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Post by Admin on Dec 21, 2022 10:30:36 GMT -5
A few excerpts from the book Heartland by Mort Sahl
Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich - hard cover, 1976
from page 6
I was attending USC under the GI bill. It was a passive campus, except for the incident after the war when Helen Gahagan Douglas had come there during her race for the Senate and some of the supporters of her opponent, Richard Nixon, had spontaneously driven by in a truck, called her a "communist," and dramatized their passion by dousing her with red paint. Later, over coffee in the Student Union, one of these five activists on a campus of twenty-eight thousand told me he had been hired for this specific purpose by Murray Chotiner, who was Nixon's campaign architect and who cropped up later at the White House and would die, ostensibly of coronary thrombosis, on the sidewalk in front of Teddy Kennedy's home. We see here, for the first time, a thread of what is to become an elaborate embroidery.
from page 17
The Smothers Brothers were across the street at the Purple Onion and were the second act. One night the Smothers Brothers got laryngitis and they called me to tell me about it. I went over to do their shows. I had my shows to do and their shows. So I did fifteen minutes, then went across the street and did their show. I came back and did my show, and then I did their show, etc. At that time, North Beach was a place for a lot of conventions in San Francisco. You know, four or five drunken guys and their wives walking around with those badges that say, THE NATIONAL PAINT AND CONCRETE FOUNDATION. HOWDY, I’M FRED. One night I was running back to the hungry i to do my third show and a couple of drunken guys lurched toward me, and one guy said, "Hey, kid, there's a guy at the other club using all your material."
from pages 76 & 77
Actors know about spontaneous feelings. When they have to improvise, the guys slap girls and the girls cry. And I knew all about acting classes. At one time Newman said I had to study because he had studied at the Actors Studio, and Joanne had studied with Sandy Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse. So Meisner came to Hollywood and set up a class at Twentieth Century Fox. Joanne enrolled in the class. That was reverse snobbery. You get a million and a half dollars per picture, but you go to class and you return to New York and you do plays in dirty theaters if possible. So she asked me to be her partner in class. We enrolled in Meisner's class. It was really something. The first thing you had to do was wind watches or open doors. It's called an exercise with inanimate objects. And I worked with a lot of inanimate objects, but space does not permit my listing all those actors. Meisner threw me out of the class. He said, "You've already developed your character." It's the same as Gregory Peck playing himself or Audrey Hepburn playing herself. He said he didn't want to tamper with it because it's been successful on the stage. He said he could teach me not to verbalize as much, but he didn't want to alter it. He also threw Dennis Hopper out of the class once, because of a scene centered on a plane leaving an island with only ten seats, for which twenty passengers are competing. How do you, improvising, convince them that you have to get on? So, Dennis went over and pounded on the door and said, "I've gotta get on. I've gotta get on." And they asked why and he said, "Because I'm the pilot." He was thrown out for being facetious. Cloris Leachman told me once that she was in the Actors Studio in New York and a guy was doing a sensory exercise of peeling a banana. And he was so intense that she literally could smell the banana. She thought it was a fantastic experience until she turned around and saw the guy behind her eating a banana, watching the same scene.
from pages 80 - 82
Kennedy came to Los Angeles to ask for the California delegation votes. I was shooting the interiors for the movie at Columbia. The night before, I had been at La Scala with Dyan Cannon, eating dinner. A car drove up, a black Ghia (Sinatra bought it with the proviso that the dealer would not sell another black one in the continental United States). Sinatra, who had vowed he'd never come into La Scala (one of his many life decisions), came inside with Dean Martin, drew up a table. "Mort, I need your help. I want you to write some material for me. I'm going to be working with Jack Kennedy and I'd really appreciate it." And I took it on with all the enthusiasm of Conrak teaching a class of illiterates. So I started writing his material along with Jack's. At the banquet at the Beverly Hilton with Governor Brown and Senator Kennedy, where I was the emcee, I had to make sure I didn't duplicate the same jokes I had given Kennedy and Sinatra. The banquet was at 8:30, and James Darren and I were shooting a scene from the movie in which we're in a machine-gun nest in Korea and he's got a trained frog and he wants it to jump and it won't jump. We shot the scene thirty-six times. And it's getting to be 9:15. And I said, "I've got to go," And the director, Hal Bartlett, said, "It isn't right, it isn't right." And finally he said to me, "Whether the scene is right is kind of immaterial, as I happen to be on the other side; I'm a Republican." So then I went to the dinner. It was the first time I met Kennedy, standing there with those laser-beam blue eyes, looking very quizzical. He was curious about me, my age, my political posture. Shook hands, told me he appreciated what I was doing, and asked, "Have you got any more one-liners? This looks like a rough crowd." Bobby just sat on the sidelines and waited. I suppose that even though he was emotionally as loyal as he was to his brother, he was waiting his turn. In the crevices of his mind he was a lot like Hamlet. He must have wondered why it was his lot in life to break the doors down for this guy and to cut all the corners and be an outlaw of sorts and then be rewarded by people saying, "Jack, you're great, but I can't stand that rat who works for you." There had to be a jealousy—which I thought he contained admirably. Afterward, we went to Kennedy's plane, parked at L.A. International Airport. He was on his way to Palm Springs with Sinatra and he called me to join him on the plane. When I got aboard he asked me to sit up front. The Senator said, "Where was Paul Ziffren four years ago?" I said, "I guess with Stevenson." He said, "Of course, a logical position," and I said, "How do you arrive at a logical position?" and he said, "You just think in terms of survival." Everybody was drinking Bloody Marys. Then Kennedy put his finger to his forehead, pensively, and he said, "Tell me, why do you like Castro?" He never let his ego stand in the way of his curiosity. I told him of my admiration for Castro and that a revolutionary, I thought, appealed to all Americans—well, not quite all, for Americans view South American revolutionaries as a joke, the Russian revolutionaries as a horror, and the American revolutionaries as heroes. Kennedy asked me about a joke I told on television about him. He was grilling me, knowing the answers, but insisting on my telling them to him literally. I had said on TV that his father had said, "I'm putting you on an allowance. You're not allowed one more cent than you need to buy a landslide." "What does that mean?" Kennedy asked, relentlessly. I told him it meant his father was rich, for one thing. "How much do you think he has?" he asked. So I made a snap decision and said, "Four hundred million." He looked at me as if I were retarded and asked if I knew how much the Rockefeller brothers were worth. "Liquid," he said, "about ten billion." Then he looked at me and said, "Now, that's money!"
from pages 85 & 86
At the second convention, 1960, Kennedy was nominated and now it fell to the convention to choose a Vice President. I was at the Biltmore Hotel, where Sam Rayburn told Johnson, "You're no son of mine if you accept second place. You have to go all the way." Johnson was visited by H. L. Hunt, which has since been documented but certainly wasn't underlined by them at the time. Bobby went downstairs reluctantly, on the orders of his father and Jack, to offer the job to Johnson. And Johnson accepted. And Rayburn walked in and said, "You're not even a man." And Johnson threw himself across the bed and was racked by sobs. Bobby kept saying to Jack, "Take Johnson: you will only lose every labor vote, every Northern city vote, every Jew and Negro in every metropolitan city." Bobby had promised the Vice Presidency to nine people that I knew of. Bobby was uncomfortable in the whole Hollywood milieu. Jack was always curious about people in the arts and would have been a movie producer had he lived to enjoy his retirement.
from pages 87 - 90
I'll tell you about the time I met Nixon. I had gone into La Scala with Paul Newman. Nixon had just failed in his bid for the governorship of California and was sitting there with his wife and a contractor. The guy had built a stadium some miles away, which was, at the time, I think, collapsing because the concrete was diluted. So Newman said to me, "Why don't you buy him a drink? You've mocked him so much, why don't you meet him?" So I sent Nixon a note and I said I'd like to buy him a drink. He sent me back a note saying, "I'll have wine with you, if you'll join us." That's how I verified that it was really Nixon, it wasn't astigmatism. Because he couldn't just have a drink; he had to make a deal. I went over to the table and I introduced myself and sat down. The wine steward came over and asked what Nixon had ordered to eat. Nixon said cottage cheese and meat loaf. The wine steward asked what wine he would like to go with that. Nixon said, "What would you recommend?" I thought it was a toss-up between Ripple and Thunderbird, but the guy said, "Well, Mr. Nixon, how about the Rothschild?" Nixon said, "No, we're going to have an American wine." He was very adamant. The wine steward blanched because he saw his money going out the window. He said, "What year?" Nixon said, "This year." So the guy was really dying now. And Nixon said to him, "Why don't you bring it right up with dinner?" So, we had the wine, and when the dinner was over, he said, "Don't forget to keep a candle under my ass, and under Kennedy's too. It's good for America. You're the Will Rogers of our time." So I said, "How do I know you haven't said that to Bob Hope?" And then the check came, and I grabbed it. Women don't know about that. That's the last test of virility left. Because the frontiers are gone. Alaska's gone, and you can't outdraw people in frontier towns. That's all there is left. I reached for the check, and Nixon reached for it too. It was a battle of wits. I finally got it. I paid with Diners Club. The captain stamped the card, and, you know, it has on it the tab, and gratuities, and tax, and FICA, and W-S, and withholding, and United Nations payments, and deficits, and devaluation of the dollar, and on the back you have to write down whether it is a deductible dinner. So, as a test of the law, I wrote that it was a business dinner and my guests were Mr. and Mrs. Richard M. Nixon. It asked, "Did you discuss specific business?" And I said, "Yes, we discussed excessive taxation and the possible overthrow of the United States Government." I later mailed that receipt in with my copy of my IRS return and wondered whether the computers would jam up at the audit center for the Internal Revenue Service in Westport, Connecticut. Kennedy was elected by one-tenth of 1 percent of the vote, counting Texas and Cook County. And then the rewards began to be handed out. Adlai Stevenson left his law firm to become ambassador to the United Nations. William McCormick Blair left Stevenson's law firm to become ambassador to Denmark. Bill Rivkin became ambassador to Luxembourg. Willard Wirtz, same law office, became Secretary of Labor, Under-Secretary first. Newton Minow became head of the FCC. So you see, virtue is not its own reward. Everybody had to get something, although they said they were all doing it altruistically. Sinatra got to plan the Gala. They had a big dinner and show in the Armory in Washington to celebrate the victory, which I was not invited to. My manager, Milt Ebbins, was on his way to Washington with Lawford for the Gala, Ebbins carrying Frank Sinatra's golf clubs. They all went to Washington. Nobody ever said thank you to me. Before Jack became President, we were having our picture taken together, which he was going to autograph, and the photographer asked me to wave my finger in what he said was a typical Mort Sahl gesture, you know. Right, and the President refused to sign the picture. He said, "See anything wrong with this picture?" And I said, "No, what?" And he said, "Shouldn't you be listening to me?"
