Totie Fields Wants JobTotie got serious in a lovely feature article in the September 17, 1974 edition of The Honolulu Advertiser. The musing about Totie’s legs ending in wheels is ironic, considering what the future held in store.
By HAROLD STERN
NEW YORK, March 19—Totie Fields, the queen-sized comedienne who guests on this Sunday's Ed Sullivan Show, would like nothing better than a TV series, preferably from New York.
“But I wouldn't want to star,” she said. “I want to be a second banana. It's just a matter of time. It must happen. There are so few comediennes around, it has to be inevitable.
“It isn't a matter of work,” she continued. “I'm booked through next October in clubs. Finding things to do isn't hard, but finding the right things can sometimes be a problem.”
One thing Totie Fields doesn't believe in for herself is topical humor.
“I dig all kinds of comedy,” she explained, “but I'd rather do basic material. I'd hate to have to depend on today's paper and come up with something strong only to find out that the audience hasn't read today's paper. I think comedy has to be association. Something that has happened or is likely to happen to people in the audience.
She's the Butt
“I do material about myself, not about other people. I made that mistake only once and luckily someone pointed out what was wrong. Even though the audience laughed, they didn't enjoy it. Now I make sure that the premise of my material is honest. People believe me. And no one in the audience can get offended at what I do because I'm the butt. This helps me maintain a warm relationship with my audience.”
Totie, who's been happily married for 14 years, believes that whatever she may look like, a woman entertainer must remain feminine.
“There are too many women who try to be men when they do comedy. A comedienne can't come on with a line like: ‘These are the jokes.’ You can't be hostile and expect your audience to like you. And you can do jokes and still be a woman.”
She demonstrated: “I'm the Elizabeth Taylor of the fat set. I don't worry about my weight (about 170). I don't have to. Everyone else does. But I have trouble holding my weight. I'm a light eater. Every time it gets light out, I eat. . . etc.”
Though she may eventually get her own series, she will be seen exclusively on the Ed Sullivan Show this year. She has two additional appearances booked with Ed after this Sunday.
Completely Relaxed
She was schooled in the Borscht Circuit and feels this sort of background is invaluable to anyone trying to be an entertainer. She seems completely relaxes about her career and apparently places it second in importance to her home and family.
She admits she would not like to live and work in Hollywood.
"But it isn’t all bad,” she said. “I had one funny experience the last time I was out there. George (her husband, George Johnston) and I like to watch television in bed and we were watching a one a.m. movie and I was eating a tremendous turkey leg and having a fine time.
“Then came the commercial break and the announcer said: ‘And stay tuned, ladies and gentlemen, we've got a real treat for you. A little later tonight we're going to have a visit from one of the funniest people in the world.’
“I couldn't wait to hear who it was and just as I turned to George and said: ‘I wonder . . .’ the announcer said: ‘None other than Totie Fields.’
“I screamed, threw the turkey leg in the air, jumped up, got dressed and, believe it or not, we made it to the studio. By the time the film had its next break, there I was sitting with the announcer, cigarette dangling rakishly from my fingers and looking casual.
“But when he asked me, ‘And did you come here directly from work?’ I couldn't resist answering: ‘No, directly from bed.’”
Totie FieldsFields had a leg amputated in 1976 but still continued to perform, though not for much longer. She was named “Entertainer of the Year” by the American Guild of Variety Artists in 1978. She was dead of a heart attack later that year. She was 48.
Jewish mother with a gift of laughter
By COBEY BLACK
Advertiser Columnist
A well-endowed blonde, her curves held in check by no more than a string, strolled onto Kahala Beach.
“Let's beat her up,” yelled a dumpy matron in a dressmaker bathing suit. “Let's get a gun and shoot her.” The matron flounced from the surf, shaking a dripping fist. The blonde stared at her, startled to a standstill.
“Off the beach, young lady. Off! Off! This beach is for middle-aged fat ladies only.”
Then the blonde recognized Totie Fields and burst into laughter.
IF HUMOR'S your bag, you'll have a Fields day with Totie. Though pumpkin shaped, she's top banana on the comedy circuit. The madcap of Jewish mothers, the mop-maned darling of TV talk shows, the raucous rebel of middle-age, Totie may share Medusa's hairdresser but her victims are reduced to jelly, not turned to stone. Her intrinsic good nature is irrepressible, her all-embracing heart irresistible.
“A woman can't be funny unless she's a happy woman," according to Totie. But surely, deep in that exhuberant [sic] frame, there's a serious woman screaming to get out, I suggested.
