Monthly Archives: April 2012

Once upon a time, the May Company was the sacred place to shop in Los Angeles — especially the formidable outlet at the corner of Wilshire and Fairfax. It marked the west end of a strip of Wilshire full of department stores and that strip was known as the Miracle Mile. It's still called the Miracle Mile even though there isn't a single department store left there. Orbach's is gone. Harris & Frank is gone. Desmond's is gone. Mullen & Bluett is gone and so on. The May Company's lovely building is still there but inside it now is some sort of off-shoot of the L.A. County Museum of Art which is next door.

This memory takes place back when it was still the May Company, inside and out. For two or three years running, they did a special Easter promotion involving Bugs Bunny. Ads would appear giving a special phone number that kids could call to "talk to Bugs Bunny." Well, naturally, I had to call. I think I was six or seven the first time this happened but I knew how to dial a phone. And note that I said "dial," as in running one's finger around on one of these:

So I dialed and got a busy signal. Then I dialed and got a busy signal again. Then I dialed and got a busy signal again. Then I dialed and got a busy signal again. Then I dialed and got a busy signal again. Then I dialed and got a busy signal again. Then I dialed and got a busy signal again. Then I dialed and got a busy signal again. Then I dialed and got a busy signal again. Then I dialed and got a busy signal again. Then I dialed and got a busy signal again. Then I dialed and got a busy signal again. Then I dialed and got a busy signal again. Then I dialed and got a busy signal again. Then I dialed and got a busy signal again. Then I dialed and got a busy signal again. Then I dialed and got a busy signal again. Then I dialed and got a busy signal again. Then I dialed and got a busy signal again. Then I dialed and got a busy signal again. Then I dialed and got a busy signal again. Then I dialed and got a busy signal again. Then I dialed and got a busy signal again. Then I dialed and got a busy signal again. Then I dialed and got a busy signal again. Isn't "cut-and-paste" wonderful? Then I dialed and got a busy signal again. Then I dialed and got a busy signal again. Then I dialed and got a busy signal again.

And finally, it rang. And Bugs picked up.

Well, it wasn't Bugs, of course. Even I knew then it was Mel Blanc. But it also wasn't Mel Blanc. It was the recorded voice of Mel Blanc. But even that was exciting. In later years, it would be no big deal to call some number and hear a recorded announcement. Heck, there would be times when it would be a novelty to dial a number — any number — and not get a recorded announcement. But at the time, this kind of thing was kinda rare…and the fact that it was a cartoon character was very special.

I remember the first thing he said. It was, you may be surprised to hear, "What's up, doc?" And I remember the last thing he said. It was an admonition that I should hang up now so that someone else could get through. In-between, there was a pitch to get my parents to take me to the May Company at Wilshire and Fairfax where Bugs would have a special gift for me and a special, personal message. Well, you can guess where we were going…the next day, in fact. This was a few days before Easter.

That night, I was lying wide awake in bed, as I often did. I didn't sleep much as a kid. I would lie there half the night it seemed, making up incredible stories involving cartoons and characters I saw on TV or read in comic books. They were all about my phone buddy Bugs Bunny that night and I suddenly got the idea that I'd like to hear his message again…and also, I was curious. Was there just the one message or were there several and they rotated? And what would have happened if I hadn't hung up immediately? Would the message have repeated? Would Bugs have said something else?

I checked the clock by my bed at it said it was 4:10 in the morning. I had a hunch the phone might not be quite as busy at 4:10 in the morning.

So as not to awake my parents, I crept carefully out to the kitchen, which is where our only phone was. From all that dialing earlier, I had the number memorized so I called, worrying slightly that Bugs would answer and say angrily, "Hey, didn't you call earlier, kid?"  Or maybe, "What the big idea, waking me up at this hour?"

I got a busy signal. At 4-friggin'-11 in the morning. Someone else obviously had the same idea.

I put some peanut butter on a cracker, ate it and then dialed again. This time, I got through and heard the exact same message I'd heard earlier. At the end, when Bugs said to hang up so someone else could call, I risked him getting mad at me and didn't. And I heard…absolutely nothing. After about a minute, I hung up and went back to bed.

The next day, we went to the May Company. Near the center of the top floor, there was a huge display with big cut-outs of Bugs and Elmer Fudd and Porky Pig and other Warner Brothers characters. The phone message had made it sound like I could actually meet Bugs Bunny there and while I knew that wasn't possible, I figured there'd be something like a guy in a Bugs Bunny suit or a big robot or — and I knew this was a longshot but you tend to dream at that age — maybe they'd have Mel Blanc there.

They didn't. There were two cute young girls dressed in bunny ears and tails. This was a year or two before the Playboy Clubs opened with waitresses in bunny ears and tails and I always wondered if Hugh Hefner or someone working for him drew any inspiration from Bugs' helpers at the May Company. Probably not but you never know.

One gave me a little Bugs Bunny coloring book with a bag of crayons and candy attached. The other was in charge of a telephone on a pedestal. She held out the receiver for me and I took it and heard another message Mel Blanc had recorded. It was something about how he was sorry he was so busy he couldn't be there in person but you know, "us rabbits" are pretty busy just before Easter, painting eggs and figuring out where to hide 'em. He told me to be a good little kid and eat all my carrots and to make sure his helpers gave me his special Easter gift. And then he hung up on me and his assistant yanked the receiver from my grasp.

