Dynomite!: Good Times, Bad Times, Our Times--A Memoir Page 17

  In the end Lear was proud of the show. “The white audience had an opportunity to have a black family in their homes every week,” he later said. “They were there because they were funny; they were there because they were facing problems that white families were facing; they were there because on some subliminal level, if no other way, people realized that what hurt me in my white family hurts them too . . . The oneness of the black experience and the white experience, I think if it [the series] mattered at all, that’s the way it mattered the most.”

  On Good Times J. J. made people laugh, but it was Norman Lear who made them think.

  Good Times was unlike anything on television then and still today, whether a comedy or not. I think the show would be too edgy for network TV today. In the mid-’90s, several years after he was the king of sitcoms, Lear tried another spin-off of All in the Family. For 704 Hauser, a black family moved into the Bunkers’ old house in Queens. The father was played by—guess who—John Amos. The son was black but with the twist that he was not liberal; he was an arch conservative, holding views not unlike my own in real life. He also dated a white Jewish woman, again reflecting some of my own life. I wonder if Amos realized that this time he was playing a father figure not to J. J. but to a character much more like Jimmie Walker!

  I talked to Lear when he was writing the pilot episode at his summer home in Vermont. He said he wanted the show to be gritty and urban and funny—like Good Times. I told him, “Well, there is no better place to be inspired to write a gritty, urban show about blacks than Vermont.” Only five episodes aired in 1994. America no longer wanted socially relevant sitcoms.

  In 2006, at the Fourth Annual TV Land Awards, Good Times received the Impact Award for being “a show that offered both entertainment and enlightenment, always striving for both humor and humanity, with comedy that reflected reality.”

  I guess J. J. wasn’t such a “negative stereotype” after all.

  8

  Freddie, Richard, Andy, Mitzi, and Budd

  THE COMEDY BUSINESS HAD MOVED FROM NEW YORK TO LOS ANGELES. For stand-up comics success on a series had become the fastest road to fame and fortune. I wasn’t the only comedian from our crew in New York to have a sitcom in LA—just the first: Freddie arrived too, cast in Chico and the Man after a spectacular shot on the Tonight Show.

  Freddie and I both made our network television debuts on Jack Paar Tonite, and both of our sitcoms debuted in 1974: Good Times in February and Chico and the Man in the fall. In the TV world I was the young black and he was the young Hispanic. But we had different views of success. The hotter he became, the more out of control he became. Sex, drugs, and alcohol dominated his life, and many of the people around him fed his ego and his demons. Some people gave Freddie drugs, and TV producers gave him a new blue Corvette. Today we call them enablers.

  Freddie always called me a “goody two-shoes.” I didn’t drink or use drugs and I wasn’t a partying kind of guy. But we were still friends. He lived a few blocks from the Store, along with more than a dozen other comics, in an apartment building that came to be known as Fort Bursky, because it was managed by the parents of comic Alan Bursky. Bursky had, at age eighteen, been the youngest comic ever to appear on the Tonight Show. But he didn’t have enough shots ready, and so his career never lived up to its beginning. Freddie would call and say, “Let’s go over to Hollywood Boulevard.” Along with Bursky, we would stand in front of the teen magazine section of a giant newspaper stand. Freddie was on the cover of dozens of those magazines. He stood there hoping people would recognize him.

  The next year Welcome Back Kotter, which starred Gabe Kaplan, another regular from the Improv, hit the air. The actor who played the breakout character Vinnie Barbarino was a young John Travolta, and suddenly he was on the cover of those same teen magazines. Freddie was incensed. He bought a high-powered crossbow and went with some friends to Travolta’s apartment. I doubt if he meant to kill Travolta, but he sure wanted to scare the hell out of him.

  He knocked on the door but no one answered. Thank God. Freddie fired a few arrows into the door and left. Hey John, now you know where those arrows came from!

