Free We'll Be Here For the Rest of Our Lives by Paul Shaffer Page A

show-biz schmaltz was undoubtedly Lewis’s fabulous telethon. I say fabulousbecause in one long weekend blitz we were treated to a candor best expressed when Milton Berle, once Jerry’s opening guest, began by saying “Ladies and gentlemen, this telethon will give you an opportunity to see us as you do not normally see us. For this evening we intend to alleviate the mask.”
    I believed Uncle Miltie. I was convinced that his alleviation of the mask would give me a behind-the-scenes look at the stars who so completely captured my imagination.
    Jerry was a benevolent autocrat. When it came to this special show, Jerry was proprietary—and rightfully so. The recipients of this charity were, after all, “Jerry’s kids.” Jerry began hosting telethons to benefit the Muscular Dystrophy Association of America back in the early fifties. And to those who say his devotion to the cause came as a result of his guilt for portraying physically challenged people in his act, I say, “Keep your cynicism to yourself!”
    In 1966, Jerry expanded the telethon into a nineteen-hour show featuring his famous tote—telethonese for “total”—board. When the amount raised reached one million dollars, America celebrated as Jerry himself wrote the number
1
on the board.
    In the early years, Jerry hosted from start to finish. Part of the thrill was seeing a man work himself to the point where he nearly passed out but never did. In later years, Jerry recruited others to help him, a group he called his “Pussycats.” There was also the trio that Jerry dubbed the “Love Triangle”: Jerry himself, Ed McMahon, and Chad Everett, a show-biz personality best known for the TV show
Medical Center
. Of course among all the Pussycats, Ed was special. He had a unique contribution that always impressed Jerry: Ed could predict the final tote.
    “You’re scaring me,” Jerry would tell Ed. “You’re a witch with these predictions.”
    “I’m always right,” Ed would respond.
    “If you’re even close to being right this year,” Jerry would say every year, “you got yourself a Jew houseboy for the next twelve months.”
    Ed would laugh his jolly Ed laugh, and at the end of the weekend, Ed’s prediction would come uncannily close to the mark.
    In telethon lore, no date looms larger than September 6, 1976, when, to the shock of the world, Frank Sinatra escorted Dean Martin to the stage, presenting him to his long-estranged partner and saying, “I think it’s about time.” Jerry and Dean embraced and shed tears before Jerry asked Dean, “So, are you working?” “Five weeks a year at the Megem,” said Dean. “The Megem,” repeated Jerry with a smile, and just like that, a new hip name for the MGM Grand Hotel in Vegas was coined. The Martin and Lewis rapprochement was realized.
    There was a distinct dramatic arc to the telethons. They were, in fact, epics. To me, they had a Yom Kippur-esque feeling, with the tradition and the atonement and the suffering. It was all about the suffering. The kids suffer. Jerry suffers for them, even as he suffers to stay up hour after hour to bring in the money. All Jerry wants is a dollar more. Jerry might be in the middle of a speech about how this year he intends to “take off on” the press who have been accusing him of using charity for self-aggrandizement. Looking straight into the camera, Jerry adds, “And I’m enough of a showman to realize that if I tell you I’m going to take off on the press, you’re gonna keep watching until I do.”
    With that, Ed breaks in. “Sorry, Jer,” he says, “but it’s time for a tote.”
    “Show me! Do me! Yeah!” cries Jerry.
    The camera pans to the big board; the numbers flip and … yes! The tote has gone over $500K! Now Ed has some boilerplate work to do. He thanks the unions who have allowed their members to perform free of charge on the show. Breaking from the acknowledgments, Ed braves new waters by singing special material: “Holiday for Strings”