{"id":2296,"date":"2021-08-28T00:51:16","date_gmt":"2021-08-28T00:51:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/?p=2296"},"modified":"2021-08-28T00:53:52","modified_gmt":"2021-08-28T00:53:52","slug":"ftv-that-wild-and-crazy-guy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/?p=2296","title":{"rendered":"FTV: That Wild and Crazy Guy"},"content":{"rendered":"

From the Vaults:\u00a0 That Wild and Crazy Guy<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Elvis hit the nail on the head back in 1971.\u00a0 He told Steve Martin, \u201cSon, you have an ob-leek sense of humor.\u201d\u00a0 Oblique can be added to the long list of words used to describe Martin but the one at the top would undoubtedly have to be \u2018funny\u2019.\u00a0 One does not become a stand-up comedy superstar if \u2018funny\u2019 isn\u2019t part of their repertoire.\u00a0 That Martin could project \u2018funny\u2019 to basketball arena size audiences more commonly assembled for rock concerts is telling.\u00a0 As one would expect, not every one embraced his form of over the top comedy, but let us note one of his books (<\/span>Steve Martin – Born Standing Up – A Comic\u2019s Life <\/span><\/i>– Scribner Press) came out in 2007, the same year he was a Kennedy Center Honoree.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Incredibly, Martin put pen to paper twenty-five years after he walked away from stand- up comedy.\u00a0 Steve worked hard and was certainly no \u2018overnight success story,\u2019 but he was still surprised to find the flip side of becoming wildly popular was a deep well of loneliness.\u00a0 As he states in the book\u2019s foreword (here called \u2018Beforehand\u2019), \u201cIn a sense, this book is not an autobiography but a biography, because I am writing about someone I used to know.\u00a0 Yes, these events are true, yet sometimes they seemed to have happened to someone else, and I often felt like a curious onlooker or someone trying to remember a dream.\u00a0 I ignored my stand-up career for twenty-five years, but now having finished this memoir, I view this time with surprising warmth.\u00a0 One can have, it turns out, an affection for the war years.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0A native Texan by birth, Martin was five when his mother, father, and big sister moved to Hollywood.\u00a0 Frequent road trips to visit back in Waco provided plenty of family time they spent listening to Bob Hope, Abbott and Costello, Jack Benny, and what Martin describes as, \u201cthe now exiled Amos \u2018n\u2019 Andy.\u201d\u00a0 It proved to be one of the few things they did as a family.\u00a0 Steve always thought they had moved west so his mother could pursue acting, but it was actually his father who had the show business bug.\u00a0 The urge waned as the need to support his family took top priority, first by sorting fruit at a supermarket and later selling real estate.\u00a0 Martin remembers seeing his father in one small role at the Callboard Theater in Los Angeles, but soon after they moved to Inglewood, California.\u00a0 Glenn Martin\u2019s acting dream was left behind in Hollywood.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Highland Elementary School, where Steve got his first taste of the greasepaint, was just across the street from their small bungalow.\u00a0 Lured by the prospect of wearing a red ping pong ball nose to play Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer in kindergarten, he was a little disappointed when that prop was replaced by his own lipstick covered nose.\u00a0 The family bought their first TV around this same time so the five year old Martin absorbed a steady diet of westerns and comedy shows.\u00a0 He found he preferred the gentler Laurel and Hardy comedy to the more violent Three Stooges.\u00a0 One of the things he learned from Jack Benny would follow him for the rest of his comedy career:\u00a0 \u201c[Laurel and Hardy] is where I got the idea that jokes are funniest when played upon oneself.\u00a0 Jack Benny, always his own victim, captivated me.\u00a0 His slow burn – slower than slow – made me laugh every time.\u00a0 I would memorize Red Skelton\u2019s routines and perform them the next day during Wednesday morning\u2019s \u201csharing time\u201d at my grade school.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The magic bug first nibbled at young Steve when they were still living under the LAX flight path in Inglewood.\u00a0 An uncle gave him a few store bought magic tricks and when he received a Mysto Magic set one Christmas, Martin says, \u201cMy meager repertoire of tricks quintupled.