So the Kennedys started ruling and I started attacking them. It was reported to me by Ebbins that my detrimental humor had gotten back to the President, and his intimates had referred to me as "that bastard," and the President agreed but said, "He's a smart bastard." He always wanted to know what the enemy was thinking. America had a new optimism. People today say it was a little more than optimism, and that we don't know how the President would have worked out—he didn't live long enough. Nowadays we find that optimism is extremely tangible, now that we know what it's like to live without any. One night he came into the Crescendo and I had just had dinner with Marilyn Monroe. She was at odds with herself and didn't know what to do. So I said, "Well, listen, you were married to Joe DiMaggio and Arthur Miller. I think the only thing left now is to marry Adlai Stevenson." And she laughed. I came down to the club that night. Kennedy was in the audience in the back booth. And I said, "I have a bulletin. Marilyn Monroe is going to marry Adlai Stevenson. Now, Kennedy can be jealous of him twice." And I heard a fist come down on the table and a voice in New England dialect saying, "God damn it." Even though I knew Marilyn for a long time, she forgot. It was John Huston's birthday when they were filming The Misfits with Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe in Reno, and they asked me to come up and entertain at a birthday party for Huston. And I flew up there and Huston was drunk, and he introduced me to Marilyn, whom I'd known for years. And she was drunk, and she took my hand and put it right on her breast and she said, "Don't be afraid, Mr. Sahl." And I said, "I'm not afraid." And she said, "How wrong you are. We're all afraid."
from pages 97 & 98
Jack Valenti and I once were on The Dick Cavett Show together. I first encountered Cavett, by the way, when he was a junior writer on The Tonight Show. Cavett worked in a few nightclubs, and I got him a job on The Jerry Lewis Show as a writer. (When he came to California, he was terribly alone. He was married to an actress, which is the same as being alone. The night of a Jerry Lewis premiere show, I was with Yvonne Craig, who later, after I educated her, went to work on Batman, which shows that some people are above adult education. She had these long white gloves that went over the elbow, and Cavett was so busy watching the show being screened that while eating Baked Alaska, instead of reaching for his napkin, he took her gloves and wiped his mouth.) When Jack Valenti and I were on Cavett's show, I spoke about the CIA. During the commercial, Jack leaned over to me and said, "Mort, President Johnson's not responsible. He really doesn't know what those bastards are doing." That was the first admission I had by anyone in the government that they were doing anything. Cavett would say things to me like "I can't bring myself to believe that."
from pages 116 - 119
Arriving in New Orleans, I got into a cab and said to the cabbie, "4600 Owens Boulevard." "That's Jim Garrison's house! I'll let you off on the corner. I don't want to get shot. Somebody says there's a machine gun pointed at his door." "What do you think of this thing Garrison's got?" The driver said, "I believe those bastards in Washington are capable of anything—and a lot worse." I walked to the door and a man emerged, all six foot seven inches of him, wearing a bathrobe. I said, "I'm Mort Sahl, and I came down here to shake your hand." Garrison said, "I hope you're available to do a lot more than that." Later, he took me into a wine cellar at the Royal Orleans Hotel and opened up the Manila envelope that was the beginning of a compilation of a four-year investigation. It contained documents on Pentagon and Central Intelligence Agency involvement in the events surrounding the Kennedy assassination. Who was involved? I recall at a press conference that Garrison spoke of "the right wing," and a reporter said, "But you've also charged the CIA and others." Garrison's reply still holds. "These are not mutually exclusive groups. Usually a conspiracy involves more than one person." That was the first time that I knew more than I would like to know. Yet, you can't know less than you know. I wanted to work for Garrison, so I got my credentials and a desk in the D.A.'s office, took an apartment in New Orleans, and went out to do college concerts when I needed money to buy groceries and pay the rent. Later, I went to New York and onto The Tonight Show. I met with Rudy Tellez, the producer, and said to him, "Rudy, I don't want to throw you any curves. What's verboten on this show?" I've always done that, although the networks like to characterize me as an outlaw, because it justifies capital punishment. Rudy said, "Don't mention Sarnoff. It's the only 'No.'" I said, "Even if I talk about the Warren Commission, it's OK?" "Yes, if you don't editorialize and you read it straight." So I agreed. We went on the air that night. I was on the panel and Carson said to me, "What're you doing now?" I told him I lived in New Orleans part of the time. When I mentioned that I knew Garrison, Carson started to laugh. He said, "You don't put any faith in that, do you?" And I answered, "Yes, I put every faith in it. He's the most important man in America." Carson said, "Look at what the press said and everything." I told him that the press was doctored. That they wanted to stop him. "Why do they want to stop him?" I continued. "Because he has the truth. There has been a great suppression of the truth in this case. If he's a crackpot, why not let him expose himself?" Carson said, "One week from tonight." "You've got it," I said. We went off the air. Carson's chest was swelled; he was so happy to give people their rights, piecemeal. Off the air, Carson said, "Listen, I don't want this thing to become a circus." David Merrick—he looks like the leading man in a dirty movie—had been on the program and he said, "Yeah, we don't want to give a crackpot a lot of publicity." And Stan Irwin said, "Yeah, we don't want to give this guy a lot of mileage." I talked them all out of canceling the promised show and took off for New Orleans that night. I got Garrison and told him we'd start rehearsing. "I'll make up three-by-five index cards. I'll play Carson and you be you." ("Oh," Carson had said to me, "we'll have to have someone on from the government, to give equal time. The network is very good on equal time.") You may recall that one of the two missing persons in the Clay Shaw trial was Gordon Novell, a former CIA agent. He was one of the equal-timers. The men who wrote the white papers against Garrison—NBC produced two of them-called the first one "The Trial of Jim Garrison." Apparently, they forgot who killed the President. The researchers were headed by Walter Sheridan, who had been a Justice Department lawyer hot after Hoffa, under Bobby Kennedy's direction. For him to have become a newsman, as Bill Stout at CBS told me, was pretty odd—"Pretty odd for NBC to bring in a house detective and call him a reporter." Odd, indeed. When Gordon Novell fled New Orleans, two girls who had rented his apartment discovered a note embedded under a panel in which Novell indicated his intention to return to the CIA, which he felt was his destiny anyway. I started to brief Garrison for the Carson show. He asked me, "Who do you think they'll have on from the Warren Commission?" I said nobody. I said that because I was on the air in California for fifty-eight weeks talking about the Kennedy assassination and had offered the air to the Warren Commission members and counsel. Nobody took me up on it. Anybody who has read the whole Warren Report cannot defend it. So I said, "You watch and see if they don't call and say there will be nobody." I rehearsed with Garrison one whole week, and when he went on the air, I had foreseen every question Carson would ask except one. The day before air, I heard from Carson. "Who's going to debate Jim?" I asked him. "I will," he said. "I holed up one Saturday afternoon and read the Warren Report." That is interesting, because it took me twenty-seven months to read the Report. Garrison went to New York. Ironically, the man who was thought to be a big threat to the system upped Carson's audience from nine million to fourteen million—the highest rating he'd ever had. Garrison did the entire ninety minutes alone. Carson interrupted Garrison seventeen times in the first twenty-five minutes. Garrison produced a photograph of eleven men being caught by the Dallas Police, arrested and handcuffed, in the freight yards. And Garrison asked Carson to identify the "lone assassin." Johnny replied that his cameras could not pick up glossies. At one point Carson asked, "Jim, why would Lyndon Johnson cover this up?" Garrison said, "I don't know why, Johnny; why don't you ask him?" The audience warmed to Garrison. The next day in New Orleans, Garrison received two thousand telegrams by nine in the morning from various D.A.s around the country. People were impressed by Carson's nervous antagonism and in effect said, "Garrison must have something, judging from the way he was continually interrupted." It became so bad that NBC sent out thousands of form letters saying that the Johnny seen on TV that night was not the Johnny we all know and love—that he had to play the devil's advocate because that makes for a better program. When they apologized for him, Carson became furious and said that Garrison would never be on the air again and I would never be on the air again.
from pages 120 & 121
Then we subpoenaed Marina Oswald. I recall she was walking down the street with her new husband, Mr. Porter, who looked not so much like a husband as he did a Secret Service man following, or escorting, her. She got up in the Grand Jury room and looked very glassy-eyed. Garrison asked if there were something wrong. Her husband said, "Well, she was raised in Soviet Russia and that's a totalitarian country." Garrison said, "Well, if she's had a rehearsal she should be perfectly acclimated to living in the United States under this administration." (Garrison often referred to Washington as "The Fourth Reich.") Jim Garrison was in a position to become governor of Louisiana or the next senator. He was the most influential Democrat in Louisiana, and he had political friends in other parts of the South. He blew all that. Nowadays people say that he did what he did for political aggrandizement or that he pursued the Shaw case for political ambition. The fact is that the best way in the world to advance yourself in politics is to not attack the federal government. But Jim is an honest man, and he knew no other way to express himself. At the age of fifty-three, Jim Garrison is out of a job, has less than $5,000 in the bank, an ex-wife and five kids to support, a Volkswagen his wife drives, and a lot of seven-year-old shirts from Brooks Brothers. But he has himself, unmortgaged, and that's more than I can say for some of the other people I've listed here.
from pages 122 & 123
Shaw's arrest was interesting. Garrison had a witness named Perry Russo, who said he had been at a party at David Ferry's house with Clay Shaw and Lee Harvey Oswald. Shaw on that occasion discussed how one could use a triangulation of fire to murder the President in a car caravan. Russo was the witness to this. Now, we brought Shaw in, and Garrison said to him as he approached his desk, "I charge you with conspiracy to murder John F. Kennedy." Perspiration broke out on Shaw's upper lip. He said, "I'd like to go home and get some of my things." To Garrison, that meant hide some things. So Garrison wanted to go over and search the house. He said, "I think you'd better go downstairs and be booked and have bail set." When he went downstairs, the desk sergeant said, "Is this your name?" Shaw said, "Sure." "Any aliases?" "Clay Bertrand," Shaw said. "Bertrand" is of course derived from the Marquis de Sade, whose inclinations Shaw was more than casually acquainted with as a life style. During the trial he claimed that he never used the pseudonym Clay Bertrand as the name of the man who hired Dean Andrews to defend Oswald. The significance was that Garrison was certain that Shaw was Bertrand, whereas the "NBC White Paper" group produced a bartender who claimed to use the same name. The D.A.'s investigators went to Shaw's apartment while he was being booked. They found a black hood, an executioner's whip, and wooden shoes, which Shaw said he used for the Mardi Gras—curious, since the shoes had obviously never touched anything but a rug. So they went to trial. Shaw was acquitted because he said he didn't know Oswald, although Fred Liemans, the proprietor of a steam bath in New Orleans, said that they used to come to the baths and disappear together for hours at a time. Liemans was approached by a government agency which urged him not to continue to give state's evidence. It sounded, from his story, like the Internal Revenue Service.
from pages 146 & 147
I learned from William O. Douglas, who in turn learned it from Thomas Jefferson, that the government is to be suspected, that the less government the better, that the police do not need more power. What Warren did all the years he sat on the court with Douglas was to sense what was needed for justice's sake and then ask Douglas to document it constitutionally. Douglas struck a fine balance between the emotion of the times and the equity of all times. That was his humanity. At times I conceived of his standing in Oregon at one end of the country, Fulbright at the other end, holding up the tent for all the rest of us. Douglas said the most dangerous thing was to be alive. He said "the alive have the most to lose," and he wasn't speaking of life in physical terms only. He came to see me in New York in 1974. It was a heavy conversation. I am going to reveal it because you are to be trusted with what's important to yourself. He came to a New York nightclub. I had sent invitations to the opening in the form of Watergate subpoenas. Douglas walked in and the nightclub captain mistook him for Casey Stengel. I said, "Mr. Justice, I'm surprised to see you." "No," he said, "you're just surprised that anyone in the government will obey a subpoena." He told me that I must bend every effort to look into the fact that the CIA has a former telephone company executive administering its funds for a dollar a year and that one of the things he knows about is that other agencies' funds can be diverted into the CIA. We talked about other things having to do with the CIA and he said, "You've got to do it, Mort." I look up, amazed. He said, "There isn't anybody else." Now, I ask you, fellow Americans, are you worried now?
