I must confess, I have sat in a lot of chairs in resorts, hotels, restaurants, private clubs, press boxes, airports, underground rock clubs and sky-high penthouses, but there are two chairs I always single out for special recognition. One is "Old Sparky," the famous now-departed electric chair at Huntsville State Prison in Texas. The other one is the barber chair in the old Dick Clark Productions offices in Burbank, California.
First things first, so those of you reading this column won't misunderstand. I had the "opportunity" to sit in the electric chair at the prison when I toured the facility for a story I was writing about prison life. Sitting in the electric chair with that little cap sitting on my head and holding the socket plug tightly in my hand, (so I wouldn't freak out), I watched through the big glass window as the warden and his staff pulled the switch that literally would have fried me, baby.
It was an experience I'll never forget, but one I'd like to. The scene at Dick's office was a little different, though, I must confess, I found it a little out of the ordinary to sit in a barber chair in a TV producer's office.
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Actually, the barber chair was only one of several "props" back in those days that visitors to Dick's office were treated to when they paid him a visit. He had a whole wall featuring old post office boxes (functional) in his reception lounge. One of his assistants told me Dick's visitors never complained when they waited to see him, because they could fiddle around with the knobs on those old boxes, to see if they would open or not.
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It was sorta fun, checking out the magazines, press releases and brochures about Dick Clark Productions that were very carefully and cleverly placed inside the boxes. I asked Dick if he had ever been a postman, and he said, no, but, frankly, there had been times when he had wished he was.
I must say, in all candor, it doesn't surprise me that Dick is still making news with his many TV specials and other business ventures that include restaurants and corporate promotions. I must also add that, every time I see him on TV out there having a ball in Times Square on his "rocking New Years Eve" celebration, I wonder how he keeps from freezing his butt off. (No doubt, in lieu of the recent tragic events in New York at the World Trade Center, this year's climatic celebration will be a real challenge. Knowing Dick, he'll rise to the occasion).
Way back yonder, longer than I'd like to remember, I met Dick Clark when he was helping the Miss Teenage America pageant get off the ground and I was publishing IN magazine, which I billed, probably inappropriately, as "the world"s first teenage newspaper" written and edited by teenagers. Not long after that, I sold the paper to the Dallas Morning News and tagged along as the publication's editor. This was during the heyday of the Beatles, and as mentor Dick liked to say, "It was a real swinging scene."
While at the News, Air France decided it would be a good idea for me to take a group of teenagers to Europe. I billed them as "The Mod Squad," long before the TV series came out by that name. Anyway, I never would have been able to go to Europe if Dick, Trini Lopez, Paul Peterson (of the Donna Reed Show) and Miss Teenage America hadn't agreed to guest write columns for me.
The European trip was a blast, but when I returned to Dallas, nobody wanted to read my column anymore. They had been spoiled by Dick's journalistic flare and the columns written by our show biz friends.
Later on, while most of America was stunned by the long hair and kooky clothes worn by the Beatles, it was Dick who went out on a limb and recommended me to the publishers of "TEEN magazine in Hollywood, who were looking for a senior editor. We laughed about my "official title" one time, and Dick said, "Well, finally, I'm not the world's oldest teenager."
Suffice it to say, Dick has succeeded in the entertainment business far more than any of us would have ever imagined, even in our wildest dreams. Not that he didn't have the right stuff. He had that and more. Today, he ranks right up there at the top with history's TV trailblazers.
I'm proud of Dick Clark and his outstanding accomplishments. He's truly an icon in the broadcasting industry, but, as far as I'm concerned, his accolades don't stop there. Over the years, Dick has helped a lot of young people – including performers - who, otherwise, might have become hooked on booze and/or drugs and dropped out of life forever.
Every time I go to the barbershop for a haircut, and sit in the barber's chair, I think about Dick Clark, fondly, and smile. But, I always miss seeing the mailboxes and those pretty, classy associates I liked to call "the Clarkettes," who made you feel like you were the most important person - next to Dick Clark, of course - in the whole, wide, wide world.
