INT: You wanted to talk about George Burns, and his 90th birthday [GEORGE BURNS’ 90TH BIRTHDAY PARTY: A VERY SPECIAL SPECIAL]? 

DQ: Right. I think, you know, I did some research, he did several specials at CBS. I think this was his 96th [GEORGE BURNS’ 95TH BIRTHDAY PARTY], okay. And Sid Grosfield was my Second [Second Stage Manager], and Sid informed me, of course, right when it was, when we walked in, said, “I’ll take care of George.” “Okay, Sid, but you still have a job to do,” you know. So, and then I think this is Walter Miller [Walter C. Miller], too, if I’m not incorrect, who may have directed this. So, poor little old Sid was so involved, and he was a Second City out of Chicago, and thought himself quite the performer, and you know, back in the day when Dinah [Dinah Shore] was seeing the younger Burt Reynolds and so forth, oh Sid thought he was quite the flirt with Dinah, and you know, he had this whole sort of you know, persona going on. So now he’s gonna take care of George Burns, I said, “Okay.” So, Ann-Margret’s on the show. Which of course, you know, they worked together, George and Ann, you know, quite a bit. [INT: He discovered her didn’t he? He or Jack Benny, or one of them discovered…] You’re right, I had forgotten about that. So now, well, Ann-Margret. The Elvis shows, and movies and features, I mean who is this beautiful, beautiful person. So, I’m gonna now get to meet her personally, on a quiet little weekend when we did these specials. So it was, you know, what’s the... it’s an in house invitation only audience. Okay, there’s no tickets that anybody can get for this, they’re sent out, to, you know, all of entertainment, for the opportunity, for key people to be able to come and witness this. So, Ann-Margret, oh my gosh. So Ann’s here, and I greet her, meet her husband and so forth, show her to the dressing room, and, “I’m Doug. Stage Manager, anything you need, blah, blah, blah, okay with this, okay.” We turned the air conditioning, you know, “Here’s all this, anything else? I’ve gotta get back out at the stage, so you know, just out, down around the door, and I’ll be right there, and I’ll come back and get settled. I’ll come back, we’ll talk about your rehearsal, and you know, what time we’re gonna need you, and all that good stuff. You need your clothes pressed, or anything I can help you with, you know, we’ll take care of it.” So I go out, and do some more rehearsal and so forth. I come back in, say, “Okay, here’s the rundown, here’s where we’re gonna need you. So in about five minutes if you could come out we’re just gonna rehearse your song that you’re gonna sing to George.” So she says, “Okay.” So I come back in and get her, and Roger’s there, and so forth, and she just locks arms with me. So it’s just she and I, and we’re working around the cyc [cyclorama], and the scrim, and coming around stage, and talking and so forth. So it’s just the crew, you know, cameras, and you know, audio and, you know, a few stage hands, everybody’s kind of, you know, out of the way, it’s her stage now. And so, “This is where we’ll come in from stage left here, and blah, blah, blah. You’ll come down to here, you know, and microphone, and so on and so forth. And George is gonna be sitting right there, you know, the dais over there.” So she says “Okay, great.” So, and then, you know, they’re telling me this, “Tell her, you know, she’s gonna be singing to George.” I mean everybody--we all know this, she’s singing to George, and I said, “So, are you ready to give it a go?” And she says, “Yeah.” She says, “Doug, could you sit in George’s chair for me?” I said, “I’d be happy to.” So she sang the song to me. You know, have you ever had anybody sing you a song? That was like one of my first times, right? You have to stay right here. You have to appreciate every moment, and they’re looking right into, your eye contact has got to stay right there.

