When it appeared that his theatrical life had died an early death, by a piece of pure luck Phil was signed on by the big-time vaudeville team of Joe Morris and Flo Campbell. Morris needed a brash, cocky young boy with a loud grating voice---yet a kid who behind it was still likeable---who would sit in the audience, posing as his spoiled son, and shout insults at his father on stage. The brashest boy he could remember was Phil.
"I loved that role. I knew I had a good day when the audience wanted to tar and feather me after a show. A few times old ladies pummeled me with their umbrellas, but I never let that stop me. I always hit them back." Phil later said.
He headed for the borsch circuit, that first refuge for undiscovered talent and the last for washed-up talent. The borsch circuit is a fabulous collection of summer resorts in New York's Catskill Mountains, so named for the simple reason that on the top of the menu for each meal is the inevitable borsch. The clientele is almost exclusively Jewish, and every hotel worthy of the name felt impelled to have a dinner show replete with acts, song-and-dance teams, and a comic who acted as master of ceremonies and social director.
As social director it was Phil's job to see that everyone had a hilarious time all the
time. The job is called tumling, and many a desperate tumler toward the end of a
season was not above pouring bowls of borsch on his head, firing off bombs, falling
off the stage and being hit on the head by a giant stuffed herring to get a solitary
laugh. Every night called for a new routine, and it was here that everything Phil had
absorbed in vaudeville was, in desperation, put to use.
It is killing work, but if you survive it --- and have talent --- you are a comic. The borsch
circuit has produced such comic talent as Jerry Lewis, Sid Caesar, Abbott and
Costello, Imogene Coca and, in other fields such names as Ethel Merman, Robert
Alda, Robert Merrill, Mimi Benzell and Eddie Fisher, to name but a few.
From borsch, Phil jumped into burlesque and was signed as a top banana for the
G-string and bump-and-grind houses run by a man called Minsky, who fancied
himself as the poor man's Ziegfield. This work called for broad humour! If you had to
get your jokes across by hitting a man over the head with a club---then that is what
you did. Phil was lucky playing in the high-class chain along with other bananas like
Rags Ragland, Bobby Clark and Bert Lahr. In some of the houses, if the audience
got tired waiting for the strippers, the management satisfied their patrons by yanking
the clown off the stage with a long hook, to the crys of "Give the bum the hook;"
squirting them with seltzer water; batting them across the rump with slapsticks and
roping them.
As his profile grew Phil became a favourite of H.K. Minsky and his nephew Harold,
who owned the Gaiety and other Burlesque house. He remained at Minsky’s from
1934 through 1939 shouting out jokes and routines to people who came to observe
dames take their clothes off. It was here that he first adopted the oversized, clown
glasses, matching his oversized clown bow tie. Phil knew he was better than this
material, but he also knew that it could be a means to a better end, as it had been for
Eddie Cantor, Bert Lahr, and Abbott and Costello, whose famous "Who's on First?"
skit was actually an old burlesque routine they'd appropriated for themselves.
When he told a dirty joke, he never enjoyed it and would usually say something like,
"That's a little thing I borrowed from the Theatre Guild."
A mentor was found, in none other than Herbie Faye, a bold, hollow-eyed
veteran of the strip joints, and a best friend in Rags Ragland, a hard-drinking
Kentuckian who'd failed as a boxer and decided to give comedy a go. From Faye
he learned the ropes and etiquettes - never move on someone else's line; don't
date the strippers, they go with the straight men - and with Rags he perfected some
bits that he would use again throughout his career, chief among them the "singing
lesson" sketch he later performed with Sinatra, Crosby, Como et al.
In an interview given later in his life, Phil said Punko was an: "aggressive, smiling,
call-a-tall-man-shorty manipulator."
Yokel Boy completed 208 performances at the Majestic Theatre, but it wasn't
really a successful show, the critics didn't give it very good reviews. One good thing
did come out of the show though, Phil Silvers tremendous performances won him
the attention of a Hollywood big shot. One night, Louis B. Mayer, caught the show,
whilst he was in New York, and was so impressed by Phil that he offered him a
$500-a-week contract to come work for his MGM studio.
But for nearly nine months, Phil languished at MGM, playing bits that always landed
on the cutting room floor and spending more time at the cashier's office, drawing his
weekly paycheck of $500, than he did in front of the camera. Five hundred bucks a
week isn't bad drawing, of course, but Phil was getting very discouraged.
"Those were Babylonian days, it was a frightening city. I never got anything to do."
Phil would later say.
