Gold in Them Thar Hills

When Crooner Andy Williams canceled an engagement in Las Vegas last summer to play the state-fair circuit, the supposition was that he had just won an uncontested divorce from his senses, or that he ought to start proceedings against his agent. After all, Vegas, that bonanza city of the show world, would have paid him $50,000 a week. And what could he make from the likes of the Corn Palace Fair in Mitchell, S.D.? As it turned out: $70,500 in six days.

So this season, without even a feeler to Vegas, Williams has whirled past more fairgrounds than Astronauts Cooper and Conrad ever did. In fact, the state-fair circuit has become an unpublicized gold mine of show business. Not for everyone. The star of the fair circuit must be folksy, decent, no-putting-on-airs, and never, never step out of character. Williams is the circuit's ideal singer, Tennessee Ernie Ford its ideal comic, Liberace its favorite pianist, Lawrence Welk its ideal bandleader.

And any star of any TV western is boffo--provided he never lets on he is only an actor pretending to be a cowboy. Says Agent Mike North, the Hurok of the hinterlands: "You couldn't give away Bob Goulet, Frank Sinatra, or Dean Martin. And Danny Kaye and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. would also bomb." But those who can make it, make it big. Like, say, $15,000 a night.

Dog Acts. Ten summers ago, the fairs were paying the stars only a quarter that much--if they were booking stars at all. Most of the fairs made do with just acrobats and dog acts and perhaps a kick line of local chorus girls. Sometimes the whole show was included in the dollar-odd price of admission, right along with the exhibition barns and the competition sheds full of fancy needlework and loganberry jam. At other fairs, an additional couple of dollars per head were charged for the grandstand entertainment, but it was usually a loss leader.

The Ohio State Fair, which had been running the grandstand in the red for years, dropped $80,000 in 1956 and was about to give up. But it was talked into gambling one last time the following year--with Roy Rogers. Rogers, gambling himself, signed a no-guarantee contract, giving the fair the first $10,000 and 25% of the rest. He left town with $84,000. That was the big breakthrough for big-name headliners at the fairs. In time, Rogers was bringing in so much profit that his take ranged up to $234,000 for ten nights at the Wisconsin State Fair in 1958.

But the fair circuit also imposes its conditions. Even between shows, the headliner is always on. He can count on being greeted by the mayor, booked to attend a P.T.A. lunch, scheduled to address the Lions' Club. The most conscientious, like Ernie Ford, spend off-hours playing the local children's hospital, old folks' home, and perhaps the jail. There are command performances at shopping centers and interviews with every 1-kw. disk jockey in the county. And the stars' best chance to relax--the private parties local functionaries are always thrusting upon them--are off limits to Mike North's clients. "You can't win," he advises. "If you don't drink, you're a snob, and if you do, you're a gutter drunk."

Hoss Sense. At all times, the star must stick to his public character. A TV cowboy or country musician does not, if he is wise, roll into town behind a screaming police escort or in a chauffeured limousine. The touring cast of the Beverly Hillbillies cannily commandeers the town's oldest car for its infield entrance. Jim Nabors, trained as an operatic baritone before he took on the title role in Gomer Pyle, cost the gate an estimated 10% by trying to sing classical arias at the Shelby County (Iowa) Fair in July. And Lorne Green's Shakespearean parody of one of his own Bonanza scripts--"That which we call a Hoss by any other name would smell as sweet"--fell prairie-flat at the Illinois State Fair last month.

The fair audiences, in fact, do not want to see a talented fellow who can impersonate anybody. They want to meet Bat Masterson; they are not interested in an actor called Gene Barry, who happens to be a Jewish boy from Brooklyn. When a youthful fan at Canada's Calgary Stampede handed him a snare drum, and asked "Would you sign this, Bat?", Barry snapped: "My name is Gene Barry," and bashed his gold-headed Bat Masterson cane right through the head of the drum. He was not asked back.

Big Foot. But the performers willing and able to play along drown in the gravy. Among the kings of the circuit this year are Gunsmoke's Ken (Festus) Curtis and Milburn (Doc) Stone, who drew 225,000 fans in a week at Billings, Mont. (pop. 62,000) and, at the Kitsap County (Wash.) Fair--with the local impresario's job riding on the outcome--doubled the best previous gross. "We'll be singing and jawing at each other and having a time as big as my foot," announces Festus as they reach each town. Which means declining nary a radio interview and likely, after the show, laying a plank across a couple of sawhorses to sign autographs for up to two hours.

Their show is relentlessly in character. Festus gives his goose call. Doc up and says, "My cousin's so tall she hunts geese with a rake." The delivery is always slow-motion ("You can't Bob Hope 'em," says Stone) and fair-circuit clean. About as daring as they got at the Indiana State Fair last week was the routine in which Festus reported, "I've got 'seenus' trouble." "You mean sinus," corrected Doc. "No," rejoined Festus, "I was out with a pretty little girl last night and her husband seen us."

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