Funnymen Read Online Free PDF

they were also laughing at you . They thought you were very funny.”
    â€œMe?” Zig says. “They thought I was funny?”
    Flo chimes in with her two cents and says, “They thought you were hysterical, Ziggy.”
    Ziggy puts his shoes up on the coffee table and says, “Did anyone ever say that you was hysterical, Mom?”
    Flo says, “To be honest, no . . . nobody has ever said that.”
    â€œDid anyone ever say you was hysterical, Poppy?” Zig asks.
    â€œNo, Ziggy. No one,” Harry says. Not an easy thing for a comic to admit.
    Ziggy puts his hands behind his head, leans back against the couch, and says to Rosie: “I get fifty-two percent, they split the rest twenty-four/ twenty-four. Plus I want an additional ten percent of the take from the box before you take your bite.”
    â€œYou three split it thirty-three percent down the line and I give you five percent,” Rosie says.
    â€œThen you can all go to hell,” Ziggy says, “and burn rye toast there.”
    Rosie says, “Okay, then, have it your way.”
    And they shook hands all around and in a minute Ziggy was dipping his stubby red fingers into the chopped liver.

    SALLY KLEIN: I saw Ziggy in the hotel coffee shop the morning after the first performance. I hugged him—he was my cousin after all—and I said, “Congratulations! I'm so happy for you!”
    â€œLittle did you know, when I did a number one on your couch pillows where I'd be today, didja?” he said with kind of a twisted smile.
    â€œNo. I guess I didn't,” I said to him. “I hear you were hilarious.”
    â€œWas it hilarious when I wee-wee'd on your father's socks?”
    I kept trying to congratulate him but he just wouldn't let me. He kept bringing up other things.

    DR. HOWARD BAER: On the poster stand advertising the show, the one that stood in the hotel lobby, Ziggy's picture was up the next day. The next day! There was a black-and-white glossy of the Beaumonts at the top and beneath them it said: “Also appearing, the Blissmans. Plus: Ziggy!” The picture of Harry and Flo was just of them, smiling pleasantly. But Ziggy—his hair was wild, his eyes were crossed and bulging out, and his tongue was sticking out.
    If you ask me, Ziggy already had a dozen of these pictures when he checked in.
    There was a serious incident very late one night. The house detective told Allie Gluck, who told me. Strange noises were coming from Mary's room—she and Billy didn't sleep in the same room—and the detective was summoned. Ziggy, apparently, had tied Mary's wrists and ankles to the bed using hotel towels, which had a bear logo on them. She was naked and so was Ziggy, who was swaying back and forth in the chandelier over the bed. “The Lord in his mysterious ways,” the house dick told Allie, “had blessed this young Hebrew mightily.”
    Ziggy, Allie was told, merely wanted one kiss from her. That was all.

    â€¢ • •

    MAEVE CLARITY: Looking back, I guess I resented that we were now representing a man who had tied me up in my seat and whose mother had threatened to bash my brains in. But I must say, being tied up . . . it was thrilling at the time.

    HUGH BERRIDGE: Vic had a pleasant voice; his was a relaxed, ambient timbre, but he was terribly unpolished. It was going to take some time to meld him into our own sound. He was, we also realized, going to stand out on the stage. Our performances were live, in small ballrooms or at social functions, and Rowlie, Teddy Duncan, and I were all on the short side or of average height and had short, straight blond hair (Rowlie had sandy brown hair but after a summer at Newport it would be dirty blond). But Vic was a lot swarthier. And taller. The cut of his clothing was—dare I say it?—gangsterish, and his hair was curly and terribly unruly.
    Mr. Enright tried and tried and ultimately got Vic to agree to dye his hair blond