Hollywood Squares (1967)

An Interview with Steve Rossi - Part Two

Kliph Nesteroff: I understand that your first major show business gig was in a Mae West revue.

Steve Rossi: Yes, I did that in 1953. I had just turned twenty-one. I had been playing the lead in several operettas in university; Desert Song, Oklahoma... I got signed to the Civic Light Opera Company by Edwin Lester, who was the head of that in Los Angeles. Mae West saw me in Vagabond King at the Carthay Circle. She came backstage with her manager. They told me they wanted me to play a straight man and singing role in her new show Muscle Men. She had ten muscle men in the show and then she had Charlie O'Karn as director and choreographer of the show.

She didn't like his ideas, so she fired him and asked me to help her put the show together (laughs). Which I did. In fact, I wrote the opening song for her and it was a huge hit. It was called Everyone Knows It's a Man's World. I directed the number and we had ten guys on pedestals. You'd step on a pedal and it would turn them around. They were just wearing G-strings and they were all greased up behind a screen. Before she came down the staircase, this was at The Sahara Hotel, she'd walk down... there was no introduction, just her walking down in the spotlight. She walks down to the front to a little raised area in front of the orchestra.

Then all of a sudden all the lights turn on and you can see all these muscle men from the back and they looked naked behind the screen. They'd look naked. And this was 1953! Long before these different male dancers and groups. She comes down and it was pandemonium! Women crawling up on their chairs [to get a better look] and in those days women are dressed up in gowns and men in tuxedos. She walks down, "Now you see the outline of these guys. [singing] Everyone knows it's a man's world! That's how the world was designed! To show off the female anatomy! Which appeals to the masculine mind! Why should this sort of pleh-shah! Be exclusively for the men? I'm sure that you girls would like a display of the opposite sex now and then!" Now the screen opens and she's looking at each of the men. "Now, look at this one! Oh! And this one's mine. Eat your hearts our ladies!"

They're going nuts. They're all screaming in the audience. They step on a pedal, they're all flexed in positions. The night before she called me up and said, "I want you to come down and take a look at the marquee." So I went down. She said, "What do you notice?" I had my real name [on the marquee]: Joseph Charles Michael Tafarella. She just had "Mae West" which was seven letters and I had thirty-one. I took up the whole marquee. She says, "What do you notice about my name?" I said, "Well, it's hard to notice because you've only got seven letters and I have thirty-one." She said, "From now on your name is Steve Rossi." Later on she told me how she came up with that name. She had a manager at that time by the name of Bernie Ross. She added the "I" to make it Italian and she was dating an actor from B films and his name was Steve Cochrane.

Kliph Nesteroff: Did you find her easy to work with? She had a reputation for being difficult and for firing people on a whim.

Steve Rossi: Yes, very much so. She was very easy to work with because she liked me. There was another song in the show that she was known for at the time. "Frankie and Johnny were sweethearts..." You know, talking about two gay guys. Then she did a couple of routines with me that were from Diamond Lil and Sextette, comedy duo things and that was the first time I ever played straight man. It was for Mae West.

Kliph Nesteroff: What a great way to start.

Steve Rossi: Yes, I remember in one scene I played a Spanish gigolo. We were doing a dance and I was singing in between, "May I kiss your hand, madame?" And I say, "Goodness, what beautiful diamonds!" She says, "Goodness had nothing to do with it, baby." It was a very entertaining act. She had four or five curtain calls at the end and standing ovations. We did it for almost a year on the road.

Kliph Nesteroff: Did you remain in contact with her over the years after that?

Steve Rossi: I did for a couple of years. She owned half of Van Nuys, California and she leased out the land to the people that ran the stores on what became Van Nuys Boulevard. She was a very smart businesswoman. I think when she died she had over three hundred million dollars. She gave most of it to the Catholic church of all things (laughs). 

Kliph Nesteroff: Around the time that you were doing the Mae West revue, you were on an episode of Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts, right?

Steve Rossi: Yes, I was a winner on Talent Scouts. I was hired to be on the show for a month out of San Diego. He did his show at that time from different locations, but that one was from The San Diego Zoo.

Kliph Nesteroff: Was this radio and TV?

Steve Rossi: Radio and TV, yeah. The early years of television. I was telling everyone I was going to be on the show for the whole week. So, now I'm on the TV show and they had a monitor there. I'm singing a song on the show called On the Street Where You Live, which was Vic Damone's big hit. I'm singing and I'm looking at myself in the monitor and there I am, a medium close-up. "The pavement always stayed beneath my feet before..." Now I look again at the monitor, and there's the face of a giraffe. 

Kliph Nesteroff: (laughs)

Steve Rossi: As I'm singing, they're showing pictures of giraffes, elephants, hippos. They didn't show me except in the opening shot! Here I was bragging to my friends I was going to be singing this song and everything. Everyone called me and said, "Well, we only saw a giraffe while you were singing." That was around, maybe, 1950.

Kliph Nesteroff: What was your interpretation of Godfrey the man? Of course the notorious Julius LaRosa thing was years later...

Steve Rossi: Oh, yeah, it came years later. In fact, Julius did a show with me three years ago in Palm Springs. A show called Senior Class. His voice was still pretty good.

Kliph Nesteroff: You had no problems with Godfrey yourself...

