Traditionally, autumn is the time when car dealers show new models. Barbara Stanwyck bought a new Cadillac. It is also the time when Catholic parishes have festivals to raise money for their churches. Barbara told the dealer to park the car in her driveway with the keys in it. It would be safe, she said, because her husband Frank Faye would be home. Faye was a top comedian when he married Barbara. She was a struggling actress on Broadway. Frank was the MC of the Palace Theater, the mecca for all vaudevillians. The two of them moved to Hollywood where Barbara, a talented actress, became a sensation. But Faye was mostly unemployed and became a heavy drinker. On the morning the Cadillac was delivered to the Faye-Stanwyck home, Faye had already drunk about eight Scotches, Barbara later told me. Just then, the parish priest in Northridge came to the Stanwyck home to solicit funds for the festival. Barbara wasn’t home, but Faye answered the knock. Barbara would say that Faye was a “death bed Catholic,” but he had no money, being unemployed, and had nothing to donate. Faye looked out the window of their Northridge estate and saw the new Cadillac parked in the driveway. “Take it, it’s yours to raffle at the festival,” said Faye to the priest. The priest happily drove off in the brand new Cadillac. Barbara came home and found no Cadillac. She reported it stolen to the police. The next Sunday she went to Mass and heard the priest praise her from the pulpit “Barbara Stanwyck has generously given us a brand new Cadillac to raffle off at the festival. Thank you, Barbara.” All Barbara could do was smilingly accept his thanks. It was not until later that day that Faye confessed to Barbara that it was he who had donated the car. In fairness to Frank Faye, he later had a career revival as the original Elmer Dowd in the hit play, “Harvey.” He scored rave reviews, and for a time was very hot in the business. He and Barbara, however, eventually split up and sold their estate to Jack Oakie. Jack and his wife, Vickie, lived there until his death.
Jackie Gleason was one of the top comedians in television. But did you know that he also sold three hit musical albums? It’s rather amazing that Gleason would write music because he couldn’t read a note or play any instruments. Bobby Hackett, the famed trumpet player, who was on the albums, said Gleason knew more about music than people realized. One of his albums featured 40 Italians playing mandolins. “You couldn’t get a haircut within a 40 mile radius of New York city,” Gleason told me. He was referring to many Italian immigrants who became barbers when they came to this country. Speaking of music, I was once invited to a party at Bricktop’s apartment in Century City. She was the famous African-American expatriate singer, dancer and saloon keeper who entertained Ernest Hemingway, Cole Porter and many other expatriates in Paris during the 1920s and 1930s at her Place Pigalle nightclub Chez Bricktop. Cole Porter wrote his famous hit “Miss Otis Regrets” especially for Bricktop who made it her trademark. F. Scott Fitgerald, Hemingway and Evelyn Waugh wrote about her. T.S. Eliot even put her in a poem. She gave Duck Ellington his start and guided a young sister expat named Josephine Baker. Born Ada Beatrice Queen Victoria Smith in 1894 in the little West Virginia town of Alderson, she was tagged “Bricktop” for her flaming red hair and freckles. I first met her in the early 1950s in Rome where she had a nightclub on the Via Veneto in the basement of the Hotel Excelsior. It was one of two night clubs she opened outside Paris. The other was in Mexico City. The movie “Ben Hur”, starring Charleton Heston, was filming in Rome at the time and virtually the whole cast jammed the saloon that night as Bricktop sang “Miss Otis Regrets.” We became good friends and every time I’d go to Rome I’d visit her. She once told me that whenever a customer went up to the bar in her saloons, “I always alert my bouncer because gin, like no other drink, makes men violent and they want to fight.” After she retired she moved to Los Angeles and often telephoned me to reminisce about the good old days in Rome and Paris. Occasionally she invited old friends to her apartment for a nostalgic songfest. At one memorable party, the guests included one of her proteges, singer Mabel Mercer, Louis Armstrong and MGM musical director Saul Chaplin, who was an accomplished pianist. For much of the evening, Bricktop had tried to convince Louis to sing “Miss Otis Regrets” with her. Finally, he agreed. Alas, the only pianist present, Chaplin, had just left. I don’t know whether it was Louis or Bricktop who refused to sing without a piano accompaniment. But the historic duet never happened.
“Duke” Wayne was in the back of the Republic lot, where he was under contract, when he saw owner Herb Yates with a couple of investors touring the studio. “Duke” leap-frogged onto a horse and rode around the back lot at a fast pace. As he approached Yates and the guests, he swung under the belly of the horse and back into the saddle and kept doing fancy tricks on the saddle of the horse. Galloping full speed, he jumped off the horse and yelled at Yates, “Let’s see your Roy Rogers do that.”
Cary Grant loved the most bizaare colors. I once accidently dropped a linen sport coat into my pool just after I poured the chlorine in the pool. The sport coat emerged filled with weird colored spots. So the only thing I could do was throw the entire sport coat back into the pool to make it a solid color. It came out the craziest color you can imagine—a bilious green. I wore it once afterwards and Cary Grant saw it. “Jim,” he said, “ Where did you get that color. I’ve gotta have one just like it.” He asked to borrow the coat to show to his tailor. A few days later, the tailor called me and said there was no such color on the market. “Where did you get it?” he asked. I told him to soak it in chlorine and told him my pool story. He thanked me and did exactly that to a fabric he had. Cary Grant was pleased with it and had a sport coat made. The next time I saw him he was wearing the sport coat. The color matched mine. “I love this color,” said Cary. “It’s received a lot of compliments.
Roy Clark was another man who had an eye for color. Each year in the goody bag at his Tulsa, Oklahoma, gold tournament he used to give out matching color golfing clothes. One year, it was an all purple pants, shirt and sweater combo. The next it was all red and the next all Kelly green. I took them all along with me when I played in Bob Hope’s British Classic at the historic Moorpark, which was at Cardinal Woolsey’s hunting lodge. It was also the place where King Henry VIII met Anne Boleyn and where he took her a thousand days later and beheaded her. If that’s not enough history, the cart path was made by Julius Caesar when he invaded Britain two thousand years previously. Each day of the tournament I wore a different colorful golf suit, which contrasted with the conservatively dressed English golfers. The day I wore the all-red outfit, the BBC commentator exclaimed to the TV audience: “Ah. Here comes Mr. Bacon in his usual sartorial splendor.”