When Wish You Were Here opened, it was one of the hottest nights on record in New York City and the air-conditioning in the theater broke. The reviews were mixed. Josh called the cast and crew together after the first few performances and stood up on a chair. “Don’t worry, I will make this a hit,” he said. And he did. The show went on to sell out performances for the next two years.
What also made a difference was a segment on Ed Sullivan’s television show, then entitled Toast of the Town. Sullivan had been a very powerful newspaper columnist in New York when he made the move to hosting a variety program on this emerging new medium. For our performance, Sullivan went to the trouble of having a replica of the swimming pool built on his stage. It was only a foot or two deep, with mirrors placed on the bottom to create the illusion of deeper water. It was my first TV appearance, although only in voice singing off camera. Lines formed at the ticket office the next morning after the broadcast.
Television was just starting to emerge out of the novelty stage and become the major communications medium of the masses. It is funny to admit that I was on television a few times before I ever owned one. But that wouldn’t be for long. And for what he would do for Elvis and the Beatles and hundreds of other acts that he helped launch, Ed Sullivan became the king of Sunday night in America for the next two decades.
In the meantime, Broadway was in its golden age from the post–World War II era well into the late 1950s, and its cultural influence was at its apex until Elvis and the Beatles took over. Although there are still packed houses today and just about every able-bodied actor wishes they could do Broadway, it was truly in the stratosphere back then. The biggest hit songs most often came out of the productions. If you opened on a Wednesday, you would be in the recording studio on Sunday doing the cast album, and within weeks it would be up at the top of the pop charts. Eddie Fisher would later have a number one hit with the title song, “Wish You Were Here.”
When I got the play, I moved out of the Three Arts. One of the girls in the chorus, Margaret Ann Cooper, who was also from Kentucky, told me that two other friends and she were going to get an apartment and asked me if I wanted to share. Sounded like a good idea at the time—a fifth-story walk-up on East 61st Street near Bloomingdale’s. It could be fun, I thought. And I didn’t mind being around a lot of people. There was a fairly large bedroom that could accommodate a bed for each of us. There was a bathroom we shared that could only be accessed by walking through the living room. That proved to be a problem. If one of the girls was seriously dating, she and the guy would take over the living room. You hoped and prayed during those times, “Lord, please get me through the night.” You tried to visualize desert sandstorms instead of cascading waterfalls if you felt your bladder reaching capacity. There was no way you wanted to interrupt the festivities on your way to the toilet.
Jerry and I were at the tail end of our dating at the time, but safe passage through the living room was guaranteed whenever we were there. I also dated the noted writer William Safire for a little while, and went out with Tim Murphy, an acquaintance of a cousin who studied with him at Georgetown Law School. He was in the military and a strict Catholic. He was not one to cross a street against a red light, so it figures that he went on to become an important judge, and we still correspond to this day. But most of my energy was concentrated on learning my craft and building a career. My personal life took a backseat, at least for the moment.
CHAPTER 6Hitting the Road
My one little line of dialogue in Wish You Were Here quickly opened some doors. A top agent suddenly wanted to represent me. The production company also started sending me out to do publicity for the show (including that off-camera Ed Sullivan performance with the chorus). Don’t ask me why—maybe they saw something refreshing in a young face getting a big break, since the show was openly giving that chance to a few newcomers. It was something to see my name in ink for the first time in newspaper columns. Television talk shows were just getting started and Tex McCrary and Jinx Falkenburg, who pretty much invented the genre, had me on theirs. They thought the country accent that I had worked so hard to lose was the funniest thing and wanted me to demonstrate it. That was easy enough.
There was
