Señor Wences
by Mark Evanier
WRITTEN 11/13/96
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED 5/2/97
Comics Buyer's Guide
I am just back (like, ten minutes) from one of those evenings that you want to press forever in your book of memories. Tonight, the Improv up on Melrose hosted a benefit for the L.A. Free Clinic — a 100th birthday tribute to the great ventriloquist, Señor Wences.
Everyone knows Señor Wences, even if a few don't know his name. They remember him from his eight zillion appearances on the old Ed Sullivan TV show. They remember his "friend" Johnny, whose head was formed by the Señor painting eyes, a nose and lips on his hand. They remember his puppet Cecelia Chicken, and the Señor juggling, and most of all, they remember Pedro.
Pedro was everyone's favorite — maybe the oddest character to ever appear on the Sullivan stage, Ed excepted. Pedro was a head in a box, and we all used to wait for Señor Wences to open the box and ask Pedro, "S'right?" And Pedro would answer back, "S'right!"
The Señor didn't start out to be a ventriloquist. Incredibly, once upon a time, he was a bullfighter. One day, the bull won and once the matador got out of the hospital, he decided a career change might be in order. He worked up an act and proceeded to do it on every continent for much of this century. It was always pretty much the same routine, and he knew it in eight or nine languages, not all of which he otherwise spoke.
The one other time I'd met him before tonight, he told a story that probably teaches an enormous moral. For twenty or thirty years, a section of his performance involved juggling — a skill at which he was quite facile. Then his agent arranged a year-long gig at the famed Folies Bergere in France. (Or maybe it was someplace else. As much as I respect Señor Wences and love his act, I must admit that I've never been able to understand more than about 50% of what he said while performing, and it was even worse off-stage.)
Wherever it was, it was a club with a low ceiling — so low that he had to omit the juggling from his set, which he did for the full year he played there. At the end of the year, he was booked into another hall where he decided to reinstate the juggling —
— only to discover he couldn't.
In the year he'd gone without juggling, he'd neglected to practice. As a result, he was never able to juggle on a stage again, at least to the standard he'd set for himself. Like they say: Use it or lose it.
But apart from that one omission, he did the same act for decades. It didn't sink in for me just how long until the other day. Someone gave me a Playbill for the original Broadway production of the play, You Can't Take It With You. In the back is an ad for a nightclub called the Crystal Garden at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, and one of the featured performers is Señor Wences. From his billing, you can tell that he was not a newcomer. The year was 1937.
Tonight, to salute a century of life and his many years of performing, a capacity crowd flooded the Improv to wish him a happy one-hundredth.
My lady friend just read the above over my shoulder and said, "You have to explain to people who Ed Sullivan was." I don't think so, but I know better than to argue with her. Any of you who think Ed is just the guy whose name adorns the place where Letterman works, pay close attention. The rest of you can skip this part.
Ed Sullivan was a newspaper columnist who became a TV host. Every Sunday night for years, he presided over an hour of variety acts — singers, comedians, ballerinas, magicians, harmonica virtuosos, dancing bears — all of it broadcast live on CBS. Everyone who was anyone in show biz (and a lot who weren't anyone) graced his stage. Elvis Presley cemented his super-stardom with his appearances there; so did the Beatles; so did almost every big name for decades. It was as if you weren't in the entertainment field until Ed had you on and, quite likely, mangled your introduction.
Stiff and uncomfortable to the extreme, Ed was often the most amazing thing on his program. There are only about eighty-seven thousand tales of his outrageous gaffes — like the time he introduced Rich Little as Buddy Rich, or the time he meant to say an actress was starring on Broadway and he actually said she was starving on Broadway. Fred Allen once said that all Sullivan did was point. "Rub meat on the performers and a dog could do the same job." Others suggested that the secret to the longevity of The Ed Sullivan Show was talent: Everyone on the show had it except Ed.
Not true. Ed was a master showman. He would stop at nothing to book the hottest acts. True, he was amateurish with his hosting chores but there was a good reason for that. When he started, back in the earliest days of television, everyone was amateurish. The talented folks were all in the movies or on Broadway. Ed merely outlasted the other amateurs, and was still around when the pros got into television. It was strangely comforting that he never, in all the years he did it, got any better.
He was a demanding impresario: Every comedian who ever played the show has a story about doing eight minutes at the dress rehearsal, then having Ed chop him to five (or less) before the final broadcast. I asked Señor Wences about this and he said, "Oh, yes. Mister Sullivan…he would want to cut out every line that did not get a laugh. I would say to him, 'Mister Sullivan…that is the set-up line. The joke…she does not make sense without that part.'"