  Unlike Freddie, I preferred my privacy. When I went home to New York for the premiere of Let’s Do It Again, I wasn’t able to walk around the streets at all. I had to hole up in my hotel room. I did not like that. I remembered the story about the restaurant busboy who became a star. When he was a busboy, he had to eat in the kitchen. Then he finally made it—and he still could not eat in the dining room because he caused too much excitement as people came up to ask for autographs and pictures. So again he had to eat in the kitchen.

  Freddie did not know that fame does not make you happy. But there he was: famous and unhappy—he was always telling people how unhappy he was. He did not know how to deal with that, at least not alone. He would phone me at three in the morning and say, “Hey man, I’m really depressed. Could you come over?”

  “Freddie, it’s three a.m.!”

  “I understand. No problem.”

  He sounded so desperate and pathetic and alone, so I would rush right over. I’d find his apartment filled with people, and he’d say, “Hey, I just wanted to see if you would come.” He was in constant need of attention.

  In 1975 we were both in Vegas, with Freddie headlining at Caesar’s Palace and me opening at the Riviera. He seemed very happy, which was very unusual. He said he was getting married.

  “But Freddie, you’re nailing every chick in town! How are you going to be married?”

  He had met a cocktail waitress at the casino. “She thinks I’m great. She loves me. She understands me.” That’s what he wanted and needed to hear.

  “Freddie, it’s never going to work,” I warned.

  “Fuck you! You’re a pussy! You don’t know me!”

  So he and Kathy Cochran married.

  When I was back in LA, I saw Freddie—with another woman.

  “Freddie, what about this marriage thing?”

  “Man,” he said, “I just couldn’t resist.”

  Even though I saw him with other women—even during the time he was so happy because Kathy was pregnant . . . and with a boy—I never saw him and Kathy together. After Freddie Jr. was born, that was all he talked about. He loved his child so much.

  Then one day, a week after he performed at President Jimmy Carter’s inaugural ball, he met me at a club and he was as down as I had ever seen him. Kathy was divorcing him, on the grounds that his drug dependency threatened her safety and that of their child. He told me he loved her. He could not believe she would leave him.

  “Really, Freddie? How about she’s leaving you because you’re still dating!” He gave me an evil look.

  The next day I received a call saying that Freddie had shot himself and was in serious condition. He died January 29, 1977. He was twenty-two years old.

  Some say Freddie committed suicide. They told police that he made a series of phone calls to friends and family saying that “life isn’t worth living.” But Freddie was always doing that. Many times he would play Russian roulette in front of people who did not know his gun was unloaded. It scared the hell out of them. That’s what he wanted—for them to be concerned about him. That final night, even after his worried business manager showed up at his hotel room in Westwood, Freddie continued to make those calls. The manager dialed Freddie’s psychologist, who told him that the comedian was acting out, that he was in no danger.

  After he phoned his mother and Kathy, Freddie reportedly pulled a .357 Magnum from under his sofa. The manager intervened and the gun went off. Freddie shot himself in the head.

  I was flying to Union City, New Jersey, to play the Latin Quarter when I heard the news. Within minutes Brenner, Gabe Kaplan, Landesberg, singer Tony Orlando—who was a very close friend of his—and I, along with still others, called each other. At first we were told he might pull through, then that he might have brain damage. When I arrived at the airport, I was told he was dead.

>   I went on stage that night and said, “You may have already seen this on the news. Freddie Prinze has passed away. He was a friend of mine. I will always miss his funk and his swagger.”

  Like his mother and many others I believe Freddie did not commit suicide. I believe he was simply looking for sympathy, was playing at shooting himself, and accidentally, tragically, did. In fact, the original suicide verdict was later officially changed to “accidental shooting.”

  Suicides, say the experts, rarely pull the trigger with others watching. Freddie wanted attention—nothing more and nothing less. There was nothing any of us could have done to forever fill that need in his life. However, I cannot help but think that Freddie would still be alive today if Brenner had been around to give him guidance. Brenner was older, had more worldly experience than us, and his intellect and advice meant a lot as we grew up both on stage and off. He was our mentor, our House Dad. But he was a Philly/New York kind of guy. He hated LA. When we went west, he stayed behind.

