by Carl Reiner
At the end of the dramatic scene, when Cyranosa thrusts his sword home, every instrument in the thirty-piece orchestra played the high G. Instead of belting out a G, I let out a skull-popping high C which caused Sid and the studio full of performers and musicians to shake their heads in unison and disbelief. It took more than a few bars for the singers to repair the musical mayhem by modulating to the original key, and singing an adrenalin-assisted, ultra-rousing finale.
It’s been fifty years since we performed Cyranosa, but whenever Sid Caesar and I reminisce about that “good ol’ day,” invariably Sid will start to laugh and repeat what he said to me that night as we walked to our dressing rooms.
“Carl, I don’t believe it! A whole, entire, high-priced orchestra with thirty-five professional musicians blast a G natural right at your head and you give ‘em back a high C? How the hell did you do that?”
That night, I explained how, and I have explained it to him many times since then, and he still shakes his head, laughs, and asks again, “How the hell did you do that?”
Here is my side of the story:
A young, eager member of the chorus, a soprano, playing one of the townfolk, was standing a foot away from me and reacted to the stabbing by screaming directly into my left ear a bloodcurdling, brain-rattling, memory-destroying high C! It completely obliterated the high G the entire orchestra had just placed there.
Had I been born with the ability to retain that fateful G and been able to sing it out loudly and confidently, my life might have taken a different turn. I am pragmatic enough to know that I probably would not have reached the operatic heights of a Pavarotti, a Domingo, or even a Carrera, but I like to think that if those guys heard me sing “Rachel” from La Juive or “La donna è mobile” from Rigoletto they might consider renaming their group, “The Four Tenors!”
9
A Purse Is Not a Pocket Book
One very late evening in 1957, after my wife and children had gone to bed, I found myself in the den of our house in New Rochelle staring at a typewriter I had bought but never used. Since learning to type fourteen years earlier in an army teletype school, I had found no reason to type. Now on this lovely spring night I had found a reason. Actually two reasons, the first being an urge to discover how much of my touch-typing skills had eroded by disuse. The second reason concerns a vengeful trait in my personality that surfaces occasionally, a trait of which I am not proud. I promise to discuss it in an epilogue to this story.
I started that night by putting a new ribbon in my manual typewriter, rolling in a sheet of paper, and, without looking at the keys, speedily typing up the traditional practice sentence.
Noe is the tume for a goood men to come th e aife of thier pastry.
I was pleased to discover that I had lost little of my typing skills. After retyping the sentence a few times, my last effort showed a marked improvement.
Now is the time for all goodmem to comw to the aid of their paryt.
Two hours later, I had typed up a four-page short story about a senile but dogged old woman, who had worked hard for two days cooking an elaborate Friday dinner for her son and daughter-in-law, who do not show up because she had forgotten to invite them. That morning, without fanfare, I handed the story to my wife.
“Read this,” I said, and went to the bathroom.
Ten minutes later, she called out, “Honey, this is a very touching story. Who wrote it?”
Estelle had given me my first literary review, and it encouraged me to write another story that night. This one, a five-pager, about a nine-year-old Little Leaguer and his boorish, loudmouthed father, who encourages his son, the pitcher, to “Hit him in the head! No more homers for this bum!”
In a couple of weeks, I had amassed about a dozen stories that my wife thought good enough to send out into the world. I asked my literate neighbor and friend, Julian Rochelle, a successful textile manufacturer, if he would read them and tell me what he thought. He thought my stories were delightful and asked if he could give them to a friend who he knew would enjoy them. He said that his friend “was in pocketbooks,” but I didn’t care who he gave them to. What tickled me was Julian putting my stories on his recommended reading list.
That Saturday night, Julian and his wife, Sylvia, had invited us to a buffet dinner. It was always a pleasure to see “dinner at the Rochelles” noted on our calendar—the food was always excellent and the wine and the conversation sparkling.
