I was in the Navy, San Diego, Yeoman School, in 1952, and a classmate of mine lived in Los Angeles, and we occasionally went up to his house for a weekend visit.
His Dad was a Dentist, and as I recall, that year he was President of a Los Angeles Dental Association.
On one particular visit, his Dad was very busy putting the finishing touches on a large annual meeting the association was having that weekend. Dentists were coming in from all over California for the event. It was being held a a large convention center somewhere.
It was unusual for his family to be home during our visits, they were generally off somewhere for the weekend. He had a girlfriend who lived in Beverly Hills, her Father had something to do with one of the large studios. We visited her home on one of my visits. I remember she lived in a corner house, very large, and in close proximity to her house, some of her neighbors included Jimmy Stewart, Jack Benny and some other well known names.
We were sitting out at their pool one morning, and Dan Dailey, entered and went around saying hello to everyone, followed by Virginia Mayo and Frank Lovejoy. They were putting together a movie they were working on. It was a big event for me, a kid from Ohio, sitting around the luxurious pool, waving, and saying "Hi Dan."
That happened on Saturday morning, and the convention was that evening. The entertainment for the evening was Martin and Lewis.
Of course I didn't attend the meeting, but when his Dad got home, rather late, we were sitting up watching "The Peter Potter Show," which few will remember. He had a late Saturday night show, from LA, live, came on around midnight, and would keep going as long as guests showed up. All very impromptu. I remember one night Sammy Davis stopped by, before his accident. All the "stars" who lived in LA stopped by at one time or another. It was the first "Late Night TV Show," remember, this was in 1952.
His Dad got us tickets, for a Sunday Morning show at one of the downtown theatres in LA, The Martin and Lewis Show. If memory serves me, the show started around noon, or something like that.
Lewis came out first, a little late, apologizing to the filled theatre, explaining they had done a convention the night before that went on till the wee hours of the morning, and they had very little sleep. He clowned around a bit, then Dean Martin came out and they went through some of their normal routines. They primarily did what they felt like doing, and it was hilariously funny. I gathered they were still a bit "high" from the previous night, so the entire hour plus show was nothing but laughs. The great thing about the show, they had no idea what was coming next, they played the whole show, doing whatever they felt like doing next. It was great.
It was a great weekend, and a great show, early Martin and Lewis. Prior to that, I had listened to them on the radio when they broadcast their first "telethons," which were from some theatre in New York, with the midshipmen from Annapolis, going through the crowd collecting money .....
