Met Lord Richard Buckley in Miami in 1954. One night Frank invited Buckley to join us at the Eden Roc Hotel on Miami Breach. I can see Lord Buckley now, marching through the lobby of the Eden Roc Hotel, in his black bow tie and tails. I say marching because he carried himself like a major in the British Army; chest and chin high, white hair and mustache, and striding like a man with a mission. When he spotted us, he approached us, and with a deep bow, said in his chesty voice, "Good evening, Prince Frank of Linale. How Are you this glorious evening? And Lady Bunny, you look elegant, my dear."

Frank introduced us. Buckley said, "How do you do? I’ve heard, Prince Frank and Lady Bunny speak of you many times. Henceforth I dub you, Prince Sam, of the royal court of Buckley." We shook hands and became friends.

We entered an elevator and rose to the penthouse to visit, Harry Belafonte, who was performing that night in the main show room of the Eden Roc. In the late 40's Frank was the arranger and conductor for, Martha Raye at her Five O' Clock Club on Miami Beach. Harry Belafonte was one of the acts that appeared there.

One of Harry’s managers let us into the suite. Harry appeared and we were introduced. Again, Lord Buckley gave a sweeping bow and said, "Sir Harry of Belafonte, I am honored."

Harry had been working on some new music and wanted Frank to hear it; we were all treated to a personal performance of his new song. We chatted for a while, then when it was nearing show time, left Harry, and went down to our table in the main room.

Both Frank and Lord Buckley knew the Maitre’d and the captains. We were shown to our table, where it became a circus between the waiters, Buckley and some of the people in the audience, who knew him. The house lights dimmed and the show began. At one point in the show, Harry introduced Frank and Lord Buckley, who of course did his gracious bow. This was my introduction to Lord Buckley, which was the beginning of an interesting and most novel association.

The next meeting with Lord Buckley was at dinner at Frank Linale’s home in South Miami. The front door opened, Buckley’s children (Richard and Lori) entered and announced the arrival of Her Ladyship and His Lordship, Richard Buckley. Lady Buckley, a tall, beautiful, blonde, who carried herself like a ballerina, entered first. (I learned later that she was a ballerina and taught "Ballet for Living", a theory that was based on posture and movement. Lord Buckley applied these principles.) She was followed by his Lordship, who was very regal even without his black tie and tails. It was a pleasant evening with talk centered around Buckley and show business. I regret not having that evening on tape because it was an intimate conversation with lots of humor. That was the beginning of our friendship.

Lord Buckley was a frequent visitor at Frank's home and the Vagabond Club in Miami, Florida. The club was owned and operated by The Four Vagabonds: Al Torrieri, Tillio Risso, Dominic Germano and Pete Peterson. Frank Linale, was the Vagabonds’ Band Leader and Manager. Frank, set up a recording booth off-stage and recorded the various acts that appeared there. He recorded a lot of Lord Buckley’s material. I used to assist him

The Vagabond Club was on Biscayne Boulevard in Downtown Miami. It was an elegant dinner club with a large stage and a full orchestra. The lounge had an elevated stage setup behind the bar. After the last show in the main room Buckley would get on the stage in the lounge and go on for hours sometimes. Woody Woodbury was the lounge act at that time.

As well as bringing in named acts, the Vagabond's also performed at the club when they weren’t on the road. I remember a very funny bit that Buckley did on stage with the Vags. He seated them in chairs, then stood behind them and when he patted one of them on the head, that person would open and shut his mouth and Buckley would say the dialogue. Every time they did it, It would bring the house down

Buckley and I spent a lot of time together driving around Miami Beach. I am not sure how it happened, but we pulled into a long driveway and stopped in front of a mansion that overlooked the beach; it used to be a gambling casino. We met Faith Dane, who lived there. She was renting rooms to people working in nite-clubs. Bon Bon, Jenny Lee the Bazoom girl, a Latin dance team and a Comedian, Tubby Boots were a few. Buckley and Tubby roomed together at one time ( an interesting story there that I will save for later).

