An Interview with Chuck McCann

Chuck McCann: My father was the arranger at the Roxy Theater, so I grew up sitting in the orchestra pit. All the various comics came through there from Smith and Dale to you name it.

Kliph Nesteroff: Your dad played with The Paul Whiteman Orchestra.

Chuck McCann: Right. The Roxy Theater was a presentation house and everybody played it from Abbott and Costello to Jack Benny. I got to know everybody because they'd be there for two or three weeks.



I was backstage and Lou Costello took me for an ice cream soda at Hanson's. I started going to Hanson's Drugstore and hung around all the comedians. I grew up there with all the comics. That's where I met Will Jordan. Later I met people like Peter Marshall out here in California. He was a member of our Sons of the Desert [Laurel and Hardy fan club] and part of our Yarmy's Army, which is a group of comedians that get together out here. Most of our members are dead now.

Kliph Nesteroff: Orson Bean was a founding member of that Laurel and Hardy fan club...

Chuck McCann: I've never seen him at one meeting. But that's okay. He's in there. He used to come into Hanson's. Originally I wanted to do Laurel and Hardy with Orson. I asked him, but he was becoming Orson Bean. So I did it with Dick Van Dyke instead. We did it on The Garry Moore Show. 

Kliph Nesteroff: You mention Lou Costello taking you out for an ice cream soda at Hanson's. That's remarkable. What year...

Chuck McCann: God, I don't know. It goes way back. It would have been in the late 1940s. I went over there as a kid and then I started to hangout there as a professional during high school. I'd stop in to see my father and then I'd wander across the street. Milton Berle, Jerry Lewis, everyone would hang out at Hanson's.

Kliph Nesteroff: Did you encounter Rodney Dangerfield when he was still known as Jack Roy?

Chuck McCann: Sure. Yeah, of course. Jackie Roy was writing at the time and had his siding and shingle business. He hung out with all of us, but he would come in to Hanson's as a writer. He would write for comics. We all had agents and there were tons of them in 1650 Broadway. Upstairs were all the Mountain agents including whatshisname, the big one.

Kliph Nesteroff: The Rapp Agency.

Chuck McCann: Yeah, Rapp. My agent was in the Palace building near a bunch of other variety agents. We would walk back and forth between the Brill Building and 1650. The agents were all nestled up the avenue to 57th Street. Later when television came in they were all by the RCA Building. We'd all constantly be bumping into each other as we headed to our central focal point, which was Hanson's. Also the B-G coffee shop, which was right next door in the 1650 building. Right next to that building was the Wintergarden, one of the most famous theaters for variety and musicals. That's where Jolson sang. The Roxy was across the street in the Taft Building. 

Kliph Nesteroff: Who were some of the core guys in your circle?

Chuck McCann: Will Jordan. Jack DeLeon. Howard Storm. Red Buttons was one of the main comics around there. He wanted to team up with me at one point. He thought we worked well together. We did a movie together and we were two jerks and it kinda worked. Let's see, who else? Joe E. Ross was my buddy. 

He was an old burlesque comic. Nat Hiken first put him on The Phil Silvers Show - y'know, Sgt. Bilko - and then Car 54, Where Are You. The Bilko show was originally shot over at WNEW on the sixth or seventh floor. It was a big studio up there. It was at one time an opera house, but it became WNEW. They had a pretty good size studio up there and that's where they did the Bilko show.



I was over at WPIX doing my show before I moved over to WNEW. I shot Wonderama up there with Sandy Becker. It was two different lives for me. I was building my career and I came up through puppetry and children's shows, but I was also doing nightclubs. I was out at the Valley Stream Park Inn and Steven's Steakhouse and a lot of other places with everyone else who was working the clubs through the hub of 1650 Broadway.



We'd go there, get our work and go off on the weekend. Mostly all weekend work. If you opened the Daily News or the Daily Mirror in the 1950s, you'd see page after page of nightclubs and you'd see all the comics that worked there. That'd be an interesting piece for you. Have you ever looked at those?

Kliph Nesteroff: Sure, I've looked through lots of...

Chuck McCann: Oh, okay, I forgot I'm talking into an echo chamber. You're hearing a lot of your own stuff. That was where we all worked during the weekend... and the Mountains. For my first gigs I wound up taking on a partner. The first club date we worked was with a new group from Canada. They were the ones that did that, "Oh, a little darlin, bup, bup, bup..."

