing because he opted to be paid in Polaroid stock. 

            From 1962 to 1964 he recreated his Tonight Show as The Steve Allen Playhouse. It included a hidden camera at an all night market; He introduced Southern California eccentrics such as Gypsy Boots and Frank Zappa. He once called up Johnny Carson pretending to be a ratings interviewer and asked him what show he was watching. He got Carson to unknowingly plug Steve’s show on national television. 

            In 1964 he became the host of I’ve Got a Secret and The Steve Allen Comedy Hour, which featured the TV debuts of Rob Reiner, Richard Dreyfuss, John Byner, and Ruth Buzzy. 

            Steve wrote the score for A Man Called Dagger in 1967. 

            From 1968 to 1971 he had a new Steve Allen Show, which featured wacky stunts that would influence David Letterman such as being slathered in dog food and letting dogs lick it off. This show introduced Steve Martin and Albert Brooks to television audiences. 

            From 1977 to 1983 he wrote, produced and hosted Meeting of the Minds, which featured actors playing historical figures from different eras arguing with each other on various topics. Some called it the best talk show on TV. His wife Jayne Meadows played most of the female characters. Steve had first conceived on the show in 1959. It was very popular and he won a Peabody and an Emmy for it. 

            He starred in The Benny Goodman Story. 

            He wrote more than 50 books and 8,500 songs. He wrote “This Could Be the Start of Something” (his theme song), “Impossible”, “Pretend You Don’t See Her”. He won a Grammy for his song “Gravy Waltz”. He made a $1000 bet with Frankie Laine that he could write 50 songs a day for a week. He did it in the window of Wallach’s Music City and won the bet. One of the songs” Let’s Go to Church Next Sunday Morning” became a hit. 

            He wrote the books Dumbth: The Lost Art of Thinking, Steve Allen on The Bible Religion and Morality, His last book was Vulgarians at the Gate: Trash TV and Raunch Radio. 

            He said, “Radio is the theatre of the mind while TV is the theatre of the mindless”. “If the Old Testament was a reliable guide on the matter of capital punishment, half the population of the United States would have to be executed”. “Making mental bets is how I lost my mind”. 

            After being hit by another car that broke several ribs that pierced his heart, he said to the driver, “What some people will do for an autograph”. He died a few hours later.

August 28, 1996: I called around for modelling work

Thirty years ago today 

            On Wednesday I called around for work and got a few calls offering me bookings. In the evening I took my guitar to the Art Bar reading series to perform on the open stage.

Steve Carell

            On Tuesday I went to bed at 1:40. I slept fairly well and woke up to pee at 4:30, then went back to sleep until 5:00. After yoga I checked for bedbugs and there were quite a few on the old exit door at the head of my bed. There were also several stuck to the carpet tape on the floor between the head of my bed and the door. 

            I tried to edit an old poem but discovered that the entire document that contains it is in Protected View. I unchecked all the boxes that should remove Protected View but it wouldn’t go away. I spent a lot of time trying to find solutions to the problem in search results but nothing I tried worked. I guess I’ll just transcribe the poem tomorrow. Because of this hassle I didn’t have time to work out any chords for “Jules Bonnot c'était pas n'importe qui” (Jules Bonnot Was Not Just Anybody) by Boris Vian or “Docteur Faust” by Serge Gainsbourg. 

            I weighed 91.7 kilos before breakfast. 

            I played my Martin during song practice for the last of four sessions and it went out of tune all the time. 

            Around midday I put some two sided carpet tape on the bottom of the old exit door at the head of my bed. Some of the tape got wasted because it accidentally got stuck to tape that was already there and once it’s stuck to itself it won’t come apart. I ran out of tape so I’ll have to buy some more tomorrow. 

            I weighed 92.95 before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back.

            I weighed 92.6 kilos at 17:45. 

            I was one day behind in my journal and worked on getting caught up. 

            I had a potato with gravy and my last chicken leg while watching an interview with Steve Carell and another with Steve Lawrence on the topic of Carol Burnett. 

            Carell says Carol exudes joy in everything she does. He considers himself a student of The Carol Burnett Show. It was the first show one would set aside the evening to watch. There’s nothing like watching good people have fun with each other. Her comedy was never at anyone’s expense. 