\u201d\u00a0 He spent hours in front of a mirror practicing the Linking Rings or the Ball and Vase illusions.\u00a0 Recalling my own third grade piano performance, it seems grade three must have been the universal \u2018show us\u00a0 your talent\u2019 year back in the day.\u00a0 Steve recalled his third grade showcase:\u00a0 \u201cI can still remember the moment when my wooden billiard balls, intended to multiply and vanish right before your eyes, slipped from between my fingers and bounced around the schoolroom with a humiliating clatter as I scrambled to pick them up.\u00a0 The balls were bright red, and so was I.\u201d\u00a0 Ah yes, we musicians, magicians, and comics all had to start somewhere.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Around home, Martin\u2019s mother was \u2018mom\u2019 and the frugal one while his dad, called \u2018Glenn\u2019 at home, was generous but distant.\u00a0 Steve speculated later that Glenn\u2019s increasing volatility toward him (but not toward his wife or daughter, Melinda) stemmed from the subconscious realization that his dreams of being in show business had been supplanted by the needs of his family.\u00a0 Young Steve\u00a0 was spanked or paddled for his worst behavior.\u00a0 On one occasion, the belt treatment he was given was severe enough he had to cover the welts with long pants and sleeves.\u00a0 This unexpectedly brutal punishment only happened once, but his father\u2019s moodiness left a wall between them.\u00a0 Steve later described the relationship:\u00a0 \u201cI was incurring psychological debts that would come due years later in the guise of romantic misconnections and a wrong-headed quest for solitude.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0His mother avoided Glenn\u2019s temper by becoming more timid and submissive.\u00a0 Steve\u2019s sister was four years older than he and attended a different school.\u00a0 Though they did not form a tight sister\/brother bond then, she contacted him decades later and declared, \u201cI want to know my brother.\u201d She got her wish.\u00a0 As they discussed the past, Steve realized she had observed the same things about their father and coped by keeping her head down and out of the line of fire.\u00a0 Martin summed up his early life:\u00a0 \u201cI have heard it said that a complicated childhood can lead to a life in the arts,\u00a0 I tell you this story of my father and me to let you know I am qualified to be a comedian.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0One of the last times they visited, his father was gravely ill (he passed away in 1997).\u00a0 Glenn expressed sadness because he had been unable to \u201creturn all of the love I was given.\u00a0 You did everything I wanted to do.\u201d\u00a0 Steve could not tell him the truth, that he had accomplished what he had in show business mostly to get away from him.\u00a0 Glenn had little good to say about his son\u2019s career and it had hurt Martin deeply.\u00a0 Steve simply said, \u201cI did it for you.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0When the new San Diego freeway was\u00a0 built,\u00a0 the Martin\u2019s Inglewood neighborhood was leveled to make way for it.\u00a0 The family landed in Orange County, CA just as a real estate boom (created by the sprawl of Los Angeles) hit the urban fringe areas.\u00a0 It also put Steve on the doorstep of the recently opened Disneyland.\u00a0 In the summer of 1955, the ten year old Martin got a job there selling guide books for twenty five cents each.\u00a0 Dressed in his uniform of candy-striped shirt, garter on his sleeve, vest, and a straw boater\u2019s hat, he turned his two cent per sale commission into a two dollar pay day out of the gate.\u00a0 When the guidebook sales ended at noon, he was free to roam the property like it was his own fantasy neighborhood.\u00a0 Steve did more than rubber neck, however.\u00a0 He observed and learned tricks he would one day incorporate into his act.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0From Frontierland cowboy, Eddie Adamek, Martin learned how to twirl lariats and do rope tricks like the Butterfly, Threading the Needle, and the Skip-Step.\u00a0 After his guidebook selling days, Steve worked as Eddie\u2019s trick-rope demonstrator.\u00a0 He enjoyed working at Disneyland more than he enjoyed school where he was a straight C-average student.\u00a0 Another regular stop was at Merlin\u2019s Magic Shop to see Jim Barlow who demonstrated and sold magic tricks.\u00a0 Barlow was also funny, greeting store browsers with, \u201cCan I take your money – I mean help you?\u201d and punctuating sales by saying loudly, \u201cThis trick is guaranteed! . . . to break before you get home.