Buckley rented some rooms and moved his family into Faith's mansion. You could find him holding court at the large kitchen table most anytime. Lady Buckley gave dance lessons, called, "Ballet for life". It was all about the importance of posture in everyday life. She was a grand lady.      

I had a 39 foot ketch that I used for advertising as well as charters. We sailed up and down the beach advertising Coppertone and the Vagabond Club on the sails.. Friends who owned the Calypso Club across the street from the Vagabond Club were producing Lord Flee in the Vagabond Club. We put his name on the sails and advertised his show. Whenever we came abeam of the mansion, it was drop anchor and a swim to the beach for a visit with Faith and Lord Buckley. 

Faith and I became great friends, but that's another wonderful story. If you ever saw Gypsy on Broadway or in the movies, Faith played the part of Mazeppa, the Stripper. 

It was during one of my visits to New York that Buckley was killed. While enjoying a hot pastrami at the Stage Deli, I bumped into Sid Gould, a comedian I knew from Miami Beach. Sid told me about Buckley.  Faith and I went to the funeral home to pay our respects to Lord Buckley, and later I went down to the Village to visit Lady Buckley. It was very sad.             

Sid introduced me to his brother Oscar, a very interesting man (Stories about Sid and Oscar). Sid's cousin was Gary Mortin, who married Lucille Ball. You may have ssen Sid in some of the "Lucy" series. He also played the patient in the "Sunshine Boys" with Walter Matthau and George Burns.

Years later, bumped into Sid at the Valley Music Theatre in Woodland Hills just north of Hollywood. Ross Hunter, the producer of the film, Lost Horizon, threw a big backstage party for Mitzi Gaynor, who was appearing there.. Sid came with his cousin, Gary Morton, and Lucille Ball. There were quite a few stars there: William Shatner, Pearl Baily, Ed Ames, and more I can’t remember.

Sid told me the same story about Buckley that he had told me in New York. Everybody who paid their respects to Lord Buckley stashed a joint in his pocket. He probably had a pound of grass on him when they buried him. I can see the police reading this and digging him up to confiscate the grass. One night a couple of years later, met Sid in Cantor’s Restaurant in Hollywood, again I was eating a hot pastrami.. We talked about old times and again he repeated the story about Lord Buckley. I think it was one of his favorite stories.

8/7/2001 To be continued in the far future:

Back to top of page

Jason Ankeny about Lord Richard Buckley

"A most immaculately hip aristocrat," Lord Buckley was the epitome of comedy cool; a onetime vaudeville performer and a hulking ex-lumberjack, he was a comic philosopher, a bop monologuist whose vocalese fused the rhythms and patois of the street with the arch sophistication of the British upper-crust to create verbal symphonies unparalleled in their intricacy and dexterity. A comedian who didn't tell jokes and a word-jazz virtuoso riffing madly on the English language, Buckley combined the frenetic intensity of Beat poetry with the lessons and moral heft of Biblical tales and historical discourse; holding court over the "hipsters, flipsters and finger-poppin' daddies" of the postwar era, he was a true visionary, the original rapper.

His Lordship was born Richard Myrle Buckley on April 5, 1906 in Tuolumne, California, a mining town located in the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas. After spending his formative years as a lumberjack, in the mid-1920s Buckley set out to find work in the oil fields of Texas and Mexico; he never made it, instead teaming with a traveling guitarist to form a musical comedy act. By the 1930s he was in Chicago, emceeing in mob-owned speakeasies; there he became a protege of Al Capone, who set up the comedian with his own club, the Chez Buckley, where he performed backed by a cadre of jazz musicians. Constant vice-squad pressure soon forced Buckley out of town, however, and throughout the early 1940s he worked the vaudeville circuit, gaining a notorious reputation for ridiculing unhip audiences and smoking dope onstage.

