Like a Lampshade in a Whorehouse by Phyllis Diller & Richard Buskin

Author:Phyllis Diller & Richard Buskin [Diller, Phyllis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781101617700
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2006-02-16T00:00:00+00:00

The Purple Onion’s Barry Drew loved me and I loved him, and he was aware of all my problems. He had a predilection for black men, and one year when I stayed with him on his Sausalito houseboat, we’d drive home from the Onion every night and case the Fillmore district for black guys. Now, after Sherwood and I had moved out of that former whorehouse on Hyde Street, Barry provided us with somewhere to live. One place was around the corner on Green Street, and during my Onion engagement in 1959, he’d even loan us his houseboat and find somewhere else for himself. That’s the kind of love I received and which I’ll never forget.

Overall, I had done pretty well on my own during those first three-and-a-half years, without a manager, without an agent, without anyone. The owners of the little discovery clubs had seen me and hired me, and they had also talked to one another. Many of them liked me and everything was going really well in terms of bookings, even if my earnings were still pretty modest. The one agent with whom I did work during this period was Irwin Arthur, who would call me at the Purple Onion to tell me about a job after I’d just finished a gig at two in the morning. Evidently he knew my schedule, and he came through on a freelance basis time and again. But then I signed with a big agency and initially this turned out to be a big mistake.

The General Artists Corporation had tried to place me on their books once before. I’d gone to the company’s New York office and had sat down with a young hotshot who didn’t impress me at all, making a big show of talking to people on the phone. I had seen right through him and thought, “Bullshit.” I didn’t like his attitude and I didn’t want him as an agent, so I’d left without signing. Now, however, having seen more of my shows and observed how my popularity was continuing to grow, GAC made another attempt to sign me, and this time the agent was a man named Leonard Romm.

Leonard was an agent from way back: an old bald guy with a lot of sharp pencils. The first thing he did when he arrived at work every morning was sharpen those pencils, and he knew a thing or two about selling. As a youth, he had worked in his father’s haberdashery where the deal was “If anyone comes in here, you’ve got to at least sell him a hat.” I loved Leonard, so I signed with GAC, although there was no contract. It was all done on a handshake and he was my man. However, we got off to a rocky start.

In the corporate sense, agencies like GAC don’t care about anything but the money. When they see you making plenty of dollars, they think you’re a success; but that has nothing to do with building a career.

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