“Honey, there's nothing serious about me at all,” contradicted Totie. “The only thing I take seriously is my family. I have the most precious husband God ever made and two darling daughters, both in college. But I'm not a serious person. I see something funny in everything. You have to if you're a comedienne, and I'm the highest paid in show business.”
Reluctant to disclose the secret she confides only to the IRS, Totie admitted that “I could make $100,000 a week if I wanted to. Not every week, of course.”
TOTIE WALKS as though her legs end in wheels and as we rolled up to her cabana, on the private preserve of Kahala Hilton sand confined to celebrities, I noted that her physiognomy resembles one of those child's drawings made of a series of circles. Beneath the halo of unruly curls, the spinning cogs of her mind reel out a non-stop monologue.
“The gift of humor is the greatest gift in the world,” continued Totie. “It's a gift from childhood. Everything springs from there. I don't think that what we are is a mistake. I had a marvelous childhood, the youngest of a large family raised in Hartford, Connecticut. My daddy, who owned a supermarket, was the most delicious man I ever knew.
“He was widowed at 36, with five children. I was only five years old when my mother died and I can honestly say, without meaning to be sacreligious, that I never missed having a mother. I had two of them and three fathers. They lavished me with love. I was everybody's toy.
“I THINK that's why I adore Hawaii, because the people here still have a loving quality that has been lost to greed on the Mainland. There's a feeling of family here. Would you believe that my daughter, Debby, attended a Mainland school in which she was the only child in her class whose parents were not divorced?”
Totie's not one to wait for an answer.
“This family feeling, which also includes our friends, is a very important part of my life. I think people are drawn to us because of it. Our house in Las Vegas is always full. Last week, Alan King, Sammy Davis, Jr., Phyllis Diller, Steve Lawrence and Edie Gorme came over for dinner, and just before we left Joel Gray and Florence Henderson dropped by for lunch.
“Los Angeles Magazine said we and the Bob Stacks entertain more than anyone else in show business. George cooks and I tidy up. I've been married to George Johnson 24 years and he still laughs at my jokes. Loving and being loved, that's what's important.
“AND AGAIN I go back to my father. He loved life, every minute of it, every blade of grass, every passing cloud. He always kept a blanket in the back of the car and when we kids were small, he'd take us driving until we'd pass a hill with a view, or a lovely tree or a field of flowers and then he'd pull over to the side of the road, spread the blanket and we'd all sit there, enjoying the beauty of nature.
“I drive my kids insane to this day by swooning at my kitchen sink over a desert sunset outside the window. I spent two hours this morning just looking at those three swaying palms. And for me to sit still two hours is a miracle. "Yet Edie Gorme and I can talk all morning about a petunia. Everything she grows, however, is bigger and better than mine. One day I'm going to get a gun and shoot her. I have 60 rose bushes and love every one of them. I bet that's a side of me you didn't know, Cobey.”
BEFORE I could admit I was already dazzled by Totie's spherical dimensions, a room clerk passed us, leading two VIP guests to their private cabana.
“Honey, bring us two Tabs and two straws,” called Totie, “and give them the check.” The guests looked back in dismay.
“It's a funny thing, Cobey,” carried on Totie, without dropping a comma, “but when you have a tremendous earning power you appreciate what money can't buy. When my father became ill, I realized how little money meant to me, compared to healthy parents, happy children, pretty faces, three palm trees in the sunlight. And when daddy died, all my money couldn't replace what I lost. At every stage of life, you've got to appreciate what it's offering you.
“EVEN YEARS ago, when I was struggling and was I ever, darling. Do you realize how thrilling it was to a manager to sell a fat little Jewish girl with a funny face? it never occurred to me to give up. I took every dancing lesson available, tap, toe, ballet, aerobatic. I skipped music lessons only because we couldn't afford a piano.
“By the time I was six, I was a real performer. At 10, I was practicing signing my autograph. Every one of my teachers was as convinced of my success as I was. There was only one thing I wanted more than show business. That was motherhood. I decided I would have both. Georgie was a performer. I met him when I was 19 and he was 20. We were married six weeks later and became parents nine and a half months after that. I must say God had been good to me.
“Not that it's all been velvet; a working mother still has two jobs whether she's in show business or a salesgirl in a dime store. At least your kids know where you are when you're working. “INVARIABLY, two minutes before my cue to go on, I'd get a phone call: ‘Mom, I just flunked algebra’ or ‘Mom, I think I've got the measles.’”
The two Tabs arrived. “Put in the straws, honey,” said Totie to the waitress. “I don't want anyone to think we're drinking booze. You never see a booze glass with a straw in it. I have a hard drinking neighbor who sips straight vodka through a straw. ‘No one suspects I'm an alcoholic,’ he says.”