WOW, I DIDN'T KNOW THAT
Celebrities with Telltale Tattoos
Body tattoos are still the rage with many popular celebrities. For instance:
"Charlie'sAngels" star Drew Barrymore has angels tattooed on her back, a cross on her ankle, a butterfly under her bellybutton and a blue moon on her right foot.
Angelina Jolie has a big, bold cross and a Latin quote tattooed on her taunt tummy. Billy Bob Thornton's name is on her arm.
Chinese characters surround a tattooed heart on "Pretty Woman" Julia Roberts' shoulder. She also has a butterfly on her back.
Swedish star Halle Berry has a tattoo of a swordfish star hiding a flower on her left buttock.
"Buffy" star Sarah Michelle Gellar's back is linked with a tattoo of the Chinese symbol for integrity.
Alyssa Milana has a fairy tattooed under her bellybutton and a chain with a cross on her shoulder.
"Live!" beauty Kelly Ripa has a four-inch flower tattoo on her left ankle.
A fairy tattoo is showcased on the back of songbird Britney Spears and a daisy decorates her foot.
Greg Allman featured a tattoo of a coyote on his forearm.
A flower is tattooed on the small of the back of singer Joan Baez.
Singer Pearl Bailey had a tattoo of a heart on her thigh.
Glenn Campbell wore a tattoo of a dagger on his arm.
Cher has flower designs tattooed on her derriere.
Sean Connery has "Mum & Dad" and "Scotland Forever" tattooed on his forearm.
Peter Fonda claims to have dolphins tattooed on his body, though the whereabouts are not known.
Politician Barry Goldwater had Navajo tattoos on his left hand.
There is a tattoo of a half-moon and a shooting star on ex-Beatle Ringo Starr's arm.
Flip Wilson had a winged number "13" and a cross tattoo.
Melanie Griffith has a yellow pear tattooed on her butt.
Celebrities with Funny Nicknames
Some stars today perform under their real names, though most have "gone Hollywood" in the name department. It's kinda fun, checking out some of the nicknames the stars had when they were young, and how they came by them.
Leggy Nicole Kidman was called "Storky" growing up, because of her height.
Super-model Gisele Bundchen was labeled "Olive Oyl" as a youngster. (Her boyfriend, Leonardo DiCaprio, was given the nickname "Leonardo Retardo.").
Keanu Reeves was known as "The Wall" in school because of his blank stare.
Lara Flynn Boyle was known on campus as "Lara Flame Broiled."
When she was growing up, classmates called Cameron Diaz "Skeleton" because she was so tall and skinny.
Super model Jerry Hall was known as "Tall Hall" in high school because she was so lanky. Sometimes, friends also called her "Stringbean."
Whoopi Goldgerg was born Caryn Johnson. She was called "Whoopi Cushion" as a child because of a severe gas problem.
Celebrities Who Were Wild Childs
President George W. Bush's daughters weren't the first presidential children to "raise hell" and make the supermarket tabloid's gossip columns.
John Quincy Adams' son George was an opium addict, who fathered a child out of wedlock with the family maid.
Hard-drinking Princeton student Alan Arthur, son of Chester A. Arthur, created an international incident by skinny-dipping in a White House fountain with the visiting Prince of Siam.
James Madison's stepson, Payne, was such en embarrassment to the fourth president that he was banished to Europe.
Alice Roosevelt, daughter of Theodore Roosevelt, caused a scandal by smoking in public places long before cigarette smoking became permissible for women. (She also gambled on horse races and smuggled flasks of liquor into White House parties).
Franklin Roosevelt's son, Franklin Jr., was known for wrecking cars and hosting rowdy parties at Harvard and for punching news photographers who tried to take his picture.
Ronald Reagan's daughter, Patti Davis, publicly denounced her father and his policies. (During Reagan's eight years in the White House, Patti revealed she never voted for her father and talked openly about her cocaine addiction, her failed suicide attempt and an affair with a married English teacher when she was 17). In 1994, Patti Davis broke new ground for "wayward presidential children." She posed naked for Playboy.
