My Anecdotal Life

by Carl Reiner

  “I’ll give you a hundred,” he said chivalrously.

  “I won’t need a hundred, but if I guess that star’s name,” I asked, “will you tell me?”

  “No, RRRReiner.” He chuckled, devilishly. “I will not tell you, but I will give you a thumbs-up.”

  For the next half hour, while enjoying my dessert and coffee, we played. Ms. Vreeland set my arm free during the salad course. When we began, I was confident I’d guess because there were fewer than twenty actors in the world who are in the biggest-star-in-the-world category. It must be noted that this game took place in 1978, so the stars we mentioned were the reigning ones at that time.

  “Barbra Streisand!” I offered.

  “Bigger!” he countered, grinning wildly.

  “Richard Burton!”

  “Bigger!”

  “Elizabeth Taylor!”

  “Bigger!”

  “Bigger than Burton and Taylor??”

  “Bigger! Bigger!”

  “Robert Redford!”

  “Bigger!”

  “Paul Newman!”

  “Bigger!”

  “Sidney Poitier!”

  “Bigger!”

  “Bigger than Streisand, Burton, Taylor, Redford, Newman, and Poitier?” I asked.

  “Bigger!” he shouted. “Much bigger!”

  “There are no stars bigger than those!” I insisted.

  “There is one!”

  Mr. Bluhdorn countered with “Bigger!” after I, and the amused dinner guests offered the following names:

  Julie Andrews, Laurence Olivier, Jimmy Stewart, Bette Davis, Alec Guinness, Paul Scofield, Warren Beatty, Anne Bancroft, Spencer Tracy, Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, Shirley Maclaine, Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., Bob Hope, Al Pacino, Charles Laughton, Charlie Chaplin, Tyrone Power, Greer Garson, Danny Kaye, Peter Sellers, Clark Gable, Jimmy Cagney, Woody Allen, Robert DeNiro, Dustin Hoffman, Paul Muni, and I don’t remember how many more. After some of our guesses, we heard, “HE’S DEAD!” or “SHE’S DEAD!”

  He loved this game. The more frustrated we all became, the happier he was. He was drunk with power, and since I was the one empowering him, I decided to sober him up by capitulating.

  “I’m sorry, sir, game’s over!” I sighed. “I have exhausted my list and everyone’s else’s list of ‘biggest stars.’”

  “Well, Mr. RRRReiner,” Mr. Bluhdorn snarled, his eyes dancing, “you left off your lists, the … one … and … only biggest star in the world!”

  “Who?” I asked, sarcastically. “Mickey Mouse?”

  “NO!” he screamed. “Fidel Castro!”

  As if we had been rehearsed, all of us responded in unison, “Fidel Castro???”

  “Hah, RRRReiner, never thought of Castro, did you?”

  “Biggest star in the world?” I chided. “I don’t believe I’ve seen any of Fidel’s films.”

  “Films? I never said film star, and that is the point,” he said, grinning from ear to ear. “Because he has never been in a film, every newspaper on the planet is going to have the same headline on their front page: ‘Fidel Castro, the President of Cuba, Has Agreed to Co-star in a New Film for Paramount Pictures!’”

  I wanted to say “You’ve got to be kidding!” but I didn’t.

  “So, RRRReiner,” he said triumphantly, proffering his hand, “are you ready to make a deal now?”

  “And what part will he be playing?” I said, going along with the madness.

  “Fidel Castro will play Fidel Castro!”

  “Good casting,” I joked, “but not much of a stretch for him. What is the picture, a sort of documentary?”

  “I didn’t buy a movie company to make documentaries,” he explained in a tone I had not heard before, “no, it will be a comedy, a comedy with heart! The Bad News Bears Go to Cuba!”

  So that’s why he invited me! Finally it all made sense. Two successful Bad News Bears pictures, why not shoot for a third?

