The Importance of Being Ernie: Page 2

  Now that our earthquake-damaged house in Hollywood was tilting like the leaning Tower of Pisa, my mother wanted the “great man” to get off his butt and do something about it. She wanted action, and fast. Doing anything, let alone doing it fast, wasn’t my father’s style. Apathy was his middle name. That might explain why he chose to work as a salesman at Charles Furniture in South Central Los Angeles, a job he held his entire life.

  My dad inspected our battered home and seemed unfazed. Even the hole in our living room ceiling wasn’t too bad. He said, “Let’s just stay here and try to get the landlord to repair the place.”

  My mother flipped. She said, “If you want to stay here, with the cracked walls and hole in the roof, you are nuts! I’ll be goddamned if I’m staying!” She swore like a drunken sailor. Most ex–fan dancers do.

  Somehow my mom scraped up the money to rent a dinky duplex on Wilcox Avenue in Hollywood and even arranged for movers to haul our secondhand furniture. As we vacated the shack on Formosa, my sullen dad followed us like a sad puppy, tail between his legs.

  We didn’t live in our new duplex for very long, though. The place turned out to be a bigger dump than the shack. Worse yet, it was infested with roaches. This was no big deal to my dad; nothing a couple cans of Raid couldn’t fix. Mom flipped, again, and we hauled our meager belongings across the street into our new apartment home on Wilcox. This turned out to be a great move because the building was crawling with kids. This is where my life really got interesting.

  CHAPTER 2

  Wild on Wilcox

  Hours after moving into our apartment home, my older brother, Stan, and I made a slew of new pals: Ray Canada, oldest kid in the building and de facto leader; the two obese brothers, Russell and John Hare; Alan Nickoletti; and Gary DiMeo. The street was alive with handball games in the parking lot, rubber-band gunfights, and knuckle-bruising swordfights with sticks.

  Music echoed through the building, too. Ray Canada’s family blared Italian operas; the Hares were big Four Seasons fans; and Alan Nickoletti’s dad, a music teacher, played polka tunes nonstop on his accordion. Old man Nickoletti even sold my mom a used upright piano and a ukulele, hoping to drum up some students. We never took any lessons, but that didn’t stop my brother and me from banging on the piano like a couple of deranged Little Richards.

  Basically, the neighborhood was poor working class. Because everyone’s parents worked all day, the kids living at the apartment building ran wild in an unsupervised jungle. It’s where I honed my street survival skills, especially while pulling our juvenile pranks.

  One of our gang’s favorite stunts was bombarding passing cars with water balloons. On more than one occasion, an enraged driver would hop out of his vehicle and chase us. Being the youngest, I was always at the rear of the pack, just out of reach of some cursing, sopping-wet maniac.

  Another favorite practical joke was to mold a hand out of clay, paint the wrist blood red, like the whole meathook had just been severed, and attach it to somebody’s doorknob. The real fun began when somebody, usually me, would pound on the door and run away. From our hiding place, we’d watch some unsuspecting old biddy open the door and discover the gruesome bloody mitt. If she screamed, so much the better. Mission accomplished.

  Our gang also loved combing local construction sites for metal pipes to be used as swords and metal slugs from electrical outlet boxes. The round slugs were like real coins and could be used to buy baseball cards or candy among the local kids.

  Occasionally, our raiding party encountered real danger on our treasure hunts. On one such adventure a rottweiler security dog cornered Stan, Ray Canada, and me on the third floor of a partially built apartment building. The only way to escape was to jump, which is what Stan did. He landed in a huge pile of sand twenty feet below and laughed like a madman, thrilled by his daring aerial escape. He waved for me to join him, but I couldn’t do it. The snapping dog was scary as hell, but the thought of falling three stories was more terrifying.

  A crusty old security guard appeared on the scene, cursing and waving his flashlight like a hot-white laser beam. I knew I had to jump now, but I still couldn’t budge. Our gang’s sworn motto was based on the Marines’ credo, “Never leave one of your own behind.” With that solemn vow in mind, Ray Canada latched on to my arm and yanked me off the building’s scaffolding.

