Just My Bill

 

Bill Zehme, in his element.

"I started spelling “chemo” k-e-e-m-o whenever I wrote it out because I thought that made it sound fun. And then “hot sauce” and “glow juice.” It’s so easy to fall into a vat of hopelessness. You better bring some levity to this. And you better laugh every day. Because if you forget how to laugh, cancer will just spin you out." -- Bill Zehme, Chicago magazine, Dec. 2016

My ol' buddy Bill died this weekend, at 64, nearly 10 years after being diagnosed with stage 4 colorectal cancer. We first found each other and bonded in the mid-80's when we were both young celebrity journalists, and we ended up helping each other get launched at various places. 

But I hadn't seen Zehme since he came to New York in February 2013 for an Andy Kaufman event in a 50-seat gallery, Andy being one of his many, many showbiz deep dives, this one came out booklength - 1999's "Lost in the Funhouse: the Life and Mind of Andy Kaufman." 

It was typical of Bill to choose to decipher one of the most confounding, hard to nail down celebrities to walk the earth and approach it with the same work ethic and clarity of wordsmithery that shamed most other people who toiled in the trenches of celebrity journalism, whether he was doing so for Playboy, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, Esquire, or - less characteristically - Spy. 

Bill was a fanboy, but not a mindless one. He spelunked for humanity where most would only see cartoons: subjects who few would take seriously, like Liberace, Regis Philbin (with whom Bill wrote TWO very Bill-titled books, "I'm Only One Man!" and "Who Wants to Be Me?"), Jay Leno, and Barry Manilow ("If he could be anyone else, he would be Sting. 'He's on his own path,' [Manilow] says, admiringly. 'I wish that I could be as brave as he has been with his career and his life.' Next choice: Tom Waits. 'He sings from his kishkes.'").

Also, impenetrable subjects like Warren Beatty, who refused to answer any questions, so Bill published the timed length of Beatty's infernal pauses and summarized, "To interview Warren Beatty is to want to kill him. It is also to become fond of him. He seduces anything that is not mineral."

Also, Carson, who talked to nobody, Letterman, who didn't suffer fools, Bozo the Clown, and Sandra Bernhard, whose public persona everyone was afraid of. When he handed in his profile for the Rolling Stone Comedy Issue I edited, I tripped on his first line: "She's not so scary."  Spoiler alert, I protested. But Bill won me over -- it's the question everyone wanted to know, and once you got that out of the way, you could hang with her, as he did, most improbably. 

Sandra: Not so scary?

Bill was a tall guy -- in fact one of his email handles was "TallGuyInc" -- and had the unassuming, midwestern, gee-shucks I can't believe I'm talking to you demeanor that ingratiated him with everyone - subjects and editors. Perhaps he was overcompensating for his 6'5" height to put people at ease. He saw the world clearly, but he also cherished the value of cheeseball showbiz, and found ways to convey his enthusiasm and insight with mighty turns of phrase, never falling into the trap of repeating himself. 

He was also the world's biggest Chi-town booster -- I visited him there several times, and he showed me Wrigley Field, the Twin Anchors - one of Sinatra's favorite local hangs -- and a Greek Taverna with live Opa Opa music whose name escapes me. He later wrote a book decoding Sinatra's approach to life, which included mid-90's correspondence between him and Sinatra - who otherwise had not cooperated with a member of the print media for 25 years.

Bill, Cubbie booster, me, ye olde Wrigley

But he also ably navigated LA, where he would later relocate. And when Spy magazine held a promotional event there, he miraculously pulled strings with his hometown employer, Playboy, to get Spy's editors invited to a shindig at Hef's mansion, grotto and all. 

I saw Bill a couple more times in both cities, then lives intervened. He divorced first.  I had cancer first, around 2010, and kept it pretty mum. Bill's first hit in 2013. 

As the quote up top shows, Zehme tackled his cancer with the same kind of cheerful derring-do and devil-may-care breeziness as his art. 

But despite the "lookback now that it's over" tone to that uncharacteristically personal article, the fucking disease wouldn't leave him be. It derailed his personal Moby Dick of a project, a comprehensive Carson biography; the fact he confoundingly had no health insurance (Oh, Bill!) both ate up his book advance and lost him his domicile (as he would call it). He got some TV documentary work to tide him over, but he never finished the book, which was to be called “Carson the Magnificent: An Intimate Portrait.” 

