Dynomite!: Good Times, Bad Times, Our Times--A Memoir Page 9

  I called my friend Marty Nadler, who did stand-up at the Improv and elsewhere when he wasn’t working at a crepes restaurant. “I got Paar!” I told him.

  “When are you doing it? Next week?”

  “Tonight!”

  “Oh my God!”

  “Marty, you have to take off from work and go down there with me.” He said he would and called another comic, the veteran Phil Foster, and they joined me. (Flash forward about three years: Phil would play Laverne’s father on Laverne & Shirley, where Marty would be a writer/producer.)

  We arrived at Paar’s studio ready for the moment that could change my life.

  “Don’t worry,” said Phil. “You’re funny. You’ve been doing this every night at clubs. What I want you to do is walk out and say, ‘I’m from the ghetto. I’m here on the exchange program.’ Take a beat and then say, ‘You can imagine what they sent back there.’ Open with that. It’ll kill. But have a big smile on your face.”

  Standing backstage, suddenly I became a little anxious. Paar was walking over to me!

  “I’ve heard nothing but good things about you,” he said. “I’ve had many comics like you on—Dick Gregory, Godfrey Cambridge, Richard Pryor.” I was relieved I had stopped using their material! He continued, “Everybody tells me you’re a little bit arrogant—but funny. That’s exactly what makes a good comedian. You’ll do great.”

  Terrific. Now I had to be great!

  He introduced me to the TV audience: “Here’s a funny guy who was a radio engineer here in New York and now he’s making his first appearance on network television. Please make him feel at home and welcome Jimmie Walker!”

  I’m from the ghetto. I’m here on the exchange program.

  Beat. Laughter.

  You can imagine what they sent back there.

  Big smile.

  Big laugh! I felt like a boxer in the ring. All I needed was that first laugh and I was out there punching. I knew I did well because the laughs ate into my time and I never did all the material I planned.

  I called Brenner afterward. “I already got the news,” he said. “You killed!”

  Marty, Phil, and I were ecstatic. I went in early to the Improv and Budd was so happy for me. We turned on the TV in the club and everyone watched the show. I was on top of the world.

  Then I heard the real story about how I got the audition. Brenner, Midler, and Landesberg—all of whom were regular guests on the show—had told O’Malley that if I did not at least get an audition then they would not do the show again.

  I confronted Brenner.

  “You’re our friend,” he explained. “That’s what we do.”

  I was glad I did not know about their effort beforehand. If I had, the pressure of not letting them down might have crushed me.

  A story later went around that Landesberg was with me at the show and after Paar said I’d do fine, Landesberg quipped, “Hey, if he bombs, he can still shine your shoes.” Funny line, but that did not happen.

  The high from my debut did not last long. Brenner had warned that having enough good material for one shot was not enough. If you hit that first time, you would be asked back very quickly and other shows would be calling too. That first shot might not make a career if you had used all of your best stuff. Bombing the next time could undo everything.

  A couple of comics from the Improv followed up with two of the worst shots in history. Marvin Braverman, one of the best stand-up comics I ever saw, was never able to overcome his Waterloo. Richard Lewis followed his first shot with an atrocious performance—beyond hideous—on the Tonight Show. He was a friend, so it was painful to watch. His career was set back for a while before he had another chance and eventually broke through.

  You had to have six shots in the revolver, Brenner said. Some, like Seinfeld, were smart enough to wait and wait and wait until they had enough. Those forty minutes or so, not just the first six, separated the average comic from the star. Then you needed another ten minutes of material solely for the clubs, so people who saw you on TV could hear something new and different when they saw you in person.

  I had my six shots ready. I was ready to fire away.

  5

  Kid Dyn-o-mite!

  ONLY A MONTH OR SO LATER I WENT ON THE PAAR SHOW AGAIN.

  “Here’s a guy who did great last time. One of the funniest young comics around . . . Jimmie Walker!”

  I killed again. Thank you.