After touring with the U.S.O. during World War II, Buckley relocated to New York City, where he acted in a Broadway production titled The Passing Show. After marrying Elizabeth Hanson, one of the show's dancers, the couple and their children moved to Los Angeles at the dawn of the 1950s; after attempts to break into films proved largely unsuccessful, Buckley began taking on the persona of "His Lordship," an aristocratic hipster madman clad in tuxedo, pith helmet and Salvador Dali-esque waxed moustache. He quickly emerged as an underground legend, partipicating in LSD experiments while throwing wild parties at his rented Hollywood Hills mansion (dubbed the Castle) where the likes of Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Jr. and Tony Curtis mingled with jazz musicians, junkies and poets. At a Topanga Canyon art gallery owned by his friend Bob DeWitt, he also founded the first jazz religion, "The Church of the Living Swing."

In 1951 Buckley made his first recordings for the Vaya label, Euphoria and Euphoria, Volume II. The first album contained his most legendary routine, "The Nazz," a "hipsemantic" retelling of the life of Christ ("the sweetest, gonest, wailinest cat that ever stomped on this sweet, swingin' sphere"); the latter featured a number of riffs on Aesop's Fables as well as "Jonah and the Whale," complete with a pothead Jonah. Despite a series of well-received appearances on The Tonight Show, The Milton Berle Show and You Bet Your Life, Buckley did not re-enter the studio until 1955, when he cut Hipsters, Flipsters and Finger-Poppin' Daddies, Knock Me Your Lobes, which spotlighted his adaptations of scenes from the Shakespearean dramas Julius Caesar, Hamlet and Macbeth.        

After issuing a trio of singles in 1956 — "Flight of the Saucer, Parts 1 and 2" (an excursion into outer space rapped over the 1946 Lyle Griffin track "Flight of the Vout Bug"), "The Gettysburg Address" and "James Dean's Message to Teenagers" — as well as recording the LP A Most Immaculately Hip Aristocrat (which went unreleased until 1970), Buckley moved to Las Vegas, where he worked the nightclub and casino circuit. In 1959 he returned to play Hollywood; the majority of a February 12 appearance at the Ivar Theatre was soon issued as the album Way Out Humor, while the remainder appeared in 1966 as Blowing His Mind (and Yours, Too). Ever the nomad, Buckley and his family moved to San Francisco in 1960, where he took up residency at clubs like the Hungry i and the Purple Onion; a performance at Oakland's Gold Nugget formed the basis of the 1970 release The Bad Rapping of the Marquis de Sade.

In the summer of 1960, Buckley set out alone in a red VW microbus to tour the country; in August he arrived in Chicago, where he fell ill. Still, he forged on to New York for a series of October performances at the Jazz Gallery; during one of his shows, the city's vice squad confiscated his cabaret card — a document necessary to play area clubs — on the grounds that he lied about having a prior arrest record. On November 12, he called the novelist Harold Humes, complaining of great anxiety triggered by the cabaret bureau's daily refusals to reissue his card; he also said he was hungry and broke. Within hours of hanging up the phone, Lord Buckley was dead of a stroke brought on by "extreme hypertension; " he was 54 years old. A few weeks later, civic pressure forced a repeal of the cabaret card law.

While never a mainstream figure, Buckley's stature grew to mythic proportions in the months and years following his death. Lenny Bruce was an avowed fan, borrowing much of his attitude and rhythms from Buckley's lead, and everyone from Jonathan Winters to Robin Williams acknowledged His Lordship's influence. Bob Dylan was also enamored of his work, and at the outset of his career frequently covered Buckley's rendition of the poet Joseph Newman's "Black Cross." Jimmy Buffett performed the Buckley original "God's Own Drunk," and George Harrison's hit    "Crackerbox Palace" drew inspiration from the comedian's life and its title from the name given his tiny Hollywood home. Still the subject of a fanatical cult following and a true underground hero, even decades after exiting "this sweet, swingin' sphere" the self-styled Messiah of Hip lives on. — Jason Ankeny

Back to top of page