Steve Rossi: Oh, not at all, not at all. He was very nice and very charming. Later on we found out that he didn't like Jews and all kinds of stuff. Quite a womanizer. He was going with Jeanette... somebody from the show. He fired Julius, really, not because of ego. But he heard that Julius was looking to make a date with her. She was a singer on the show. Jeanette Davis I think was her name.

Kliph Nesteroff: Now you had a couple of records one that was solo, one with Marty Allen and one that was with Slappy White on the Roulette Records label which was run by Morris Levy. I was speaking with Bill Dana of Jose Jimenez fame. He told me that Moe  Levy pressed a pair of Jose Jimenez comedy records without his participation or authorization. Roulette recorded his routines off of television and pressed them as records. They became best sellers and Bill Dana never saw a dime.

Steve Rossi: Yeah. In those days, if you made a deal with Roulette... I have to say, Morris was very nice to me. But he did a lot of shady dealings. I heard that from several artists, you either did it his way or the highway. He would pay me upfront to do the albums. A couple of comedy albums and a couple of singing albums. Later on I brought Trini Lopez back into prominence by being his manager and I got him on Roulette Records and it did very well in the Latin market. Morris really revived his career, but, you know, he didn't get a lot of royalties. A very small percentage. 

Kliph Nesteroff: Now there is another interesting record label, primarily a comedy record label, that Slappy White recorded for several times...

Steve Rossi: Laff Records?

Kliph Nesteroff: Laff Records, yes.

Steve Rossi: It was owned by a Jewish guy and he was a real hustler too. He wanted to do an album with us and he offered, like, three hundred dollars.

Kliph Nesteroff: (laughs)

Steve Rossi: He was going to record us live at the Shrine Auditorium with Moms Mabley. We turned him down. I was already with Roulette Records and I told Morris. I said "Listen, why don't you give me enough money to record a live album with Moms Mabley at the Shrine Auditorium? We're not really worried about royalties so much as the exposure." He said, "I can give you fifteen thousand dollars, a straight recording thing, no royalties." I said, "Fine." It was the first black and white [comedy team] album. It was called I Found Me a White Man, You Find Yourself One. That was the title. It [has bits about] the first black pope, the first black president... 

Kliph Nesteroff: How did you come to team up with Slappy White?

Steve Rossi: Well, Marty Allen's wife had died and he was in mourning for three or four years. [After we broke up] I decided if I was going to do another team, it would have to be completely different. I knew Slappy from years before and that's how it came about. We started doing it and we played the Johnny Carson show four or five times and we did the Sullivan show a couple times. In fact, we did the first black vice-president on there. We were doing stuff in the seventies on Sullivan that nobody would ever do. We were lucky he wasn't too sharp because he never picked up on it.

Kliph Nesteroff: That was the last time you did Sullivan was with Slappy...

Steve Rossi: Yes. And I also did it with Joe E. Ross.

Kliph Nesteroff: How long were you and Slappy together?

Steve Rossi: We were together almost three years. We were the last headliners at The Coconut Grove at The Ambassador Hotel. We co-starred with Eddie Fisher a couple of times, including at Caesar's Palace and we headlined once at The Copacabana and another time with James Brown. James Brown opened the show and then brought us on and then he came back at the end. We had such an ovation when we went off... what happened was, we were supposed to do a half hour. The press was all there. We did, instead of thirty minutes, forty minutes. 

When we went over, the owner of the club, Jules Podell said, "Turn the microphone off!" Now we had no microphone and we were just shouting the act and getting huge laughs and this was with all the stars there and all the press. Then we did another five minutes and he said, "Turn out the lights!" Now we were working in a blackout and Slappy takes out his lighter and turns it on and says, "I know you can see the white guy in the dark, but I want you to see this guy." Such laughs you couldn't believe it. Incidentally, we got fired that night. We did a number called Bojangles in the blackout. There was enough light that you could see us, but the spotlight was off and the main stage lights. We did our version of Bojangles and when I [sang] that, Slappy, who was a helluva dancer, came out and did [his impression of] Bojangles with the hat and the spats and the cane. He did the number and Sammy Davis was there that night. After the show he came to our dressing room and he said, "Boy, that thing you did on Bojangles was phenomenal. I'd sure like to do that." Slappy said, "Yeah, go ahead and do it." That became his signature thing.

Kliph Nesteroff: What was your relationship with Jules Podell like in general?

Steve Rossi: Well, there wasn't much of a relationship you could have with him. He was very abrupt and he hardly said anything to anybody. He'd either fire people or throw some guys out of the club. On the other hand he was very generous. He'd call us up to do a show for the convent or do a show for the priests and then he'd make donations on top of that. So behind that rather fierce facade, he was pretty nice. But everything with him was like he was mad with you. "Hello, Mr. Podell." "Hello, blehhhh, how are ya, grrrr!" You always got the feeling he was pissed off. Then again, most of the time he was... and he drank on top of it.

Kliph Nesteroff: I was listening to what is probably the weirdest Allen and Rossi record. It's really a strange album - a departure from the other Allen and Rossi records... Batman and Rubin.

Steve Rossi: That was the worst album that we ever did! It was written by the guy who [created] Batman.

Kliph Nesteroff: Bob Kane. I was going to ask you if he actually had a hand in it. I see that he wrote the liner notes, but I assumed that his name was more of a selling point than...

Steve Rossi: Yeah, the reason we did it was because we figured, his name is on it, he wrote it, he produced it and we figured [it would be successful]. Batman and Rubin the Jewish Wonder... that was his idea.

