Dinner Music: Morty & Hal
Before Trailer Trash takes the stage, Morty & Hal will be performing lounge favorites from their Vegas heyday (we wanted to book Tony Clifton, but apparently he's touring Japan). Morty & Hal will provide the kind of flavor we all long for from those days of supper clubs and cocktail lounges across our great country. Bartender, another Whiskey Soda, please! And whatever Hal wants ... do it.
(Actually -- I don't know who these fellas are. I found this photo in my Granfather Frank's photo collection. He had a fascination with snapping polaroids of strangers in whatever bar, lounge, or ballroom he happened to be bartending in. This may be the cover shot for a career retrospective called: Photos of People My Grandfather Didn't Know (or something).
posted by Brent Sigmeth at 4/26/2005 09:49:00 AM
8 Comments:
The guy on the left is Morty Levinstein. He did shtick (badly) on the Borsht Belt circuit in the late '50s and early '60s. His fame, or perhaps infamy, never really spread beyond a few low-rent resorts that couldn't afford anyone better than Morty. He was the guy who came up with the "Why do Jewish Princesses use gold diaphragms?" joke.
Morty retired to Palm Beach where he's still getting groans from the crowd at the Palmetto Acres Retirement Village activities center. He's still wearing that jacket and his liver's the size of a football.
The handsome devil in the gold silk double-breaster is Alberto Funginetti. His friends nicknamed him Hal (short for halitosis) due to his foul breath. The bad breath was the result of Hal's 3 pack a day habit, his penchant for cheap whiskey, and his truly miserable lack of dental hygene.
Hal was a slightly connected, lousy lounge singer who mostly played the Catskills and some of the less-than-classy clubs in Jersey. He always dreamed of being a part of the Rat Pack and tried to parlay some of his connections in order to get close to Frank. It never worked out. Even Joey Bishop thought Hal was a putz.
Hal was found dead behind the wheel of his convertible El Dorado in a Trenton back alley back in '79. A single gunshot to the back of his head and another to the groin. He was last seen alive in a nearby club, flirting with a very attractive young cocktail waitress known to be the mistress of a local Mob boss. His murder was never solved.
I think these guys look familiar...do they still hang out at the Legion?
More on Morty & Hal.
Morty met Hal in June of 1967 when they were both booked at some run-down resort called the Pines, outside Sundown, NY. The town was aptly named because both their careers were sinking fast. Morty warmed up the crowds (if you could call it that) with his crappy banter & shtick plus a few lame songs for about 45 minutes every night. After a 15 minute break Hal would croon for about an hour or so. By the time Hal wrapped his shows only the hard-core boozers were left in the lounge.
They hit it off immediately. Hal was one of the few people who found Morty's material funny. Hilarious, even. Plus, they both had a foundness for cheap booze, blondes, and playing the horses. Since they couldn't get into the real Rat Pack they sort of formed their own homage group. I didn't last long, though, because hardly anyone else could stand to be around them.
After their gig at the Pines, they were regularly seen together at Belmont, losing their shirts and getting plastered. Other times they could be spotted doing the same in Atlantic City. They were quite the team. Simpatico comes to mind. They refered to themselves as the Goomba & the Yid. For many years they were inseperable.
This pictures must be from about 1972, just before their falling out. Morty caught Hal shtupping his wife, Zelda, from behind in the laundry room at a party thrown by a mutual friend in July of '73. In November, Morty and Zelda moved to Florida. They never spoke to Hal again.
Interestingly, Zelda was seen weeping in the back of the church at Hal's funeral. Zelda stayed in Jersey after the funeral and shortly thereafter filed for divorce from Morty. She remarried in 1980 to a guy named Harvey Gold who had made a fortune in the delicatessen supply business. They now live in a beachfront condo in Bocca.
You'll get yours ..... all of you! (burp). Hal and Zelda can eat my shorts, but you people --- you'll get yours. For cripes sakes, have some respect for a dying man you never knew.
Morty, sorry man, but I didn't write the story, you and Hal did. I just told it to the folks on this blog.
TC, wow, I'm fascinated by your six degrees thing with Hal. I am glad to hear that there's no intermingling of your bloodlines. You know, I heard rumors of that goat legend but I couldn't verify the details, so I left it out.
And those closeted skeletons make great dia de los muertos decorations. Bring 'em out & show 'em off!!
10-1 B-Rent is the dude on the left in 25-30
You know, B, the guy on the right kind of looks like Mel Jass (a real person). Mel was a popular spokesman for TV commercials in the Twin Cities in the 50s, 60s, and early 70s. It could actually be him.
That would be really funny ... but, Wendy says it's not Mel Jass. Hmmmm.
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