Kliph Nesteroff: The Diamonds.

Chuck McCann: The Diamonds. Then they took off and became very, very big. And whatshisname who used to hang out in the bathroom and slept in their tub. Oh, Jesus. He's huge. He became very big. I went to the Paramount to see him... he used to bug the hell out of me at the B-G. He used to always ask me to do Gregory Peck for him. Oh, what's his name? He wrote the theme song to the Tonight Show...

Kliph Nesteroff: Paul Anka.

Chuck McCann: Paul Anka. Paul was friendly with The Diamonds and became a big star. He used to come into Hanson's and the B-G all the time.

Kliph Nesteroff: When you were starting out, what name were you performing under?

Chuck McCann: I used various names. I used the name Jack Frost. I came onstage and people shouted, "Jack Frost - get lost!" 

Kliph Nesteroff: (laughs)

Chuck McCann: So I dropped that (laughs). But I used a bunch of various names - and we all did. Every comic in the world was named Jackie something. Jackie Gleason, Jackie Kahane, Jackie Vernon... you were up to your ears in Jackies. I used Jackie McCann at one point. That didn't work either. 

I would work on Long Island and in Queens. There was a place called the Ideal Spot. That was a tough room. Then out in Long Island there was the El Mambo Club where they kept me for six weeks. I think the Boys ran it or something, I don't know. I wanted to go because I had another gig, but they asked me to please stay. I felt I better stay.

Kliph Nesteroff: Because they were Mob guys.

Chuck McCann: Don't say that! Let me put it this way... I didn't know if they were or not. I had a lot friends that may have been. Everybody did. All the guys that ran the clubs were generally in that... it was the liquor business and what have you, y'know. Let's put it this way - they were "influential." But everybody in the business knew that.

Kliph Nesteroff: You mentioned Joe E. Ross. Do you know anything about a guy whom Joe E. teamed up with briefly named Dave Starr?

Chuck McCann: Yeah, Davey Starr, sure. They were burlesque comics. I did not know him well, but I knew him. I knew him mostly through Joe E. They did an act together. He showed me this photo of him working in burlesque with this girl. She's with feathers and pearls and everything next to him and, I swear to God, he had this hard-on that was so obvious. It was a publicity picture!



Joe E. was a character. I mean he really was a character and Nat Hiken saw that in him. He was not a dramatic actor or any kind of actor in any shape or form. He was just a burlesque comic, but in a way we're all storytellers. That's the basis. I'm a storyteller and whether it's funny or dramatic, you're a writer as you speak.



You're singing a song - you're telling a story. Comedy is the same way. You're a story teller and it's how you tell it. Joe E. was able to tell a good story and his attitude was funny. That's what Nat Hiken saw and developed a character around. That was Joe E. Ross. He made it funny because he told a great story.

Kliph Nesteroff: Mel Brooks was in New York back then. Did you meet him during the Hanson's Drugstore years?

Chuck McCann: Yes, Mel was writing the Sid Caesar show and we met one day in the drugstore. He was getting paper and pads. I was writing my act and he was writing a play called All-American, which was not successful, but he was a good guy and I loved him. He recognized funny people and talent. He had a great eye for that. Mel himself was a brilliant performer. He was a writer then. 

Mel Brooks is as good a writer as he is a performer as he is a producer as he is a director. He's his own storyteller. So, that's what he was doing at the time I met him, writing this show All-American. The Producers became a part of history. It did not take-off right away. It sat on the shelf for a while. Finally, I believe, it was Peter Sellers who saw it by accident. The film he was supposed to see in a screening room didn't show up. Sellers was shooting something and used to bring his cast and crew in to watch British films. They had like a film society going. So his film didn't show up and rather than waste the evening the owner of the screening room said, "Well, we got this Mel Brooks film." And they ran The Producers for Peter Sellers and he took out a full-page ad in the Times the next day saying, "You must see this movie." 

Kliph Nesteroff: Peter Sellers gave Mel Brooks a big break in that sense. I've heard you gave the comedian and impressionist Frank Gorshin a big break.

Chuck McCann: Yes, absolutely. It's a funny story because after I helped him The Steve Allen Show booked him and kicked me off so they could fit him in! That wasn't really a problem for me because the show moved to California and I didn't. Neither did Tom Poston and I was working with him a lot. Steve Allen and I remained very close. And I'm glad he didn't take me along because otherwise I would not have gotten movies like The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. I started doing a lot of movies.