Kliph Nesteroff: So how did this bizarre pairing come together in the first place?

Steve Rossi: Bob Kane was a fan of ours. He came to see us when we were at the Persian Room at The Plaza. He just approached us. "I've heard a couple of your albums etc." He produced it. We went into the studio and... I don't remember what label it was with. Maybe it was Roulette, but I'm not sure.

Kliph Nesteroff: Mercury.

Steve Rossi: Oh, Mercury, yes. That was when Quincy Jones was head of production. I didn't think that album was funny at all. Most people didn't. Our other stuff was all funny one-liners and topical gags.

Kliph Nesteroff: We were talking a bit about What's My Line last time and Dorothy Kilgallen. On one of those episodes, a guest panelist is Henry Morgan who was normally on I've Got a Secret.

Steve Rossi: Yeah. We also did I've Got a Secret... we did just about every conceivable show. I don't think anybody ever had as much TV exposure as Allen and Rossi in our prime. We had over eight hundred appearances on television between network and syndication, probably fifteen hundred radio interviews. You know we did The Hollywood Palace, The Perry Como Show, The Dean Martin Show...

Kliph Nesteroff: A bunch of Garry Moore shows....

Steve Rossi: Garry Moore and Carol Burnett and the game shows, Hollywood Squares, Password... we were in the era of the variety shows and the era of the game shows. We were the last of the headliners in the Catskill mountains and then we did a couple of films. We recorded and we did a summer special called Hello Dere...

Kliph Nesteroff: Let's talk a bit about that special. I read that Nestor Paiva was in that and Henry Corden... was that a pilot for a series that never was?

Steve Rossi: Yes, it was a pilot for a show that [was to air for] a season. The summer was always tougher to get ratings. It only aired that once. I don't know. It seemed like everything that we did that I didn't write... didn't make it. I knew what was funny for us. Then you get involved with CBS or NBC or movies and all of a sudden they think they know more than you do. And you're doing it thousands and thousands of times and you know what works. The proof of what I'm saying is that I wanted to use a lot of [the Allen and Rossi nightclub] material that we could have adapted in the first movie that we did, The Last of the Secret Agents, and they said no. Rodney Dangerfield went into Caddyshack and did his routines and stole the movie! He knew he was doing his funny stuff. That's what we wanted to do.

Martin and Lewis did bits out of their nightclub act in their movies. Those were the only real things that were funny in their movies, otherwise their movies weren't funny at all. I didn't think so anyhow. People told us that their nightclub act couldn't compare to Allen and Rossi. A lot of stuff that they did was out in the audience. Jerry running around, dropping the trays, playing a waiter... he was doing all the old burlesque bits in the audience and Dean would bring him back up and they'd do a dance number. But when they did their bits on [television] they were hardly getting any laughs [in comparison]. I remember watching The Colgate Comedy Hour and I was amazed. I mean, people laughed, but the material was very weak. But I always thought that Dean was fantastic and I thought that Jerry played well off of Dean. But without Dean Martin... it proved that Jerry was never a stand-up comedian. And yet, Dean was. Dean could do stand-up and Dean could sing and Dean had hit records. Dean's hit records are what made Martin and Lewis as big as they were.

Kliph Nesteroff: When you and Marty Allen were forced to perform material written for you by other people, such as in The Last of the Secret Agents, did that make it a miserable experience?

Steve Rossi: Well, I felt like if that was going to be the first movie for Allen and Rossi... and we were hot at the time. There was nobody on television as much as we were during that period. I felt that if we were going to do a movie, especially a spoof, let's do some stuff out of our act that adapts to it, you know? I was trying to get Norm Abbott who directed it, I said, "Norman, we can take a bit from this routine and stick it in perfect here, it would work perfect here and we know it's funny." You can't make a top musical comedy without knowing if it's funny. We got the top writers from The Carol Burnett Show and The Garry Moore Show [for the film], but they didn't know shit about writing a movie. We already knew what would work and they wouldn't even take our advice.  So, consequently the movie was [a bomb]. 

It was made for under a million dollars, although it grossed, over the years, thirty or forty million dollars. By rights we should have been kept under contract at Paramount, but a new regime came in. Bob Evans and Howard Koch left and that was the end of our deal. We made enough money [for them] that they should have signed us to a ten year contract, for crying out loud. If they had, if we had gotten a contract, I never would have allowed some other comedy writers to go in there and say, "This is what you have to do." We weren't in the driver's seat.

Kliph Nesteroff: How about two of the movies you appeared in with Slappy White. A pair of drive-in exploitation pics... The Man From O.R.G.Y. and The Real Gone Girls.

Steve Rossi: Yes, those were both spoofs also. The Man From O.R.G.Y.... I mean, they were stupid stories. There was some nudity in it. I didn't want to be naked in those movies. I didn't want anybody to know I was Jewish. There was some [implied] nudity in The Last of the Secret Agents - it was shown from the back. But they were just spoofs and it was a way to get some exposure and make some money... and that was as close as I ever got to doing porn (laughs).

Kliph Nesteroff: There is another project listed on IMDB that... well, maybe you can elaborate for me on what it is. It sounds to me like it's a mistake - erroneous information maybe. A short film or a special of some kind called Allen and Rossi Meet Frankenstein?

Steve Rossi: I don't know how that got around. We never did a movie called that. I know Abbott and Costello did.

Kliph Nesteroff: Yes, of course.