  This time there was no hot sun in my eyes when I listened to Mr. Bluhdorn talk about the film, but there was a big knot in my stomach. It seemed that, at a clandestine midnight meeting in Cuba, Fidel had agreed to play himself in three scenes: playing catch with the Cuban Little Leaguers, giving them a pep talk before the big game, and throwing out the first ball and sitting in the stands watching the World Championship game between Cuba and the United States.

  Mr. Bluhdorn talked about why I should do the film, and I countered with why I couldn’t.

  “I’d never be able to stay on schedule,” I said, half-facetiously. “Every picture I’ve ever done, I have brought in on time and under budget. If El Jefe decides to give one of his marathon seven-hour speeches on a day he’s scheduled to work … I…”

  “RRRReiner,” he interrupted, “you don’t want to shake my hand on this one either, do you?”

  “No, sir, I don’t,” I admitted, “mainly because doing a second sequel of Bad News Bears or any picture really doesn’t interest me.”

  Mr. Bluhdorn told me that the very talented Michael Ritchie had written the script and was in the process of reworking the end, which had problems.

  “Last night I called him on the phone. ‘RRRRitchie,’ I pleaded, ‘wrrrite me a Stella Dallas ending.’ RRRReiner, you understand what I’m talking about!”

  “Yeah, you want a tearjerker ending.”

  “Bigger! I want the ushers should have to go down the aisles handing out boxes of Kleenex.”

  I felt so beholden to Mr. Bluhdorn for being so hospitable to us and for being so endearingly whacko that I offered to meet with Michael Ritchie and kick around some ideas, for free, of course.

  I spent a couple of very pleasant hours with Michael Ritchie, comparing notes about our eccentric billionaire benefactor and also attempting to find a nonmanipulative, sentimental ending. Ritchie admitted he had no heart for the piece but got roped into it by falling for the shake-my-hand-and-you-got-a-deal ploy. Michael had considered an ending in which the coaches and umpires decide that, after playing thirty innings, with the scored tied at 0–0, both teams are winners and order that they share the trophy, each team holding it for six months a year. After coming up with a few more dopey and overly sentimental ideas, we got giddy enough to take a shot at Bluhdorn’s Kleenex-box-with-no-dry-eye-in-the-house ending. We came up with the following shot list:

  Close-up of

  • the coaches and players on both teams fighting back tears.

  • the kids’ parents, grandparents, and relatives dabbing at their eyes.

  • millions of misty-eyed baseball fans blinking and smiling.

  • Little Leaguers in uniform watching the World Series on TV and wiping their drippy noses on their sleeves.

  • Presidents Nixon and Castro fighting back tears and losing that fight.

  • tears of joy rolling down the two president’s cheeks.

  • the closing credits start rolling and the tears of joy that were rolling down the presidential cheeks splash all over the closing credits and roll into the orchestra pit.

  As I am sure you are all aware, The Bad News Bears Go to Cuba was never made, and I believe that is why, to this day, Fidel Castro is so pissed off at the United States.

  21

  The Emergency Gourmet Dinner

  In the late ’50s and early ’60s, a group of talented authors, writers, artists, performers, and businessmen got together and formed the Gourmet Eating Club. The club would meet at least two or three times a month to dine at a Chinese restaurant in New York’s Chinatown. Ngoot Lee, a Chinese food maven and a serious painter, who was born in China, and lived in Chinatown, was charged with the responsibility of choosing the best restaurants for their gourmet eating meetings. He chose a restaurant not for its decor but for the culinary excellence of its chef. I had heard about this extraordinary gourmet eating club from Mel Brooks and Joe Stein, two of an eclectic group, which included novelists Mario Puzo, Joe Heller, and George Mandel; actor Zero Mostel; businessman Speed Vogel; and diamo
nd merchant Juley Green. All shared a need to laugh, eat gourmet Chinese food, and get out of the house for a night with the boys.

  While living and working in Los Angeles, I made many quick trips to New York and longed to be a part of that gourmet dining experience. Joe Stein had proposed my name to the club members and recommend that I be invited as a guest eater. I was told that, after serious and spirited deliberation, the members voted that I be a permitted to join them for one of their gourmet dinners—but only for one! A second invitation was possible and would depend upon my social behavior and my willingness to chip in for the food.

