GO-GETTER : A Legend in His Own Time, Vince Calandra Talked the Celebrities Onto the Talk Shows

Vince Calandra was on his knees, begging Lee Iacocca.

It was all on videotape. Calandra offered to cook a traditional Sicilian dinner for the Chrysler Corp. chairman. Calandra showed home movies of his son, the baseball player, and his daughter being crowned homecoming queen. Calandra promised to trade in his car for a Chrysler.

All this--if only Iacocca would appear for 14 minutes on Joan Rivers’ “Late Show” on TV.

When it comes to persuading celebrities onto the talk-show couch, Calandra has tried just about everything over the last 27 years. And at least some of the time, he made it work.

The Woodland Hills talent booker became legend in his business when he booked the Beatles on “The Ed Sullivan Show” in 1964. He later persuaded Sir Laurence Olivier, Fred Astaire and Robert DeNiro to chat with Mike Douglas.

Convincing Iacocca would have been another coup. But Calandra’s videotaped plea never got the chance. Joan Rivers’ producers thought it was demeaning to their show and to Calandra, and would not let him send it.

Just Kidding

“It was a gag. All tongue-in-cheek,” Calandra said. “I was just trying to show the guy that we could be creative.”

Calandra can look back on this episode and smile about it. He is out of the business, having left Rivers’ show several months ago. On a recent afternoon, he told war stories from his life as a talent booker and reminisced about the business.

Other talent bookers say they aren’t as, well, flamboyant as Calandra. Calandra dismisses his sometimes exotic tactics as good business sense. He was always looking for an edge, the one trick that would get to the desired celebrity. The business, he says, demanded it.

Talent bookers scratch and claw to get big names for their talk shows. It is a night-after-night, week-after-week grind for the kinds of guests who will attract viewers and ratings.

“Naturally they want the big stars,” said Henry Rogers, of Rogers & Cowan, a public relations firm that represents such celebrities as Sylvester Stallone and Cybill Shepherd. “But they have learned a long time ago that the very important stars are reluctant to do talk shows.”

As Burt Reynolds’ manager and former publicist, David Gershenson has listened to more than a few pleas from talent bookers.

“They can get real panicky,” Gershenson said. “These people’s jobs are on the line. The bottom line is, the pressure that is put on these people is horrendous.”

Calandra knows all about it.

“I mean, you’re not curing cancer,” he said. “But every booking sounds like it’s the end of your career.”

There are some who believe that the business has grown even tougher of late. The recent proliferation of late-night talk shows, they say, has made for too many couches and not enough guests to fill them.

Calandra insists there are still enough celebrities to go around. The great guests, he says, are the Danny DeVitos, John Larroquettes (of TV’s “Night Court”) and Tony Danzas (of “Who’s the Boss?”) of the world--celebrities who are entertaining and available, the people one talent booker called “B” guests.

Something Different

He discussed all of this while sitting on the patio at the Disney Studios commissary in Burbank, where he was booking talent for “Disney’s Golden Anniversary Show: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.” Calandra also has been working for the weekly music-and-dance show “Solid Gold.”

There were rumors that he left the Rivers show because of creative differences with the host. Calandra dismissed such suggestions, saying that he left because “it was time for something different.”

“I’ve got to tell, I’ve got talk-show burn-out,” he said. “It’s fun for me doing the special and the rock ‘n’ roll. It’s diversified.”

But he was eager and excited when speaking about his old work. He talked nonstop. The whole time he was fidgeting, leaning forward, gripping a paper cup filled with Coke, twisting it in his fingers.

“They classify you as the so-called legend,” he said in a native Brooklyn accent, “ the talent buyer.”

Calandra’s voice rose to make a point.

“It’s not just picking up the phone and saying, ‘Do you want to do the show?’ ” he said. “You have to have a game plan. It’s like being a general in battle.”

Without realizing it, Calandra had poked a hole in the cup he was holding. Coke leaked out into a puddle on the table.

“Look at this,” Calandra said in disgust.

Air of Sincerity

At 53, Calandra looks younger, with a tan, rugged face and collar-length dark hair. He is quick to smile and gestures widely with his hands. Despite his tense, fast-paced style, he comes off as friendly and sincere. That, too, might be part of his game plan.

