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"No, he would never say what his connections were. I do know he never took any checks after the IRS got after him. If you used him in a picture, you had to pay in cash. I had to do that once. George was clever. He could always top you. And he was such a dancer! Once we were in a restaurant and all the girls were coming up to pat his face. I said, 'George, can you explain your charisma with women?' He looked at me real serious and said, 'Sylvia, will you notice with whom I am sitting?' He was a ladies man. Married once or twice.

"When he died they said George didn't have any relatives, but that isn't true. He had a grandchild by a lady from his youth, who had a daughter. George wanted to marry her, but she wouldn't marry him. God knows why. She had the child out of wedlock and married someone else. What was her name, Honey?" "Who the hell knows? Maria Something."

"And that child had a boy. That's not part of the public record. But George visited him. He was crazy about that kid . Did you know that George's grandfather introduced the merry-go-round to America?" "He was a helluva nice man. Took good care of the girl and her boy--his grandson, great grandson, who knows?

Behind a pillar, paying no attention to anything but his own melodious, liquid voice, sits Jack Ellis, by himself, rehearsing Reader's Digest jokes. His serious shriveled forehead ripples like a peeled egg, overboiled and left too long on Fred and Ginger's picnic table. His neck has taken reckless inspiration from Ronald Reagan, who he once arrested-- silently in pictures.

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