Señor Wences was introduced this evening by a younger performer. He was introduced by Milton Berle, who is a mere lad of 88. (Someone commented that the average age at the Improv this evening was "Deceased.") I've seen Berle a few times in the last year, live or on TV, and he was starting to make me uncomfortable. He was always a pushy performer with an almost desperate craving for applause. As he reached a certain age and a certain stature, the "act" was starting to make me cringe. I wished someone would sit him down and say, ever-so-lovingly, "Uncle Miltie…your place in show business history is assured. You don't have to remind us of it, and you can afford to let someone else get near the microphone." (I also agree with Jay Leno's view that there should be an age limit on telling sex jokes.)
But tonight, Milton Berle was spot-on target — hysterically funny and relatively tasteful, with fresh material that was perfectly suited to the occasion. This was an "industry" crowd; you could sense that everyone was rooting for Berle to be at his best. That, he was.
The other M.C. for the evening was John Byner, another graduate of the Sullivan show and an uncommonly funny individual. John spent much of the evening "channeling" Ed, doing his brilliant impression of the host.
Ed Sullivan impressions were, for a time, a thriving industry in this country — and not a rare one, either. Between 1948 and 1971 when his show was airing, there was not a man, woman or child in America who could not do some semblance of an Ed Sullivan impression. You'd wrap your arms around yourself, elongate your face, rock back and forth and go, "We've got a really big shoe tonight…a really big shoe." Presto: Ed Sullivan!
John Byner has been a professional Ed Sullivan imitator for quite some time. Half the comedians booked on Ed's show did Ed, but Byner was one of the best, along with Will Jordan and Rich Little. (Actually, most of the people who did Ed were not doing Ed; they were imitating other people doing Ed. On one of his first albums, George Carlin did just such an impression and admitted that he was doing, "The John Byner Ed Sullivan")
The funniest moment in John's act tonight won't be funny here, because you can't hear it and this publication won't print most of the words involved. It was Byner's story of the night Jackie Mason did the Sullivan show and seemingly made an "obscene gesture" on live TV. Byner was the other comedian on the bill that evening, and he does a hysterical imitation of what went on backstage after the show — Ed cursing out Jackie, and Jackie saying over and over, "But, Ed…but, Ed…"
Like I said: Not funny here. But John Byner, in or out of his Sullivan impression, is one of the most entertaining comics I've ever seen. If you ever see him playing near you, go…and pray he tells the Sullivan-Mason story.
(He also does the definitive impression of the late Georgie Jessel. At one point, in the middle of one of Byner's hosting stints, Milton Berle got up and demanded the Jessel imitation, which John obligingly performed. I don't know which I found funnier…the impression or the sight of Berle — who knew Jessel since they were both child stars — reduced to tears with laughter.)
The audience was full of folks in allied fields, such as cartoon voice actors. There were three guys in the room who've done Bugs Bunny since Mel Blanc passed away. One of the original Mills Brothers performed several of that group's hits, plus there were producers and writers and comedians, and even a magician or two. One of latter — the great Ricky Jay — was prevailed to get up and demonstrate a bit of wizardry, which he did nicely. If you've never seen Ricky Jay handle cards, you've never seen a superb example of someone doing something about as well as it could possibly be done.
There were other ventriloquists, on stage and in the audience. Jay Johnson, formerly of Soap, did one of the funniest acts I've ever seen, and Rickie Layne (another Sullivan vet) appeared with his ethnic wooden buddy, Velvel. But the real treat was having America's premier voice-tosser — and a personal hero of moi — Dr. Paul Winchell there. Incredibly, tonight was the first time he'd ever met Señor Wences and he was absolutely delighted by him. "What a wonderful, wonderful man," Winchell kept saying. "A wonderful man and a wonderful talent." He introduced me to the Guest of Honor saying, "Mark, I'd like you to meet a ventriloquist older than me." (Paul is 74.)
And I recall one other thing Winchell said. We were talking about something after the show and Peter Boyle and some friends came over to say good-bye to Paul. "Wasn't this a great party?" I heard Winchell say.
I'm not sure if it was Boyle or someone else, but someone replied, "Wait'll you see the party we have when you're one hundred."
That's an exciting thought. Watch for my report on Paul Winchell's one-hundredth birthday party, some time in 2022. Because there's no way in the world I'm going to miss that one.
P.S., Written in 2006: Well, of course, that's not going to happen. Paul Winchell's one-hundredth birthday party, I mean. Paul passed away on June 14, 2005. The great Señor Wences died before him — on April 20, 1999 at the age of 103. Here's a photo of them together at the event I wrote about here…the only time they ever met, so far as I know.