Anyway, the Gorshin thing happened at a rehearsal. Tom Poston and I were doing Laurel and Hardy. We were asked to stay after the rehearsal because they were auditioning comedians and they felt it would help if there was a bit of an audience. Bill Harbach, the producer of the show, asked us all to stick around. I saw the piano had a bunch of hats on it. I was in the hall and there was this guy standing there. 



I tried to make him as comfortable as possible. I said, "What do you do?" He said, "I do impressions." I asked him to do a couple and he did. I said, "Jesus! That's wonderful!" They were really remarkable. He did Richard Widmark and Kirk Douglas. I said, "Oh, they're going to love this." So I sit down with our little audience. Steve was sitting next to me. Steve is the nicest guy in the world, but if someone is embarrassing themselves it is hard for him to take. It's hard for anyone to take. Gorshin comes out and sits down at the piano and starts playing rock and roll. He sings this awful song. He's half way through and everyone is cringing. Steve looked at Bill and Bill got the message. He gets up, "Well, thank you very much. That's terrific. Uh, we'll give you a call and let you know."



So Frank stands up and... it was embarrassing. I yelled out, "Wait, Bill! What's the porkpie hat for?" Gorshin says, "For my impressions." I said, "You do impressions? Can we see some of the impressions, Steve?" Steve glared at me. Everyone glared at me. But I knew I was safe because he was marvelous. He turned around, put on the porkpie hat and became Richard Widmark. It was perfect. He assumed the spirit and being of Richard Widmark. He did the voice spot on and everybody's mouth dropped. Then he did Kirk Douglas and so forth and so on.



Three weeks later he was on the show and I was off the show (laughs). No good turn ever goes unpunished. But I was very happy to do it. Tom Poston booked a Broadway show after that and I never again went on the show, but we had been scheduled to do a whole bunch of Laurel and Hardy together and perhaps do a movie together - but it didn't happen. Gorshin never remembered the incident. In his mind he thought he had done well, but I saved his ass. He didn't realize it. To him it was a natural segue when I said, "What's the pork pie hat for?" He didn't know he was going to be asked to leave.

Kliph Nesteroff: I have down that your earliest Steve Allen appearance was January 1959 with Patrice Munsel, The King Sisters and Roy Hamilton.

Chuck McCann: It could have been. I remember one of my early episodes was with William Bendix. Henry Fonda was on another. I was just doing sketches and stuff. I was just a young comic. I did a football sketch with William Bendix. But we're talking however many years ago. I'm seventy-eight. Not quite as old as Irwin Corey but... 

Irwin and I did several movies together. I remember my dad telling me this. He was working the Versailles at the time. He was in a show with Fay Dewitt, a wonderful comedienne. 



She did a lot of singing and comedy and was quite talented. She was part of the East Side set with the Number One Fifth Avenue and the Blue Angel. Fay became an agent and is locatable. You could probably get some Irwin stories off of her.



He would come into the Mayflower, which was a donut shop people went to on their break from the Versailles. My father was doing the orchestra at the Versailles after the Roxy closed. Irwin would carry on. He told a story about falling into a sewer with an umbrella and not being able to get out. He did crazy routines and wonderful stuff. My dad told me he went to the London Palladium and Val Parnell was orchestra leader. Irwin talked to the orchestra with his back to the audience. The audience thought this was terribly rude. So they started shouting, "Next act, please!" Irwin had to leave. The audience turned on him. That's a story my father told me. 

Kliph Nesteroff: What was your father's name?

Chuck McCann: Valentine J. McCann. Val McCann.

Kliph Nesteroff: Your manager at the time was a guy named Manny Greenfield.

Chuck McCann: Manny Greenfield brought Tom Jones into the country and had his nose done. I gave Tom Jones my microphone in Bermuda at the Forty Thieves Club. He first worked there. He didn't have a good mic, so he borrowed one from me and I never saw it again. We all invested in that nightclub. It was right across the street from where the boats docked. We all bought property there in an area called Prosperous Caves. Supposedly the land on top of the caves is mentioned by Shakespeare in The Tempest. 



What we didn't know was - the people that sold us the property had blasted trees out. They dumped the dynamite in this underground lake down there. Mel Torme and I were dropping rocks in that lake, watching them sink to the bottom... not knowing that at the bottom were piles of this volatile dynamite. The owner of the nightclub told me about the dynamite. He said, "God, in heaven, you're throwing boulders down there!?" Anyway, Tom Jones was terrific. When Manny passed away that was the end of my career in a way. My star career. They were grooming me. His brother took over. His brother had been the secretary and he just metamorphosed. He became Manny! It was amazing. His name was Lloyd. They had Margaret Whiting. They had The Goofers.

