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Source: Walter O.K – Speaker Talk – Date Unknown.mp3 File: walter-ok-speaker-talk-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 01:11:54
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Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. We now come to the final section of this conference. And my name is Cal M., and I'm an alcoholic from the Chestnut Street group. Hi, everybody. I've been asked to make several announcements. Again, we'd like to request the people in the back of the room to please bear with us and try to keep as quiet as possible so that you can hear the speaker, like that pin drop that Bob spoke about.
I'm again reminded to mention the Illinois Downstate AA Spring Conference, May 27, 28, and 29 in Decatur, Illinois. There is still literature on the table in the back. There is still literature on the table in the back. Frank just handed me an announcement that says that we had 959 paid registrations, so we can all breathe a lot easier. I hope now that those gals who worked on the tables in the back so faithfully, not only today, but in helping to make this conference the success that it has been so far, will be able to stretch, get a cup of coffee, and join with us for this last section of the program.
I was not asked to announce, but I'd like to do it anyway. I think all of us, speaking for all of us, this has been a pretty wonderful conference, what we've heard and seen in the last two days. Not so much what we've heard, but what we've seen. This is what is so believable about this AA program. And I do think that it would be very appropriate to thank all of our speakers who participated in this program, all of the people on all of the committees that did the work that helped to bring out this attendance, and you for being here and sharing these experiences with all of us together today.
By way of introduction to my speaker, I wanted to say just this. At church this morning, the priest was in the pulpit, and he said, today is May 1st, and May 1st can mean a lot of things to a lot of people. To Karl Marx, it can mean the Communist Manifesto. To the subject that he was directing himself to, it was to St. Joseph the Worker, the Feast of St. Joseph the Worker. To us in AA, it seems to me that this is another day of sobriety in which we are workers, whether we're sitting in the audience, or whether we're working at the tables back there, or whether, in the case of our speakers, they are trying to share their experiences with you.
I liked what Tommy said last night in his talk, Faith Schmaith, do it. This, to me, is the essence of the program. Like it says in Chapter 5, rarely have we seen anyone fail, who tried to follow in our footsteps, and who would go to any length to try to achieve his or her sobriety. I think you've seen how alcoholics come to AA, they're willing to do what their sponsors tell them, to get in and work at the program, at the steps, and at the 12 steps, and on themselves, to get to learn to know themselves better.
And that we do this, we accept it, because we want that sobriety that the others have, we do it because we feel we have to, and then we find we're doing it because we love to. And if there's any word that seems to me that applies to this program, it's that word love. Now love can have a various meaning to a lot of people. One semantic interpretation of it is a physical act, it is a selfish one. And that's not what I'm talking about.
I'm talking about this love that we see so freely demonstrated in AA, of one drunk for another, of giving of himself or herself, no matter what the hour, or what the task may be. Well, that leads me to the point of introducing our next speaker. I had nothing to do with him being invited to this program. When Frank told me that he'd heard him in Toronto, and had written to him and asked him to come, I threw my hat in the air, because I had known Walter for quite some time.
I had heard of him, as many of you have, in his professional capacity for many years since I was a young man.
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And his first marriage was to a girl who was the sister and the wife of my best friend, who was killed in an accident in a car. I met Walter in New York in 1955. He was coming into the program at that time, and I heard him speak at some meetings around the New York area. And we do grow in AA. We see people grow. Here's a man who has a wonderful, God-given talent of making people laugh, and laughing at himself.
And some of those early talks, you know, it was pretty obvious that Walter was still a professional entertainer. But he was doing his best to communicate with people. And then we had the good fortune of having him speak at the 20th annual meeting of the Greenwich, Connecticut group, which is the third oldest group in AA, and his talk was quite different then. This was two years of sobriety in AA, thereabouts.
But here was the humorous to establish that empathy with the audience, but then he started to get into the meat and potatoes of AA. I have seen Walter over the last years, and those of you who heard him in Toronto, that his motivation in making a talk today is quite different than it was when he first came around here. Because now, he is motivated by the desire to try to share this wonderful love of this program that he has found, and try to help pass it on to others.
So without any further ado, it seems hard for me to introduce him by his initials, but nevertheless, from Palos Verdes, California, Walter O.K. Applause Good afternoon, my dear parishioners. My name is Walter O. and I'm an alcoholic. And as this talk develops, if it does develop, but as it gets longer, you'll begin to understand the hunger I had for this meeting, and what it meant to me because Terry and I, for the last nine weeks, have been, we've been traveling, and we've been in Portugal, and we've been in North Africa, and we've been in Spain, and I couldn't find a meeting.
I found some AAs, I'll talk about that later. But you know, when Tommy last night, here's Cal talking about the business of laughter, of course, I wouldn't have lasted five minutes with you jokers, if you hadn't been as kooky as you are. If you hadn't made me laugh, I remember about the third month I was in in Hollywood, I went to a meeting, and I snuck in in the rear, kind of quietly, and the speaker was airborne.
And he was leaving vapor trails of beauty and spiritual stuff behind him, and as I sat down there, I heard him say, well, I shouldn't say that. This is an honest program. Yes, I did join the program four years ago, but six months after that, I had a slip. I was subjected to a severe emotional shock. The woman I was living with went back to her husband. So I thought, these are my people. And you know, I woke up, I was pretty punchy when they met me here Friday, and I want to thank Frank and the others who've been so kind to me here.
I was pretty punchy having gotten up in Barcelona, and in one day, been in Barcelona and in Lisbon for 45 minutes, and New York for two hours, and then here, and the time differential. I was pretty tired, and I got up the next morning and walked out. It was very pleasant. It was very touching, because I hadn't gone a couple of blocks when I came to one of my greatest triumphs. And I've got to tell you about the boy in the Notre Dame Glee Club.
49 years ago, I had entered Notre Dame. You see, I was that awful example, a child who told jokes. It's the greatest argument for corporal punishment in the world. And I had forced myself into the Notre Dame Glee Club, and we came up here and played orchestra hall on Easter Monday night. Well, I got to explain what I was doing before I got here. You see, I had been in the seminary studying for the priesthood, which shows you how far wrong a guy can go.
