by Carl Reiner
“I was doing what he told me to do, why?”
“Mr. Selman told you to make fun of his stroke?”
I could not make Gene or anyone believe that I was not aware that our boss had suffered a major stroke. How could I notice anything about the old man when I was so busy worrying about what he was noticing about me?
I went on to play Orlando and four other good roles in three other Shakespeare plays. I finally got comfortable enough with myself to notice many wonderful things and had the most treasured experience of my life to that date.
* * *
Now, with your kind indulgence, an afterthought. I might not have written the above anecdote were it not for my friend, Mel Brooks, who at a dinner party at Alan and Arlene Alda’s home asked me if I were going to include my “making fun of a man with a stroke story” in this collection. I said that I was not intending to, because it needed to be performed. I did not think I could write it as effectively as I tell it. I told it that night for the benefit of Peter Jennings, who was the only guest at the small dinner party who had never heard the story. Everybody laughed, even my friends who had previously heard it.
Later that evening, Mel insisted that I try to make it work on paper. The following day, my manager, George Shapiro, offered the same advice. Since neither Mel nor George had ever steered me too wrong, I agreed to give it a try.
If, dear reader, you and I should ever cross paths or bump fenders, ask me to relate this story to you, and then tell me how well, or if, I succeeded.
5
Lovely Legs
(A SECOND SHORT TALE OF SHMUCKERY)
For my second short tale, I must take you back with me to Washington, D.C., the city to which the army chose to send me in 1943. For some reason, the army thought that if I studied French at Georgetown University for nine months I would be qualified to go to France and be a French language interpreter for our American officers, who were desperate to know what their French counterparts were saying to them. I did learn how to speak the language well enough to order food in French restaurants and understand French films without reading every English subtitle.
After graduating from Georgetown, our company of French interpreters were shipped to Hawaii, and the company of graduating Japanese interpreters were sent to Paris. We were totally confused by the logic of those assignments, but who’s to argue with the results? We won the war. “Confuse and conquer!” might have been our strategy.
While at Georgetown, when I wasn’t in class struggling to master the more difficult tenses of the verbs and learning how to ask a French girl if she wanted to go to bed with me, my good buddy, Sol Pomerantz, and I would go into town on our days off and visit the local USO canteen to see a variety show or participate in one. After a year at the Gilmore Theater in New York, two years at the Rochester Summer Theater, performing roles in twenty-six plays, and a season touring with the Avon Shakespearean Company, I never lost the urge to get up on a raised platform and show off. To that end, I had worked up a comedy act that was good enough to get me invited to perform at the canteen. This was to be my second appearance there. I had not too long before plied my craft at Georgetown, having produced a Christmas show in which I did a monologue and a too-accurate impression of the dean of Foreign Services, Father Edmond Walsh, and the other good Jesuit fathers who taught various subjects in the School of Foreign Service. For that performance, I received the best audience reaction of my career and a serious request from Father Walsh never to do another performance like it. Since Georgetown was no longer an outlet for the ham within me, I was grateful to have the USO.
As I came through the USO foyer that led to the canteen ballroom, I spied a comely young lass seated on a white wicker settee, and she was smiling—at me. Since the dance portion of the evening had just ended, I assumed that the attractive girl had been dancing and was taking a breather before going back in to see the show. Her smile broadened as I approached her, and I smiled back. I had not intended to stop but did when I heard a melodious “Hello, there!”
“Hello,” I sang back.
“Are you going to perform again this evening?”
“I am,” I said, enjoying her smile. “Were you here last week?”
“I was. You were so funny.” She giggled. “I hadn’t intended to come tonight, and I’m glad I did.”
“I hope I don’t disappoint you. I’m trying some new things. Well, nice talking to you,” I said, starting off.
“Don’t you remember me?” she asked brightly.
“I’m sorry,” I said, “did we meet before?”
“Well, not formally,” she said, coyly, “but we did share a few moments together.”
Not possible, I thought. If I had shared anything with this pretty girl, I would remember. I decided to white-lie myself out of the situation.