            Breaking up is only funny when you’re trying not to. 

            The audience was instrumental to the energy of the show. 

            The interviewer tells him that Tina Fey compares The Office to Mama’s Family. Steve agrees.

            Even as a kid Steve thought Carol was hot but he never thought of what she did as being something only a woman could do. That’s why she was an inspiration to people of all genders. 

            Steve and Carol both did voices for Horton Hears a Who but they didn’t meet until he was promoting the movie with her. He says he had lofty expectations of her and she exceeded them. 

            Steve Lawrence met Carol even before he met his wife Eydie Gormé. He did a TV special with Carol Burnett and Dan Dailey. Then Steve and Eydie and Carol and Joe Hamilton became very good friends. Steve and Carol had similar musical tastes. 

            Once when he was on his way to guest on Carol’s show he drove there from his hotel but made a mistake because in California you have to be in the extreme right lane to make a right turn. A motorcycle cop pulled him over after he’d entered the studio but he thought the cop was an actor. Steve didn’t have his license on him and tried to tell the cop he was Steve Lawrence. To prove it he handed a script to the cop and had him read Carol’s part while he responded with the part he’d memorized. Then the cop told him it wasn’t funny. 

            Steve had guested on a lot of shows but Carol’s was the best organized show of any of them.

            Carol would say, “I can’t sing with Eydie Gormé! She’s the best singer in the world!” Eydie would say, “That’s true, but you sing very well yourself.” In the musical number that ended with Carol and Eydie in the front of the Hollywood sign as the camera in the helicopter pulled away to show them in the distance. Carol’s husband Joe Hamilton the producer thought it would be funny to just leave them there. He finally came back to pick them up and neither Carol or Eydie spoke to him until much later.

            When Steve and Eydie did a special on Irving Berlin they insisted on having Carol as a guest because she adored Berlin as much as they did. Carol gave an incredible performance of “Suppertime” on that show. 

            Steve and Eydie lived in the same building as Beverly Sills, who they called “Bubbles”.

            Steve went to a couple of acting classes but the instructor told him he was a natural talent and didn’t need instruction. 

            Paddy Chayefsky wrote a play called The Tenth Man. He got the idea from Steve when he told him that everyone is influenced by others and if you take from nine other people you become the tenth man. 

            Steve Carell originally wanted to be a lawyer but couldn’t think of a reason why. He was a member of Burpee’s Seedy Theatrical Company at Denison University, which is the oldest collegiate improv group in the US. After university he moved to Chicago where he taught improv and performed with Second City. He made his film debut in Curly Sue in 1991. He co-starred on The Dana Carvey Show. In 1999 he became a correspondent on The Daily Show for 288 episodes. He starred in The 40 Year-Old Virgin (which he co-wrote), Little Miss Sunshine, Evan Almighty, Dan in Real Life, Get Smart, Date Night, Despicable Me, Despicable Me 2, Despicable Me 3, Despicable Me 4, Minions, Dinner for Schmucks, The Way Way Back, Last Flag Flying, Crazy Stupid Love, Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, The Incredible Burt Wonderstone, Alexander, Foxcatcher (for which he was nominated for an Oscar), Beautiful Boy, Welcome to Marwen, and Irresistible. He co-starred in Tomorrow Night, Stories USA, Hope Springs, Over the Hedge, Horton Hears a Who, Vice, The Big Short, Battle of the Sexes, Café Society, Anchorman, and Freeheld. He starred on The Office from 2005 to 2011 (for which he wrote two episodes). He starred in Space Force and Rooster. He co-starred on The Patient and The Four Seasons. He made his Broadway debut as the lead in Uncle Vanya in 2024. He co-created the series Angie Tribeca. He owns and operates the Marshfield Hills General Store in Marshfield, Massachusetts.

August 27, 1996: Raven featured at my open stage

Thirty years ago today 

            On Tuesday night as always I hosted my Orgasmic Alphabet Orgy writers open stage and my co-host Raven had a feature. She introduced her song “Crack the Whip” and a couple of others along with some blank verse.

