Pete Hamill - Piecework

“Anyway, we ended up in Bangor, in some kind of an armory. And Billy was supposed to dive into the tank from some girders. About 90 feet. But this day he was sick — he got loaded the night before or something — and he said to me, ‘You do it.’ I said, ‘Are you kidding?’ He said, ‘You do it, or you’re fired.’ So I climbed up in the girders and looked down, and said, ‘What the hell,’ and dove. Obviously, I lived. But when I pulled myself up on the side of that greasy tank, I said to myself, ‘That’s it, I quit.’ And I did.”

Still, it was show business. In Brooklyn, he went with his friends (and his first girlfriend, Julie Dennehy — pronounced Dunnahee, immortalized later by Joe the Bartender) to places called the Bijou, the Gem, the Diamond. “There was an outdoor theater, too, where they couldn’t start the picture until it was dark. I got the Poor Soul from the assistant manager in one of those places.” And finally he arrived at the Halsey again, where there was an amateur show on Wednesday nights “which was usually guys who played stomach pumps and things like that.”

Gleason thought he could do as well as most of the contestants, probably better (“Vanity is an actor’s courage; if he doesn’t have that, he’s finished”). He worked up an act with a friend named Charlie Cretter, who had a soprano voice. Cretter dressed as a girl; Gleason told jokes.

“All the guys from the Nomads, all the people from the neighborhood were all there, and when we came on, they started cheering and shouting. And we were a hit. I guess the guy that ran the Halsey realized we could sell tickets, so he offered me the master of ceremonies job. I took the place of a guy named Sammy Birch, who was a friend of mine. First prize was 50 cents, and second prize was a card that introduced you to the guy that booked the acts, the agent. I must’ve been a hit, because the guy from the Folly Theater, three stations away, he came and saw me and offered me a job at his theater too. So I worked Wednesday night at the Halsey and Monday and Friday at the Folly. That was the beginning.”

During this period, Gleason met a young dancer named Genevieve Halford; years later, he married her. But most of the time, he was going with Julie Dennehy. Sometimes he went to the Myrtle Burlesque, to watch the comics. He remembered seeing an act called Izzy Pickle and His Cucumbers. He was also a fan of Billy “Cheese and Crackers” Hagen. (“A beautiful broad would walk across the stage, and he’d say, ’Cheese and crackers.’ That’s as dirty as they got.”) Two of his friends were working as ushers at Loew’s Metropolitan in downtown Brooklyn, and they started writing down the jokes of visiting Manhattan comics for Gleason to use at the Halsey and the Folly. He hadn’t yet learned that he was a comedian, not a comic. (“I always like Ed Wynn’s distinction,’” Gleason says. “He said that a comic says funny things; a comedian does funny things.”) But every night, burlesque, vaudeville, saloon humor were working their way into the Gleason style.

Then in April 1935, his mother died of erysipelas. She was just short of 50; Gleason was 19.

“After the funeral, I had 36 cents to my name,” Gleason says. “And I was on the stoop, and Mr. Dennehy came along and said I could stay with them. I said, ‘No, I got 36 cents, I’m going to New York.’ So I went over there on the train. I bought an apple-butter waffle and some apple juice to eat. That left me about 11 cents. Then I ran into Sammy Birch, from the neighborhood, the guy who was before me at the Halsey. He was staying at the Hotel Markwell, and he let me sleep on the floor.”

Within weeks, Gleason had a gig at Tiny’s Chateau in Reading, Pennsylvania, for $25 a week. “Then Sammy got me a job at the Oasis in Budd Lake, New Jersey.” He stayed all summer. “The joint’s gone now, and Sammy’s gone, too. Maybe this is a ghost story. Maybe we’re dead.”

In September 1935, he moved into the Club Miami on Parkhurst Street in Newark; this was Gleason’s graduate school, and he stayed for two years. “It was a real bucket of blood,” Gleason remembers fondly. “My job was to introduce the acts and quell the fights. One night, I’m doing the last show and this fat guy is heckling me. I use the usual lines on him, but nothing works. Finally I say, ‘All right, you, come with meV I start out the side door, taking off my coat, everybody trying to stop me.” Gleason takes a drag on a cigarette. “Next thing I know, I’m in the furnace room and they’re waving fans over me, and slapping my cheeks, and laying the ice on me. And I say, ‘Who was that? And they tell me it’s a guy named Tony Galento.”

He married Genevieve Halford on September 20, 1936; she was then working as a dancer in a joint called the Half Moon, in Yorkville. Gleason moved her to the Club Miami as part of a four-girl chorus line; they lived in Mother Mutzenbacher’s rooming house. He bought the wedding and engagement rings for $60 “from a guy that just got out of the can.”

Genevieve expected something like a conventional home life; she was a good Catholic, gave him two daughters, but never got the home life. By 1937, Gleason was moving around, playing the Bally Club and the Rathskeller in Philly, a joint in Cranberry Lake; following Henny Youngman (still his favorite comedian) into the Adams-Paramount in Newark; working the Empire Burlesque; playing for a few weeks at Frank Donato’s Colonial Inn in Singac, New Jersey (where he met a young singer named Sinatra). He still made money hustling pool. And in other ways.

“Sometimes I made money ’busking’ at fights. I weighed ’75, ’85 at the time, and what you did busking, you filled in for some guy that didn’t show up, or if there were a bunch of quick knockouts and they wanted to fill out the card. You got paid $2 a round and $5 if you won. For that money, there was no sense in us killing each other, I figured, and before the fight, I’d go to the guy and say, ‘You know, let’s not end up in a hospital.’

“Then one night I was in Chicago. Actually, Cicero, where I was playing the 606 Club. I went over to the arena. Anyway, I was fighting some guy named O’Connor, and I go in and hug the guy, and he steps back and gives me a rap. I say, ‘What’s this? I thought we . . .’ And he says, CF- you!’ “ Gleason fingers a scar on his brow. “He gave me this. And that was the end of busking. I was cut, my teeth were loose, I’d had it.” He smiles. “Fighting’s not that hard. It’s going out the dressing-room door that’s murder.”

The goal was always Manhattan, and the village that was then called Broadway. By 1939, the closest he’d come was playing a place that was always called “the ever popular” Queens Terrace, under the el in Woodside. Gleason now had a personal manager named Willie Webber, and after much pleading, Webber talked Fred Lamb of the Club 18 (across the street from “21”) to come out to Queens and look at his new kid. Lamb was impressed, and brought Gleason into the Club 18 on January 20, 1940, for $75 a week. This was what is called a tough room, but after the free-for-all of the Club Miami, Gleason was ready, holding his own with Pat Harrington, Jack White, and Frankie Hyers, the mad comics who were the club’s regulars. One night, Jack Warner came in, saw Gleason, and signed him for Warner Bros, at $250 a week.

“I never expected anything from Hollywood,” Gleason remembers. “I had no idea of becoming a big star, having a big picture career. I was a kid, I was having a lot of fun, and they were paying me $250 a week in the Depression! Not bad.” His first movie was Navy Blues. “It had Jack Oakie, Jack Haley, Jack Carson, me, and Ann Sheridan, some of the worst drinkers in the history of show business. Now, across the street from Warners was a joint called My Blue Heaven. And every day when they wrapped, there was a stampede across the street. I mean, a stampede! I mean, these were drinkers!”