Celebrities with Other Career Choices
Though, by today's standards, most actors' lives are considered quite glamorous, show business was not always the first career choice with some well known stars, who grew up wanting to do other things than trying to achieve celebrity status:
Before he became an actor, George Clooney tried out with the Cincinnati Reds, but failed to make the final cut.
Scotsman Sean Connery wanted to get his kicks as a soccer star.
Michael J. Fox sez he would like to have been a hockey hero.
If Jennifer Love Hewitt hadn't made her mark in horror movies, she'd have been working as a pediatrician.
Julia Roberts claims she's always wanted to be a veterinarian.
"Ally McBeal's" Lucy Liu always dreamed about being a gun-totin" policewoman. (The closest she came was playing one on "Charlie's Angels').
Bob Hope was once a boxer, fighting under the name of Packy East.
Carol Burnett was a home economics major in high school.
Consumer advocate Ralph Nader was a cook in the U.S. Army.
Margaret Hamilton, the Wicked Witch of the West in "The Wizard of Oz," was once a kindergarten teacher.
Edward Albee worked as a Western Union messenger and as an advertising copywriter before he found fame as a playwright.
Before Eddie Arnold became known as a singer, he was an ambulance and hearse driver.
Actor Warren Beatty was once a piano bar player, a bricklayer's helper, a rat-catcher and a "sandhog" on the Lincoln Tunnel construction.
Tony Bennett was a singing waiter.
Before he became a TV star, Bill Cosby was a shoe salesman.
Though better known as James Bond, actor Sean Connery worked as a bricklayer, a coffin polisher, theater usher, milk delivery man and a model. He was also a Royal Navy sailor.
Actor John Barrymore was a cartoonist.
Newsman John Chancellor was a hospital orderly, a carpenter's assistant, and a trailer truck parker.
Before she became rich and famous, singer-actress Barbra Streisand worked as a switchboard operator.
Clint Walker once was a deputy sheriff in Las Vegas.
Charlton Heston was once a nude model for the Art Student League of New York. (He also worked as a coffin polisher, a brick layer and a milkman).
Elvis Presley was a truck driver before he became a singing star.
Tom Hanks was once employed as a hotel bellhop.
Madonna was a waitress before she became the Material Girl.
Ronald Reagan was once a lifeguard.
Glenn Ford was a bus driver.
John Wayne was once a studio prop man and a pro football player.
James Cagney was once a dancer in a female impersonator's nightclub-cabaret act.
Rock Hudson worked as a postman and a truck driver.
Walter Matthau was a boxing instructor.
Oliver Reed was a strip club bouncer.
Rudolph Valentino was a gardener, gigolo and a dishwasher.
Rita Hayworth was a Spanish dancer performing in Mexican nightclubs.
Clint Eastwood was an Army swimming instructor.
Kirk Douglas was a parking lot attendant and professional wrestler.
Michael Douglas once pumped gas at a Texaco station in Hollywood.
Singer Glenn Campbell worked as a cotton picker.
Comedienne and TV star Carol Burnett was a hatcheck girl.
Actor Richard Boone was a truck driver and a roustabout.
CELEBRITY FAMOUS FIRSTS
Barry Nelson was the first actor to play James Bond. He played the fictional spy in a television broadcast of "Casino Royale" in 1951.
Elizabeth Taylor was the first Hollywood star to receive one million dollars for a single film, the disastrous "Cleopatra" in 1963.
Hedy Lamarr was the first person to appear nude on screen.
Johnny Carson's first guests on the "Tonight Show," Oct. 2, 1962, were Mel Brooks, Tony Bennett, Joan Crawford, Groucho Marx and Rudy Vallee.
Marianne Faithful was the first actress to utter "the F---word" in a movie in "I'll Never Forget Whatsisname" in 1966.
The first movie fight was between Tom Farnum and Tom Santschi in the 1914 version of Rex Beach's "The Spoilers."
The first words Greta Garbo spoke on screen were: "Gif me a viskey, ginger ale on the side, and don't be stingy, baby" in "Anna Chjristie."
