A group called Postmodern Jukebox favors us with their rendition of the theme from The Flintstones…with a little Andy Griffith Show for reasons which should be obvious.1
1I often say "…for reasons which should be obvious" when I have no friggin' idea what those reasons are.
I've received an amazing number of messages about Herbert "Tiny Tim" Khaury, the subject of this recent posting here. If I post them all here, this will turn into a Tiny Tim website so I'll just share this one from my buddy Howard Johnson…
Tiny Tim was a friend of my good friend, improv icon Del Close.
Del used to tell me about Mr. Tim. Around the latter part of 1958, Del first met him when he was working as a fire-eater at Hubert's Museum and Flea Circus in New York. At that time, Tiny Tim was working there as Larry Love, the Human Canary.
Del once described him as "…not so much a singer as a haunted house. He'd turn into people like early Bing Crosby or Tex Ritter. 'Cause this falsetto voice is only one of the many personalities haunting the caverns of Mr. Tim's mind. He got his start playing lesbian bathhouses in New York…so he basically thought of himself as a lesbian. That's why he wore makeup, to make himself more attractive to the ladies…"
Hugh Romney convinced him to come to L.A. to appear in The Phantom Cabaret Strikes Again. (He and Romney had previously been part of the original Phantom Cabaret in New York.) He arrived with nothing but twenty cans of Popeye Spinach. He stayed in Romney's guest house (Close was also a guest), where he used to take 2 to 3 hour showers.
The theater was across the street from the Hollywood Ranch Market. On his last night there, he had so endeared himself to the management of the market that they let him sing over the public address system. According to Romney, "There wasn't a dry eye in the whole place as he sang 'Old Shep' and 'I Didn't Raise My Boy to Be a Soldier.'"
After that, Mr. Tim went on to national fame and fortune thanks to Laugh-In and The Tonight Show.
Fast forward to December 11, 1993. I was working as Marketing Director for Moondog's Comics in Chicago, where one of my duties was to produce and host Moondog's Pop Culture Radio Show for Gary Colabuono. Del would occasionally co-host with me, which was always fun, and we had pop culture and comic book guests on each show. That week, our guests included Don Simpson, Joe Quesada, and Jimmy Palmiotti, along with my wife, Laurie Bradach. And somehow, thankfully, we booked Tiny Tim.
I picked up Del (who only lived a block away from me), and we drove out to the suburban hotel where Mr. Tim was staying. I met him in the lobby, where he brought his ukulele in a brown paper shopping bag, and an overpowering scent of a very strong cologne. He was very effusive and grateful to be appearing on the show, and he was very surprised and happy to be reunited with Del; the two hadn't seen each other in nearly 30 years. ("Oh, Mr. Close! Mr. Close!") He called everyone "Mister" or "Miss," even when it was just the three of us, so I took a cue from Del and called him "Mr. Tim."
The ride from the hotel to the radio station was one long, joyous reunion with his peer; I only wish I'd had a tape recorder running. I recall the two of them discussing ex-wives, mind-blowing when I suddenly realized he was married on The Tonight Show. Mr. Tim noted ruefully that "The marriage was over as soon as they turned off the TV cameras."
We got to the radio station and proceeded with a jam-packed show. Del sat in on the interview, and Mr. Tim played a few songs on his uke (he didn't attempt "Tiptoe Through the Tulips," as he didn't seem like he wanted to attempt the high notes). But it was a very memorable program. He told the story of owning the first 20 issues of Captain America comics when he was younger, and losing them when he gave them to a girl he was trying to impress. I had known about this in advance (it may have been noted in a Marvel Bullpen Bulletins page) and so when the show had finished, I gave him some reprints of Golden Age Captain America comics, which thrilled him.
We rode back to Del's apartment and dropped him off, and I turned back to take Mr. Tim to his next appointment. For nearly the entire ride, Mr. Tim gave me a private solo concert on his uke, singing some incredibly obscure century-old songs. (Who knew that "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" had actual verses? But he knew every one of them!)