Oscar Hammerstein II

            On Monday I went to bed at 1:30 and got to sleep at around 2:00. I didn’t notice any bedbugs on me but after yoga when I checked there were a few adults caught on the carpet tape and a few more mostly babies crawling on the old exit door at the head of my bed. 

            I searched for more chords for “Jules Bonnot c'était pas n'importe qui” (Jules Bonnot Was Not Just Anybody) by Boris Vian but no one had posted more than the ones I transcribed yesterday. I worked them out for the instrumental intro. 

            I finished working out the chords for the first verse of “Docteur Faust” by Serge Gainsbourg. The rest of the verses should have the same chords. 

            I weighed 91.8 kilos before breakfast. 

            I played my Martin during song practice and it went out of tune constantly. 

            I weighed 93.1 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. 

            I weighed 92.25 kilos at 18:15. 

            I was still two days behind in my journal and worked on getting caught up. 

            I had a potato with gravy and a chicken leg while watching an interview with Shirley Jones.

            Shirley was the youngest member of a church choir at the age of 6. She recognized that she was gifted but her dream in life was to be a veterinarian. During the summers when she was in high school she studied acting and dancing at The Pittsburgh Playhouse and in her first play she had the lead role. But she loved animals and had raised everything from squirrels to snakes and so she wanted to be a vet. Before entering veterinary college she went with her parents on a trip to New York. When she was there she called up her friend who was a pianist she knew from The Pittsburgh Playhouse. He invited her over and then told her Rodgers and Hammerstein were having auditions for anyone that wants to sing for them. They had three shows running on Broadway at the time and the shows ran for so long that they needed to keep replacing members of the chorus. She didn’t know who Rodgers and Hammerstein were. She went and sang then the casting director asked what she’s done. She told him she’s done nothing. He asked her if she’d wait a few minutes and sing for Richard Rodgers who was across the street rehearsing his orchestra for Oklahoma. He went and got Rodgers and he walked up and said, “Hello Miss Jones”. She asked him who he was. She sang for him and he asked if she could wait because he wanted his partner Oscar Hammerstein to come from his home to hear her. He finally arrived and asked her if she knew the score of Oklahoma. She said she might know some of the tunes but not the words. He said he had the score with him but she said her pianist had to leave. He took her across the street to sing with the full City Centre Symphony. She’d never even heard a symphony let alone sung with one. She sang “People Will Say We’re In Love” and “Oh What a Beautiful Morning”. Three weeks later she was in her first Broadway show, South Pacific. Three months later she was in the movie Oklahoma, all from her first audition. They signed her to a personal contract and she was never signed to a studio. 

            But after a few years movie musicals went out of style. Since she’d been typecast as a singer in movies she wasn’t offered any straight acting work so she went into television. Her agent warned that it would ruin her film career. She did Playhouse 90 with Red Skelton and got nominated for an Emmy. Burt Lancaster saw that show on TV and called her but she hung up on him because she thought it was a crank call. But he called back and when she realized it was him she was embarrassed because she’d had his pictures all over her bedroom wall when she was sixteen. He invited her to audition for Elmer Gantry. The director didn’t like her at first but then apologized and predicted that she would win an Oscar, which she did. 

            After that she did a lot of movies with stars like Marlon Brando, John Wayne, Henry Fonda, and David Niven. 

            When she was invited to do The Partridge Family she was advised against it because if it was successful her movie career would be over. She had already turned down the role of the mother in The Brady Bunch because that character was just a housewife. But The Partridge Family was different because it had music and she’d be the first working mother on TV. When David Cassidy came to screen test for the show he didn’t know Shirley had been cast. They had almost five years of success with the show and the hours and the steady location gave her an opportunity to go home early every day to raise her kids at a time when a lot of Hollywood movies were being shot in Europe. 

            Shirley was a fan of Carol Burnett from watching her show but also from meeting her through her husband Jack Cassidy because he was doing Fade Out Fade In with her on Broadway. When she guested on Carol’s show she was so much fun to rehearse with. It was the best variety show that was ever on the air. 

            She worked with Bob Mackie on Carol’s show and other shows and sometimes she got to bring the clothes home, although Bob might not have known about it. 

