Of lamp wires & life...

[[[...on November 23 when more than one thousand guests honored Lucy and Desi at the Friars' tenth anniversary dinner for "their continuing philanthropic activities and the esteem in which they are held by the trade and public"---ironically not long after Desi's Riviera Hotel escapades had become the talk of Hollywood. Dais entertainment was to be provided by Milton Berle, George Burns, Eddie Cantor, Sammy Davis, Jr., Dean Martin, Tony Martin, George Murphy, Danny Thomas , and Harry Einstein---better known as "Parkyakarkus" of old-time radio fame; Art Linkletter was the emcee. The $50-$200-a-plate dinner event began well enough. George Murphy delivered the night's only serious speech praising Lucy and Desi; Berle (referring to the honored couple as "the Cuban Leopold and Loeb") cracked, "We may laugh, but someday he will buy the whole country, and [we'll] be talking funny." Entertainment from Tony Martin, Dean Martin, and George Burns came next, followed by "Parkyakarkus"---quipping in his monologue that the Friars' roster included many prominent figures---"several fine judges and quite a few defendants." When he finished to an ovation, Linkletter asked the audience, "Why isn't this man on TV in prime time?" The comic reached his seat and replied, "Yeah, why aren't I?" He then turned to event producer Barry Mirkin and asked, "Was everything all right?"

At that very moment, the comic was seized by a fatal heart seizure in full view of nearly twelve hundred persons in the International Ballroom of the Beverly Hilton Hotel. "He had for a moment lurched forward," Said Variety, "mortally stricken with a heart attack with the crowd's applause and laughter still ringing in his ears."

Linkletter took the microphone and called out for a physician, and the stunned audience began almost hysterically shouting for doctors. Ed Wynn, seated nearby, ran to the dais, shouting, "Put his head down!" Einsteins's wife, actress Thelma Leeds, rushed up from the audience and pushed nitroglycerin pills into her ashen-faced husband's mouth. Five physicians converged from all corners of the room and were at his side in seconds but could detect no pulse or respiration and, after carrying him to a narrow vestibule in back of the dais, vainly applied artificial respiration for about twenty minutes without noticeable results. In a grisly scene, City of Hope chief surgeon Alfred Goldman sliced open Einsterin's chest with a pocket scalpel and with a trio doctors took turns at massaging his heart. "Electric shocks, effected by makeshift means from a lamp's wire cord were also applied directed to the heart," continued Variety, "but life's spark was gone from Einstein." He was pronounced dead at 1:10A.M., an hour and twenty minutes after first being stricken."]]]

& so passed Albert Brook's father.

I discovered this passage in "Desilu- The Story of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz" pages 164-165.