Kliph Nesteroff: Woody Woodbury.

Chuck McCann: Yes, that's right.

Kliph Nesteroff: I don't know why I didn't know this until recently, but you were on the original Vaughn Meader LP - the best-selling comedy record The First Family.

Chuck McCann: I put the money up for it, practically.

Kliph Nesteroff: Really?

Chuck McCann: Yeah. Earle Doud was my writing partner. Earle and I wrote Far Out Space Nuts later. We were the best of friends. He lived across the street from my apartment on 69th Street. Even before that I knew him. Earle was a character. A fantastic character. He was very funny and wrote great stuff. He had good ideas and I had good ideas, so we collaborated on a lot of things. I wasn't a partner on The First Family, but I put the money up for his initial pilot to get it cooking. Then he went to [Cadence Records president] Archie Bleyer with it. It was Bob Booker and whatshisname.

Kliph Nesteroff: George Foster.

Chuck McCann: Foster, yeah. We found Vaughn Meader downtown in a place. He was a kind of a country hick from Maine, just another barrel house piano player, but his voice was very New England. It was right on the money. He barely imitated Kennedy because he was that voice. There was no impression there. Earle said, "I want to do this idea on the President." I thought, "Yeah, but what's funny about the President?" Earle had a great sense of storytelling and he started to put this thing together and then I immediately thought "hit." We went down and met Vaughn.



The rest of the cast we auditioned. We made a little demo at Y&R Studios on 57th. I think the Casa Madrid was in that building. We were about to do the show and everyone was over in the bar because the President was about to make an announcement. Right before we recorded, the president made an announcement on television. It was the Cuban Missile Crisis speech... and then we went into the studio to record The First Family album. I mean, you talk about a joke killer. The audience came to our studio and they laughed out of nervousness. It became twice as funny to them. I don't know what it was, but it was so funny that night.

I did the warm-up and I played Pierre Salinger and a couple of other characters. I ended up doing another album called Sing Along with Jack, which Pat McCormick wrote. It was a satirical take-off on JFK and Mitch Miller. Anyway, we did The First Family. Archie Bleyer was in the control room. He was livid after we finished. He said, "We can never release this! There's too much laughter! They're laughing over the lines! We're going to have to do it again." So the next week they did it again and it bombed. Ka-boom. I mean into the shit house.



So they released the original right away. That happened by accident. Somebody played it in New York, one of the disc jockeys got an advance copy. It was an acetate copy that Earle laid on him. It was William B. Williams or somebody like that. They played it and the people stormed the record stores to order it. They couldn't print the covers fast enough. They could press the vinyl like crazy, but the covers they didn't have ready. People would buy the disc in a paper jacket and then were entitled to come back and get the cover later on. And they sold millions and millions. It was the fastest selling album in history.

Kliph Nesteroff: Where did the live audience come from?

Chuck McCann: A lot of them were friends and people at agencies they'd call. Generally, it was people in the business. It wasn't a big crowd. Maybe a hundred people. Maybe seventy-five. There wasn't that much room in that place. After the album started to go, everybody jumped into the fray. Now he went off on a concert tour. He was going to do a sequel. He was about to do this sequel album, went out to promote it, and then got the news that Kenendy was shot. That was it.

An Interview with Maynard Sloate - Part Two

Kliph Nesteroff: You booked Lenny Bruce at Strip City in 1953 and he stayed for a couple years. You booked him again at the Crescendo on the Sunset Strip a few years later. By then he had more notoriety. 

Maynard Sloate:  We were close at one time, but we didn't stay that way. The drug addict was not particularly fun to be with. I was closing the Avant Garde [nightclub in Hollywood]. I went broke there. Acts were calling - the Four Freshman and Ruth Olay - to tell me that they'd be happy to work for nothing so I wouldn't have to close down. That sort of thing. Lenny told me that he would play it for only $750. That was my friend Lenny!

Kliph Nesteroff: Who were some of the other comedians you were booking?

Maynard Sloate: Well, there was Lord Buckley. When Buckley was working for me at Jazz City there was a musician named Red Rodney. Red had come to Los Angeles from New York and was looking for work. So I gave him a night at Jazz City.