            Oscar Hammerstein II enrolled in Columbia University in 1912 and while attending law school participated in and wrote plays. In 1917 he dropped out of law school to pursue a theatrical career. His mentor was Otto Harbach. His first musical was Always You in 1920. His first hit was Showboat in 1927, which introduced the songs “Old Man River” and “Can’t Help Loving That Man” with music by Jerome Kern. Hammerstein’s lyrics for musicals were unique in that they actually furthered the plot and developed characters rather than providing a musical break from the story. In 1943 he began his collaboration with Richard Rodgers on a musical adaptation of the play Green Grow the Lilacs, which became the mega hit musical Oklahoma (containing my favourite song from a musical “I Can’t Say No”) and ran on Broadway for 2,212 performances. From 1943 to 1959 Rodgers and Hammerstein were the dominant force in musical theatre. They created Carousel, Allegro, South Pacific (which won a Pulitzer Prize and which contained the anti racist song “You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught”), The King and I, Me and Juliet, Pipe Dream, Flower Drum Song, and The Sound of Music. They also collaborated on the movie State Fair. In addition to their own work they also produced other people’s musicals such as Irving Berlin’s Annie Get Your Gun and John Van Druten’s I Remember Mama.

            In 1943 he wrote the lyrics and the book for Carmen Jones with all black characters. 

            He won 8 Tony Awards. He won Academy Awards for his songs “The Last Time I Saw Paris” and “It might as Well Be Spring” making him the only person named Oscar to ever win an Oscar. His last song before he died was “Edelweiss” for The Sound of Music. 

            He co-wrote over 850 songs. 

            He was the mentor of Stephen Sondheim. 

            Before WWII he co-founded The Hollywood Anti-Nazi League. 

            In 1956 he was a speech writer for Adlai Stevenson II. 

            He was president of The Dramatists Guild of America from 1956 to 1960 when he died.

August 26, 1996: I started calling around for modelling work

Thirty years ago today

            On Monday I made some calls and got a few calls about modelling bookings this fall.

Steve Earle

            On Sunday after midnight I put some more two sided carpet tape on the wall side edge of my mattress to secure the other tape where it had lifted up. I went to bed a little after 1:30 and slept fairly well after lying awake for a while without feeling any bedbugs. When I checked after yoga there were a few crawling on the wall above the head of my bed but there were more stuck to the tape. 

            I transcribed from the Boite a Chanson site a set of chords for “Jules Bonnot c'était pas n'importe qui” (Jules Bonnot Was Not Just Anybody) by Boris Vian. I’ll check tomorrow to see if there have been any different chords posted and then I’ll start working them out. 

            I worked out the chords for more than half of the first verse of “Docteur Faust” by Serge Gainsbourg. I should have the first verse done tomorrow and then I think the rest of the verses will be the same. 

            I weighed 90.85 kilos before breakfast. 

            I played my Martin during song practice for the second of four sessions and it went out of tune all the time as usual. 

            Around midday I laid down more two-sided carpet tape on the bedroom floor next to the baseboards and also next to the bottom of the part of my desk that is closest to the bedroom. I vacuumed under my desk again. I’ll put down some more tape on Tuesday. 

            I’ve been listening to the Steve Earle discography and I’m about halfway through. The first two albums are conventionally country music but then with Copperhead Road he starts to rock a bit, with The Pogues guest starring on the record. His lyrics also became more interesting. The fourth album The Hard Way goes even further into rock and it has an interesting song called “Justice in Ontario” about a murder that happened in 1978 in Port Hope, Ontario during a biker war between The Outlaws and The Satan’s Choice. About six Satan’s Choice members are still in prison while the real murderer is free. The Ontario Provincial Police decided it was an opportunity to get rid of several nasty bikers and more important than catching the killer of another biker, so they shuffled the evidence and put the Choice members away. In another song, “Christmas in Washington”, imagine a country singer saying “Bring back Emma Goldman” the Anarchist revolutionary. His album Transcendental Blues is still country but with some songs having an Indian feel like the Beatles’ “Within You Without You”. In his Grammy Award winning album The Revolution Starts Now there’s a song from the point of view of a US soldier fighting in the Middle East, with the line, “Just another poor boy fighting a rich man’s war”. 

