How I Saved the Careers of Martin and Lewis...!

Blogging, according to my world, is new, exciting, revealing, subject to limitations, and factual. Every word I type and every word you read relate to "happenings" Life has sent my way in all of my 85 years. (Setting "vanity" aside, I find as I declare my age more and more often, it becomes less of a challenge to face whatever is before me, and thee, a matter of Thanksgiving as opposed to pride, and a small sense of urgency to share stuff about the wonderful people who have populated my life.)

The printed word is more durable than a lightly-tossed-off remark over a Chinese Chicken Salad at lunch...so, if it is ok with you, if you have the time and forbearance, please come back often, tell your friends, and please, leave a comment or two when you have finished a chapter!

A HINT FOR THE NEW BLOGGER-READER: Sometimes, most of the time, the post you will read first (about Phebe, for instance) will contain references to people in the previous segment. Therefore, click back on the very first Blog..."In the Beginning" posted in November, and proceed from there. It's like playing "Dominoes", start with the first domino and add, one story at a time...going in several directions at the same time. Just stay with me, it will be fun!

Those Early Days in Southern California...ca 1948-1949

Looking back to then, one of those Early Days had all the ingredients of being a Magical Kind of Day...if you call "magical" nearly being trampled by those crazy legs of one young comedian, Jerry Lewis, newly arrived in Hollywood with his darkishly-handsome singing straight man, Dean Martin!

This comedy team, yet to make it big via Radio or the Movies although they were fast gaining favor with comedy club audiences in the Midwest territory, were called to Los Angeles to test the market, so to speak. Lucille Ball was already a well-known actress and comedienne and was hired to be their "foil" for their first appearance at a theater smack dab in the middle of "Tinseltown."

Tickets appeared, out of nowhere (in reality, I don't recall) so Del and I put gas in the 1938 Chevrolet coupe and off to Hollywood we went. There was only one Freeway then...the infamous Pasadena Freeway that included a bridge from which a number of people have jumped...and arrived in plenty of time to do a little sight-seeing and gawk at a few famous celebrities who were there for the same purpose of deciding the future of Martin and Lewis!

Not so much Del, but I pretty much separated myself early on from the true sophisticates arriving by waving at a couple of A-picture actors, gushing inane words when acknowledged by a young blond starlet on her way to a career we would eventually read about in a movie magazine. Once again, I was really out of my league! If Del were here right now, he could tell you their names...oh yes, Eleanor Powell and her then husband, Glenn Ford (the A people!).

Eleanor and Glenn were properly seated in the A-people section, down in front. Not knowing then that in order to get premium seats in the Hollywood-seating-arrangement one tipped the usher a whopping five dollars if you were a non-celeb, we were seated about five rows from the back, but I had an aisle seat which is prime territory to my way of thinking and great for seeing the studio-sized orchestra on stage, the Martin and Lewis comedy duo and my gal, Lucille Ball, a real MOVIE STAR!

The entire routine was scripted, which means they were reading from pages of paper, throwing to the floor each page as the lines were spoken. The three were supposed to stand in front of the three available microphones, which they did until the ad-libbing began. Absolute bedlam! Jerry was really beyond being "outlandish" that fate-deciding performance, roaming the stage, straightening the music sheets of the musicians. spewing gibberish that in later years paid him and his sidekick millions of dollars. Dean stood there with his mouth open in apparent aghast, hand to mouth a la Jack Benny, until his turn to perform, the beginning of my infatuation with his voice to this very day. Lucille Ball of the bright orange hair approximately the shade of Tangee, lost it completely at the unscripted antics of Jerry and Dean's song. So did we, the mesmerized audience....I was more like "stunned!" and in complete awe of what was unfolding before my slightly-myopic eyes.

Encore after encore finally satisfied the audience...these young daring-to-be-different kids just might have a chance in Hollywood. Time would tell.

Oh, yes, the trampling part of this story. Remember, my seat was on the aisle, center of the theater, and it was in this direction that Jerry Lewis, with vast energy still unspent, came lumbering up this aisle, long legs and long arms flailing in two-to-four different directions, drawing ever nearer to my seat where I was sitting, becoming with certainty the 95-pound prime target of an out-of-control-wanna-be-movie star.

The last time I was this all-shook-up was at the Atlantic Theater watching a Boris Karloff-Frankenstein movie as a nine-year-old with subsequent nightmares ensuing.

Jerry must have noticed my near-cringing but convulsing-with-laughter body as he came nearer to my seat for he smiled, patted my shoulder and, never missing a flail, continued on his way out the door, hearing in his ears what must have sounded better than anything his good pal, Dean, could have warbled...the laughter and applause of an audience that helped seal their future for many years to come.

For a movie-star-struck country gal from Atlantic, Iowa, my future was sealed also. I declared myself a Californian at that instant and decided that I would do my best to become more sophisticated if ever I should find myself in the company of celebrities and such again...yes, I am still working on it!