Free The Importance of Being Ernie: by Barry Livingston Page A

jocks sporting crew cuts gathered around me and started laughing their asses off. One of the bigger kids lifted my wig off the top of my head, elevating it as high as the rubber strap under my chin would allow. That got a laugh from the kids. When he let go of the wig, the hairy mop snapped back down on my noggin, landing askew. The elastic band worked flawlessly, and that elicited howls. Mortified, I pedaled away from the jeers and catcalls. I rarely went back to the park after that.
    My true childhood playground was the Desilu Studios where MTS was filmed. There was always something amazing to discover. One of the coolest places was a storage area where they kept old movie props, some of them dating back thirty years or more to when RKO owned the lot.
    Amid the piles of forgotten treasures, I found the model buildings that simulated New York City in the classic film, King Kong . It was all there collecting dust: the Chrysler Building, the Broadway theaters, even the Empire State Building that Kong had climbed. When we weren’t working on the set, my brother and I played our version of Kong, running amuck amid the miniature buildings and feeling as powerful as the great ape himself. One Monday morning we arrived at the studio, and the model buildings had vanished. We were told that the old props were thrown away to make room for newer ones. Holy crap, we were pissed. Those models were so cool. If I’d only had the foresight, I would have asked for all of New York City. They’d be worth a small fortune today on the movie memorabilia circuit. Steven Spielberg paid $60,500 in 1982 for the “Rosebud” sled from Citizen Kane . Can you imagine the dollar value of the Empire State Building from the original King Kong ?
    Another fun stop on the Desilu playground was an underground garage where they stored the 1920s gangster cars used in the TV series The Untouchables. Stan and I had a ball climbing in and out of these classic autos with their running boards, pretending to battle it out as Eliot Ness and Al Capone.
    Another great pleasure was sneaking onto the Paramount Studios lot that was right next door to Desilu, literally. I already knew the layout of the studio, having worked there earlier and taken a tour of the place with Elvis in his limo. A rickety wooden fence was all that separated the two studio empires. Stan and I found a break in the barrier, which gave our unauthorized visits an added air of danger. Trespassing was well worth the risk, though, since Paramount had a huge Western town where Bonanza and many other cowboy sagas were filmed. The authentic frontier buildings, dirt streets, horse troughs, and wooden walkways sparked our imaginations. Imaginary gunfights were mandatory with every visit. Paramount also had an enormous water tank (and still does) that could float an entire pirate ship when it was filled. That was a sight to behold.
    Lunch at either studio commissary was always a mind-bending spectacle. It was a freak show of costumed actors working on Star Trek , Hogan’s Heroes , My Favorite Martian, Mission Impossible, and Lassie . You’d see purple aliens dining with Navajos or country spinsters breaking bread with baldheaded KGB agents.
    After living in our new home for about six months, I finally made friends with a neighbor boy, Jack McCalla. Whenever I wasn’t working, we played “army” for hours, digging trenches and building forts. Once we dug a pit so deep, we buried a huge wooden crate in the hole, and it became our subterranean headquarters. We stocked it with rations, installed a toy periscope to spy on the enemy soldiers above ground, and slept there on many summer nights, sweating it out like real “dogs of war” in our unventilated fort. We abandoned the bunker after winter rains flooded the place ... and a few rats moved in to salvage our soggy rations.
    There was another force in the world that was reshaping my views and my tastes: the English rock-and-roll invasion. Personally, I