  Freddie was chronically unhappy, but that did not make him much different from any other comic. I always say that there is no such thing as a happy comedian. Off stage, we are always bitchin’ and complainin’ about somethin’—money, clubs, billing, whatever. There are a few who are content, but for the vast majority there is always something to make us dissatisfied. The only place we are happy is on stage trying to make people laugh.

  When I get on stage, that is my heroin fix. I’m on top of the world. Leaving the stage, there is still a little bit of a high as people come up to say they liked me. But as soon as I walk outside into the night, that feeling disappears. I come down as fast as a junkie. The approval of strangers had filled a hole that now returns. The next day there are agents who will not pick up my calls, club owners who will not answer my e-mails. There is rejection, again and again—until the next time I get back on stage and hear the laughter of strangers. I am thankful for my heroin, those minutes I get on stage.

  Life, however, happens off stage.

  I met Lilly when she was a twenty-year-old student at Santa Monica College. With long black hair and often not wearing makeup, she looked like singer Rita Coolidge. Extremely bright, shy, and quiet, she had been estranged from her family and living with friends for a few years. She didn’t watch much TV and wasn’t starstruck by Hollywood. Instead, she spent most of her time reading and studying. Unlike with my second Barbara, we never argued, never got loud or crazy. We had such a smooth relationship that one day I realized we were living together and wondered how that happened.

  I am not easy to live with, but Lilly made everything easy for me and for us. She would never interfere or bother me when I was working. When she needed to study, she would go into the spare bedroom. Sometimes she traveled with me when I went on the road. And she laughed at my jokes! What more could a comic want? But still I fooled around with other women. Lilly knew but never called me on it. Women are my one vice. That is one reason why I could never marry. Unlike Freddie, I know I could not be faithful. Yes, I am a dog, but at least I am an honest dog.

  After a weekend alone on the road I came home to find Lilly more quiet than usual. She said nothing was wrong, but I knew something was. I finally coaxed it out of her: She was pregnant. She said she was happy about that. But I was not. I never wanted to have kids. When I was with wild-child Barbara, her desire to have children was a stumbling block in our relationship. I never thought I would be a good father. I never had the role model that would show me how to be one.

  Lilly was understandably upset about my reaction. She said I would not have to take care of the child, that she would do everything. But like marriage, I felt that if you made a commitment, then you should stick to it. If I was going to be a father, then I was going to be a father. It would have to be “us,” not “her.” And I was not capable of “us.” A couple of days later she had an abortion.

  The drive home from the doctor was somber and silent. We never talked about the abortion again. She fell into her regular routine and was as nice and easy as ever with me. But when she went into the spare bedroom to study at night, I could hear her softly crying. Increasingly, she spent more and more time in that room.

  I was on the road as much as ever. One night I met a woman at a club and we went to a hotel room. After the abortion this was the first time I had slept with another woman. A neon sign flashed over the bed board proclaiming the obvious: I am not good enough for Lilly. I recognized that I was too selfish to be able to be a bigger part of her life. When I returned home, I told her I would get her an apartment of her own. She never said a word, which said a lot—in her heart she had already moved on. We found an apartment she liked and she moved in. I took care of her for more than a year after that.

  Lilly would have been a great mother. I know she was the best woman I have ever been with. I wish I had known that at the time.

  At least I didn’t have a drug problem to go with my relationship problem. Just like Freddie, Richard Pryor had a drug problem and a woman problem. His second marriage (he was married seven times to five different women) was to Shelly Bonis, a blonde Cher look-alike from Beverly Hills, and they had a daughter, Rain. I remember once going to Richard’s house in Northridge to babysit her, and there was a carafe of cocaine on the coffee table. Richard pointed to it proudly and said, “Walker, I have your whole year’s salary on that table!”