  I was suddenly surrounded by a silky, soft nothingness. As the song says: “Falling feels like flying ... for a little while.” I landed hard on the mountain of wet sand, which knocked the air out of my lungs. I gasped to catch my breath, but thankfully nothing was broken. We rolled off the hill and ran for our lives as the security guard and dog both howled at us from above.

  Halloween was also an especially fun time on Wilcox Avenue. It was a little dangerous, too, because roving gangs of trick-or-treaters were armed with pirate swords and fake rifles with hard plastic bayonets. A squad of teenage G.I. Joe’s pursued me five city blocks to steal my booty of candy, which I refused to hand over. I thought I was going to get away, too, as I scaled a chain-link fence. Unfortunately, my Zorro cape got caught on the metal barbs at the top of the fence. I hung there, in my black mask and beautiful gaucho hat, and took a beating like a piñata until some adults rescued me.

  The local city park at Cahuenga and Santa Monica was another childhood hangout. It had a huge, overly chlorinated swimming pool that my dad called the Cold Pool. Even in the dead of summer, the water felt like we were flailing around in the North Sea.

  Our neighborhood gang was also within striking distance of Hollywood Boulevard and its dozens of movie theaters. Most Saturdays we’d head up there to catch a triple-feature of horror flicks, movies like The Brain Eaters, A Bucket of Blood, and Pit and the Pendulum. Anything that starred Vincent Price was a must-see. Also, the Ray Harryhausen epics like Jason and the Argonauts and The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad were mind-boggling cinematic achievements in our book.

  Our favorite old movie palace was the Pix Theater. It had a great balcony that was perfect for bombarding the patrons seated below with candy. Every time a movie veered into a boring love scene, Good & Plenty licorice would fly. It was during one of our visits to the Pix to see The Raven that I became aware of a portly, bug-eyed actor named Peter Lorre. He was the geekiest actor I’d ever seen starring in a movie. I was impressed.

  I’d seen other oddball characters on TV like Wally Cox in Mr. Peepers and Froggy from The Little Rascals. There was something about Peter Lorre, though, a quirky charisma that nobody else possessed. His sad round face made him look like a wide-eyed Boston terrier. You couldn’t take your eyes off him. I also found that I could mimic his nasal eastern European dialect, which really scored points with my pals. That peer group approval surprised and pleased me. It opened my eyes to something amazing: I possessed a talent. Who knew? An acting seed was sown.

  Another actor who made a big impression on me was Vincent Price, Lorre’s acting partner in a number of Roger Corman horror films. Price was such a refined and giddy sadist. Come to think of it, he was a pretty odd duck, too. Perhaps the term “elegant nerd,” would be the best way to describe him.

  Price starred in a film that I saw over and over again, forever scarring my young psyche. The flick was called House on Haunted Hill. While Price scared the hell out of everyone on screen, the theater owner rigged a skeleton on a wire and pulled it above the audience during a few tense moments, adding to the terror. The movie industry was desperate to lure audiences away from their TVs, and no campy trick was ruled out.

  Naturally, kids who’d already seen the film came armed and prepared for the skeleton on their second viewing. As soon as the bag of bones came flying out from the theater’s wings, it was pelted by a barrage of Milk Duds, Rollo Bars, and, of course, Good & Plenty. The poor people seeing the movie for the first time got two shocks: the terrifying entrance of the flying skeleton as well as a hailstorm of hard candies. Good times.

  We found another activity on the boulevard after the
city installed a new sidewalk, the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Once the concrete dried, it was slick as ice and great for roller-skating. My brother and I would head up there late at night accompanied by our huge sheep dog, Patchy. We’d put on our skates, attach two leashes to the dog’s collar, and yell, “Mush,” just like we’d seen Sergeant Preston do with his dog, Yukon King, on another TV favorite, Sergeant Preston of the Yukon.

  Patchy would haul ass down the boulevard like a galloping Clydesdale, and we’d roll right behind her, trying to keep our balance. If one of your steel skate wheels hit even the smallest pebble, it would stop on a dime and you’d go face forward, getting dragged across the “stars in concrete” by our sprinting dog.