At this party there was an eclectic group of neighbors, theater folk, and associates of Julian’s from the textile industry, many of whom we were meeting for the first time. A man, who I assumed was one of Julian’s customers, sought me out to tell me that he admired my work on Caesar’s Hour and enjoyed reading my short stories.
“I’d like to take you to lunch,” he added, nonchalantly, “when you have some time.”
“I’ll check my calendar,” I lied, pulling away. “Thanks for reading my stories.”
I searched out my host, whom I found at the buffet table.
“Hey, Julian, what do I do about your friend?” I said, guiltily. “I’m happy that he liked my stories, but he wants me to have lunch with him. Authors don’t have to go to lunch with everybody who likes their stories, do they? Probably wants to ask me what Sid Caesar is really like.”
“Let him take you to lunch,” Julian suggested, “it might be worthwhile.”
“What’ll he do? Give me a wholesale price on an alligator pocketbook?”
Julian laughed. I had assumed that Julian’s friend bought fabrics from him to make linings for the pocketbooks he manufactured. When Julian mentioned on the phone that the man was in pocketbooks, I thought he was talking about the kind women sling over their shoulders, not the Pocket Books they read.
At our luncheon, Julian’s friend told me that he had arranged for me to meet with Mr. Goodman, an editor at Simon & Schuster—“at my convenience”—which turned out to be right after lunch.
“So, Mr. Reiner, what would you like to do with these twelve short stories of yours?”
“Have them published. I had this idea. Paperback books sell for thirty-five cents a book. I thought I’d write thirty-five stories and title the book ‘A Penny a Story’.”
“It is a cute idea, but, traditionally, books of short stories don’t sell as well as novels. Now, if you had a novel…”
“I don’t.”
“You could,” he suggested, “if you took one of your short stories and expanded it. Think about it.”
I did. What I thought about was “Fifteen Arthur Barringtons,” one of my stories that might lend itself for novelizing. It dealt with the insecurity a young actor feels when competing with other actors for a part. Arthur Barrington, whom I described as resembling me at seventeen, wonders if any of the fourteen other handsomer, taller, blonder actors with great-sounding theatrical names who are waiting to audition had changed his name, as he had, from something like David Kokolowitz to a less Jewish-sounding one like Arthur Barrington. To fortify himself for the audition, he decides that all of them had changed their names.
Mr. Goodman agreed that the trials of an aspiring young actor was a worthy subject for a novel and suggested that I get started. I told him that I required one thing from Simon & Schuster that would facilitate my writing such a novel.
“And that would be?”
“Pressure! I work best under pressure—an early deadline would do it.”
He was more than accommodating. He gave me a September 30 deadline and a thousand dollar advance! He had doubled the pressure on me, and I thanked him for doing so. The only element missing was the “how” as in “how the hell do you write a novel?”
There are many people who believe that there are certain coincidences in life that are supernaturally induced by some unknown cosmic force, but I firmly believe that a coincidence is a coincidence is a coincidence. I do appreciate the really strange ones in which I was a participant. There are others that I remember with awe and affection. (Se
e Chapter 17, “Two Weird Coincidences.”)
I am sure many of you will insist that the following coincidence was orchestrated by a divine intervener.
I came home from my meeting at the publishers without a clue as to how to start writing a novel and wondering if I had promised to do something I was incapable of doing. While thinking these negative thoughts as I got into bed that night, I casually picked up a book that had been lying on my night table for weeks. It was Fred Allen’s Much Ado about Me. I loved Fred Allen and never missed his weekly radio show. After reading a short foreword that John Steinbeck had written, I jumped out of bed and started to pace. The great Fred Allen had faced the same dilemma I was facing and had told John Steinbeck that he had foolishly committed to writing his autobiography without having a clue in the world as to how to go about it. John Steinbeck gave him, and now me, not one but many clues. I had found my Rosetta stone!
