My Anecdotal Life

by Carl Reiner

  To protect the identities of the other writers on the staff, who rarely used bad language, I will simply refer to my protagonist as Mel Tolkin, our head writer. Thanks, Tolk!

  When I first accepted the thousand-dollar advance and realized that I owed somebody a novel, I told my wife that I couldn’t possibly write a novel, because you need a lot of words to write a novel and I didn’t have enough words or the erudition to do the job, and she said, “Honey, you’ve got something else—feelings.”

  With encouragement and advice from Steinbeck and Estelle, how could I miss?

  10

  This Is Your Lie, Carl Reiner

  One of the best years of my life was 1960, and I didn’t realize it until I started to write this chapter. For one, I had a good job cowriting the Dinah Shore Show every week and performing on it every other week.

  Also in that year, my wife became pregnant with our third child. Our two older children, Robbie, who was born when I got the job in Call Me Mister, and Sylvia Anne Reiner, who dubbed herself “The Annie” when she was a tot, and has since dropped the “The,” was conceived soon after I secured a role in the Broadway musical Inside U.S.A. It seems that conceiving children was a sure way for me to ensure getting a good job, and, also ensuring that there will be truly wonderful people in my life.

  Robbie and Annie were thirteen and eleven respectively during my Dinah Shore days, and were doing well enough considering that their parents had uprooted them from their home in New Rochelle where their real friends lived. We did share a few good laughs with them, none more sustained and hearty than the one we had at the breakfast table, when I said, “Mom has a big surprise for you guys, guess what it is.”

  Their blue eyes lit up and big smiles erupted on their faces, just the reaction we had hoped for.

  “A pony!” Annie screamed, “Mom, you’re getting us a pony!”

  “A pool table!” Robbie countered, equally excited, “You’re getting a pool table!”

  When we told them that Mom was going to have a baby, they exchanged quick glances, opened their mouths wide, and literally fell off their chairs. They laughed soundlessly as they rolled around on the floor. To avoid blacking out they inhaled short gulps of air that they quickly expelled, making loud, primitive snorts which made Estelle and me laugh. They were trying to say something, but it was unintelligible. Finally, with tears rolling down their faces, an apoplectic Annie pointed to her mother and blurted out, “Mommy’s … gonna … have a … p-pony!!” A convulsed Robbie corrected, “No, not a pony!… Mom’s gonna have … a … pooool table!!”

  The image of their mother delivering either one of these cumbersome items they found hilarious. We did, too.

  Back to the Dinah Shore Show, where I became party to the lie that triggered this confession. It all started a week earlier, when I did a mild comedy bit at the end of the show. Before throwing her famous good-night kiss to America, Dinah announced,

  “And next week our special guest will be Gordon McCrea—and our not-so-special guest, Carl Reiner.”

  At this point, she acknowledged my presence in the audience and asked me to take a bow. The audience, heeding the blinking applause sign, applauded wildly, which I acknowledged by smiling and blowing kisses. Dinah thanked me and started to wrap up.

  DINAH

  So until next week—

  CARL

  [Still standing and grinning]

  Dinah?…

  DINAH

  You can sit down, Carl.

  CARL

  [Smile fading]

  You want me to sit down?

  DINAH

  Please? I want to say good night to our audience.

  CARL

  [Miffed]

  You mean this is it? You had me drive all the way down here just to take a bow?

  DINAH

  What did you expect?

  CARL

  [Peeved]

  I don’t know … I thought maybe Ralph Edwards was going to pop up … and grab me for his show.

  DINAH

  Well, he’s not here …

  CARL

  I’m not going be on This Is Your Life?

  DINAH

  Sorry, Carl …

  Acting angry and disappointed, I stomped off.

  For those of you who are too young to remember or don’t care to watch TV reruns on hard-to-find cable channels, This Is Your Life was one of the most popular and discussed shows of the ’50s and ’60s. They would surprise a guest, drag him off to a studio where he would watch his past unfold as relatives and friends were paraded out to sing his praises. They were most clever about where and how they would trap their subjects.

