CONFIDENTIAL FILE

Current Skull Doily Scene, With Larceny

I don’t know what you do for kicks, but my friend Tiger Small snatches toupees.

Not just anybody’s
toupees, understand. The Tiger’s selective. He’s been working the
Catskill-Manhattan-Miami circuit for years, dealing only with the best
people. The cream of the show business crowd. Doctors. Professional
men.

When he came to Hollywood last month he brought quite a reputation with him.

"But in this town," he was telling me yesterday, "they bloat everything way out of proportions."

The
Tiger — an animated conversationalist — explained that it was just a
sideline with him. That he lifted his first toupee strictly as a favor
for a chorus girl friend and then sort of fell into the habit.

"This
actor in New York owed the girl $375, so she asked me if I could help
her get it back," Tiger told me. "I was a fighter, but I don’t believe
in felony stuff. I’m strictly misdemeanor.

"So when I approached the man — it was in a nightclub — I wasn’t sure what to do. Then I noticed he was wearing a wig.

The Tiger shrugged his shoulders, "I snatched it."

On the spot, the actor paid off.

After
that, the little boxer from Brooklyn was a man in demand. "Anybody with
a beef against a guy with a wig — they came to me."

There was
the guy who felt that Billy Daniels had been forgetting the old friends
who knew him when. He asked Tiger to "straighten" the singer out.

"Billy had one of the finest toops
I ever nailed," Tiger beamed. "Beautiful blondish gray and some brown.
All kinds of colors. It was a $1,200 piece if I ever saw one. I grab it
off him at theCopa. But I gave it back the next day. He’s been fine since." 

The owner of one of New York’s top beauty salons was also a friend of the Tiger.

"So
when this fellow who was my friend’s ace hairdresser threatened to
quit, I got the call," Small said. "He said no rough stuff, Tiger. I
said who could hit a beautician? It’s like hitting your sister.

"I lifted his wig, that’s all. A nice red one. Until he decided not to quit."

The Tiger shook his head in disgust.

"I
don’t understand people," he said. "Everybody thinks you grab wigs from
the back. That’s not right. Too thin back there. Take them from the
front.

"Nine out of 10 guys you do it to will stand their holding their bare heads like they just lost their pants."

I asked Tiger about an example of when they didn’t just stand there.

"Like
the time the big wheel’s wife got mad at her dog doctor?" he asked.
"She was sore because the doc said her French poodle died, and then she
learned later that the dog didn’t — that the doc sold it.

"Anyway,
she called me in on the case," he continued. "I went to see my friend
Chickie, who’s a real cuckoo-pot, and borrowed his dog and went to see
this vet.

"I nailed his wig as he bent over to look at the dog."

Hell Hath No Etc. . . .

The Tiger’s eyes flared. "That guy went out of his mind. You ought to of heard him holler. I was scared.

"I dropped that doc’s cheap mattress and grabbed Chickie’s dog and got out of there fast."

Then I asked him, the Tiger didn’t deny that he might continue his profession in Hollywood.

"But," he added, "some of the ones I’ve seen out here I wouldn’t dare snatch. They’re so cheap they’d fall apart in my hands."

"You haven’t seen any that you really like yet?" I asked.

The Tiger shrugged, "Not yet."

"But," he added, "I’m a friend of Jerry Lewis. Man, I wish Dean Martin had one."