Shtick and a Few Yuks? Bingo!

You are in the “world famous” Friars Club of Beverly Hills sitting at a long white table. At the bar lurks a man whose cratered mug has been in every gangster movie since “Little Caesar.” A few feet away, two women in motorized vehicles that look more like Harleys than wheelchairs are negotiating the buffet with its glass bowls of Thousand Island dressing and croutons.

The air shimmers with the smell of butane and the sound of Donna Summer singing “God Bless America.” A man in a Hawaiian shirt holding a microphone is explaining that Buddy Hackett will be arriving in less than an hour. Directly in front of you are two bingo daubers, which look inarguably like brightly colored sexual aids, and a plateful of banana cream pie. Sitting on your left, drawing off white gloves with big blue polka dots, is Jo Anne Worley. You are laughing so hard that when you try to breathe, you snort, just like you did in high school.

This is not a dream.

This is the grand opening of Celebrity Bingo Night at the Friars Club earlier this month. You are here because a comic named Steve Bluestein convinced a few of his friends, including Worley and Mary Willard, that it would be an absolute hoot to see Buddy Hackett call a bingo game and they, being gracious, adventuresome women, allowed you to accompany them.

The dreamlike quality of the evening began early, at about 3:15 on the front stoop of Worley’s Toluca Lake house. For anyone older than, say, 35, Worley occupies a significant and unique place in the heart of popular culture. She was one of the most beloved members of the deliciously odd ensemble of “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In.” With her big hair, zany polka-dotted head scarves, unapologetically fake eyelashes and trademark high-pitched warble, Worley’s post-”Laugh-In” career includes game show diva, stand-up comic and comedic actress.

Meeting her is kind of a big deal.

Opening her door, she is immediately and irrefutably her, with a jet-black pageboy and lashes out to here. “You look hot,” she declares over the silky head of her miniature Yorkshire terrier, Harmony. “You want a diet soda?”

She and Willard, who is also there at the house, know nothing about bingo, nothing about this game except that Hackett’s supposed to be there tonight and comedian Norm Crosby is scheduled the following week. “But how can it not be a scream?” says Willard, who is a playwright and is married to comedic actor Fred Willard.

In the car, Worley dangles a string of white beads. “I wore these once in Esther Williams’ pool,” she says. “They have to be lucky.”

The beads pay off almost immediately; Willard gets street parking right across from the Friars Club, and then things start to get a little odd. From across the street, it’s apparent that the health inspector has been here fairly recently and awarded the food service a thought-provoking C.

“Maybe C stands for comedy,” says Worley. Or Cedars-Sinai.

Inside the club’s foyer, a group of women is gathered. Most of them seem to be wearing T-shirts adorned with sequined American flags. Many of them are carrying pillows. They all seem to know each other. They do not seem to be from the neighborhood. They are bingo ladies.

The doors do not open until 4:30. It is 4:15. Bluestein arrives. He had been told by the folks at the club to show up at 4, and this is what he told his friends. Some of the bingo ladies are slowly sneaking their way up the curving staircase that leads to the main room where the games will be held. One woman advises Worley to get seats at the end of a table--better access. “It’s going to be like the Cocoanut Grove,” says Bluestein. “A stampede. I’ll get a high heel in my forehead.”

The women are talking to each other about “this evening.” About how they’re going to do in the games “this evening.” Worley looks at Bluestein, her wide eyes wider, and asks, “Since when is 4:30 the evening?” Bluestein looks at Willard, who sensibly asks the woman behind the counter: “What time does the bingo actually start?” 6:30. And it will probably go until at least 10. And Buddy Hackett’s only scheduled to do 15 minutes. At 7:30.

7:30. It is now 4:20. “But the buffet opens at 5,” the woman behind the counter says.

The buffet. When plans were made, there had been no mention of a buffet. The two women turn as one toward Bluestein. He takes a small step back. He is the only man in the room right now. He has no allies in this building. He has only two friends who thought they’d play a little bingo, laugh at Buddy Hackett, be home by, what? Seven? And they are now facing down a three-hour wait for 15 minutes of Hackett, 3 1/2 hours of bingo at $35 per card pack and a $12 all-you-can-eat buffet. Even backward, the C in the window is emphatic.