\u201d\u00a0 Martin\u2019s introduction to juggling came from a character at Fantasyland named Christopher Fair (who could juggle five balls while riding a high unicycle).<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0At the Golden Horseshoe Revue, Martin would see his first live comedian (as opposed to a dead one? – sorry, that just slipped out) in person, Wally Boag.\u00a0 Steve\u2019s description of Boag\u2019s act helps explain where many seeds of Martin\u2019s future bits were planted:\u00a0 \u201c[Boag] plied a hilarious trade of gags and offbeat skills such as gun twirling and balloon animals, and brought the house down when he turned his wig around backward.\u201d\u00a0 Martin knew the act so well, he was watching one performance and mouthing all of Boag\u2019s lines in his head when he passed out cold.\u00a0 Further investigation uncovered a heart murmur from a prolapsed mitral valve.\u00a0 The condition went away as he aged, but another seed was planted by this event;\u00a0 this one left Martin with reoccuring bouts of hypochondria later in life.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Working with Jim Barlow at Disneyland\u2019s two magic shops was never dull.\u00a0 The hours spent demonstrating tricks served as practice for his side gig as a magician.\u00a0 Shop owner Leo Behnke (a master card and coin manipulator) was the first person to explain the inner workings of some of the tricks of the trade.\u00a0 Occasional performances for Cub Scouts and the Kiwanis or Rotary Clubs had the aspiring magician leaning toward a career in show business.\u00a0 Steve wondered why, \u201c[These clubs] comprised of grown men, would hire a fifteen-year-old boy magician to entertain at their dinners.\u00a0 Only one answer makes sense;\u00a0 out of the goodness of their hearts.\u201d\u00a0 The man who wrote a mimeographed in-house newsletter for Disneyland, Claude Plum, also wrote jokes for Wally Boag.\u00a0 Steve paid Plum five dollars for some dialog to use with his magic tricks.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Disneyland was a great training ground to absorb a variety of tricks to use in his magic act, but\u00a0 transferring to a new school in 1962 had the biggest impact on his future.\u00a0 At the first day assembly, Martin found himself seated in the Don Wash Auditorium:\u00a0 \u201cThe interior narrowed like a funnel to focus all eyes on its polished hardwood stage.\u00a0 The proscenium was framed by heavy velvet curtains, and the acoustics were – and still are – brilliant and sharp, making microphones unnecessary.\u00a0 I sat in the audience looking up at the stage, surrounded by high-energy adolescent chatter.\u00a0 The house lights dimmed dramatically, and when the crisp ice-blue spotlight illuminated center stage in anticipation of parting curtains and grand entrances, I knew I wanted to be up there rather than down here.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Claude Plum asked Martin if he would like to be in a vaudeville type review with Wally Boag and he jumped at the chance.\u00a0 Ironically, the program listed his first performance as <\/span>Mouth and Magic<\/span><\/i> (it was supposed to be <\/span>Youth and Magic<\/span><\/i>) but perhaps it was a glimpse of what was to come.<\/span><\/p>\n

Steve continued to learn from those he worked with at Disneyland.\u00a0 Alex Weinter (aka – Aldini the Magician) taught him Yiddish words they would use as code for customers at the magic shop.\u00a0 Dave Stewart (aka – Lord Chesterfield and later, Dave and Company (reasoning it sounded like two people meaning he could charge more for gigs)) taught him the art of being the \u2018bungling\u2019 magician\u2019. \u00a0 Stewart\u2019s hero, Carl Ballantine (who went on to wider fame as Lester Gruber the PT-73 Torpedoman\u2019s Mate on <\/span>McHale\u2019s Navy<\/span><\/i>), provided a deadpan joke-trick both used for years:\u00a0 \u201c[Stewart] walked from behind the counter and stood on the floor of the magic shop, announcing, \u2018And now, the glove into dove trick!\u2019\u00a0 He threw a white magician\u2019s glove into the air.\u00a0 It hit the floor an lay there.\u00a0 He stared at it a while and then went on to the next trick.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Upon high school graduation, Steve matriculated to Santa Ana Junior College.\u00a0 He enrolled in some theater classes and found to his own surprise he was interested in English poetry, \u201cfrom Donne to Eliot.\u201d\u00a0 While attending Santa Ana JC, he learned that Knott\u2019s Berry Farm was looking for performers with short acts (and by his own admission, his magic act could not have been much shorter).