And I wrote a letter to Notre Dame, and Father Cavanaugh, the president, says, any boy who can write a letter like that, come on out, and we'll take care of you. And I checked in at Notre Dame about 10 days after the school year had started,
[00:10:01]
and the young man who was the secretary to Father Cavanaugh opened the door, and he said, Father, Walter O.K., the seminarian from Hartford. And the voice boomed out, Walter O.K., bring him in here. And I came in, and here's this wonderful ecclesiastical con man, you know. You know them, we have them. And I loved him instantly, and I knew how to behave. There was an archbishop there. He presented me to the archbishop.
I knew enough to kiss the archbishop's ring, and the next thing I heard was, you know, your remnants, I don't know how accurate an ecclesiastical prophet I may be, but in this boy here, Walter O.K., you may be looking at the first American pope. And three weeks later, I had a job at the Elk's Temple Tending Bar. And I was on my way to meet you, right from there. But anyway, during the course of the fall, being an aggressive, obnoxious little cookie, I told these people what a great performer I was, because even at that time, I was whipping the ego to death.
And so I got into the glee club, and they said, we'd like to have you join the glee club, Walter. I said, I'd love to join, but I'll be honest with you boys, I can't afford a suit of those tails. So the cry went up in the Notre Dame campus, tails! The only guy who took this to heart was a young aristocrat from Manila. He was a Filipino boy, son of wealthy parents, and he had the best suit of tails, beautiful broadcloth, made in Manila.
And it fitted me, he was willing to give it up, and it fitted me like a maternity jacket. It was a little loose here, and a little loose here, but I tucked it in, and they kept me in the back row of the glee club. So, because I looked like everything the well-dressed man would shun. And finally, we came to Orchestra Hall on Easter Monday night, and I was all ready to go, and, oh, I forgot to explain one thing about the tailoring in Manila.
This is before the days of zippers. And the buttons in the center of this black suit, the buttons which were concealed by good tailoring under ordinary conditions, were made out of steel. Well, they introduced me, but as I came through the line, the flap caught, and they threw a battery of spotlights on me, and here I stood in a black suit with a little silver thing down here, and it was twinkling all over Orchestra Hall, and I was killing them.
And I didn't know why, but I suspected it was my talent. And I had to do encore after encore, and I finally got in the wings and found out the reason for my tremendous success was the fact that my trousers were ajar. Well, we went to the Congress later, and Bill Curley's wife, the Hearst executive, Mamie, came up to me and says, oh, Walter, you were marvelous tonight, but what a funny place to wear a holy medal.
And that was me starting off in Chicago. Now, I don't say I'm a Notre Dame man, I say I'm a Marymount girl. And I say that for the simple reason of where Terry and I live on the coast now, Marymount College is about two miles away, and I was over there talking to Mother de Sacre Coeur one day, very urbane, suave lady of the cloth. She says, you know, Mr. O.K., last summer I was in London, and it was necessary for me to make a flying trip to Africa in a hurry, and I called up the airport to get a reservation.
I'm sure with your name, you'd have no trouble getting a reservation from a man named Bill Jones or Joe Smith, but you must admit, with a name like mine, Mother de Sacre Coeur, it wasn't very easy over the phone. The man didn't seem as the girls, he didn't seem to dig me. And I spelled it out, I approached it from the north, south, east, and west, and it was not without confusion that I hung out in apprehension for fear I might miss the plane.
I needn't have worried. I came in the next morning, the door closed behind me, and a voice boomed out, ah, Mother de Sacre Coeur. I said, my dear man, you must have an extraordinary memory for voices. He said, not at all, there's only two people on the plane, you and Elizabeth Taylor. I would like, before I get into more serious things, to find out if there's a girl named Edna in the house, because I've practically got a committed to memory now.
It's Abby's column, Dear Abby. And if I remember it correctly, the thing starts off and says, Dear Abby, Correctly, the thing starts off and says, Dear Abby, I have been married for six years
[00:15:04]
to a man who is turning into an over-sexed alcoholic. Now, I submit that that is a spectacular example of redundancy. That's the craziest statement I ever heard. If he's an alcoholic, of course he's got delusions of grandeur, you know. Boy, do you remember how it was when you were loaded? Yeah, you'd sort of look at yourself in the mirror and think Errol Flynn was a choir boy compared to you. Well, Edna's letter goes on after saying that he's turning into an over-sexed alcoholic and says he drinks a case of beer every day and even more on weekends, but he insists he's not an alcoholic because his work record is so good.
I admit it's amazing that his work record is so good. I also find it amazing that he can be so amorous just before he passes out, which he does almost every night. And you can understand, therefore, why it's signed, Aggravated Edna. So if there's an Edna in here, dear, the case is taken care of. People, you know, when you've been around as long as I have and you're a veteran in show business, they're inclined to be complimentary, inclined to be kind.
Somebody came up to me a while ago, says, Walter, what are your plans for television? I told him, I think I'll buy a set and see what's going on. But I can remember a scene I played here in 1922. I had an office on Warbash. It was after I got out of Notre Dame. And I was in the advertising business. And I bring up this because I had an apartment, a one-room apartment in Rogers Park. And I bring this up because this is your story and this is my story.
And this is a story of a 22-year-old girl, Sam. I came in from Grand Rapids where I'd made a killing in this advertising racket. And I was loaded with guilt and loaded with conceit. I met my partner and we holed up at a filling station on Warbash. And out of teacups, I proceeded to violate the law. And the next thing I knew, that was Saturday. And the next thing I knew it was Sunday morning. And I was in the one-room apartment in Rogers Park.
And I had no idea how I'd gotten there. I didn't know when I'd left the saloon on Warbash. I didn't know whether I had come home by cab or by the elevator. Or whether somebody drove me home. And I had just bought previously, just shortly, a brand new suit. And I wondered how the new suit was. And I found it in the other room and it was hung up very beautifully. Very beautifully, all in creases. And do you know what I said to myself when I looked at the suit?