During my hours with Mr. Tim, I think everyone found him to be very intelligent, very entertaining, and he was constantly using religious epithets like "Praise God!" in every other sentence — but only off the air). There are several stories about Mr. Tim in my Del Close biography The Funniest One in the Room.
And lastly, I should point out that for the next two weeks, I thought of Mr. Tim whenever I got in my car. Because that was how long I could detect the scent of his cologne.
Several folks sent me stories that mentioned Mr. Tim's overpowering cologne, detectable even when seated in the tenth row of a performing space. But I had not known he had a relationship with Del Close, who was one of the most important people in comedy in his era. For those unfamiliar with Mr. Close, I have put on an Amazon link on its title above. A very fine book.
I think the main takeaway from all this is that Tiny Tim was more than a guy some TV shows had on so they could laugh at a human oddity. He was a serious performer who often enchanted audiences with his ukulele, voice and knowledge of music from the first part of the twentieth century. It's nice to realize how popular he became for a while there.
Here are ten songs you know but you don't know their names — except that I knew seven of them. This video will be fun for folks who like to identify classical music and/or enjoy having a strange man stare at them. And stare and stare and stare and stare…
First off: Thank you all for the lovely birthday wishes that were sent my way yesterday on social media and even some antisocial media. I do not feel 71 years old except sometimes around the knees. And I certainly do not fit the image I had of being 71 back when I was much younger. I would thank you all individually but that would take me until I'm 72 and then I'd have to start sending out thank you notes about that birthday and that would take until I was 73…
Second off: I have a very busy day ahead so this may be the extent of the posting here day. For those of you who don't know, that's what it means when I post a picture of a can of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup. This is a well-known ancient custom that began in the year 1412 A.D. in The Ming Dynasty except that they used sesame cakes instead of mushroom soup and they posted on Gingko Trees instead of on the Internet. Otherwise, it's exactly the same tradition.
We haven't had a song here in a long while from Julien Neel, my favorite one-man singing group. Here he is with some sound musical advice…
I've been talking a lot about Phil Silvers here and a reader of this site named Robert Atendido suggested that I link you to a piece I wrote about him here. I'm going to save your mouse a click and quote it below.
Before I do, I think I should explain a little about what's the big deal with Phil Silvers? Simple: I thought he was of the greatest comic actors who ever lived. I also have a personal "thing" about him. Two life-changing moments for me were when I first saw the movie, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World in 1963 and when I saw a live production of the musical, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum in 1970.
Phil Silvers was the star of the second one and he was in and stole much of the first one.
And I think the show in which he played Sgt. Ernest T. Bilko was one of the five-or-so best comedy shows ever on TV. It was a show that had (usually) great writing and a superb supporting cast, but it was about about Phil Silvers in a way that no other TV series ever was about its lead performer. Here's an excerpt from the time I spent with him…
One of the more thrilling afternoons of my life came about when I had a brunch-interview with the great Phil Silvers. It took place at Nate 'n Al's delicatessen in Beverly Hills in 1982, a little less than three years before he passed away.
Expecting it to last an hour, I only brought along about 90 minutes of tape, but Mr. Silvers was in a talkative mood. This was in spite of the lingering effects of a stroke that had thickened his speech and created odd holes in his memory. He could recall the name of the landlady at a hotel he'd lived in for two weeks while touring in burlesque, but not his current phone number. He could (and did) rattle off whole pages of dialogue from plays he'd done on Broadway decades earlier but had no memory whatsoever of The Chicken Chronicles, a movie he'd made five years before our chat.
My recorder ran out of tape long before Silvers ran out of anecdotes. Fortunately, I captured this remembrance about the "Make Way for Tomorrow" dance sequence in the 1944 film classic, Cover Girl. (I did not have to edit any questions from me out of what follows. Charmingly, Silvers did not require questions. He jumped from one topic to the next without prompting. And I just sat there and listened.)
