Spatz Donovan, our New Yorker of the Month for March 2011

Ask a New Yorker: You certainly have a look. The beret, the rainbow colored
scarf.

Spatz: The funny thing about the scarf, I was on the subway and a gay guy comes
up to me and says, “You must be one of us.” I said, “What
do you mean?” He said, “You got the rainbow scarf and the rainbow
gloves”. I said, “You guys stole it from us.” He said, “Wait
a minute, what do you mean?” I said, “I’m an old hippy and
we started the rainbow coalition, the merrymakers, we had the rainbow flag back
in the early 60s.” And he said, “You mean we stole it from you?”
I said, “You never stole it, you’re just borrowing it for a while
until the rest of us hippies come back from Amsterdam and India.”

Ask a New Yorker: You’re good. Who are you?

Spatz: Actually, I was influenced by the counter culture. I was all part of
that growing up. I’m a 60’s 70’s child of craziness and fun.
We were into the dizzy dancing, the way you feel: is every fairytale comes real.
We were out to try to make a difference on the planet in a positive way. We
were into love and peace and kindness and all that sort of thing. My mom was
a jazz singer and I was influenced by my folks. They were in show business and
so were my grandparents. At a very young age I was one of those kids that grew
up during that Golden Age of Comedy, that new television thing, that new invention,
the one eyed monster. So I loved Bob Hope and Bing Crosby. I loved the road
movies.

Ask a New Yorker: I read you began as a busker
in London?

Spatz: So, here I am a hippy, and my buddy is a John Lennon look-alike who plays
guitar. I played harmonica and ocarina; we often went for it. I hitchhiked around
the planet, you know, doing street theater. You asked me about London, well
they crowned us the kings of London, buskers. We would dance in Piccadilly and
Trafalgar’s square and Soho and Petty Coat Lane. In Piccadilly the British
Bobbies would come on horseback and they would chase us between traffic and
I would be tap dancing while cars are going by on each side and slowing down
traffic right in the middle if Piccadilly. And I’m shedding from one custom
from the next as I’m doing comedic eccentric tap dancing. My buddies are
on both sides collecting money because hundreds of people would gather around.
Then the cops would chase us down these narrow cobble stone streets and alleyways.

Ask a New Yorker: You mentioned Bob Hope and Bing Crosby.

Spatz: Bob and Bing were amazing. To me Bing Crosby was the first greatest icon
of the 20th century. Sinatra, Dean Martin, Perry Cuomo, Andy Williams on and
on–they all admired Bing. I got to know Bob Hope, see, through this lady friend
of mine down in Miami. She used to find real estate for Bob all over Florida.
And she was my business partner. I saw on television one time Merv Griffin interviewed
Bob in his back yard and Merv said, “What is it Bob that you’ve
always wanted? You’ve got everything you need. “ Bob says, “Well
you know, I kind of always wanted a theme park”. Bada bing, bada boom,
right then and there got going and I designed the Bob Hope Global Fair. It was
amazing. We had Bob and Bings putt and swing miniature golf course. We had a
water park with all the sides designed like Bob Hope’s nose. We had Road
Rio, Road to Zanzibar, Road to Morocco, Road to Utopia, Road to Hong Kong, and
Road to Bali. All the road movies in different sections like you would have
had at Epcot Center or something. Hong Kong would be China, Bali would be South
pacific etc.

Ask a New Yorker: You are on fire.

Spatz: Bob and I became very close. I would talk to him on the phone an awful
lot. And every time I would call him he would hang up on me if I didn’t
tell him a dirty joke. You see Bob never worked blue, meaning dirty. He was
a clean comic. But he hungered to hear a dirty joke. I’d run out of dirty
jokes and I’d go down to the local bartender and say, “hey, what’s
the latest one?” And then one time I was at Disney, at Buena Vista with
my business partner Helena. And Bob was coming up, we were supposed to have
a business meeting, and he was late. We were told he was on the golf course.
We went to meet him on the golf course. He was in his 90’s. Not the golf
score–his age. Helena goes up and goes over and hugs him. He gets off his golf
cart and gives her a big hug and I pop up from behind a Palm tree and one of
Bob’s best friends, I don’t know if you knew this, was Jackie Gleason,
you know Ralph Kramden and I’m dressed in the bus driver outfit. And I’m
going (in a pitch perfect Ralph Kramden) ”Alright Hope, you going get
yours pal, we were supposed to tee off at Inverrary. Inverrary, Hope!”
And I’m pacing back and forth and I’m getting louder and louder
and he could not stop laughing. Usually comics don’t laugh at other comics.
But I caught him by surprise and it was like pow zoom right to the moon! He
fell on his knees on the ground and started pounding the ground on the green.
I thought he was having a stroke. Excuse the pun. He gets up, we help him up.
I stopped immediately and thought “what if he had a stroke?!” So
he gets up and looks at me and says”Spatz why I ought to….”
It was great.

Ask a New Yorker: What a colorful interesting life you’ve had. Wow! Where
are we today?

Spatzs: Well I’m in show business which means I’m working my way
up from nothing to an extreme state of poverty. No, I’m getting ready
to launch two albums. One’s a socially conscious political comedy album
and the other one is just fun and light, wonderful great songs, all original
that my partner and I have written. We have a stable of different composers
and were just getting ready, were on the edge of launching all this. My representation,
they handle pretty heavy people like Lady GaGa and Cher and Madonna and McCartney,
so I’m in good hands, you know? We have three back up girl singers.

