A television documentary on comedian Shelly Berman in the late 1950s was intended to show how hard funny men and their writers must work to keep audiences laughing week after week. Shelly’s manager was a big, gregarious man from Pennsylvania named Harry Bell who had earned his stripes at the Music Corporation of America and become a theatrical agent for some of the great names in show business.
As the documentary cameras rolled, a phone rang just off stage, interrupting Shelly’s monologue. In a rage, he raced across stage, yanked the offending phone from the wall, and smashed it on the floor.
Knowing Shelly’s volatile temperament, Harry had inserted a clause in the agreement with the documentary producer retaining the right to edit. In the dressing room that evening, Harry urged Shelly to scrap the unfortunate telephone episode. But Shelly’s wife thought the incident dramatized the stress her poor husband endured every week to put on the show. It stayed in.
The documentary was panned; the telephone episode ridiculed. Shelly forgave his wife but fired Harry.
The big guy told me the story with gestures years later when I hired him for just 30 days to schedule the secretary of the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare on television talk shows.
A charmer, Harry made Secretary John W. Gardner feel at home before the cameras, and Gardner was a big hit on the popular Mike Douglas show.
“You did a great job, Harry,” I said, shaking his huge hand.
“You better believe it,” he replied with a grin.
I was to hear that phrase a thousand times during the next 35 years: congratulating him for a winning hand at cards, for catching the biggest fish, or more often, for telling the biggest fish story. “You’re great, Harry,” his loyal pals would exclaim.
“You better believe it,” Harry would laugh.
On the strength of that 30-day contract we signed in 1966, Harry sold his house in Westchester County, N.Y. and moved to Maryland with his wife, Frances, and two sons, Gordon and Douglas.
“Don’t worry, I’ll prove my worth and you’ll keep me on,” he said confidently. I ended my appointment as Director of the Office of Public Information at HEW in 1968 when Gardner resigned. Harry stayed on almost 20 years, first as a media specialist in the Office of the Secretary, then as a program manager at the National Institutes of Health at Bethesda, Maryland.
He was Barnum and Bailey, W. C. Fields and Mark Twain rolled into one, huge, bigger-than-life enthusiast who told outrageous stories about show business people with such flair and good humor that listeners were always amused and rarely offended. He loved life, a good story well told, jokes of all shades, being with friends, playing cards, and traveling around the country with Fran in their mobile home. He was earthy and irreverent and delighted in meeting new people.
On the boardwalk at Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, in the shops at Cape May, New Jersey, or touring Tangier Island, Virginia in an oversize golf cart, Harry would start up conversations with total strangers. Within minutes, an observer would assume they were old friends. The wild stories he told were mostly true, but embellished with each telling.
“Harry, did it really happen that way?”
“Hey, you better believe it.”
After retiring from government, he graduated from auctioneer’s school in Iowa and set up his own firm, Blue Bell Antiques and Appraisers in Rockville, Maryland. He loved being an auctioneer. Frances recalls how curious he was about the history of books, furniture and all kinds of household items, and his genuine interest in the people who owned them, even after he gave up the business and they moved to Lewes, Delaware.
Harry and Fran were enjoying a long-delayed European vacation in 1982 when he noticed a lump on his sternum. A biopsy confirmed his fears when he got home. Multiple myeloma. Radiation followed. Then remission.
But as the years passed, cancer returned in his lower spine and hip. Chemotherapy, radiation, experimental drugs and surgery became a way of life.
“Listen, you’ve got to play the hand you’re dealt,” he would say matter-of-factly. And he did, with amazing courage. Frances, a registered nurse, was his indefatigable supporter and counselor.
This energetic, six-foot-five, 270-pound giant of a man began to use a cane. He lost strength, became unsteady and traded his cane for a walker. He never complained and pushed himself to visit friends and travel with Fran. They even toured Alaska in their RV. Frances did the driving.
Harry’s heart attack, followed by open-heart surgery while visiting their son, Gordon, in York, Pennsylvania, persuaded them to sell their home at Lewes and move into a condo near Gordon. Harry became ill the day they arrived and was taken to York Hospital for colon cancer surgery. Later he had surgery to repair a broken hip, compromised from previous radiation.
Joan and I visited Harry and Frances on March 12, 2002. Cancer had come back once more, this time in his cervical vertebrae. He was receiving daily radiation and wore a hard neck brace. But we played cards, told stories, and he joked with the young man who came to install a new cable television. “It’s going to be great to have all these channels,” he enthused.
Surgery March 21 repaired vertebrae in his neck with bone from his hip. But 20 years of battling cancer had reduced his weight by 100 pounds and sapped what little strength he had left. He got pneumonia, fought it off somehow, but never left the recovery room. He died just after midnight, on Easter morning.
Surely a compassionate Lord has reserved a special place in Heaven for people like Harry who suffer so much and live so courageously on earth. Ever the showman, Harry managed to take his final bow on the Day of Resurrection. I picture him regaling his new friends on Cloud Nine with the story of Shelly Berman yanking the phone off the wall.
“Really?,” questions Saint Peter, arching an eyebrow.
“You better believe it,” says Harry.
I confess I’d like to hear Harry tell that story just one more time myself, you know, with a little something added. Like always.
You better believe it.
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Carlton E. Spitzer
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