Then one day he asked to entertain at a big dinner Mr Mayer was having for the
entire MGM family. Phil literally killed them. He was on for half an hour and could
have stayed on all night. Mr Mayer rose to his feet and looked over to the big crowd,
"Gentlemen," he said, "you're looking at a perfectly sane man. You know that I am
not crazy, and if I think an actor nobody has ever heard of is worth $500 a week,
then you must know he has a great talent. Gentlemen, you have just seen that talent.
He has been on the lot for almost a year and all I can say to you producers, director
s and writers is that I'm ashamed of you for failing to recognize it."
Phil Silvers slipped quietly from the room with his accompanist. "This is it at last,"
he told him, "It's been worth nine months of misery just to hear those words from
Mr Mayer, because now I'm in."
1939: Phil debuts in his first Broadway musical, Yokel Boy
Here he is seen with co-star, Buddy Ebsen at New York's Majestic Theater.
In the 1930s Phil made great friends out of Milton Berle, Jackie Gleason, Red Skelton and Red Buttons, all of whom were young comics on the way up working at the Gaiety, the burlesque palace at 46th and Broadway.
Phil began to appear, without pay, at any cafe where there was a guest-star night. He wanted to gather more experience. At one of these clubs, on guest-star night, by the time Phil was finally introduced there was only six customers left - Charlie Chaplin was amongst them. Phil got up and did his comedy routine, Charlie laughed and clapped and afterwards said to him: "Mr Silvers, your comedy speaks for the stifled voices of the masses. It is eloquent in its expression of the
spirit of the Common Man. Its proper interpretation is that of a desire to.........." Phil butted in with, "Desire? All I desire is a few yaks and a good job."
One time, in a nightclub, frequented and owned by mafia heavies, Phil had come to listen to the star turn, a friend, who promptly called him to the floor. Phil looked around and noticed the ringside tables were occupied by mobsters, and announced. "It's nice to see the sons of Italy turned out for your opening." As one the room fell silent and held its breath.
Not Phil. He turned to the tables: "Listen I come from Brooklyn, the home of Murder Incorporated, and we used to call you guys fags!" The whole place suddenly burst into fits of hilarious laughter!
In 1937, Phil landed work in short films for the Vitaphone studio, making short films under the name of Broadway Brevities.
By 1939, Phil was a burlesque topliner - a first banana, in the vernacular of the trade - but he knew it was time to move on. When he was offered a small part in Yokel Boy, a new Broadway musical starring Buddy Ebsen, he jumped at the chance, even though the $150-a-week pay was a comedown from the $275 the Minskys paid him.
Lew Brown was the man producing and directing Yokel Boy, he wanted Phil from the first whistle. As well as Buddy Ebsen, the show included; Judy Canovar, Dixie Dunbar and starred Jack Pearl, a dutch language comic who had left his radio persona as Baron Munchausen, due to the audience tiring of the character. When Pearl failed to get laughs, Phils' role in Yokel Boy was suddenly expanded and Pearl left the show Phils' original role of director's assistant was cut from the show and he was now a brash Hollywood press agent called Punko Parks - a template for Bilko if ever there was one.
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1934: Minsky's
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When you look at it, that part is quite close in many respects to the Bilko role, which would immortalise Phil in later life. It called for a brash, egotistical, lovable wise guy whose mission is to confound, fool, beguile and rout the opposition from the vantage point of safety.
During five years with Morris and Campbell, Phil had the trouper's chance, as pointed out, of studying, learning and mimicking hundreds of tried and tested comic routines. He also learned to ad lib under pressure, handle a heckling crowd, and sharpen his wits in battles with other bananas.
Phil later said; "I had one really bad day. We were in Boston and some of the backstage crew introduced me to a horseroom downtown. It looked like a dump to me but I kept betting and betting into the man who was the head bookie. At the end of the day I lost a week's pay. That night I was going through the brat routine when out of the corner of my eye I see the bookie standing around backstage pulling up scenery. My mouth dropped open and I couldn't say a word. The audience looked at me like I had suffered a stroke. That was no horseroom and no bookie. Even if I had won, I never would have seen a cent. That was the only time I couldn't think of one thing to say."
All this was to pay off handsomely later. In the 1930s, at the depth of the depression, Phil was faced with an unhappy reality. He was still playing the brat, but in the meantime he had grown to be nearly six feet tall, weighed two hundred pounds and his hair was falling as fast as the stock market.
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Fourteen years of age
1931: Catskill Mountain hotel (man on right always carried his hooter)