Totie raised her Tab in a toast to Hawaii. “I'll be back at Christmas with eight kids, two of my own and six nieces and nephews. This beats a fancy toy. Hawaii's delicious. Kids too.
“Even the little kid who accosted me in the Kahala Hilton elevator last spring. I was riding up to our rooms with Merv Griffin and an angelic little girl about five years old got on at the second floor. ‘I know who you are,’ she said to me, ignoring Merv. ‘You're Totie Fields. My mother loves you. I beamed at Merv. We got off at our floor and the little girl popped her head out before the door closed and yelled ‘And my grandmother hates you.’ “If I see her again, I'll shoot her.”
Waggoner ‘Overnight Success’ After Four YearsWaggoner’s other main accomplishment, if you want to call it that, was his picture-spread in the first edition on Playgirl magazine. According to this story by syndicated writer Tom Donnelly previewing the issue, he was one of two centrefolds. This was published June 10, 1973.
By DICK CHAMP
Journal Staff Writer
It took four years in Hollywood but Lyle Waggoner has finally become an “overnight success.”
The big break for the tall (6-4), handsome actor came last summer when he tried for the role of announcer on the Carol Burnett Show.
He got the role and now viewers of the show recognize Lyle as the announcer Miss Burnett swoons over every week.
Waggoner also feels, he said in a telephone interview, that he's getting a chance to act in the role.
The St. Louis native decided four years ago that acting was what he wanted to do. So he left his own seasonal business in St. Louis to try to get into the film industry.
He was in Hollywood about a week before he took a salesman's job. A couple months later he got a contract with Metro Goldwyn Mayer and was taking lessons in all facets of show business singing, dancing, acting.
“Things didn't go too well at MGM,” he says, “but I thought I might like to do commercial acting.”
He tried that but things were “pretty slim” for awhile. He went a year without a commercial acting job. After he got the first one, Waggoner found that things went a little better but he still was seeking an acting job.
He finally got an acting contract—seven-year one from 20th Century Fox. It was the school at Fox which helped him get the TV job. He now has an arrangement with 20th to go back with them after the Burnett show has run its course.
Lyle, who wasn't necessarily an announcer, heard from his agent that a person of his type (a leading man) was being sought for the job. Waggoner, a longtime fan of Miss Burnett's, had an interview and after a few weeks he started the show.
He feels now that he has gotten valuable experience in the announcing role. And he doesn't regret the decision to take the job. He was offered a role in Land of the Giants, a series scheduled next fall, but he turned it down.
The reason he didn't take it was that in the Burnett show he's playing himself and getting the opportunity to play a variety of characters in the skits. “I feel I'm identified with my own name,” he said, “rather than with a character's name.”
Since joining the show Waggoner has found that working with "pros" like Miss Burnett, Harvey Korman and others has been a great aid. “The members of the cast get along well,” Lyle says, “and the ‘pros’ help me a lot.”
Shooting winds up in April after the cast has shot three episodes for next season. “You really can't take anything for granted in this business,” Waggoner says, “but I think we'll be picked up for next fall.”
For Waggoner the hiatus period will probably be spent making some commercials and possibly doing some guest shots as an actor. He may also do some summer stock and movies.
Explaining that he has never regretted the decision to pass on a series, Waggoner says he “couldn't have asked for a better break than I'm getting. I feel that producers might feel that I have a good image for a movie leading man and I get to show my versatility.”
He thinks that in movies or stage plays he would be cast in light comedy and says “That's pretty much my type of role.”
Away from the set Waggoner says he's the “world's greatest game (sports) player. Right now I'm hung up on golf, billiards and handball.”
He also rides a unicycle some and says he likes any kind of game—“I'm a real nut for that kind of thing.” “That kind of thing” would include game shows on TV and he says he'd like to get on some of them.
Waggoner also does quite a bit of sculpting and cabinet making “when I'm inspired.”
Looking back (and ahead) Lyle Waggoner gives much of the credit to his wife (sorry, girls) of five years, Sharon, who's a former beauty contest winner.
“I have a gorgeous little wife who has encouraged me in this business,” Waggoner says, “and she hasn't ever expressed any jealousy. If anybody asked me the major factor for me in this business, I'd have to say it's my little wife, Sharon.”
Girls, are you ready for this?Waggoner semi-retired from acting after Wonder Woman and opened his own successful company leasing trailers to stars on movie sets. He was 84 when he died.
By TOM DONNELLY
WASHINGTON – “He’s the stuff of which sexual fantasies are made, a 6-feet-4 hunk of gorgeous beefcake. He's ‘The Carol Burnett Show’s’ big turnon, Lyle Waggoner.”