The word on booking talent is that it’s all in who you know, your connections, whose home phone numbers you have. Calandra doesn’t buy that line.

“I’ll give you my Rolodex,” he said. “I’ve got 190 major stars. I’ve got their addresses and their phone numbers.”

But anyone can get hold of telephone numbers, he said. It is hard work and homework that make a talent booker.

While working for Rivers, Calandra said he had an agreement with People magazine. The magazine would tell him who would be on the cover for the coming week. Calandra had to keep it a secret, but he could try to book the cover celebrity on Rivers’ show for the same day the magazine hit the stands.

“People are going to talk about it the next morning,” he said. “That’s what you need.”

Hoping to woo baseball star Rod Carew, Calandra read and memorized Carew’s autobiography. He met the athlete outside the California Angels’ locker room one day and recited several passages verbatim. Carew later agreed to appear on John Davidson’s talk show.

Smooth Talk

Calandra has also relied on quick thinking and a used-car dealer’s affinity for smooth talk. On the day when actress Diahnne Abbott was appearing on “The Mike Douglas Show,” Calandra cornered her husband, Robert DeNiro, in the studio. The two men sat eating hot dogs and pretzels.

“I was in awe of the man,” Calandra recalled. “It was like hanging out with a guy from the old neighborhood. We started talking about being brought up in New York.”

During taping, DeNiro agreed to sit in on the show with his wife.

“I would like to take credit for that, but I don’t know,” Calandra said.

Calandra tried to persuade Roger Moore with a home-cooked meal. The “James Bond” star wouldn’t do the show, but did insist on helping with the dishes, Calandra said. Moore was also the only man that Calandra’s wife, Marge, has ever allowed to smoke a cigar in her house.

This personal approach is unusual in the business. A talent booker with the David Letterman show said he does most of his work over the phone, or at the occasional lunch or dinner with publicists and agents.

“I’ve never done any videotaping. I don’t think I’ve done anything extraordinarily strange other than send flowers,” said Laurie Zaks, talent executive for “Night Life” with David Brenner. “I rely a lot on my relationships with managers, publicists and record company people who I’ve been working with for 10 years. It’s a lot of phone work.”

Baby-Sitter Too

And the work doesn’t end with a booking. Even after Calandra secured a guest, he still had to get the celebrity to the studio on time. Baby-sitting the Beatles was a pleasure, he said, but some other stars were less enjoyable.

“The guys who’d come in with six bodyguards--it’s unbelievable,” he said. “I’ve dealt with rock groups that called and said they wouldn’t come because we didn’t send them a purple limo.”

On the other hand, Paul Newman didn’t want a limousine to pick him up for an appearance on the Douglas show. He wanted a station wagon.

“We sent a station wagon,” Calandra said.

And for every success, there was a catastrophe.

Calandra once booked a pair of female magicians on the Sullivan show. The duo had never been on television before (their agent lied about this, Calandra said) and halfway through the act, their pigeons escaped and flew off. The Sullivan show was broadcast live, so all they could do was drop the curtain. For all Calandra knows, the birds are still up in the rafters at the Sullivan theater.

Another time, two trained chimpanzees began fighting on the air. Curtain down. And once, as Frankie Laine was singing “I Believe (for Every Drop of Rain),” a horse brought on stage as background scenery began to urinate.

Calandra says he doesn’t miss the kind of heartache that comes with the daily grind of booking for a talk show.

Spaghetti With Sophia

But he does miss the better parts of a talk-show talent booker’s life: sitting on the floor backstage and eating spaghetti with Sophia Loren before the Douglas show, lunching with Joe DiMaggio (who he never got on the air), playing tennis with Prince Rainier in Monte Carlo while doing the Davidson show there.

All this, he said, for a kid who grew up in a four-room Brooklyn apartment and worked his way up through the Sullivan show as a “go-fer” and cue-card man.

But Calandra insists he won’t go back to a talk show unless he can also produce it. After all, he says, the talent booker is really the one who runs the show.

“If you don’t get the bodies there, you don’t have a show,” he said. “It’s what you put in TV Guide that gets people to tune in.”