I didn't feel cheated by this since I'd known going in I wasn't going to really meet Bugs Bunny. I remember being rather thrilled to have gotten that close to him. And then my parents went shopping.

That's about everything I remember about the Bugs Bunny promotion. I'm going to guess they did it the first time in 1958 or 1959 when I was six or seven. If I had to bet, I'd bet the latter. I know they did it at least one following year, maybe two. Same ad in the paper, same message on the phone. We only went to the May Company in response that one time, presuming that since the phone message was the same, the pay-off when you got to the store would be the same. In 1961 or so, they did the same deal with Fred Flintstone, even though, having lived before Christ, his connection to Easter was at best tenuous. A recording by his voice Alan Reed was on the phone and when you went to the May Company, they had two cute ladies in ratty cave girl outfits filling the same function as the bunnies.

What they did have, I think in lieu of a phone message, was a robotic Fred Flintstone. It was a very good likeness about five feet high. His mouth opened and closed, not particularly in sync with a constantly repeating voice recording — Fred welcoming us to the May Company and wishing us Happy Easter. His right arm went up and down. My mother took a photo of me next to him but, damn it, the pictures didn't come out. A day or two later, they trucked the Robot Fred over to the local ABC studios and I saw it "perform" on the morning cartoon show hosted by Chucko the Birthday Clown. The voice didn't work and the moving arm kept stopping and starting, and Chucko (who was a pretty funny guy) kept warning Fred that if he didn't talk, ABC would cancel his prime-time show. I assume that robot is long since gone but I'd give about a year's pay to have it in my living room.

This has been an Easter Memory…and just about the only one this Jewish kid has from his childhood.

That's a photo of my mother taking a photo of me taking that photo of her. It was shot outside the Paris hotel in Las Vegas, the last time I took her there, which was more than a decade ago.  Carolyn and I took turns pushing her around the town in a borrowed wheelchair and we all had a very good time.  I wish I could take her there again but her health isn't quite up to it.

Where I can take her is out for lunch or dinner here in L.A.  Yesterday, we took her to the Musso & Frank Grill up in Hollywood to celebrate her 90th birthday, which is today.  We went yesterday instead of today because today is Easter and restaurants are too crowded on Easter.  Also, she wanted to go to that restaurant and it's not open on Sundays. She had fried scallops and a lovely bread pudding covered in strawberries, and enjoyed both very much.

For reasons above and beyond longevity, my mother is an extraordinary woman.  She's also pretty funny. Recently at a party where a lot of my friends met her for the first time, I heard the following from many of them: "Oh, it's easy to see you got your sense of humor from your mother, Mark."  I disagree and so does she.  She got her sense of humor from me.  Growing up, I got mine from a bevy of sources: Comic books, MAD, Soupy Sales, Laurel and Hardy, cartoons on TV, Stan Freberg — fittingly, Stan was at that party — and others. And I think my mother learned to talk like me so we could communicate. We still do…and I think the last time we had any sort of argument or reason for anyone to raise their voice, I was still in junior high school. My father didn't yell much, either. I think we had less than a dozen angry moments, the last of which occurred when I moved out and into my own place at age 23. That was more than half my life ago.

I keep reading about dysfunctional families and hearing horror stories from acquaintances who were reared in one. At times, I think I grew up in one of the few functional ones of the 20th century. I had friends…I'd go to their homes and in two or three visits I'd literally hear more yelling and tantrums and threats of discipline than I experienced in my entire childhood. My father was half the reason for that and my mother was the other half.

She's amazed to be 90. Absolutely, utterly amazed. Her mother darn near made it to 100 but my mother didn't expect anything close to that, especially since she's been smoking since she was a teen and has never fully quit. She's cut way, way down but can't give it up altogether. She still has all her wits about her. The body doesn't work so well and she spends an indecent percentage of her life at or in the hospital for check-ups and tests and occasional stays…but she's still well aware of the world she lives in and how long she's lived in it. Yesterday at the restaurant, I asked her what her earliest memory was of something "new" they had in her household. She thought a minute and answered, "Sliced bread." At the time, it was the biggest thing since…well, sliced bread.

One reason she's still around is that she has this great doctor. If you could invent the perfect doctor to take care of an elderly parent, you'd whip up one very much like Dr. Bruce Wasserman. If he lived across the street from her and didn't have any other patients, he'd be perfect. He's been her doctor (and when my father was with us, my father's doctor) for more than thirty years. When my mother turned 80, he surprised her on her birthday by sending flowers. He did that when she hit 85, too. She thought that was the most wonderful thing and I suspect they did more good for her than any prescription he ever wrote.

For a long time after that whenever she had health problems, I'd tell her she had to get better so she wouldn't miss out on the 90 arrangement. No other reason. At dire moments, she'd actually say, "Well, it looks like I won't be around to get the 90th birthday flowers from Dr. Wasserman." She was wrong. Two dozen roses arrived on Friday.

The floral displays get better and better. This one was especially stunning and I've told her she has to stick around just so I can see what Dr. Wasserman sends when she hits 100. She thought about it a moment, shrugged and said, "All right. I'll do it…but only for you!"