Life Is Not a Stage Florence Henderson (13 ebook reader .txt) 📖

that people saw at home was funny enough, but it did not compare with what happened off camera with such a crazy group of personalities. They taped five shows in one day—three in the afternoon, a break for dinner, and then two more afterward. Wine would be served during the meal, copious amounts and with predictable loosening of tongues on the last two shows. Paul Lynde especially loved to get sloshed. Once, when it was my turn, Peter Marshall asked me, “Would humming help your tennis game?” I was taking tennis lessons at the time from Dick Van Patten’s son, and he was always saying, “Keep your eyes on the ball.” So I replied, “Yes, because it would take your mind off your balls.” I might as well have detonated a bomb on the set. Everybody immediately vacated their little squares in mock protest; even Cliff Arquette, who had recently had a stroke, got up and walked off. It took ten minutes for the hysteria and pandemonium I had caused to subside and to get the show back on track. Peter Marshall still features a video of that segment in his act.

If you happened to sit next to Jonathan Winters, there was a whole other show going on in his brilliant comedic mind. When we’d go to commercial break, he did not sit idly. One of his favorite things to fill the time was to perform his own one-man Civil War or “Cowboys versus Indians” reenactments, complete with sound effects of arrows whizzing by.

Redd Foxx was notorious for his blue comedy routines. If you happened to be the next square over from him, you were in for an earful. Sandy Duncan, the singer and actress, didn’t put up with it and asked to be moved. I found that the best thing to do was to just fire back a glib answer to him when he started to talk dirty. He’d respect that and back off. Here’s one typical exchange:

REDD: Have you ever had sex with a [black man]? (He had used the N-word instead.)

ME: Oh, yeah.

REDD: Did he ever give it to you in the ass?

ME: No, I wasn’t interested. He wasn’t that cute.

Redd wasn’t that much into the wine with dinner. Instead, he was quite open about his love of cocaine. He would take out his little silver spoon. I’ll never forget how Pearl Bailey lit into him. Like many distinguished African American performers of her time, she had worked hard to keep her integrity in a business that had so derogatorily marginalized and stereotyped people of color. In her mind, Redd Foxx was not holding up his part. She had zero tolerance for his behavior. “What’s the matter with you? You can’t do that! There are children here. Put that away!”

During the evening shows, they would always give the women panelists a rose. I would always twirl mine a little when they’d announce my name at the beginning of the show. Sometimes the stem would break, and I would playfully shrug my shoulders in response. I got a fan letter from a gentleman who wrote how he loved it when I did that with the rose. As I did with every letter, I wrote back and said thank you. Then I got another letter from him and more letters. “I know that you’re doing that rose for me and nobody else.” This went on and on. I wrote back that I was very happily married, but he totally ignored all of that. He sent me a box full of fake rings, asking me to pick out which one I wanted for my engagement ring and said he’d send me the real one. He showed up a couple of times where I was performing. One of the singers pretended to be my husband, but that didn’t faze him. My lawyer got involved and sent him cease-and-desist letters. He sent those back to me with notes in the margin: “They’re trying to keep us apart,” or “They’re working you too hard.” He would send me checks. He showed up at my manager’s office and made a total of eleven trips to L.A. I had never had a real stalker before, so this was scary. The police got involved, and eventually someone got a hold of the man’s son, who was in the diplomatic corps in Italy. The son wrote to me and thanked me for my kindness to his father. He explained that his father had not been well since his mother had died a few years before. After his son got involved, I never heard from the man again.

If you’re getting the idea that the path of being a performer is one crazy way to make a living, just wait, there’s more. Whether there were good things happening or not, there were few dull moments. Sometimes a voice of sanity would come into my head and question what in the hell I had gotten myself into.

Take, for example, my excursions with the Kennedys in Hyannis Port. These fall into that category of “sounded like a good idea at the time.” I was performing with Ben Vereen in Hyannis when I got a call.

“This is Ethel Kennedy. I’d love to have you come out and have a boat ride with us.” I told her that I thought it would be wonderful. She picked Ben and me up in a convertible at the hotel. She had packed a lunch, which included a supply of several bottles of wine. We got into her sailboat.

“Hmm, no life jackets,” I duly noted, not being a particularly strong swimmer.

The seas were especially rough that day in my novice opinion. For Ethel Kennedy’s kids, it was like a walk in the park, jumping into the water and swimming back and forth between boats. I was there holding on to Ben Vereen for dear life, grabbing him in places I don’t think he’d ever been grabbed before. The boat pitched and heeled to one side.

“I get ten