DQ: So we’re finished and I, you know, I applaud and so forth [rehearsal for GEORGE BURNS’ 95TH BIRTHDAY PARTY]. All right, so there from here, I come back up on stage, and so and so will come out or whatever was going to be the end of that. And, you know, she [Ann-Margret] speaks at first, and then sings the song. They says, “All right Doug, we need a second pass at it. Need to do it another time.” Okay. You know, she’s shy, you can tell all about this loveliness, this person is so shy, that’s why she was really kinda, walk with me, and you know, be there, and we’re out on stage together and so forth. So I said, “If you don’t mind, they’d love to do it again, so they can, you know, for all the camera shots, and you know, to make it look as perfect as we can and so forth.” “Do I, do I have to, could somebody just sort of stand in and so forth.” I said, “It’s all, the shots are all sort of predicated on your dialogue, and the lyrics I’m sorry, and you know, and that sort of stuff.” “Will you sit?” “I’m on my way.” She sang it to me again. So the perks of the Stage Manager. Yes, and that’s something that I, she isn’t going to really perhaps recall that, you know, she’ll remember the show and so, but for me, it’s special. So now we’re getting ready to do the show, and my old buddy Sid [Sid Grosfield], god bless him, is, you know, has been busy taking care of George, he’s gonna make sure he’s gonna take care of George, so okay. So now I think I have Milton Berle, Red Buttons, Steve Allen, I think it was Steve, or Carl Reiner or Carl Reiner was, I think Carl was hosting, or Carl was one of the guys. Anyway, so remember when George started, he was with his brothers I think, and they were, you know, in Vaudeville, and they were singers. I think three or four of them, and they were in their, what are, the cutoff pants back in the day? [INT: Knickers.] Knickers, right, and all that sort of stuff, turn of the century kind of stuff, you know. And that’s Berle, and everybody’s behind this, we snuck them out with the curtain, put them behind this sign that’s gonna fly to reveal them. Out of nowhere. Wasn’t me, Walter. Sid, during the introduction, just flies it. We’re all just shocked. We’re just shocked. Walter can’t say anything, can’t, we can’t say anything. And now you have these men in front of an audience? Do you know how long it’s gonna take me to kind of wrangle them back to do it again, and not have the surprise reveal again? Sid never owned up to that mistake. I had to apologize, and take it on myself, but I wasn’t the guy in the rail that flew it. You know, it’s like crushing, it’s like, how can you, what were you thinking, my god, there’s an introduction going, and you fly it during an introduction? Fly late, not early, if you ever do anything. So I finally get them back, and I finally, you know, get them behind, fly it in, bring it back in, da, da, da, lose the drape now, ‘cause, you know, they’re, everybody knows who it is. So you had to give one of those quick little speeches to the audience. “Ready, we can roll, rolling, let them know.” “This is the first time you’ve ever seen them. Ladies and gentlemen, just hang on, here we go. Here we go, three, two,” you know, you try to get the momentum back. Cue it and say, “Now, from blah, blah, blah,” you know. Goes back into the Vaudevillian days again, and the knickers, and the whole nine’s here, and here’s George’s, you know, three younger brothers, whatever it was, were the guys in the knickers, and you know, you gotta get them going again, you know.

DQ: Well there’s, you can’t get somebody--I don’t know if anybody’s ever worked with Milton Berle, you can’t get this guy off the stage. It took forever to wrangle him to get back there. He’s, you know, he’s got his shtick, he’s going through, ba ba ba, Red Buttons, he’s going, “Never got a, never got a dinner, I never got a dinner. I’m not gonna get one tonight, I can see it right now, I’m not gonna get a dinner.” I mean just on, it just took forever, “Get him back there, Doug.” “I’m trying.” Oh, oh it was just… [INT: Now you did, now speaking of perks, you did get something nice, the Hirschfeld?] Yes, there was a, you know, the caricatures that he [Al Hirschfeld] would draw, so I’ve got a big, you know, a Hirschfield of George Burns that’s about this big that I’ve been lugging around with me for a long time, and Lady Lisa saw it and she goes, “We gotta get that framed.” I says, “Yeah, it’d probably be a good, ‘bout time, what do you think?” “No rush, maybe now.” So yeah, I’ve gotta get it framed. There’s a little bit of frailty around it now, but yeah, it’s, and he signed it, George signed it.

