by Carl Reiner
I would like now to return to my playwriting mode to re-create that most memorable and historic night for me, for Mel, and for his alter ego.
Time: 11:30 P.M., June 21, 1960
Place: A living room in a Beverly Hills mansion
[Mel accepting accolades, Carl accepting the overflow]
[George Burns approaches Brooks
and Reiner]
GEORGE BURNS
[puffing on an El Producto]
Boys, very good—very funny … [Exhales]. Is there an album?
MEL / CARL
No, there is no album. We only do it for friends.
GEORGE
[Puffs, exhales]
If you don’t put it in an album, I’ll steal it … I’m serious.
[Takes a puff and exits]
[Edward G. Robinson (Little Caesar,
Dr. Ehrlich’s Magic Bullet, Double Indemnity) approaches]
EDWARD G. ROBINSON
Fine work, fellers, fine work. It’d make a dandy play. Write it up! I want to play that thousand-year-old guy on Broadway. It could be terrific. Write it!
[Exits]
[Steve Allen walks over, hand extended,
big smile on his face]
STEVE
Okay! Mel, Carl, I heard why you don’t want to do an album, but here’s my proposition: I’ll pay for a studio, you go in and record your stuff, edit it down, and if you don’t like what you hear, burn it. If you like it, I’ll set you up with a record company to distribute it.
MEL / CARL
You want to be our partner?
STEVE
No, it’s all yours.
MEL / CARL
Why are you doing this?
STEVE
I love to see people laugh. Call me.
[He exits]
[Crowd gathers around Mel and throws verbal bouquets at him, which he seems to enjoy catching]
[Ross Hunter, Universal Pictures producer of Pillow Talk, Make Mine Mink, Flower Drum Song, Teacher’s Pet, and Thoroughly Modern
Millie, etc. is chatting with Carl Reiner]
ROSS HUNTER
You guys really cracked me up. Listen, Carl, do you have any interest in writing for films?
CARL
Well, I guess.… I’ve never written a screenplay.
ROSS HUNTER
Well, I know you can. The way you were interviewing Mel—you were creating a story with your questions.
I’m looking for a property for Doris Day. Do you have any ideas?
As a result of this party, the professional recording career of the 2,000 Year Old Man was launched, as was the screenwriting career of his Interviewer.
True to his word, dear, brilliant, Steve Allen arranged for us to record the 2,000 Year Old Man at World Pacific, a company that mainly produced jazz albums. The owner, Phil Turetsky, engineered and helped us edit the record. The session was recorded at his small studio into which a hundred or so family members and friends crammed themselves. We taped two hours of material that was ultimately edited down to forty-seven minutes. There was no script, no notes, and no guarantee that we would end up with an album. It hurt me to cut some of that material. To hear Mel searching for the vein of gold in each routine was, for me, as interesting and as exciting as the actual discovery. It could be likened to a trapeze artist who fails in his first attempt to do the triple-double and when he gets back up and nails it, the performer gets an even bigger ovation than he would have received had he succeeded that first time.
The album was well reviewed, but Mel and I still worried about its broad appeal. Half of the album was Mel performing many different characters. We were sure everyone would find them funny, but the title half was all the Jewish-accented Old Man. Would WASP America get him? Would Christians find the old Jew funny? Do “our people” still consider the Yiddish accent to be non grata? The highly successful appearances Myron Cohen made on the Ed Sullivan show spinning hilarious ethnic tales was a good indication that the Yiddish accent was again becoming grata.
Our unlikeliest fan, Cary Grant, gave us a hearty vote of confidence very early on. At the time of the release of the record, I was working for Universal Pictures writing the screenplay that Ross Hunter knew I had in me, The Thrill of It All for Doris Day and James Garner. Universal had given me a big, comfortable bungalow right next door to Cary Grant’s bigger one. He popped in one day, introduced himself, which is something Cary Grant never need do. I immediately gushed like a teenager and told him how much I loved his work and a lot of other things he had heard too many times. As he was leaving, I presented him with a copy of our album and told him to “pop by anytime” … and darned if he didn’t. He couldn’t have been more effusive in his praise of Mel’s 2,000 Year Old Man. He laughed as he repeated a line or two of the Old Man’s dialogue, often answering “jaunty-jolly” when asked how he was feeling. He was so intrigued with the 2,000 Year Old Man that he suggested we do another album and include “a two-hour-old baby who can talk.” On our second album there is a two-hour-old talking baby. Who is going to say no to Cary Grant?