  Dan Rowan called me at the Improv. “We saw you on the Paar show. We love what you do. We’re doing our last shows for NBC and want you to come out here and be on.” Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In had officially ended, but they were putting together variety specials as a farewell. Opening Night, Rowan and Martin would be shot in Los Angeles.

  “Sure, send me a ticket.”

  The next day at the Improv, Louie, the angry Puerto Rican cook who answered the phone during the day, yelled, “Package for you!”

  Inside was a plane ticket to LA and instructions about a limo that would pick me up at the airport, about putting me up at the Sunset Hyatt House hotel on Sunset Boulevard, and so on. I thought, “I guess this is for real.” Here I was, a kid from the South Bronx who grew up never expecting anything out of life, never counted on anything, and now I was getting flown to LA, the Promised Land.

  I was brought to the NBC studios in Burbank and met director Greg Garrison, a pioneering television comedy producer and director who had worked on such classics as Your Show of Shows and the Dean Martin Show. Garrison had done it all—had even directed one of the Kennedy-Nixon debates in 1 960—and he made sure you knew it. Oh, and he was wearing a safari hat à la Crocodile Dundee, baggy Jodhpur riding pants, and leather boots, and he carried a riding crop. Really. You cannot make this stuff up!

  “I want to get this guy out of the way,” he said to his crew on the set. “We have a lot to do. Let’s get a few people in here for an audience. We don’t need cue cards for this.” He turned to me. “What’s your name? Jimmie? Jimmie Walker? We’ve carved out a spot for you in the show to do about four minutes. We’ll have you on right away.” I did my shot and it went well.

  They have different commercials for shows for black people. I’m watching TV the other day and I saw one that goes, “Are those chitlins staining your dentures? Try new Chit Off! No chit!”

  On my way to the commissary Garrison, who was chauffeured around the lot in a golf cart, drove up next to me.

  “Okay, you got some laughs. So what? By the way, ‘no chit’? Out!” He looked at his driver. “Move on!”

  That was my introduction to crazy Hollywood—I felt more comfortable on the stage of a comedy club. But doing TV helped me get better stand-up gigs. Among the best were for the Playboy Clubs, where years earlier Dick Gregory had replaced Professor Irwin Corey to become their first black comic, which was a major breakthrough. I played them across the country. Leno did too. I often called him Ray Peno because of an early routine he did about those clubs.

  You see, there would be three main acts, one on each floor of the club, and each would do two shows each night at different start times. The opening-act comic would rotate from the top floor to the middle to the bottom and then back again in the other direction. On the stage at each room there was a sign announcing the act and a beautiful Playboy Bunny introduced you to the audience. One night, the Bunny looked at the sign that clearly read “Jay Leno,” a simple name, and said, “Hello. I’d like to bring on our next act—Jay Seno.”

  After that act Jay went to the room for his next performance and told the Bunny, “It’s Jay Leno.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry, no problem.”

  She introduced him: “A very funny guy. Here he is—Bay Eno.”

  So then he went to the next room and told the same Bunny, one more time, “My name is Jay Leno.”

  “Okay, I got it.”

  She introduced him: “One of our favorite funny people—Ray Peno.”

  Ray Peno and I became fast friends. When I was in Bosto
n, along with staying at the Leno Arms, his parents would take me and the other comics to their favorite restaurant, the Hilltop, to chow down on steak served on paper plates. Along with his comedy partner, a very funny guy named Bob Shaw, we played hootenanny nights at Harvard and the folk clubs in the area. Shaw had a bit about drugs that was so funny that when he did it at a folk club at the University of Maryland, the woman who booked the acts laughed so hard she really did break a rib. I would never have thought Leno would do what he later did to Shaw and a number of others in the comedy world—and that our friendship would end.