from pages 148 & 149
In Washington one time, David Brinkley, who is an old friend of mine, invited me to dinner. Bobby Kennedy was there with Ethel and Bob McNamara. My wife was Robert Kennedy's dinner partner, and McNamara was mine. We talked a lot about the TFX, the F-11, and Barry Goldwater. Evans of Evans and Novak was on one side of my wife and Kennedy was on the other. And the conversation was so innocuous that it had to be an effort. Weather was a recurrent topic, and no one ever took a position on it. I had to leave at eleven o'clock to do a show, and my wife reported that after I left, Kennedy, who continually made pyramids of paper napkins and looked like a man really eaten around the edges, said to her, "Mort said he wrote for my brother. Is that true?" Of course, he knew it was true. Then he said, "Why was he fired from that program in Los Angeles?" Well, I was fired for discussing the assassination of his brother. And it was implicit that if he knew I had a program in California, three thousand miles away, he'd know why. And they continued to pump her for information. Later, two personal friends of Robert Kennedy, one of whom had been his roommate in college, at the request of the Kennedy family, got in touch with Jim Garrison and attended the preliminary hearing of Clay Shaw. They said that Bobby would wait until he was in a position to be relatively assured of the Presidency and then would get deeper into the case and get the guys who killed Jack. Guys. They used the plural. Garrison said to me later he'll be dead if he wins the California primary. I don't know if Robert Kennedy would have made a choice to listen to a nightclub comedian and a Southern district attorney instead of his brain trust. He never got the opportunity to make that choice. When I hear people talk of the Irish Mafia and the Boston dealers in pragmatism, I wonder how they found their way into Arlington cemetery. I am alive. I've had a couple of strange car accidents; my back has been broken twice. There have been several attempts made on Garrison's life, but he's intact as far as I know. And our minds are intact. But Jack and Bobby are in Arlington cemetery with the everlasting flame. Is that pragmatism?
from pages 153 - 155
So, I beg you. Join the battle for your own sake. Give our existence meaning. Lack of purpose is the worst: it's the insanity with no meaning. I made a million dollars a year. I emceed the Academy Awards. Then I made just about nothing a year. And I ate coffee and donuts with Jim Garrison. But I felt comradeship. I felt the contribution when I opened Garrison's eyes to the fact that corruption didn't start with Jack Kennedy's murder. It started with the Cold War gambit. With the reversing and the stripping of gears after Franklin D. Roosevelt. The Marshall Plan. Point Four. The Loyalty Oath. The Defense Department. The Central Intelligence Agency. The ringing of the Soviet Union with missiles. The beginning of a twenty-five-year drunk that ended with people hoping for a merciful Defense Department, and with Ted Kennedy as a hostage. Jack Anderson reported in his column that Frank Sturgis, one of those burglars indicted in the McGovern headquarters break-in, was a Cuban adventurer who was idealistic about Cuba but always getting into trouble. For instance, continued Anderson, there was even a "crazy rumor" that he was involved in Dealey Plaza and the assassination of President Kennedy. No one checked with Garrison to see if any of those people had been subpoenaed by him but had been denied extradition to the Orleans Parish during the Clay Shaw trial in 1966 and 1967. Jack Anderson reported that Ehrlichman and Colson had talked to a sound expert at the CIA who said he could erase the tapes even if they were in another building, through sophisticated equipment. His name: Gordon Novell. Why did no one in the press check the rumor that E. Howard Hunt had left the country after leaving Dealey Plaza on the day President Kennedy was killed? Why did no one check the correlation between E. Howard Hunt's sending 240 falsified State Department cables attributing the death of Diem to John Kennedy with E. Howard Hunt's trip to Chappaquiddick; E. Howard Hunt's being chief of station at the American Embassy at Mexico City when Oswald went there before Dallas; as well as the aborted plan to break into Bremer's apartment in Milwaukee to plant a diary explaining Bremer's need to shoot Wallace? These men had worked at the CIA for twenty-five years. Is anyone naive enough to think that such men sat there like career firemen waiting for the bell to ring? What kind of house calls did they make in those twenty-five years to advance their expertise? What did Gordon Liddy mean when he said he'd do anything for Nixon? Tell him to assassinate someone, and he'd do it on any street corner. Jack Anderson repeated that Jeb Magruder told Gordon Liddy that they'd have to get rid of Anderson, which meant silence him or throw him off the track. Liddy organized the Cuban assassination team to get rid of him. In 1971 and 1972 all avenues were cut off to me except the colleges. I must have played five hundred. All those students! All that travel! All that hair! After a show at Niagara Falls Community College, there was a reception hosted by a faculty adviser who won Godzilla on The Dating Game. They served coffee and cookies—spiked with acid. I received a call advising me my mother had had multiple strokes in L.A., and since I had just been given a car, I started driving. I lost spatial perception first. Headlights appeared to be motorcycles converging from 180-degree angles. The road surface was magnified. I saw a whale and the white line was the tongue I was driving down. After three days, China called Garrison, who alerted the highway patrols cross-country. I called her from Albuquerque. "I'll be home soon. I just saw myself drive away." Objective detachment—great in critics. I woke up with my arms at my sides going over the side in New Mexico into a canyon—at fifty-five I heard my back break. I drove out of the hole and got to Winslow, Arizona, where I stopped because I thought I saw Marines in a landing rope on the side of a ship which turned out to be a freight car. Two cops grabbed me (with drawn guns) and busted me for drugs. "Hollywood. Look at the beard. Flowered shirt." No-doz on the seat for evidence. The arm of a black T-shirt sticking out of a laundry bag I mistook for China's profile, her hairline, and I conversed with it for three days. They took me to a hospital and never looked at my back, not for six hours. I remember that the doctors talked about how Jews go into medicine for money. The doctor told the police he would not verify the presence of narcotics. "Extreme fatigue." They told me I had to go to sleep. The Travelodge was across the street (twelve bucks). "You have to sleep here (the hospital) and vacate the bed at 8:00 (it's 2:00 A.M.) (Sixty-five bucks). They impounded the car. When the cops' shift ended, the doc sprung me, and I took a cab 150 miles to Phoenix. I went into a brace for one year, the Arizona police stole my clothes, and I accused them on The Dick Cavett Show. The Commander wrote me and assured me Arizona police were as honest as any other—unquote. Three doctors diagnosed LSD in my system. I read the other day about the CIA using acid. Of course, now it's not paranoia to talk about it.
from pages 156 - 158
How many more have to die before some Americans realize murder is not a way of life? Too many have lost America because they brought her their lust, but could never love her. For one, Hugh Hefner, who is now reduced to attacking Mae Brussell, who is an assassination researcher who pursues the murders among us selflessly. What did Garfield say in Body and Soul? What are you gonna do? Kill me? Everybody dies. Hefner sent a prominent novelist to ordain her a paranoid. America's poet laureate, Don McLean, reminds us, "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you." Writers? Well, Mark Harris says the greatest danger to America is people who see assassins, not assassins themselves. Twelve years ago, no less, Jean Stafford showed us a mad Marguerite Oswald. So we know we can't count on the intellectuals. Like the Hollywood Ten, they discovered a lack of interest in their country after they went to jail. And I started the battle early. The enemy isn't political in nature. It's insanity, which I combatted through purpose. But even Kafka couldn't envision that the enemy would become apathy. I learned a little along the way: the bad times, the years in the foxholes. An introduction to the devil does not constitute equal opportunity. We've gone from Henry Wallace to Spiro Agnew. We've gone from Jefferson to Ford. From Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin to Ford, Brezhnev, and Wilson. From Paul Muni to Burt Reynolds. From Oscar Wilde to Gore Vidal. From purpose to anticommunism. From love to indifference. Darwin was wrong. Is it too late for America? How many lies before you belong to the lies? You can't return to your own lines. They don't recognize you. You are made different by the company you keep. Nixon reminds you of what you have become. McCarthy reminds you of who you were. I'm relaxing now from my monastic writing chores. I'm watching Merv Griffin speaking to James Whitmore, who's appearing in a one-man show: George Plimpton. Whitmore has been Truman as well as Will Rogers. He and Will, Jr., agree that Will was "not like Mort Sahl. His humor never hurt." Let sleeping Presidents lie. In fact, let living Presidents lie. My story isn't special but it's strenuous. I took America at its word. We were right and we were wrong. We were right to pursue the murderers among us. We were in error in pleading the case for America in Beverly Hills and New York. Here reside the phrases "I can't bring myself to believe" and "I loved him so much it's too painful." Don't appeal to the intellectuals. The hope of America is the heartland. Now you know there are murderers among us, killers of the dream. You know what they did. I know some of you don't want to get involved, but you began your involvement when you began life. Do it for the best friend you ever had, John F. Kennedy. Do it for yourself. You must do it, because there is no one else. Don't be diverted by prefab threats. Wallace is painted a lunatic, but why does he appeal? He's anti-elitest, for one thing, and he has had enough courage to examine the attempt on his life. For that matter, the populist suspicion of the federal government is maybe what stands between you and an unstated fascism now. I tried to answer your questions. Now I have two. Is anybody listening? Does anybody care?
