Of Sloops, Dolphins and Mauve

A pleasant half hour could be spent on a weekday afternoon in the 1960s watching four people in show business uncover liars.

We’re speaking of To Tell the Truth.

The panel evolved until it featured my favourite version—Tom Poston, Peggy Cass, Orson Bean and Kitty Carlisle. Like all good panel shows, the four had a chemistry but were all a little different from each other.

This is where I know Poston the best. The newspapers of the day reported CBS wanted a comedian on the panel, so Poston auditioned as a fill-in on January 20, 1959 and soon was given a regular job (Bye, bye, Hy Gardner!). More people today probably think of him working on a Bob Newhart sitcom. His fame came well before that, as one of the man-on-the-street interviewees on Steve Allen’s Sunday night variety show on CBS from 1957 into 1959.

Of course, fame is never instant, and it’s interesting seeing what people did along their path to bigger things. In 1946, Poston and his brother Dick were featured in the Del-York Players’ production of the Corliss Archer comedy “Kiss and Tell” at the Rehoboth Beach resort’s Straw Hat Theatre. “Tom is plenty funny and droll,” decided the critic for the Salisbury, Maryland Times on Aug. 8.

Three years later, he appeared with the famous Kenley Players in summer stock in “Petticoat Fever,” starring the famous Sonny Tufts. The theatre page Mahanoy City Record-American of Sept. 21, 1949 contained this verdict: “we have found his performance outstanding. He just doesn’t seem to know how to ‘do’ a bad job. This week, as a British nobleman, he deserves every complimentary adjective that can be paid an actor for a stellar performance.” (Poston told Associated Press entertainment reporter Cynthia Lowry in 1964 that “it was great experience but financially disastrous.” He and Dick had formed the stock company in Delaware).

It was on to the New York stage for Poston. And television. Sid Shalit, in the Daily News of March 11, 1955, wrote: “Tom Poston, the much-heralded young satirist, is beginning to liven up WABC-TV’s daily two and a half-hour ‘Entertainment’ stanza. He is highly personable and quick-witted with a professional aplomb far beyond his young years.” At the start of that year, he had been appearing in a satire on stage at the Plymouth Theatre on West 45th. Columnist Earl Wilson gave him a spotlight in this feature column of Feb. 17, 1955:

Actor Tom Poston Has Lots Of 'Homes' In Ohio
By EARL WILSON

NEW YORK—I’m almost willing to bet that young actor Tom Poston was kidding me with his explanation of why most of Ohio is his "home town.”
We were chatting backstage where he’s making big hit on Broadway with his drunk scene in “The Grand Prize,” starring June Lockhart. Critics praised Poston for his "shrewd characterization of an inhibited young man liberated by drink."
“Whereabouts are you from?” I asked innocently.
"Well," Tom said, leaning back in an armchair, "I'm from Steubenville, Massillon, Canton, Williamsport, Mount Gilead, Toledo, Marion, Cleveland, Columbus, Akron and Upper Sandusky.
"BUT I WAS born on a sloop off the coast of North Carolina. Birth certificate's registered in Charlotte.
“The reason we moved around so much,” he went on with a smile, "was that Dad always liked to keep one step ahead of the sheriff. He was busy in those days making 90-proof beverages without the bother of labels and stuff."
"You mean he was a moonshiner?"
"Please,” Tom held up a hand in apparent shock, "Dad calls himself a chemist.
“That explains why I happened to be born aboard a sailing sloop."
AND, OF COURSE, you could only expect, in the light of his background and the part he's now playing, that Tom claims he hasn't a had a drink in three years.
“My first Broadway show,” he said, "was Jose Ferrer’s ‘Cyrano de Bergerac.’
Then I was in his production of ‘The Insect Comedy.” I followed that up with ‘King Lear,’ starring Louis Calhern."
Poston also did a few productions in the Children's World Theater. "I was a wolf in Little Red Riding Hood, he said, and a more pooped wolf you never saw. Besides having more lines than Hamlet, that wolf had to dance, sing and tumble, shouting all the lines through a heavy mask. At the end of the second act, I just lay down on the stage.
“In that part I near to died!”
"By the way,” I said, hoping to pin him down to a specific Buckeye town, "got any relatives in Ohio?"
Nope," he replied, "most of them are in Kentucky.”

He gave some interviews during the time on To Tell the Truth. We’ve mentioned the one with Lowry. He once told the Miami Herald how he slept in and Johnny Olson was forced to pad his warm-up to make up time until he got to the studio. There’s an interesting one from Rick DuBrow of UPI (click on story on the right) about the time the two appeared together in a show at Northwestern University and “helped” Poston’s career. Well, it actually wasn’t an interview as Poston didn’t say anything.

That’s kind of like this syndicated half-pager from January 20, 1967. Poston never did talk about the game show. Instead, he showed the quirky, and I suspect deliberately mischievous, side of his sense of humour.