Here now are Mr. Steinbeck’s words of advice:
Don’t start by trying to make the book chronological. Just take a period. Then try to remember it so clearly that you can see things: what colors and how warm or cold and how you got there. Then try to remember people. And then just tell what happened. It is important to tell what people looked like, how they walked, what they wore, what they ate. Put it all in. Don’t try to organize it. And put in all the details you can remember. You will find that in a very short time things will begin coming back to you, things you thought you had forgotten. Do it for very short periods at first but kind of think of it when you aren’t doing it. Don’t think back over what you have done. Don’t think of literary form. Let it get out as it wants to. Over tell it in the matter of detail—cutting comes later. The form will develop in the telling. Don’t make the telling follow a form.
Sitting in the tiny den of our Fire Island beach house, balancing my portable Smith Corona typewriter on my lap, and armed with John Steinbeck’s instructions, I started typing my book. I typed away for most of the day, every day while Robbie, Annie, and Estelle did what we always did for the six summers we had vacationed on the Island. There were a few writers on the island whom I made feel guilty by clacking away while the sun shone. Reggie Rose, the writer/creator of The Defenders, the television show that was the precursor of all of today’s quality courtroom dramas, threw pebbles at my window every time he passed by—to let me know that I was disturbing his peace.
For six summers, while on thirteen-week hiatuses from Your Show of Shows and Caesar’s Hour, I had lain on the beach, played in the sand with my kids, chatted with friends and neighbors at the local markets, dug for clams and enticed blue-clawed crabs out of the Great South Bay using a piece of string and a chicken neck. That summer, I was happy doing none of those things but worried that the thing I was doing was not worthy of being called a novel. My editor, Mr. Goodman, had called to say that he was in bed with a bad cold and available to read whatever I had written. I mailed out eighteen pages, and he called to say that I was on the right track and to continue. I continued until I had written 214 pages and was in the process of cleaning up the messy ones and doing final edits when I received a call from someone at Simon & Schuster informing me that Mr. Goodman had passed away. I could not believe it. The man was in his forties, and it was just inconceivable that anyone that young could just up and die. I had but that one conversation with him when he told me that I was on the right track. Now, not knowing if I had stayed on track, I buried my untitled book in a bureau drawer and went back to doing Fire Island things. I had finished the book weeks earlier than the September pressure date we had negotiated, but since Mr. Goodman was my only contact with his company, I assumed my project was canceled.
Two weeks after I had mourned the death of my editor and our project, I received a call from a Lee Wright, who informed me that she would be my new editor. Prior to her coming to the island to meet with me, she wanted to read what I had written. And what a good editor Lee Wright turned out to be! Not only did she give excellent lessons in grammar and punctuation, but she came up with the title for the book, Enter Laughing. I thought it was so perfect that I quickly added a humorous scene at the beginning of the book that accommodated her inspired title.
A week after this meeting, I slipped a spanking-clean copy of Enter Laughing into a manila envelope and headed to the harbor at Ocean Beach where I would board the Fire Island Queen and be ferried across the Great South Bay to the town of Bayshore, where I would retrieve my car (there are no cars allowed on Fire Island), drive to New York, and hand deliver my manuscript to my editor. On the ferry, I met a Fire Island neighbor and a fellow novelist, Herman Wouk.
“Hi, Carl,” he said, “do you have a ride to New York?”
“Yes, thank you,” I said, “I have a car.”
“I don’t. How would you like company?”
We had met at a couple of parties, and I liked and admired him and told him that I was honored to have him aboard.
The two-hour-plus drive to New York turned out to be the most uncomfortable and surreal driving experience I’ve ever had. When Herman Wouk settled into the passenger seat, I placed the manila envelope between us and started the car. The following is the conversation we had as I drove out of the parking lot.
HERMAN
What’s in the manila envelope?
CARL
A little novel I’ve just finished writing. I’m delivering it to my publisher.
HERMAN
What are you calling it?
