Cowboy Star John Wayne was proud of both his work ethic and his drinking.

A timeless treasure trove of colorful vignettes featuring an amazing all-star cast of icons including John Wayne, Charlie Chaplin, Walt Disney, Jack Nicholson, Johnny Depp, Shirley Temple, Marilyn Monroe, Marlon Brando, Errol Flynn and many others. Available at Barnes & Noble, Amazon or wherever books are sold.

EXCERPT

George Burns on Tours

While giving tours of Hollywood in the 1990s, it was a pleasure for me and my customers to see ninety-something George Burns being driven around in a black Cadillac. The comedian always rode shotgun and smoked his trademark cigar. He would roll down the window, say hello and smile for the cameras. The women on the bus frequently commented on his cuteness. Usually Burns rode to Forest Lawn Cemetery to talk with his late wife Gracie or went to have lunch at the Hillcrest Country Club. Since the 1940s, George had sat at Hillcrest’s famed “Comedian’s Round Table” with legends such as Jack Benny, Danny Kaye, Al Jolson, The Marx Brothers and George Jessel. When we encountered Burns, he was the last survivor of the group. The Hillcrest Board of Directors was always very strict about the club members following their rules. But they amended one policy so that anyone ninety-five and over could smoke.

Extra: Founded in 1897, the Los Angeles Country Club was composed of the city’s old money oil people; Jewish show-business types and actors were not allowed. The new monied movie folk started the Hillcrest Country Club in 1920, just a few miles away. Ironically, Hillcrest’s primarily Jewish membership discovered oil on their property.

Extra: One time George Burns (1896-1996) and Harpo Marx (1888-1964) were playing golf at the Hillcrest. It was a hot day and the two men took off their shirts. A staff member raced over to tell them that their action was against club protocol. They shrugged and complied. Then a grinning George asked if there were any rules against taking off your pants. The employee admitted that there weren’t. For the next few hours, several other players were startled by the sight of the two half-dressed comics.

Extra: Always optimistic, when George Burns turned ninety-nine, he signed a new contract with the Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas. He promised to renegotiate in five years if the hotel was still around.

The Unusual Speaking Engagement

One day in the 1950s, George Jessel was having lunch with some fellow comedians when he was approached by a stranger who asked him to speak at his dog’s funeral. The famous toastmaster, who often got into trouble professionally because of his outspoken conservative politics and his fierce support of Israel, was insulted. Jessel’s speechmaking was reserved for political and entertainment gatherings. This fellow was humiliating him; George’s friends would probably rib him about pet eulogies for the next five years. The cash-starved womanizer began to reconsider when the man quietly promised to pay him a great deal of money. Still, George hesitated. Could he really agree to this indignity in front of his pals? His would-be benefactor then stated that he would also donate heavily to George’s pet cause, the Jewish Relief Fund. Slowly, Jessel broke into a smile and then said, “Why didn’t you tell me your dog was Jewish?”

The Reluctant Stereotype

Marilyn Monroe was disgusted when she read the script for the comedy Some Like It Hot in 1959. The thirty-three-year-old Connecticut resident had left Hollywood partly because she had grown tired of stereotypical dumb blonde roles. Now they wanted her to appear as someone too dense to realize that Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis were disguised as women. Even she had never pretended to be that stupid. Still, Marilyn needed the money. Her acting coach, Lee Strasberg, reminded Monroe that she usually hadn’t been close with other ladies. Marilyn should play her character as someone who yearned for female companionship so much that she did not notice her new friends’ more masculine attributes. Armed with her teacher’s advice, the bombshell unhappily returned to Los Angeles. Though she was resented by her co-workers for constantly being late and blowing her lines, movie audiences totally fell for Marilyn’s sweet and sincere comic performance.

Extra: Thirty-four-year-old actors Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon (1925-2001) sometimes suffered in silent agony on the set of Some Like It Hot. Marilyn Monroe (1926-1962) often took multiple takes to get her lines right, while her dressed-in-drag male co-stars were forced to stand for hours in their uncomfortable high-heeled shoes.

Extra: In one Some Like It Hot sequence, Marilyn’s only line was, “It’s me, Sugar.” It took her sixty-five takes. In between camera setups, the frustrated director, Billy Wilder (1906-2002), tried to calm his leading lady down. “Don’t worry, Marilyn.”
“Worry about what?” she replied.
Later, the blonde, who was very shrewd about her comic abilities, told friends that she functioned as her own director. Once Monroe thought all the elements in a scene were correct, she delivered her dialogue perfectly.

The Great One Could Move

Even though his weight sometimes topped 280 pounds, the heavy-boozing Jackie Gleason moved with great speed and grace when he had to. Christened “The Great One” by his fellow drinking buddy Orson Welles, the forty-six-year-old comic actor embarked on a cross-country train trip to promote Gleason’s return to television in 1962. For ten days he’d be surrounded by beautiful dames and the alcohol would be flowing. The publicity tour was a huge success; the often hung-over Gleason managed to keep smiling when he was loudly greeted by fans in each new town. At Union Station in Los Angeles, one of Jackie’s entourage, named Billy the Midget, started selling helium balloons on the platform. At one point, the little man was carrying so many products he actually started to float away, when Jackie raced to his rescue and pulled him back to safety. “Nobody gets to San Bernardino before I do, pal!”