  As bad luck would have it, the days I spent in New York were always days when the club was not scheduled to meet. Consequently, I never had the pleasure of accepting their semigracious invitation. On the day of my fourth unsuccessful attempt to join them, I was preparing to fly home frustrated and unfulfilled, when Joe Stein called.

  “Carl,” Joe said excitedly, “good news! The club voted to convene an emergency Chinese dinner tonight, just for you! That is, if you’re available—if you’re not, we’ll convene without you.”

  Because of the short notice, only Joe Heller, Joe Stein, George Mandel, Speed Vogel, Mel Brooks, and Juley Green, were able to convince their wives that it was imperative they leave their homes to attend an emergency gourmet dinner they had arranged for a needy friend. Ngoot Lee asked that we rendezvous in Chinatown at a designated street corner from whence he would lead us to a new restaurant.

  Joe Stein, our self-designated driver, chauffeured Joe Heller, Mel Brooks, and me to Chinatown, where we found Ngoot and the other club members waiting at the designated corner. Joe Heller, the hungriest member of the club and its most dedicated eater, jumped out of the car and confronted Ngoot.

  “This new restaurant,” Joe Heller challenged, “is it as good as our old one?”

  “New one is good as old one,” Ngoot said, with his textbook Chinese accent, “I guarantee!”

  “How do you know?” Joe Heller challenged.

  “I know because new one steal chef from old one!”

  “Good enough! Take us to your restaurant!”

  “I take you,” Ngoot said, “in one minute!”

  With that, Ngoot dashed across the street toward an apartment building.

  Where the hell are you going? we all thought, but Joe Heller shouted it.

  “I go visit wife and say hi!” Ngoot yelled back and ran into the building.

  I was told then that Ngoot had befriended a young Chinese immigrant whose visa had expired. To keep her from being deported, he married her and set her up in a one-room, fifth-floor apartment. Before Joe Heller could finish grousing about Ngoot’s dinner-delaying detour, Ngoot came bounding out of the building and back across the street.

  “Wasn’t she home?” one of us asked.

  “She home,” Ngoot answered, puffing hard.

  “Didn’t have much time to say hi to your wife, did you?” Joe offered.

  “Enough. I open door, visit, say ‘Hi, wife!’ close door, and go.”

  Ngoot’s lightning visit served two purposes, he showed his wife he cared, and he made his friends laugh. Ngoot and his wife had started their marriage living apart, and he visited her only when it pleased him. As time went on Ngoot and his wife bonded and he invited her to move in with him. He had fallen in love with her, and told the group about the serious commitment and gift he made to her. He described, in detail, how, on one sunny afternoon, he put his arm around her waist and escorted her to the kitchen window, where on the sill was an herb garden growing in a two-foot-long window box.

  “Someday, sweetheart,” Ngoot said solemnly, his hand sweeping majestically across the small window box, “this land aaaaall gonna be yours!”

  Since then, I never pass a flower-filled window box without saying, “Someday, aaaall this land gonna be yours!”

  Ngoot seated us at a round table in the rather small, unprepossessing new restaurant. From my seat, I had a clear view of the kitchen and the activity that went on in it. I had just settled in my chair when Ngoot jumped up and said that he thought I might be more comfortable sitting in his seat. I was perfectly comfortable where I was, but Ngoot insisted that, since I was the honored guest, I sit with my back to the kitchen instead of facing it. I thought it strange, and I asked if this was some kind of Chinese tradition.

  “Traditionally,” Joe Heller explained, “honored guests, who aren’t accustomed to seeing a rat scurry across a kitchen floor, don’t seem to enjoy the evening as much as those of us who are accustomed to the intrusion.”

  I thought Heller was kidding but two others confirmed seeing “the little feller” scurrying about.

  No one seemed upset about the “visitor,” and all had a creative reason for not leaving. For example:

  “All New York restaurants have problems with vermin.”

  “Yeah, but the ritzy ones hide them by keeping their kitchen doors closed.”