He wanted to draw on his Monday night pay and I said no. Shortly after that Lord Buckley came to the office. He called me Prince Maynard the Fox. Buckley comes in and he says, "Prince, I have some bad news. Sir Red of Rodney is living in his car. He has sold the wheels and the car is up on jacks. He's got his kids with him and they're living in the car. He has no money. If you would advance him the money for his Monday night's pay, you will be doing a wonderful thing for humanity and for Sir Red." For some reason I said okay. That night I was driving home after work and I started to laugh. It occurred to me that I was the only person in the world that would advance Red Rodney's salary on Lord Buckley's say-so.

Kliph Nesteroff: How about Buddy Hackett?

Maynard Sloate: He was always a good friend of Lenny's. He got Lenny work at Universal-International. Shecky was another one of Lenny's friends. When Lenny was sick or whatever, those guys would come in and work for him. I knew Buddy and always got along great with him, but he wasn't one of my close friends.

Kliph Nesteroff: Some other comedians associated with the Crescendo... Mort Sahl...

Maynard Sloate: He was playing the Crescendo before I got there. He was closer to Gene Norman.

Kliph Nesteroff: Shelley Berman played at the Avant Garde when you were running it.

Maynard Sloate: He certainly did. I had a bill of Shelley Berman, Ruth Olay and Matt Dennis. That was the only time I did good business at the Avant Garde. I played them for two or three months. They were just great. Shelley was impossible. I have learned to like him. But putting up with him? 

Kliph Nesteroff: That was very early in his career - before he even had a comedy record out.

Maynard Sloate: Yes. I told him, "Shelley, no matter how successful you get, you will never change. You're already the world's lowest, living human." Shelley was impossible and not easy to get along with. He was extremely temperamental. From the stage he'd yell, "Maynard! Maynard! What's that noise?" This goes on for his entire act. "Maynard! There it is again! Maynard! It's the refrigerator in the kitchen!" He was stopping his act to complain about the refrigerator. He was unbelievable. And then he worked for me in Las Vegas.  Putting up with him was very difficult and that temperament would cost him his career. You know the story about what happened with his career? A phone rang backstage while he was on. He flipped out. Went absolutely berserk when he came offstage. He was screaming and yelling at people. They told him, "Take that out. Don't use that in the special." He said no. He wanted them to see the suffering that comics have to go through. He decided  to leave it in. He said to me later, "You know, people have murdered and suffered less." It cost him his career.

Kliph Nesteroff: I've heard that many times, but it was just one television special. It's seems like a very exaggerated story, almost a scapegoat. Could it really have affected his entire career? 

Maynard Sloate: Yes. Yes. He blamed it and I agree it must have happened that way. He was soaring at that point, going like crazy - and that absolutely ended it! That was the end of it.

Kliph Nesteroff: Don Adams played the Avant Garde when he was a stand-up.

Maynard Sloate: Yes, I loved Don. Don was a true delight. Now, I've had people tell me that's not true. My relationship with him was wonderful. A typical day in Don Adams life when he was working for me... I think he was living at the Hollywood Roosevelt... He would get up in the morning and go to the races. Then he'd have dinner at work and do the show and then come to my house and play poker. A typical day was gambling from the time he got up until the moment he went to bed. Years later I would still run into him at the racetrack. We always had a wonderful time when we were together. He was just absolutely a doll and I have nothing bad to say about him. 

Kliph Nesteroff: How about the Vagabonds. I understand you managed them at one point.

Maynard Sloate: Yes, they're responsible for my being in Vegas. After I sold the Avant Garde I became a personal manager. They asked me to manage them. The Vagabonds were one of my acts. They were great. They were probably the first act to play a main room in Las Vegas and then eventually go to the lounges. They did it for good reason - and good money. That was steady work. They worked the lounges for big money.

Kliph Nesteroff: You were managing Jerry Colonna, Bob Hope's bug eyed sidekick, at the same time.

Maynard Sloate: He was doing a lounge act too so I managed it. 

Kliph Nesteroff: You managed Buddy Rich.

Maynard Sloate: Yes, he was phenomenal. We got along great.

Kliph Nesteroff: Some of the comedians who played the Tropicana under your reign - Jerry Lester...