Steve Rossi: But we never did. How that got in there... it's just an erroneous thing that was slipped into our bio for some reason.

Kliph Nesteroff: What was the atmosphere of something like The Garry Moore Show like? You and Marty Allen appeared at least ten different times.

Steve Rossi: Yes. Garry was very nice. For years he worked with Jimmy Durante as his straight man. Derwood Kerby was on the show as his straight man when Garry became the comic. Derwood was basically an announcer and in those days if you could do the lines in a comedy bit, they'd use you. He did alright. He had a decent personality. He had a look about him that identifiable. Later on I helped get Carol Burnett on the show. Joe Hamilton and Bob Banner were the producers of The Garry Moore Show. They were looking for a comedienne. I told them I had seen her in Who's Been Sleeping in My Bed. It was on Broadway and I said, "This gal is really funny. You oughta go take a look at her." 

The rest is history. We went on tour with her, the first time she went "Live in Concert." We co-starred and I fed her all the straight lines from the sketches from her show. She did the show again a year later with Nipsey Russell, but it didn't do anything at all. When she toured with Nipsey, he just came on and did the comedy poems and then she came out after. There was no continuity and nothing fresh about it.

Kliph Nesteroff: You mentioned Moms Mabley earlier... did you actually get to know her at all?

Steve Rossi: No. We just did that one show together at the Shrine Auditorium. That show that we did with Moms Mabley was a classic. The emcee of the show was Richard Pryor. He opened the show and brought on the last of the great black burlesque teams: Skillet and Leroy. They had another gal that worked with them in some sketches....

Kliph Nesteroff: Maybe LaWanda Page?

Steve Rossi: Yes, I think that was the gal. Pryor came out and killed the audience. He was absolutely shaking backstage and then he walked out like it was nothing and banged it out. Then he brought up Skillet and Leroy and then [Slappy White and I] did the next part. Then Moms did the second half of the show. We got huge laughs, Slappy and I, because it was the first time there was a black and white comedy team. I think I was the only white guy in the Shrine Auditorium that night. It was completely sold out.

Kliph Nesteroff: Skillet and Leroy, LaWanda Page and Richard Pryor were all also on Laff Records...

Steve Rossi: Yes, Laff Records, right. I believe Diana Ross was also at that show and then put Richard Pryor in that movie Mahogany. Redd Foxx recorded some [for Laff]. They made a fortune off of them because he never game them an honest shake.

Kliph Nesteroff: I read in a newspaper once that you had been in talks with Hanna Barbera at one point to get involved with a series with them.

Steve Rossi: Yes, I came up with a concept for a show, an animated series for Allen and Rossi called Hello Dere. They seemed to be interested at the time, but nothing ever came of it. We had two or three meetings, but they couldn't come up with an idea on how to approach it. We had already done [The Last of the Secret Agents]. The guy who wrote The Last of the Secret Agents [theme] was Lee Hazlewood. Lee Hazlewood had written These Boots Are Made For Walking. At the time Tommy Sands was divorcing Nancy Sinatra. I told Frank, "Why don't you record her? You have your own label." He said, "Yes, well, see if you can find a song for her." I gave her that song and she didn't like it at first. Later on she finally recorded it and, of course, it went to number one. The rest is history. 

In the early sixties Marty and I opened for Sinatra. I went to his dressing room. I said, "Frank. We're very nervous. Can you give us some advice?" He said, "Yeah, kid. First: do the best you can. Second: give 'em all you got. Third and most important: remember, they didn't come to see you in the first place."

Kliph Nesteroff: (laughs)

Steve Rossi: Good old Frank. I remember another time we were the last headliners at The Sands. We were upset when they imploded The Sands... because we were onstage at the time.

Kliph Nesteroff: (silence)

Steve Rossi: (silence)

Kliph Nesteroff: (silence)

Steve Rossi: Did you get that one? We were upset they imploded The Sands because we were onstage at the time.

Kliph Nesteroff: Yes. 

Steve Rossi: I took a photo of the marquee [before they knocked down The Sands] because they listed the names of all the stars alphabetically, so we were first. Another time, when we first opened at The Sands... the marquees always read, "The Sands presents..." The first time we got there the marquee read, "The Sands presents Allen and Rossi: America's Number One Comedy Team." Well, I took a picture of the marquee with a Polaroid camera. It was a windy day and I hadn't noticed that the "P" blew off of the sign. So it said, "The Sands resents Allen and Rossi."

Kliph Nesteroff: (laughs)

Steve Rossi: These are all true stories. I am writing a book right now about my life and it's called Show Business Undercover. And then, you know, I managed Howard Stern for five years in New York. I managed Trini Lopez, I managed Allen and Rossi...

Kliph Nesteroff: Speaking of books, I wanted to ask you how did that odd novelty Allen and Rossi Meet The Great Society come to be?

Steve Rossi: Yes, that came out of the album. We did an album on Lyndon Johnson and I came up with the idea of cross promoting that with a book. Then when Nixon had his problems, I put out a comic book. It was about Nixon and it was called The Final Daze. We did all these different captions in that also.

Kliph Nesteroff: You appeared on so many episodes of Hollywood Squares. I was wondering if you ever saw the comedy team of Peter Marshall and Tommy Noonan. A lot of people don't realize that long before he hosted The Hollywood Squares, Peter Marshall had been in that comedy team.

