The Indianapolis News from Indianapolis, Indiana • 3

Mondoy, September, 26, 197 THE INDIANAPOLIS NEWS Page 3 'Didn't Lose My Talent, Just Slaying Suspect Trial Set 'Em Lost a Leg Totie Tells ft Show," Following Totie's sensational debut on March 24, 1963, Totie did 36 Sullivan shows. But it was after the first one that Ed made his famous apqlogy. "I owe you a thousand shows," he said. "My wife Sylvia said that you were great. And you are! The audience A has proved it." At the' recent' Variety Club award luncheon, Totie.broke up the crowd with a line she threw to Eydie Gorme.

"During my entire long ordeal, I want you to know that you never have been a comfort to me." The joke had a kernel of truth to it During an endless number of years Totie had great difficulty in being booked as a supporting act. Most performers considered her too overpowering and boffo, particularly for a woman. Even Steve and Eydie, close' personal friends, lefts her behind whenever they went on the road! Invari- ably Kenny Greengrass, their manager, would contrive some excuse'. Years later, Totie got even, when, as a big star she sent him a gag gift of a pair of glasses, with a card inscribed: "To Kenny, for his vision." It wasn't Trini Lopez, but Flamingo Hotel owner Morris Lansburgh who gave Totie her big break in Las Vegas and who booked her as a supporting act for $2,500 a week. He had observed her at a benefit hosted by Sammy Davis, and admired the way she proved she could hold her own with the top cabaret performers.

Reaction of supper club fans was tremendous, but the run which began ori Nov. 23, 1965 convinced T6tie she should come back to Vegas again only as a headliner. Trini Lopez couldn't have been worse. During every show, his manager would clock Totie with a stopwatch, docking her for every minute she went over. Consequently, on closing night Totie walked up to Trini, whose big record at the time was "Lemon Tree," and said, "In parting, I wish you only one thing: I hope Jhat your dumb lemon tree dies." A few years ago on "The Tonight -Show" Johnny Carson asked Lucille Ball who the world's funniest woman considered to' be her own favorite.

Miss Ball stopped the show cold with the reply: "Why, Totie Fields." Totie, who had never done "The Tonight Show" was watching with her husband and two children in their apartment, and burst into tears. The sentiment expressed by Lucille Ball was echoed many times during the months of Totie's illness by Danny Thomas, Steve Lawrence, Eydie Gorme, Jerry Lewis, Buddy Hackett, Tony Bennett, and Bob Newhart who championed Totie as only one of us who could have handled this." To which Totie chortled: "I look at it this way. I haven't lost a leg. I've gained a cane!" NEXT: A passion to perform. Silver Twins WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind.

Cyndy Love (left), a sophomore from Indianapolis, and Susan Johnson, a junior from Pleasant Lake, are the Purdue Silver Twins. They are look alikes, but twins in narne only. The NEWS Photo, Bill Worcester. Classes Resume At LaPorte High School The school board initially offered a 5 percent raise and the teachers requested a 6.5 percent wage boost. A beginning teacher now makes $9,306 annually.

The strike also centered on the issues of class size and the teacher transfer policy. The contract includes a clause that allows teachers to appeal any transfer to the school board, but the board will still hold the ultimate au-. thority. The contract set no limit on class size, but the school board agreed te offer a part-time aid to any elementary school teacher with more than 33 stu dents. LAPORTE, Ind.

(AP) Classes sumed today for about 345 LaPorte teachers and 1,700 LaPorte High School students after the teachers voted yesterday to accept the school board's latest contract offer. Members of the LaPorte Teachers Federation voted overwhelmingly to end an 18-day strike and accept an offered 6 percent raise. The school board voted 4-3 and approved the contract. The end of the' strike signaled the resumption of high school classes, which school officials suspended indefinitely last week due to student absenteeism. Throughout the strike, classes were held on schedule in the elementary and junior higrr schools.

Flrot Of A Strltt i By SANDRA SHEVEY On March 30, 1976, Totie Fields checked into St. Joseph's Hospital in Stamford, not far from the town of Windsor where she was born. She planned to have a routine face-lift operation. The plastic surgeon was William Keavy, who had a first-rate reputation among show biz folks and jet setters, preop physical examination showed severe congestion in her lungs. So the operation was-postponed until April 1.