\u00a0 From eighteen to twenty one, Martin worked at Knott\u2019s Bird Cage Theatre.\u00a0 It was a wooden theater with a canvas roof and a five foot high sign at the entrance that declared \u2018World\u2019s Greatest Entertaiment\u2019 (no one seemed to note the missing \u2018n\u2019).\u00a0 Steve recalls, \u201cThe actors swept the stage, raised and lowered the curtains, cleaned the house of trash, and went out on the grounds pitching this show to visitors strolling around the park.\u00a0 I was being paid two dollars a show for twenty-five shows a week.\u00a0 Even in 1963, the rate was considered low.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The twenty-five minute melodramas were staged, followed by short olio segments where the actors displayed their specialties in five minute segments.\u00a0 It was at the Bird Cage where Steve honed his six minute magic act and learned the art of ad-libbing when actors missed cues or blew lines.\u00a0 The work and troupe were an enjoyable escape from his less than happy home life and Martin describes the Bird Cage Theatre as, \u201cA normal theatrical nuthouse.\u201d\u00a0 A girl friend from the Bird Cage got Steve interested in philosophy, necessitating a transfer to Long Beach State as SAJC had no courses in the subject.\u00a0 He toyed with the idea of becoming a teacher.\u00a0 In the meantime, he began injecting elements of comedy, rope tricks, balloon animals, and old jokes to extend the length of his magic performances.\u00a0 Folk clubs and coffee houses were in their infancy then but they did offer an opportunity to perform beyond the canvas roof of the Bird Cage.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Martin admits he had no real talent.\u00a0 He could not sing and had only learned some rudimentary banjo licks from his high school friend John McEuen.\u00a0 McEuen would become a member of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and Martin\u2019s lifelong friend.\u00a0 McEuen\u2019s older brother Bill would later serve as Steve\u2019s manager, but stardom was still a decade or more away.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0At twenty-two, Steve Martin set out on a journey to forge a career in show business.\u00a0 It would not be easy as this description of a typical gig illustrates:\u00a0 \u201cThe Coffee and Confusion Club was in San Francisco on a street dotted with used clothing and incense stores.\u00a0 I nervously entered the club, and Ivan Ultz, the show runner, slotted me into the line-up.\u00a0 In the audience of about fifteen people was a street poet dressed in rags like a bearded yeti.\u00a0 He had a plastic machine gun he used to shoot ping-pong balls, which he unloaded at performers he didn\u2019t like.\u201d\u00a0 This was a Monday night, the night performers like Steve Martin did their act for free in hopes of getting a paying gig later.\u00a0 \u201cThe club owner, Sylvia, was no brain trust.\u00a0 She one time told a ventriloquist to move the dummy closer to the mic.\u00a0 She was savvy enough to post a sign saying, \u201cAnyone who gives Janis Joplin her money before her final set is fired!\u201d\u00a0 She hired Martin but after an act of desperation on his part (he put his iconic \u2018arrow through the head\u2019 prop on to salvage a banjo solo that was not well received), she told him to \u2018lose it\u2019.\u00a0 We will see how the \u2018arrow through the head\u2019 became one of his most famous props in Part Two of <\/span>That Wild and Crazy Guy.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Top Piece Video:\u00a0 Proof Steve Martin can play the banjo…but so can Kermit The Frog!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From the Vaults:\u00a0 That Wild and Crazy Guy   \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Elvis hit the nail on the head back in 1971.\u00a0 He told Steve Martin, \u201cSon, you have an ob-leek sense of humor.\u201d\u00a0 Oblique can be added to the long list of words used to describe Martin but the one at the top would undoubtedly have to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,11,8,12,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bands-musicians","category-education","category-from-the-vaults","category-humor","category-woas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2296"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2296\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2299,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2296\/revisions\/2299"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woas-fm.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}