            He started learning guitar at the age of 11 and ran away at 14 to search for his idol Townes Van Zandt. He moved to Nashville at 19. He played bass in Guy Clark’s band and sang on his Old No 1 album. he was one of the featured songwriters in the 1976 documentary Heartworn Highways. He became the staff songwriter for the company Sunbury Dunbar. he got tired of Nashville and moved back to Texas where he started a band called The Dukes. He returned to Nashville and worked as a songwriter. His song “When You Fall In Love” was a top 20 Country hit for Johnny Lee in 1982. In 1986 his first album was Guitar Town and the title track became a top ten hit. "Copperhead Road" became an even bigger hit and a signature song. In 1996 his album Train a Comin was nominated for a Grammy. His novel I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive was published in 2011 as was his collection of short stories called Doghouse Roses. He is a Socialist and also an activist against capital punishment.

            I weighed 92.9 kilos before lunch. I had peanut butter and five-year-old cheddar on saltines with a glass of lemonade. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. 

            I weighed 92.7 kilos at 18:05. That’s the heaviest I’ve been in the evening since I’ve been recording my weight. 

            I was still two days behind in my journal and worked on getting caught up.  

            I made two Canadian ground beef burger patties and grilled them in the oven. I made pizza on a slice of multigrain sandwich bread with marinara, tomato pesto, one pf the burgers crumbled up, and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a glass of Creemore lager while watching an interview with Rita Moreno about Carol Burnett. 

            Rita can’t imaging anyone having a bad word about Carol. She’s loving, generous, and very intelligent. Years after Rita guest starred on Carol’s show they co-starred in The Four Seasons, written by, directed by, and co-starring Alan Alda. It also co-starred Jack Weston and he and Rita were playing Alan’s take on Mel Brooks and Ann Bancroft. Alan did a lot of takes. This movie was his first baby as a writer and director. It was tough on the cast but still one of the most wonderful filming experiences of Rita’s life because of Carol and Jack, who are two of the funniest people alive. Rita and Jack broke up all the time while shooting scenes. Alan didn’t like it when they adlibbed their lines or started laughing and especially both. 

            During the first quarter of the movie Rita and Carol were changing costumes in the ladies room. Rita called Carol out of a stall and mooned her. She’d never done that to anyone before but she really wanted to make Carol laugh, because there’s nothing like making a very funny person laugh. She says if she could make Sid Caesar laugh she would die of happiness. However, Carol disappointed her by just saying she had a cute behind. The next location for the film was the US Virgin Islands. They all had apartments on the ground level with windows that looked out on the walkway. Every day Carol would come by at 6:00 with her assistant Sharkey, call for Rita and then they’d walk to breakfast. One morning when Carol came to the door Rita mooned her and Sharkey and this time she got them shrieking with laughter so loud they woke the neighbourhood. Rita says it gave her such nachas (pleasure).

            Rita has a character called Googie Gomez who she played in The Ritz on Broadway and in the film version. She talks in an exaggerated Puerto Rican accent and is hilariously arrogant. She still does her at random times even when she is along to make herself and others laugh. She says things like, “If it wasn’t for Barbara Streisand stealing my act I would be a big movie star!” She created the character while goofing around on the set of West Side Story. She made Carol laugh with the character and Carol used to ask her what Googie thinks of Carol Burnett. So Rita would say, “The woman can’t sing, she’s cheap, and her breasts are like two fried eggs!” 

            During the shoot Carol’s birthday came up and Alan surprised her with a big cake with whipped cream on top. Carol cut a piece and smushed it into Alan’s face, then did the same to herself. 

            Rita used to keep all of her awards in a box because she thought putting them on display was showing off. When she married Leonard Gordon in 1965 and they moved into a new house together he found the box and encouraged her to showcase them because she earned them. Now she lets her guests hold her Oscar and she takes pictures of them. When she has Oscar parties she has her guests prepare embarrassingly self serving speeches and say them while holding her Oscar. What’s great about it is that most of her friends are not show people. 

            Rita first met Carol when she guest starred on The Carol Burnett Show. She says there was no ethnic humour on The Carol Burnett Show. That’s not entirely true. There were accents and the mannerisms that come along with them.

            In acting school they’ll tell you, “Don’t act. Behave like your character.”