• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1238 0

better way to move large groups of children?) He loved the school bus idea very much and eventually it was all that he could talk about because he wanted to try it out at the Huntington Hartford and even George thought that he was totally obsessed with this fairly foolish notion which would certainly be an unnecessary expenditure but probably worth exploring if only to indulge his client—I felt that we might as well do it, get it out of the way and move on to other things, he privately dictated with customary measured patience. Anyway, they secured the Olde Spaghetti Factory, an enormous theme restaurant a few blocks away from the theater on Vine, as the destination where the milk and cookies—courtesy of Adohr Farms dairy products and Famous Amos (of chocolate chip renown)—would be served and Bob commandeered ten buses to do the shuttling. And everything about this engagement was understood to be the actual precursor to the Carnegie Hall show, now scheduled for April 26, in that the Huntington Hartford was a beautiful historic legitimate theater, a jewel box of cornices and filigrees and velvety splendor with seating capacity exceeding one thousand. Both shows at the theater were sold out weeks in advance (with top single-ticket pricing set at eight dollars and fifty cents per) and, along with scores of big names and movers in the industry, his own mommy and daddy and sister and brother were going to be present for this spectacle—and it would be a spectacle because he envisioned mounting the greatest finale in the history of show business, a finale so grand that people would never believe such ideas could occur to a person and then become reality or become something sort of resembling a reality. Well, it would seem real—no really.

So, in the week prior to opening night, he mustered renewed dedication to his stagecraft—he trained, he skipped rope, he did a hundred push-ups at a time, and, most astonishing, he never once arrived late for rehearsals. (On the road, it had become routine for him to miss his music rehearsal call-times by two hours minimum.) Now he hummed with adrenaline, he was very alive and willing to try big things, also upsetting things. Gregg Sutton, who would as ever conduct the band, watched Clifton chart darker straits than ever when it was decided to give the character newfound three-dimensionality—a wife and a daughter, who would be played by prim blond actress Patty Michaels and her own cherubic blond daughter Wendy (whose name was pure coincidence, as Little Wendy Polland remained estranged from Andy). Clifton would bring them out early in his opening segment to demonstrate that they were the reason he needed to work so hard and he would recite to his stoic wife Patty a long hoary chestnut called “This Is a Wife” (She’s magic with a dish towel in her hands / Romance running a vacuum cleaner / Charm with a smudge of cake dough on her nose / This is a wife!). Then he and daughter Wendy Clifton would sweetly sing a special song that they had always sung together at home and Wendy would mess up the lyrics and Clifton would turn on her. “Zmuda pushed Kaufman to take Clifton further,” Sutton would recall. “When the kid missed a lyric, Bob showed him how he should give her a little slap in the face and snap at her —Pay attention, dammit! Bob kept giving the girl these little example slaps and Andy was laughing this stupid mortified laugh. He said, ‘Bob, I can’t do that!’ And Zmuda said, ‘You’ve gotta, Kaufman! This is Clifton!’ And, in a way, he was right. It was hysterical. And the kid didn’t seem to mind, although she would pretend to cry onstage, which was perfect.” (Director John Landis, who attended opening night, found this piece of audacity amazing—“The audience was electric! They were horror-struck! People walked out.”) Linda Mitchell resumed the platinum role of Ginger Sax and worked the lobby before the show both nights selling fresh xeroxed photos of Clifton standing in his fetid Sunset 400 Motel room. (Knoedelseder had provided the original.) At the bottom of each picture was her handwritten