  My first public school was at the Vine Street Elementary School. Besides learning the alphabet and basic math, we were also taught to do “drop and cover” exercises in case the Russians attacked Hollywood with an A-bomb. My teacher was deadly serious about it, too. She’d be facing the chalkboard, calmly scribbling an arithmetic problem, and suddenly whirl around to face the class.

  “Drop!” she’d scream with her eyes as big as mushroom clouds.

  Having been conditioned to instantly respond to her command, we’d fall out of our chairs and cram our five-year-old bodies under our wooden tables with our heads to the floor, butts in the air. This was supposed to protect us from the inevitable hellacious nuclear fireball. It was scary as hell but kind of thrilling, too, and a welcome break from adding and subtracting.

  I was only five years old, but I walked home after school every day, heading north up Vine Street. Once I hit Santa Monica Blvd., I was instructed to turn left and head west toward Wilcox, where I’d make a right and then skedaddle home. My mother insisted that this was the only route I should take home. I was to stay on the main roads for safety reasons. I finally asked why it was so much safer on the big streets.

  She kneeled down on one knee to get on my eye level, held me by the shoulders to focus my attention, and said, “Perverts are lurking on the side streets just waiting to molest little boys.”

  I stayed off the side streets like they were home to zombies. Still do. My mother always had crude but effective ways of making her points.

  Unfortunately, my route home took me right past the home of a flying monster, a giant carpenter bee. I told my mom about my problem, but she was unmoved. Perverts were worse than bees in her mind.

  The big, black, hideous flying insect lived in a hole that it had drilled (I just assumed it could drill, being a carpenter bee) in a creosote-soaked telephone pole. The buzzing bastard lay in wait every day, like the proverbial troll living under the bridge.

  I approached the bee’s hole, which oozed a nasty black tar, and I could hear a low vibrating rumble from deep inside. Every day I prayed that I could tiptoe past its lair. No such luck. Just as I passed the pole, its bulbous head would emerge like a creature from one of our beloved monster movies. We’d make eye contact. Its wings would flap in an angry blur, daring me to run ... and I would, flailing my arms in the air as the giant bee orbited my head like an errant Nazi buzz bomb. After sprinting in sheer terror for a city block or so, I’d either outrun the damn thing or it would lose interest in messing with my head ... until the next day.

  Evenings at home were mostly spent right in front of the TV, literally, sitting about two feet away from the screen. My mother, ever the oracle of wisdom and doom, would scream, “Move back ... or you’ll go blind!”

  Once again, her warnings were prophetic because I was wearing glasses not long afterward.

  I loved to watch a program called The Million Dollar Movie because the TV station presented the same film every night for a week, twice a day on Saturdays and Sundays. If it was a Western or a war movie, I’d watch every showing, assuming my mom would let me. She’d usually be sitting right alongside me if the movie starred John Wayne, her favorite actor.

  The best of all TV programs was The Honeymooners, my dad’s favorite show. It was a particular treat to watch because it aired in reruns late at night, around eleven thirty. My brother and I had to have special permission to stay up to watch it. To this day, when I hear The Honeymooners theme song and see Jackie Gleason’s face appear inside that pale white moon, I get giddy. There was nothing more magical than sharing belly laughs with your family at midnight.

  Other than the joy The Honeymooners brought to our home, there wasn’t a whole lot of laughter between our parents. My dad’s lack of drive in the career department and his bouts with depression were driving my mom nuts. Wanting to escape our dreary surroundings, she started taking my brother and me to a swim school up on Hollywood Boulevard, east of Western Avenue. Oddly enough, that place was key to our becoming actors.

  CHAPTER 3

  Swim School and the Big Break

  Jen Loven’s Swim School had two Olympic-size swimming pools, a scary high dive, and a viewing window built into the wall of the deep end so parents could see their kids cavort like fish underwater. The place was also a social club where aspiring young actors and actresses could mingle with agents, producers, and managers. Everybody in Hollywood seemed to have a kid learning to swim thanks to the baby boom in the 1950s.