DQ: Yeah it was wonderful working with him. And if I may go back to another George Burns… In ‘77ish [1977], if that would’ve been 50 years that television started, you know, geez did it start way back then? Anyway, CBS’s 50--[INT: Well it’s probably going back to radio too. When they did those 50 years it was radio and TV, so you would be right then, ’27, probably about right for the ’77, 50 years.] Right. So we had this huge long production [CBS: ON THE AIR] that’s going on, with little blackouts here, and little, you know, little speeches here, and so forth. And it reminds me, I wanna tell you a story about Henry Fonda. So, as we’re doing this, Hitchcock [Alfred Hitchcock] is there and so forth, and of course, we’re getting everybody’s, everybody on that cast around those days, except, you know, of course the younger--we had to have chairs for everybody, ‘cause they would, you know, they had to sit, we’re hours of doing, so I would be off on one side of the stage, yelling, “All right, quiet please, here we go, rolling.” So we could get everybody quiet so we could do this quick little scene on this side of the stage. Hitchcock never took his eyes off of me. Every time I’d be walking by and doing something, I’d glance over and go, oh my god, there’s Alfred Hitchcock right there, and he’d be looking at me. You know, he’s always looking at me. So I thought well, I have to be very good, I mean, ‘cause Mr. Hitchcock’s looking at me. I could do his next feature film, are you still directing? Anyway, sorry. So during this process of many hours, and really not having the luxury dressing rooms that these wonderful folks would be used to having, you know, their dressing room and so forth, everybody would be dressed and then out on stage. Well over in the corner, holding court the whole time, it’d be 15 or 20 of the biggest stars in the world all sitting around, little old George Burns, who’d be sitting in the corner. “Guys, oh, there was a time when, back in ’34 when we were doing…” Telling stories. And then the whole group would laugh and laugh. I wanna be over there, I wanna hear those stories. But George was entertaining the stars of the stars in his wonderful way. You know, and back in the day, there was never a foul word said, you know. He was always entertaining, always just sitting telling stories. You know, so it kinda uplifted the whole place to hear laughter going on when, you know, “Quiet, here we go,” you know. We worked on that for weeks. Big huge, huge special.

DQ: So I’m doing another special, real quick, and now it’s one of those, I believe, that Henry Fonda’s gonna be on, who I’d never, you know, ever, I don’t think ever seen in person, with my very own eyes. And we’re on a soap stage, 31 at CBS, and off to the side is this piano, it’s black, and so now we’ve got like a Chroma key thing going on, the whole stage is black. Okay, so, you know, it’s just gonna be him, and he’s going to recite the wonderful, I call it preamble on the Statue of Liberty in New York, “Give me your weak, your tired,” you know, and so forth. And it’s a whole thing, and then when we do it, slowly behind him, the statue of liberty is gonna come up when it’s all put together. So I’ve introduced myself to him, and you know, he’s a little bit elderly, of course at the time and so forth, and he’s kinda going over the last second in his script and I’m looking and going, “Oh my god, there’s Henry Fonda right there, he’s right there, right there in front of me, Henry Fonda.” So he finishes up, and I’ve kind of, haven’t finished all that I’m gonna say. I’m gonna show him his mark and so forth, so when he’s ready… And he goes, “Yeah, I’m set.” And he reaches up and takes out his hearing aids. And I go, “Oh my god!” And sets them down. So I go over, and now I point to the mark instead of, so this’ll be the mark on my cue, okay, and so, I know he’s not getting it. So they’re rolling. And so rather than me say anything out loud, I went over, tape was rolling, I put my hands on his shoulders, and I said, “I’ll wave you in from the other side, rather than yell it.” And he said, “Fine.” And I’m walking back across, I just, “I grabbed him by the shoulders and I whispered in his ear, loudly.” It was just the moment, you know what I mean? And I went back and I kinda glanced back at him, and he’s like totally okay with it, and everything’s fine. I’m the only one going, “What was I thinking?” [LAUGHS] So we’re rolling, we’re rolling tape and so forth, and then it’s a nice little thing, and he walks in, nails it the first time. Anybody wanna do it again, nobody wants to do it again, it was just perfect. You know what I mean? Thanked everybody, and now we can just try to make sure he’s with his people and walks out fine, and, “Lights up please, so we can see where we’re going.” It was a great moment, you know. I thought I’d, may be over, it was perfect. It was perfect.

INT: Orson Welles. 