Cover Girl was another Blinky role for me. I played the same character in every movie…Blinky. The guy who ran in in the next to last reel and said, "I got the stuff in the car." I never found out in all those movies what the stuff in the car was. Cover Girl was my first good movie. In this one, Blinky was named Genius but I was still Blinky. I was Blinky in every movie I made until I did Bilko. After that, I was Bilko in everything I did, which was fine. Bilko paid a lot better than Blinky.
We made Cover Girl at Columbia. At the time, Harry Cohn was God there. There was a different God at every studio. When you worked for M.G.M., Louis B. Mayer was God. At Columbia, it was Harry Cohn. I got along with him but no one else did. He liked me because I was a gambler. I gave him tips on horses. They always lost but he didn't blame me because to a gambler, a bad tip is better than no tip at all.
A man named Charles Vidor directed Cover Girl but from where I sat, Gene Kelly was the man in charge. He and his assistant Stanley Donen took over the choreography from the man they hired to do it. I don't remember his name but he choreographed the scenes with the chorus girls and then Kelly did everything else. Stanley Donen did some of it but it was mainly Gene. There was this song, "Make Way for Tomorrow." It was supposed to be a six minute dance down the street with Rita Hayworth and Gene dancing and leaping over trash cans and doing cartwheels. I watched them rehearse it for three days and I thought, "Thank God I don't have to do that."
The fourth day, Gene came over to me and said, "I think it would strengthen the story if you were in the number." There was a drunk who had a tiny part in it. I think it was Jack Norton, who was the drunk in any movie that had a drunk in it. I thought Gene meant I'd do a little bit like that in the number so I said, "Yes, sure, I'll do whatever you want." The next thing I know, Gene and Stanley had redesigned the whole number for three people and I was one of those three people.
He did not design it for a non-dancer, which is what I was. It was designed for Gene and Rita, who were the two best dancers in the business. I had to come up to their standard. They danced up and down stairs. I had to dance up and down stairs. They leaped over boxes. I had to leap over boxes. All the time, I'm thinking, "I'm dancing next to Gene Kelly, doing the same steps. Everybody's going to be comparing us. If we're out of step, no one's going to assume Gene's the one who's wrong." Gene was still a newcomer on screen but everyone knew he was the best dancer to come along.
It was rough. They were going to shoot it in pieces but Gene insisted we rehearse it straight through, start to end. I don't remember how long it took to learn. Rita, I think, required four weeks. It must have been longer with me but I did it. Whatever Gene and Rita did, I did, and I did it as well as they did. And Gene was right. It did strengthen the story. It was a surprise for me to be in that number and to dance it like that. When we were done shooting, I ached all over. Every muscle in my body hurt. But I felt like I could do anything.
In later years, every time I had something to do in a film or a TV show that I thought I couldn't do, I thought back to that number. And I said to myself, "If you can do that, you can do anything."
This is me again. Later, after the tape recorder was no longer running, he lamented the physical problems from his stroke and said, "If I could do that number in Cover Girl, I ought to be able to walk across the street on my own, don't you think?"
Robert Atendido also suggested that I show you the dance number under discussion. Mr. Silvers recalled it as a six-minute number but it was actually more like three. If I'd had to dance that, I'd probably think it lasted a couple of hours…but give it a watch. He really did dance it as well as Gene Kelly and Rita Hayworth…
What do we have here? Why, it's Shirley Bassey on The Ed Sullivan Show for 11/5/67. Just one of my favorite singers singing one of my favorite songs…
My old pal, the fine cartoonist Fred Hembeck, sent in this question…
The other day, I stumbled across a recording on the internet of "Tip Toe Through The Tulips" by Tiny Tim (aka Herbert Khaury), and it brought back vivid memories of the strange fascination folks, myself included, had with him in the late sixties. I can't say I was actually a fan — I didn't buy his LP, for instance — but there was nothing like him in popular culture at the time, and it was difficult to look away.
My question to you regards his appearances on The Tonight Show — what did Johnny, Ed, Doc, Fred, and other folks behind the scenes really think of him? Were they taking him seriously or were they exploiting him — or did it fall somewhere in between? I know I stayed up late to watch his wedding to Miss Vicky — were you in the audience that night? Or did you meet Mr. Tim another time? Just wondering.