And with all of this confusion of wondering where I'd been, what I'd done, who I'd seen, everything else. But now the suit was all right and I said to myself, God, Walter, you certainly can handle your liquor. And that was the story of my life. Being very soft on Walter. Being very soft on Walter and being very tough on other people. And may I offer this, a lot of definitions of alcoholics, but may I offer this definition of an alcoholic.
An alcoholic is a drunk who's lying face down in the gutter, looking down on his fellow man. Because no matter how low you get, there is somebody much lower than you in your estimation. And yet, we come out of it, you and I. We come out of it and we come into this blessed fraternity by the grace of God. And finally we recognize God. And we recognize God in another man or another woman, that's very important.
Because if you don't see God in the eyes of your fellow man, you're not going to see him anywhere at all. And you who have been the godless, you who have been arrogant, and have always loved puffed up for the word pride. You who have been so puffed up, you who have been so afraid, you who have been so scared. You who have been such a stranger to honor. You who have violated decency. You who have broken promises.
You who have broken hearts and broken homes. You've done all these things. And God in his infinite mercy forgives you.
[00:20:01]
And somebody looks on you with kindness and charity and compassion. And they say, go ahead, talk, what's on your mind? I wrote to Cal from Lisbon, I think it was, or Spain, because… I wrote to Cal from Lisbon, I think it was, or Spain, because… There was something in my papers at home. I think I wanted this excerpt, it's only three paragraphs. It's from a book called The Meaning of Success, by Michel Pouy.
And I think one of the greatest graces God gave me when I came in here these many years ago was… After I came in, of course, when I came in, Lord, the minute I got in and got the pitch… Talk about being humble. I was about as humble as a calliope at the end of a circus parade. And three weeks after I was in, I had cased a joint, I had read this and read that, and I figured, well… W. got here first, it's all right for him to be the Messiah, but I'll be Saint Paul.
But you have that wonderful way of cutting a man down to size. I remember this first… I was bringing up this one thing where I listened to the voice of God, after listening to myself for so long. And God said, O.K., why don't you keep your mouth shut? Why don't you shut up and listen? You're 55 years old, you've been popping off for 50 years, why don't you keep quiet and listen? Why don't you keep quiet and listen?
And so I listened to you. And I learned. And I should qualify myself a little bit deeper, a little bit more thoroughly and say, my name is Walter O. And I'm an alcoholic. And I'm the son of an alcoholic. And I'm the father of an alcoholic. Because I'm no Johnny-come-lately in this fraternity. I'm one of three generations that have been tyrannized by alcohol. And when alcohol ceases to be your servant, it becomes your tyrant, as you and I know.
But I wanted to read this because this was one of the things that meant so much. The way you listen. And by your very listening, you make an eloquent appeal. So I'll read the three paragraphs. If you want to draw others to yourself, talk of what interests them rather than what interests you. Before you can engage in an authentic dialogue with the other man, you must first learn to listen. There are few who practice the art of good listening, because there are few who have become selfless enough to escape from the perpetual noise of their own self-intoxication.
I wish I'd written that. Isn't that a lovely line? The perpetual noise of their own self-intoxication. You say, I quite understand, my friend. It's the same with me. While the other one was speaking, we were thinking only of ourselves. Don't interrupt the other so that you can talk about yourself. Let him talk about himself as long as he wants to. If you are tempted to talk about yourself, isn't it because you're thinking about yourself?
Because you're not giving yourself unreservedly to the other? If you do talk about yourself, let it be only for the other so as to help him see his position more clearly. To reassure him that he's not alone. But never speak of yourself in order to put the spotlight on yourself and make someone else feel insignificant. You put medication on an abscess only after you've broken it and let it drain. If the other is experiencing difficulties, don't be in a rush to offer a solution.
Tactfully help him to break the abscess. Then a friendly word or a simple handshake will suffice as a medication because the worst is over. If you know how to listen, many will come to tell you what's in their heart. Give them your complete attention. Remain silent and interested. Perhaps before you've made a single suggestion, the other will have taken leave of you at peace now that he has seen his way.
For what he was unconsciously looking for was not advice, but simply a presence. That's what I've recognized in you. The presence of God as he invests his love so lavishly in your personality.
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We were confronted with a mystery, you and I. I was confronted with it at a very early age. And I didn't understand for a long, long while. I have a friend on the coast who recently made a suggestion trying to explain the difference between a heavy drinker and an alcoholic. He says a heavy drinker is a man who drinks a great deal because he likes to drink. And an alcoholic is a man who drinks a great deal because he can't help himself.
And that's the way it was with you and me. We couldn't help ourselves. We couldn't help ourselves. And here's where the mystery set in. I can remember being a child. I'm a child of this century. I was born in 1900. I can remember those years in 1907, 8, 9, 10. And there'd be laughter out there in the other room after I'd been put to bed. And there'd be jokes and there'd be music and there'd be piano playing. You'd hear the tinkle of glasses.
And I associated that all with maturity, with grown-upness, with gaiety, laughter, happiness. All of these things revolved around the bottle. So naturally, having a father who was an alcoholic to begin with, I know you'd have loved my father. You would have loved my father, you know. I'm going to digress for a minute because I've got to tell you a story about Mike. Mike, everybody called him Mike. But he was living on the farm with me in Connecticut for a while.
I think he was afraid of my first wife. I know damn well I was. And he asked me if I minded. I had him in a guest house there. He asked me if I minded if he lived downtown. Well, I knew what he wanted to do. He wanted to go to the saloons and the bars and he didn't drive a car. So he went down to live with the C. family. And their economic status was such that they had a cow in the backyard and a boarder in the front room.
And I bring this up only to show Mrs. O.'s dedication to art. It's spelled with a capital A. Art. And how it worked out for her, it's universal. Now, she went down to the A&P to do her shopping. Dad told me this story. That's one reason you love Mike because he tells you stories like this. She went down to do her shopping at the A&P and after she'd blown a $5 bill, she got about, you know, she spent about $4.40.
