A story Jackie delighted in telling about himself, occurred long before he touched any kind of fame or event much steady work.  As a young man in business, he was an emcee-comic in intimate bistros which required a good punch, along with a good punchline, to overcome the imbibing hecklers.

   On a brief holiday, he booked a room in a hotel on the Jersey shore for little surf bathing.  (As difficult as it was to believe, our Jackie had been lithe enough, then, to have been a trick diver in what passed as minor aquacades.  We told him he would certainly make a big splash now. (He was not amused.)
   Anyway,his habit of overtipping everyone who didn't have his hands in his pockets ran wild at this little hotel.  Too wild.  The generous guest discovered in the privacy of his room, that he had tipped himself into penury.  He called a friend who had a car to meet him and proceeded to dress himself in layers of all his clothes, rolling up the pantlegs and wrapping himself in a huge robe.  Descending to the lobby, he waved gaily to the desk, sang out the he was off for a bracing dip in the Atlantic and waddled off to find his friend and flee while clothed in a respectable man's haberdashery.
    Sometime later (a year? two?) when his cash was marginally ahead of his markers, Jackie went back to the shore hotel he'd beaten out of the rent, carrying remorse and money.
    "Hi," he saluted blithely to the owner at the front desk who gazed over at him with startled eyes.  "I brought you the money I owe you."
   "O, my God!" the hotel man yelled, "We thought you had drowned!"
   Jackie considered his resurrection, the world's best return performance.