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Post by Admin on Feb 12, 2023 15:04:47 GMT -5
7-13-1963 - THE REALIST - an impolite interview with mort Sahl by paul krassner
Q: Say something--I just want to test the voice level on this machine. A: All right--we're making a test here. Stop the tests! Q: Okay. You've been doing what you do for ten years now- A: Christmas, it'll be ten years. Q: What changes have you noticed that have occurred during this time? A: Well, it's gone from from children's entertainment to adult education. Q: Do you want to expand on that? A: I can say what I say faster, and the audience seems to give me a certain credence as an elder statesman, so that they really listen to those pronouncements. When I was starting, everybody was calling me a radical and saying it was impossible, and now they've come to accept it--nobody stand up and says I'm a radical, by any means--and I probably go farther now than I ever went. So, in other words, I have more license. And, as Theodor Reik once said, "Anybody can say what he thinks, but you have to know what you think, which is tougher." I don't want to minimize this--there's a few changes we ought to lay out here. I constructed a network of theatres where people can speak--they happen to be saloons, and people said it could not be done--in complete freedom. I started college concerts; I started emceeing at the jazz festivals--that is, I introduced verbalization at the jazz festivals--I constructed, for what they're worth, Mr. Kelly's [in Chicago], I introduced The Blue Angel [in New York] to something besides that effete trash they were presenting--that inside nothing of the East 70s--Storyville [in Boston], the hungry i [in San Francisco], The Crescendo [in Los Angeles], and then finally took the thing into The Copa [in New York], The Fontainebleau [in Miami], into the larger rooms, to where they accepted it, on my terms; I started comedy records in this country--in 1957, was the first one. The whole climate has been changed, including network television. Everywhere I've gone, I have trained them, so to speak. It may not be the Midas touch, but they have come away with a different coloration than when they started it. I don't think that's to be minimized. What I'm saying in effect is, the next guy that came along after me didn't have the trouble I had. And that's no minor accomplishment. If a guy comes in with anything odd now-- that is, away from the norm-- people don't throw him out on that basis alone' they say, "Well, there is precedent, let's hear him out." Unfortunately, most of those guys have nothing to offer, but I can't control that, I'm sorry to say. Because I'm in the audience, too, and I don't hear much. Q. How do you explain the paradox--that you do go further now even though your audience has broadened. A. Oh, because I developed skills along the way which are theatrical. This is not in the area of social heroism, because a moral commitment is early in your life--but then how to implement it becomes a theatrical skill. And I go farther because I give them more--for one thing, I don't do twenty minutes, I do an hour, an hour-and-a-quarter--and I have created a climate whereby you can do it. As I say, I've created a climate that has a bigger appetite than it has qualified people to meet that appetite. There’s hundreds of people running around called "The New Comedians"--but none of them are saying anything. I don't think they're overly laden with content, but the audience is definitely ready for it. So you find people who are completely ignorant making political references, whereas ten years ago--when I made political references because they were uppermost in my mind--I ran the risk of being called a Communist. And I was once called one. And I sued a guy over it, and won the suit. A libel suit in Los Angeles. Q. Who was it? A. Jaik Rosenstein in that thing called Hollywood Close-Up. So I went to court and nailed him. Q. How do you feel about the criticism from certain quarters that once you're accepted by The Establishment, you become less effective? A. Well, they have to establish that I've been accepted by The Establishment. No one can assume that. And the people who have said those things have been incorrect. One, Richard Gehman--who used the phrase in Cavalier magazine that I "go with the strength"--was referring to the fact that I was acquainted with "Senator" Kennedy, not President Kennedy. Another is Nat Hentoff, who claims that I never said anything about the Kennedys, that I never made any jokes about the Kennedys. Actually, that's kind of healthy, to have all those people completely misinformed--they don't know what your trajectory is--because that, by default, proves that they are not arbiters of our society. They don't know what the hell they're talking about. One thinks you're with the administration, and the other thinks you're not with anything. One thinks it's anarchy, and the other think you're a Democrat. So obviously I've been successful in throwing the hound dogs off my path. Q. When I said "accepted by The Establishment, “I meant the New Yorker profile, the Time magazine cover story-- A. Oh, that's different. I'm completely in favor of being accepted by The Establishment, but you have to be accepted on your own terms. If the only verification of your art is the fact that you're done in, then I don't accept that as verification. I not only survived, but I prevailed--and that is because I identify with a long line of merit. That's my one distinction: I chose the Good Guys. I may not be one of them, but at least I recognize them. And I believe that, for those people who think that the only verification of your cause is to be Christ, remember there's a two party story. There's crucifixion, but there's also resurrection. Q. This reference to the Good Guys, which implies that there are also Bad Guys--he cleverly surmised--well, here's a quote from an article--"The Complacent Satirists"--in the June issue of Encounter: "The essence of satire lies in catching the audience by surprise in order to bring its members to see themselves, their beliefs, their institutions, and their behavior in an unfamiliar, ridiculous, and unfavorable light. Though satire usually assumes the guise of entertainment, its intention is quite different, being to make people feel uncomfortable, guilty, or ashamed of what they believed, did, or supported." Now, if you set up this kind of we-they feeling-- we're the Good Guys and they're the Bad Guys--then, according to this definition of least, aren't you failing to impart the essence of satire? A. I didn't say we're the Good Guys; I said I identify with the Good Guys. You know, I'm talking about the giants through history when I say the Good Guys--to identify with a certain kind of thinking that I recognize and I think has merit, whether it's Freudian thinking or Socrates thinking or whatever--I'm talking about gigantic concepts that determined your faith before you were born. I'm not talking about the audience. In fact, a verification of what you just said is in people in the audience who come up and yell at me from night to night: "You don't leave us anything! You don't leave anybody standing@ The vindictive spills out on us, on our values, on the way we live, on the Democrats, on the Republicans..." They term it anarchy. So I didn't say the audience are Good Guys, by any means. I took them apart first. Q. And yet, didn't you once say to me that the Realist makes a mistake when we make fun of liberals because we give fodder to the conservatives? A: Well, in some areas. I think the Realist is probably the most vital publication in the United States; I've often said that to people. But saying it to you is something else again; I'm not giving fodder to any bigots who are enemies of yours, by censure--when I say it to you, then the facts can be considered--I don't think the magazine should dissipate its time on crudeness, and I think there's an appetite in the magazine for crudeness; in other words, what we can get away with by writing things on the side of a barn. I write what I say in Time magazine; not in the Reporter, not in the Nation, not in the Realist. I want as many people to hear it, undiluted, on my terms, as possible. See, I think there are more skillful ways of saying things than that cartoon you ran [on the cover of issue #39] about the world being in bed, and the Russians and the Americans. In fact, I think you're evading responsibility by making out that the whole world is a hoax--the whole world is a put-on, morality is a put-on--in other words, I think you confuse puritanism and morality. I think you confuse puritanism and morality. I think it's a mistake of the magazine. But with all of that, it's still better than anything that's being printed. Q. I'm really pleased to hear criticism of that cartoon because there's been so much praise of it-- A. Oh, it was awful. That's crude, that's terrible, that's Men's Room Literature. Q. But wait now. The theme of that cartoon was on attack on the theory of collective guilt. Isn't that what you do too, really? A. I don't know. I don't do it that way. I can do it within the confines--see, I don't think virtue is to be spat upon. First of all, virtue is rare, so let's not throw it away, we don't stumble upon it all that easily, it's very difficult to locate. And once we have it, I don't think it's made for people to wipe their feet on. And I don't do it that way. Mankind is not to be--the ultimate configuration of man is not there so that you can deface it. Because I don't think that's rebellion, for one thing; I think that's a very important kind of rebellion. Whatever you do, whether it's a rebellion or anything creative, has to be done within a framework. There has to be a frame of reference, and if we're not within the frame, then there is no sanity. We have to define the purpose of this life. Now that may mean lawfulness, but lawfulness is for survival, not to inhibit creativity Q. But, to me, the whole theme of that cartoon was: Though shalt not deface mankind. A. Oh, yeah, but look at the way he took it--the most direct way--it shows a great impoverishment on the part of the guy that drew the cartoon [Guindon]. In other words, if you could only reduce everything to a sexual situation--first of all, sex is only what comes out, anyway. Much more subtle drives are going on. That's one of the ways you can show hostility, is sex. And one of the ways you can show high regard for someone, is sexual. But--gee, I mean it's so obvious,--unskilled, untutored. I find that cartoon offensive. I don't mind telling you, that kind of thing is offensive to me. I don't dig that. And it's not because I'm not free. I've been in the world since I was 12, and I know what goes on--but I don't think it has to go on that way. And to equate Russia with the United States in that sense is a way of obviating your own responsibility as an adult. It's a way of not choosing up sides, and not defining anything, or not analyzing anything. And what makes it maddening is that a page away you have quite a scorching analysis of the world situation--you really deal with Cuba, and Vietnam, and the FBI, and whatever else, and you see them quite clearly. Then something like that comes along, and I think it's ridiculous. In other words, if you say something truthful, and you use profanity in order to test the law, I'll defend your right to use the profanity, but I'd hate to see your message stilled while we argue over the use of profanity. Because I think you should be heard. I don't want you to compromise the truth--you know, I don't care how you say it; if that's the only way you can say it, that's something else again, that's another argument. Q. I feel like saying: "Are there any other comedians I haven't offended?" A. It's an opportunity for me to ask you about the magazine, too, because I'm really concerned with what you're doing, because nobody else is doing it. Q. There was one word you said--responsibility--responsibility to what? A. To yourself. That's where it starts. Q. Yeah, well, that's what I was talking about when I said collective guilt. In other words, this cartoon was expressing a mood; it used a sexual analogy to express a mood which I think you yourself have expressed on stage. Every night, perhaps. A. Yeah, but I don't think that's true. I don't think that both the United States and Russia are raping the world. They are the world--whether they subdivide it or not, they're a good portion of it, and they're influential nations--and I think that's a childish way to look at it. You cannot reduce the riddle of the power struggle in this hemisphere, where the fact that you have an administration that defers to the cold war, or to capitalism; or you have a socialistic country in the East such as the Soviet Union that is trying to westernize, so to speak--you can't reduce it to that--that's a childish way to look at it. Plus the fact that it's crude and offensive. Q. Now you used the word rape. How do you know that the female representing the earth was not being submissive? A. Or even seductive. Well, I'll never know. I didn't see her face in that cartoon; you didn't emphasize that part, you know. Q. Right. So isn't it possible that you're projecting something into the cartoon-- A. Well, the question is, who can interpret my remark? I mean who's fit to interpret it? A doctor. Q. But I don't know if you answered the question that I posed--about our making-fun-of-the-liberals giving fodder to the conservatives-- A. Oh, yeah, well, they'll pick up anything they can. It's much the same as if during this whole strike-out-for-civil-rights, during the period of the Negro's agitation in this country, if there are certain excesses by irresponsible hoodlums who happens to be colored, and we point it out, we're giving fodder to people who have stepped on all Negroes for the last hundred years, and we certainly don't want to do that. In other words, you have to be careful who you talk to. It's just like if you produced a play today, it's nice to hire Negro actors, but if you made one a villain, I think you'd damage the cause. Q. But don't you often say things on stage that could give fodder to conservatives? A. Very often, sure. I've had to, to dramatize the situation. But I have to, because ultimately we have to get at the truth, and when the audience comes to see me, I'm afraid we're at ground zero; we've got to get to it. Because we're in the first booster phase of getting at the facts, and we've got to do it, that's all. And it doesn't matter who fails. You cannot have a protective cloak over the Democrats, for instance, forever. We've got to look at them and see what they are. But that means looking at them completely. That doesn't mean people saying, "Don't you think the President's doing a wonderful job?"