Ask a New Yorker: What’s the name of the album?

Spatz: It’s called Moon Tripping and the name of the band is Spatz Donovan’s
Boomerettes.

Ask a New Yorker: Where are you from originally?

Spatz: Whenever anyone asks me that I always say I’m apple, cheese and
crackers, which means New York, Wisconsin and Florida.

Ask a New Yorker: Let’s hear about Wisconsin?

Spatz: Well, that’s the cheese. So I’m an old Packer Backer from
way back and a Badger kind of guy. I grew up in a little place called Racine,
where the first American circus originated from, Baraboo was the headquarter.
I was a clown in my other life. I had some good memories. I went to Oshkosh,
the University of WI in Oshkosh. My great grandparents were in vaudeville. The
British would say, “From here to Timbuktu” and the vaudevillians
in New York would say, “From here to Oshkosh” like no-man’s-
land. The frozen Tundra.

Ask a New Yorker: A song and dance man…

Spatz: Absolutely 100% I have grease paint in my veins, and sawdust in my britches.

Ask a New Yorker: World record holder….

Spatz: Yes, I’ve done 20,000 live stage show performances to about 12
million people. And I’ve got to keep doing it until I get it right because
show business is like working your way up from nothing to an extreme state of
poverty, as I said.

Ask a New Yorker: Continue please.

Spatz: we were talking about what I am doing now, with the album and everything.
So I wanted to share with you that I’m pretty damn excited that a lot
things are coming across my thresholds at this time. One of them is my new band.
My group will be touring with the legendary, and I call her the Mother Theresa
of politics, Sarah Palin. It was so cold out, by the way, that I heard her sneezing
outside with a polar bear. The flashers in Central Park are handing out snap
shots….I’m looking forward to that. We are going all over the country.
She’s all over the place. She’s planning on going to Europe soon
to see the Royalty in England and to talk to some of the crown heads of Europe.

Ask a New Yorker: New Yorkers love her!

Spatz: Do they? I don’t think so. They adore her outside of New York;
I mean the rest of New York State. Even the elitist republicans don’t
like her either because she is her own independent type of person. She is the
tea party. She stands for patriotism and just wants to weed out poisonous venom
on both sides of the party and that’s what she’s all about.

Ask a New Yorker: Here’s a great shot of you, with Michael Jackson and
John Landis.

Spatz: Well you know Michael, I’ll tell you the story, I was in my dressing
room at Rosie
O’Gradys Good Time Dixieland Jazz Emporium down in Orlando, Florida.
I had just finished a show. The manager comes up and says, “Spatz you
better come downstairs, Michael Jackson wants to talk to you”. I said,
“Get the hell out of here, Michael Jackson, bullshit.” He said,
“No, I’m not kidding you.” So I got dressed and went down,
and sure enough, Michael Jackson wanted to buy me dinner and invited me to sit
with him and he had heard about my show because I’m kind of like a song-and-dance-Robin
Williams. I had an open microphone and I’m all over the room and I go
nuts. He saw me work and asked, “Who were your influences?” I said,
“Jackie Wilson, Sammy Davis Jr and Fred Astaire.” Michael said,
“They were mine too.” This is like in 1983 or 1984 when this happened.
It was before he dyed his face and got in all the trouble and problems. He was
on the top of his game. He had just finished doing Thriller. So I said, “So
what are you doing tomorrow?” He said, “Well I have plans.”
I said, “Would you like to take a hot air balloon ride over Walt Disney
world?” His jaw hit the floor. “Yea!” I asked John Landis
if he wanted to come with, but he declined. So I took him over to Disney World.
It was early in the morning and the employees at Disney were just coming in
before the tourists. Michael was giggling like a school girl in the gondola,
the basket of the air balloon. We had a champagne breakfast in a field as they
were blowing the balloon up. Then we went over to Disney and then we went tree
topping, picking pine cones. Picking pine cones off the top of pine trees. Then
we were throwing them down on cars on I-4 and also down on early morning golfers.
And they were throwing their fists up at us. He was just in heaven. And he asked
me,”Spatz, please tell me, I loved your show last night, why do you wear
white hats and gloves when you perform?” I said, “because in the
old days a hundred years ago before electricity, you had to put white around
your mouth, white around your eyes and white gloves and white hats because to
be seen from the back row of the theater those were the most prominent things
on a theatrical person on stage to be seen because you were working with gas
lights and kerosene lanterns. He was so fascinated by this. Then we went down
and were splitting up cows and sheeps skimming across ponds and farmers’
fields with the hot air balloon. We got out of the balloon. He said, “Tell
me that story again” I told him about the white gloves. About a few months
later in his next video he introduces his white glove. I can’t say that
I gave him the idea, but it sure seems like it. You know?

Ask a New Yorker: What a great story. One more for the road.

Spatz: My early years when I started out, I was in John F. Kennedy’s inaugural
choir. I was a featured soloist and we were ambassadors of good will representing
the White House. We performed the New York World’s Fair and Seattle s
World’s Fair. We entertained all over the United States. Just 120 boys
and it was in the late 50’s early 60’s and it was some great memories.
It’s like growing up out of the theatrical truck.

Ask a New Yorker: Beautiful Spatz, just wonderful. Thank you.