“Let me look at you,” I said mock seriously, looking her over from head to toe, pausing to stare at her lovely legs, which were daintily crossed at the ankles. “Of course, I remember you. Now that I see those pretty legs. I’d never forget legs like yours!”
I had made a bad joke, paraphrasing the cliché, “I never forget a face!” but the young lady found it funny and chuckled. It was an honest flirt, because I have always appreciated women’s legs.
During my turn onstage, I looked about to see if my leggy girl was laughing, but I couldn’t find her. As I ended my program, I spotted her at the back of the hall and caught a glimpse of her lovely legs. My heart leaped, or I should say, fell! I was right about one of her legs, it was perfection, but the other was polio stricken, supported by a metal brace. I didn’t know what to do or say. What do you say to someone whom you have, inadvertently or not, offended? “How could I ever forget legs like yours?!” Damn!
While accepting compliments from some soldiers, I was thinking, How can I face this girl? What do I say to her? Do I have to face this girl? Do I have to say anything? Is there a back door I can scoot out of? Am I a shit? I decided I wasn’t one and raced to the foyer, not sure she would be there—or whether or not I wanted her to be there. She was there, seated on the settee, and, without asking her permission, I sat down next to her.
“You were wonderful!” she said. “Your new jokes were funny.”
“Thank you. Some of the ones I did onstage were pretty good,” I heard myself say, “but the one I made to you about your legs was god-awful, and I apologize.”
The part of my psyche that controls assuaging of guilt and the reclamation of mental comfort put those words in my mouth. Whichever prophet said, “The truth will set you free” was one smart prophet. That young lady, who had lived with her problem since she was a child, immediately put me at ease by telling me that she knew I was not aware of her condition and admitted to enjoying the compliment her good leg received.
“Well, let’s see, now,” she said, proudly, showing it off to its best advantage by extending it and pointing her toe. “It is a pretty nice-looking leg, as legs go.”
Had I not been committed to a Bronx lass I had met a year earlier, who also had great legs, who knows what might have developed. I remember sitting and chatting with her for a long time and being openly flirtatious. I meant to reaffirm something she probably already knew, that she was a most attractive and desirable young woman.
I do not remember her name, but I would love to know that she had a good life. I feel that she did.
6
My Fifty Years with the 2,000 Year Old Man
When I met Mel Brooks in 1950, we were both working on the venerated television program, Your Show of Shows. I was a twenty-eight-year-old actor, and Mel, the youngest member of a brilliant writing staff, assumed he was twenty-four. Had I not watched a Sunday night television program, We The People Speak, Mel Brooks would never have discovered his true age.
We the People Speak was a weekly news program hosted by Dan Seymour. Each week, using actors to impersonate the people making the news, they would dramatize the important events of the week. What I heard one Sund
ay night was, I thought, appalling and begging to be satirized. It seemed like a perfect vehicle for Sid Caesar. I could not wait to discuss it with Sid, the writing staff, and Max Liebman, the boss of us all.
No one had seen the show, so that Monday, in Max’s office, I did a re-creation of one of their re-creations of the news.
“Ladies and gentleman,” I said, mimicking Dan Seymour’s delivery, “the voice you are about to hear belongs to a plumber who was in Josef Stalin’s toilet. While fixing a faucet in the washbasin, this is what the plumber overheard:
“… and I hear Stalin say,” I reported, using a Russian accent, “‘ve goink to blow up vorld Turrsday!’”
I know you are shaking your head, but I stand by that quote. Everyone in Max Liebman’s office—Max, Sid Caesar, writers Lucille Kallen, Mel Brooks, and head writer Mel Tolkin—was sure that I had made it up. I remember saying that if Stalin actually said that, shouldn’t Dan Seymour tell President Eisenhower or the Congress about it before scaring the crap out of everyone in America who owns a seven-inch, black-and-white television set? And then to illustrate how utterly ridiculous the whole premise was, I pointed to young Mel Brooks.
“Here with us today, ladies and gentlemen,” I announced à la Dan Seymour, “is a man who was actually at the scene of the Crucifixion, two thousand years ago. Isn’t that true, sir?”
