Photoplay (Jan-Jun 1963)

paper strike came along and threatened to make the whole thing a shambles. There were lots of people who suggested to Vaughn that he cancel out. They told him, ‘You’ll be lucky if half the house is filled — it’ll look bad to any of the important people who happen to be there.’ As it turned out, these suggesters were all wrong, because we turned the customers away that night. Anyway, they didn’t know who they were talking to, these people. Because if you say something to Vaughn that he doesn’t agree with, you’ve got a tough fight on your hands. And what he’d answer was, ‘I’ve got a deep respect for the public. I’ve got a commitment to the public. Even if there are only one hundred customers out there. I’ve got to show up in front of them and give them everything I’ve got.’ “I think that to Vaughn, the audience stands for a family he finally belongs to. He loves those people out there. And he’s grateful for being loved back by them. He had a very rough childhood. His father died when he was an infant. His mom had to send him off to Maine to live with some people while she worked as a waitress down in Boston. He had nobody, not for a long, long time. Not until Vera came along. And now the audiences. . . . Have you met Vera yet? No? Well, you’ve got to. She’s around tonight. Meanwhile come on, I want you to meet some of the other people who can tell you a little bit about Vaughn.” First Buddy introduces us to a young Brooklyn-born comedian, one Stanley Myron Handelman. And Stanley says to us, “Vaughn and I first met down on Bleecker Street, at a little club where we worked. What we did? Well, we made audience for each other because usually nobody else was there. We got fantastic money* too. I had more lines than Vaughn, so I was getting $8 a night, whenever we worked. Vaughn had less lines so he only got $7 a night. This club is a place where a lot of comedians go to break in material. It’s pretty depressing at a place like that — because you get to see how much non-talent there is around. But Vaughn and I were talented, I like to think. In fact, we revered each other. Revered. He thought I was pretty funny. For instance he said to me once, ‘That’s some name you’ve got there — Stanley Myron Handelman. Is that your real name?’ And I said, ‘No, oh no, my real name is Sheldon Lewis Engelberg.’ And Vaughn laughed at that. Yeab, he laughed, so I knew I had an appreciative friend. “As far as his talent goes, I thought it was very contemporary, that it had a great appeal to people looking for something outside of Catskill Mountains comedy — you know, the guys who get up there with the fast delivery, the yak after yak routines, the machines who just get up there and grind out one joke after another. But Vaughn’s humor was very serious, and very well thought out — and extremely dry and New England. “Anyway, we weren’t at the Bleecker Street club for long. Like I said, not too many customers.. And one night we shook hands, said goodbye and went our separate ways. I had no idea where Vaughn was going from there. But I sure knew where / was going. Right up to the Catskills where I’d taken a job as athletic director at a resort. What a place that was. p It was like the age group was from ninety years up. My biggest job was to organize sitting-around-the-pool tournaments. But oU I’ve got to say, we didn’t have one accident. I mean, how hurt can a person get falling off a chair? Even a ninety-year-old person? . . . So anyway, there I am, big athletic director doing nothing. And one night all my clients are fast asleep — by seven o’clock they're sleeping, all right — and me, big roue that I am, I’m sitting up and watching television and I saw the “Talent Scouts” show this night and there’s Vaughn, fresh out of the Village, being introduced as a new and hopeful discovery. And then Vaughn began to make it so big in night clubs that the ‘Talent Scout’ people asked him to appear again. This time he was to introduce a new talent— and Vaughn thought of me. He phoned me one night and he asked if he could do the honors. Yeah, ever since then, things have been going very nice for me. I’ve been on the Merv Griffin show. I’m with this tour now. “My appreciation to Vaughn? Let me put it this way. I had decided for a while there to maybe quit the business and go back to Brooklyn and be a school teacher. And all I can say is that Vaughn Meader, by giving me a break, saved a lot of little, unsuspecting kids from a terrible fate!” Starts shy, warms up Next we’re introduced to Michael Ross — writer, actor, comic and now director of the “First Family” tour — who says to us about Vaughn: “He’s a reticent boy. He does not open up to people easily. But once he does, he’s quite