  My high-spirited mom was soon in the thick of the pool’s social whirl. She was making friends with an exciting new group of people, folks like the world-famous trumpeter Jack Sheldon. Jack was married to Jen Loven’s daughter, and his hipster friends included guys like comic Lenny Bruce and legendary musician Miles Davis.

  My mom befriended a poolside lounge lizard, Sonny Tufts, who was an aging star of B movies. Tufts had long been on the verge of stardom with good supporting roles in The Seven Year Itch and The Virginian, but his career was stymied by bouts with alcohol. When we first met the bronzed, blond-haired actor, he had just “fallen off the wagon,” again. This was after a year of sobriety while Tufts tried to land the role of Jim Bowie in the John Wayne epic, The Alamo. When the role went to Richard Widmark, Tufts went back to the “bottle.”

  Sonny loved gathering the pool kids to sing the Hamm’s beer commercial jingle. He’d pound out the song’s Indian tom-tom drumbeat with his fist and we’d chirp: “From the land of sky blue water ... Hamm’s, the beer refreshing, Hamm’s, the beer refreshing, Haammmm’s!”

  What a great role model for the future child stars of America. Any substance abuse I suffered later, I can blame on him.

  The first acting job in my family came about purely by accident while we were at the swim school. Sonny’s agent, a lady named Tina Hill, invited a reporter from the Los Angeles Times to come to the pool to interview her client and write about the lively social scene. When the reporter arrived, he quickly lost interest in Sonny, who was already crooning the Hamm’s beer jingle.

  The reporter asked a few of the young swimmers to ride their metal tricycles across the bottom of the pool, underwater. He wanted to take some photos of us through the big underground window that looked into the pool’s deep end. This guy was no Ansel Adams, but he knew a good shot when he saw one.

  When the photos were printed in the newspaper, they were really eye catching, and a producer of the TV series Lassie saw my brother in one of the underwater shots. He realized that Stan resembled Timmy, the little boy character on his show. Their similar looks might solve a big problem he was facing. In an upcoming episode that was to be filmed, Timmy almost drowns in a lake, and the child actor who played the character couldn’t swim. Stan was the perfect “stunt double.”

  The phone rang one evening at our home while the family was gathered around the tube watching The Ed Sullivan Show. My mom answered and listened to the producer from Lassie inquiring about Stan’s availability to do a “drowning” scene. She thought it was a prank and hung up on the guy.

  The producer persisted, calling back to tell her that the job paid a few hundred dollars, which was a lot of money in those days. Now my mom became less skeptical and my brother became much more available.

  Stan went to work on Lassie a fe
w days later and made his acting debut: flailing, splashing, and finally submerging anonymously in some studio pond. It was an odd beginning to a career, but you’ve got to start somewhere, I suppose, even if it’s at the bottom of a pool.

  Presto, chango! With one scant appearance on TV, Stan went from swim school tadpole to a professional thespian. Agent Tina Hill smelled money and convinced my mom to let her become his theatrical representative. Tina was a kind of low-level agent. There were no big stars on her roster of clients, just aging has-beens like Sonny Tufts and young newcomers. My brother, obviously, was among the latter.

  I accompanied my mom and Stan to the Screen Actor’s Guild, the actor’s union, and watched him sign up. It was pretty impressive to see him write his squiggly signature on official looking documents, like he was joining the army or buying a car. While we were waiting for Stan to finish, my mother found out a surprising fact: anybody could walk in and join the guild, even if you’ve never had an acting job. It was an “open” union. Hearing that, my mom had an “ah-ha moment”: If both of my kids were actors, we might make enough money to escape our Wilcox ghetto. Barry should sign up, too.” Bam!

  Seconds later, I was scratching my signature on a page full of impossibly tiny print and being inducted into the SAG army of thespians. I had no TV credits, or any talent as far as I knew, except imitating Peter Lorre, but I became an actor that day, whether I liked the idea or not. I liked it.

  Immediately, our lives took a turn. Tina Hill started sending us out on job interviews, which dramatically changed my after-school routine. No more bucolic walks home eluding perverts on the side streets or being chased by carpenter bees.