My Lucky Life in and Out of Show Business_ A Memoir - Dick Van Dyke [35]
When he went into the Air Force, Jerry got into Tops in Blue, a comedy-variety show that traveled from base to base. He swiped material from Dick Shawn’s act, including a piece called “Massa Richard,” which he performed better than Dick. He also incorporated jokes from other comics. In those days, no one could check.
Gradually, he included his own material. When I first saw him, I thought, My God, he’s got the timing! If you don’t have that talent, you can’t do stand-up. But my brother had it, and he began working some of the Playboy clubs, which put him on the map. Dan Rowan and Dick Martin took him on the road with them. Later he opened for Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme.
He had just turned thirty the summer I began doing The Dick Van Dyke Show, and Carl heard me tell stories about Jerry’s antics, from punching the high-school dean to his skill playing the four-string banjo.
One day after the Bel Air fire, a bunch of us were telling stories around the table and I mentioned that my brother had been a longtime sleepwalker. It had lasted until he was in his late teens.
“He’d just get up out of bed and leave,” I said, getting up from the table myself and acting out the way Jerry used to walk through the house as he slept. “We had to go get him one night. Some people called from across town. He had walked there in his pajamas.”
Rosie, Morey, and the others were incredulous.
“One night I caught him going out the door with our dad’s golf clubs,” I said. “He had the bag over his shoulder. I asked where he was going and he said, ‘To play golf.’ ”
“Did he know what he was doing?” Carl asked.
“Yes, that was the strange thing,” I said. “Growing up, we slept in the same bedroom, and I’d say, ‘Jerry.’ He’d say, ‘I know. I’m asleep. Just give me a few minutes.’ Then he continued walking around the house. He almost got thrown out of the Air Force because he still walked in his sleep.”
Carl, who was always listening to, adapting, and incorporating our real-life stories into the show, caught Jerry’s act in Las Vegas, thought he was as funny as I had said, and wrote a two-part episode based on the stories I’d told about Jerry being a sleepwalker and nearly getting thrown out of the service because of it. Once again, Carl amazed me with his finely tuned ear and creativity.
Jerry was excited about being on a network show. It was a break for him, and he hoped it might lead to something else, something bigger, as did I. He did gain more recognition, and we had a good time working together, the first time we’d done so on camera.
By the time the two-parter aired at the end of March 1962, though, it seemed as if there might not be another chance. Worse, it appeared that I would have to go looking for another job myself. CBS canceled the show. Sheldon delivered the news on the set. It was a ratings issue, he explained. Despite good reviews and a whole season of thirty-nine episodes to prove ourselves, we lost the ratings war each week to our more popular time-slot competition, The Perry Como Show. In short, we didn’t find an audience.
“Or they didn’t find us,” someone said, voicing a frequent complaint that we didn’t receive enough promotion from the network.
As the Six-Foot Tower of Jell-O, I didn’t see the point in complaining. The facts were the facts, and the network had made its decision. I felt sick. The whole lot of us was practically suicidal. We knew we had something good and we didn’t want it to end prematurely. I glanced around the set. It felt like a foreclosure, like we were being wrongly booted from our home. It seemed like such a tragic error in judgment.
The show aside, I was personally devastated. We had just moved across country, bought a house, and had a fourth child. I had recently signed on to do the movie version of Bye Bye Birdie. My salary would hold us for about a year. But then what?
12
BUSINESS AS USUAL
It was spring on the bustling studio’s back lot, and I was involved in a rehearsal of the big Conrad Birdie number