When he left my office that day, he asked how he might get a dozen or so albums to give out to his friends. Naturally I was happy to have the albums delivered, complimentary of course, Cary Grant’s favorite way to shop. Twenty years after leaving MGM, he still brought them his weekly laundry.
For the next few weeks, Cary would phone from time to time to report on the wonderful reactions he was getting from his friends, and add, “Ahh, Carl, would it be possible to get another dozen or so?” I was thrilled to oblige, and I was even more thrilled to hear that famous voice talking to me! The last call on this subject was the one that forever set to rest any concerns we had about our album. Prior to that last call, Cary had asked if he could have two dozen albums delivered to his office as he was flying to London for a few days and wanted to give them out to his British buddies. I did remark about the possibility of his buddies “not getting it” and he pooh-poohed my concern. “They do speak English,” he reminded me.
A week later Cary Grant and I had this conversation.
CARY
Carl, the album was a smash! Everyone loved it!
CARL
Who is everyone?
CARY
Everyone one at the Palace.
CARL
Are you talking about Buckingham Palace?
CARY
Of course …
CARL
You … You played The Two Thousand Year Old Man at Buckingham Palace?!
CARY
Yes, and she loved it!
CARL
Who’s she?
CARY
The queen. She roared.
This story and the dialogue, like 96 percent of this book, is absolutely true.
Well, there it was, the definitive word on the subject. Who is more non-Jewish, more Gentile, more WASP-like Christian, more 100 percent shiksa than the queen of England? Talk about broad appeal!
Not only was the album well received but it was nominated for a Grammy, which it didn’t win. Because the Old Man and his Pesterer hung on and continued to record, their last effort, The 2,000 Year Old Man in the Year 2000, was awarded the Grammy that eluded them forty years earlier. I am hoping that after Mel Brooks helps to launch the planned ninety-four domestic and foreign productions of his phenomenal hit The Producers he will escort the Old Man to his neighborhood recording studio and let him go for a second Grammy.
As you may have gathered, I am very fond of Mel and his brain. On the lecture circuit, I borrow liberally from my friend’s brain. I quote him often and to excellent effect. Until recently, I was certain that Mel had never quoted me or had a need to. However, a month or so ago, I called his home and got his answering machine. It was Mel’s voice saying just three words, “Leave a message!” I was surprised—he had appropriated the message I had been using for years, which was, “Please leave a message.” His was one word shorter than mine, and I think ruder, but the fact that h
e thought enough of my message to appropriate it, was for some reason strangely satisfying.
7
The Man with the Blue-Veined Cheek
(THE THIRD SHORT TALE OF SHMUCKERY)
I am happy to note that these doltish acts were committed in the first third of my life.
* * *
It was 1957, I owned an affordable home on Bonnie Meadow Road in New Rochelle, had a good marriage, good kids, and was gainfully employed. I was artistically content, having been twice awarded an Emmy for my Second Bananaring of television’s greatest First Banana, Sid Caesar, and still capable of embarrassing myself.
After the dissolution of the ground breaking musical-variety show Your Show of Shows, Sid Caesar went out on his own. He had rented offices and rehearsal rooms in the Milgrim Building on West Fifty-seventh Street and invited me to be a part of his new show, Caesar’s Hour. Besides being a second banana, I was also a trusted member of the creative team, which gave me access to Sid’s ear into which I could whisper advice, opinions, and suggestions for where to eat lunch. Knowing of my innate charm and my enviable ability to bullshit with the very best in the field, Sid would often invite me to attend the goodwill-type meetings that sponsors and network heads request when everything is going very well or very badly. This meeting, I believe was the obligatory season-opening let’s-see-if-we-can-get-those-ratings-up pep talk.
