MAILBAG:

Long ago, in my mercurial role as part time banquet waiter at the Balboa Bay Club, I often spotted Joey Bishop and the “Duke,” John Wayne, when they appeared, as if by a sort of magic, imported from the silver screen, as waiters for our employee parties.

In that role, they were just as mercurial in their own right, tight red-jacketed and tux-stripe pantsed, bar boy uniformed fixtures at our Christmas parties. They would chew up the scenery at the Main Hall, dressed in their monkey suits, drink trays aloft, serving us drinks just like real wannabe waiters (well, OK, Joey fulfilled all his duties, while Duke just knocked back at least several of our cocktails — whenever our backs were turned toward the stage, his tray got noticeably lighter).

Cagney was a member then, too, but more elusive — maybe too “well on in years” to get around then, yet Duke and Joey never failed to entertain us small fries on their own time.

Both of them, whatever else has been noted, were always there for the help, and they were true people persons, and that’s just a fact you can etch in gold, right here in my “book.”

That was the mid-’70s, “back in the day.”

In the late 1980s I had graduated to other things, among them organizer of Dukakis’ Campaign for Mid-Cities LA, and I met Mr. Bishop for the first time, face to face, as we walked through the Cerritos College parking lot, after a slow speech by a “Duke” of another kind, on our way back to the cars with Alan Cranston.

Mine was sporting a P.A. system, which “The Frown Prince” noted sardonically. He had an iron-clad resolve to say hilarious things while refusing to smile, even inwardly.

I told him, “Hey, Mr. Bishop, I used to pour you coffee at the Balboa Bay Club” (that venue is still just around the corner, as the gull flies, from where he passed recently at his home on Lido Isle).

We walked to our cars side by side, November 1988, after Dukakis sped off in the serious black limo, and Bishop had me pretty convinced he had ignored me for a few beats, steps, despite my corny but official “Staff” badge, then he hit me with the jazz 5th beat in 5/4 time, “You always remember the lousy tippers ”

Now, he had a gift of making even that hilarious, and I doubled up: “So this is why they call it stand-up.”

That much he really did ignore, so I guess now I’ll always be waiting for his punch-line.

Till then, Mr. Bishop.

JOHN ERVIN

Newport Beach