John Morressy - Last Jerry Fagin Show

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THE LAST JERRY FAGIN SHOW

By John Morressy

The other networks were wiped out, and they knew it. After this there would be

no more "Big Three." There would be only a single network, and Jerry Fagin

would rule it like a king.

The others tried to put up a fight, of course. There are no good losers

in this business. One network threw together a nude musical version of the

Kama Sutra. Another did a live eighthour report on torture and execution of

political prisoners around the world. The PBS stations had the best solution:

They reran the Fischer-Spassky match.

But only the Jerry Fagin show could offer a real live honest-to-H. G.

Wells alien from outer space as a guest. The projected audience was 99.3

percent of all potential viewers. It was figured that 0.4 percent would tune

in to the other networks purely out of habit, and the

remaining 0.3 percent would be watching their own canned reruns of The

Lawrence Welk Show.

Given Jerry's personality and the nature of the television industry, the

wipeout was inevitable. A cage of tigers can be pretty impressive, but if you

drop a gigantic dinosaur into the cage, the tigers all of a sudden turn into

pussycats. And Jerry Fagin was looking like a very big tyrannosaurus rex. He

had been one all along, but he kept the fact hidden. Most people thought he

was a pussycat. Those of us who knew better said nothing-and kept our jobs.

Jerry Fagin was a funny man, as everybody knows. He had half a dozen

foolproof comic characters, but he didn't really need any of them. He could

stand in front of a camera deadpan, hands in his pockets, looking up at the

ceiling, and reel off a monologue that had everybody helpless with laughter.

He was born with pure comic instinct. At a party I've seen him zero in on the

one person out of, maybe, two hundred total strangers who could feed him

perfect straight lines.

Jerry was probably the funniest man I ever worked for, and I've worked

for them all. Along with all the funny he had a streak of pure killer. But

Jerry had talent, and, more important, he had luck; so the killer side hardly

ever showed. He always seemed to be on the scene at the right time or to know

just the right person and have something on him.

So he wound up, at twenty-nine, hosting Late Night Live. At thirty, he

was the hottest thing

in the industry. The Late Night Live title was forgotten. Everybody called it

The Jerry Fagin Show.

Jerry could play an audience like Horowitz playing the fiddle, or the

piano, or whatever the hell Horowitz plays. You know what I mean. He took

small-town talent-show winners and made them into stars of their own. Just by

holding up a book, he could turn a piece of schlock by an unknown hack into a

best-seller. He could take a clubhouse errand boy and make him into a

political figure. And he did. And they always paid.

The payoff was never money. By this time Jerry wasn't worried about

money. He wanted other things. He just hung in there and smiled and played

kindly Uncle Jerry until he needed a favor. He never had to ask twice.

Everybody knew that what Jerry Fagin had built up overnight he could tear down

just as fast.

When the alien ship landed in Washington, Jerry counted up his LO.U.'s

and decided that it was pay-up time. He must have called in every one he had

to get that thing on his show, but he succeeded. At the personal request of

the President, no less.

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John Morressy - Last Jerry Fagin Show

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