  The following day, after feigning disappointment about not being chosen as a subject for This Is Your Life, my wife called me at work and told me that someone at the This Is Your Life office had called.

  “Carl, the producers want to make you the subject of one of their upcoming shows and they want my help.”

  He had entreated her to keep his secret, but my wife reasoned that since she cared more about me than the voice on the phone, she tattled.

  It is widely believed that the satire we did of This Is Your Life, on Your Show of Shows, with Sid Caesar as the reluctant subject and myself parodying the host, Ralph Edwards, was one of the funniest sketches of all time. I knew that if I allowed myself to be a subject on This Is Your Life, Sid and all his great writers would sue to revoke my comedy license! I felt strongly about that, or, I should say, I thought I felt strongly, before Estelle suggested we discuss it further.

  “So honey, what do you think?” she asked timidly.

  “What I’ve always thought. Comedy people are supposed to make fun of these shows, not be on them.”

  “I couldn’t agree more, Carl. But … they…”

  “But they what?”

  “Well, they offered to buy you a new car.”

  “We’ve got a new car.”

  “I told them that, but they say—”

  “I don’t care what they say! What did they say?”

  “That they’d present you with a sixteen-millimeter projector and a film of the event.”

  “A boring event I’d be embarrassed to be a part of … What else?”

  When I heard myself ask “What else?” I knew I was weakening and looking to hear better reasons for me to change my mind, which Estelle hastened to furnish.

  “Free plane fares and deluxe accommodations at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel for your brother and his wife and your friends Lenny Grotte and Joe Coogan.…”

  I was nine-tenths sold when she said the part about free plane fares and hotel rooms for Charlie and Ilse, and Lenny, my Bronx boyhood chum who had moved to Buffalo and I hadn’t seen in years, and Joe Coogan, my dearest army buddy. The clincher came when Estelle added,

  “And they asked me if, instead of a car, they could get you something you really would love to have. I told them that you loved Mark Twain, and they called back to say they’ve found the definitive, complete works of Mark Twain in thirty-six leather-bound volumes, which included his signature and an original manuscript page bound into one of the volumes.”

  It was difficult living with this secret, this lie! We told no one, not the children, not my parents, not my co-writer, Charley Isaacs, not Dinah, not anyone. I went about my business behaving as if I didn’t know that in the next few weeks Ralph Edwards would pop up somewhere, maybe at a fake surprise party for a good friend, and scream at me, “This is your life, Carl Reiner!”

  That week, after I had learned about Ralph Edwards’s plan, I was on Dinah’s show as the “not-so-special guest star.” It was a particularly stressful week for me as it always is when I’m required to sing. The song, to be sung as a round, was “No Two People Have Ever Been So in Love.” Dinah and I were to be one of three angry couples who make up after escaping from a stuck elevator. The other couples were Gordon and Sheila McCrea and Joey Bishop and Janis Paige. That night, I was concentrating hard on not going off
-key, and I didn’t. When the song ended we all hugged and kissed while the audience applauded. I was so happy that I didn’t screw up that I hugged Dinah extra hard. Instead of letting go I started nuzzling her neck, which made her giggle and the audience laugh. I milked the laugh by nuzzling more fervently as Dinah struggled to read the closing remarks, remarks we had not written!

  “Read the cue cards,” I whispered while nuzzling away, “some funny lines there.”

  I was buried in her neck, and all I heard was her ad-libbing something about last week’s show and how upset Carl Reiner was about coming to the show just to take a bow. I remember thinking, Oh, boy, is Charlie Isaacs going to be pissed. He hates it when good jokes are replaced by weak ad-libs. It was then that I heard a familiar voice announce, “This is Your Life Carl Reiner!” I was not only surprised, I was thunderstruck. I thought, How in the world could a show that ordinarily requires weeks of preparation be readied in just five days?

  As I was whisked off Stage 4 and ushered down the hall to another stage at the NBC studios, I thought of my parents, who could not be talked into getting on a plane, and wondered what excuse they gave for not being able to come. I also wondered how Ralph Edwards managed to collect enough guests and information about my life to make a worthwhile show. I wondered who they did get? Do I tell Dinah or my friends or relatives that I knew I was going to be on the program because my wife told me? Or do I take the lie to my grave?

