Free Still Foolin' 'Em by Billy Crystal Page B

was also a guest that night. My anxiety increased to a full panic. The show started, Johnny did his monologue, and then he brought Welles on. They did a funny segment, and I was led to my mark backstage, behind a curtain, to make my entrance. My routine was called “The Mood Comic.” I played a comedian who did his act like a late-night lounge singer. There weren’t many jokes in it; it was attitude and timing, not the kind of one-liner monologues other comics were successful with. It was what I closed my sets with, and now I would be opening with it.
    Before the show the stage manager had told me that when I was done, to stay on my mark and watch him. If his hands were up, it meant stand there and take a bow; if he pointed to the desk, I was to go over to meet Johnny. The odds of that were almost nil. You really had to earn your way to the couch. As far as I could recall, only Freddie Prinze had ever done a first Tonight Show spot and been called over. Every other new comic had this painful look on his face as he took in his applause while his anxious eyes fixed on the stage manager, who had his hands up.
    I heard Johnny introduce me, the curtains parted, and then, as if I were a bull rider in a rodeo, I was let out of the stall and into the ring, trying to hold on for dear life. The band played me on, and I walked to my mark on rubbery legs, feeling like I had to cough up a hair ball. Wow, there’s Doc and the band, I see Johnny to my right —it was very surreal. I had been watching this show for so long, and now I was on it. The piece played very well, and when it was done the audience gave me a big hand, and I looked over and son of a bitch if he wasn’t waving me over. I tried not to run, to act like I did this all the time, but inside I was a parade. I thought of my first home run in high school when I yelled, “Oh baby!” and my coach said, “Don’t say that again.” In essence, act like this has happened before. I shook Carson’s hand and then Orson Welles’s. We looked at each other and I stopped myself from saying, Go fuck your self.
    Johnny said a few nice things about my performance, and we went to a commercial. They had told me not to talk to Johnny during the break if I did sit next to him; he doesn’t do that. Doc and that fantastic band were playing, and there was the great man drumming away on his cigarette case with his pencils. I found myself staring at him. Johnny had very sharp features, blue eyes, gray hair, and other than Ali and Cosby, he was the first superstar I had been this close to. He must have sensed that I was staring, because he looked over and gave me a quick smile and I blurted, “How’s it going?” He laughed and said, “It’s going pretty good.”
    Craig Tennis, the segment producer, joined us and asked what I wanted to do in my short segment. “Let’s go right to the Ali question,” I answered; that would lead me into the imitation and I’d be okay. “We’re back,” said Johnny. “This Thursday you’re on the Dean Martin roast with Ali—what’s the connection?” At which point Welles said something like “He’s terrific on the show” and patted me on the back. I’d like to think it was his way of saying I’m sorry. Johnny fed me the Ali line, I did the impression, Johnny laughed a lot and said, “Come back anytime,” and I was in heaven. They don’t all turn out like this.
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    In 1976 Michael Eisner and ABC signed me to a development deal and I put the plug back into the garage door of my building and we moved to Los Angeles. It was hard to leave our families and the town where I’d grown up, but it was time.
    We arrived in Los Angeles on the evening of August 2, and that night I went into a supermarket to get some food. In the frozen food section I saw one of the actors from the film West Side Story. He wasn’t the cool member of the Jets anymore. He had a belly and a bald spot and was reading the label on a bag of frozen peas with a