She comes out and she's got $0.50 and that's when she gets this, shall I say, aesthetic goose. So she decides to spend the $0.50 in art and she went into a horrible store. One of those gimracky things. And she bought a thing. It was about this big and it was velvet. And it was done in color and it pictured gondolas and gondoliers on the canals of Venice. And so, help me, it was worse than sticking your finger down your throat.
It was the most nauseating, horrible thing. But that to her was art and she brought it home and stashed it up here. Well, when John O. came home from laying brick, no square John O., a cultured fellow, he, as time would say, she quickly let him in like melon into the art gallery to show a new Rembrandt. She pointed at this and out of his great learning and wisdom, he looked at it and he says, hmm, Venice.
She says, what? He says, I say, there's a picture of Venice. She says, there's little you know about that, you ignorant jerk. Venice was that woman without a stitch of clothes on with both her arms broken off. Well, that's why you love my father. When Tommy was talking last night about the humor and the laughter, I thought, oh God, my father would have loved it so much. He would have loved it so much, but of course, he didn't know.
And while I was gone, I read about, while I was abroad, I read about the death of Dr. Thiebaud. I first brought my father to Dr. Thiebaud in 1933 and put him in Blythewood Sanitarium. I had to put him there three times. And of course, I had no respect. I loved him. It was a thing that he had done to me in the formation of my life. I loved my father, but I had no respect for him. And therefore, as I came into my teens, I had seen him so long.
He'd been loaded and he was passed out over here. Well, I wouldn't do a thing like that. You know the way kids are. You know the way they are today. Well, I was a little ahead of my time, that's all. But I wouldn't drink like that. And instantly, the first time I hit it was out in Illinois, right after the war. I went away in the Marines. Right after the war, I went away in the Marines, came home, and the Notre Dame Glee Club played here again at Arkansas, we went to Elgin, there was no dance, and somebody said, take a drink of Sonny Brook.
[00:30:06]
And that was the first one, and I passed out that night. Now, thousands and thousands and thousands of times, in the subsequent 36 years, I passed out. And I can say that in your presence because you did too. I'm not among strangers. We wear the same brand, you and I. We've all suffered very much, and we have caused others to suffer very much. But we all wear another brand, too. We wear the brand, mysteriously, of recovery. And people are talking about you. And people are watching about you. They're looking at you. You're under observation.
And they're taking heart from you. And they're saying, God, you know the way he or she used to drink, and then they go into anecdotes and stories, and somebody takes courage. And maybe you're not a speaker, but oh, God, the mute eloquence of what you are. As a practicing member of Alcoholics Anonymous, following Dr. Bob's dictum there shortly before is that let's not louse it up. If you're doing that, you are making one of the most eloquent prayers that goes up to God in heaven, and you're affecting people around you.
But I say I was confronted with this mystery. I didn't know why. I didn't know why in those days at Notre Dame. Yes, we drank, but why was I the one who drank harder than other people? And then I went into newspaper work. Then I went on the stage. Then I went into the nightclub. It was a high-pressure life. I carried big loads figuratively and literally. Yeah, you know, I think one of the delightful jobs I had was one here in Chicago. You see, I was always somebody's substitute. Remember the great imposter? Remember that guy? Well, I was a great substitute. Look, let me give you a list of my substitutions.
1932, in the summer, I took Walter Winchell's place doing the Lucky Strike Magic Carpet. 1937, Fred Allen went off for five months. He was going to make a picture with Benny. They said, let's get O.K., so I went in there and took Fred's place for five months. 1942, Edgar Bergman off for the summer. I took his place with Charlie McCarthy. 1947, I came in here and did Don McNeil's show for two weeks. 1950, Milton Berle got sick on television. They said, let's get O.K. from the coast, and I rushed in and took Milton's place.
1953 and 1954, I did Herb Schreiner's show. 1955, in the summer, I did Gary Moore's show, and then I sobered up. And looking ahead to the summer of 1956, I thought, I wonder what Bishop Sheen is doing this year. You know, I came in here for the breakfast club. I'll never forget that. I was on the coast doing two shows with Rudy Valli and two with the queen of comedy, Joan Davis. And my agents called and said, will you take Don McNeil's place? Now, may God forgive me, I was a night hound. I didn't get up in the morning. I didn't get up in the morning. I says, who he?
And then they told me what I'd be paid, and I says, the hell you say. Well, I was one of the founders of the pump room, so I thought, well, Chicago, great. So I came into Chicago to do this show, and Don had gone off on vacation, and I was in training. Nice little chaise couch, every night, tucked myself away, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, things were going great. I had rollers in town. Thursday, we relaxed a little, and had a few snorts, because this was my excitement. And I'll never forget, Friday morning, I was on the air from 8 to 9.
And there was some gal who wanted to interview me for some farm papers, and I said, yes, I interviewed her for an hour, she interviewed me for an hour, and now it's 10 o'clock, the first week is over, I've gotten away with it. Nobody knows I'm a drunk, and I thought, Lord, O.K., you've done well, you deserve, and right in the merchandise bar, I walked in feeling very guilty to get my morning stinger, and here was the whole program staff.
[00:35:02]
Everybody in there at 9.30, 10 o'clock in the morning. But I never knew, I never could depend on myself, never knowing what I would do, because I had no sense of values. That was your problem. The person who was drinking has no sense of values at all, because he's so swollen with ego. So, you know, Cal mentioned May 1st, and I think I've got time to tell this, I've got to tell you about this story. This is 1933, May 1st. The palace had closed, and they decided that they'd try to reactivate big-time vaudeville.
So, some guy got George Jessel and myself, we were to headline this bill, and they were going to bring back vaudeville, and I'll never forget, one afternoon, a matinee, George came in, he says, gee, I did a crazy thing, what'd you do? He says, I bought an automobile last night. I said, what's crazy about it? He said, well, I'm going to marry Norma Talmadge in a couple of weeks, and she's got three cars, I don't know what the hell I did it for.