Mel, aging before our eyes, sighed and allowed a sad “Oooooh, boy” to escape from the depths of his soul.
Here now is the moment Mel Brooks and the world discovered that a two-thousand-year-old man was living inside the body of a handsome, twenty-four-year-old comedy writer. I use the word handsome objectively. I know Mel will not be upset if, when writing about him, I stick to the truth.
I pressured the Old Man and asked, “You knew Jesus?”
“Jesus … yes, yes,” he said, straining to remember, “thin lad … wore sandals … always walked around with twelve other guys … yes, yes, they used to come into the store a lot … never bought anything … they came in for water … I gave it to them … nice boys, well-behaved.…”
For a good part of an hour Mel had us all laughing and appreciating his total recall of life in the year 1 A.D. I called upon Mel that morning because I knew that one of the characters in his comedy arsenal would emerge. The one that did was similar to one he did whenever he felt we needed a laugh break. It was a Yiddish pirate captain who had an accent not unlike the 2,000 Year Old Man.
“I’m stuck in port,” the pirate captain would complain, “I can’t afford to set sail. Do you know much they’re asking for a yard of sail cloth? It doesn’t pay to plunder anymore!”
Starting that day in Max’s office, and continuing for ten years, I would ask Mel to channel the Old Man, and he would oblige by telling us things that made us laugh and, later, our wives, when we came home and repeated “what Mel said” that day. The Old Man became so popular that dinners in diverse places like New Rochelle and Fire Island would be built around the Old Man’s availability. The most successful dinner parties we have ever given or attended were the ones Mel Brooks attended and shared his firsthand knowledge of all the important people and events of the last five millennia. Yes, I did say five millennia. I know I am opening up a can of caponata by suggesting that the Old Man may be a good deal older than two-thousand because of his firsthand knowledge of Moses and Phil, who was thought to be the deity before being killed by a lightning bolt. No one till now has ever questioned his age, and I’m sorry for bringing it up, but it has troubled me. It could well be that vanity keeps him from admitting that he is three millennia older than he claims to be. I must ask him the next time I interview him.
This much we do know: Between 1950 and 1960, the 2,000 Year Old Man was, to quote Mel Brooks in one of his other incarnations, Dr. Holldanish, when asked if he was well known, replied, “I am very well known to those who know me and completely unknown to those who have never heard of me.”
Such was the case with the 2,000 Year Old Man. Among an elite circle of friends who enjoyed laughing until their sides hurt and nausea overtook them, the Old Man was completely known and the most sought-after dinner invitee on both coasts. Since I was concerned that my probing questions and Mel’s brilliant ad-lib answers might be lost to posterity, I bought a portable Revere, a reel-to-reel tape recorder, and taped all of our sessions.
Along with my recordings, Mike Elliot, a Fire Island friend who had a professional recording set-up in his home, presented me with copies of the dozens of sessions he recorded. What a summer! Free Saturday night dinners and free tapes for my archives. In those archives are hundreds of examples of Mel’s brilliance. I hope someday to remember where I stored them. They could be worth thousands of dollars or billions, depending on the state of the economy.
It was at one of these Fire Island soirees that Joe Fields heard Mel holding forth and became our number one benefactor. Joe Fields, Broadway producer and co-author of Broadway musicals and plays like Wonderful Town and Dear Ruth, arranged a dinner party in New York and invited Mel and Estelle and me to attend. It was held at the home of Broadway producer, songwriter, owner of Billy Rose’s Aquacade and newspaper columnist, Billy Rose. It was a little nervous making seeing the guest roster and realizing that we’re about to do a command performance for Broadway royalty. There we were, after dinner, performing for the likes of Lerner and Loewe, the geniuses who created the music and lyrics for My Fair Lady, Brigadoon, and Camelot, and Harold Rome, the composer-lyricist of Pins and Needles, Fanny, Wish You Were Here and Call Me Mister. Mel and the Old Man, as expected, convulsed Billy Rose and the members of his royal court.