Before a 2017 trip to Chicago, I reached out to try to see him, and he made it seem possible, but then pulled back. My sense from other friends was that he didn't want old pals to see him in his current state. 

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And then this: 

In the cosmic way the universe works, after Willis Reed died, BUT BEFORE BILL DID, I was going through one of my many unsorted piles of my life to dig out an autographed photo of Reed - and out fell an envelope from the Vanity Fair Chicago office, postmarked September 2, 1986, that I had no recollection of receiving or saving. 

It hailed me, in Bill's inimitable all-caps, as "THE AMAZING DAVI!!" - a reference to my then-recent freelance piece for US magazine about The Amazing Randi, the magician who had recently been awarded a MacArthur Genius recipient. 

I set it aside to read after I finished my work this weekend; in the interim, I got a text from our mutual friend David Rensin that Bill had been in hospice (which I hadn't known) and had passed. 

This morning I trepidatiously opened the envelope,

with sadness and shame that I hadn't found it earlier. Inside was a xerox of a promotional letter from the publisher of Vanity Fair that Bill annotated under the warning, "READ & RETCH!" 

But also: two TYPED,  single-spaced letters, one from July 24, 1986, and another from August 31, from then 27-year-old Bill.

Reading his witty, writerly letters 36 years later, I realized I held in my hands what amounted to an unpublished Bill Zehme memoir chapter that provides the best picture of who he was when we were young journalism punks. 

So I decided to let him have the last word on this post (somewhat abridged since he never expected any of it to be published.)

God, how I miss letters, and typewriters, and Bill. 

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The first was putatively a thank you note for a wedding gift, but oh so much more. Kvetching that his Vanity Fair contract was being reduced "to shredded lettuce." "The best way to look at this, of course, is that I've been liberated from the dipso-facto beat."  

He then waxes rhapsodic about some Barbra Streisand noir music video with Kris Kristofferson ("It's like Gertude Stein directed it.") and fantasizes about us going to Graceland for Elvis's 100th birthday (which, I just looked up, won't be until 2035). 

Then he reveals Tina Brown's #2, Wayne Lawson, had assigned him an Oprah Winfrey profile (she being a fellow Chicagoan) which, Bill promises, 

"will blow the whistle on her amazingly loud lifestyle here. I interviewed her in bed for three hours the other night. I curled up at the foot and she sprawled across the rest of the bed. Two months into married life, and already I'm in the sack with the first willing participant.") 

He bemoans the fact that Playboy wouldn't grant his pitch to do 20 questions with TV's former Batman, Adam West, on the occasion of the show's 20th anniversary: "They regard the suggestion as crackpot. No wonder they're losing money." 

He also complains of Playboy editors adding "Jackie..." to the beginning of his questions with Gleason. "It's a wince-inducer from hell. And they left out a bunch of my favorite exchanges, like his method of surviving hurricanes in Florida: 'Close all the windows and open up all the bottles.'" 

But the second letter is really peak Bill. I will just extract the stream of consciousness of watching Jerry Lewis's Muscular Dystrophy Labor Day Telethon, though interspersed are complaints that Tina Brown hasn't read his Oprah piece, 3 weeks after he submitted it, a recommendation of Richard Yates' "Revolutionary Road," a Geraldo Rivera sighting, and a blow-by-blow of Rex Reed taping "At the Movies" ("Rex stammers all over the teleprompter - you'd swear he was reading his own reviews for the first time") and so much more. 

Dear H-man:

Only an hour to go before the Jer takes to the Caesar's stage in Vegas and begins doing his thing for His Kids. I love that man. This is the weekend I long for each year. Just think: Within 24 hours I will be able to see all my Showbidness heroes. Like indian Wayne-O the Drain-O and his magic belt buckle (he'll do his "American Trilogy" number about an hour before the final "tympony! tympony!" sounds). Like Samalah. O please, Samalah, do the Bojangles thing for me.