I said, what did you do it for? He said, I couldn't resist it. I said, what do you mean? He said, it's a custom-built LeBaron Packard town car, $8,600, and I bought it for $800. I said, is it a hot car? He says, no, come here, and I walked out and looked at it on 50th Street. Well, immediately, I got covetous. You know, being a nice guy, I said, well, look, George, when you marry Norma, if you want to get rid of her at the same price, because, oh, I could see myself riding around being driven in this thing, big deal.
So, along came the day, and he called up and said, do you want to buy that car? And I said, yeah, and I gave him a check, and I took over this extravaganza, this spectacular, this car that looked like a diesel engine. Oh, God, it was a beautiful thing. And my wife and I said, come on, we got to go downtown and see Mother, and we went down Park Avenue. Does anybody here know New York? Suddenly, I was on Union Square, and it was May 1st, and I was in the middle of the Communist May Day demonstration. I don't know how I lived through it.
But here it was. This was the big thing, you know. This showed off. This was showing off. And so, I loved the way the book, the big book here, God loved them, those who wrote that. And they said, you must get up and explain what you were like, what happened, and what you're like now. And so, that's like a good three-act play, or it's got a beginning, a middle, and an end. And what we were like, we were confused, yes. We were strangers to dishonor. We weren't true. Nobody could depend on us. Our word meant nothing, and we knew the value of absolutely nothing.
May I cite this case? I know you've done foolish things. And Tommy said, we all get competitive. Well, I'll bring this up and submit it in the sweepstakes for foolishness having no value. I went out to work with a friend of mine named Butterworth, Charlie Butterworth on the coast, and one of the lines, Charlie and I had gone to Notre Dame together, and I'd gotten him on the stage in New York originally, and one of the lines I loved of Charlie's was, any man who marries a second time doesn't deserve to lose his first wife.
Well, after the Allen experience, when I took Fred's place for five months, everything went great. Oh, gee, everything was fine. And now I had six jobs offered to me, and I insisted on going to Europe. I'd only worked 19 weeks, but I said I was exhausted. I'd been loping for nine months. I'd taken a year off, and here was this chance to do the Allen show, and now I've got to go to Europe. But anyway, I signed a job to go out and do a show for Packard with Butterworth, and Fred Astaire had done it with him the year before.
My point in bringing this up is that I went to Europe, and I came back, and they took advantage of an act of God clause in the contract, and after nine weeks, instead of 22, for which I'd brought the coast, they closed down. Lawyer says, Sue! And I thought, well, Sue, sure. Sue Packard, Motors 2, Young & Rubicon. Well, I had been the lowest man on the totem pole in ASCAP. I had written some songs, and the only trouble with my songs were they were the kind of songs that, you know, after a song is written, every six months, you get a statement from the publisher showing how much you've made in royalties. Every six months, I get a bill from the publisher for printing.
But some people knew I had written and wanted to write and was a schizo anyway. I didn't want to be an actor. I wanted to be a writer. And there was a man in New York who was having trouble. He had been very successful in the Broadway bazaars. He had come in in the 20s with many hits, but in 1933, 34, 35, 36, 37, he had come into Broadway, and Broadway had turned thumbs down, and he was bewildered and baffled.
[00:40:11]
And we had the same attorney, and he and the attorney talked it over. And they came to me, and he offered me a 50-50 partnership because he figured with his sense of experience and his sense of construction and my alleged sense of humor, we'd be a great combination. And I worked with him 10 days and walked away. His name was Oscar Hammerstein. I offer that as an example of a man who was empty, absolutely empty, and I'm talking about myself, with no sense of value. We in my business loved Oscar. Like we loved another man named Otto Harbach.
And I thought about Otto Harbach the day I got to Akron, three and a half years ago for Founders Day. And I woke up in the morning, and I said, where do you want to go, Walter? I said, I want to go over to Dr. Bob's grave because I own something. And I went over to his grave, and I thought of what was said at Otto Harbach's funeral. What a man should say, he said. What a man should seek, he sought. What a man should be, he was. It would be a beautiful tribute to a man like Dr. Bob. What a man should say, he said. What a man should seek, he sought. What a man should be, he was.
Now, this first part that I've been talking about, what we were like, is the time of confusion. The second point is where you glimpse and suspect that God loves you. And this is the meeting of things human with things divine. And you see that in an individual, or you see it in an event. And I started the trek to find you people in a very strange place. It was that year, actually it went 17 months, I was on the wagon. You did that, I'm sure. Frightened, scared, baffled. Your friends, your advisors, your conscience, your children, everything's at stake. So you hoist yourself up in the wagon. It's going to be willpower. Big deal.
I went to a meeting, you know, those wonderful meetings where everybody talks or lots of people talk. This was in Los Angeles and this was in 1955. It was called the end of the road, I think. The first four, most of the people had prison records, and the first four guys that got up looked as if Jesus might have picked them for the twelve apostles. I mean, there was purity in the face, there was honesty, and I remember one guy.
And oh, he was beautiful, and oh, he was wonderful. And he got on the subject of willpower, and he got a little bit gamey, but he made the point, and I'm going to drop it with you. He says, so he's talking about the woman, she was obviously a do-gooder who was congratulating him in the prison on being sober, and how he did this, this, that, and the other thing. And she says, I certainly want to congratulate you on your willpower. He says, so I said to her, look lady, if you think it's willpower, let me suggest an experiment. The next time you take poodle water, call me up the next day and tell me whether willpower had anything to do with it.
And so here we were, here we are embarking on a new life, and I tried it for 17 months of sobriety like you did. And then I fell off, of course. Actually, I fell and broke my ankle. I was 52 years old, I broke my ankle, I had it in a cast, and they moved me into a hotel and I got so sorry for myself, and room service was just over there by the phone, so I started in again. But in 51 was the year that I was sober, and this is where I started to find joy. And again, I want to stay on this subject of the meeting of things human with things divine, and how I recognized God, and how he led me to your doorstep.
I was in a hotel in Honolulu, and a call came through, and the guy said, Mr. O.K., my name is Lawrence Judd. I said, yes, Mr. Judd. He says, I was governor general of the island in the Hoover administration. Well, I immediately knew he wasn't a kid because 20 years had left. He says, I'm interested in Hansen's disease, what the layman calls leprosy. Irving Berlin, Shirley Temple, Olson and Johnson, various friends of yours have been generous enough to go over and entertain the lepers. I wonder if you'd come over.