So begins a profile, or, to be more precise about it, a paean of praise accompanying a four-page foldout of Waggoner in the nude, presumably the big come-on in the first issue of Playgirl, a publication billed as "the entertainment magazine for women.”
Playgirl isn’t the only new sex magazine aimed at women, by the way. California Girl, a San Francisco-based magazine that went national this month, offers nude male models capering about on the greensward and bold editorial statements to the effect that. “Today’s woman is entitled to a sex life.”
A spokeswoman for Viva, which debuts in September and is published by the people who brought us Penthouse, said that the new magazine “recognizes that women have heads and want to know about more than homemaking and kids; they want to know what's really happening in the world around them. We’ll tell them.’’ There won’t be any beefcake per se in Viva; the emphasis will be on “male-female nude sex.”
Playgirl is published in Los Angeles and whereas it boldly, some might say brazenly, exploits the Playboy formula for a distaff audience. Hugh Hefner has nothing to do with it. Editor Marian Scott Milam said the publisher, Douglas Lambert, is “a businessman of varied interests” who has owned and operated a nightclub called The Playgirl Club in Orange County for 10 years or so.
“That nude picture of Burt Reynolds in Cosmopolitan really triggered the birth of Playgirl,” Mrs. Milam said. “Mr. Lambert decided women were ready for this.”By “this” Mrs. Milam presumably means the graphic aspect of Playgirl.
The editorial content of the first issue is, by and large, rehash of themes from Cosmopolitan. “Hong Kong — Playgirl’s Paradise” says a girl can have a simply divine time dating and dining and shopping in that exotic port; and if she “has qualms about sitting alone in a bar and looking like a pick-up,” why she can sit over a drink in a hotel lobby and, with any luck, get picked up there. “In Hong Kong this is not considered in the least bit unchic.”
The “Playgirl Philosophy” (“a playgirl is independent, self-confident, sensuous, aware, involved, adventurous, daring, curious, vital ...”) is so vapid as to make the boyishly lecherous musings of Hugh Hefner seem the work of a sage from Olympus of sex. Pictorially speaking, Playgirl goes far beyond the published fantasies of Helen Gurley Brown. Quantitatively, at least. Naked young men appear, here, there, everywhere. Twelve of them illustrate Playgirl’s astrology chart.
In the fashion section, a nude male cuddles up to a blonde modeling Mr. Blackwell’s latest gowns; she leans against pillars and posts, her flowing draperies concealing his vital parts whenever his hands aren't. The male vital parts are concealed in every instance in this first issue of Playgirl: the men clutch footballs, or guitars, or the backs of chairs or arrange their legs so as to shield the “ultimate vision.”
There are two celebrity nudes in the collection.
The centerfold shows a TV actor named Ryan MacDonald, formerly of the serial “Days of Our Lives,” stretched out in the Burt Reynolds attitude on a towel beside a swimming pool. It seems that Hollywood columnist Joyce Haber asked her readers to vote for the man they’d most like to see in the bare, and MacDonald won out over such more famous names as Tom Jones, George C. Scott, Robert Redford, Paul Newman, etc.
Lyle Waggoner may not have topped any polls, but Playgirl goes all out on him, with stripped-to-the-waist pictures, a bikini brief picture, and that possibly historic four-fold section which, when detached from the magazine, is approximately 204 inches by 164 inches. The nude Waggoner lolls in a chair, one arm resting on a nearby desk, his right leg discreetly crossed over his left.
Editor Milam is elated.
"Our first issue was a sellout,” she said. “Six thousand copies! In just a few days! For the July issue we’ve ordered 700,000; and we’re going up to a million for the third. We got 1,000 answers to our questionnaire in the Los Angeles area and (most) wanted more male nudes. Their only complaint was they thought we were too conservative. They want to see more!
“I suppose we can’t have any full frontal shots, but I think our subjects can be presented in movement — so there won’t be the connotation of posed pictures. Along with better nudes we’re going after better content. You see, I came in as editor quite late, so a lot of the material in that first issue isn’t what I would have chosen. I didn't, for instance, have anything to do with the ‘Playgirl philosophy.’ I’m going after serious authors, like Tennessee Williams and Vincent Price.”
Does she anticipate running out of men willing to pose in the nude? “Heavens no!” said Mrs. Milam. “That’s no problem. We can always get them from modeling agencies if we have to, but I think we can get them from just everywhere. We’re going to continue having two nude centerfolds, a celebrity and an unknown.
For the next issue George Maharis is the celebrity and a young college student is the unknown.”