DQ: Orson Welles, oh my gosh! Well who didn’t, in our day, since we read anything about features or filmmaking, have not heard, just tons of material about Orson Welles and CITIZEN KANE. What was he, 26 years old or something at the time? [INT: Yeah. He was doing Mercury Theatre, he was basically started in his early 20s, 21, 20, something like that, yeah.] Yeah, he was so young, and so wonderfully with his voice, he had just a commanding beautiful voice. And so now I’m a page at NBC, if we go back to this, and it’s like this, there’s Orson Welles, there’s, he looks like, he looks like all the pictures I’ve seen of him. Nice big beard and so forth, big man. So he’s, you know, he’s guesting on the MARTIN SHOW [THE DEAN MARTIN SHOW], I think he did a, I think he was on JOHNNY [THE TONIGHT SHOW STARRING JOHNNY CARSON] one time and did a magic trick. He, well into that. And then he was in the roasts, a lot of THE DEAN MARTIN ROASTS [THE DEAN MARTIN CELEBRITY ROAST] and so forth, so I got to see him several times. And you know I’m a page, and now we’re doing an AFI tribute. And I think it was to John Huston [AFI LIFE ACHIEVEMENT AWARD: A TRIBUTE TO JOHN HUSTON], who, oh my gosh! If you think for just half a second of what John has written, and directed, and you know, and acted in, and where he came from, wonderful, wonderful stories. I still have the script in the binder, and you know all that sort of stuff. So now, I forgot exactly, it was Michael, you know, Selig… [INT: Was that Michael Seligman?] Seligman, you know, that may have come up to me and so forth. So we’re really sort of getting ready, we’ve done our sort of, I think they, maybe the paparazzi kind of welcoming of all the celebs and so forth. They come up and say, “Listen, Orson Well--we’ve got a problem with Orson Welles.” I said, “What?” He says, “We need you to tell us, ‘cause he’s in a wheelchair now, and he’s in this section of the show, but he doesn’t want the audience to see him, so we’ve gotta find a way to get him from the kitchen, through the kitchen at the Beverly Hilton, right, Beverly Hilton, we’ve gotta get him through the kitchen, and then come through these doors. Audience is all over here to my right, and along the side over here where it’s nice and dark and then get him to the stage, what time should he be here?” What? How am I gonna figure this out? And the reason is, the show could start, and this person talks this long, and this person talks longer and longer and longer, how…it’s difficult. So I picked the time, I say right about that time. Show is underway, I had the stage hands off to the side, pick up a couple of big, the heavy trunks that are with the orchestra and the band and the risers and stuff, so that it’s up higher, ‘cause I don’t know, he’s quite heavy at this time, and he’s in a very large oversized chair, I’ve been told, so you know, putting the brakes on, who’s gonna hold, how’re we gonna get him up, how well can he walk. How well, I don’t know? I picked the time. And so now, show’s going on, and I’m off to the side. And I open up the door, and here he comes. He’s up next. Here they come in the wheelchair, I’m going oh my god this is perfect, this is perfect. So I open the door, I walk beside him. You know, so the audience doesn’t quite maybe see, I can hide a little bit. And I said, “You wanna sit right up here? These chairs are real good and solid, and then, once your cue, you’re right out on stage.” He goes, “Yeah, oh yeah.” So we get him out of the chair, we sit there for just a short time. Then I have the moment or two, he’s got his notes, but when he stops and is looking out at, you know, the show from the stage and the side, I said, “We worked together on THE DEAN MARTIN SHOW, remember Dean Martin, and the roasts,” and he goes, “Oh, oh, oh good.” So, you know, a nice little re-acquaintance kind of thing. And so, time gets ready for him to, you know, come out, and I go, “Here we go, here we go.” So we get him up, and get him up, “Ladies and gentlemen, Orson Welles.” And walks out like there’s nothing wrong with his legs. He does his whole bit out there, standing O, Orson Welles, da, da, da, talks about John Huston, I mean, come on, two Writers and Directors like this, come on. Beautiful stuff. He comes back in, get the next person out, the host comes back out, right, da, da, da, put him back in his chair. Walk him back out, down the side, out back out through the kitchen. That’s the last time I saw him.