I did. I said, I'd be glad to when you want me, Mr. Judd. He said, a week from tomorrow, Thursday. So, he said, you can bring two people, and I picked up a Paramount executive at the hotel next door, and we flew over, and for those of you who haven't seen Molokai, it's nothing but a highly palisaded rock there in the middle of the Pacific.
[00:45:10]
And the sugar and the pineapple grow up here, and down here is the Kalapapa, the place where Father Damien ministered to the lepers and the chief martyrs. From the air, it looks like a Par-5, and we came down, and the car picked us up, and we started to drive into the jungle, and he had six bits. So, Judd had six bits worth of flowers in his hand. He says, excuse me, I gotta go in here, and he ran up the steps. They were sagging. The shutters were sagging.
There were no windows. There was no paint. It was a shack in the bush, and he went in there with the flowers. And when he came back, and the car started up, he says, you know, I got a great fan in there, Mr. O.K.. I said, tell me, Mr. Judd. He says, no colored lady. She's blind. He said, give my love to Walter O.K.. I said, why didn't you take me in to meet her? He said, well, a week ago, when I came over here and explained that you were coming to entertain the patients, I said, wait a minute, never mind a week ago, why didn't you take me in just now?
He said, well, Walter, she didn't, I must explain. He said, the sulfone drug did not catch in her case, and so at her toes, and her nose, and her ears, and her fingers, she's decaying. And she didn't want to have you see her in that condition, but she loves you. There was an earthquake in my heart. I think there were about 287 lovers, and I entertained the lovers. They didn't miss a nuance. They didn't miss a subtlety.
They laughed at everything I stole from Hope, from Alan, from Benny, I mean, anyone. I wanted to make them laugh, and boy, they rewarded me with a laughter. And I didn't have a piano player with me, so I could sing a song and get off, and I suddenly said, are there any questions you'd like to ask? Way up in the rear, one of the lovers hollered out, yes, Walter, tell us about your two boys, Michael and Anthony.
That was the second earthquake in my heart on that individual day. They came down to see me off. Mr. and Mrs. Smith, the administrator, I think they were Presbyterians. There was a Catholic nun, an Episcopal nun, Father Pat Logan, the little round butterball of a priest, and the woman who was the authority on the doctor on leprosy. And they were coming down to thank me for telling some jokes, some lousy jokes.
And their faces were all lit up, and their eyes were beautiful, and they had what I chose to call, and subsequently did call, a Molokai look. It's the look of dedication, it's the look of devotion, it's the look of the person who's giving more than he's getting. And I knew something had happened in my life, and as I rode home that afternoon across the Pacific, I uttered the first honest prayer I had ever uttered in my life.
Thinking of this and them, and what they had that I didn't have. Under my breath I said to myself, I wish to Christ I had something like that to give myself to. And of course I didn't know it, but Christ was my Savior. And so it took time to get to you. It took time, because that was when I came home, and that's when I fell down and broke my ankle, and that's when I had the thing in the cast, and that's when the room service was there, so I drank for three more years.
And then I felt sorry for myself at a kid's graduation, one of my boys. And I saw an excuse to get drunk, and I called my sister who was a member of this paternity, and I said, send over that book. And two guys came in, one was a horn tutor and one was an announcer, Dell and Larry. And they were clean, and they were calm, and they were confident. And they said, you're sick. And they spent three days trying to thaw me out, and then they decided to bring me to a meeting.
And I went to a meeting at a guy's house, and here were six or seven guys in show business, big names, much bigger than I ever would be. And they're eating chocolate cake, and they're drinking coffee, and they're telling each other how well I look, and I was never so nauseated in my life. I thought, God, what a horrible price for sobriety. But the seed was planted. You had planted it. And I went on into New York.
I went on into New York, and I was to take Gary Moore's show. First I went to Washington. I was to follow Sophie Tucker there.
[00:50:00]
I didn't mind following Sophie. I followed her here at the 225 Club. I followed her in Miami, and my agent, I changed agents, of course. They said, I thought I'd get a nightclub act up and go to Vegas and make $100 million a week. So they said, will you follow Sophie in Washington? I said, sure, and I walked in there, and I realized I wasn't the headliner. There was a guy, I forget his name. He had the Unchained Melody, Al something.
Hibber, Al Hibber, Unchained Melody. And I had to lead him out. And I went over to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Maybe I knew that guy, I don't know. Maybe he was on the campus at Notre Dame. Maybe he came from Hartford, Connecticut. All we know about the Unknown Soldier is that he gave his all that I and mine might live, and I couldn't even live sober. So I visited with him, as I do every time now when I go to Washington.
I went on into New York to take over the Gary Moore show. At the end of the first week, I thought, oh, keep going to get to a meeting. My brother was living with me, and my brother is the reason Anheuser-Busch built in California. I had brought Jack along thinking he might write a gag or something, but all he did was, he had a nervous tick with a bottle opener, you know. So at the end of the first week, I thought, oh, Keith, you better go to a meeting.
And I took Jack with me, and we came down. I called up, I said, where is there a meeting? And they referred me to a place off Madison Avenue, and we went down. And there was a guy sitting there, back of a table, and his clothes didn't fit him, and his skin didn't fit him. But I saw the Molokai look. It was dedicated, and it was devoted, and he didn't have the platform manner. He wasn't a gifted speaker, but he led the meeting.
And God made me see him clean and clear. I saw him for what he was. He was you. He was honest. He was truthful. He was sincere. He was trying to help. And in a quiet way, I fell in love with him, very snobbishly. I had on black glasses. You see, I was a celebrity. Got to tell you the one beautiful line about celebrity. I went to Francis Xavier, got me out to Cincinnati for AA in 57, and I hadn't been in television a long while.