  I was right about the show, it was rather boring. It seems, to borrow a phrase from Mark Twain, I had, “neglected my bad habits.” I had no alcohol or drug addictions and so no rehabilitation stories to tell or any heroic war stories or major diseases that I beat because of my deep faith in the Almighty. I was happy to see my brother and his wife and my friend Lenny and my army buddy Joe Coogan and my old boss, Mr. Weglinsky, and I was not surprised to hear Ralph Edwards say, “Your mom and dad were unable to travel because they are just getting over a flu.”

  I called them immediately after the show and they were thrilled to see Annie and Robbie looking so pretty and handsome and Estelle so glowing and pregnant, carrying somebody called Lucas, whose birth coincided with the birth of the Dick Van Dyke Show, proving again my premise that great children begat great jobs.

  All in all, being on This Is Your Life was a positive experience. Besides the good memories, I also have a shelfful of books by America’s greatest humorist. The producer made a point of telling me how much he paid for them and how they will increase in value. I don’t know if he was right, and I am not curious to find out. I love my books—and I love my children who will inherit them.

  One last memory. When I called my folks after the show and told them that I didn’t expect them to come, knowing how my mother feels about flying, my father surprised me by saying that they would have flown out if they hadn’t come down with a terrible flu.

  “We both ran very high fevers,” he said,

  “Pa, c’mon, you really had the flu?” I said, doubting him.

  “A bad one. Momma couldn’t keep any food down. I had to call our doctor!”

  That phrase stopped me cold. Normally, whenever any of us took ill, my father, with help from his best friend, Mr. Glantz, the pharmacist, managed to diagnose and administer all the right medicines without ever calling in a doctor. I knew I had to investigate further.

  This following exchange is 90 percent verbatim.

  “Pa, who do you mean by ‘our doctor’? Mr. Glantz?”

  “Not Mr. Glantz, our family doctor.”

  “We don’t have a family doctor!”

  “No? And what is Dr. Neushatz?”

  “Dr. Neushatz? The doctor who delivered Charlie, and me?”

  “That’s right, we called him.”

  “You haven’t called Dr. Neushatz in almost forty years,”

  “But he’s still our family doctor. We’d never call anybody else.”

  “How did you find him?”

  “We looked him up in the phone book.”

  “He must be a hundred years old.”

  “He’s ninety-six.”

  “And he still practices?”

  “No, he retired ten years ago. He sold his practice and he recommended the doctor who bought it. A lovely young man. He made a house call, gave us a shot of antibiotic, and we’re fine now.”

  * * *

  I don’t know why I included the above conversation in this piece. Yes, I do. It’s about my father, a very unusual and talented man, and it is a preview of “Perpetual Papa” (Chapter 23), which chronicles his moderately successful attempt to create perpetual motion.

  11

  Oh, Mary, Mary, I Am So Sorry

  One of the things I am most proud of is my ability to choose wives. I chose a perfect one for myself and an even more perfect one for Dick Van Dyke—of course I mean for Rob Petrie, the character he played on the show that bore his name. I say “more perfect” because my marriage still requires a fair amount of attention and problem solving, whereas the Petries go blithely on and on in a place called TV Land, where all their problems were presolved and nothing is required of them except to go on and on and, hopefully, on and on and on. Before I chose Mary Tyler Moore to play the role of Laura Petrie, I saw forty thousand actresses. I am aware that those we now call actors once were called actresses. For the nonce, I will continue to refer to actors with breasts and stockinged legs as actresses.

