"Goodnight, Dick!" - My Malibu Sunset with Dick Martin

Dan Rowan (L.) and Dick Martin (R.)

Sock It To Me: My first visit to sunny California was pure magic.

Bound for the 1983 Western Cable Show conference in San Diego, I flew out a few days early and was met at LAX by my friend Chris, then an aspiring actor working as a P.A. to Steven J. Cannell Productions.

Don't get me started, but Chris' enviable job was to look after Connie Sellecca's needs on the set of Hotel.  We drove to Malibu, spotted "Old Reliable," the birds-of-paradise-carrying stalker camped at the bottom of ON-J's driveway, and continued until....

Billy & Connie

...with the sun dropping toward the sea, we stopped for a drink at the Trancas Grill, an 80's hot-spot of "The Colony," before proceeding to the Malibu bungalow on Broad Beach Road that Chris was house-sitting for William Katt (Sissy Spacek's co-star in Carrie, more recently in the Cannell-produced Greatest American Hero).  Billy was then on location in Africa to shoot Baby, a Disney dinosaur pic, and we had the run of his beachfront home.

Dropped bag on futon, grabbed a couple of cold beers, and walked right out the sliding glass doors to cross 50 yards of sand toward the waves and setting sun.

Halfway there, I became aware of a figure moving in parallel, 20 feet to my left.  "It's Dick Martin," whispered Chris.  Sure enough, carrying a large, clinking tumbler was Goodnight Dick, of Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In.  He looked over at me with a big smile, cocked an eyebrow, gestured to the pinkening horizon and said "Not bad, eh?"

"It's beautiful! I've never seen the sun set into the Pacific before!" I gushed like the first-timer tourist I truly was.

"Ah-hmmm!" he intoned, with a leer. Stage pause. "Ah-hmmm! Happens here every night like this!" was Dick's giddy response.  You bet your sweet bippy....

The Carrie Nations - Dolly Read (center)

April, '68

I love the Dick Martin love story, first because of its Liz & Dick quality - he married ('71), divorced ('75), and later ('78) re-married the same woman for life - and second because this wife was the incomparable, supremely beautiful Dolly Read, British actress and Playboy Playmate unknown to me on that day but whose crowning achievement I'd later see in the 1990's and love to this day: she's Kelly MacNamara in Russ Meyer's Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.

All For Love: native Michigander Dick Martin loved the ocean, and when he died in May, 2008 Dolly scattered his ashes in the Pacific.

Addendum: About this time (People, 1983) Dick and Laugh-In co-star Goldie Hawn used to run into each other on Malibu Beach