--or, "The Republicans are blocking him in Congress." There's no time for rationalization. There isn't any time, that's the point. Q. How do you feel about the notion which is sometimes put forth, that there's a definite relationship between your Jewish background and your work? A. That's nonsense. I don't have any kinship a Jewish background. But I will say this: When Freud was ostracized by the medical society in Vienna, he then was offered the forum of B'nai Brith. They said, "We don't agree with anything you say, but anyone can speak here, because we're interested in free speech." He then wrote in a letter to a friend: "The role of the Jew is that of the opposition." So if the role of the Jew is to rock the boat, and to be inquisitive--intellectually curious, that is--fine. Classic role. But there's no urgency; in other words, there's no message I got from this generation. This generation of Jews in America is taking a sabbatical. They're taking twenty years off because they produced--because they saw it, they didn't produce it--because they were witness to a generation, all the people that were active in left-wing politics, and all the people who compensated for being oppressed by over-intellectualizing in the arts, all the English professors they developed, and all the people who generally contributed to the intellectual life of this country. This generation is making up for it by assimilating and becoming nothing. You know, vanilla ice cream. What I'm trying to say is, if I'm Jewish, then they're a fraud; and if they're Jewish, I don't want to be that. Q. Do you consider yourself Jewish? A. No! I belong to me. And that's enough. I don't consider myself anything. And I'm having a tough time finding any kinship. You know, you get along with people who have ideas, that's all. Q. You had a gag in your performance last night about the Supreme Court's prayer decision. Now, to me, it seemed that I couldn't heard Bob Hope saying that; it didn't seem to have any honest point of view. A. First of all, there's seven records of mine out now, that have hours and hours of material with a point of view that you might find honest, but you didn't isolate that' I think that may be a key to your thinking. But you isolated this one joke about the Supreme Court, which I'll be happy to discuss with you. The so-called Bob Hope form--it's true, you know, I'm working within theatricality, forms of theatricality attention, which I do for an hour without dancing or singing or doing imitations or compromising my point of view. Now, I think that to become more skillful and say things economically--as economically as a cartoonist in panels--I think is an accolade. To free associate and waste time and eventually come up with some ore, but come up with a lot of garbage along the way, and eventually bore people, is something you obviously admire. I don't admire it, and I won't sit through it. Not because I don't think enough of the performer, but I think too much of myself. I have something else to do with my time. I just want to make that clear. And we can apply that to a few people. But now, the Supreme Court. The joke, I think, goes: that "all this depression is coming in on me and I don't know what to do with it, and I say to myself, 'If I didn't have God, I don't know what I'd do'--and then the Supreme Court made this ruling." Well, I think obviously, any guy that's worries about fallout, lung cancer, heart disease, not getting along with women, and his career, and the fact that we don't have a two-party system any more--who can rationalize with "If I didn't have God"--is obviously a Norman Vincent Peale disciple. That's where the joke lies. His philosophy is only vulnerable by a bigger cliché. So a guy who would be dumb enough to have that philosophy would then misinterpret the Supreme Court ruling. I've already fought about the Supreme Court ruling on the Tonight show; I took a half-hour of NBC's time to go into that. But that works for me in that arena--that's my interpretation of the joke--but the area of your interpretation is sacred to you' you have that right as a member of the audience, to do anything you want to with that joke. Q. Which includes the right to ask a question in the role of the devil's advocate. I knew what you did on the Tonight show--but, you know. I had to ask it in the context of your night club performance-- A. All right, but I just want you to know that the values are reasonably constant. And the people that challenge that Supreme Court ruling don't know what it's about. But that's a historic rule. Q. But I was thinking in terms of--you know, if someone in the night club audience were to hear that joke, he would come away not knowing: Is Sahl in favor of the Supreme Court decision or not? A. Yeah, but you see, that's a fine line, because if you start in with the people in the audience--the first thing I used to hear in San Francisco ten years ago was, "Nobody wants to hear that"; then the next thing was, "Well, only intellectuals want to hear it"; then after that it was, "They don't want to hear it in the East"; then, "They don't want to hear it on TV." You know, you take this to a point where you say, "People can misinterpret it," so eventually my point of view is suspect if I'm not elected President. There's really no end to it. The very fact that I can say it--it's almost miraculous that I've developed a form--in other words, it's this form that triggers a release that makes the point, makes it economically, and covers all that ground. That's not a lecture, you know, with 12-year old morality. That's a distilled point of view, that people subsidize. It's the healthiest thing in the world. For them. And for me. Largely for them; it's healthier for them. Q. Do you get any sense of futility in the whole milieu of the night club? The idea of it is healthy, but in terms of its actual effect, do you get any sense of frustration? A. What, in night clubs? Well, there are certain occupational hazards, but there's great freedom, because there's nobody pompous there, like an editor in a publication, or a director in a theatre group, or an advertising executive in broadcasting--there's no one who has delusions of "helping" you. You have complete freedom. That means you can edit. But it doesn't mean you go unedited--that's a very important point--you edit, and you have to be the final arbiter. And that helps you become a responsible adult--which should be the aim of all of us. It's help me. I think there are frustrations in the audience, because when I hit gold, when I hit a vein, I don't like to talk to 300 people--I'd like to be talking to three million--but the reason I talk to thirty million on television is because I built on the night clubs. That's a lobbying point. That's a lobby to influence the congress, the ultimate congress, which is the American public--once you can get to them via mass media. That's how you do it. You've got the club--you can stand on that rock and scream--otherwise you couldn't talk at all. That's why I chose night clubs. Q. Then you believe it snowballs into having some influence? A. It always does. You know, it brought me into television; it brought me into being, in other words, a major voice. When a guy like Gehman or anybody else says "He goes with the strength," what put me alongside the President? What put me in his company? What introduced him to me? I mean, how do you explain the fact--everybody in the United States knows me, and I'm not on television or in pictures. What put me on the cover of Time? Because I had an audience. The audience made me a hero. Q. Well, I'm not talking about an influence on your meteoric rise. I'm talking about your influence on the audience's thinking. A. Well, don't you think the fact that every--you don't see too many guys getting up with a Borscht Belt approach now; they all get up and try to look like they're thinking, even though they're not equipped; even though they're untalented in that area, they try to imitate that stand. Now obviously in that area, they try to imitate that stand. Now obviously I have made that acceptable. That's an acceptable way to be, or I wouldn’t been dismissed by the audience years ago. Q. I'm talking about your ideas, in terms of influencing the audience to the extent of perhaps changing their viewpoint. A. There's nobody who comes away from the show with a feeling of apathy. I don't care when I reinforce their prejudice or I convert them to my point of view--the point is they feel something. And the mission of theater is to wake people up. Make them feel something. And that's residual feeling on the part of everyone that's seen the show, whether they're terrified, or whether they laugh, or whether they say "Yes, that's right, I wish I'd said that, that quick," or "Hang 'im!" They feel something. They always have. There's an urgency about it. Q. You were at Time magazine’s cover-personalities party. What didn't Time tell in their story about it? A. Well, I saw the pictures in there showing that Casey Stengel was there, and Hedda Hopper, but that isn't what I was impressed with at the party. I mean I was impressed by the fact that hundreds of people who work for Time magazine were at the party, and there were a lot of generals and admirals and a lot of political figures who shape our destiny--and that's what impressed me. Bette Davis said, "I'm glad the wrong people aren't here, like Khrushchev and Castro." And I had to remind her that perhaps it wasn't Mr. Luce's option that they not come; maybe it was theirs. You know, that kind of thing--the emphasis on who was important at the party, because everybody was there. Nobody turns Time magazine down. I was handled very efficiently. It was really like the proverbial well-oiled machine. The children of some of the people who work for Time magazine are more conservatives than their parents are politically, which scared me to death. Q. Children of what age? A. Twenty-three, twenty-two. Terrible. Uninformed conservatism. Gee, that was depressing. And also I noticed that President was absent, and the Attorney General; they only come in election years, I gather. But the President sent a wire for Mr. Luce to read. They gave me the red-carpet treatment. I had a pretty good time. But everywhere I went I was sort of harassed by an audience of people who wanted to know what my opinions about everything were; this is a great era for that. Derivative opinion. They want to know-- Tell me what I should think about such-and-such--and they argue with you. They compare their clichés with your clichés. Q. I assume Kennedy and the Attorney General got invited-- A. Yeah, they were invited. They couldn't make it. Q. Did Castro and Khrushchev get invited? A. I wonder! That's what we don't know. Everybody who was on the cover was invited. Che Guevara was on the cover--he wasn't there--couldn't get into country. Oh, I'll tell you what happened. We were assigned two people to a car, and I rode with Dr. Jose Miro Cardona--it was Time's idea of a joke--and the he kept looking for explosives under the hood. Then when we were making our travel arrangements, Ed Magnuson of Time said, "I'll get you to the airport on time, Mr. Sahl, I promise you"--and I looked at Cardona, and I said, "Does that word hold an awful lot for you these days?" So he got the interpretation and laughed a little, and his interpreter said, "Every time we start with our travel accommodations, we don't have to ask, because people ask us when we're going to leave the country." Those were a few of the sidelights that I think were a lot more interesting than what the magazine reported. It was ten times as colorful as what they reported, because the world was there. And if that's the power elite, look out! Q. Something should've been done with a captive audience like that--I don't know what, but-- A. Well, I did with the ones I could talk to, but the show was arranged. The only one who was on the show was Bob Hope. I tried to appear on the show, and they said it was already arranged. Bob Hope spoke, and Paul Tillich and Mr. Luce. That was it. I said a lot of things, you know, like "Life begins at forty"--and I was going to give Mr. Luce a present of a permanent binder for his copies of Show Business Illustrated and U.S.A-1. U.S.A.-1, Russia-3. Q. I want to get into the liberal magazines-- A. Yeah, well, the New republic is a real gung ho magazine, they have these things about "The President got up today!" Three cheers. The Nation is a little bit better. They're all humorless. The Reporter is depressing. It's like cold war hysteria. And you put an armband on a guy that says Democrat instead of Republican, that's the only difference it is. There's no spectrum of opinion there. For instance, The Reporter is concerned with things like, "How did the miners' election go when they attempted to have an open shop in the Ruhr?" Or, "Is Upper Volta going to extend the vote to women?" I mean who the hell cares? They skip the issues that are going to determine whether we are incinerated or not. And they're humorless--they're heavy-handed--and they're not curious enough, for one thing, the so-called liberal publications. Now, what else do we have? There's the Realist, which also operates in that area. There's I.F. Stone, with the newsweekly which says a little bit about Cuba, because we don't get any information... although in this country, overall, we're suffering from too much information. But it's all junk. You're suffocating from it. Because all this gung ho--see, the liberals are afraid to give the Republicans a hole in the breach, so they don't look at the Democratic Party. It's like the girl who said to me, "I'm a delegate to the Massachusetts convention." I said, "Do you believe in Ted Kennedy?" "No." "You gonna vote for him?" "Yes, because I'm a good Party girl." I said, "Well, maybe a good Party girl is being dissenting." Maybe you're a good American if you dissent. They used to in this country. Those magazines are a joke. They have no right to exist. They keep saying, "The President's trying." The Nation's a little bit better than the New Republic--that's hopeless. But The Reporter--and Max Ascoli with those editorials up front. It's that same thing, you know; they just take these newspaper editorials and grind them down--it's as if you had a fare box from an old streetcard and you put in Republican newspaper editorials and then you distilled them and put pepper on them, and they're okay. They're awful. It's fragmented anyway, their thinking, but with a few exceptions they're generally in favor of the administration. The administration with few exceptions is generally in agreement with the Republicans. The Republicans with a few exceptions are generally anti-Communist. I mean the whole thing is ugh! Q. There's an article in Harper's by Adlai Stevenson on patriotism; I forget whether he's for or against it. A. Listen, I went to a UN meeting in Los Angeles last month--the American Association of the United Nations--they opened up the meeting, and the first thing they do is a flag salute. We're fighting sovereign states, right? And they said "One nation under God," and a lot of people in the audience don't believe it should be done that way, but, you know, that's not their night at ACLU, it's their night at the UN association. Oh, liberals are impossible. They're terrible. The worst thing about Stevenson were his supporters, as the old saying went--and was true. Q. All right, then there's the National Review-- A. Well, of course, the National Review--it looks like a comic book. It looks like a funny book, and it doesn't live up to that. Buckley, of course, he got that job of being head of the conservatives by default. He reminds me of Goldwater in this sense: They're not stable conservatives. Those guys are a joke. If I were a conservative, I think I'd be in as much trouble as if I were a liberal in this country, because you really need a friend, and you need a leader, desperately. Barry Goldwater and Buckley remind me of a guy who comes to town and becomes a disc jockey--comes to a town and becomes a disc jockey--comes to a town like Cincinnati, plays jazz all night, sponsors concerts-the college kids all follow him, you