PART 2
D. McDonald: So how many accordions do you have?
Contino: Just the one. They gave me a spare, but I gave it to my son, who also plays the accordion. Since I was 17, Debbie, through the years, I’ve been in a position where I get ’em on consignment. They keep repairing ’em until they can’t be repaired.
C. McDonald: Through the years, you’ve gone through, what, hundreds?
Contino: (Smiling) Dozens. They just fix ’em up. As long as they’re solid, they’re fine. The one I have now retails for about $11,000.
C. McDonald: Now your music is on CDs (You can order discs directly from Dick HERE). I don’t want to date you, but you started out recording on 78 rpms, right?
Contino: Yeah, the breakables, man. In 1948. I’ll be 73 next month (January, 2003).
C. McDonald: You’re in terrific shape. How do you do it?
Contino: I work out every day. Go to the gym and do weights, Stairmaster. My girlfriend is 40 years old, and I’ve known here since she was 28. I told her my age when we first met, and she said, "I love you and to be honest, that’s part of the attraction (age)." Maybe it was a maturity thing. Again, there is a kinship. If you’re supposed to stay together, you’ll be together. I love her. I’m happy. She satisfies me in every way, and I’m cool.
C. McDonald: Let's talk about Contino, the literary character.
Contino: You know James Ellroy. Dog. I call him "Dog." Eccentric guy. Hard to get to know. A very great talent. He likes to howl like a dog, go out there in the yard and go at it. He didn’t finish high school, by the way, but he made it as a writer. You know the story. He’s a kid, and his mother is murdered. When he wrote the piece, Out of the Past, for GQ, he came back and said, "I want to write a piece about Dick Contino as a character and mix truth and fiction: can I get your approval?" I said, "Yeah." Ellroy said, "Do I have to send it to you for approval?" I said, "Dog, just turn on the burners," because I’m through with trying to make people understand. As a result, when Dick Contino’s Blues came out, John L. Smith, out of Vegas — nice guy, I love him — he had never written but two lines on me over the years, and he was a big huge Ellroy fan. The story came out, and he said, I have to have an interview with you. We met at this delicatessen. He said, "I don’t want to know what was truth and what was fiction. I don’t want to know, because he (Ellroy) put it together too beautifully."
C. McDonald: I read somewhere that you never signed any agreements with Ellroy. No contract. Why’d you do that?
Contino: I guess because it gave me satisfaction. I was also curious to take on the excitement. He was the first person to tell me, Dog said, "This could change a lot of things in your life." I said, "Think I should get a P.R. person?" He said, "No, fuck it," he says, "Dick, do me a favor: Let this thing live it’s own life." I liked that. He said, "Let’s sit back and don’t worry about it." We were very close for a while, and then something happened. I don’t know what. He wrote Hollywood Shakedown and got pretty bizarre with that. Did you read it?
C. McDonald: Sure. You and Oscar Levant were killing people.
Contino: Yeah, we were killing people (chuckling). I said, "Holy God, this guy’s got me doing everything." I didn’t mind that.
C. McDonald: What’s a murder or two between friends?
Contino: Yeah, yeah. The thing that I felt like, at the end of the story, well…after Dick Contino’s Blues and the first piece he did for GQ, he had me going on. I had the feeling in Hollywood Shakedown he wrote my epitaph. Like he’s sitting around in Vegas and doing time….He (Ellroy) is a good example of what interests me now and why I’m doing what I do. It thrills me to study and to try to understand human nature —more so than getting a standing ovation or whatever. I love trying to understand more deeply, because human nature interests me more deeply — what causes people to do what they do and act the way that they do — myself included — the fears. I have a feeling he was influenced, because, when Dick Contino’s Blues came out, it was the lead off story in his book of short stories, and in France and Germany, the book itself was called "Dick Contino’s Blues."
C. McDonald: Right. Different title in the U.S. — Hollywood Nocturnes.
Contino: Yeah, yeah. He’d send me money — he’d send me a couple of thousand for this or that. But when the publisher in New York picked it up, he was advised to call it "Hollywood Nocturnes." Know what I mean? I think it may have been a little like the case of Horace Heidt. See, Ellroy had never written about anybody living. It’s always been somebody fictitious or dead. I was the only person alive that he has ever written about, and I think maybe somebody cautioned him that I was getting too big. We did a tour in L.A., and every bookstore was packed.