  Another lucrative circuit involved those colleges. The comedy team of Joey Edmonds and Thom Curley played campuses across the country, and they suggested I contact an agent named Lou Johnson in Minneapolis. I sent him a kinescope of my Paar shots and, within an hour of receiving it, he called. I flew to Minneapolis for a showcase alongside B. B. King and singer Michael “Bluer than Blue” Smith for college entertainment bookers from the upper Plains States (Iowa, Minnesota, North and South Dakota). B. B. was the big winner, landing about 175 dates, but I was happy to leave with about 60. These were not fancy Playboy Clubs, however. Sometimes in one day at one college I did a show at noon in the school cafeteria, then opened for a ping-pong tournament in the afternoon and at night performed at the rathskeller. But a paying gig was a paying gig.

  You did not see many black people in those states back then. I pulled into a gas station outside Minot, North Dakota, because my car was overheating. The attendant said, “I can’t believe it! You’re the second black to come through here in the last year and a half. Chubby Checker stopped here when his bus broke down. You guys need to take better care of your vehicles!”

  Between dates I returned to New York, where once a week I did studio audience warm-ups for a CBS sitcom called Calucci’s Department, which starred James Coco. Not many sitcoms were still being shot in New York rather than LA, so this was a prime gig for a stand-up. My job was to get the audience revved up to laugh during the taping of the show set in a New York State unemployment office. Apparently being out of work was not very funny, because the series lasted just a couple of months. Before it folded, however, a woman came up to me after my warm-up act and said she had cast Calucci’s Department. Now she was casting a new series starring Esther Rolle, who played the black housekeeper on Maude. She wanted to know if I would be interested in being on a sitcom.

  I said, “Sure, let me know,” and walked away. I didn’t think any more about it. There are so many people in show business who say they are this or that—and aren’t; who are going to do this or that for you—and don’t; who say, “give me your card” and “here’s my card”—and never call that you end up not believing anybody. So many gigs and TV shows had fallen through before for me that I was skeptical of everyone and everything. My line is “Everyone is a liar . . . until proven full of shit.” If I had a dollar for every person who came into the Improv with a business card that said “Producer,” I would already have been a rich man.

  The next week I was about to do my warm-up and the woman from CBS, Pat Kirkland, was there again, this time with a man wearing a golf hat.

  “Jimmie, I’d like you to meet Norman Lear.” I had no idea who he was.

  “Welcome aboard,” he said.

  What was he talking about? On board what?

  “We’ll begin shooting in about a month,” he continued. “We’re glad you’re on our show.”

  I said to myself, “What show?” and went into my warm-up.

  “You’re very funny,” he told me afterward. “We’d love for you to come in to help audition one of the girls too.” The next day his people called my people—Louie the cook—and left a message with a day and time to meet them at CBS.

  Lear had already scored with the massive hits All in the Family, Sanford and Son, and Maude. His new show was called The Black Family—at least that is what it said on the pages for the scene I did with the actresses—Chip Fields, Tamu Blackwell, and Bern Nadette Stanis—who were auditioning for the character of my younger sister Thelma. Though I never auditioned, apparently I already had the part of a character named Junior. I believe Lear and producer Allan Manings had earlier seen me at the Improv and on the Paar show, and they had approved my casting. But they never told me anything about how they saw the character or what I should do with him. They just said, “Do it.”

  That audition scene, about Thelma accusing Junior of stealing five dollars from her, would never make it into the series:

  THELMA

  (she snatches his painting off the bureau and goes to the open window . . . holds the painting out)

  Give me back my $5.00, or I’ll throw this garbage out the window.

  JUNIOR

  (moving toward her threateningly)

  Girl, you throw that painting out the window and you gonna hear some new sounds . . . whoosh when the painting passes the twelfth floor and whoosh again when you pass the painting.

  Meanwhile, I was happy doing my stand-up. I had gigs lined up, including the college tour. These people I did not know were talking about taping a sitcom on the West Coast when I was doing just fine on the West Side. Well, they could keep talking; I was going to keep working. I wasn’t going to believe I was on a TV show until I was actually there.

  So instead, I was in Fargo, North Dakota, playing a college, when the phone in my motel room woke me up at two in the morning.

