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Most people, when they hear my name, think of the scene in "Treasure Island" where I come tap-tapping my blind-man’s cane into The Tripe & Kidney Pie Inn to deliver the Black Spot to scrofulous Billy Bones—the Black Spot being, well, a black spot grease-penciled onto a page of the Holy Bible. (I regret the blasphemy, but that’s just the way the business is structured.) Originally a candy-gram of impending doom first popular in the better piratical circles, the contemporary Black Spot is similar to delivering a dead fish in someone’s bulletproof vest—except that the Spot is more of a warning, a “You’re going down, Bubbalouey” sort of thing, while the fish is more an indication of a brute job well done, i.e., “Luca won’t be home for dinner tonight.” In any case, I don’t do fish deliveries, or fried chicken for that matter, only Black Spots.
These are good days for Spot deliveries since everyone’s sending them to a husband, wife, teenage child, boss, coworker or talk show host. They were especially popular on Wall Street a couple years back and it soon became the case that the receptionists didn’t even look up when they heard my cane--they just reached for my list and made the calls: “Mr. Blodgett, Mr. Grubman, Ms. Meeker—a Mr. Blind Pew is here to see you.” Eventually, I had to start posting muscular associates with animal nets and tranquilizer guns at the emergency exits of the main stock brokerages and investment banks. It says something about modern times, when an ancient, honorable and heretofore dignified business like Black Spot deliveries turns into "Wild Kingdom."
But long before "Treasure Island" and Black Spots, my first break came as a child star on "The Little Rascals." I wasn’t a marquee star like Spanky or Buckwheat, but perhaps you remember the episode where Spanky brings home a circus cannibal—big afro, bone through the nose, molar necklace, really very authentic. Anyway, as the People Eater chased my tiny, frantic co-stars around the kitchen chanting, “Yum, yum, eat ‘em up, eat ‘em up,” I was the cute little towhead (I still had my eyes then) who lifted up a basket and chirped, “Here, Mr. Cannibal, have an egg.”
And that propelled me into the big time (much to the disgruntlement of precious Wheezer who refused the egg scene as beneath his dignity).
The Cannibal and I ended up making a dozen movies in the Bob-Bing/Abbot & Costello tradition, and in every one, I made my trademark egg pitch as the theater audience chanted along. For a few golden years, I was the Leo DiCaprio of my generation, living on top of the world and thinking it would never end.
My greatest regret from those halcyon days is that the Cannibal and I never became as close as I wanted us to be. He kept mostly to himself, never came club-hopping on Broadway or ice skating at Rockefeller Center, never wanted to mess around in the tub, and never really said much of anything beyond “Yum yum, eat ‘em up.” He often seemed morose, and one day, he just up and disappeared, leaving nothing behind but a bed full of eggshells and the shrunken head of his agent, an unsavory carnie named Sal. Maybe he was sick of the tawdry merry-go-round of show business, or missed the simple joy sucking bone marrow underneath the baobab tree. I don’t know. Though he was the human being I loved most in the world, I cannot say I knew him well.
“Adiós, mi Cannibale,” I whispered to the empty night.
After that, the studio tried a movie where I offered a blintz to a pygmy ("Bushman & Me Meet the Butcher of Buganda"), and another where I proffered an egg roll to a very courteous Jewish gentleman in a side curls and an Abraham Lincoln hat ("Yehudi & Me Go to Chinatown for Szechwan Takeout"), but the change was too much for the general audience to digest, and neither did well at the box office. It wasn’t long before the talk shows stopped calling, and my posse and corporate sponsors deserted me for Mickey Rooney.
Are you listening, Mr. DiCaprio? In the blink of an eye, my friend, the blink of an eye.
So, just like so many child-stars before and after me, I tried to re-package myself. In my first self-directed feature, I played an albino submarine commander with an uncontrollable fear of enclosed spaces. This movie featured a revolutionary psychosexual hallucination of being trapped inside a can of cling peaches in heavy syrup—with Annette Funicello. While in this psychotic fugue state, I blew the hatch 8500 feet down and my entire peevish crew floated out, pirouetting in a slow-motion ballet among the thrashing sharks, electric eels, and a giant squid and a baby humpbacked whale who crooned an achingly beautiful duet of “What Do You Get When You Fall in Love.”
Then, I played a mental defective with a brain tumor the size of an acorn squash. (As money was running short, we actually used an acorn squash.) My voluptuous sister, Delilah, had to choose between becoming the ill-treated bimbo of a rich, malignant real estate developer and caring for the helpless, humming innocent who loved her more than anything in the universe—on a drive through Atlantic City, she pushes me out of the still-moving limousine with a bag lunch. In the final shot, I squat on the litter-strewn beach, singing nursery rhymes and building sand castles in the wintry dusk. The dirty froth of the incoming tide laps ever closer; a three-legged wiener dog runs off with my lunch bag … fade and cut!
On the strength of that performance, I found steady work playing caged freaks and geeks at company Christmas parties and the more prestigious county fairs.
Before I knew it, forty years had dried into shit dust and blown back into tinsel town since I’d last proffered my sweet, svelte, ebony Cannibal a perfect white egg. I was selling pencils and PCP-laced Ring Ding Juniors outside Ye Olde Burrito Shoppe in North Hollywood, when Michael Eisner dropped by for the green enchilada plate, and offered me the Treasure Island gig in exchange for a day-old poorboy (mostly the dried, puckered ends of salami and baloney rolls—which are my favorite parts). He also convinced me to have my eyes removed, saying it almost certainly guaranteed me an Oscar.
The rest, of course, is history: my performance caught the critics’ fancy, and then a certain someone thought it would be funny to have a Black Spot delivered to his ex-wife, Demi. Suddenly, I was on the cover of Forbes and People, and selling franchises.
I fill a need, and the money’s good. My early films are cult classics, and the French say I’m a genius. There’s even talk I may be tapped as the new James Bond, or the next Governor of California. All that is fine and dandy. But there’s a black, aching hole where the Cannibal used to be and that’s not going to change. I press my nose and fingertips against the cold, dark glass of my Park Avenue penthouse, and Blind Pew sings his song for him.
By Henry E. Panky
"I'm dancin' for you, Mama!"
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