Maynard Sloate: And later I got Jerry Lester hired as star of a show at the Plaza. He couldn't remember a line. Five days into rehearsal I had to go to him and say, "Jerry, we can't do this. You can't remember a line. Get a cane and we'll say you hurt your leg." Well, he decided to take me up on charges with the union for hurting his leg! Of course, that didn't work, but he thought it was a good idea.

Kliph Nesteroff: You were around for Shecky Greene's wild Vegas days.

Maynard Sloate: Yes, I but I have never seen Shecky drunk. When he gets drunk, apparently he turns. My good luck is I've never seen him in that shape. 

Kliph Nesteroff: How about a comedian who was booked in the Tropicana Blue Room once named Allan Drake.

Maynard Sloate: Yeah, Allan was a competent comedian. He got along well with everybody, I guess. He did fine.

Kliph Nesteroff: He had a tragic trajectory. His wife was killed by the mafia.

Maynard Sloate: Yeah, I know the story. He wasn't a brilliant comic, just an adequate comic. There was a comic here named Lenny Kent who was brilliant at one point. He wound up working as a host at Caesar's Palace. When something would happen to a comic, they'd put Lenny on. But he wasn't doing that well by then. Sometimes they lose it. It was just age. It can happen.

Kliph Nesteroff: You booked comedian Gene Baylos at the Tropicana with Vaughn Monroe.

Maynard Sloate: Ha! At the end of the engagement Vaughn Monroe gave me a set of gold cufflinks. I was kidding with Gene Baylos and said, "You see what a class act does? Look at these cuff links." They were expensive and beautiful. So the next night Gene Baylos hands me a wrapped gift. I open it up and it's cufflinks with a roulette wheel on them and a plastic top, which were available in the gift shop. I felt guilty. I felt terrible. It was awful. The next day, of course, I took them back. They said, "He didn't buy those here. He just asked us for the box." They were used cufflinks.

Kliph Nesteroff: What was the difference between when the Mob controlled Vegas and the shift that happened after Howard Hughes came to town?

Maynard Sloate: The Mob was here and then Howard Hughes came, but that's not the change that happened. The biggest change came after Howard Hughes left. The big, huge corporations took over. That's what happened to the city. The city changed a great deal. Howard Hughes didn't change the city that much other than getting rid of some of the Mob. Not all of the Mob, I don't think. They stuck around a little. He was quite influential, but he was running the same kind of casino as everybody else and the same kind of entertainment policy. He had Walter Kane and he just bought acts for huge periods of time. Wayne Newton. Juliet Prowse. Lengthy, lengthy contracts. 

Kliph Nesteroff: I had been under the impression that Howard Hughes was the first puncture in the Mob's stranglehold on Las Vegas.

Maynard Sloate: He probably was. He bought their casinos. Again, he didn't change the format that much. Fortunately, I worked at the Tropicana for the Houssels family. They had run El Cortez and the Showboat, then they took the Tropicana.



They weren't the Mob. When they sold it - they sold it to the Mob. I was replaced by a guy named Joe Agosto who became the producer of my show - the Follies Bergere. Frank Rosenthal was the entertainment director for the Stardust. They became entertainment directors because they didn't need licensing to be entertainment directors. So that was the job they took, but they ran the hotel. Joe Agosto ran the Tropicana and Frank Rosenthal ran the Desert Inn. There were hotels run by other people. Jackie Garn owned hotels. He was originally with the Mob at the Flamingo. Moe Dalitz was big at the Desert Inn. Those people did a pretty good job starting this town.

Kliph Nesteroff: Most comedians preferred the Mob years.

Maynard Sloate: Oh, yes, no question. The town was fine. You knew everybody in town and everybody knew you. Now you know nobody. I don't even know the names of the people buying entertainment. I have no idea. As far as this town is concerned, the gaming is no longer the source of income. It used to be that everything subsidized the gaming and they'd give away the rooms and food to get you to gamble. That's not true anymore. The biggest money makers are the nightclubs in the hotels - they're making millions of dollars with daytime clubs at the swimming pools.

Kliph Nesteroff: Why did that change? Less people gamble these days?

Maynard Sloate: The gaming of the old people - that has changed. The young people are what's here and they aren't gambling. Race horsing does nothing compared to what it used to. 

Kliph Nesteroff: You mentioned the Tropicana was sold in the seventies and it ended up being sold to a Mob entity. Who was it sold to?