Steve Rossi: Yes, in the early years in Dallas, Texas they were working in a hotel there. They were very good. They were more typical than Allen and Rossi or Martin and Lewis were. Peter Marshall was a good straight man and he had a nice voice, even to this day. His sister was an actress.

Kliph Nesteroff: A lot of people started out in comedy teams that people don't realize. Bill Dana was in a comedy team with Gene Wood.

Steve Rossi: Dana and Wood, yes.

Kliph Nesteroff: George Carlin was in a comedy team with Jack Burns, Lorne Michaels was in a comedy team with Hart Pomerantz in Canada.

Steve Rossi: Sure.

Kliph Nesteroff: Last time we spoke, we mentioned Dorothy Kilgallen and you mentioned that you were friends. How did you meet her?

Steve Rossi: I met her at The Copacabana. She had written a negative remark about me in her column. About a week later I went to The Copa to see Paul Anka and she was sitting at the front table with Danny Stradella. She was sitting there and Paul Anka introduced me. I said, "Ms. Kilgallen, Steve Rossi." She was kind of stunned, knowing that she had written something negative. I said, "I just wanted to thank you for mentioning me in your column. I learned when I was very young that as long as you spell my name right, it's okay with me." She started to laugh and we became the dearest of friends. The next week, Johnnie Ray was opening at The Copa. She said, "I like you. I'd like you to be my escort." I said, "I've met Johnnie a couple of times, we did some TV shows together." She said, "Oh, do you know him personally?" I said, "Yes." So we go to the show and it was one of those exciting nights in show business. This guy just tore the place apart. 

After the show we go backstage and she was just enthralled with him. She was married to a guy who she found out later was gay. His name was Dick Kollmar. He was a half-assed producer on Broadway and he had a lover in New Jersey that he was living with toward the end of their relationship. They were doing a show in New York called The Dorothy and Dick Show, which was on radio. They had two kids. She fell madly in love with Johnnie Ray. They had a wild, mad, love affair and Johnnie Ray never slept with anyone else in his life other than Dorothy Kilgallen. Ironic, because she found out Dick Kollmar was gay - and Johnnie Ray had been gay. 

They had arguments and he left to the Coast of California. I had a home out there as well as a penthouse in New York at the time. He started dating a gal that worked at a club he was at on the Sunset Strip called The Mocambo Club owned by Charlie Morrison. The girl was Marilyn Morrison. He started dating her and that created problems with Dorothy. On their honeymoon night, he ran out of the bedroom just as they were getting ready to go to bed together. He put on his clothes and ran out of the bedroom. The next morning he flew to New York to be with Kilgallen. He consummated his honeymoon night with Marilyn Morrison by sleeping with Dorothy Kilgallen. I mean, I've got some stories that are pretty revealing. If you ever get to Vegas, please give me a call and I would love to meet you. 

An Interview with Steve Rossi - Part One

Kliph Nesteroff: I'm working on an article right now about Joe E. Ross. I know you had a very short time with him as a comedy team.

Steve Rossi: Yes, we worked together for about ten months and shortly after, I believe, he passed away.

Kliph Nesteroff: How did you first meet him?

Steve Rossi: I met him many years ago, I would say, in the late fifties in New York at the Stage Deli and the Carnegie - the typical hang-outs. There was a drugstore we used hang out at in those days; Hansen's it was called. Hansen's Drugstore was sort of a celebrity hang-out along with the deli's there and Jack Dempsey's where they had a roundtable for all the name comics at that time. So we were friends and then in those days he was working with Nat Hiken on the Bilko series. He was a character on the Bilko series and then later on he did Car 54 and a couple other shows. So it was Joe E. Ross and Steve Rossi and we did a couple of Ed Sullivan shows. We headlined in Vegas and the Holiday House in Pittsburgh and the Latin Quarter in New York. We did quite a few dates together. We did The Mike Douglas Show and Merv Griffin because [Ross] was quite popular from his own shows at that time and he was very funny.

Kliph Nesteroff: How was it that you two came to form a comedy team?

Steve Rossi: He was living in Hollywood and I had gone in for some meetings at the studio. I was doing some recordings at that time on Reprise Records which was Frank Sinatra's label. In fact, I was the one that got Nancy Sinatra signed to the label and picked out her first hit song; These Boots Are Made For Walking, after listening to a bunch of demos. Strangely enough, she didn't want to do the song. She said that she thought it stunk - and it went to number one. But I loved the feel of the song and that's why I told her she should record it. Then I told Frank. I said, "She needs a record contract." So he signed her to the label and I believe Neal Hefti was the head of A&R at that time at Reprise Records. A dear friend of mine, he passed away about three years ago.

Kliph Nesteroff: I believe her arranger on that song was Billy Strange.

Steve Rossi: Billy Strange and Lee Hazlewood wrote the song. That same year or a year later, Marty Allen and I had a motion picture contract with Paramount where Sinatra was doing a movie at the time, I believe it was called Assault on a Queen. He asked if I could get Nancy Sinatra into our movie called Last of the Secret Agents with Telly Savalas and Ed Sullivan. Marty and I starred in the film. I said, "Let me see what I can do," and I spoke to the producer and the director and they made her the lead with us. It was Allen & Rossi and Nancy Sinatra. Of course, she had already done a couple of movies with Elvis and one of the beach party movies I think.

Kliph Nesteroff: She did a beach party movie called For Those Who Think Young. The comedian who starred in For Those Who Think Young was Woody Woodbury, who is a friend of mine.