see. "Boy, this guy's really something." And the reason he's playing jazz is because he checked out the pop and rock and roll markets and found out they were taken. That's as close as I can come. Q. You just said, "if I were a liberal." Does that mean you're not? A. Oh, boy. Listen, I'm so much farther on than that. Q: Do you consider yourself a radical? A. I don't know. Radical as compared to what? And liberal as compared to what? Q. Do you consider yourself anti-label? A. Well, I don't want that to become a basic industry at the wrong time. You try to be your own man and judge it issue for issue. You know, put the issues up against themselves, so to speak, as opposed to having your own fluoroscope with the liberal anatomy and putting things against that. Because I can adapt in order to breathe, but there are some things that you just cannot adapt to. Well, it's impossible; I mean they're just not patterns of survival. How can you be a liberal in our society? First of all, the liberals nowadays--all they do is work on emotional causes. They'll freedom ride, but they won't give $10 to help a man like Estes Kefauver fight the pharmaceutical houses. They'll march for Caryl Chessman, but they won't go up to San Quentin when a homosexual who killed his grandmother with an ax is being executed. Because it doesn't appeal to them. It's unfortunate. You've got to have a whole emotional--you couldn't sell a play to the liberals unless there was a strong love story--it's like that. Q. You and Dick Gregory both talk about the evils of segregation and, implicitly, the justice of integration--but he's had more than an abstract role in the conflict. How come you seem to limit your passion to your function as an entertainer? A. I'm really sorry, you know, that I brought politics into the theatre when I realize that the real virtue in life is to take the theatre into politics. I've never done that. You also noticed I wasn't at either one of the conventions marching around with any of the nominees. I don't do that with the other theatrical people. I like to use the theatre for what it's meant--it's an arena of ideas. First of all, I've been talking on an international scale about segregation, that's true. I was doing it a few years before anybody else--when people were saying "It isn't feasible" and "It can't be done." I didn't hear anybody doing it. It was a pretty non-competitive area. I felt that I could do it with effectiveness if I was not a Negro, to a disarmed audience. It's as if you don't have an ax to grind. You can sneak up on them. It's much the same as when I talked lot about the Hollywood Ten being blacklisted. I felt I could be more effective when I was not a victim of a blacklist. I could be a spokesman for them because I was not tainted in the eyes of the audience, so to speak. Now, as far as his taking part in demonstrations, that's up to him. I haven't seen that there's been a great deal of effect by his taking part in those demonstrations. And also, there's a reversal of theory, because a few years ago, he was saying, "I don't want to be segregated--'You're just a Negro'--I'm an individual, too, not just a member of a group." Now he says, "I might be an individual, but I'm a Negro first." there's been a reversal there, of his logic. In other words, I don't ever want to be a member of a group. I can't find one anyway, so that decision's a little late in coming. You know, it's lagging. Q. I think that's why you always ask if there are any groups you haven't offended' maybe you'll find one. A. Yeah, well, it ain't happened yet, in ten years. But, see, entertainers who don't say anything--they don't get into areas of controversy, they make meaningless motion pictures and all--yeah, they go to demonstrations; they have to say what they think. I say what I think--in other words, my morality is implicit in my work. There's no more I can do. People know pretty much what I do. It reminds me very much of entertainers who run to be on Open End with Susskind because they can't express themselves doing a play written by a homosexual eight times a week. Well, I couldn't either if I was doing that. But life is a series of choices. And I chose what I was going to be. And I didn't come on as the first Negro comedian. And I didn't ask for anybody's tolerance. I took my chances. Even when people said a Jew and a Communist would be the only ones who would be a "nigger-lover"--I heard that many times--we're all familiar with that cliché. I did it then. I did it and I took my chances with it, and I won with it. I don't run, as I say, to a program like Susskind's because I can express myself every night. Nobody has to say to me, "What do you really think?" At least I'm brave enough to say it on the stage: That's what I think. And I'm not down there--you know, it's nice to go down there in groups of 5,000 and thumb your nose at Southern Cracker cops. What about getting up at a meeting at NBC when you don't have an audience to cheer you on and telling a Southern sponsor you want a Negro trio to accompany a white girl on a television show. Try that some time. Q. Have you done it, or is that hypothetical? A. No, it's not hypothetical. I've done it, and more than once. And I've made it stick. It's not the heroism of doing it, it's having it come off. It's getting the show on the air. That's your verification. But this stuff of marching down 10,000 strong--you know, the Jews didn't have that privilege in this country; they had to march alone--one guy had the ability, and he was resented, but he graduated from medical school. It wasn't en masse. I'm afraid I will never have a group. My people are never going to be in power, whoever they may be. Q. You used the phrase, "There's no more I can do." A. Than give the best you can theatrically. You know, I'm in the theatre. Q. All right, but where does the responsibility end? You were invited to give some advice to some people from SNCC (the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) the other week--and you turned down the invitation-- A. Oh, yeah--by two Jewish liberal busybodies, who were rude to me on the phone. And, with one hand, to say, "You're a potent force, you can help us." and with the other, to attempt to discredit me? Well, I can't live both ways. Q. Discredit you in what way? A. You don't know that whole story. They called me up on the phone, and they were rude to me, and they were threatening to me, and they gave me a lot of trouble. And when I tried to accommodate them and set up a time for the meeting, they suddenly dropped into a Negro dialect, these two Jewish busybodies, and said, "Like, man, if you're going to cop out"--and, you know, I'm not interested in withdrawing from society by limiting my vocabulary to 31 words. There was a time when people spoke Yiddish because being Jewish was the sophisticated thing to be. Now being Negro is the sophisticated thing to do. Well, I'm not that flexible. I'm still attempting the old things. I was insulted. Now if they want to ask for something, they're going to have to find a way to reach me, and meet me when I can. I told them I would try to set up a meeting. When I tried to attempt a time that was convenient for both groups, they then gave me all that static. You know, I went to those meetings before these groups were interested. I went to a lot of meetings, and I heard a lot of people talk, and I had areas of concern. The commitment didn't start last year because "It's time" according to some irresponsible so-called leaders. It was time a long time ago. Q. I'm not questioning the commitment for one second. The real question is--you know, accepting your premise to the Jewish busybodism of the two who invited you-- A. You mean it defeated the area? Well, I think that the area becomes impotent because they're involved. I don't think you can do anything. You'd have to go directly. If you want to work with SNCC, you go direct to SNCC. If you have to go to those people, you never get anything done anyway. Because I don't know who my people are, but they sure ain't. I will not ride an emotional freedom train. That's not my idea. In other words, for them, to bear their guilt, to show their wounds, feeds their neuroses. I don't know if it helps the Negro; I don't (know) if it educates a Southerner; and I know damn well it's not the most effective way of doing things. Q. You're not talking SNCC, are you? A. No, I'm talking about those people that called me. Q. But SNCC asked them to call you. A. Yeah, well, they must have run into the breach and said, "We know him." But they insulted me and drove me off the phone. I was trying to effect a time that was convenient for all people concerned. They call me at 11:15 and say, "Come over here now"--people who haven't seen me in a year-and-a-half. And by the way, of the two who called me, one of them is someone who kept saying to me, "No one will ever understand what you say"--but she's willing to exploit me, for personal heroism, so that she can be a busybody. Busybodies never change the world. Intuitive geniuses do. I'm doing it down there on my own time, and I'm saying what I think, not because "It's time"--it's always time. And if it becomes an unpopular cause, I'll still say it. And I did. Under threat of Senator McCarthy. Q. I'm just a reporter, sir. A. Yes, yes. They've given you false facts. Q. I didn't present you with any facts except what actually happened. A. If they're SNCC leaders, then I don't want SNCC. Q. They're not SNCC leaders. Don't you think you shouldn't ignored their rudeness in order to give whatever advice you could to the SNCC people? A. I couldn't get to the SNCC people. They called me up and they said, "You've gotta come over here right away." The first insult is, I'm in the theatre, and you recognize where I work. I said, "Well, I've got a show." "We'll pick you up right after it." I said, "I've got a date. Now I'll try to shift the date around. Call me when the show is over." "Oh, well, like, man, if you're gonna cop out, like." Well, again--I'm not that much in awe of the Negro. I don't have to talk like that. I did that already, when I was 12. They're never going to get anything done by calling a guy and insulting him and questioning his integrity and yelling at him. What can you do besides hang up? I'm not interested in proving myself to them. I just want to make it clear that I didn't reject the CNSS leaders. I probably have a record of doing more benefits and more boat-rocking in the last ten years--it's like the people who come up to me now and say, "How can you say that about our President?" I was flying around the United States with him! Or they'll say to me, "Are you acquainted with Adlai Stevenson?" I appeared on the same platform with Stevenson from New York to California 35 times. These people are really so uninformed that they become a burden. I don't take the trouble to explain this, but I'm bored with it. You know, it's almost paralytic. Q. Is it true that you've written gags for Kennedy? A. Yeah, it's true. I gave a lot of stuff to the President. And I haven't laid on that--in other words, I haven't made a big publicity gambit out of it, as has Mr. Gregory by being photographed walking around down South. My liberalism can just be left up to the audience. They can decide for themselves. But the President is a friend of mine, and I gave him a lot of stuff. Period. I also had met Nixon consequently, and had a drink with him, and had quite an interest talk with him. But that's not a commitment. For all people know, I did that as a personal favor. But everybody assumes everything. It shows their ignorance. Not my position: their ignorance. Q. It wasn't in a professional capacity, then? A. You mean was I hired? No, I wasn't hired. there are those who began to march with Kennedy when he was a winner. I knew him when he was a person who had an ambition, I knew him personally--he was a personal friend of mine--and I did that. I was not engaged, I mean I was not hired for money. I'm not very big on going to inaugurals and parties and running around with that group. I don't know anything about them. I've got my own thing going. The minute I start with them, then I'm not with me anymore. So I don't participate in much of that. Q. How would you compare the public images of Jackie Kennedy and Elizabeth Taylor? A. I used to use a gag in the act, where I said that Mrs. Kennedy is in all these movie magazines, and I couldn't understand it; then a Democratic girl gets impatient with me and she says, "What do you want her to do?" And I said, "Well, I thought that she might relieve Mrs. Roosevelt, who's 77 and too old to be driving tractors to Havana. Of course, Mrs. Roosevelt has passed on since then, but I do think that the first lady has a responsibility to be interested in somebody who's poor. I don't see that in this group. Q. I don't think her job is to be--I don't think women should be downgraded to be nothing but fashion models. And I don't mean to invade her privacy, but she has a public image, which seems to cultivate herself, or this administration does. She's very bright--I've met her, and she's very bright--and she's capable, but the concept of having Pablo Casals and all these people who are not about to rock the boat, and have it pass for culture, I think is misleading. I'm acquainted with Elizabeth Taylor too, but I don't see any similarity. They're both on those magazines. Q. How about the public images of Joseph Mitchell and Jimmy Hoffa? A. Joseph Mitchell. Oh, the city manager of Newburgh who went to the John Birch Society? Yeah, well, he was lassez faire, Mitchell. This is the first time he's gone to the Birch Society, but he must have been in absentee membership for a long time. He was certainly living up to their philosophy. He was against unwed mothers, wasn't he, and welfare checks. He's for everybody pitching in. We have leaders and we have followers. That would be his public image. And Hoffa represents crime. You know, a casting director in a television show would say that Hoffa's too on the nose. That's possibly why the government picked him as The Victim. He sums up all organized crime. He's unpopular with the government, but very popular with his constituents--which is interesting. You can say the same thing about the President: he's unpopular with the Communists, with the Eastern world, but he's popular with his constituents--or something, I don't know. Anyway, the Hoffa thing is terrible. I think it's dangerous. I think that the harassment of him--to single out one individual and to put the resources of the United States government to work--is (1) expensive; (2) it's futile; and (3) it's against the American grain. The hearings of the Senate subcommittee when Bobby Kennedy was an attorney were harassment--they were in the best McCarthyite tradition. And now they're carrying it on. We are at a time, as I've often said on stage, where free speech is very much in doubt in this country, the individual is sliding down the drain, and it's being tested by a couple of people, like Hoffa, Lenny Bruce--a couple of people. There's a conspiracy against--well, you know: don't rock the boat. Q. I was told by a responsible civil rights leader--and they may not follow through on this--but they're thinking of approaching Jimmy Hoffa to have his Teamsters Union boycott deliveries to any of these Southern communities which permit and condone and encourage racial violence. A. Well, I don't condone that, any more than I like an Interstate Commerce clause