CHAPTER SIX: JOKER'S FORTUNE

I taught Johnny Carson. Twenty-five years later, I taught Rama Lama. That's what I told my wife to put on my tombstone. But she said no. Nick Nolte was in there for a semester, but I jest name Johnny and Denny.

What more does anyone need to say about their academic career: that they helped to give the world a great funny man? And Johnny Carson wasn't bad either...

Dr. Frank Morgan, Phd., Dramaturg, the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. I'd been a very successful child actor on Broadway in the 1920's. But I wanted a more stable adult life so I grabbed a doctorate in theatre from the Yale School of Drama. That was like taking candy from a baby. They fell all over me. They should have been kissing Gene O'Neil's ass instead. Look what he turned out to be!

But this is supposed to be about Denny Norwood, THE Rama Lama Vishnu of all time. He came to Lincoln in 1961 on a Ford Foundation scholarship intended to further our experiments with a brand new video tape machine they'd bequeathed upon us. We would tape a student's growth in acting skills over their four-year undergraduate course of study in our fine theatre department.

Ram was chosen because of an essay he had submitted from his high school on Guam entitled "I'll Make Hank Fonda and Marlin Brando Look Like Larry Welk". It got us rolling in the aisle, especially since Fonda and Brando were from nearby Omaha like young Norwood.

It was the day after Ernie Kovaks was killed. The students were holding a little candlelight vigil for the great tv innovator on a rainy September sunday afternoon. Rama Lama, who had jest entered as a frosh, broke the sombre tone of the event with improvised recreations of Kovax bits like the famous Nairobi Trio skit. An upper classman came over and complained bitterly to me about the brash upstart Norwood. I told the no talent senior to shut up. I was missing the show.

We were doing "Measure For Measure" by Willy. I cast Denny as Lucio, the fantastic, who has the immortal line "..and his use was to put a duccat in her clack dish!". RL asked me if he could use his new geetar, an electric Japanese model he'd bought on his high school senior trip to Tokyo, to underscore the Shakesperian comedy lines with rock 'n roll lix like "Rumble" by Link Wray. I said absolutely NOT. I'll regret that directorial decision to my dying day. The young man was about fifty years ahead. OK a hundred. Or two. Like Willy himself. But Will Shakespeare was so ahead we'll never catch up. Ever.

Ray was a drunken Shriner in "Light Up the Sky" by Moss Hart; Nickels (Satan) in "J.B." by Archibald Macliesch; and Yakov in Checkov's "The Seagull". Denny went around yelling "I'm playing Jackoff! Denny Norwood IS Jackoff in Antone Checkov's 'The Seagull'!". He was nuts. Its that simple. And a v.v.v. gifted player. If he had stayed as an actor, per se, I think he COULD have made Fonda and Brando look over their shoulders to see what that big sound coming down the road behind them was.

But the Lamb told me he was sick of acting already. He was moving to Omaha to play folk music. There were three or four beatnik coffee houses springing up. Denny adored Bob Dylan, Peter, Paul and Mary, the Kingston Trio and Buffy St. Marie whom Ra claimed had hot legs. For an Americunt Injun as he so delicately phrased her. He was cutting edge sardonic. Sardonism and Ram were one, like Klee and color.

I asked Denny if he realized that theatre was part of a larger sphere, Art. He mulled that over for a day or two then came to my office and announced proudly "Dr. Morgan, I know what I want to be:". He held up a card he'd fashioned with big ornate letters spelling out 'DRAMA'. He put his finger over the 'D' so the sign jest read"RAMA". I'm going to be an Artist..."

"Congratulations, Norwood!" I said. "And to that end I'm going to cast you as Brick in "Cat On a Hot Tin Roof" next semester. But he dumped his fat full ride there and then and joined the Folk Scare. They called it the folk 'scare' because some musicians were terrified it would last more than a year or two.