Maynard Sloate: Originally they sold it to a guy name Carl Pohlad. The Housells sold out to Carl Pohlad. Carl Pohlad hired the Housells to run it. He was a banker from Minneapolis. Housells, the old man, got sick and he couldn't run the Trop anymore. Carl Pohlad owned the Minnesota Twins. For some reason, along with him came Deil O. Gustafson, a flunkie for Pohlad in Minneapolis. Gustafson became owner of the Tropicana, or ran it, and that brought the Mob guys. How all that happened, I have no idea. Then they found a poor woman named Mitzi Stauffer Briggs who was an heiress. She came to the Tropicana because she had the rights to the Ziegfeld Follies and wanted to sell it. Instead of buying the Ziegfeld Follies, they sold her a hunk of the Trop - and Joe Agosto ran her. 

Kliph Nesteroff: It was often very difficult to determine who owned what in the old Vegas. Who was legit and who was a front.

Maynard Sloate: I think it was well-known who they were. There was a lady they brought into the Stardust that they killed. The guy who was the owner of the Stardust, who apparently put in all the money, was a dentist from San Diego.

Kliph Nesteroff: You worked in Los Angeles in the late 1940s; corrupt and Mob controlled. Did you encounter Mickey Cohen?

Maynard Sloate: I knew people who knew him. All the bars and nightclubs, many of them, were owned by the Mob. The three of us who opened Strip City were an easy target. We were just kids. What did we know? I asked when I went to get a license, "Is there any objection to us calling the club Strip City?" The guy said, "Well, you'll probably get a lot of attention." We weren't doing anything against the law. Los Angeles in the 1950s was as corrupt as you could get. The cops used to give us cards with their name on it. On the back it would say something like, "This is our friend Maynard." If you got stopped for a driving infraction or something, you just showed them the card. That's how you took care of it. There was a catholic priest that we paid off.

Kliph Nesteroff: Do you remember anything about Billy Gray's Band Box?

Maynard Sloate: Absolutely. Billy Gray was great. He was a wonderful dialetician. He was an excellent comic and his partner was Sammy Lewis, who became the entertainment director at the Riviera. Sammy's wife was Patti Moore who did an act with a comic named Ben Lessy. They used to play the Band Box, but all the good comics played the Band Box. Buddy Hackett played it. That was the first place I ever saw him. Lenny Kent played it and everybody played it.

Kliph Nesteroff: It was almost like a comedy club before comedy clubs existed.

Maynard Sloate: Billy Gray and Sammy ran it and it had some great comics. It was the first place I ever saw Jackie Mason. Moore and Lessy were a popular act. Ben Lessy did The Danny Thomas Show.

Kliph Nesteroff: How about Jack Sheldon...

Maynard Sloate: I managed him. I got him a comedy record on Capitol Records. He's an idiot. He used to yell at me while in Dave Pell's band at the Crescendo, "Maynard! Book me!" He's an idiot. And a wonderfully talented idiot. He had a dope problem. And is extremely talented. Great comedy and great trumpet playing and I was responsible for him. He had his own television show when I had him - Run, Buddy, Run. He also did something called The Nut House. We got Run, Buddy, Run and I managed him during his most successful period. 

Kliph Nesteroff: He and Lenny Bruce friends.

Maynard Sloate: Yes, and Sheldon worked for me at Strip City, worked for me at the Crescendo, worked for me with Dave Pell. He apologized for having mistreated me when he was on drugs. I never saw anybody as stoned as Jack.

Kliph Nesteroff: When was the last time you saw Lenny Bruce?

Maynard Sloate: I don't remember. I imagine it would have probably been at a club, but I stopped going to see him because there was nothing happening there.



He was two different people. He was the guy who was my friend and then he was a drug addict. That does change you. We were really close in the beginning. When he had an argument with his wife, he would stay at my place. They had a baby and shortly after that I had a son. They gave me their crib for my son. We were close. When Sally Marr, his mother, came to town Lenny was playing the club with another comic. We used two.



On Monday nights I had another comic working the strip-a-thon. Sometimes one of the comics that was working would say, "Can I work the Monday? I need the money." So, the other comic asked if he could work the Monday night. He goes up on Monday night and he was doing Lenny's act! Now, Sally Marr comes to town. Lenny gives her his old act and says, "You can use it." She was going to work as a comic, which she did. There was a club called the Bamboo Room in the Valley. It turns out that the other comic working with her was the comic who was working for me at Strip City. So they played the Bamboo Room together and they both did Lenny's act! 

Read Part One of the Interview Here