And what had started out as minor cosmetic surgery became a death defying battle against phlebitis, resulting in the amputation of her left leg, and the narrow escape with her life. After almost a year's absence, Totie Fields, 46, made a triumphant return last March. She opened the new, sSat Sunrise Musical Theater near Fort Lauderdale, and joked about the ordeal. In her famous foghorn voice, she told the audience: "Honey, I didn't lCfse my talent. I didn't lose my sense of humor.

I just lost a leg." On ah artificial limb, aided by a cane, the stand-up comic clowned in front of a full house, gearing up for the really big event -the three-week, two-shows-a-night grind at the Sahara Hotel in Las Vegas the following April. Miss, Fields', a sort of Mary Hartman with cane, existential mama of the soapbox, sustains a reputation for feeding the pathos of everyday life into the laughter bin, and distill- ing tragic corn. Here was simply more fodder for humor. Relating what it was like to be fitted for a prosthesis, Totie lightened a dreary experience with the quip: "There was only one time when I was really frightened the day I got my new prosthesis. I'd shopped for everything else in my life, but I wasn't ready for what it looked like.

It was the ugliest thing I'd ever seen. It was grotesque. Too short, too wide. I knew people would make fun of me if 1 wore it on stage. Then I put it on and that's when I noticed "it looked like my real leg.

So it shows my loss was not a great one." Gagging about When her new leg squeaked and had to be oiled, and again on Valentine's Day when her husband, George Johnston, fastened a' gold charm to it engraved, "Badleg," so she'd know which was the Totie confirms, "My sense of humor got me through." Having spent six months on her back iri.and out of hospitals from New York to California, and sustaining a series' of, four operations, addictive pain killers, and continual transfusions, which damaged the nerves in her hands, Totie considers that "my most exciting mo-. ment was when I could unscrew the cap of the toothpaste all by myself Her 10" frame is 70 pounds slimmer as a result of the ordeal The result, predictably, a batch of weight jokes. "The only nijay. to losfr weight Is to ha vq, someone putvou in bed so you can't get to the refrigerator i JKhen a general, rather than local, -ajethetic kept Totie on the operating table for an interminable amount of precipitating an, acute circulatory ppblem, a team of six surgeons transferred her to Columbia Presbyterian spital in New York City where bypass operation was performed im- i mediately to attempt to restore her left leg. That failing, they Confronted Totie with the alternative, sfqlfeiting -her permission to proceed with the amputation.

Personal manager Howard Hinderstein recalls Tofie's monumental courage at that moment of truth. "When they told Totie, all she asked was: 'Will I be able to And when they assured her that she would, she replied readily: 'What are we wait-, ing for? Let's The thought of what it would mean to go through the rest of her professional career as a cripple had an enormous impact on retarding the speed of Totie's i recovery It was almost as if she didn't want to get well, and for days she lay inertly in her hospital bed, semicomatose, making no effort to communicate with anyone. "That was the lowest moment I ever recall reaching in my entire Jife," reflects Totie in a serious moment. At one point the doctors considered prescribing psychiatry to motivate the lethargic Totie. Who's Crazy? Recalling how she got rid of the shrink, Totie says, "This guy comes to talk to me.

He has a pad and pencil. He keeps asking me if I ever hated my mother or father So I ask him: 'Who's supposed to be crazy you or Throughout the ordeal, Totie's sister Rosie kept a constant vigil by her bedside, creating an impression that, by babying Totie, she was impeding her progress Six doctors conspired to get rid of Rosie. Intruding one day upon the sister's reminiscences, they told Rosie that she'd have to leave. Suspecting foul play, the intractable Rosie piped up: "Okay, who is it. Which one of you is trying to get me out?" Each of the physicians looked sheepish, and Rosie was never bothered again.

