The President and the Courts (1973)

that at all. I couldn't possibly. Monday, Wednesday is a Friday. it in one way? No, Tuesday is another? No, no. Okay. I think that life would be much easier for most of us if instead of even contemplating that type of philosophy, if one would just try putting out a hand occasionally, always find someone who is willing to grasp it and sometimes help you along the way. Well, there's an old Navy saying that goes with that, but I can't repeat that one on the air. Well, the Navy, after all, know, you can't do it that way though, because the Navy is primarily to sort of toughen up people. The same hand is supposed to punch you in the nose. It begins with, if you have a buddy brave and true, that's the first line. Let's go on to other profound matters of cultural history. I've been reading a book, The Night They Rated Minsky's, and I want to ask if you were there. No, no, no. I do know the man who wrote the book though. Mr. Roland Barber. Yes. It's a pretty good book. I thought so. No, that was a nasty question, because I know it's They were going to make a musical of that. No, not necessarily before my time. April 20th, 1925. Well, before I

was in burlesque, but I was in show business. Were you? Yes. And they weren't going to do a musical of this? Yes, I died, and there was great talk about it. The story's true or apocryphal, for instance, the Professor It all depends on how you would like to view the Minsky's. As an audience, perhaps you'd have one opinion of them, and as someone who worked for them, you'd have another. I was reading about the girl called Giggles, and the Professor, the girl committed suicide. It was sort of like out of soap opera. Could happen. This is an anecdotal book, and probably some of the things are true and others legendary. Well, Roland has just taken stories that people have told him, and we all have a tendency to glamorize the past, color it a little bit. Because people are now writing or doing the history of burlesque. You see something that Lou Lara did for omnibus a few years ago. was magnificent. Called burlesque. Burtlar. Burtlar, sorry. Burtlar, and that's what Thurlman wrote. That's getting wonderful as it was. thought it was wonderful. And I'm interested to know

what were people like Morton Minsky lied as a man? I didn't know them terribly well. As bosses, they were pretty tough to work for, but as men, I really couldn't say. And it seemed to me they were very complicated. Leon Trotsky, I take, was a friend of one of the Minsky's. Really? didn't know any of them socially. I see, I see. Now, to talk about yourself and your career, I've been re -reading your book, and that of your sister, Erdi Havik. Yes. Now, your book, of course, is called Gypsy. Yes. That goes without saying. Now, the picture of Rose Havik is mighty different in your book from that of your sister. The dust jacket in our book is pretty mean. You're familiar with it? Oh, she doesn't mean it to be mean. I think if you take any two sisters or any two brothers of a whole wide world and ask them to remember certain instances of their childhood, and they will invariably give you different answers, because our memories play peculiar tricks on us. We have our own ways of making the past,

well, the palatable isn't the word, livable perhaps. Yes, sure. my sister didn't find it as amusing as I. And, of course, there were many reasons why she didn't find it as amusing. June worked much harder than I did. She was the star of the act. And when she wasn't on the stage acting, dancing, singing, knocking herself to pieces, she was backstage smiling and curtsy. As a child? Of course. You see, being the star, it was very difficult for a little girl to go through all of this. And she couldn't... Oh, I'm trying to find a nice word that would... I don't mean necessarily a nice word, but I mean a descriptive word. I can't think of it. I could sit in the dressing room with a detective story, or I could be out playing jacks for the other boys in the act. I didn't have to worry about these things. See, the anecdotes are similar. That's what interest me. For instance,

you have your mother standing in an Indian costume, and how funny. Well, this is after June had left the act, of course. Yes, but June tells the story of how your mother swiped a male impersonator's