D. McDonald: You’d play in the bookstore?
Contino Yeah, I’d bring the box and took my son along to play drums. Every bookstore was just packed. Even better, we’d get there, and I’d be in the audience and they wouldn’t know. James would get up there and read the first chapter of Dick Contino’s Blues, then he’d finish and say, "I want to introduce you to Dick Contino," and it was startling. On the other hand, like in Hollywood Shakedown, any girl he’d have me balling, he had to make sure they were dead.
C. McDonald: Joi Lansing….
Contino: Yeah, Joi Lansing. I think he originally wanted me to be with, man — but she’s still alive — was Julie London. He said, "Next book I write man, you’ll be balling Julie London."
C. McDonald: Every woman Ellroy wanted, but couldn’t?
Contino: Exactly. He used to rob girl’s houses to steal their panties…a real freaky guy. I just think somebody advised him it was getting too big.
C. McDonald: There was talk of a movie.
Contino: Yeah, they flew me in three or four times. The guy who had been doing Crime Story on TV, to this day, he still thinks they are going to do Dick Contino’s Blues.
C. McDonald: Do you have a preferred actor to play you?
Contino: Yeah. No. Let’s see. They mentioned John Travolta. They mentioned the Mexican guy who did the cop thing…what the hell is his name? A horrible actor….
D. McDonald: What was he in?
Contino: The motorcycle thing….
C. McDonald: Not Erik Estrada.
Contino: Yeah! Erik Estrada. So I said, "No, no, I can’t see Erik Estrada." But it didn’t get that far, either. It seemed like they were going to do it, but it didn’t happen. That could have been a real kick, because, on the book thing, Ellroy would read and then say, "Here he is." I’d get up there, and I wouldn’t try to be that character. He’d have a lot of Hollywood people at those readings, like actors, because they love Ellroy. It’s like a cult. People would say, "Are you this guy? Did you really do this or that?" He (Ellroy) made me promise I wouldn’t say what I did or didn’t do. The strangest part is, that he made it like it was very possible I could have said and done those things. Very much so. Maybe because he was so tuned in to me that he figured he knew what I would say if I had the chance to, or to act. So, rather than having me apologize all over the place for the Army thing, he just had me being a tough guy.
D. McDonald: How was he so in tune to you?
Contino: I don’t know. Maybe it was that kind of spiritual kinship type thing. But, something happened, Debbie. I don’t know what…I don’t know what. I don’t like to force things. It seemed like he was drifting.
D. McDonald: When was the last time you talked to him?
Contino: At least three years. Yeah, yeah.
D. McDonald: (Smiling) He’ll pop up.
Contino: I hope so, you know? Because I think he’s a great talent. There was something about Ellroy…I liked him. Fun to be around. The guy shoots espressos like they’re candy. And he talks so openly. He could be in front of the Pope and he’d say, "I don’t give a fuck, man." He’s got this way of delivery and I’d go, "Yeah Dog, yeah." When we’d hang out.
C. McDonald: Have you noticed a blending of your audience — those who come to you through the books mixed with your musical fans?
Contino: Yeah. I get a few younger people in who know me through Ellroy and have read the pieces.
C. McDonald: Let’s take a fan who has been with you since the 1950s or 1960s…would you steer them toward the Ellroy novellas?
Contino: I’ve had my own family, like my brother Pete, who said, "I don’t like what he did." But I don’t care. I said, "Look, I’ve spent too many years trying to tell people what I thought." My first question is, "What is truth? What is truth?" I’ve been trying to tell people…back in the Army Beef, my mother and father used to invite the press over for Italian food dinners and say, "Look, you should understand our son, he’s not that kind of a boy and ba-ba-ba-ba-bah." And they’d still write what they wanted to write. Or, you tell somebody something and then you’d read it and you’d say, No, I didn’t say that." So, when Ellroy said, "Can I do it?" I said, "Turn on the burners." I said, "I don’t even want to look at it for approval, because, whatever you say is cool, because I am invincible, man. After a while, you build up this wonderful sincere sense of invincibility, you know. I gave ’em all this chance to shoot me down, and maybe I’m not setting the world on fire, but I’m still burning a little flame here. They haven’t killed it. So, write whatever you want to write, Dog. Like, even with Hollywood Shakedown, I didn’t even look at that until it came out. They called me from GQ and said, "Whoa, he’s got you doing some pretty wild things. And I said, "I don’t care."
