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

identified with the blossoming youth rebellion. Publicly, my wholesome alter ego, Ernie Douglas, was depicting me as a very different person. A new identity schism was brewing.
    The kids at school and on the playground saw me as an agent of the “old guard.” I was ostracized because my TV twin was more pervasive than the real me. As Ken Kesey said, “You were either on the bus or off the bus.” Barry wanted to be “on the bus” but I kept getting recognized as Ernie and thrown off. As far as I could see it was a case of mistaken identity.
    Trying to keep with the changing times, I begged my mom to get me a guitar like my new rock-and-roll heroes. She did, mainly because music lessons fit in with her cherished vision of me as a well-rounded performer .
    My first and only guitar teacher was a sixteen-year-old prodigy, Gil Reigers, who later became Johnny Mathis’s guitarist and arranger. Gil taught me to play the current hits like “I Want to Hold Your Hand” and “Blowing in the Wind” as well as classical Flamenco guitar, and I got pretty good.
    I was even asked to perform on Art Linkletter’s House Party, a very popular live daytime show. This was my first guitar performance, on live network TV no less, and my jitters made my fingers freeze up. Luckily, Linkletter blabbed on about my lengthy acting credits while I was playing “Malaguena,” and the audience couldn’t tell how badly I mangled it ... I hope.
    Like many other teens in the 1960s, rock-and-roll music fueled my fantasies of rebellion against authority. I even started to bristle against my mom’s notion that I become the new Danny Kaye, that good old-fashioned song and dance man. I told my mom that I never saw Mick Jagger do a “shuffle-off-to-Buffalo” tap dance step.
    Of course, my protests fell on deaf ears and I was soon enrolled in a new local performing arts school, the Eddie Gay Dance Academy. It was tough enough to study jazz and ballet, but telling kids that I was a member of the Eddie Gay Dance Academy really sucked, no offense to any homosexual fans. I went along with my mom’s program, but in my head I knew that my dancing days were numbered.

CHAPTER 13
     
    My Pal, Lucille Ball
     
    Back at work on MTS at Desilu, I started to become pals with the studio’s owner, Lucille Ball. Lucy had divorced Desi Arnaz and had taken over the daily grind of running the place. That was in addition to producing and acting in The Lucy Show . She was a force of nature and seemed to be at the studio night and day.
    After I’d finished school, I’d take a ride on my Schwinn, and my path frequently crossed with Lucy’s, who was speeding around the lot in her golf cart. Since she wasn’t in front of a camera, Lucy wore little or no makeup and would have her bright red hair tucked under a bandanna. A cigarette was also perpetually glued to her lower lip.
    I couldn’t believe my ears the first time she waved to me in passing, yelling out, “Hi there, Barry!” I practically fell off my bike. It was one thing when your average fan greets you and quite another when a world-famous celebrity and comedic legend knows your name. My afternoon encounters with Lucy continued on a daily basis, nothing more than passing smiles and waves. One day, though, it got more up close and personal.
    One of my current passions was baseball, and I would spend hours bouncing a tennis ball off the wall of our soundstage, playing catch with myself. I didn’t realized that my ball was also leaving little round smudge marks on the stage every time it hit it, which was hundreds of times. Lucy’s new husband and business partner, Gary Morton, caught me in the act and went ballistic.
    Morton screamed, “Kid, what the hell are you doing? Look at all those marks! It’s gonna cost me a lot of money to repaint the side of that stage!”
    Lucy pulled up next to us in her golf cart as Morton continued to rant and rave. “Gary, calm down for Chrissake. He’s just a kid!” Lucy