from 2008
DANA DANIELS

by Scott Wolf

Dana Daniels has the distinction out of every person I've ever interviewed, of being the only one to sit in a barber chair during our interview. He wasn't getting his hair cut at the time, it's just a comfortable chair in his living room. That tells you a bit about Dana's whimsical side. In another room is his partner in is his hysterical comedy/magic act, Luigi, the "psychic parrot." Yes, it's a bird! If you've seen Dana perform, you know why he was voted Magic Castle's 2007 Stage Magician of the Year... he's simply brilliant at what he does. And for Dana, it all started at Disneyland. I'm just so pleased to be able to share these interviews with you!

Dana Daniels: When I was in characters I would go to the Disney auditions. Once a year they would have this thing called the general audition and I think it was just for them to keep a catalog of entertainers for anything.

I wanted to be a sub in the (Golden) Horseshoe. I wanted to be Wally Boag's understudy. I watched the show all the time. I just thought it was a great show and I thought the comic spot was the best part of the whole show. It was such a great balance of a show as far as singing, dancing, beautiful dancing girls and singers and then the comic comes in at the right moment and just cleans it up. Then you finish up the show with the singer and the comic doing shtick with the song and the can-can girls just finish it up beautifully. Just a really solid thirty minute show.

I was so inspired, I tracked Wally Boag's dressing room down between sets and I'm wearing Goofy shoes and a sweaty t-shirt and I knock on his door. I was probably eighteen and I said, "I want to be your understudy. What can I do to be your understudy? I work in the character department but I'm a magician and a comic," but I was pretty young. He said, "You're kind of young for the part," but he told me to go to the auditions that they had every year.

Sonny Anderson conducted those and I auditioned in front of Sonny and I always made Sonny laugh. I did my stuff and then they would say, "How old are you?" and I was always just a little too young to do that. I thought I was pretty good, but I was not ready for the Horseshoe at that time. I was too green. I wasn't seasoned enough for the Horseshoe.

When I was hired as a juggler for the Fantasyland thing, now I had an AGVA (American Guild of Variety Artists) contract, because the Horseshoe is an AGVA show. So now I'm an AGVA player so I found out who the Show Director was of the Horseshoe, it was a guy named John Lee. I went to John's office and said, "I'm doing comedy magic out in Fantasyland, I don't know if you're aware of it or not," by that time Wally retired and Dick Hardwick was hired as his replacement. Dick's about ten or eleven years older than me, so we look a little closer in age. So I said, "It might be a benefit, since I'm here five days a week, take a look at me and see if I'm right to do the show. I'm here all the time so if someone's sick, you can grab me and I can fill in." Well, they thought that was a pretty good idea.

So they had me audition in the Horseshoe, and it was going to be in front of just John Lee. Just one person. So I went to wardrobe, I had some friends there and I said, "Dress me up like the comedian in the Horseshoe," so they gave me the whole outfit with the derby hat and the prop coat and a carpetbag, I got the rubber chicken and the whole thing, stuck all my props in there. Then I went to all my friends in the character department and I said, "Sit in the audience."

So I come walking in the Horseshoe, John's waiting for me and I've got thirty people behind me. I say, "Sit in those chairs!" and he just laughed. I said, "Hey, I'm not going to play to one person, are you kidding me?" I also needed to bring up someone because I'd have shtick I do with a kid. I said I need someone to pretend to be a kid, so I had this one girl in the character department pretend she was the kid. I can't remember what the joke was, but I did one joke and John Lee thought it was so funny, and it was an old joke, he said, "I've always wanted to hear that joke in the Horseshoe." I think that's what got me hired.

So I got hired to be Dick's understudy and I literally was thrown into the show with no rehearsal. It was pretty frightening.

SW: Were you doing primarily your own act or were you incorporating Dick's act?

DD: There's all the stuff that's written, you get up on stage, "You look pretty close to an idiot," and I say, "I'll stand over here." And "You look like a million dollars," "You've never seen a million dollars," "That's right, you look like something I've never seen before." And, "Who are you?" "I'm Dana Daniels, my father was an old Indian fighter." "Who was your mother?" "An old Indian." Then you do the little song, a little ditty where you go, "I just got off a stagecoach from Chicago, gotta catch a steamboat to St. Lou, have a few things I'd like to sell you, so let's proceed with what we have to do." Then you did this shtick with the cards that Wally used to do and I think there were a couple of others.

There was, "I've got a six shooter with seven notches, count 'em. Then the drummer would go bup bup bup bup bup bup bup and you would just fire off one round." I never liked that joke, in fact, I never got it. I never got the fact that the drummer was the other shots. I was doing the joke and I never got the joke as I was doing it! I just knew that was the dialogue. Then I got it and said, "Okay, you're the gun," but I still didn't think it was funny. It never got a laugh. Then I asked someone one day, "Can I take that joke out?" And they said yeah, and I started replacing some of those jokes, but after that you'd do your own stuff.

I remember the first day I did it. Dick Hardwick is standing in the back with me and it was like I've been watching this show for four years, dreaming I'd be that guy on stage and I'm in the back of the room watching the “Police Gazette” (musical number), and I don't get nervous very often on things, and I can feel my shirt just getting wet. I'm going, "This is like surreal to me," because this dream, the picture I had in my head, is now going to be true. It was really scary and exciting at the same moment. To walk in, shoot the gun off and then say, "Here I am, your Avon man!" was really, "Wow! I'm part of the club!" I went up there and did the whole thing, my act's fine, but then we got to “Pecos Bill,” I'll tell you, there's an art into spitting those beans without getting spit everywhere and to be funny. Wally and Dick were brilliant with it. Every bean was a laugh, it was calculated, it's more than just standing up there spitting beans out. When I first did it I was terrible at it. First, I was trying to hold them and not choke.