Steve Rossi: Oh, right! Yeah, he started his career - well, most of his career was spent in Florida. He had his own club there. But Joe E. when I met him there at Du-par's on Ventura Blvd, where a lot of showbiz people hung out, and also at Jerry's Deli - we met two or three times and somebody came up to us, I think it was Phil Foster. He [would do] a TV series ... trying to remember... two gals were headlining the series... something and Lorraine.

Kliph Nesteroff: Laverne and Shirley.

Steve Rossi: Laverne and Shirley, yeah. Cindy Williams I spoke to a couple of times in the past year. I'm talking to Penny Marshall. I'm working on a movie deal of my own script called The Wedding of the Year. I'm going to call her - if it goes through - and it looks pretty good right now - I'm gonna call her and see if she'd be interested in directing it. She's a very good comedy director. But more about Joe E. is - his life centered around dating strippers. He was very likable and he had a catchphrase, "Ooh! Ooh!" So he'd come out and say "Ooh! Ooh!" when we'd go into different routines and he was a pretty good ad-libber as well. I wrote some new material that we did together, besides some of the stuff I did with a couple other comics. For a while I worked with Slappy White as the first black and white [comedy team]. So, I've got quite a history behind me and for the past five years I've been doing stand-up at the Improv and the Comic Strip and co-starring with Frankie Avalon and Bobby Rydell at the Sun Coast and some concert dates with them. I also write all the material for Frankie Avalon and Bobby Rydell's act. Also Rich Little, I'm directing his new Broadway show. So I'm keeping pretty busy for an old guy.

Kliph Nesteroff: When you and Marty broke up, your formation with Joe E. Ross seemed to come together pretty fast. 

Steve Rossi: Yeah, it did. I had met him just before we broke up and Phil Foster saw us there at Jerry's Deli and said, "Why don't you guys get together? You've got a lot of the appearance of Allen and Rossi." He said, "Ooo! Ooo! That's a good idea." We were in Hollywood at the time. I would go from "Hello Dere" to "Ooh! Ooh!" Boy, that's a big stretch (laughs). He did a little monologue in the act and he got pretty good laughs. The show was clean. I always worked clean. Including with Slappy. Now that I'm working solo and doing stand-up, I don't say any four letter words but I do do some double entendre. Stuff that is acceptable for nightclubs today.

Kliph Nesteroff: You and Joe E. appeared on Ed Sullivan pretty quick after forming.

Steve Rossi: Yes. Well, Ed was a dear friend of mine. When I told him about Joe E. and me he said, "Why don't you guys come on my show and I'll be the first person to present you as a new team."

Kliph Nesteroff: Do you remember anything about that appearance?

Steve Rossi: I think, as I recall, we got pretty good laughs, but Joe E.'s timing was off because he was very nervous. He sorta hesitated on a couple of punchlines, so it wasn't the best performance I've ever had on the Sullivan show. But we did get respectable laughs and the people did like him. That's about all I remember about it. Then we did Mike Douglas, I think, shortly after.

Kliph Nesteroff: On the same episode it was you, Joe E. Ross, Stevie Wonder and Norm Crosby.

Steve Rossi: Yeah. In fact, I'm going to see Norm Crosby next weekend at the Orleans. He's headlining there. He's terrific and funnier than ever. Hilarious. He's not playing so much on the words et cetera - he's really doing more jokes kind of thing rather than malapropisms. He's getting a laugh every twenty seconds, it's pretty damn good and his memory is pretty damn good. He's in his eighties. I'm putting a show together called the Legends of Comedy with Norm Crosby, Pat Cooper, myself and maybe David Brenner.

Kliph Nesteroff: I spoke with Norm Crosby two months ago. I spoke with Pat Cooper yesterday.

Steve Rossi: Oh, really? Atlantic City, a couple hotels in Atlantic City proposed that combination. Pat Cooper and Norm Crosby and Marty and I headlined at The Tropicana many years ago. About fifteen years ago and sold out about three engagements in the ballroom that seats about fifteen hundred, so it was a good package then and I think it would still work pretty well.

Kliph Nesteroff: Well, I would sure love to see that.

Steve Rossi: Well, I'll let you know, because I've got your number.

Kliph Nesteroff: That would be wonderful. You know, I haven't been able to get in contact with Marty Allen - I've been trying for well over a year.

Steve Rossi: If you give me a buzz Wednesday I'll check on my Blackberry, I think I have it on that phone.

Kliph Nesteroff: I would certainly appreciate that. Did you know Mitch DeWood? Marty's original partner?

Steve Rossi: Yes. Mitch DeWood was, well it was his second or third partner. In fact, it was after he and Mitch broke up in Chicago at the Chez Paris in the late fifties - it was shortly after that that Marty and I got together. Mitch later became the entertainment director at The Aladdin Hotel in Las Vegas.

Kliph Nesteroff: Do you know what led to the demise of their partnership?

Steve Rossi: I heard it was animosity. They really didn't... they were together for, I would say, seven to ten years, but they never had the exposure that Marty and I had. I became friendly with Ed Sullivan and Mike Douglas and Merv Griffin - so as soon as we had the exposure we became stars within three years.

Kliph Nesteroff: Huge stars. You guys were the biggest comedy team of that era.