CARL
Enter Laughing.
HERMAN
Good title.
[A long, long pause]
Mind if I read it?
CARL
You want to read it now?
HERMAN
If you’d rather I not …
CARL
No, no …
While saying “No, no,” I thought, Reiner, are you really going to let this literary giant, who wrote The Caine Mutiny and Marjorie Morningstar, read your cockamamie novel? Are you nuts!? I quickly decided that I was. I reasoned, My cockamamie novel has humor in it, and this literary giant, before he became a literary giant, was a comedy writer on The Fred Allen Show. Fred Allen?! Wow, another eerie coincidence!
CARL
I’d love you to read it, Herman.
[Hands him the envelope]
I wrote it to be read.
Herman Wouk took my life’s entire literary output in his hands and started to read.
Herman was not aware that while he was reading Enter Laughing his life was in danger. My concentration was split between the road ahead and the book in his lap. I kept shifting my eyes from Herman’s impassive face to the book, hoping to catch him smiling. What really irked me was hearing a snort or a chuckle coming from the “literary giant” and not knowing what scene or page he was reading when he made those sounds. The most upsetting thing of all was the speed with which he read my book. It took him just two hours to read what I had spent two thousand hours writing.
He was silent and pensive as he slipped the manuscript neatly back into the manila envelope. He paused much too long for my comfort before he turned to me.
HERMAN
[A suggestion of a smile on his face]
Very entertaining, Carl, very amusing.
CARL
Did you really like it?
HERMAN
Yes, I did. It has a lot of feeling. Good work.
CARL
Would you have said that if I hadn’t given you a free ride to New York?
HERMAN
Not likely.
[His smile broadening]
I wouldn’t have read it.
Before dropping Herman Wouk off, he added a few complimentary things about my virgin effort and wished me luck.
Enter Laughing was published in 1958 and sold a few thousand copies in hardcover and a few thousand more in paperback. I presented a copy of the book to my friend and New Rochelle neighbor, Joe Stein, who paid me the ultimate compliment.
“This i
s a dandy book!” he said.
Some people might think that Joe’s calling the book “dandy” was damning it with faint praise, but coupled with his saying that it would make “a dandy play” and actually adapting my novel into a “dandy hit” that ran on Broadway for more than a year I think qualifies the word as being a compliment of the first magnitude. Young, brilliant Alan Arkin playing the fictionalized version of me, made his Broadway debut in Enter Laughing, and went on to become one of America’s most versatile and original actors. Joe and I later adapted the “dandy play” into a “dandy movie.” Earlier, Joe had adapted a Sholem Aleichem story, “Tevya the Milkman” into the dandiest of musicals, Fiddler on the Roof.
Had it not been for Julian Rochelle’s pocketbook/Pocket Book friend and the coincidental finding of Fred Allen’s autobiography, I might not have written two more novels, a book of short stories, a children’s book, and The 2,000 Year Old Man in the Year 2000 (the book) that Mel Brooks and I “told to each other.”
It frightens me to contemplate how bleak this world would be if those cherished works did not exist.
THE PROMISED EPILOGUE
Typing For Revenge
The driving force behind my need to type was born in the legendary writer’s room of Your Show of Shows, where I made some contributions to the creative effort. I had been invited there by our producer, Max Liebman, and thought of myself as a writer without a portfolio. Sometimes I would come up with a less than brilliant idea or joke that would be summarily batted down by one or more of the staff. The one criticism that was the catalyst for my development came from the writer who reminded me, after dismissing my failed attempt to contribute, that I was “nothing but a fucking actor.” To defend my name and the good name of all actors, I chose to use my typewriter as the weapon to bring down my detractor. I’d show the bastard! I’ll dare to write something without asking for his approval. To his everlasting credit, the writer who reminded me that I was “nothing but a fucking actor” also said to me, after reading Enter Laughing, that I was “a fucking good writer.”