Marvin Scott, Alan King and
Randie Levine-Miller |
FRIARS
CLUB
Alan
King Tells How
It All Started For Him
By Jules Peimer
 LAN
KING, comedian,
film and stage actor, author, producer, concert impresario, social
and political activist, philanthropist, and abbot of the Friars
Club was the perfect person to launch the Friars Centennial
Luncheon Series, said producer Randie Levine-Miller to a
packed house as the New York Friars Club celebrated its one
hundredth year.
Senior correspondent of
WB11 News at 10 Marvin Scott, acting as host, wondered how
King’s career started.
“I was the youngest of
a large family during the depression,” King related.
“I got a lot of love but no attention. I wanted to be
heard so I acted like a clown.
Realizing I could make a living being funny, I decided to
become a comedian.”
King’s 60-year career
started with Major Bowes Amateur Hour and progressed to
burlesque, the Catskill hotels and bungalow colonies, and finally
the Ed Sullivan Show, which eventually led to stardom.
“Milton Berle, Danny
Thomas and of course Judy Garland were the most
important influences on my career,” King said. “Berle was
known as the thief of bad gags.
He did everyone’s act better than they did.”
Milton Berle, unable to
do a benefit that he did every year for the Bowery Mission, asked
King to go on for him.
“I didn’t have enough
time to prepare so I do his act which got tremendous laughs.
Milton comes in unexpectedly, forces me off the stage and does his
act that I just did. There’s
no reaction from the audience. He couldn’t understand why he
didn’t go over. Later
I told him why. He wouldn’t talk to me for six months.”
King was with Judy
Garland on and off for seven years.
“She missed
performances due to a drug problem.
“One day she says to
me, ‘Alan how can you stay with me after what I put you
through?’
“I said, ‘Because,
there’s nobody in America that says, Ladies and gentlemen, Miss
Garland will not appear tonight, better than I do.’
“I worked with Frank
Sinatra. He was the best. Even if he wasn’t, who would dare
say he wasn’t. There
were great singers during those times but they were just crooners.
All of a sudden Frank comes along with a very limited education.
He brought a sense of drama to the lyrics.
“Boy did he drink.
I remember when I worked with him in Atlantic City. I had jaw surgery.
“He called my room and
my wife told him I wasn’t taking calls.
He told her to put the phone near my ear, then said, ‘You
must take care of yourself. No
more smoking, no more drinking. As a youngster I studied
ventriloquism and learned to throw my voice without moving my
lips.’
“Frank,
how can you, living the life of a Kamikaze pilot, give me advice
on how to behave.
“Frank says, ‘How can
you talk? Didn’t you have a jaw operation?’
“Yes, but that’s
nothing. I’m
drinking a glass of water while I’m talking to you.”
King was known to be
quite liberal. During
a television show he said that America had the John Wayne
mentality, up San Juan Hill, damn the torpedoes and so on.
King was in Acapulco
having a few drinks in the cocktail lounge.
He looked up and there was John Wayne.
He said, “I hear you
had a few things to say about me on television.”
“For a moment,” King
recalled, “I was thinking of catching the next plane out, but he
sat down and we proceeded to get bombed.”
King’s wife was
upstairs waiting to go to a dinner party.
He phoned and she screamed, ‘Where are you?’
“ I’m in the cocktail
lounge getting drunk with John Wayne.”
And she answered,
“I’m here screwing Paul Newman.”
“I fell down
laughing,” King related. “I couldn’t stop laughing.
I never knew my wife had a sense of humor.
I told Wayne what happened and he insisted upon meeting my
wife.
“We went up to the
suite and I asked her to come out of the bedroom and say hello to
John Wayne. She
looked back into the bedroom and shouted, ‘Paul, let’s join
them.’”
Randie Levine Miller, who
has become a major force at the Friars Club, and executive
director Jean Pierre Trebot lent their expertise and
know-how to make the kick-off luncheon a highly entertaining and
hilarious event. |