D. McDonald: Weren’t you surprised they didn’t try to get you to sign off on things earlier?
Contino: What hon’, with Dog — Ellroy? I think they didn’t realize at the time — same thing as with Horace Heidt — that certain thing. See, with Horace Heidt, he had my name up on billboards when I was 18 or 19: "Horace Heidt Show, featuring Dick Contino." But I think I got too big for him. According to his P.R. person, the guy who, by the way, was responsible for getting me Daddy-O, said, "Heidt’s been holding meetings and saying we have to get your name off the billboards, because you’re getting too big." I think maybe in calling it Hollywood Nocturnes in this country in lieu of Dick Contino’s Blues, and maybe his wife, or someone, was justifiably trying to protect him. But, something happened, because, when we were touring with Dick Contino’s Blues, he would tell interviewers or whomever, "I think there will never be a year when I’m not writing something about Dick Contino." Something happened, and, rather than trying to seek him out, if we’re in kinship, so to speak, then basically, whatever temporarily derailed us, we’ll cross again. Not that I want another book. I think he’s a great guy and a great talent and I don’t care one way or another. It’s a nice place to be. A nice place to be. You’re not obsessed. Ellroy was fascinated — fascinated by and wrote about Daddy-O, which they gave me a thousand or so dollars for. I’d have given them a thousand dollars to play the part, because it was a Class-B movie. Now it’s a cult thing.
C. McDonald: Okay, legend time: They say you actually drove the car during the famous jump scene….
Contino: No, no.
C. McDonald: That’s apocryphal?
Contino: I just drove up to the ramp and stopped: "Okay (to the stuntman): You get in…" Then they show me driving away. I did my own stunt driving otherwise, through Laurel Canyon. I did my own driving, but I didn’t do that jump. You know, I saw what’s her name, man, Sandra Giles, just recently!
C. McDonald: She was hot.
Contino: Yeah, she was pretty hot stuff. It was wild, man. You know, see, Elmer Rhoden was her man — the guy who produced the movie. So Howard, okay, I’ll tell you the truth now, man, because I don’t care what anybody does — if they want to date chickens, dogs, goats, or whatever, it’s not any of my business — I let life live itself. Howard was gay, and he had this boyfriend he wanted to get into the movie. In order to get his boyfriend into the movie, he had promised he could deliver Dick Contino to play "Daddy-O." So he said, "I’ll give you a thousand dollars to show up and be Daddy-O" and I said, "Okaaaay…." So, one day I’d show up and felt like John Garfield — you know, my heroes back then — another day like Alan Ladd, or George Raft. Never felt more like singing in my life. To this day, you can rent Daddy-O in some video stores. It’s like a cult film. In Australia, they’ve had three or four editions of Dick Contino’s Blues. So, I’ve never pushed too hard. Even my girlfriend, Tonia, said, "You should have gotten a P.R. person," and I say, "Naw, I’ve got to go with my promise to Dog and his advice to let life live itself," because I don’t give a shit, because I’m a firm believer too, that you’ve got to be careful what you pray for because you just might get it. I’ve seen too many things where people are desperate to get certain things and, well, talking of Vegas, a girl won $13 million on the Megabucks and now she’s crippled for life. Paralyzed from the neck down. She split the money with her boyfriend and as a result of the money bought a new car, wrecked the car, and, as a result of the money, her life went in another direction. I just enjoy life. If it comes my way, I love it. If it doesn’t, that’s cool too.
© Craig McDonald, Dec. 4, 2002
— Special thanks to Carrie Cerino's Ballroom and to J.B. Promotions.
