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Although he has rung up record salaries in nightclubs ($460,000 for 46 weeks at Manhattan's Carnival) and vaudeville ($23,000 a week at Broadway's Roxy), Berle will work for nothing rather than go without an audience. He has entertained in hotel lobbies, restaurants, railroad stations, buses and cabs. (To a convulsed cab driver on whom he worked during a recent ride, Milton cracked: "You think this is funny? You should've caught me last Tuesday in a cab on 57th Street!")
Good Samaritan. Some of his best performances in nightclubs, which the new, more refined Berle professes to find too "smoky and noisy" for his taste, have been put on free, while Milton was a customer. Visiting a Philadelphia spot during the war after a hard day's work, he went on the floor at 3:30 a.m. and played until 6 to two customers, a janitor and some sleepy waiters. Recently, when Gypsy Rose Lee walked out on a club date at the last minute, Berle stepped in and put on a two-hour show. Last year, when a mishap forced Kay Thompson out of her act at Le Directoire, a frantic owner was assured: "Don't worry. Berle's in the house." Milton put on the show.
Much of Berle's free entertaining has been in good causes. He has probably played more benefits than any other performer—as many as seven in one night. In 1946, he set up the Milton Berle Foundation for Crippled Children. He has done marathon radio shows (from 12-24 hours) in New York, Chicago, Baltimore and Pittsburgh to raise funds for heart associations. Last year he spent four hours clowning with each of 75 patients in a Chicago hospital for children with rheumatic fever. Said a witness: "He has a way with kids, a way of being a kid himself."
He has played the good Samaritan in show business too. When an unemployed actor with a chance to get a vaudeville job ran into him on Broadway and asked for material, he stayed up all night in a hotel room, pouring gags into the man. He also helped salvage an actress from alcoholism, wrote an act for her, paid for its musical arrangements, made the bookings and appeared with her on the early engagements. He is easily approachable to down-&-outers, and generous with gifts. Among his unusual presents: plastic-nose operations just like his own for his secretary and the head of his fan club.
Dollars & Dolors. Berle's earning capacity is high enough to let him hit $1,000,000 a year if taxes made the effort worth while. For the last ten years he has earned more than $250,000 a year; in 1946 he piled up $750,000. His current TV and radio shows pay him an estimated $6,500 a week, and next fall he is slated for a raise.
Once inclined to go overboard on horse bets, he tries to hew to a pocket-money allowance of $125 doled out weekly by a Wall Street law firm, which receives his income, pays his bills, nourishes his annuities and tends to the dozen companies lumped under the name Milton Berle Enterprises, Inc. Among his interests: a machine tool company, a furniture factory, real estate, music publishing, a toy business, a producing company.