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By Root 1284 0

to insult and douse with a glass of water, thus incite audience venom—in the person of Mel Sherer, a rotund (Hey, fatso, c’mere) comedy writer for Rich Little and Jimmie Walker who shared Andy’s surrealist bent, which was established upon their first meeting at the Improv. Andy said hello and Mel said hello and Andy said hello and Mel said hello and Andy said hello and Mel said hello and Andy said more hellos and Mel paused and said more hellos and then Andy said hello? and Mel paused even longer and said goodbye and walked away and they started working together the next day, which meant Andy would go to Mel’s apartment and bounce ideas off him. One day as they worked, Mel’s phone rang and Andy answered the phone as Clifton and it was a woman friend of Mel’s from the East Coast who was coming to visit and Clifton kept her on the phone and poured on the charm (such as it was) and invited her to his place in Santa Monica and she accepted and he rushed home to greet her as Clifton, clad in a bathrobe, and told her he was taking her to the beach and he changed into a suit and tie and he grabbed some towels and they went to the beach, which was empty—all of which Andy later told Sherer—“And he said they had to find the perfect spot on the beach, so he made her move the towels at least fifty times and he was still fully dressed in his suit. Finally, they settled a spot under the lifeguard tower and he said, ‘Okay, let’s go now,’ and they left—and she just went along with it for some reason. They went back to his place and he said, ‘Do you know anything about the Belva Tessel?’ And she said no. He said, ‘Well, it’s a Swiss massage thing and you do it in the shower. You wanna see what it’s like?’ And she said okay and they took off their clothes and got in the shower and he just started making up this massage technique. Finally, of course, they ended up having sex, which was the point. The next day, she called me and said, ‘I really liked your friend Tony.’”

And his boyhood yearnings for women and their supple flesh had grown exponentially in California (along with his early television renown) and he dated as many women he could attract with his innocence and his awkward lovability and, though he preferred being some form of himself as he won their affections, there were instances (he said) in which he spent nights or weekends of carnality without shedding the cloak of Foreign Man. He squired various TM women or actresses, taking them to see late showings of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (which he loved) and to vegetarian restaurants and to Chinese restaurants and to Duke’s coffee shop for chocolate cake and to Disneyland and Knott’s Berry Farm to repeatedly ride the roller coasters—and, because he didn’t have a car, Little Wendy usually chaffeured obligingly. “As soon as he started going out with a woman, he would say, ‘Now, don’t get serious!’” she would recall. “Some of them got really insulted. He also liked to tell them that he was really special and that he couldn’t have a serious relationship because he had so many big plans. He once told me that this much tongue—like a half inch—makes all the difference. In other words, once he put that extra half inch into a kiss, it changed the whole dynamic of the relationship. He hated that he needed to be with women, because he didn’t like the mind games they played with him. Which I guess was sort of ironic, wasn’t it?”

Cindy Williams, the actress who had just begun acquiring fame as Shirley in the ABC-TV sitcom Laverne and Shirley, met him at the Improv that autumn and had already been smitten with his work on Saturday Night. “From the moment I first saw him [on the program], I just wanted to be a part of whatever that mirthful wonderful magic was that he did,” she would recall. And he was not opposed to letting her peek behind his facades (because, after all, she was getting famous too and was very extremely pretty) and they began a casual mirthful affair over the course of weeks that grew into an easy friendship and she would drive him to the Improv and he would meditate in her