So I get back to New York at noon on Monday, and there were no cabs around, and a lot of people. And a complete stranger said, you going into Manhattan, sir? I said, yeah. I said, maybe we could share a cab. And the cab came up, and we got into it. And he stuck out his hand. He says, my name is L. from Chicago. I said, my name is O.K.. He says, you're not Walter O.K., are you? And I thought, subconsciously, I said yes.
And just then the cab driver turned around and says, yes, sir. Mr. O.K. used to be a real big celebrity. Those are the things that lift you up. Well, I got out at 10 o'clock, and I came back six more weeks. Always with the black glasses. Always got in at 8.30. Always get out at 10 o'clock. I didn't want to associate with O.K.. I would take, if it was the story of my life, I'd take what I could get, but I wouldn't give anything.
And then the day of my finale came. Nobody from Madison Avenue was saying we need him. The tryout hadn't worked. My brother is still tipping them up over there. The government's after me. My ex-wife is after me. Creditors are after me. I have to say, look, line up in alphabetical order. This can be handled. And in this moment of despair, I got off the air. We took over the Arthur Godfrey time every Friday, so I got off the air at 11.30 and walked right into Dinnie Moore's and said, give me a double Jack Daniels.
And I was off. God didn't love me. You know the way you're wallowing in self-pity. You know that. Isn't that awful? Nobody loves me. Nobody appreciates me. You stand in front of a mirror like a spiritual ham, you know. The biggest love affair of my life, and nobody shared it with me, which broke my heart. And so I woke up Saturday morning. You know what it is. I was sick. I was back in the snake pit.
And I lay there quivering and ashamed and unhappy. Three months I hadn't had a drink. I'd been to six meetings. What would I do? I did what you consciously did time and again. I'd go out to the kitchen and get a drink. And here is my drunken brother. He said, where are you going? And I told him. He says, you can't do that. You can't do that. And then I suggested something he could do. But as I went through the door to the kitchen, I heard this voice yell.
I'm going to call National Headquarters. National Headquarters.
[00:55:01]
Well, he made a call. And at the other end of the phone on 38th Street, or 39th, isn't it? 39th Street, there's a guy sitting there on September 9th, 1955. It's raining. And he's got a carton of coffee and a cigarette. And he's waiting for somebody to call who may be in trouble. And my brother said, will you come to this address here? And at 10.30 I opened the door. And the miracle started for me. Of all the drunks in the world, of all the drunks in New York, Ed, the guy who ran the meeting for six weeks, was there.
And I was shaken. And I took him in. I had a couple of drinks while I talked to him. And I'm sure I was supercilious. And after a while I said I'd lie down and take a nap. And when I woke up, I heard a bell or a whistle in the river. I was living in Sutton Place. And I looked to the left, and here's the luminous dial of a clock, and it's 10 minutes to 12 midnight. I knew there was a call for my agents at 7 o'clock.
I didn't get that. The nice guy from AA with the Molokai look in his eyes, he'd come into my life that morning. I'd walked out on him. What would I do? I'd go back to the kitchen and get a drink. But I went into that other room, and the lights were coming through from Sutton Place. And a voice said, I thought you might need me. So I waited. And it was Ed. It was you. So, in the next couple of minutes, God said this to me.
Walter, I don't care how fast you run. I can move faster. And I'll be waiting for you, but when are you going to stop running away? So I started to follow Ed, and Ed led me to you. Ed died of cancer. A year and a half ago. Less than a year. A little over a year ago. Clean. True. Illustrious. Inspiring. Challenging. Something for you and me to be proud of. Everybody who knew Ed loved him, and he didn't let us down.
And he didn't let AA down. Now this is what I'm talking about, that meeting of things human with things divine is the same thing that Bill and Bob saw in each other. There's a line in Goodyear's three-volume Life of Christ, where he's talking about the eloquence of Jesus, and he says this. It was not eloquence. It was much more than that. It was utter truth, uttering itself, convincing by its own transparency, blinding and subduing by the brightness of its light, conquering beyond all doubt every man of good will who heard it.
And the phrase in there that I love is convincing by its own transparency. That's what Ed was. That's what you are. Thank God that's what you are. Convincing by your own transparency. And we make our mistakes. We make our mistakes, but we keep going on. And I truly believe that Bill and Bob were what we know as saints. Now, I don't know whether about your experience, but my initial contact with a saint was in stained glass, and he always looked like a fellow that was irregular.
I never saw a happy-looking saint in my life. They always looked like the before part in a commercial for something that a lot of networks won't take. But after all, a saint is nothing but a sinner who never stopped trying. A saint is nothing but a sinner who never stopped trying, and that's what Bob, or Bill, or you. And I think of the guidance of God, I think of that Akron experience when Bill had the drink on the bar, and God said, Bill, go call up somebody.
Oh, I love this. So Bill goes out, and he looks up the number of a minister, and he calls the minister, and mind you, this is what, 35 years, 30, over 30 years ago, and the minister picks up the phone. It's Saturday afternoon, about 5.30, he's probably preparing the Sunday sermon, and a voice on the other end says, do you know where I could find a drunk to talk to? Can you imagine the minister? He says, what for?
The guy says, I want to stay sober. And yet there it was. That's how Bob and Bill met. And yet there it was. That's how Bob and Bill came together. And they were convincing by their own transparency. And each one of you has an Ed L. in your life, like I did. Each one of you has somebody who revealed God to you.
[01:00:05]
And so you come to the third part, what we were like, what happened, and what we're like now. There's nothing now except gratitude. And the best expression of gratitude that you can make. The Portuguese have a wonderful phrase. The Portuguese say, God writes straight with crooked lines. And I thought of you and me here today, and nobody entered this room I know without a heart that's bursting with gratitude, and gratitude is the aristocrat of the emotion.
What are you grateful for? Well, I'm grateful for my sobriety. And if I didn't have my sobriety, I wouldn't have my wife. And God gave me the custody of a good thought about her. I wish I could stand in relation to every other human being in the world as flawlessly as Terry stands to me. So I got that to be thankful for. I got something else to be thankful for that you gave me. We imitate what we love, as I said. We like to do and be exactly like the object of our affection. It had to be, I imitated my father, that my poor benighted boy, Michael, would imitate me. And so Michael did. But the results were different.
