After she'd hung up, another telephone call confirmed what she said. It was from Misty Milo. “Hello, you slob,” she greeted me. “Do you know you left my shower on the other night and my bathroom was flooded! Why did you run off that way?”
“Things were getting a bit too hot for me,” I said cryptically.
“And you call yourself the man from O. R. G. Y.!” Misty took it the wrong way.
“I was referring to the shower, not my libido."
“I wondered about that. Why on earth did you have it so hot? That water was positively scalding when I got back. And why did you run out on me?”
“You ran out on me,” I reminded her.
“Well, I had to. Something came up. But you could have waited.”
“If I was a lobster, maybe I would have. But let’s skip it, shall we? Let’s just say we got our signals crossed.”
“All right. Hey,” she changed the subject, “I hear you’re joining us on that acne telethon."
“That's right. You know me. I’ll do anything for charity.”
“That’s a laugh. What’s your vigorish?”
“Huh?”
“The vigorish. The angle. The kickback, or whatever. How are they paying you off?”
“Oh. Well, actually they’re not. It's sort of as a favor to Ella Hooper.”
“Aha! Then you're really getting a bigger payoff than any of us. I'm getting five Gs and top billing, but the Hooper return’s probably worth more. And poor Happy’s only getting to share the second spot with April Wilder for two Gs apiece."
“You mean you’re getting paid? I thought performers donated their services to these charity telethons.”
“You've got to be kidding!” Misty snorted. “You've been around Hollywood enough not to be so naive as that. Of course we’re getting paid. Under the table, natch. Where it won’t show on the tax returns. Why shouldn't we? You think all the rest of those sobbers at the Acne Foundation aren’t getting theirs? Well, they are! In spades! They all milk the public for whatever the racket’s worth. Only some of us don't take it in cash. For’ instance, Voluptua’ll do a bit and she'll have a new Mustang to show for it next week. Likewise the Prince.”
“The Prince? Is he going to be there, too? What’s he going to do?"
“Point out that this is an international problem and that Acne Foundation carries on its work all over the world. He'll probably give some spiel about the clinic they've set up in Poversia. Maybe he'll show some before-and-after shots of pimply Poversian kids.”
“Sounds heart-rending,” I granted.
“It will be. And for about sixteen hours at that. A heartstring-tugging marathon. Well, at least we'll be among friends. I'll see you there, Steve."
“See you there.” I hung up, got out of bed and started fishing some clothes out of the closet.
“And where do we think we're going?” Nursey was back, topless and clucking her disapproval.
I explained about the telethon for the Acne Foundation.
Her disapproval changed to a dishrag-weepy “sort of sympathy. “It’s a very worthy cause,” she said. “Those poor people! How they suffer! But don't let it depress us now, hear? We have to be careful not to get depressed and do anything foolish.”
I assured her that “we” wouldn’t do anything of the sort and finished dressing. Then I cast one last fond look at her bobbling mammaries, went down to the lobby, and had the doorman call me a cab. Twenty minutes later I arrived at the studio.
Louis Ching was there, but the others hadn't arrived yet. They straggled in while he was taking the shots of me that were to be used on the program later. A darkroom had been set up for Louis where he could develop, enlarge and doctor the shots, and when he went to work there, I turned my attention to the others and greeted them.
They were a disparate group. April Wilder was in pony-tail and blue jeans with her shirttails hanging out, while Voluptua wore a low-cut gold lamé evening gown that accentuated her Amazonian proportions. Happy Daze wore the loud checked suit and baggy pants which had come to be associated with him, a marked contrast to the velvet dinner jacket and frilled dress shirt the Prince sported. Misty hadn't shown up yet. She came in a little later while we were being briefed.
The briefing was conducted by a network yoyo with narrow lapels running up his vocal chords to his company brain. Enthusiasm gushed out from under his clipped moustache in a diarrhea of “belief in the product.” He might have been peddling acne at the moment, but you knew he’d be just as reverent with toothpaste, or beer, or arsenic. He’d keep the faith if he was setting up a show performed by concentration-camp guards to market lamp-shades made of human skin. Adolf Eichmann isn't dead; he lives on in the absolute obedience and fervent dedication of such program warmer-uppers.
“Now, I’m sure that everybody here is as impressed by the humanitarian works of the Acne Foundation as I am,” he announced for openers. “Otherwise, you wouldn’t be donating your services.”
Voluptua snickered.
“Now, those of you who have been involved in telethons before know that the idea is to move the viewing audience to phone in pledges for contributions . . .”
“Sixty percent of which will never be collected,” April Wilder muttered.
“I heard that!” His voice was hurt, almost a whine, “Now, I'm not going to deny it. But the forty percent we do collect will still serve a worthwhile humanitarian purpose.”
“Like paying your salary among other network costs,” April sneered.
“There will still be ample funds left over for the Acne Foundation if we all pull our weight on the program.”
“Sure there will.” April wouldn’t let go. “The boon-dogglers at the Foundation and the ad agency driving the Foundation bandwagon all have to get theirs, too."
“The Foundation is staffed by reputable medical men!” he protested hotly. “Some of the top dermatologists in the country are involved in its work."
“Nuts!” April disagreed. “The Foundation is staffed by so-called skin specialists who graduated in the lowest tenth of their classes from med school. With a few shining exceptions, that’s true of all of these charity research-treatment operations, They fall into the hands of the best medical politicians, not the best doctors. Almost all doctors who attain a degree of excellence go into private practice. They may contribute a little of their time and effort to outfits like the Acne Foundation, but they leave the actual running of it to a combination of p. r. carny spielers and inept quacks. The best research men work for the drug companies who can afford to pay them. If a cure for acne is ever developed, you can be sure it’ll come out of some outfit like Squibb, or American Pharmaceutical, not out of the insufficient resources of the Acne Foundation. And the same is true of most other diseases with only maybe one or two exceptions. Let’s face it. Acne victims will be lucky if they see even five percent of the money we raise here tonight. Between ourselves, the network, the ad agency, the fund raisers and the administrators and quacks, ninety-five percent gets skimmed off the top. If the acne sufferer depends on the Acne Foundation to help him, he'll go on suffering for a long time.”
“I simply can't abide such cynicism!” The yoyo was apoplectic. “What about the coffee and doughnuts the Foundation provides acne sufferers?"
“Doughnuts? For acne? But I thought sweets—” Misty Milo had just come in and she was puzzled.
“Well, never mind that," the network man said quickly. “We really don’t have time for any more abstract argument. I have to fill in all of you on the setup for this telethon. Now . . .”
He explained how the telethon would be conducted. When the program opened, a panel of eight volunteers from the Acne Foundation would be seated at a long table, each with a telephone at his or her elbow. Behind the scenes there was a switchboard so that people calling in with pledges might be connected with the telephone answerer of their choice. As the program progressed, this would become important. Each of the performers would do a bit in turn. After each bit the performer would relieve one of the volunteers at the telephone. The idea was that someone calling in would be able to talk directly, on the air, with the celebrity of his choice. A running count would be kept of the amount of money pledged to each celebrity. This would go up on a ruled blackboard in back of the table and within easy camera range. Periodically one or another of the half-dozen shapely girls in tights who had been hired for the show would empty the pledge baskets used by those on the telephones, add up the amounts, and post the totals on the blackboard. At the top of the blackboard, in large block letters, was the goal for the telethon: $100,000.