Growing Up Laughing_ My Story and the Story of Funny - Marlo Thomas [4]
They were called “The Boys,” and like all boys, they had a clubhouse. It was the Hillcrest Country Club, and that’s where they spent their afternoons playing golf and cards. Hillcrest sat on a sprawling property in a beautiful setting just south of Beverly Hills. Its famous, rolling green golf course ran along Pico Boulevard, across the street from 20th Century Fox Studios.
Hillcrest had a terrific brunch on Sundays, and it was a great place to throw a party. The only problem—it was restricted. Jews only. This was because the Jews had been kept out of every other club in the city—the Bel Air Country Club, the Los Angeles Country Club—so in the 1920s, they built their own.
“The Boys” celebrating Dad’s seventieth birthday at Hillcrest. BACK ROW, LEFT TO RIGHT: Art Linkletter, Milton Berle, Don Rickles, Steve Landesberg, Bob Newhart, Morey Amsterdam, Bob Hope, Jack Carter, Joey Bishop, Carl Reiner, (honorary “Boy”) Phyllis Diller, Sid Caesar; FRONT ROW: Jan Murray, George Burns, Dad, Red Buttons and Buddy Hackett.
All of my dad’s pals belonged to Hillcrest, but since he was a Lebanese Catholic, he wasn’t permitted to join. He’d spent so much time there, however, that the boys decided they should find a way to make him a member, even if he was just an honorary member.
Of course, such a big decision had to be voted on by the board. Groucho Marx had the most memorable comment at the meeting.
“I don’t mind making a non-Jew an honorary member,” Groucho said, “but couldn’t we at least pick a guy who doesn’t look Jewish?”
Dad got in. And Groucho got his laugh.
George Burns was also a club member. He didn’t play golf, but he loved to play cards. George would go to Hillcrest in the late morning, then spend the rest of the afternoon there, smoking cigars, having lunch and playing bridge with his cronies. He was such a darling, funny man. And a modest one. One day during a card game, he made a remark that broke up everyone at the table. I never knew what he said. I only heard the story of how he got such a big laugh he couldn’t wait to use it again. But George, being George, decided to attribute it to someone else—Georgie Jessel—so he could retell it without sounding like he was bragging.
Everywhere he went, George would say, “Did you hear that great thing Jessel said at Hillcrest?”—and, sure enough, he’d get the laugh. This went on for a few weeks. Finally, Jessel ran into George at a party.
“Hey, George,” Jessel said, “did you hear that great thing I said at Hillcrest?”
That story went around and got an even bigger laugh than the first one.
All of the boys took pride in coming up with the killer line, and if there’s one thing they had in common, it was how quick they were. But Dad always said that the quickest of them all was Joey Bishop.
Joey and Sammy Davis were once driving from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. The route is 270 miles of flat highway through the desert, and everyone speeds like a demon through it. Sammy was going about 90 miles an hour, and, of course, he got pulled over. The cop asked to see his license.
“Do you know how fast you were going?” he demanded of Sammy.
“Around 70,” Sammy said innocently.
“Seventy?” the cop said. “You were way over that. You were going at least 90.”
Joey leaned his head toward the window.
“Officer,” he said, “the man has one eye. Do you want him to look at the road or at the speedometer?”
Most people would think of a line like that three days later and say, “You know what I shoulda said?” These guys said it on the spot.
Sometimes the boys would travel in a pack, and one of their favorite pack nights was a trip to a club where Henny Youngman was playing. If ever a comedian was a joke machine, it was Henny. He was the kind of comic who built his entire act around a string of one-liners, bouncing from one joke to the next without any segues. He’d make a crack about his wife, then without the slightest concern for any semblance of a connection, talk about the snow outside.
The boys, all of whom painstakingly constructed