400 episodes for sitcoms and still able to dress himself. : Funnyman Meets the Fat Lady

I put the rap awhile back on a show biz bar in Studio City called Residuals because it failed to live up to its own advance billings.

Flyers delivered from door to door and stuck under windshield wipers hailed it as a “conversation bar populated with bright, amusing, interesting people.”

That is the kiss of death for a place as far as I am concerned, because saloons ought not to predict their own image. Time takes care of that.

When reputation is pre-established, everyone labors in excess to justify the claim.

I could therefore imagine walking into Residuals and being greeted by people who could hardly wait to be witty.

But since it is a show biz bar, I realized that its habitues would consist instead of unemployed actors sitting right-profiled to the door, and cotton-brained ingenues who think a double-entendre is a strong drink.

Wit among such humanoids is out of the question.

But I am a person of egalitarian cant, willing to give even a show biz bar a chance, so I swung by Residuals to hear the bon mots buzzing.

I listened for hours but never once heard anything that seemed even remotely interesting or amusing.

Worse, there were no fat ladies in the bar, and I was cautioned years ago to drink only where the Fat Lady drinks because she always drinks at places with character.

Saloons do not last when the Fat Lady passes them by.

So I wrote about Residuals and to my surprise was challenged to a duel of whimsy at five paces by one of the co-owners, a man named Martin Ragaway.

I wondered what kind of nut would issue that sort of challenge, so I looked him up in our files. Martin is no nut. He’s a comedy writer. There is a slight, though perceptible, difference.

He has written for Red Skelton, Bob Hope, Dick Van Dyke, Jackie Gleason and a lot of others. George Burns? Him too.

This is no lightweight in the business. Four hundred episodes for television sitcoms and still able to dress himself and remember where he lives.

While I declined Martin’s invitation to duel, I was impressed enough to accept his subsequent offer to spring for a round or two, although you need not be famous to buy me a drink. Twenty dollars or an American Express card will do.

We met at Residuals.

“Let me tell you the latest funny story going around,” Ragaway says, almost before I can seat myself across from him.

“There was this widow who went to Miami Beach every summer. She had been going for years and never saw anyone new. It was always the same faces, year in and year out.”

He speaks in a reedy voice. His face is craggy but his eyes quick. Arched eyebrows add a sad and quizzical tone to his expression.

“Then one year she sees this guy she’d never seen before. ‘You’re a newcomer,’ she says to him eagerly. ‘I’ve been away,’ he says. ‘Where?’ she says.

“ ‘I’ve been in prison for 34 years,’ he says. ‘I poisoned my wife and cut her up into small pieces and then put her down the garbage disposal.’

“ ‘Oh,’ she says, ‘then you’re a single man!’ ”

“She wasn’t even listening!” Martin says through his own laughter. “Humor is based on little realities.”

Ragaway is a pharmacist’s son. He worked for the old New York Daily Mirror for awhile and then hustled items to Walter Winchell until he began writing comedy, which is what he really wanted to do. He’s been doing it for 35 years.

“How old are you?” I ask.

He hesitates for a moment which probably means he isn’t going to tell me the truth, and then says, “Sixty.”

“Hey,” I say, “you don’t look 60.”

“Good,” he says, “make it 59.”

I could fill several columns with Martin Ragaway stories, but the one I like best concerns a man who is currently a television network executive. Call him Steve.

“I used to know Steve’s father, Les, who was also a comedy writer, when Steve was a kid,” Martin says. “Steve was very short and they always worried about his height so they took him to an orthopedic doctor. The doctor puts Steve on the rack to stretch him.

“I see Les one day and I say, ‘Is the kid getting any taller?’ and Les says, ‘No, but he’s already confessed to 300 crimes.’ ”

I sit with Martin for maybe three hours, which is longer than I ever sit with anyone in a bar unless I am in a coma. His stories are treasures.

The last one is about how he tried to explain humor to a Communist commissar on a trip to China:

“ ‘Humor,’ I say to him, ‘can be like a funny incident at the commune. A cow that did something to make a tired farmer laugh.’

“The commissar looks at me and says, ‘Chinese cows are not funny. They just give milk. That’s their job.’ ”

Martin shakes his head. “You know,” he says, “that’s why Communism will never work.”

I am still not sure Residuals is loaded with bright, amusing and interesting people, but it may be getting there.

As I left, I thought I saw the Fat Lady wander in. She was having a drink with Martin Ragaway.

He was telling her a story.