We all gathered in Sid’s well-appointed office. I knew most of the network brass but none of the new sponsors or advertising people. After some preliminary introductions and the accompanying chitchat, one of the new team of admen, who was seated in a corner of the big leather couch, waved me over and invited me to join him. I will call this gentleman Ted, because that may have been his name.
Ted spoke enthusiastically about last year’s shows and made complimentary references to a couple of my performances. Very soon after he started talking, I stopped listening and concentrated on trying to avoid looking at the left side of his face and forehead or acting as if I was not revolted by what I saw. I did all I could do to keep from grimacing, and told myself, If he can go through life accepting this disfigurement, I should be able to spend a few minutes behaving civilly.
As he talked, I kept thinking about the photos of fetuses I had seen in Life magazine, the translucent skin of the unborn baby’s face and head, allowing for an intimate and disturbing view of the circulatory system with its patchwork of bluish veins and red capillaries. On the left side of Ted’s face was a birthmark like none other I had ever seen—it covered most of his cheek and forehead.
Ted, a seemingly secure sort, obviously had come to terms with this thing and either chose not to have it cosmetically altered or knew it to be unalterable. It was thrice the size of the birthmark Gorbachev sported on his forehead. When I finally allowed myself more than a cursory glance, I saw what looked like a complex road map with finely etched blue-veined roads crisscrossing from just below his cheek to his forehead and ending at his hairline. It looked like a map of Connecticut, and I thought, Connecticut? He’s in advertising, half of the people in advertising live in Connecticut. Did he, when drunk one day, decide to have a map of his home state tattooed on his face? Tattoo, birthmark, skin disease, or a genetic capillarial fragility, whatever it was, I could not look at it, and I hated myself for being so squeamish.
My role was to cater to bigwigs like Ted, so I hung in. And good old Ted, by turning out to be a man of rare taste and perception, was making it more and more difficult for me to leave. How can I walk away from a man who tells me what a huge fan I have in his wife and who seemed genuinely interested in hearing about my wife and kids and the dynamics of the family. While I was thinking all this, suddenly Ted jumped up.
“Would you like some Perrier?” he asked, “I’m getting one for myself.”
While I was declining his offer, he was off to the drink and snack table. As he popped the top off a bottle of Perrier, Ted glanced up at the wall mirror behind the table and peered into it.
“What the fuck is that!?” he screamed, touching his face, “Hey, Carl, did I have this … thing … on my face while we were talking?”
I was tempted to say “What thing?” but I nodded.
“Why the hell didn’t you say something,” he asked, trying to rub out the map of Connecticut with his pocket hanky, “or are you in on a practical joke?”
I assured him that I was not and approached to get a better look at those blue veins which were now a messy, bluish purple smudge.
“So Ted,” I asked, lightly, “what the devil is that ugly, blue mess on your face—that I barely noticed?”
Ted suddenly slapped himself hard on his forehead and recalled leaning his hand on a piece of carbon paper when talking to the receptionist. (Remember carbon paper?)
“And right after that, I made a phone call and rested my head in my hand. Just before you sat down,” he said, clearing up the mystery, “I remember seeing this blue stuff on my hand and wiping it off on my hanky. But Carl, what the devil were you thinking when you looked at me? Why didn’t tell me I looked like a prune?”
At this point I told Ted the story that I related to you earlier—“Lovely Legs”—and how, because of that embarrassment, I had vowed never to make reference to or joke about anyone’s physical traits—except my own.*
8
Off-Key–On-Key
There are certain memories I have of my early days on the legitimate stage and in television that are for the most part pleasant, but the painful memories are the ones that seem to bubble up more often. I was chatting with Sid Caesar the other day about the lovely reception the sketches of Your Show of Shows and Caesar’s Hour were receiving from their airing on Public Television, and he reminded me of how, on Caesar’s Hour, I once turned a golden moment into a leaden one.
