Seven Dirty Words_ The Life and Crimes of George Carlin - James Sullivan [34]
Carlin delighted in Kaye’s rubbery faces and vocal gymnastics, knowing that he had a similar knack for both. “Anything that was challenging verbally I liked,” he said. And Kaye “was incredibly adept verbally. He did funny accents, funny faces. All those things appealed to me.” From a young age he looked at Kaye’s career—the Catskills, radio, stage, films, and, eventually, television—as the model for his own ascent in show business. The way he figured it, if he succeeded as a comedian, Hollywood would have no choice but to make him a comic actor.
But Carlin’s boyhood enthusiasm for his favorite performer cooled considerably after a personal episode. Knowing that Kaye was scheduled to make an appearance at Radio City Music Hall, the young fan waited in a doorway on a cold, misty day to ask for an autograph. When a cab pulled up and Kaye hopped out, he strode briskly past the kid holding the pen. “Not even an ‘I don’t sign autographs,’” Carlin recalled. “That was a crushing moment.” Years later, when Carlin was established as a comic celebrity and had an opportunity to meet his onetime hero, he didn’t have the heart to tell him about the snub. “That was my gift to him,” he said.
In 1965 Carlin was still dedicated to the goal of breaking into Hollywood. His “responsible agent” at GAC—the one who coordinated the client’s career and saw to it that the agency’s various departments (television, film, nightclubs) kept his best interests in mind—was a veteran in the nightclub department named Peter Paul, who did his best to keep the young comedian busy. In the new year Carlin played five more weeks of bookings at Café Au Go Go. He also did two stints at another Chicago club, Mother Blues, in the city’s folkie Old Town neighborhood, and he was invited for return engagements at Paul’s Mall in Boston and the Inverurie in the Bahamas. Other gigs were not so notable. At a place called the Blue Dog in Baltimore, he performed without a paying soul in the audience.
Still, he was getting plenty of laughs most nights. He’d been honing one hunk in particular, “The Indian Sergeant,” which was emerging as his surefire crowd-pleaser. The premise involved an Indian warrior who called his troops to order like an army drill sergeant. Carlin introduced the bit by noting that classic Westerns typically spent an hour and a half showing the cowboys getting ready for the climactic Indian attack, but never showed the Indians preparing. “It was a standard fish-out-of-water gimmick, the thing that Bob Newhart was doing so well then,” he once explained. “The idea was that if the Indians were good fighters, they must have been organized, and military organization means N.C.O.s.” Carlin’s Indian sergeant addressed his troops in one of the born mimic’s favorite, and most natural, voices—a posturing Bronx baritone that mangled the word “loincloth” as lernclot’. The braves, the sergeant reported, were performing their drills admirably: “Burnin’ settlers’ homes—everybody passed. Imitatin’ a coyote—everybody passed. Sneakin’ quietly through the woods—everybody passed, except Limping Ox. However, Limping Ox is being fitted for a pair of corrective moccasins.” He then made a few scheduling announcements: “There’ll be a rain dance Friday