At this point Mel Brooks had not yet met and swept Anne Bancroft off her feet, and was years away from writing and directing his first film, The Producers, and four decades away from becoming the reigning King of Broadway, by adapting his film into the super hit musical, The Producers. He was still defined by his ability to write fine monologues and sketches for Your Show of Shows, Caesar’s Hour, and for New Faces of 1952.
During the ten years Mel and I had performed at people’s homes, we were continuously asked why we had not made an album of this hilarious stuff.
A word now about why we held firm about not commercializing the 2,000 Year Old Man.
In the 1920s and ’30s, there were wonderful comedians and comediennes whose material and performances were enhanced by their speaking with a Yiddish accent. In vaudeville there was Smith and Dale; in burlesque Eugene and Willy Howard; on Broadway Weber and Fields and Fannie Brice, (a star of the Zeigfeld Follies); on radio Mr. Kitzel, and a Mr. Shlepperman on The Jack Benny Show; Bert Gordon (the Mad Russian) on the Eddie Cantor Show; Mrs. Nussbaum on the Fred Allen Show; and Gertrude Berg and Eli Mintz on The Rise of the Goldbergs. The Yiddish accents they employed were all reminiscent of how Middle and Eastern European Jewish immigrants spoke English. Their accents were considered to be cute, charming, and funny, but when Adolf Hitler came along and decreed that all Jews were dirty, vile, dangerous, subhuman animals and must be put to death, Jewish and non-Jewish writers, producers, and performers started to question the Yiddish accent’s acceptability as a tool of comedy. The accent had a self-deprecating and demeaning quality that gave aid and comfort to the Nazis, who were quite capable of demeaning and deprecating Jews without our help. From 1941 on, the Yiddish accent was slowly, and for the most part, voluntarily, phased out of show business.
Growing up in Brooklyn and listening to his uncles, his neighbors, and the shopkeepers talk and argue, Mel, blessed with a good ear for music, had no difficulty absorbing the lilting, Middle European Yiddish accent. Mel and I were very aware that our friends and fans were, for the most part, Jewish, and if they were not, they laughed and behaved as if they were. We were also under the impression that only New Yorkers or urban sophisticates would know what the Old Man was talking about or find it so funny that they would double over with laughter. Our audiences were always small, always select, and always happy to hear the Old Ma
n tell intimate stories of his involvements with Joan of Arc, Helen of Troy, and Murray, the discoverer of ladies.
In 1960, the two things my wife and I missed most when we transplanted our family to California were our house on Fire Island and our friends in New York. In particular, I missed seeing Mel and interviewing his alter ego. By then Mel Brooks had written the book for two Broadway musicals, Shinbone Alley and All American (for details check Mel’s book, due next fall). Every so often, Mel would make a trip to Los Angeles for meetings, about what, I don’t know (check his book). On one of these trips, Joe Fields produced another lavish dinner party, this time at his own home. He made no pretense about the reason for the dinner party. He simply wanted to be the one who introduced his friends to “the funniest man in the world”!
In 1960, Joyce Haber, Hollywood’s reigning gossip columnist, coined the phrase the A-list party. Well, this party had a lot of A’s and A pluses. Wall-to-wall stars, whom I will bill in order of their appearance, or rather, in the order they appeared to compliment Mel and me after Mel had them falling off their plush seats for a good hour or more. Besides the 2,000 Year Old Man, I also interviewed Mel as a world-renowned artist and as an innovative psychiatrist.
In our ad-lib years, I always tried to surprise Mel by introducing him with a name and occupation he wasn’t expecting. What is most amazing to me is that, if I said, “Here now is the world-renowned sculptor Sir Jacob Epstone,” he would, without skipping a beat, create a whole new person, complete with voice, attitude, and an extraordinary knowledge of the subject’s profession.
I have asked the 2,000 Year Old Man dozens of times to tell me which of his twelve hundred wives was his favorite and why she was. Each time he would say a different name and a give a different hilarious reason for favoring her. The wives whose names are known to us as his favorites, like Shirley and Zenobia, are just the names that popped out of his mouth when we recorded the albums. But I digress. (I will not digress again—unless a digression is in both our best interests.)