  “This is Tandem Productions in Los Angeles. We’re looking for Jimmie Walker.”

  “You got him.”

  “Did you get the contract for the show? You were supposed to sign it and be in Los Angeles.”

  “Why?”

  “We start rehearsals tomorrow. We sent you a ticket and were at the airport to pick you up. You weren’t there.”

  “No one told me.” They had sent everything to Louie at the Improv.

  “Go to the airport. A ticket will be waiting for you. Get on that plane.”

  They met me in LA and put me up at the Farmer’s Daughter motel next to the CBS studios. As soon as I settled in I called Steve Landesberg, who was in town doing Bobby Darin’s variety show on NBC. “Steve, where can I get on stage?”

  I was more concerned with doing my stand-up, which might lead to getting a shot on the Carson show, than this TV sitcom. The Tonight Show was the pinnacle for a stand-up comic, but it had moved three thousand miles from me, to Burbank, in mid-1972. If nothing else, this TV series had at least brought me to the West Coast too. I figured I would shoot the first couple shows of the sitcom, maybe get on Carson, then go back to New York to the Improv, call up Lou Johnson, and make up the college dates in North Dakota that I owed him.

  That was my “plan” as I stood that night on the stage of the Comedy Store on Sunset Boulevard—the Store, as comics call it. As it turned out, none of that plan would come to pass.

  The Black Family became Good Times. The show was a rare spin-off of a spin-off. Lear had asked black actor Michael Evans, who played Lionel Jefferson on All in the Family, for ideas about expanding the character of Florida Evans on All in the Family, who had moved on to Maude, in order for Esther to head her own series. He and playwright friend Eric Monte came up with a concept based on Monte’s childhood in the Cabrini-Green projects of Chicago.

  According to reports, Manings then did his own take on their pilot script, though Monte was credited as the writer of that first episode. The goal—bold and dangerous for the times—was to show the life—both the highs and lows—of a lower-class, urban black family dealing with the world. Importantly, the family would be solid and intact, headed by a father who worked and a mother with a moral backbone.

  Florida was no longer a maid, and there was no mention of her previous employer, Maude. John Amos, who played her firefighter husband Henry on Maude, was now named James, a man from Mississippi with a sixth-grade education who struggled to keep a job despite his best efforts. Rather than living in New York, the Evans clan was in a housing project
in a poor, inner-city neighborhood of Chicago—apartment 17C at fictitious 963 N. Gilbert Avenue. The infamous Cabrini-Green projects were shown in the opening and closing credits, but they were never referred to by name.

  James and Florida were role models, strong and admirable. J. J. (as in James Junior) was their always-getting-into-trouble seventeen-year-old eldest, Thelma their beautiful-and-sweet sixteen-year-old daughter, and Michael their hope-of-the-future ten-year-old son. Though Rolle was top-billed, Amos second, and Ja’Net DuBois, who played neighbor Willona Woods, was third, the element that originally was going to make the revolutionary concept of an “urban black family” work for popular TV was young Michael. His appeal, as in many sitcoms before—from Opie on Andy Griffith to Ricky on Ozzie and Harriet—would be the hook that would bring family audiences back every week.

  The difference between those earlier classic sitcoms and Good Times is that Michael would talk about more than family life. This “militant midget,” as he was referred to on the series, would talk about society and politics right there in front of the mainstream American viewer. The audience would feel threatened hearing speeches about racism from Rolle or Amos, even—or perhaps especially—on a sitcom. But Michael saying on national TV that “boy” was a racist word was okay. After all, he was just a child.

  But who was going to play Michael? The producers very much wanted Ralph Carter, the twelve-year-old who had been Tony nominated for his performance in the Broadway musical Raisin. But his contract committed him to a long run of that hit show. So they brought in another twelve-year-old actor, Laurence Fishburne, who had been raised in Brooklyn and had recently made his TV debut during the last season of The Mod Squad. They kept working on trying to sign Ralph, all the while being honest with Laurence that he might be replaced at any moment.