(I just found his first--there've been two-- autobiography in a used book shop two nights ago, entitled [of course] Yes I Can! Sinatra sent him a telegram upon its publication that read simply, "No you can't." I love those guys.) And then there's the auspicious arrival of Francis Albert, the Chairman, hisself, who each telethon does really fine covers on tunes like "I Write the Songs" and "Song Sung Blue."

But Jer. He's the reason to watch. Sure, he's cut back on the pill-popping. He's a little less mean each year. And since he's quit the coffin nails, there's no more shtik with the lighter flame. But the hair, it's always glistening, always jet black. And you just know he'll break out the "chink" teeth a few times. And he'll lead the orchestra when it gets really late and his voice has begun to scratch. And he's got to jump into Big Ed's arms after one really substantial "tymp." There'll be at least one short film in which he'll play the mime who's actually supposed to be MD. Strong stuff. And the "mod" songs to which he'll change the lyrics ("My kids can't smile without yooooooou"). And finally, his tearful signature, "You'll Never Walk Alone," after which he can't get off the stage fast enough.

(later pic of prized find described in letter) 

So we're walking down Melrose in LA, the wife and I, and we go into one of those stores that sells old antique-ish pop culture chotchkies. And I see this great technicolor 3-D portrait, lit from behind, in a huge gaudy wooden frame. It's of Jer and Dino, circa '55, in which they have tons of pea-green money loaded onto their outstretched arms.

And I say to the missus, "I gotta have it." And she knows I mean business. So its on the way here, UPS. $125. Plus delivery. That's what Jer means to me.

Well, fall is in the air, which means, if you're anything like me, classes are about to start and you're guilty because you somehow forgot to register this semester.....

....Telethon Update: Sammy is out onstage first, tapdancing like a mofo. He introduces Jer. Jer comes out. Says of Samalah: "Let me tell you something about this man. He's a Show Person. He's there whenever I need him. He is truly a Giant. He'll get on a plane wherever he is and he'll come here. That's the kind of beautiful man he is. He'll be back later." (I hope so, Jer, I fuckin' hope so.)

....Telethon Update: Cos makes appearance. In NYC, where Tony Orlando is anchoring. Cos jumps into Tony's arms, stealing Jer's shtik with Big Ed; Jer is too much of a giant to call them on it, tho. Cos, who closed at Caesar's just last night and has flown back to the apple, offers up for auction a day on the set of his show, lunch in his dressing room, and dinner at the place of his choice afterward. Tony starts bidding at two grand. Jer says: "That man is Show People." Meaning Cos. Altho Tony probably qualifies, due to some loophole, I'm sure. 

...My brain is pudding now; perfect for Jerathon-glomming. Eleanor Mondale is a cohost of the Chicago end of the begging. She's dressed like a junior Vanna White, has bad energy, and can't read the idiot cards at all. But, damn, she's cute. And she can always lean on her shill-partner for the next 22 hours, Adrian Zmed. Now there's a guy with a last name I'd kill for.

And then Bill closes with this: 

Zehmer has left the building 

         

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MAGNIFICENT POSTSCRIPT: 

Nearly a year after Bill's passing, came news that Bill's Carson book will exist in the world. 

Johnny Carson bio by late Chicago writer Bill Zehme set for November release

Author died in 2023 but former research assistant completed the 384-page ‘Carson the Magnificent.’

By  Darel Jevens

 Chicago Sun-Times

  Feb 7, 2024, 6:47pm EST

Bill Zehme’s long-awaited biography of Johnny Carson — thought to be lost when the Chicago writer died last year — will be surfacing after all.

Publisher Simon & Schuster says “Carson the Magnificent” is scheduled for release on Nov. 5. Zehme’s former research assistant Mike Thomas, who went on to write for the Sun-Times, completed the 384-page book from writings and research Zehme left behind.

Zehme, a magazine writer and author of books about Frank Sinatra, Andy Kaufman and Jay Leno, spent almost a decade interviewing Carson’s colleagues and friends for the bio, but a cancer diagnosis and treatments cut his work short. He died at Chicago’s Weiss Memorial Hospital last March at 64.

Simon & Schuster says the book will “illuminate one of the most inscrutable figures in entertainment history” with details about his youth in Nebraska, his Navy service during World War II, his three marriages and his struggles with alcohol.