interpreted to hang civil rights on. They either stand on their own, or they should be disregarded completely. That's hypocrisy. It also won't stand up legally. If the Solicitor General has to go before the Supreme Court and equate a minority's rights with the Mann Act, then you're in a lot of trouble. That's a wrong interpretation of the law... just like that housing bill--remember Adam Clayton Powell wanted the thing about segregated housing, that they wouldn't get a federal grant in aid? That's extortion. That's not democracy, that's exertions. And, as I say, this whole concept, this whole headlong surge toward liberation with no skills--you're going to have a lot of people turned loose who are equal--it's like you've got free elections in Africa. You remember when Ellender said that--that people weren't equipped to vote--he happens to be right. Now a lot of liberals wouldn't like to hear that, but Ellender's bigotry is better founded than their liberalism. And if they want to compete with him, then they should cultivate liberalism, not just go with emotionally what they feel the polarity. You've got to be a full-time working individual, with a head on your shoulders; not a thumping heart coming through your rib cage. Q. You mentioned Dick Gregory and publicity. I don't know whether he did it for publicity or not, but--in the same way that your reaching people is effective--maybe the publicity that accompanied his being down South, rather than an unknown Negro, brought the situation to public attention. Now, isn't that good? A. Anything that contributes is good. No matter what the motivation, if it is productive it's good. It doesn't seem to be productive. He stood on the street corner, he was ignored, and he was finally jailed. I don't know. I don't think that's good. I don't think Martin Luther King picked up in overalls, looking like he had prepared to go to jail, is good. I don't think encouragement anarchy is good. I don't think a power struggle just before the top is loosened on the pickle jar, so that someone can get the credit for doing all of the turning, is good. Everybody wants to be around to raise the champ's hand, because the other guy is reeling. The fact that anything can happen via violence does not bode well for the country. You can't march on Washington. There's no such thing. I'm not in favor of that. Q. You know who else said that? Governor Barnett. Isn't it funny to be in the same camp with him? A. That often happens. You know, Henry Wallace was in the same camp with Bob Taft about the Korean war, but he was the head of the Progressive Party. That's all right, there again you've got to go issue by issue. People will just have to make up their minds whether I'm a segregationist or not. I don't think I have a record as one. Q. Of course, the context that Barnett said this was a charge that the drive for civil rights legislation and street demonstrations are a part of the Communist conspiracy to conquer the nation from within. A. Well, last night in a drug store a guy asked me if I didn't think that Communists were behind the NAACP, and I said, "If the Communists were behind it, it might be a little better organized--there wouldn't be so many groups." Because I think they're impotent by the fact that there's such a fragmented leadership, Q. But the March on Washington is a joining-together of all these groups-- A. When I say you can't march, this is what I'm getting at: Demonstrations are fine to let the Congress know that they're not insulated and this is public opinion--put it in front of them, that's fine. But I want to know how you can control that. I like hostility at times, when it's justified by the situation, but if hostility can't be controlled it then becomes an instrument of terror, even to the person who possesses it, because you cannot control it. It may end in a lot of blood, because what is going to happen eventually--if somebody gets out of line, you will have to call in the law, because the Negroes will represent outlaws in that situation, and then, when you call in the law--right is automatically on the side of those who are in uniform, and there's going to be blood in the streets, as the saying goes. I don't think that's getting anything accomplished You can't sit in on Congress. It's against the law. That's the way things are. And I'm talking about getting something done, not expressing the individual neuroses of those Jewish girls who belong to the NAACP. Let 'me take it out on their husbands, like they used to. Q. When you say that, aren't you going to give fodder to the right-wingers who say that the NAACP is run by Jewish girls? A. No, the Negroes say it. The Negroes have turned against the Jews. There's a lot of anti-Semitism among Negroes. They have no sense of history. They've forgotten about the Communist Party--the Jews were in the middle of it and pulled the Negroes right along with them--they were always saying, "Help the Negro!" Remember the jokes, years ago, when they used to say, "We're having a party; I'll bring the liquor, you bring the Negroes." Remember those jokes? Well, the Negroes have forgotten that. They're now saying "The Jews didn't care." An awful lot of Jews did care--in the Furriers Union, and in demonstrations in Union Square in the 30's. But aside from that, I'm giving fodder to all the conservatives who subscribe to the Realist. You and that fodder. Boy. Q. Would you like to make any political prognostications about the 1964 elections? We assume that Kennedy's going to run again-- A. Well, I hope he gives us an answer soon, because the tension's driving me crazy. But, if he runs, I think his brother, Robert, will run as Vice-President, and I will think that we are desensitized enough so that we will accept it. No one will say anything. The rationale will be that Lyndon Johnson has to go back to the Senate to get Kennedy's program through. That way, if they say it fast enough, no one will ask what his program is. I've now suggested, as you know, that his program be called "Old Miss." Anyway, he'll say that Lyndon Johnson will have more power in the Senate, and they don't need him to whip the South any more, they can desert the South because there are more Negroes voting that there are Southern governors--that's the hard fact of the matter. The Republicans, I believe, will run Rockefeller and Romney. And you know what else I think? I think Rockefeller will be elected. I think the that the country will have a big deficit by then; I think that economically we'll be in the trouble. I think the people have no sense of loyalty to an President--and we’ve got the most popular President ever now. It doesn't matter. if they're not making any money.... It's been defined as an economy, not as a country, so they'll scream and yell, and they'll say they want a change. And Rockefeller will emphasize Latin America and fiduciary integrity--he's very well-schooled there--and he could win. And if he should lose, the size of the Republican vote will scare you. It will be shattering. Now the President has certain alternatives. He can have a military crisis, which will help defense spending. In other words, he can always be aggressive. You can't be aggressive about the economy, but you can be aggressive in foreign policy. I don't know how long they can keep using that little island down there as their whole cause. I think the people will eventually become bored with it, because it's a vicarious enemy as it is. Nobody knows what's going on down there. They've never been there, they don't know why they hate them. They say it's because they don't have free elections, and that so many people are leaving the islands. Castro himself said on ABC television recently that if you judge a country by how many people leave it, Puerto Rico's the worst country in the world; only Adam Clayton Powell goes there. Anyway, I think that's what's going to happen. And by the way, I want to say that this is not wish-fulfillment--you're too bright for that, but most people say to me, "What do you think is gonna happen?"--then when I answer them, they argue as if I have advocated it. I didn't mean it as an advocacy. That was just a kind of survey, because if you'll think about it, I really have no ax to grind. I'm in the theatre, for better or for worse, in one form or another, for the rest of my life. I'm committed there. I'm not interested in politics. I'm not like Ronald Reagan, or somebody. I don't want to graduate to politics. I'm not interested in that area--I mean in participation there--it's just the way I see it now, the way it falls now. It may change in a year, but it's going to change for the better for Rockefeller. And the Republicans will never run a Republican, any more than the Democrats will run a Democrat. That's all over in America. Incidentally, don't you find it quite interesting, as you watch me work, that I mention Eisenhower and there's a complete blank--the most popular man we ever had? That really makes you wonder about Edward P. Morgan's phrase that nothing is as fickle as public favor. Now, if he is a ridiculous figure, as many in the audience say--in other words, if he's a meaningless figure in American history--then I want a refund on the eight years that my destiny was in the palm of his hand. And if he's a meaningful figure, I want him to be honored, I don't want him ignored. There's a bill due here somewhere. Q. They honor him in the Saturday Evening Post and Look magazine--he's an elder statesman now--you and him. A. Yeah, we belong to the University Club--it's at 54th and 5th Avenue--"What time does this train get to 55th street?" Q. There's a fantastic irony about what constitutes a scandal, as far as Rockefeller is concerned-- A. Oh, yeah--the fact that he got married is a scandal! You know, that really is peripheral vision of the mid-West. The Protestant ethic. He married her. What kind of a scandal would it be if he wasn't married? Q. Would you care to say a few words about the future of monogamy? A. Yes. It looks like it's falling in the Western world--just look at the divorce rate--it's definitely failing, due to the fact that everything is a metabolism, including a love affair. It goes a while, and then it's over. And most of the agony is because people will not accept that. The reason they won't accept it is that they have not been resourceful enough to think up an alternative of loneliness terrifies them. They become impatient with the fact that they cannot sustain this for life. So they continue to get married--they continue to pretend--that's their adjustment to reality. Now, women are being liberated as a result. So they have an opportunity to develop more as people. As they do this, long-range on the graph they're moving ahead and becoming human beings, like men are now; the only trouble is, in between there’s going to be some girls making the transition who are going to be bloodied. It's very similar to Leopoldville when the Belgians got out. It's a good thing overall, but an awful lot of people got punished in the meantime, because it's a rough transition. You live what? 65-75 years. Over a 200-year period, women are really going to emerge as people. But in between, there's a lot of people who are going to have miserable lives. Their heads are going to be bloodied in the battle, because they don't have skills, they've become dependent in all the wrong areas; because they're competitive when it comes to cocktail hour and having a big mouth, but they're not really competitive--they're hypocrites--they don't want to be girls, but they don't have the courage to be men. Now, monogamy. It looks like it's over, and it's a panic for all of us, because--I don't know--where do we go? Everybody keeps pursuing the dream, and you can spend your life doing that. You pursue it to such a degree that you don't believe in divorce. You get divorced and you don't believe in it. Think of that agony. Or you say to yourself, "Can you really love more than one person? God send me that one partner and I loused that up." You know, puritanical instinct. And yet you know that isn't true, because you've been in love with more than one chick, or you've been attracted to more than one, for different reasons; it happens. But women are the lost souls. This is even beyond Negroes. Women are the most lost--holy cow! Q. Do you realize what you've just said? The Realist is pursuing the dream! A. Well, I don't mean it as an insult to you. You may beat the rap, see. Q. How many one beat the rap? A. Well, you have to believe it or else insanity sets in. The trouble is, if you say no one can beat it, you're opening the door for the outlaws to exploit everybody. Because you might get lucky! Q. You're giving fodder to the polygamists. A. Polygamy. Very interesting. Q. But you don't think, with all the criticism of Rockefeller's second marriage, that it's going to have any influence on the 1964 election? A. I think that's terribly wishful. If you can elect a 43-year-old Roman Catholic to the Presidency, whom no one has ever heard of after fourteen years in Congress, you can elect anybody. We have to face the fact, and the Democrats must face the fact, that those methods, if they are opportunistic methods--you know, the Kennedys kept saying, "Well they worked, didn't they, they worked!"