Andy and Don: The Making of a Friendship and a Classic American TV Show by Daniel de Vise Page B

narrow room. When it was over, Don recalled, the owner pronounced it “the most boring thing he’d ever seen.” Don went home, crestfallen, and tucked the routine back into his subconscious, presumably for good.
    Between Bobby Benson and Search for Tomorrow , Don’s schedule was growing increasingly hectic. His soap-opera talents kept Wilbur alive far longer than Don had expected. (Lee Grant was not so lucky: Sponsors fired her over alleged communist sympathies. Two other actresses stepped in to play Wilbur’s sister.) Meanwhile, Don’s radio voicings on Bobby Benson proved so popular that the producers created a spin-off program called Songs of the B-Bar-B , which eventually expanded from five minutes to a full half hour. By 1955, the spin-off had moved to television, and Don found himself in a scramble.
    â€œMy day went something like this,” Don recalled. “I would arrive at the studio for Search for Tomorrow at eight a.m., off the air at one, then lunch, then off to rehearse for Bobby Benson . Then grab a cab to the television station, where Jim McMenemy”— Songs of the B-Bar-B ’s writer-director—“would read me the tall tale I was to tell while I was changing into my cowboy costume. I would more or less memorize it as he told it. Off the air at eight p.m., then dinner, then take the subway home to learn the lines for the next day’s Search for Tomorrow .”
    Don and Kay’s first child, Karen, had arrived in April 1954. In 1955, to lighten his load, Don quit the television version of Bobby Benson , leaving him the radio show and the soap opera. Not long after, Bobby Benson and the B-Bar-B Riders was canceled, a casualty of the waning radio era. Around the same time, Wilbur was eased out of Search for Tomorrow . And, just like that, Don was unemployed.
    Joblessness bred desperation. “The nest egg was dwindling rapidly,” Don recalled, “and there wasn’t a job in sight. My spirits were sagging, and with the responsibility of a family now, I was, for the first time, beginning to feel I would have to throw in the towel.”
    Between visits to casting agencies, Don would rest his feet at Cromwell’s Drugstore, nestled inside the RCA Building at Rockefeller Center, a notorious actor hangout. Don’s stoolmates included Tony Randall, later of television’s Odd Couple , and Jonathan Winters, then a young, wild warm-up comic. Another of Don’s cronies was Frank Behrens, a struggling television actor. One day, Don was pondering his fate over coffee at Cromwell’s when Frank happened by and asked, “Have you looked into that No Time for Sergeants thing?”
    Don replied, “What the hell’s a No Time for Sergeants thing?”
    â€œYou haven’t read about it? It’s a new play. Maurice Evans is going to produce it on Broadway. They’re looking for Southern types. It ought to be right down your alley. Here.” Frank pointed to an article about the new production in a trade paper. “I think this is the last day they’re seeing people.”
    Don scanned the article. “You’re right!” he cried. “They stop seeing people at five p.m. today, and Maurice Evan’s office is clear down in Greenwich Village.”
    Don looked at his watch. It was four thirty. He leaped from his chair, dashed out of the restaurant, and ducked into a subway station.
    Don arrived at the office of Maurice Evans at five o’clock. His production was adapting a bestselling book by Mac Hyman, a Georgian who had crafted a novel from his experiences as a Southerner in the military. Evans was not a Southerner but a British-born thespian who had brought the first full-length Hamlet to the modern American stage—although contemporary readers will more likely remember him as Dr. Zaius in the postapocalyptic film Planet of the Apes .
    Don ran to the desk. “I’m sorry,” said the man behind