INT: In your time at CBS, freelancing, any other specials that come to mind? 

DQ: Specials, specials, specials… The one [LOLA!], remember Lola Falana? [INT: Sure.] Lola Falana was a great talent. It was one of the first times I worked a first day for 22 hours, and you knew you couldn’t even go home. You’re back in two hours, to drive home and back was just, you know. So, you know, dressing room, I had the key--Stage Manager, you know, so all the key guys that, you know, I could, we all just crashed in dressing rooms, and called for maintenance the next morning to come in after us. And so, the next day, I think we worked 23 hours. You know, I mean it’s just, you had two days to do it, and you used all of the two days to do it. Well there was Howard Cosell on the show, Muhammad Ali, who now I had, during CBS Sports, and specials… Okay this one with Lola Falana, I get to meet the champ, you know, just kinda coming… We know why he kinda missed his prime, because of the Selective Service and all of that sort in the Vietnam era. So, here he comes to doing the show, I mean…Muhammad Ali. I mean, you know. So the photographers on the show, you know, assigned to the show at CBS of course, like we knew everybody, goes, “Doug, Doug, Doug, let me get a picture of you two.” So on the punching bag, right here is Howard Cosell’s face, has been painted on the bag.

DQ: So years later, Don Diamont, one of the Actors on THE YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS, does sort of a sporting event and so forth that Muhammad Ali was on. Well Muhammad was a pretty big fan of THE YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS. So Don says, “Hey come on, come on and be on the set.” Well the word passes. You know, Muhammad’s gonna be, you know, Ali’s gonna be here on the show. So we were waiting for the moment, and as, you know, his Parkinson’s or whatever had really, you know, began to really set in and so forth, and so now, here’s the, sometimes, this is all Stage Manager here. I wasn’t working the show, but I’m coming in to see a man I’ve met several times. And so, when he said, “Come on out,” Don says, “come on,” we’re all kinda just standing around and waiting for the opportunity to say hello to him and meet him and so forth. And when he came out, and he was so, everybody was in shock. Nobody said anything. It was dead quiet. So you know, as Stage Managers, we’re there to break that. I mean, how many times have I, you know, we’ve broken that vibe. So I goes, “All right champ,” so I start dancing around, “Come on, you still got something left, come on, give it to me, give it to me.” You know what I mean, so everybody kinda nervously laughs and so forth. And then I go over to gently say, said, “You know, we worked a Lola Falana special [LOLA!], I was there when you fought Spinks [Leon Spinks], and you know, blah, blah, blah. Remember DEAN MARTIN ROASTS [THE DEAN MARTIN CELEBRITY ROAST], and you know.” He goes, “Oh,” you know, his voice was so weak, but good to see you. So we had Polaroid, you know, back then, “Hey Doug. You know, let me get a picture of you guys.” So somebody’s taking a picture, and it just opened up the door, so everybody could now say hello to him, and how wonderful it was to meet him. And that was the last time. And even the Olympics, were you there? [INT: Yeah, ’96 [1996], lighting the cauldron, yeah. And it just again, wherever he showed up to watch, we had some time off between the opening and closing ceremonies, so we had some opportunity to watch some of the events from up in the press box.] Right. Oh great. [INT: And you’d feel this rush of people, photographers, that says, “Champs gonna be here, the champ must be here.” And for sure it was. To go and snap pictures and see him, and he would still try to eke out a magic trick or two.] So we worked with, yes I did, I thought about this a while back. Beginning of his career too. I worked with two people, probably the most recognizable faces on the planet at that time, Bob Hope and Muhammad Ali. ‘Cause Bob Hope was doing all the USO tours, doing all the specials, the Christmas time specials in Vietnam, and all those things. I started with a page when I was working with those, so, you know, I look and it just reminded me, I look back on those days and that thought and go, wow. I guess it was me. I was the lucky one to be there.

INT: Okay, so this concludes part one of the Doug Quick story, recorded on August 14th, 2012, to be continued, right? 

DQ: Yes, in September perhaps of this year, we'll do it again.