Lost in the Funhouse_ The Life and Mind of Andy Kaufman - Bill Zehme [93]
And that Friday—because certain walls had tumbled, thanks to Van Dyke—Johnny Carson welcomed him onto The Tonight Show, noting, “This is the first time we’ve really met,” and indulged him with a kindly measured patience usually reserved for minors or the elderly. But there he sat beside the king of the night and Grandma Pearl watched in New York and Grandma Lillie watched in Florida and Stanley and Janice watched in Great Neck and, if there had been any lingering doubt about their boy and his eccentric dreams, it vanished in this seismic moment. No showcase in America—it would be forever understood—mattered more than this showcase when Carson presided over his own program. And so he had meditated long and hard in his dressing room (with Do Not Disturb warning posted on door) before he stepped out to bask in the evanescent shimmer of great opportunity. And he was flawlessly flawed as necessity demanded. Carson asked, “Where are you from originally?”
FM: From Caspiar. Eet’s an island.
JC: Caspiar?
FM: Caspiar.
[One audience member applauds as though zealous with native pride. Carson casts a surprised withering eye toward the assemblage.]
JC: That’s a first in show business!
Which provoked a large laugh among all, perplexing Foreign Man, who clearly perplexed Carson, especially when he did not drop character during the commercial break, before which the geography of Caspiar was explained and after which came discussion of his quest for American citizenship and reading skills—he demonstrated again with a Dick and Jane recitation as Carson helped him with the word funny. Then he performed jokes and eemetations, losing his place with de Ed Sullivan, starting over again before chanting a cappella the Caspian harvest song and Carson said, “That’s very good, Andy. Very, very amusing. You’ll have to come back with us again sometime.” And after the taping, Carson stuck his head into Andy’s dressing room and said, “You’re very funny, kid. I don’t understand how you do it, but you’re very funny.” And Foreign Man responded tenk you veddy much. And Carson shook his head and winked anyway.
A week later Freddie Prinze shot himself in the head and died within forty-eight hours and fellow comedians grieved and Andy did not want to think about it and chose not to attend the funeral—where fellow comedians flocked—because he did not want to think about it. He had by this time become a boarder in a big house above the Sunset Strip owned by actress Joanna Frank, sister of rising television writer Steven Bochco, and he took a bedroom next to Joanna’s and people came and went—TM people predominantly, since Joanna was one as well—and Joanna’s exparamour Richard Beymer, the actor who played Tony in the film West Side Story, lived in the basement. Joanna Frank experienced Andy as an uncommunicative narcissist unwilling to give more than passing nods; she fully engaged his interest only once, when he quizzed her about a cleansing diet she had begun—“He was fascinated with the way the bowel movements happened and what came out.” She would remember another conversation—a soliloquy, really—in which he told her, “I always knew that I wanted to be in the entertainment field. And what I was looking for was a place where no one else was doing what I was gonna do. I didn’t want competition. I knew that I really couldn’t compete. I had to find something that was not being done.” Ultimately, she could not find humanity behind his eyes—“I don’t think Andy’s heart was very developed at all. His mind was developed and he was crafty. He had this total single-pointedness, this obsession with himself, with his work—he didn’t have any off-moments like normal people do, when you’re just a person. He was always on, he was always doing The Andy Kaufman Show no matter where he was. And he was always using people for his end result.” So he would have Mel and Little Wendy come over to the