Funnymen by Ted Heller Page B

veal and Vic's stuffin' his face and saying, “Oh yeah, Don? Then what kinda beer should I have with this fuckin' hot dog?” He wanted Vic to go to church every Sunday, he wanted Vic to stop going to the track, he told Vic the booze would ruin his pipes. One time he caught Vic with his hands up a floozy's skirt in the stairway of a nightclub and he pulled Vic off the broad and tried to deliver a lecture right then and there. Started talking about disease and filth and sin. Vic told him to cram it up his trombone.
    Leslie was a real straight arrow. He had that big Waspy image to protect. Ruth Whitley was his girlfriend and they stayed in separate rooms but one time I saw him sneaking to her room at 3:00 A.M. Some straight arrow, huh?
    He even found Vic a nice spread on Broadway in the Seventies. “You don't want to live in that lice trap, do you, Vic?” he asked him. And Vic said, “Hey, they're my lice.”

    ROGER DILLARD [trumpeter with the Leslie band]: Don Leslie's previous singer was Phil Hardy, who was a first-class prima donna. Then Hardy met a widowed millionairess, married her, moved to Newport, and was never heard of again until the woman found him in a hammock with a yacht boy. So Vic was a breath of fresh air, he was just one of the guys.
    The girls in the audience . . . they adored him. Couldn't keep their eyes off of him.
    He did have trouble with the lyrics. That was Don's big complaint. When Vic couldn't remember the words, he would mumble, moan, and basically slur over the words. And with the style of relaxed, lulling singing he was doing, you almost didn't notice it. I guarantee you, he could have slurred over an entire set and not one girl at the Ambassador would have noticed. Or if they did they wouldn't particularly care.

    SNUFFY DUBIN: The very first time I ever heard of Victor Fountain or Fontaine, it was at the Mosque Theater in Newark. He was billed as “the Singing Fisherman” with the Don Leslie All-Goyishe Kupf Orchestra. My first thought was, when I heard him: Devane. This guy is doing Fritz Devane. Next song: Dick Fain. After that: Como. The man wasn't using his own voice, his own style. I saw right through it like it was fucking cellophane.

    GUY PUGLIA: It was like a revolving door! Girls comin' in, girls goin' out. There were times when he'd finish up with one, bring her down to the hotel lobby—'cause he had class; a lot of other guys would've just swept 'em out the door—and then the next one was in the lobby waiting for him and he'd just bring her back up.
    And don't forget it was my room too! Sometimes I had no place to go,while he was busy “accommodating” these girls. So I'd wait in the lobby and read a paper. I spent a few nights sleeping in the back of the Buick, no kidding. Or I'd go to Jack Dempsey's bar on Fiftieth Street or goof around with Hunny. Or I'd hide in the closet and listen to Vic.
    There were some classy girls too, girls right out of the society columns, like Elsa Maxwell's or Hilda Fleury's. I'd be reading about some rich horse owner up at Saratoga and four floors upstairs at the Monroe, Vic was putting the sausage parmigiana to the guy's daughter.
    So it wasn't all bimbos. But there were a lot of bimbos too.
    Hatcheck girls at the Ambassador, waitresses at the Blue Beret Cafe, a busboy's wife, a cigarette girl here and there. Or just some lonely married lady. It just went on and on.
    And I was doing all right for myself too, you know? Just from being Vic's buddy and getting his rejects. But some of these girls . . . marrone! I think I had a better time alone in the back of the Buick.

    ROGER DILLARD: Vic started to get Don very angry, and I suppose that was only a matter of time. It was the girls, it was the booze and the gambling. Vic—and you have to admire him for it, I guess—he didn't do anything to hide it. He flaunted it sometimes. Vic once walked over to Don while he was drinking a glass of milk and he