"My God, people call me all the time and want to know where he is," says impressionist Will Jordan. Frye's career evaporated largely because of his drinking, which dulled the edge of his act. "David was a genius, but there's no question he was the master of his own demise," says his ex-writer Billy Riback, now a producer of TV's Ask Harriet. In part, Frye, who now drinks only an occasional glass of wine, blames his fall on perfectionism and a disquieting sense that he wasn't worthy of success. "I had a life other people dream about," he says. "I just didn't think I deserved it."
Surely TV shows and Vegas stages were a far cry from Frye's boyhood in Brooklyn, where he was born David Shapiro, the son of Irving and Belle. But even then, Frye was working in a favorite venue. "There was one bathroom, and you couldn't get into it because he was always practicing in front of the mirror," recalls his sister, Ruth Welch, 67. After graduating from the University of Miami, Frye worked for his father in his office-cleaning business—all the while honing his Kirk Douglas, Gregory Peck and Sammy Davis Jr. at Greenwich Village coffeehouses. He refined the same 10-minute routine for a year before new host Johnny Carson gave him a shot on Tonight in 1962. Disappointed that David wouldn't take over the family business, Irving bitterly disapproved of his son's career. "The first time my father went to see him perform he sat there crying because everybody was laughing at his son," says Ruth. "He thought it was disgraceful."
Mixing dead-on showbiz and political impressions, Frye made it to the Sullivan show in 1966. "That was the big break," he recalls. "I did Bobby Kennedy. That got screams." But if his act—which TIME called "the most devastating topical humor on television"—and his records made him a wealthy man, they didn't make him a happy one. "The audience would roar, and he would come off the stage and be miserable," says Joe Lauer, Frye's manager from 1968 to 1974. By the early '70s, liquor began to take a toll on Frye's performance. "I lost my confidence that I could do without the booze," he says. He was known to verbally abuse unappreciative audiences, which made bookers wary of using him.
Frye, who never married, once had three homes—in New York City, Miami and Los Angeles. Now he's down to the attractive two-bedroom apartment in Beverly Hills he has rented since 1991. He has worked only sparingly in recent years, doing an occasional corporate engagement or appearing before senior citizens in Miami Beach. Still, like Nixon, his equally self-destructive alter ego, Frye has never ruled out a comeback. He has an idea for a TV show that would feature his voices backing political cartoons—and, of course, keeps sharp with his nightly bathroom run-through. "I'm a better impressionist now than when I was famous," he says. "You have to be ready if a break comes."
THOMAS FIELDS-MEYER
CHAMP CLARK in Los Angeles
- Contributors:
- Champ Clark.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
