Thanksgiving makes me think of bow ties . . . and my former boss.
For my 21st birthday — on the advice of our good friend, Fred Hargadon — my Pop bought me a tuxedo. It was beautiful and traditional (from Cable Car Clothiers in San Francisco) with a proper full vest (not a cummerbund) and a real (as in not pre-tied) bow tie. The only thing was, I did not know how to tie a bow tie. Nonetheless, I had decided to wear that tie on Thanksgiving day that year.
Having belonged to a VERY preppie Frat, I called Larry Frye, the former president, who bore a slight resemblance to the character Hoover in “Animal House” which had recently debuted. (I would later meet and work with Jamie Widdoes who played Hoover — funny, I never, ever saw Larry and Jamie in the same room together!) Larry was at home preparing his turkey day feast for several guests, but figured he could spare a few minutes to give me my sartorial lesson in between his cooking duties.
As I arrived, he had just completed that half hour’s basting duties, and took me before a large mirror — he put one of his bow ties around his neck, I did the same, and he showed me each step, inviting me to follow suit. We did it the first time and while his looked professionally tied, mine was a mess. We pulled them apart and did it another time — and again: his perfect, mine a Dali-esque mockery. We repeated the procedure a third time and while mine was slightly improved, it was still barely recognizable. As he had more cooking chores ahead — he told me to keep repeating the process for the next 30 minutes and he would check my progress after the next round of turkey moisturizing.
I followed through and after half an hour — my bow was, let’s just say, close enough to its intended form. I did wear it to my Thanksgiving dinner — my Pop beaming at his accomplishment, and over the years as I became as accomplished as Larry, thus the bow tie became my preferred neck adornment.
Over the years it became my “trademark” and I would wear a bow tie on tape nights for the whole run of “The Golden Girls” and other shows which followed. In fact, when Margaret Cho was in the early part of her career, she got a much needed one-line part on the spinoff of “Golden Girls.” A few years later, I visited the set on a show in which she was starring and my friends reintroduced us and reminded her we had worked together on that episode of “The Golden Palace.” “Oh yeah,” she recalled, “the guy with the bow tie.”
One day, during my editing years, I got a call from Marlene, the assistant to my then-boss, Tony “Son of Danny” Thomas — asking if I would come over and teach Tony how to tie a bow tie? It turned out that he had to attend a formal fund-raiser that Saturday and he wanted to have a “Tony Bennet moment” — which, as he later explained to me, was that moment at the “after-party” when you are in the middle of the dance floor and reach up and untie your bow tie impressing the crowd with your skills. OK, I replied, but as it wasn’t tape night, I didn’t have a tie with me. I suggested she call over to wardrobe (our designer, the great Judy Evans, always used real bow ties when she could) and have two sent over.
When the ties arrived, I got the call to head over to Tony’s office. Channeling my best Larry Frye, I took Tony into his private bathroom — stood him next to me in front of the big mirror and went through the procedure. Tony did, and does, have a lot of great talents and attributes, patience, though, not high on that list. After the third time through, as Larry did with me, I told him to keep practicing for a half hour or so. Really???? No easier way? Some short cut? I replied that, short of a pre-tied tie, no. I wished him well and went back to my day job.
I half expected a call on Saturday night to go over and tie the tie myself before he headed out, but none came. Monday morning, I called Marlene to ask how the moment went — he had given up all hope and wore a pre-tied tie to the event and then exchanged it for the real, but untied, tie in the car on the way to the after party — he never got his “Tony Bennet moment.”
So on thanksgiving I think of bow ties . . . and my former boss, Tony.
And so it goes.