  I didn’t really see forty thousand actresses, it was more like forty. To make myself seem more astute, I exaggerate a bit each time I tell this story. Actually this is not about my brilliant casting of Mary Tyler Moore to play the part of Laura but about the concerns of a writer-producer of a series who is desperate to keep a stage full of talented, sensitive, temperamental and absolutely indispensible artists happy with their decision to sign five-year contracts. The most difficult period for any new show is the first year when the show is thrashing about looking for its soul and its audience. I was most fortunate to have had Sheldon Leonard as my executive producer. Sheldon knew the ropes and knew what to do if the ropes became knotted. Since Sheldon was also the executive producer of a half dozen other shows, he expected that any of the knotty personal and artistic problems that arose would be handled by the writer-producer of each show. By the way, today these writer-producers prefer to call themselves show runners. I believe they do this to differentiate themselves from the producers, co-producers, executive producers, co-executive producers, associate producers, co-associate producers, and the dozens of other assistant and co-assistants and co-co-assistants whose main function is to squeeze as many names as possible into the opening and closing credits.

  That first year our show had some problems. For the most part, I was able to solve them without calling in the muscle, Sheldon and our other partner, Danny Thomas. Danny, I should mention, was the one who suggested I see “this girl with the three names, whose legs were featured on the Richard Diamond Show.” Mary had been considered to play Danny Thomas’s daughter on his show Make Room for Daddy, but she lost by a nose. Wrong size and wrong tilt to have been born of Danny’s DNA.

  Mary was the last of the small army of actresses I saw for the part. After hearing her read the first two lines of the script, I knew we had found our Laura. Mary was the last actress hired for what became a dream cast. The casting of Dick Van Dyke and Rose Marie were Sheldon Leonard’s suggestions, Morey Amsterdam was Rose Marie’s, and I signed off on all of them, including my suggestion that I play their egocentric boss, Alan Brady.

  Very early on I learned one thing about being a producer. When things are going well, you are rarely called upon to meet with a network head or a sponsor or any of the actors. When actors are unhappy about a particular script, they will sometimes ask to have a one-on-one to discuss how shitty their part is and what you are going to do about it. When a show is doing really well, the possibility of an actor asking for a renegotiation of his contract is not uncommon and requires an uncomfortable face-to-face meeting. The me
eting you most dread, the one that strikes fear into the black hearts of all producers who have worked hard to mount a successful show, is the meeting that has been requested by one of the show’s young stars whose talent and appeal is undeniable. She knows it, because she has read it in all the reviews and featured articles her money-hungry agent cut out and sent her. Unlike myself and Herman Levin, the producer of Call Me Mister, I had no oral contract with Mary that forbade her even to think about asking for a raise. I worried that she might ask me, as a dear friend and ally, to release her from her contract so she could accept an offer from a major film studio to play a major role in a major movie. I had never had such a meeting, but one hectic day, while I was doing a rewrite of a scene for the following week’s show, my secretary, Peggy Crider, buzzed and told me that Mary Tyler Moore was on the phone and wanted to speak to me. It was the first time that Mary had ever asked to speak with me on the phone, and instinctively I knew it was bad news. I hoped it was about the script, but we always dealt with script problems on the set after a run-through. I wondered what the heck she wanted. Many things popped into my head as I headed for the phone, among them the smashing photo of Mary on the cover of Look magazine and the positive things that were said about her. There was no question in my mind that Mary was destined to have a remarkable career in films or on Broadway. As I picked up the phone, I hoped she wasn’t going to tell me that she wanted to start her remarkable career in films this week.

  “Hey, Mary,” I said, cheerily, “what’s up?”

  “I can’t tell you on the phone,” she said somberly, “may I come to your office?”

  “Of course. Is something wrong?”

  “Well,” she hesitated, “yes, there is, but I’d rather not discuss this on the phone.”

  “I understand, please come up.”

  While waiting for Mary to make the trek from Stage 8 of the Desilu Cahuenga Studios to my office on the second floor of a building that was less than a hundred yards away, I girded myself to deal with the worst-case scenario. I decided that I would listen patiently and sympathetically to whatever she had to say, but I would not shirk my responsibility to the show; the other cast members; my partners, Dick, Sheldon, and Danny; and most importantly, to myself. Though I was very fond of Mary, I had worked too hard helping make this show a success to compromise it by being a good guy and letting Mary go, even if it was to fly “somewhere over the rainbow.”