Before I describe that embarassing moment, I’d like to go on record and say loudly that Sid Caesar is, in my estimation, the greatest sketch comedian who ever lived, bar none, double exclamation point!! A year before I became a member of his troupe, I watched and admired his work on The Admiral Broadway Revue, the precursor to Your Show of Shows. I remember saying to my wife, “That guy is sensational, he’s doing the kind of comedy I love.” I also remember thinking, I belong on that show, but did nothing to make that happen. I always wait for fate or a good agent to step in, and in this case it was Max Liebman, the producer of The Admiral Broadway Revue.
Max Liebman, mentor to Danny Kaye and Sid Caesar, was brought in to doctor a couple of the sick comedy sketches in Alive and Kicking, a new musical in which I had a part. It was playing Philadelphia, and on its way to Broadway. It got there but closed in six weeks. Dr. Liebman could not save the patient but he did save one of the cast members. He invited me to become Sid Caesar’s straight man in a new show he was producing for NBC that fall.
As I think about it, the nine exciting years I spent with Sid on Your Show of Shows and Caesar’s Hour were the result of being in a bad Broadway show at the right time.
Ah, yes, the leaden moment!
I am not being immodest when I say that I was gifted with a good operatic-type voice. I sported a three-octave range, could comfortably negotiate a high G, and on occasion, by risking a hernia, a high C. Along with my gift came my curse, the inability to sing on pitch and in rhythm. Being pitch and rhythm-challenged all but guaranteed that I would never fulfil my dream of being a leading tenor of the Metropolitan Opera, which I had planned to be when I first heard Enrico Caruso sing “Vesti la giubba” on my father’s windup Victrola. That phonograph was a piece of furniture that stood four feet tall and was in use in our Bronx apartment for thirty years. For the first fifteen years it played my father’s collection of Red Seal records of opera singers and violin soloists. For the remainder of its days, its record compartments served as a pantry to store cans of Heinz’s soups and Bumble Bee salmon.
When called upon to lift my voice in song, I could manage, with proper rehearsal and serious concentration, an on-key
, in-rhythm acceptable rendition of that song. Whenever improvising my own mock operatic aria or a phoney recitative, I rarely sang off-key, and if it was off, no one knew. It sounded as if I were mocking Arnold Schoenberg’s Sprechstimme (speaking voice) that the composer created for his off-key-sounding opus, Pierrot Lunaire. For my efforts, I got big laughs, unlike Schoenberg who had to settle for applause and immortality.
When I performed with Sid Caesar, Nanette Fabray, and Howard Morris in the opera burlesques that were featured on Caesar’s Hour, I was able to use my dubious musical gift for fun and profit. Singing fake arias for millions of people was the closest I’d ever get to realizing my dream of becoming the next Caruso. In the four or five opera takeoffs we performed, I had managed to stay on-key, until that fateful night, when, in the last scene of our opera, Cyranosa, I lost my way! In a dueling scene, after being stabbed through my heart, the orchestra punctuated the thrust by playing a loud, dramatic chord which included my trusty high G, the note I would belt out and sustain fortissimo. The principals and chorus needed that key note to cue them into the rousing finale. Sid Caesar, who is a fine musician, voiced concern about my ability to pick my note out of the chord the orchestra would play as I was stabbed.
To allay his fears, I mentioned to Sid that in Call Me Mister, the conductor, Lehman Engel, who was privy to my musical shortcomings, solved the problem by arranging for a solo trumpet note to be played as I stepped out of the wings to start singing the opening song. For a year on the road and three months on Broadway, the opening number of Call Me Mister, thanks to that trumpet note, was on-key and in rhythm.
Sid reasoned that, if a single trumpet playing my note was a good idea, a better idea would be for the entire orchestra to play that note. To guarantee that I hit it, our conductor, Bernie Green, arranged for every instrument to play the high G. Perfect scheme, almost perfectly executed. Here, now, is the sequence of events that permanently pasted this story into the scrapbook of my mind.