The two women look at each other and a moment in which just about anything could happen twitches between them. Worley starts to laugh, and Willard starts to laugh and, in a nervous minute, Bluestein starts to laugh too.

And for the next five hours or so, they very rarely stop.

Many things separate those who write and perform comedy for a living from the rest of us, but the biggest thing is laughter. For most people, laughter is a perk, an occasional windfall from the gods to remind us that being human is a pretty good deal, all things considered. Laughter takes the average person by surprise; it always seems to come from nowhere.

The Currency of Life

For comics, however, laughter is the currency of life. It is the work and the payoff, the alpha and the omega. They take it seriously, court it, coax it and when it arrives, they give it lots of room. Where many people try to control their laughter, to cut it short, keep it quiet, comedians let their laughter settle in, shift around, fluff the cushions. They throw back their heads, open their mouths wide, they hiccup and splutter, lean forward, wipe their eyes, then start all over again at the mere memory of the joke.

And everything is material for the joke. Even a situation like this. Especially a situation like this. The women decide that whatever the outcome of this evening will be, it is too darn good to miss.

Seats at the end of a table are procured. People come one after the other like pilgrims to stand in front of Worley. “I know you,” one woman says staring into her face. “I know you.” She points but gets no more specific than that. Worley smiles and when the woman leaves simply clears her throat in just that way, and the whole table roars. Several others ask her to do that “you know, that thing you do.” As quietly as possible, she complies with a shadow of her trademark trill. “Yes,” she says, when asked if people want her to do that all the time. “Oh, yes.”

More people come in, some of them more Beverly Hills than bingo, older couples fringed with gold and baffled expressions. The buffet is bland, but the food at least seems safe, and you can’t beat the banana cream pie. Bluestein’s cell phone rings almost constantly. “I’m at the Friars Club playing bingo and waiting for Buddy Hackett,” he says to a number of people in a tone one might use when calling Mom from the Oscars or dinner at the White House.

“I can’t believe we’re here,” says Willard, often, looking around just to be sure. “I feel like we fell down a rabbit hole.”

Serious Bingo

At 6:30, bingo does indeed begin, and it is serious bingo, much more complicated than anyone at the table remembers from their childhoods. The payouts are $250 a game, so everyone pays close attention because that is a lot of money. There are reprimands from the man running the show about “bingo etiquette” and how it involves mostly silence. “Bingo etiquette” becomes a much-uttered phrase at Worley’s end of the room.

Finally, at 7:30, Buddy Hackett is introduced. Introduced and applauded, people stand up for heaven’s sake, and he makes his way past the sequined T-shirts slowly, almost as wide now as he is tall, but still Buddy Hackett, God bless him, wearing a blazer and gloves.

He speaks for exactly one minute, explains that the folks who asked him to do this for the Friars Club told him that his presence would push the crowd to 300-plus but that clearly the anniversary of Sept. 11 kept everyone in so they’ll try again next week. With a wave for good luck, he is done and heading for the bar through a sea of uneasy smiles.

At Worley’s table, everyone is giddy from butane and waiting, from bingo and Thousand Island dressing and laughing too hard. That Hackett has just stiffed the room is just the cherry, the big sloppy maraschino cherry on top. Hilarious.

“My favorite part,” Worley told the young man at the door when she left, “was that Buddy Hackett. He’s still got it. I could just listen to him all night, couldn’t you?”

On the drive home, she and Willard agreed that despite the long wait and not-quite-fulfilled expectations, the evening had been a success, hoot-wise. And it could be a great thing to do now and again if one did not arrive quite so early and if the comics--Rip Taylor and Sammy Shore are also scheduled for the future--actually did some material, if they actually called a few games. (The following week’s bingo game featured Rip Taylor and was, by all accounts, a rousing success.)

In fact, the man who ran the bingo game had asked Worley if she would come and call a few games one night. She was sweetly noncommittal. “We’ll see,” she said.

Then, driving through the dark on Benedict Canyon, Willard approached a stop sign a bit too quickly for Worley’s taste, and Worley unconsciously did “that thing” that she does--she let out a full-throated Jo Anne Worley warble, the first real one of the evening.

And there’s nothing you can do but laugh and laugh and laugh.