In Search of the 'Real' Tom Poston
By LEE VINSON
NEW YORK—Of the four knowing panelists on CBS-TV's To Tell the Truth, Tom Poston has the highest rating when it comes to identifying the genuine character and shunting aside the bogus "expert." His batting average, in tabbing the genuine article, is 75 per cent.
And so, just as Lewis Carroll once ventured on the trail of the snark, I set off in quest of Poston.
"Sure," he said on the phone. "Drop by the stage door right after the show and we'll talk it up."
WE MET AN hour later. In sports jacket and faded slacks, he had the casual air of a man just back from raking leaves. His blue eyes met the world straight on. His stance was one of leniency toward his peers.
"How about lunch someplace?" I asked. "No better place than the Stage Delicatessen," he said.
"Kind of noisy for conversation," I ventured.
"But quiet enough for Hungarian goulash," he replied.
En route to the delicatessen, I asked him how one man in one lifetime had stored up so many irrelevant facts.
"YEAH, LET'S talk about that," he said. "But first, we'll stop in here for a minute."
We entered another CBS-TV theater where Garry Moore was rehearsing his show. Everybody smiled at our companion.
"Hey, Tom,” someone called. It was Morey Amsterdam with Rose Marie. "Tom," Amsterdam said, "you know everything. Do Dolphins really . . . ?”
"Dolphins are okay," Poston assured him. "But are you aware that Lake Nicaragua in Central America is the only fresh water lake in the world which has man eating sharks in it?"
"No kidding,” said Rose Marie, aghast.
AMSTERDAM said, "But do Dolphins—?"
"See you," Poston told them, and waved at everyone as we left.
By the time we got to the corner, a production assistant from To Tell The Truth was trying to hail a cab.
"How'd you know about the sharks in Nicaragua?" I asked.
"Let's help her grab a cab," Poston said. So Poston went into the street and did all the waving to flag the cab, ushered the lady into it and saw her on her way.
We made it almost another block when Poston stopped to observe a building whose side was newly exposed because another structure had been torn away.
"LOOK AT that faded sign," he said, pointing. "An ad for liver pills. There's a date. 1912."
We studied the side of the building carefully, with minds full of wonder about liver pills and all the events of 1912. Eight people joined us, staring at the sign, and maybe they, too, were thinking about 1912. But, after all, in New York, people will stare at anything. As we walked away, they stared at us.
"Nice bunch of people," Poston said.
"They seemed to get along fine," I agreed. I was thinking of a conversational gambit to plumb the depths of Poston's knowledge when he pulled a manuscript from his jacket pocket. "Interesting why O'Neill is spelled that way," he said.
"GOING TO do a play?"
"No, not this one anyway. It isn't O'Neill, or anything worth a hang. I'd like to find a good one."
"Tough, huh?"
He waved at an elderly couple who were waving at him. "You know most of the stuff written today isn't very funny. Nor very stimulating. I read all the time, but I haven't found anything. You're a writer, aren't you?" "Well, yes, but now let's talk about you. Why do you have the best batting average on the series?"
"OH, THOSE things happen. Ever see such a day like today?"
Now we were at the delicatessen. We were offered a table in the corner, but he chose a small table flanked on either side by people and slurping sounds. He ordered a roast beef sandwich and urged me to have the goulash. "I guess you've picked up all that knowledge from events in your life. You were a bomber pilot, weren't you?"
"Were you in the service?" he asked. "Say, where are you from?"
"Texas originally. I read you were born in Kentucky.”
"OHIO," HE said, and autographed the menu for a man seated at the next table. "That's funny," I said. "I read a bio of you and it said Kentucky."
"Well, I was almost born in Kentucky," he explained. "My mother was on a train, and the train got to Ohio in time.”
I didn't say it, but I had also read that he was born on a river boat in Missouri.
"Were you born on anything?" he asked.
"On anything?"
"WELL, A SHIP or something."
"No. I was born in a bed. Just a regular bed."
"Just a bed," he mused. "Well, we better get out of here so they can have the table."
On the street, I said, being born on the train . . .”
"I'll never take over anyone else's role again," he told me.
"Terrible. Terrible. The other actors who have been in the play all along get locked into hearing a line said a certain way. The guy who created the part might have been saying it all wrong, but the rest of the cast is used to it. When you say the line your way, they feel you're some kind of nut.”

"IS THERE any script you think you might do? I need something like that for my story.”
He turned into a building doorway, and we went up in the elevator and into an office. He introduced me to the secretary, and dropped off the play script.
"Tom," I said, when we were on the street again. I felt I now had the right to call him Tom.
He sensed that I was going to say more than his name. He knew there was going to be a return to the question, to what now would be known as The Tom Poston Question.
AND SO HE bobbed into another doorway. We took another elevator. We entered another office. We said hello to another secretary, and Tom pointed to the paintings on the wall. "There's a fine one," he said, "but look at the border. Mauve."
It was his agent's office. His agent was out.
"There's never been a real mauve period for paintings," Tom said. "The yellows, yes. And the reds and blues. But mauve, no."
"You're a student of the fine arts?" I asked.
And he wheeled and took us back to the street. There he met Martin Balsam, an old pal of his. "This man is a writer," Tom said to Balsam.
"Send me something," Balsam said. "I read everything."
"SWELL," I told him. "I've got to get back. See you fellows another time."
From a block away, I looked back. Poston was standing talking to four people, and I wondered about what. Not about Poston, for sure. Not about all the time he's spent on the stage in roles he himself created. Not about the bomber he piloted in World War II.
Not about the old Steve Allen show that made him famous. Or his training at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. Or the movie. Or the University of Virginia. Or his degree in chemistry.
TO TELL the truth, there was no telling what he might be talking about. But the four people were pleased to be with him. Just as I had been. It's good to see a man like him around.
If we don't bump into him again soon, we'll see him on television anyway. And we'll probably never know how he comes by all the stuff he knows. But do we have to?
Does it really matter if the real Tom Poston never decides to stand up?

I always liked Tom Poston. He struck me as a pleasant man who could be funny instead of a man trying to be funny. And quirky is good, too.