Steve Rossi: Oh, yes. After Martin and Lewis I think we were definitely the biggest. And Rowan & Martin were around too, but they never really attained the status that we did. We starred in movies and had over eight hundred appearances on national television. They had Laugh-In and that was a success, but even with Laugh-In they never really were a major attraction. But they were very good. I liked them very much.

Kliph Nesteroff: You guys were everywhere. I watched an episode of What's My Line with you and Marty on it.

Steve Rossi: Oh yeah, we were on twice. I think we were the only ones on twice in a period of three years. Dorothy Kilgallen was a dear friend of mine. I'm writing a book now and I have a whole chapter on her. She was madly in love with Johnny Ray and Johnny Ray was crazy about her. The only woman he ever slept with in his life was her. To this day, the files are open in the New York police department on how she died. They never solved the case. They alleged that she died from an overdose of barbituates, but I know for a fact that she wasn't taking anything at the time. She felt like she was being poisoned. And I think that's what happened. Once she started writing the book on the Kennedy assassination, I think somebody came in there and poisoned her.

Kliph Nesteroff: There are a couple of episodes of What's My Line from shortly before she died, where she is visibly off. There's something wrong.

Steve Rossi: Oh yes, for sure. You could see it. Plus she lost a tremendous amount of weight. She was turning yellow, you know. I saw her two weeks before she died. She looked really bad. And she thought she was being poisoned, but they couldn't detect it. You know, there's a lot of poisons out there that are undetectable. They're usually, you know, with the government (laughs). But you know, I'm not going to write too much about that. I've got a whole chapter on her, but who knows who's still lurking out there.

Kliph Nesteroff: When you and Marty broke up, a lot of people wanted the story to be that it was because of animosity. The reports at the time, however, all said it was a very amicable break-up. Was it amicable?

Steve Rossi: Yeah, it was amicable, but there was animosity that caused it. It just got to a point where we agreed to disagree. It happened practically with every comedy team. It wasn't because it was prevalent ... when you're in a team, and of course I was writing a lot of the material at the time, you just get to the point where one wants to do this and the other wants to do something else. Doesn't want to do this and the other one does. It's just very, very difficult, you know? You get moody and you have to deal with it. It's like being in a marriage except when you disagree in a marriage you can always go to bed with your wife. It was hard to go to bed with Marty. Although we did it three times... naw, I'm kidding (laughs).

Kliph Nesteroff: The billing was originally Marty Allen assisted by Steve Rossi...

Steve Rossi: Originally, no. It was Marty Allen - Steve Rossi all the time. But when we first started, because I wanted to make an honest effort to make it happen. He had a manager at the time by the name of Buddy Allen, and his manager said, "Well, Marty has been around a lot longer than you." I didn't have any TV exposure, but at that time neither did Marty. Anyhow he said, "Because Marty is established in nightclubs and everything, we can only give you twenty-five percent." At the time I accepted it. But the billing was always [equal]. Later on it became fifty-fifty.

Kliph Nesteroff: There were so many comedy teams back then. Did you ever encounter the sorta legendary-by-default comedy team of Duke Mitchell and Sammy Petrillo?

Steve Rossi: Yes. They did a take-off on Martin and Lewis. In fact they did Martin and Lewis routines. And they did a movie in the Martin and Lewis style. Duke Mitchell was the straight man and Petrillo played the Jerry Lewis character - looked very much like him also. Yeah, I saw them work a couple times. But you know, it was basically physical humor and it was mostly scenes with the audience. You know, going out into the audience. Which is what Martin and Lewis did for years. I mean most of the laughs that Jerry got was going out in the audience, sitting on a guy's lap and dropping trays. 

It was the old burlesque stuff that he was doing. The waiter bit where he would come out with the tray in the middle of the song and crash, bang, you know. I liked Martin and Lewis, but I never really appreciated them as I did Dean. I thought Dean was much more talented, more sophisticated, and I thought he got bigger laughs when he did his stand-up stuff than when they did their team stuff. I mean, I'm not taking away that Jerry was visually very funny and very likable... they did... both of them had other talents. They both danced pretty well at the time. Dean did a couple of impressions ...

Kliph Nesteroff: Jerry himself put out an LP or two of straight singing.

Steve Rossi: Right. There was some jealousy, not on the part of Dean, but on the part of Jerry. Jerry got jealous when Dean became a recording star. Instead of... the reality of it was that when Dean became the recording star, he really didn't need Jerry anymore. He could've just said goodbye because he was already making millions in record royalties. But he couldn't go on TV shows without Jerry because they were under contract together.  The reality is, when Dean hit it big, their price doubled and tripled because of the hit records. 

Then Dean would come out to sing his hit records like Volare and whatever the songs were and Jerry would come out and interupt him in the middle of the songs. You could see the jealousy. Dean would get annoyed because a lot of his fans wanted to hear the songs, they didn't want the interruption. But he did it anyhow and eventually that caused the break-up. Plus, in the movies, when they were at Paramount, Jerry literally cut out scenes with Dean because he said, "We don't need to put him in this scene because he likes to play golf and we can take that scene out." So then the movies became seventy percent Jerry Lewis and thirty percent Dean.

Kliph Nesteroff: You and Marty had appeared on The Dean Martin Show a number of times.

Steve Rossi: Several times, yes.

 
Kliph Nesteroff: Were you close with Dean? Did you get to know him well?

