I remember saying, “Oh, now I know what you’re talking about” and assured him I hadn’t done it again. It finally dawned on me that Joey thought I’d committed the same crime again. The conversation grew heated, but it took me 20 minutes or so to realize that he was talking about a second incident in which a stranger had gotten his number. I thought we’d resolved that long ago and got miffed that he was still making an issue of it. He made a reference to the old business of me having given out his phone number. Then, everything seemed to turn on a dime. He told jokes, I laughed, and all hatchets were buried. They had a nice chat (Mom was thrilled), and Joey said he’d call back that night. My mother was visiting at the time and Joey had called during the day to leave a message for me. Then, in what I think was probably February of 1996, I sent him a birthday card with a conciliatory note. The result was that we hit a wall in our communications. His occasional phone calls to me continued, but because they all seemed to center on him reminding me to use “attitude” in my columns, I ran out of ways to say I was trying. He wasn’t happy, but when I explained the circumstances and he confirmed the filmmaker’s legitimacy, Joey agreed to let it slide. I immediately realized my mistake and phoned Joey minutes later to tell him what I’d done. Caught off guard and wanting to help Joey regain some of his former notoriety, I gave out his phone number. He’d seen my column on Bishop and asked for help in contacting him. Things began to fracture when a documentary filmmaker wanted to reach Bishop for a proposed project on the Friars Club. No matter what subject I was writing about, he said, do it with attitude. Rodney Dangerfield made a comedy career out of affecting an attitude, Bishop said. The most important thing, he said, was attitude. “You-mah” he would say, with his Philadelphia inflection. Eventually, on a few occasions, I’d be surprised by a phone call at home, with Joey offering advice. He liked my columns that had lighter touches. He told me once he didn’t know a lot about journalism, but he knew comedy.
He also seemed to take an interest in my career.
We both loved boxing, and, if memory serves, he had tapes of old prizefights that he brought out.
WAS JOEY BISHOP PART OF THE RAT PACK TV
He was highly competitive and threw himself into guessing the puzzle before the TV contestants. I remember returning to his home on a subsequent evening and as his wife, Sylvia, busied herself elsewhere in the house, Joey and I watched Wheel of Fortune.
I was star struck, but the weird thing was that Bishop seemed to take some pleasure in my company, too.
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