But the incident which really snapped Totie out of her inertia was the marriage of her daughter Jody, 25, a child psychologist at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas, tp William Chil- ders, a Texas boy and psychology major at the same college. Younger sister Debbie, 22, is an artist who works for Hanna-Barbara in Los Angeles. Hospitalized in New York City, Totie didn't want to disappoint Jody, and insisted upon being shipped out for the wedding. She was transferred to Sunrise Hospital in Las Vegas via Bill Harrah's private jet, where a small, nondenominatiohal wedding took place in her hospital room. As a result of the move, Totie relapsed.

An infection set in, and healing was retarded. Nevertheless, Totie wept with profuse delight at seeing her firstborn become a bride. RENSSELAER, Ind. (AP) The second of four men charged' in the Feb, 14 slayings of four young Hollandsburg brothers is scheduled to stand trial in Jasper Circuit Court here Oct. 3 The trial of David Wayne Smith, 18, Wingate, is set to begin 11 days after -a Blackford Circuit Court jury convicted Roger C.

Drollinger on four counts of first-degree murder Both are charged in the shotgun deaths of teen-aged brothers Raymond, Ralph and Reeve Spencer, and their 22-year-old step- -brother Gregory Brooks. i Smith has entered a plea of innocent by reason of insanity through his court-appointed attorney, John S. Capper of Crawfordsville. Jasper Circuit Judge Michael S. Kanne then ordered two court-appointed psychiatrists to ex-amine Smith.

Mrs. Betty Spencer, the only sur-. vivor of the attack and mother of Brooks, implied during her testimony at Drollinger's trial that he led the group that burst into the Spencer's mobile home in rural Parke County. Suspects Michael Wright, 23, Craw- fordsville; and Daniel Stonebraker, 20, Darlington, are awaiting trial on the same charges. Both testified against Drollinger and are expected to be wit- nesses in Smith's trial.

He had been subpenaed to testify in the Drollinger trial, but refused on the advice of his attorney. Wright is to stand trial in Daviess County Nov. 7, and Stonebraker's trial 1 is scheduled to begin Dec. 5 in Decatur County. 2 Married In Flight BECKLEY, W.Va.

(UPI) Carol West Ferrell combined her fear of flying with her premarital nervousness and conquered both. She was married on an airplane in I flight. "I was calm," she said. "I thought I'd be a nervous wreck. I didn't know what to worry about most getting married or getting on the plane." She and Calvin Ferrell exchanged I vows aboard the plane, one mile above her hometown Saturday.

The ceremony was performed by a minister of the I Universal Life Church. "I thought it was fantastic," the bride said. "I thought I'd be petrified. "We wanted something small and simple, but something we would remember. And we decided if I was going 0 be tense and nervous anyway, I night as well get my fear of flying out my system." WHISKY 156 HI Totie Fields TL- II IC Celebrity Spotliqht Whether it was the millions of cards and letters which communicated to Totie the deep concern of the American 'people, the solicitude of the men and women in her own profession, particularly the male-comics who have always slightly resented Totie's high powered brand of humor, or her recently deceased sister Rachel's divine intervention with the man upstairs, one day Totie surprised her medics with her intended desire to get back to Beverly and to buy out the entire first floor of Robinson's department store.

"After all," she jokes, "how much can you wear without thinking you're being ahowy?" True to her word, shortly thereafter she was on the mend, and on Feb. 10, 1977, Totie Fields appeared in public for the first time since her illness to accept the Variety Club's "Valentine of the Year" award as the bionic yenta. The patterns of Totie's life have always" been checkerboards of pain and pleasure, sunshine and sorrow, professional triumph often arising simultaneously with personal tragedy. In the course of that Herculean spiral to the top Totie has endured the loss of her mother from cancer, followed by the death of her father from alleged malpractice in a 'cataract operation, and subsequent deaths of her brother Charlie a diabetic who ate himself to death and sister Rachel from cancer. Subbed For Connie The loss of Rachel came at a crucial time, and in the best tradition of going on with the show, Totie took her shot by subbing, for an ailing Connie Francis in the main room at the Riviera Hotel, all the while laughing on the outside and crying on the inside.