  Pryor was hardly the only one indulging back then. Danny Aiello and I went to see Richard at a Madison Square Garden concert produced by Sid Bernstein and headlining Sly and the Family Stone. Compared to Sly, Richard was a weekend warrior. As we stood backstage Sly announced that he would not go on until he was given a brick of cocaine. The wheels were quickly set in motion. But the delivery would take a while.

  Singer Kathe Green went on. Then Richard went on—and was booed off the stage as comics always are when opening for a rock act. The coke still had not arrived. They sent out Rare Earth, Motown’s token white act, and told them to stretch their time. By the end of their set Sly had scored his coke. He was now also very stoned. He walked on wearing a fur coat and a fur hat, and he then proceeded to fall off the stage.

  I had no desire to imitate Sly or Richard or Sam Kinison, who was in the worst shape of anyone I ever saw when he performed at the Riviera in Vegas one New Year’s Eve. Surrounded by his Outlaws of Comedy, including Carl LaBove, Jimmy Shubert, and Allan Stephan, Sam sat in a chair in his dressing room. It was pitch-black except for one small light, but I could see a small pile of cocaine on the table next to him.

  “Hey, Sam, how are you?”

  “Jimmie Walker?”

  “Yeah, man. I just came to see the show.”

  He mumbled something incomprehensible and then tumbled off his stool. Carl picked him up and placed him back on the stool.

  A Riviera exec who was there was worried. “Are we going to be able to get him on stage?” he asked. Carl took him to a corner of the room where they had an animated conversation.

  “Oh yeah! Everything’s good,” I heard Carl say as they came back to us.

  “You have to go on now,” Carl told Sam.

  Sam slurred, “Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

  Two of the Outlaws grabbed Sam under his arms and carried him to the edge of the stage.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome the new year with Sam Kinison!” The crowd went wild.

  The Outlaws gently pushed him onto the stage. I was amazed that Sam regained a little of his senses. But he was so wasted. He tried to do his material, but he was physically unable. He forgot his bits. He staggered around. He fell down. I have never seen anything like that on stage before or since. Afterward some fans asked for their money back; the Riviera turned them down, saying, “but he was on stage.”

  I suppose the strangest thing is that Sam did not die from drugs but rather a car accident a couple years later. If you had seen him that night at the Riviera, you would have thought he would not be on this earth another twenty-four hours.

&nbs
p; Being drugged held no joy for me. All I needed to avoid temptation was think of my uncles, Cornelius and Herbert, and how alcohol destroyed them. My view was not a secret; I had a reputation in town for not partaking, though I never preached about it. Freddie and Richard would say, “You’re a pussy!”

  In turn I had called Pryor “the wildman” since our New York days, when he wore a tie-dyed shirt and big Afro and was a staple at the Café Wha? and the Village Vanguard. One year a local publication named him the Best Comic in the Village, and the next year I was the winner. We became friends after he was kicked out of his apartment. I asked him why he got kicked out.

  “I haven’t paid the rent for two months,” he said matter of factly. “I’m going to need a place to stay.”

  I was working at WMCA, so I had a little change. I gave him $175 to get a room in some fleabag hotel for a month. We were friends thereafter, but he remained “the wildman.” He only got wilder when, after his success with Gene Wilder in movies such as Silver Streak, Columbia Pictures gave him $40 million for a five-year deal. That could buy a lot of coke!

  Once, while he was working on new material, he performed at the Comedy Store hours a night for two weeks straight. He was coked up and getting frazzled. At one of those shows a guy yelled up to the stage, “Hey, Richard, my girlfriend fucked your wife the other night!” Pryor jumped into the audience and pounded the guy.

  Maybe the drugs gave him courage, because he was not always so brave. Back in New York he had hooked up with a pretty little white girl, a waitress named Susan. I made it a double date by taking out her girlfriend. We went to Small’s Paradise, a Harlem club owned by Wilt Chamberlain (Malcolm X was a waiter there in the 1940s). It seemed like there were a thousand black people in the club—and our two white chicks. We were at the bar when two black women came over and spat, “Are you with these white bitches?”