Steve Rossi: I got to know him fairly well. I don't think anybody got to know him really well because Dean was very much - he was pretty aloof to most people. We were pretty close because we both did the same thing, we dealt with the same things, and we became close enough that I named my son after Dean Martin. My son's name is Dean Martin Rossi. But he looks like Jerry Lewis so...

Kliph Nesteroff: (laughs) On the same episode of What's My Line that I watched, one of the panelists was Woody Allen. Do you remember Woody back then?

Steve Rossi: Oh, yes. In fact I was up for Broadway Danny Rose - to play the lead in it with him and Mia Farrow. I was working alone at that time. I auditioned and did three screen tests in Brooklyn at his studio where he worked there. The third time I did the screen test it was a love scene with Mia Farrow which was in the original script and then they took it out. Anyhow, what happened was, Danny Aiello got me the audition because he had worked with Woody a few times and Woody said, "You've got the part. You're fantastic." I was thrilled about that because I felt that might be my big break working alone. Star billing. Woody Allen - Steve Rossi. Like Allen & Rossi with a different Allen, you know? So a week before I got a call from the office there in New York and he says, "I'm so terribly sorry, Steve. I never go back on my word, but this reflects upon my career." I said, "What do you mean?" He said, "Well, when I said I'm getting Steve Rossi everybody said, 'Oh, that's great. Like another Allen & Rossi." And he just didn't want to be put in that category. So I lost that because of my name. And I said, "Well, why don't we use my real name, Joseph Tafarella?" He said, "Because the reason I wanted to use you is because I have those comics and I knew your name would mean something in selling some tickets."

Kliph Nesteroff: That's a shame because there are a bunch of nightclub comedians of that era in the film. Sandy Baron and...

Steve Rossi: Sandy Baron and Corbett Monica... Yeah, there were quite a few. I already knew the script because he let me see the whole script - which normally he wouldn't do, but he did because I was in so many scenes, you know? I knew about the scenes in the deli and all of that before it ever happened. I was so let down because I felt like I really had it. A guy like him says, "You're fantastic and you've got the part." You want to take the word of the guy. But I could understand his concern, it's just a shame that it happened that way.

 

Kliph Nesteroff: Going back to The Dean Martin Show for a moment - did you ever encounter a comedy writer named Harry Crane?

Steve Rossi: Oh, yes. He was a great writer. He wrote for Martin and Lewis for years and later on he went with Dean. Excellent writer and he also wrote situation comedy as well.

Kliph Nesteroff: I had always heard that the giants loved him. Guys like Dean, Frank Sinatra and Jackie Gleason...

Steve Rossi: Yup. Because he had a great comedy mind, you know, he would rewrite the jokes to fit the personality, to fit the person delivering it. So whenever he gave them a joke, it was a joke that he knew already worked. 

Kliph Nesteroff: Did you ever encounter a comic named Gene Baylos?

Steve Rossi: Yes. Gene was a delicatessen comic. He worked up in the Catskills, but he never worked the real big rooms like The Concord or Grossingers. I think he might have worked those rooms during the week but never as a headliner on the weekends. But he was funny and he was actually a lot funnier when he'd come to your table in the deli doing shtick. Start to drink water and spill it all over himself. He was like Jerry Lewis - a lot of visual comedy.

Kliph Nesteroff: What led to the break up of your act with Joe E. Ross? 

Steve Rossi: At the time, you know, Joe E. used to drink quite a bit. One day he came up to me and he said, "Ooh! Ooh! Steve! You know I love working with you, but I'm having problems with my memory and my health. I think we should finish out our dates. No reflection on my friendship with you or what we've done together." And I could understand that. it was not too long after that, he was doing a couple of condo dates in California and he had a heart attack doing one of the shows. I don't know if you have heard about that. There is a supposedly true story about the agency that booked him for it. He was only doing a half hour, you know. We used to do an hour and twenty minutes together. He just did the stuff he was absolutely sure of because his memory wasn't that good at that point. He was in his, I think, late sixties or seventies when we broke up. He did have health issues. A lot of times he'd forget lines and stuff. It affected his memory. But the story that got out was that the agent that booked him went back two months later to collect the five hundred [dollars] and the guy that owned the condo, gave him a cheque for two-fifty. The agent said, "Wait a minute. You're supposed to give me five hundred." "Well, he only did half of his act." I don't know if you had heard that, but that was the story.

Kliph Nesteroff: Yes, I have heard several different versions of that story now. Sometimes it's the agent, sometimes it's his wife, sometimes it's a prostitute and in one instance it's character actor Chuck McCann.

Steve Rossi: Ah, okay. Isn't that funny? Chuck McCann has been working with Tim Conway. Tim Conway, Rich Little, Ronnie Schell, me and Tommy Smothers who has just separated from The Smothers Brothers, they're no longer working...

Kliph Nesteroff: Really!? I didn't hear that.

Steve Rossi: We all did two shows at the University of San Francisco ... Tim had to close the show because he was the biggest name. Tommy came on just before me - a helluva show. Two and a half hours.

Kliph Nesteroff: What is Tommy Smothers doing in his act by himself?

Steve Rossi: He did some stand-up and he got some pretty good laughs for his first time and then he did his yo-yo man bit. He has the potential to do a single act, I think, because he's got a lot of confidence and he's got his own style.

Kliph Nesteroff: I want to thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me today. If you stumble across Marty Allen's contact info, please let me know.

Steve Rossi: Call me next week and I'll find that for you and we can talk more about my career if you like.

Kliph Nesteroff: I would love that.