SW: Did you practice at home?

DD: Oh yeah. Then you've got to twirl guns. I took fake guns home and practiced gun twirling and juggling the guns and did all that stuff and had to learn all that stuff.

I had Fulton and Betty do most of the singing because I really wasn't comfortable with it at the beginning. There's three different sections where the comic sings in "Pecos Bill." He sings the very beginning, then the middle and then he does the last one. So they did the first two for me and then I did the last one. Just because I didn't have that experience behind me as far as singing and coming in on cue with the band. I didn't have that and they didn't audition me for that. I guess they assumed I could do it and I wasn't going to tell them I couldn't do it. I figured I'd cross that bridge when it comes. But Dick worked with me on that and then eventually I was doing it because you don't have to be a really good singer to be Pecos Bill, you're a comedy part.

SW: Can you tell me about some of the Horseshoe veterans you worked with?

DD: Well, Jay Meyer was very fatherly to me. I remember him defending me a little bit on some things, like when I'd get a few beans on the trumpet player and the trumpet player doesn't like it and starts to yell at me. I was twenty two, just hired and he's been there for years and the last thing I wanted to do was make anybody mad. I'm happy to be here. I was almost going to cry and he stormed off and Jay Meyer was working with me that day and Jay just got in between and said, "Dana, you did a great job, don't listen to him. Just keep the beans off him. Let him calm down, you'll be fine." That kind of thing.

He taught me how to tie my tie. My little bolo-string tie, no one showed me how to tie one and Jay was teaching me, reaching around... every time I tie one of those things I always think, "Jay Meyer!" reaching around, teaching me how to tie the tie. He was a great guy and I always used to walk around a little bit early, to the back when he was on just to hear him sing "Too Ra Loo Ral," because it was just so beautiful. I gained an appreciation for that kind of music, too! He was one of the top tenors in the business.

SW: He was on the Jack Benny show every week!

DD: I never knew that back then. He never talked about that. He wasn't that kind of guy to brag about that kind of stuff. I would have loved to hear that back then, but I didn't know that until I went to his 80th birthday party. I knew he was the face in the Haunted Mansion and all that.

Then working with Fulton, I was always picking their brains about stuff and Fulton was very encouraging to me. He'd say, "You know, you'd be great at doing fairs. You should be doing fairs! You could make a ton of money because you're so good with kids," and all that.

He was always just hilarious. We were standing around and someone walked by and said, "Hey Fulton, I'm in a play!" He, without missing a beat, says, "Great! What high school?" That laid me out. I thought that was so funny! He did stuff like that all the time.

He always said when you asked him how he's doing, he'd say, "Seeeeeeeeen-sational!" He'd always bring it out! I was doing the riverboat gambler when I first heard him do that. I was out in Frontierland and he was walking by and some guy who's sweeping the floor said, "Hey Fulton, how are you doing?" And he went, "Seeeeeeeeeen-sational!" And I went, "I'm going to steal that! I'm going to be sensational, too!" I've been doing it ever since, but I add, "...but I'll get better." I told Fulton I stole it, and he liked that.

When we did Sugar Babies (a non-Disney show after the Golden Horseshoe Revue ended), we'd come in and I'd say, "How are you doing, Fulton?" and he'd say, "Sensational, how are you doing?" I'd go, "I'm sensational, too!" I always had a lot of fun with him. I'd go, "I woke up this morning, I was spectacular, but now I'm feeling fantastic." I always thought that was a great response for that everyday question. It really does catch people. You go to the supermarket and the lady at the register says, "How are you doing?" and you respond with "sensational," they always stop and go, "Wow, you're having a good day," or whatever. It's great.

SW: Did you ever have serious conversations with Fulton?

DD: I would ask him what was the park like the day after Disney died, I was always interested in those kinds of things and he would tell me that everyone was pretty much quiet and stunned, crying. He said it was a really tough day, and to go in and do the show, they would just do it like it was any other day because that's the way Walt would want it. But he said it was tough.

SW: What about Betty?

DD: I didn't have a lot of conversations with Betty. Betty would do the show and when the show was over she'd go to her dressing room, so no conversation sticks out in my mind. Always very nice and very gracious. It's funny to watch the tapes of the shows because every time we shoot off the gun, her fingers are in her ears!

SW: Do you have a favorite memory of your time in the revue?

DD: The whole experience of it.

I remember the last day... there was that black Sunday, the day we found out the show was being cancelled.

They brought in everybody, all the subs, everybody. We're all looking at each other, it's a Sunday and they were doing the exact same thing in Florida at the same time, so Florida couldn't tip us off. Bob McTyre, who was head of entertainment back then just told us all, "We are going to end the run of the Golden Horseshoe Revue." I remember Dick (Hardwick) and Claudia, his wife who was a can-can dancer, I looked right at Dick and Dick was such in shock. He'd just bought a house and they're hugging each other like going, "Our living just got taken away from us!" although Dick is such a funny, talented comedian, he went on to make more money than he ever made at Disneyland. Still, it was a shock. It was the end of something.

More from Dana:
His start with Disney and the Royal Jesters