Bill Murray Made it in the Shower

When he joined the cast of TV’s Saturday Night Live in 1977, Bill Murray was getting hate mail till an idea struck him in the shower. The twenty-seven-year-old comic, who replaced the very popular Chevy Chase, had struggled to be funny in his initial weeks on SNL. Sometimes the volatile Murray angered the show’s writers by blowing his lines; the best material went to Bill’s more established castmates. But now, holding onto a gag gift, a microphone-shaped bar of soap, the former medical student Murray had an inspiration. In the season finale, Bill shone as a pretend tacky morning disc jockey that showered with his wife, played by co-star Gilda Radner, while he talked to an imaginary audience. The laughs were enhanced when Murray introduced his spouse’s supposedly secret lover, Buck Henry, as a surprise guest who joined the married couple under the running water. The “Shower Mike” sketch was a huge hit with viewers; from then on Bill’s fan letters reflected a 180-degree change of heart.

Detective Burns

George Burns and Gracie Allen worried that their careers interfered with their parenting. One night the married comics arrived home late and were distressed to find that all the pictures had been cut out of their dictionary. Burns insisted that he handle it; he asked his boy Ronnie where his daughter Sandy had put the scissors; the kid didn’t know. When George asked Sandy the same question, she revealed her brother hid them in a drawer. Even Gracie was impressed by George’s detective work, and the kind-hearted straight man was so pleased that he doled out only a minor punishment to his son. For many years afterward, George proudly related the tale about his clever sleuthing to dinner guests until one night the now grown-up Sandy couldn’t take it anymore. “Please don’t tell the scissors story tonight, Dad.”
“Why not, sweetheart?”
“Well, the reason I knew where they were is that I was the one who cut out the pictures.”

Extra: The ninth of twelve children, George Burns of New York City (he was born Nathan Birnbaum and renamed himself after a successful baseball player) contributed greatly to the legend and lore of Hollywood. When author Max Wilk did research for his great 1973 book The Wit and Wisdom of Hollywood, George related an anecdote to him about a man named Osterman who came from the East Coast to run Paramount Studios in the early 1930s. Actress Claudette Colbert was upset that her stand-in had been fired as a cost-cutting move and threatened to quit her latest picture. Osterman was incredulous. “Miss Colbert, do you mean to tell me you will give up $125,000 unless this girl gets her thirty-five-dollar a week job back?”
The star was adamant, so the executive gave in. Hearing about the incident, George Burns, who along with his wife Gracie Allen (1895-1964) was new to pictures, decided to make his own demand. Their blue dressing room was giving Gracie a headache and it had to be repainted immediately if the comedy team was going to continue working there. “Mr. Burns, do you mean to say you would give up sixty thousand dollars unless your dressing room is made to look a different color?”
“That’s right!”
“Mr. Burns, have you ever run a studio?”
“No.”
“Well, you’re running one now!”
And with that, so said George Burns, Osterman left Hollywood and returned to New York, never to come back. Max Wilk was all set to use the story for publication; the only problem was, according to his information, the Paramount head honcho at that time was named Otterson, not Osterman. George explained to Max that he’d used the name Osterman because he didn’t want Wilk to be sued since the whole tale was a complete fabrication.

Jack Benny Lived Down to his Reputation

From 1932 to 1965, Jack Benny excelled at playing a beloved miser on radio and television. In real life both a generous man and a worrywart, Jack fretted that people would think he was like his small-screen character. Benny insisted on giving huge tips in restaurants, which caused waiters to give him sad looks, as if they were disappointed that he was not really stingy. Each year Benny gave lots of money to charity, but there were times that the former vaudevillian lived down to his reputation. Once, Jack was about to leave a posh hotel in a cab when he realized he had left his wallet in the restroom. He raced back to where he’d been, crouched down to look in the stall, and sure enough, he saw his little pocketbook on the floor. Not wanting to repay the ten-cent fee, Jack tried to crawl underneath the door and was straining to reach his money, when he was startled by laughter. Another man had come in to use the facilities. “Mr. Benny, I’m so glad everything I heard about you is true!”

Extra: Jack Benny (1894-1974), who made a lucrative career out of pretending to be cheap and eternally thirty-nine years old, once praised the shtick of little-known comedian Jacob Cohen (1921-2004). Born in Babylon, Long Island, Cohen grew up a sad child who claimed his mother woke up each morning at eleven a.m. and never made him breakfast. At the age of twenty-two, he gave up his dream of being a stand-up comic and got a job selling aluminum siding. (“I was the only one who knew I quit,” Jake said.)
Twenty years later, the frustrated tin man returned to the stage, determined to create a distinct image that would separate him from the crowd. Benny caught Jake’s act and thought it was wonderful. “Everyone can identify with what you’re going through, keep it up,” Jack told Cohen.
The encouraged younger funny man continued to entertain audiences, delivering rapid-fire one-liners such as, “My wife wanted to make love in the back seat and she wanted me to drive.”
Cohen, who made a great living with his “no respect” routine, borrowed the moniker of a fictional cowboy star mentioned on Jack Benny’s radio show back in 1942, and renamed himself Rodney Dangerfield.