Michael has been arrested 16 times for drunkenness. Michael has been put away in institutions four times. Michael is on the AA program seven. And the minute I got home from Europe, I got on the phone to call up and say, how is he? And he's on the program, he's going to meetings. And if he didn't get it from me, he got it from you. And he got it through the revelation of truth as the program unveils itself for each of us in a different way.
And it takes work. It takes daily work. It takes daily prayer to put yourself into the hands of God. And it takes going to meetings. Oh, God, how it takes going to meetings. I had an operation. Mind you, one of the excitements about this meeting this weekend is that in a couple of months over there, I didn't have any meetings. But the most joyous contact I had was to call the number they gave me in Lisbon, Gilly. Gilly came into my life. You love Gilly.
Gilly is a Portuguese. He's an architect. He speaks five or six languages. He's traveled all over the world. He's a wise man. He's a sweet man. He's a generous man. And I met Gilly through you and his wife and his child. And they were one of the big blessings of our trip. But I think what might have happened if I'd played it differently. And I think of that operation I had, 57. Went into the hospital, was gone for months. And when I came out, I was hungry to get to a meeting. And I went back to that meeting where I'd met Ed. And I picked up a piece of flotsam and jetsam, you know. This was a Celtic kisser. It was an Irish face.
And he wanted to talk to me. And thank God I listened that night. I took him up Madison Avenue and he told me a story. And the story is briefly this. He says, you know, Walter, his name was Jimmy. He said, Walter, I had five years in AA. Actually, I had five years and six weeks. But I had stopped going to meetings. Don't ever forget that. Don't ever forget that line, I had stopped going to meetings.
He says, I'd stopped going to meetings. So he says, I want to go to the track. And I'm sitting there in the bus, going to take off for the track on the island. And I think, what the hell, nobody will know the difference. I've had it under control for five years. I can handle it now. Besides, I'm not going to get drunk. You've said this. You know the script. I don't have to quote it for you. So he says, I bought a half pint. You know, that's always interesting to me. Whenever a whiskey drinker goes back, all he ever had was a half pint. And somebody else goes, all I had was two beers. You know that all I had was two beers? That routine? So anyway, here is this character and Jimmy bought a half pint. He says, I remember up to the end of the fourth race. When I woke up, they didn't have to tell me where I was. I knew. I was in jail.
And I quickly fell up here. Because to protect myself in an emergency, I had secreted and hidden between the lining and the fabric, a $20 bill. Now, what was he thinking of when he put that in there? So he says, I got the 20 out and I got the jailer over and I said, look, pal, I've obviously got to face charges here later today. But right now I'm facing the worst hangover I've ever had in my life. Worst I've had in five years.
[01:05:16]
Guy says, I'll give you this 20 bucks if you get me some beer or whiskey. Guy says, buddy, you ain't going to have any beer or whiskey for a long, long while. He says, then I found out what had happened. After the fourth race, I crossed the parking lot. I stole an army truck and driving drunkenly across Long Island, I ran over a man and killed him. He says, I've just done seven years in Sing Sing. I says, Jimmy, I hope you've learned your lesson. He says, I certainly have. There were a few contacts in March, April, May. And just before I went to Brussels, they sent me over to broadcast the World's Fair. I got the call. Jimmy decided he could drink again. Jimmy is now serving life.
And I wouldn't write Jimmy off as a failure. I wouldn't write him off as a failure. Because I, like you, like many of you, have had trouble with a boy. And I didn't know how much time he was going to do. And I thought maybe he'll run into an old pro like Jimmy. And Jimmy will be convincing by his own transparency. And in the economy of God's plan, I don't know where Jimmy stands, but I wouldn't write him off as a failure. Say a prayer for him, please. Because I never like to deliver a talk without reminding you that this can happen to you. So let me turn now to a couple of prayers that will get me off.
One of them was sent after that first heart attack in 62. Boy, it certainly sums things up for me. Thank you, dear God, for all you have given me, for all you have taken away from me, for all you have left me. Written in 1535, just before he was beheaded in the Tower of London by Thomas More. And the other one is a prayer for a modern man. I'll give a couple of copies to Cal, and maybe he can get some for those of you who want it. The prayer is this. My dear God, I have no idea where I'm going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end.
Nor do I really know myself. And the fact that I think that I'm doing your will does not mean that I actually am. But I do believe this. I believe that the desire to please you does please you. And I hope I have that desire. I hope I have that desire in everything I do. And I know that if I do this, you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it at the time. Therefore, I will trust you always. For though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death, I will not be afraid, because I know you will never leave me to face my troubles all alone. And that's what I know about you. I know you'll never leave me to face my troubles all alone.
And I close with the old Irish axiom, live in my heart and pay no rent, because I haven't got a thing in there that I didn't get from you. Thank you, Wallard. There is one more announcement I'm to make. The next intergroup function will be the 12th annual banquet in the Grand Ballroom at the Conrad Hilton Hotel on October 22, 1966. I think in view of what's happened in the last few days, it might be appropriate if we just gave a little tribute to Frank L. and Ed R. and all the other guys and gals who helped to make this program what it was.
After Fr. John B. gives his benediction, we will declare the 6th annual intergroup conference closed. Now to lead us in benediction is Fr. John B. of the CATC Chaplain.
[01:10:05]
We of the 6th Chicago Intergroup Conference of Alcoholics Anonymous here assemble and inscribe upon our memories this testament of our gratitude for the life and works of our departed friends, especially Dr. Harry M. Thiebaud, Sister Mary Ignatia, Ebby T., and Waller G. of the Joliet Group, with a minute of quiet time. As a fitting conclusion of these two splendid days of this conference, we thank you, Almighty God, for all the choices, blessings that you have bestowed upon all of us.
Many of us have received new hope and zest and new life to continue our one-a-day-at-a-time existence. May we continue all the more to fulfill our responsibility to God, to our country, to our fellow alcoholics, and to gain our desired goal in the next life. Amen. Now let us say the Our Father. Mine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.