An Afternoon of Laughs and Memories With a Natural

Joey Bishop was born in the Bronx, weighing only 2 pounds, 14 ounces. For many years, he says, he was the smallest baby ever born in the hospital. “I told it to Buddy Hackett and he says: ‘Did you live?’ ”

Five minutes into a conversation with Bishop and already he’s got me laughing and between the two of us we’ve spilled a can of Coke onto the carpet in his den. So instead of being interviewed, the comedian/actor/talk show host/raconteur who turned 77 last Friday is down on his hands and knees, saying how it’s no big deal to clean up the mess.

And how can it be a big deal, with Bishop cracking wise? “I told Bob Hope I wouldn’t play in his golf tournament,” he says with his classic dead-pan delivery. “I said I won’t play golf with a Twitty (professional golfer Howard Twitty) or with someone who’s got three Z’s in his name (Fuzzy Zoeller). By the way, do you know how Chip Beck got his name? He hit a bad chip shot that went across the green and some Jewish guy on the other side of the green yelled, ‘Chip beck!’ ”

I laugh at that, because, for starters, I think most things Bishop says are funny. But it’s also funny in a comforting way--comforting that this man who I thought was funny in his prime 30 years ago doesn’t seem to have lost any comic timing or freshness. He had a sitcom and a talk show opposite “The Tonight Show,” and estimates he was in 15 movies, but, first and foremost, Bishop tells funny stories.

We’re sitting on a sofa in his Lido Isle home, the place where he and his wife, Sylvia, have lived the last 21 of their 54 years together. I’d called and asked for an interview, told him I had no particular agenda in mind other than to just shoot the breeze.

“I’m not going to answer any questions logically,” he’d said on the phone. He went on to say that “attitude” was everything and that he didn’t want to have to don the garb of philosopher, if that’s what I had in mind.

Fine with me. I went in search of relief from bankruptcies and lawsuits and crime. Besides, here was a guy who had run with Frank and Dino and Sammy. And, as it turns out, a lot more.

“I was the master of ceremonies at Kennedy’s inaugural,” he says. The gags come back in a flash. He remembers that night in 1961 at the Armory in Washington, when he pointed up from the stage to the loge where the new President was seated and said, “I told you I’d get you a good seat. You were so worried.”

Bishop reaches into a drawer, pulling out a black-and-white photo album protected in a shallow wooden box. It’s a gallery of photos from Inauguration Day. “The White House sent it to me,” Bishop says, thumbing through it. Some of the photos are from rehearsals, with one showing songwriter Sammy Kahn huddled with Bishop and Frank Sinatra. Another photo shows, among others, Gene Kelly, Jimmy Durante, Alan King, Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh.

I ask if he’d give me a close-up tour of the photos on the wall. “Now we’re talking about charging admission,” he jokes. I tell him I’d be happy to pay whatever. “No, I meant I should pay you. I’d love to show them to you. Do you really want to see them?”

The walls speak. They reflect a life richly lived, the kind the rest of us never get close to. There’s a photo of the Rat Pack itself: Joey with pals Sinatra, Martin, Davis and Peter Lawford. “We made Shirley MacLaine an honorary member,” he says. In another corner of the den is a poster from the Broadway musical “Sugar Babies,” in which Bishop replaced headliner Mickey Rooney while Rooney made a TV movie. Dance legend Ann Miller ran Bishop so ragged on their numbers together, Bishop says, that “I told her if she didn’t slow down, I’d get Ruby Keeler to replace her.”

I ask him for a Sinatra story, and Bishop tells about the time he was performing in Las Vegas, with Humphrey Bogart and Judy Garland in the audience. Before the show, Sinatra told Bishop that Bogart loved being teased. So advised, Bishop approached Bogart’s table and in his best Bogie, said, “You sure made a federal case out of those goddam strawberries in that movie.”

Instantly, Bogart grew irate and threatened to bash Bishop over the head with a bottle, as did Garland. Bishop, not to mention the audience, was stunned. Order was restored only after Sinatra came on stage and explained to everyone that he had told Bogart before the show to feign anger at the first thing Bishop said to him.

Across the den is a photo showing Bishop in boxing trunks. “Do you recognize that guy hitting me?” he asks. A closer look reveals that it’s Rocky Marciano. A boxing champ in the service, Bishop also fought three rounds for charity with Sugar Ray Robinson.

Plaques and awards fill a significant part of the wall, with many given by organizations dealing with the less fortunate. The commendations go back 30 years and more, including thank-yous from the City of Hope for his work with emotionally disturbed children, and from the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.

For one of the few times, Bishop gets serious as he talks about a drug disease center he built 30 years ago in Philadelphia, where he grew up. He talks about a girl with a drug problem who kept going back to drugs, until a doctor did minor plastic surgery to replace a facial deformity that fueled her low self-esteem and drug use. “Treating people is one thing,” Bishop says. “Caring about them is another. Do they really care? Some people do benefits because they want to be seen in the community. But do they care? Do they really, really care?”

Ninety minutes fly by. By the end, I reflect on how many laughs he’s generated in the 65 years since he first stepped on the stage at Amateur Night in Philly while still in puberty.

He pooh-poohs talk of “talent” or hard work, contending that he simply acted on his true nature, which was saying what was on his mind.

I thank him for the fun afternoon. He reiterates what he’d said the other day--that it’s more natural for him to be this way than to wax philosophical.

“Just what I was hoping for,” I say.

“I’ll walk you out,” he says. “It’s my way of making sure you didn’t lift anything.”

*

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, Calif. 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.