Totie, "I'd see Rachel's face when I'd go on and come off, and know that she was right 'there rooting for me. That's the only way I got through." Similarly Totie's $1,500,000 contract at the Sahara Hotel, which makes her the highest paid co-, medienne in the business, followed a yellow cab smashup'in 1973, sending, Totie into the hospital with 13 broken ribs. did it with one rib. Me it takes 13!" cracks Totie.) Recalling Jie sustaining Yiddish wisdom of her father, Max a Russian immigrant and shopping center owner in Hartford, Totie "Nature is amoral. It's either sink or swim.

Help, send me a life preserver!" Throughout the 16-year struggle for recognition, Totie has never given in or given up. She has never expected that, success would come easily, and has believed in herself and in her ability to survive. "I was never a Society pet. The, people made me a star," she says with justifiable pride. At first the club owners and cabaret critics didn't know what to make of a 180-pound Jewish girl whose livelihood depended on self-depreciation.

Totie recalls how the first time she packed the 500-seat Riviera Lounge in Las the critics harped that she was loudmouthed and sugges-1 tive." The cruel epithets still hurt. Recalls Totie, "When I got through with my routine the following night, I) walked on stage and addressed the Crowd directly. 'Did I insult anyone? Do you find me loudmouthed and And one. old man stood' up. and shouted 'That's why we I learned that honesty was my best defense." Figuring that the odds were stacked against her, and that the best thing a fat Jewish girl could do would be to admit that she was overweight and Jewish, Totie evolved an, act for her Copa debut in March 1963, which laid it on the line.

The opening song, called "Sexy Me" kidded the feminine mystique: "you're gonna see lips you're gonna see eyes. gonna see legs. Although the audiences seemed to be enthralled with Totie's wacky brand of humor," the critics were impervious. Although Earl Wilson praised, "Fat Gal is Fantastic!" the Variety reviewer acted as if he hadn't been there, describing the elfishly elephantine Totie as "an old drunken maiden." At Ringside Also at ringside oh opening night were Danny Thomas and Ed Sullivan. Sullivan was noncommittal.

It was his wife Sylvia's endorsement of Totie which got her on "The Ed Sullivan Death Retrial In 6th Week AMARILLO, Tex. (AP) The capital murder retrial of oil millionaire Cullen accused of killing his stepdaughter, enters its sixth "week with the defense promising a finish straight out of Perry Mason. The prosecution contends the case "stems from a dispute between Davis and his estranged wife, who were involved in divorce proceedings when the Aug. 2, 1976 shooting occurred at Davis' $6 million Fort Worth mansion. But the defense says the case is more complicated.

And, like Erie Stanley Gardner's Mason, defense -lawyer Richard "Racehorse" Haynes has promised to identify "the real murderer," someone other than his client, later in the trial. Friday, Prosecutor Tim Curry finished questioning his 12th witness, Fort Worth Police Detective Greg Miller. He was expected to examine another officer as the trial resumed today after its weekend recess. The state contends Davis, 44, killed his stepdaughter and his wife's boy friend and woundedHwo other persons. He is on trial for the slaying of the stepdaughter, Andrea, 12, his wife's daughter, by a previous marriage.

On the night of the shooting, the prosecution alleges, Davis wounded his wife, Priscilla, 36, and killed her live-in lover Stan Farr, 30. The prosecution has said it would press other charges later. Gus Gavrel, 22, who arrived at the mansion that night with a date, was left partially paralyzed by a bullet that remains-lodged in his-spine. He testified that Davis did the shooting. His girl friend, Beverly Bass, 19, the third witness to the- shootings, was not hurt and was expected to testify for the state within the next few days.

Haynes had not elaborated on the other-suspect theory, although he has said that Farr and the surviving trio were involved in a narcotics deal that backfired violently and, as part of a coverup, they seized on Davis as the assailant. S. '4iiv, small fpge pay. 'Jw" i I St, (w lf'fv i -v'T 1 1 fONEQUARTfej wiMlUQmiA iB! SencfSeM I Eduhrgh THE INDIANAPOLIS NEWS Published daily by Indianapolis Newspapers, 307 N. Pennsylvania Indianapolis, Ind, 46206, TELEPHONES 633-1240 (Main Switchboard) 633-921 1 (Home Delivery Service) 633-9142 (Mail Subscriptions) 633-1212 (QuicK-Action Want Ads) If The News is not delivered by usual time call Home Delivery Service.

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