--well, that means other people apply them. It reminds me of a guy who is washing dishes, and he has a hit rock'n'roll record, and he comes a star. You say, "You're not a star! He says, "I sold the records, didn't I?" Then next month someone else quits washing dishes and makes a record, and the guy can't understand it. He feels outraged. Rockefeller can apply all of those same methods, as the two parties grow closer together, as the village squire enters politics. Capital no longer fights politics; it dominates politics. The press is no longer the handmaiden of capital; it is capital. And television is pre-empting the press. Those are the hallmarks of our era. Wealthy men don't go into their fathers' businesses any more' they go into politics. i don't know why they're so fascinated with it. But they always did kind of run the government, so it's nice to have them doing it openly. Q. It's interesting that you left Barry Goldwater completely out of your little survey-- A. He isn't going to run. They won't run him because they suspect he's a Republican, and they will never run a Republican. The thing is, he's got to sound off and look like a threat, so that they will buy him off by letting him have a voice in the kingmaking. But they will never run him because he is too much of an extremist. He's just not logical. He's no more logical than William O. Douglas would be on the Democratic ticket. He's the most logical man they have, but he's the least logical for that very reason. Goldwater will not run. He would run even as Vice-President, but Rockefeller won't have him. It'll be Rockefeller and Romney, you watch. They'll have a middle-of-the-road ticket. Beat the Democrats at their own game. In fact, recruit Democrats. Because what is a Democrat? What does that mean now? You have to compromise to be a Democrat, so you might as well--you can be a Republican at the same time, you don't have to cross the road. It's two stores on one side of the street. Q. But Goldwater's Department Store isn't one of them. A. Minimum wage does not apply--it's not interstate commerce. Q. It's funny--in connection with the possible candidacy of Goldwater, you make this reference on stage to his being a Major-General in the Reserves, and the audience seems not to have been aware of the fact-- A. See, that's the trouble, Paul, sometimes when you work you have to--you can't assume that they know--you've got to set them up. You've got to set them up and still make them feel smart; not take their dignity away. So you've got to say, "Well, you're all aware that Goldwater's a Major-General in the Reserves," and act as if you admire them--and then... Q. An old Communist technique--"As you all know"-- A. That's from Marxist dialectics, that thing about--one guy applauds, and you say, "You can be a rallying point for collective action." Holey moley! Anyway, Goldwater is a Major-General in the Reserves, and Kennedy could always call him to active service. He's not above it. Q. I saw you use, in two separate shows, the same line; one time it got a good laugh, the other it got no laugh at all...The line has to do with the newspaper report that not since Hitler had the Germans cheered anyone as much as Kennedy when he spoke there recently... but then the following line, is the one I'm talking about. A. Oh: "Give my regards to your Dad." Well, there are several ways to do it: "Dad sends his best." Then you start thinking about Hitler being in Argentina. See, when I work, I feel a cadence, just like you play, when you blow; I feel a certain cadence, and I feel it coming. I feel rhythms--that's why the jokes sometimes look premeditated, and they seem Bob Hope-ish, as you pointed out--you feel a cadence and you find it as you go. But I become impatient with it and want to start with something else, because every word I do is improvised. I don't rehearse anything. I start it on the stage. I never stress that word, improvise; it's become distasteful to me because it's been dissipated by people who don't. People say, "We improvise! We improvise!" Well, I have to. I've found no other way out. That's the easiest way. I am also pro-intellectual, and I find that anti-intellectual persons, who are not interested in discipline, who dig anarchy, use that as a facade. They say, "Well, I wanna be free." Which means, for chaos. They also use splintered reasoning and call it free association. That's not free; that's very limited association. It's all in the presenting of it. As I'm going, I open a door and I see six streets, and on each of the six streets there's twelve doors, and each twelve doors there's twelve streets--and it's endless, what you're going to go with. You just find it from night to night, and it starts to build up. It's like Joseph Conrad: When you find out what life is about, it's over. Q. I wish you could draw an exact bar graph depicting this, but just as a matter offhand speculation, to what extent has there been an increase of what you report on stage now as opposed to what you comment? I see you get a lot of laughs on just straight reporting, without any comment. A. Information, yeah. One of the hallmarks of this era is that comedians, whether it was Bob Hope or me, by exaggeration we could get a laugh. Bob Hope went, for instance, to a paraplegic center of veterans--he could tell about the guys who were very ambidextrous with the wheelchairs and that they get speeding tickets, and so forth--and the guys used to laugh, the paraplegics. Now he had used exaggeration. I used to do the same thing. If the President said something about a policy, I would extend his logic to expose the innate absurdity of it. Well, exaggeration is no longer available, because we live in such an incredible era that I read the paper to them and they break up; whereas when I analyze it for them with all my humorous talons exposed, they often don't laugh at all. Because what is taking place, is insane! Yeah, that's a great point you just brought up. I forgot that. What's taking place is insane. An advertising man once said to me--I said I wanted to do a news show on television, and he said to me, "Well, what if you run out of news?" Today, if you were doing that show, you could just run an ad in the paper and say tonight you talk about--and then you'd insert whatever had happened that day, and it's incredible enough. The whole thing in the South is incredible. All the things people say you can't do have been done. And nothing shocks people. I think there's a point at which they become deadened to any kind of pain or feeling. Guys are in orbit, and people are being slaughtered--and they just don't know any more, they can't comprehend. Q. I have the feeling that with all this that's going on--and maybe the best example of what I'm saying is what you mentioned before, divorce--that with all the national and international tensions, in the end people are still hung up on their personal problems and their interpersonal relationships. A. I could only tell you what I've observed. The people that I know in show business are very alert, and they're a little bit advanced; that is to say, the norm--the people watching television across the country--don't have financial access to a psychoanalyst to be advanced enough to pinpoint guilt upon yourself as opposed to yelling at somebody or saying to a kid, "Go to your room." Or punishing people. Punishment and reward. Punishing yourself as opposed to venting your wrath on others is an advanced theorem. So, the people I know do look at themselves more than they look out, but I don't know if that's evasion or not; I don't know if that's being advanced or if it's just evasion. I suspect that a lot of it is evasion. I know there are personal problems, but the only way you can measure personal problems is how you relate reality--not relate it to yourself, but how do you interpret it? Does it kill you, or do you look at it and ignore it, or do you try to do something about it, or whatever. Q. How do you feel about the press treatment you've received lately? A. Well, I really don't have much respect for spectators. There's a whole nation of spectators--and when I say a nation. I'm using it in the academic sense of the word--I'm talking about all those members of the press who don't have courage to carry a torch, but stand by and judge you in terms of the Decathlon on how you carry it and whether you carry it as well as you did. And I'm also talking about the resistance to change. Marlon Brando doesn't wear a leather jacket any more. "Why don't you wear a sweater anymore?" "Why don't you go to coffee houses?" The fact is, all a man has is his integrity. You have to keep that and your curiosity up high. Keep your state of mind protected, as Del Close says. I think that's what's important. But you've got this press. I haven't read an upbeat article about anybody in five years. Everything is negative, negative, negative. They wait for a giant to emerge and cast his shadow--and then they say, "You're standing in my light!" I'm not a political flash-in-the-pan. They have misinterpreted my semiphore completely; the sun got in their eyes. I am an entertainer, and a writer, and my influence will be felt as long as I want to move, even if I want to do a television series should that unhappy day ever come. Whatever happens to strike me, I'm a prism through which nature expresses herself. And they cannot accept that. They keep treating me like I'm a Senator and you better watch out, you're up for re-election. I've got a life-time appointment. To this empty bench. Q. Do you think that you may be nothing more than something to talk about at a cocktail party? I know you said before they go out feeling something...but-- A. No, no. You know, they've had ten years of this. People thought it was going to be like six months, then I had ten years, and soon I'll have twenty, and then I'll have thirty.... Q. There are a lot of cocktail parties. A. No, I'm afraid they get much too angry for that. You can tell by the people you hear from, whether it's Bertrand Russell and Adlai Stevenson. You know that you're in the mainstream. Q. Have you also heard from your targets? A. You mean adversaries? Nothing. That's the amazing part of it. I've heard from a lot of dumb guys in the press who say, "You can't say that!" Andrew Tully--he's a syndicated columnist, and he wrote the C.I.A. book--got mad because when Newsweek said that the President likes to laugh at himself, I asked, "When is he going to extend that privilege to us?" So Tully said, "Does he expect people to keep laughing when they happen to be loyal?" He's another one of those Kennedy-worshippers. And this is not a criticism of Kennedy; it's them. Remember, it's the constituents who are weak; I'm not talking about him. If they dub him God, the weakness is that they need a god. It's not that he says "I'm God," You've got to remember that, whether it's Arthur Godfrey or Kennedy or Winchell or anybody. Guys like Tully confuse their stand with patriotism. If you knock Nixon, whom he didn't like, that's okay because he didn't like him and you're helping him. You're animating his fight. You're holding the stiletto--he puts his dagger in your hand. But if you say it about his idol, then it's patriotism suddenly. They're redefining the American symbol. You can always tell when you're right because if you do something which is in the American grain--it's in the tradition--it's always wrong at the time. Styles Bridges once looked at an English TV film called Dissent and he said that it was full of "beatniks" criticizing our government. And he named me, Normal Mailer, Arthur Miller, Robert Hutchins, Bertrand Russell. I've been in very good company, and I'm pleased about that. Flattered, in fact. The Good Guys. Q. I feel as though we should end with some sort of Grand Summation--like: "Do you have a message?" A. Yes. You have to give the best you can. That's your number one concern. Not, does anybody want the best I have, what's the use of giving the best I have, there isn't any market for the best I have. You have to give the best you can. Everything else will follow as a byproduct. That's all. My old message used to be, "Is anybody listening?" Well, that's been answered many thousand times. They're obviously listening, so now you've got to give them the facts; you've got to get to the people. That's the virtue of night clubs. Get to that audience. Q. But is that the people? Isn't that analogous to saying, as you do on stage, that Robert Kennedy met with Dick Gregory and James Baldwin and Lena Horne--to find out what the average Negro thinks? A. But I haven't just been in the night clubs. Because, again, it went from there to television where we have 40 million people looking at the Sullivan show; it goes from there to motion pictures; and it goes from there to appearances before 2,000 people at the Waldorf, all of whom are editors and will influence everybody they write for. I mean how do you explain the fact that I can't go in and complete a meal in any restaurant in any city in the United States without being recognized and harassed--I don't mean complimented; harassed. Q. About your ideas? Or to get an autograph? A. No, it's provocation. It's always about ideas. Are you kidding? With actors--they don't represent an idea--they represent Success, whatever the hell that means. Success with whom? With yourself, if you're lucky. Megalomania, that's all it can come to. Is it 9 o'clock? Great Scott! It's funny, the time ran away. Now I've got to go to that club--are you ready for that? More boredom in the night club. Q. Why, Mort, you old hypocrite. "You've got to get to the people!" I think I'll leave this on the tape. A. I cannot summon my passion on demand of a schedule of a night club seven nights a week, twice a night. That's why the show is not uniform. The only people that can summon their passion on demand are people like folksingers who sing about the labor struggle. "We'd like to introduce this song which is about the Negroes in prison, all of whom were framed...."
1-22-1964 - The McKinney Daily Courier-Gazette - News From...Hollywood by Joseph Finnigan - UPI Hollywood Correspondent Hollywood - Television's censors are nipping at the heels of comedian Mort Sahl. So far, they've on snapped his garter. Sahl is a comic whose quality improves in direct ration to his controversial remarks. He can be best described as the total antithesis of Lawrence Welk. Mort's latest brush with video's censors happened last Saturday on Jerry Lewis' ABC-TV show on which Sahl appears, reciting a monologue which predictably antagonizes a large segment of viewers. ABC cut a line from Sahl's dialogue when Mort said, "the governor of Nevada is objective to Frank Sinatra's friends - who are underworld figure Sam Giancano and the President of the United States."
Line Censored Actually, the line was carried to the eastern part of the country where the show is seen live. It was cut out when Jerry's two hour Saturday night show was aired on video tape to the West Coast. Jerry fought back. He sent a telegram to ABC's president, calling the censorship a violation of his contract which gives him artistic control. "I've had some pretty aggressive agents, but nobody like Jerry standing up there," said Sahl of his defender. "he's like Lancelot ahead of me with a spear." In the past television producers have kept an eye on Sahl, lest he antagonize somebody who might write a letter of protest. "Jerry just tells me to go ahead," Mort Sahl. "You know how these network guys are, they say, 'we don't understand Sahl.' Jerry says, 'I don't either, but I want to find out.'"
Used To Trouble Sahl is used to trouble over his dialogue. The tiff with ABC doesn't concern him too much. "It doesn't scare me, because the show is so autonomous," he said. "I knew from the first day when Jerry brought in his own stationery and cameras." The slicing of Sahl's line won't slow the perceptive comic and chances are he'll be having more fights with television's watchdogs. "They've got the idea that this is a carefree kid who doesn't know what an advertiser is," Mort concluded. ABC brass made no comment on the incident. Sahl, however, suggested they send a telegram of apology to him and Jerry. "We won't read the telegram to Eastern viewers," Sahl promised. "They heard the line before it was cut. We'll only read the telegram to the West Coast viewers who didn't hear the remark."
6-1-1964 – Corsicana Daily Sun (Monday)
6-22-1964 - IT HAPPENED LAST NIGHT - Mort Sahl Kids Everybody by Earl Wilson
NY - Sitting at something like school desks, in a neat Greenwich Village cellar coffeehouse called the Cafe Au GoGo on Bleeker St., we heard Mort Sahl kid the world... suggesting that 'if there's change of command," Los Angeles famous Coldwater Canyon may become "Goldwater Canyon." "Christine Keeler got out of jail for good conduct. That's a precedent," Mort said. "Cassius Clay later became Cassius X--named after his signature." There's no booze at the coffeehouse, but the management makes cut with a $3 admission price. Bleeker's a busy midnight street, with the Village Gate, the Cafe What, the Bitter End, the Dugout, the Pizza Plaza, the Village Corner and Snooky's Luncheonette. But Sweater Boy Mort gave it new life. Heavy on civil rights and politics, he said, "Concerning the American left wing, we don't have any, thanks to J. Edgar Hoover." Of the ethnic groups: "Everybody's active except a group of white Protestants who don't do anything except go to Stanley Kramer movies and feel guilty." Sahl said he'll discuss his two years in the Korean War. "I never saw any Koreans in Korea," he said, "except on Sundays when some of them used to come and watch us fight."
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