Sir Alec Guinness was the first British actor to become a dollar millionaire for his role in "Star wars." He was on a two-and-a-half percent of the film's gross.
The first star to produce her own film was Helen Gardner.
Lauren Bacall's first words on screen were: "Have you got a light" in "To Have and Have Not," (1944).
Laurence Olivier became the first actor to be made a Life Peer in 1970.
Johnny Carson's first stage appearance was as a bumblebee in a grammar school health pageant. His first professional appearance was as a magician ("the Great Carsoni") when he was 13-years-old. (He was paid $3 to perform at the Norfolk, Nebraska Rotary Club).
James Dean's first professional acting job was in a Coca-Cola commercial in the early 1950s. The action took place at a merry-go-round where Dean handed out Cokes to people on wooden the horses.
The first guests on the Ed Sullivan television show, first broadcast June 30, 1948 were: Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, (comedy team), Eugene List, (pianist), John Kokoman, (singing New York fireman), Kathryn Lee, (ballerina), Monica Lewis, (singer), Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein, (composer and lyricist), Lee Goodman and Jim Kirkwood, (comedy team), Ruby Goldstein, (fight referee), plus six June Taylor dancers, ("The Toastettes") and a 14-man orchestra, led by conductor Ray Bloch.
In Raul Julia's first-grade stage debut, he played the part of the devil in a play written by American nuns who ran the school.
In his first American movie, "The Case of the Curious Bride," Errol Flynn played a corpse laid out on a marble slab.
David Hartman made his first Broadway debut in the original Broadway production of "Hello Dolly!" He played the role of Rudolph, the German headwaiter.
Charles Bronson won his first movie role in "You're in the Navy Now" because of his unusual ability to belch on cue.
Lillian Gish starred in "The Birth of a Nation," the first movie to be screened at the White House, in 1915.
Dirk Bogarde was, reportedly, the first major screen star to accept the part of a homosexual in the first film ever to deal mainly with the subject, "Victim," in 1961.
Carol Burnett's first public performance was on a television show, in which she played a ventriloquist's dummy's girlfriend.
In 1900, Maurice Chevalier made his professional debut, at the age of 12, singing obscene songs to French café audiences of pimps and prostitutes.
Sophia Loren made her first screen debut as one of 10,000 slave girls in the 1951 version of "Quo Vadis'"
Clint Eastwood's first film debut was as a laboratory assistant (who carried a rat in his pocket) in the three-dimensional film "Revenge of the Creature from the Black Lagoon."
Lee Remick's first film role was as a drum majorette in the 1957 film "A Face in the Crowd."
The first black Academy Award winner was Hattie McDaniel, who played Mammy in "Gone With the Wind" in 1939. (It would be 24 years before another black performer won an Oscar – Sidney Poitier for "Lilies of the Field" in 1963).
The first and only X-rated film to ever win an Oscar for Best Picture was "Midnight Cowboy," starring Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight in 1969. (The rating was later changed to an "R").
Charlie McCarthY, Edgar Bergan's dummy – received the first and only wooden Oscar in the history of the Academy Awards for his performance in "The Goldwyn Follies" in 1938.
The first screen kiss came in the film "The Widow Jones," in 1896. It was described by a reviewer at the time as being "terribly disgusting." (The first French kiss in a Hollywood film occurred in "Splendor in the Grass" in 1960 between Natalie Wood and Warren Beatty.
Marilyn Monroe appeared on the first cover of Playboy.
One of the first jobs Jack Nicholson had in the film industry was sorting fan mail for the cartoon characters Tom and Jerry.
Barbra Streisand's first performance was as a chocolate chip cookie.
THE CELEBRITY NAME TO FAME GAME
Celebrities today are often better known by their show biz names than they are the ones on their birth certificates. In the competitive entertainment industry, changing one's name is as American as apple pie or the fourth of July.
Names are shortened or "Americanized" for Hollywood "marquee value;" numerologists often suggest spelling changes; a woman adopts the maiden name of her mother, or, like most married women, she adopts her husband's last name; immigration officials arbitrarily change names – the reasons are varied.