I never met Mr. Khaury or Mr. Tim or whatever you'd call him. I did see him in operation once when I was poaching on the set of Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In and he was there taping some short blackouts. I think I saw enough of him that day to conclude that his "strangeness" (if we can call it that) was not an act. He really was like that except that the falsetto voice that some knew him for was something he put on just for certain musical performances.
For those who don't know: He was an eccentric performer who liked to strum his ukulele and sing very old songs. He played a circuit of night clubs that featured unusual acts and gained a modest fame in some circles. A lot of people thought his career began when he first appeared on Laugh-In but he actually had something of a cult following before then and some sources say his first record album was recorded before his first time on Laugh-In. Laugh-In certainly had a lot to do though with surprisingly high sales of that album, the cover of which looked like this…
The TV shows that booked him weren't particularly interested in his music…just his freakishness. Laugh-In brought him out to perform and they put co-host Dick Martin, who apparently had never seen him before, onstage to laugh at (not with) him during that performance. Johnny Carson had him on for much the same reason and here's his first appearance with Johnny from April 4, 1968. As you can see, the host went through his entire catalog of facial takes to camera playing off how odd his guest was…
On a later appearance, Tiny Tim mentioned that he was engaged to be married and Johnny, apparently spontaneously, invited T.T. to have the ceremony on The Tonight Show. The invite was immediately accepted and on December 17, 1969, the wedding of Tiny Tim to 17-year-old Victoria Budinger got Johnny one of the highest-rated TV broadcasts of all time. Here is that ceremony — and no, Fred, I was not in the audience but I was watching along with most of the country…
What did the people on The Tonight Show think of Tiny Tim? They thought he was great for the ratings, though obviously not for long. Yes, they were exploiting him but from what I heard from one gent who employed him, T.T. was fine with that. He absolutely loved the fame and fortune he was now achieving…and with an act that absolutely no one ever thought was commercial. When asked about it, he said it was fine that people laughed at him because they also paid attention when he talked about the old songs he loved and when he voiced his disappointment with current music which he felt lacked strong melodies.
The sad part of it was that none of it lasted very long. His marriage to "Miss Vicki" (as he called his first wife) was over three years later and she was followed in his life by a "Miss Jan" and a "Miss Sue." He had one child — a daughter with Miss Vicki. He wound up playing smaller and smaller clubs. One reason his career faded was that he had several heart attacks, at least one while performing on stage. That will cause people to not book you.
The gent I mentioned above who hired him was the Entertainment Director at a hotel in Laughlin, Nevada. I do not remember the man's name but he booked "oldies" acts into the casino showroom and I met him — this would have been around 1993 or so — not long after he'd had Tiny Tim there for a multi-week stand. T.T. had cut his onstage performance short one evening, staggered into the wings and collapsed.
If you absolutely have to have a heart attack and can't do it in a hospital, a gambling casino is not a bad place to have it. Most of them have emergency medical equipment on the premises and someone who knows how to use it. T.T. was treated there until the ambulance arrived and took him to a hospital in nearby Bullhead City, Arizona. The E.D. told me, approximately: "We heard he pulled through but that on doctor's orders, he would never perform again. And then four weeks later, his manager or someone was calling to see if we wanted to have him back. I decided I didn't."
Herbert Khaury, better known as Tiny Tim, died in September of 1996. He was onstage at a benefit performing his signature number, "Tiptoe Through the Tulips" when he suffered yet another of his many heart attacks and died later that night.
The Entertainment Director told me that T.T. loved performing, loved signing autographs, loved his celebrity. It's hard to believe that most of that would have happened if he hadn't been willing to let Laugh-In, Carson and others treat him as a human oddity, mocking his appearance, his voice, his manners, his effeminate gestures and laugh and so on. I don't think anyone took him that seriously…not even himself. Thanks, Fred, for prompting me to write this.