the opposite. And he begins to speak as if his thoughts are ahead of his words — a kind of shorthand way of talking — and he expects you to know just what he means. Vaughn is quite a complex person. He works on a great deal of nervous tension. His true humor is very biting. There is a kind of doggedness about him and a desire to learn, as well as a great need to work and to play. Complex, as I say. But if he’s got his own little devils inside of him — well, he’s entitled to them. He is, to me, a boy of terribly good taste. He’s a good boy, and he will not do things that vaguely resemble anything shoddy. It’s a natural thing with him, this matter of taste. Not something that he’s learned, or is learning. He’s in a strange position now. I can infer by everything he says to me that while he is enjoying his huge success right now, the success is not as important to him as tenure. He knows that the Kennedy thing can’t last forever. He knows it’s a gimmick, an attention-getter. And he knows darned well that after the gimmick wears off. he’d better start doing something else. “What’s that? Do I think the talent is there? Yes, I do. Else I wouldn’t even be talking to you about Vaughn Meader right now. I think he has good musical talent. I think he has good dramatic talent. And, to me, his greatest talent of all is his mind, his brain, his wit. his quickness. Why don’t you step backstage right now and see what I mean? Vaughn’s on by now (checks his watch) yes, he’s on now, doing the press conference-routine. It’s totally unrehearsed. He stands there, alone, as the President, and asks for questions from the audience. Some of the questions are lulus. And so are Vaughn’s answers. He makes it look quite easy. But really it isn’t. You’ll see what I mean.” And we do. A few moments later. We stand there in the wings, listening to the questions being hurled at Vaughn one-two P three, and Vaughn’s rapid-fire repartee: I “Mr. Kennedy, who do you think will be the next President?” “Why? I don’t plan to go — er — anywhere.” “Whatever happened to Vice President Johnson, Mr. Kennedy?” “He’s lost — which is pretty easy to do down in Texas.” “What’s the matter with Senator Goldwater?” “Well, let’s start with his name—” “How is Adlai doing?” “I need him. He is so brilliant. I need him to help Teddy cross the streets.” “Mr. Kennedy — how do you and your wife feel about birth control?” “We believe in separate vacations.” “Is there any truth to the rumor that you were married once before?” “I’m glad, hmmmm, yes, that finally Confidential Magazine sent a representative here!” And so it goes, each of Vaughn’s lines i greeted by uproarious laughter. We’re laughing too by now, long and hard, when Vaughn’s agent, Buddy Allen, asks, “Would you like to meet Vera now? She’s in Vaughn’s dressing room, just sitting there.” A little reluctantly we leave the wings and follow Buddy to the dressing room. Our reluctance fades fast as we are introduced to Vera Heller Meader — once an obscure waitress in Mannheim, Germany, now the wife of a U.S. “President” —a blond girl in her mid-twenties, short, pretty, soft-spoken as a breeze. A serious girl who does not smile as she speaks, not once, not at all. But there is an innate pleasantness about her that transcends smiling. And we begin to feel the warmth that she and Vaughn share as she starts to tell us their little story: “He was in the Army when we met. In Germany. He worked as a soldier during the day and at night he played the piano and sang at a club where I worked on the tables. Serving. I remember the first time I talked to him was when a customer requested an American number and I went over to the piano and said, ‘A gentleman wants you to play “Sawdust.” What I really meant, of course, was ‘Stardust.’ But I didn't know much English at the time. And Vaughn began to laugh, so much. She’d heard about soldiers “He liked me right from the first. And I had heard so many things about soldiers, I didn’t know whether to like him or not. But then I began to see that he was basically such a friendly guy, just a regular guy, and very kind and truthful and I began to believe in him. What I liked most was that he never would get fresh with me. We dated. He would bring me home. And that was that. “How did he propose to me? You should ask better how many times did he propose. Because always he would ask and always I would say, ‘No, not yet, don’t ask me yet.’ I don’t know what I was waiting for. I guess I knew that marriage would mean leaving my family eventually, and our city, and I was very close to the family. “Speaking of the family, it was very interesting with Vaughn. I could tell with most other people that he was very often uncomfortable. I could see it in his ges