Names like Itzkowitz, Kubelsky, Sarkesian and Beedle are the real names of some very famous people. Jewish, Russian, Polish and German names abound, names like Kominski, Knopka and Heimberger. Here are the real names of some of today's celebrities:
Kareem Abdul Jabbar (Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor, Jr).
Bella Anzug (Bella Savitzky)
Edie Adams (Elizabeth Edith Enke)
Joey Adams (Joseph Abramowitz)
Nick Adams (Nicholas Adamshock)
Anouk Aimee (Francoise Sorya)
Eddie Albert (Edward Albert Heimberger)
Robert Alda (Alphonso D'Abruzza)
Muhammad Ali (Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr).
Fred Allen (John F. Sullivan)
Celebrities often choose wacky reasons for selecting their show biz professional names. For instance:
Mariel Hemingway was named after a bay in Cuba.
Conway Twitty created his stage name by combining the names of towns in Arkansas and Texas.
Karl Malden's original Christian name was Malden and Woody Allen's was Allen.
In his early vaudeville days, George Burns worked under the names Willie Delight, Captain Belts and Buddy Links.
Shirley MacLaine was named Shirley after Shirley Temple.
The Marx Brothers all took their Christian names from a comic strip called "Mager"s Monks.'
Stewart Granger's real name was James.
Carole Lombard's real name was Carol Jane Peters. The Lombard name came from a shop sign saying Lombardi Pharmacy, which she spotted one day while sipping coffee in New York.
Morgan Fairchild chose "Morgan" as her first stage name because she liked the movie "Morgan," starring Vanessa Redgrave. It also was the name of her dog. "Fairchild" was selected because it sounded regal.
When Cloris Leachman was once asked by a reporter if that was her real name, she replied, "Of course it's my real name. Would anyone in their right mind ever change their name to Cloris Leachman'"
CELEBRITY FLASHBACK
What Ever Happened to Bebe Daniels'
Early screen star Bebe Daniels played silent roles in early silent films and for several stock companies in Los Angeles. Before she ever made an appearance in a feature film, Bebe made over 200 shorts with comedians Harold Lloyd and Snub. While dining one night with Lloyd, Cecil B. DeMille spotted Bebe and offered her a part in "Male and Female" in 1919.
The actress was arrested for speeding and spent 10 days in jail in 1921. Her cell had a Persian rug on the floor, her meals were catered by a well-known restaurant and her Stutz was parked outside. Musicians serenaded her, and lots of stars in Hollywood came to visit her. (Among the 792 who signed her guest book were Jesse Lasky, Jack Pickford, Eddie Sutherland and Priscilla Dean). As soon as she was released from jail, Bebe made a picture ("The Speed Girl") based on her experience.
Critics claimed Bebe was probably the most versatile star in silent films. Paramount Pictures put her in westerns, melodramas, comedies, costume epics and flapper stories. At one time, her studio felt she could not make a successful "talkie." Bebe bought out her contract and went to RKO, where she not only talked, but sang in one of the most successful musicals in musical history.
According to Richard Lamparski, known fondly in show biz circles as "the nostalgia maven," Bebe was probably the most eligible bachelor girl in Hollywood and dated such big shots as boxer Jack Dempsey and tennis star Bill Tilden.
In 1930, Bebe married Ben Lyon. They toured the country in plays in the thirties and had a three-week engagement at the Palladium in London. Later they toured the British Isles until Ben became the head of the English talent office for 20th century Fox.
After WWII broke out, the Lyons stayed on in London entertaining servicemen and civilians throughout the Blitz. In 1946, they returned to Hollywood, but, after a short time, decided they were "true Londoners," and moved back.
A series of strokes, which began in 1963, made Bebe a semi-invalid during the last years of her life. Until the day she died, March 16, 1971, Ben and Bebe were considered by those who knew them well as a happily married couple,who were admired throughout the world.
CELEBRITY FOOTNOTE
Leave it to Mae West to have the last word: "When women go wrong, men go right after them."
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