He had to speak. Still, I wish he’d stayed black and white. Color was bad for Rocky; it’s why we managed to do okay in television when our movies were bombing. In black and white, a guy in his late forties could look like a guy of no age at all, acting like a ten-year-old — round, fretful, slightly slowed. In color, you could see that his double chin had lost some of its bounce; his eyes looked less like buttons and more like metal snaps about to pop. The flush on his face showed through his makeup, which is to say that you could also clearly see his makeup. We switched back into black and white for our next picture, and he looked better. More substantial, less real. Perfect for a baggy-pants comedian.
That was the last picture we made: The Great Stocking Caper.
Certainly there was a part of me that wanted to say, when he dreamed of out-Chaplining Chaplin, but what about me? Where would I have been? I was not a physical comedian. All the laughs I ever got on-screen were through double talk, handy with a malaprop if not an actual prop. I couldn’t have been even the least significant Keystone Kop, the one who runs and stumbles around corners only because the assistant director says, “You guys in the back, just follow the guys in the front.”
As if I would have gone to Hollywood without Rocky. As if the worst thing that could have happened to me is becoming an obscure comedian instead of a famous one. It’s completely possible that had Freddy Fabian waited another night to overdrink, Rocky would have found some other straight man, and I would have spent the rest of my life, one way or the other, behind a cash register, in Valley Junction, in Chicago, wherever my dreams of fame finally died. My children would still have had photographs, they would tell their friends, their future husbands and wives, my old man was in show business, once.
There ought to be a law. There ought to be an act of Congress blocking the rebroadcast of Carter and Sharp Meet Mother Goose and Carter and Sharp Meet Santa Claus. Those are the movies that you’ve most likely seen, because they appeal to kids. More people on this earth have seen them than have seen City Lights. Don’t think I’m proud: more people have seen Buster Keaton as an elderly man impersonating Buster Keaton in How to Stuff a Wild Bikini than the real brilliant thing in The General or Steamboat Bill, Jr. More people can do a Charlie Chaplin impression than have ever seen a Charlie Chaplin movie. If you’re a comedian, all you hope for is that some bit of your act sticks to the shoe of history: a twirled cane, a bent-over walk, a three-word catchphrase. If you’re lucky, you’ll end up a Halloween costume, a rubber mask, a bigheaded statue, the kind of two-bit impression anyone can do.
Slowly I Turned
I’d hoped the TV show would let us go out on a high note — not Mother Goose, but laughing onstage surrounded by flung pies and smashed vases. But it took us only months to run out of material. Worse, Rocky started showing up for broadcasts pretty well plastered. Not falling-down drunk, just distractible, and he tried to laugh off missed cues the way we laughed off any mistake — live television, folks! No telling what’ll happen! Now that he lived alone, there was no one to tell him to stop drinking, and so he never did. His face had turned an alcoholic red; Neddy said, “It’s a shame the way Carter’s gone prematurely crimson.”
Rocky, like plenty of show-biz types, was two people: the guy he played, and the guy he was out in the world. I was two people myself, the Professor on-screen, and my wife’s husband back at the house, a family man, an Iowan, and a Jew. (I didn’t give much thought to the Professor’s background, but I knew he wasn’t Jewish.) In the real world, Rocky was a bully, a man about town, a bluff and hearty barker of commands. And then there was the patsy he played in the movies, a big baby in too-small clothes who’d take anything, pies to the face and blows across the head, who only wanted love and ice cream and good cheer from more manly men.
Except, in Rocky’s case, it was like this second guy, the childish one, followed him wherever he went. He couldn’t shake himself. He went out to his club and turned around; there was the fat guy in the tight suit, his hat in his hand, tagging along and smiling. And so Rocky began to bully himself, throwing first food and then glasses of liquor and then lit cigarettes and cigars, and then ashtrays and filled bottles and entire tables of food and silverware, and still the fat man stood, smiling, ready for more. You had to hate a guy who took abuse like that and kept his feet. You wanted to see what would knock him to the floor. And so Rocky ate and drank and smoked, trying to smack himself down. But the fat guy couldn’t take a hint! There he was again, swaying, but on his feet! He won’t fall down.
We lost our TV spot in 1953. Audiences got a whiff of the whiskey over the ether, is what I think: no charming feigned harmless drunk, but the real thing.
Forced retirement. Rocky wouldn’t rest. He cooked up an idea for a situation comedy. Lots of comics just transferred their radio shows to TV — Burns and Allen, Jack Benny, Eve Arden — but our radio show really had no plot. So Rocky strung something together. Gas station attendants, I think, who lived across the hall from each other. Nice wives. Maybe some kids.
“A change of pace,” said Rocky.
“I don’t want one,” I told him.
What I wanted was out. We had plenty of money; I’d invested pretty well over the years. I was getting too old — correction, I’d gotten—though I’d dive through a store window for old times’ sake, and I could still stand next to a table, then suddenly jump on top of it. In fact, under the iron hand of my health-nut wife, I was in fine physical condition: I just thought a man of forty-two should find more dignified work. I didn’t tell Rocky this; he’d take it as an insult, since he was even older, and even sillier.
And besides, something had to change. The guy was destroying himself.
Well, then, why didn’t I save him?
I couldn’t have.
Why didn’t I try?
Good question. Now it seems obvious: I just should have said something. As it was, I spent hours in bars and restaurants with him, always a fraction of a second from saying, You know, Rocky, that you drink too much.
And then I’d imagine what he’d say in return.
I know. (Still, he takes a gulp of his fresh drink.)
Come on, move in with us, stay in the guest suite. We’ll keep you busy. Jess will whip you into shape in no time. Spinach, deep knee bends—
Sounds great. (He takes another gulp.)
You’ll love it.
No really, says Rocky, his finger in the ice cubes at the bottom of his now empty glass, it sounds terrific. But I’d rather die.
And I couldn’t watch. I wanted no part of it.
I believed then — as almost everyone believed — that if one of us went on to have a solo career, it wouldn’t be me. Sometimes, when I thought of stepping down, I imagined the comeback we’d make later, staid, cleverer. A sophisticated double act. Other times I thought that without the Professor hectoring him, Rocky could finally become, as he wanted, great. A guy who could speak that many languages could do something with his own, once he had to, write movies, become an auteur. Go abroad, hang out with brooding comic Englishmen — he loved The Lavender Hill Mob. Hang up the damn striped shirt and act his age, in other words. I believed that I’d have to orphan the on-screen childish Rocky to push him out into the world. Okay, I’d be selfless and walk away. Like many a guardian, I tried to leave in degrees. Like many a juvenile delinquent, he clung and misbehaved, longing for attention and punishment.