  “Which is dishonest! This is an honest restaurant with an open-door policy!”

  “Right, so we stay?”

  “We have to. At this hour no good, rat-free restaurant is still open.”

  “I’m starved!”

  The ordering was, by and large, left to Ngoot, with major input from Heller and, for aesthetic and allergy concerns, special needs ordering by Brooks and Stein. The rest of us opted to wait and taste. My memory of things said and eaten that night might be a little fuzzy, but the following is clear.

  The first course was an impressive-looking special winter melon soup. An immense scooped-out winter melon, which served as its own soup tureen, was placed on the table. As soon as the waiter took off the top of the melon, Joe Heller stood up and grabbed the ladle.

  “This is a special night,” he announced, smiling at me, “and in honor of our special guest, I will serve!”

  He filled one of the bowls with the piping hot soup, handed me the ladle and, said, “Now you serve!”

  It was obviously one of the club’s rituals that Heller had designed to ensure that he got his fair share of soup in case there weren’t enough fair shares to go around. Heller, to help me avoid breaching any of the club’s rules, informed me of the one rule that is strictly enforced. The “touch-rice” rule, which Heller himself had drafted.

  The touch-rice rule made it illegal to put your chopsticks into one of the communal serving platters and pick up a piece of the succulent lobster, duck, pork, beef, or shrimp without first “touching rice,” i.e., putting some of the inexpensive white rice into your mouth between each chunk of the expensive stuff.

  Heller insisted that the touch-rice rule was necessary to stop the more piggish gourmets from turning into gourmands, but most agreed that its main function was to ensure that nobody in the club ate more than Joe Heller. Even though Heller invented the the touch-rice rule and strictly enforced it, he rarely obeyed it. Being a former army air force captain, he firmly believed that “rank has its privileges.”

  I considered the evening a great success. The food was exceptional, the laughs were many, and as far as I knew, sitting with my back to the kitchen, the “little feller” did not appear again.

  Aside from being invited to eat with the club again, the thing about that evening that stays alive in my memory is the request Joe Heller made to Joe Stein on our ride back home. As most literate people in the world are aware, Joe Heller was the author of Catch 22, the most talked-about and praised book of the era, now considered a classic. He had also written a play, We Bombed in New Haven, which had opened on Broadway a few nights earlier. It had been fairly well received but not nearly as well as his novel.

  “Hey, Joe,” Heller asked Joe Stein, who was at the wheel, “how are you planning to drop us off?

  “Well,” Stein answered, “I’ll drop Carl at the Sherry Netherlands, continue uptown, drop Mel, then cut across the park and drop you. Why?”

  “Before you drop anybody, could we swing by my theater?” Heller asked, simply, “I’d li
ke to stop by for a few minutes.”

  “Hey, Joe, it’s one A.M.! If you’re looking to hear some reaction,” Mel Brooks offered, “the audience has dispersed, and you can’t trust the reaction of a dispersed audience. Let’s go home!”

  Joe Heller, if he is anything, is persuasive. Without telling us why he wanted to swing by the theater, he prevailed, and there we were approaching the Golden Theater on West Forty-fifth Street. Joe Heller directed Joe Stein to stop the car about thirty feet before getting to the theater entrance and to park on the other side of the street.

  “Now what?” Joe Stein asked.

  “Now,” Joe Heller replied, rolling down his window, “I sit and look at the marquee.”

  On the marquee, in lights, or I should say, in bulbs, as the electricity had been turned off, was: They Bombed in New Haven, A New Play by Joseph Heller. We all sat silently for a few minutes and looked at Joe Heller looking at the sign. He didn’t speak for a long time. He didn’t have to. Being in show business, we knew why he wanted to swing by the theater. When he did speak, he articulated it for all of us.

  “Just wanted to see my name up there. I never thought I’d be on a Broadway theater marquee, and there I am! It’s very exciting! Don’t know how long the play will run or if I’ll ever write another one so, if you guys don’t mind—a couple more minutes?”

  We sat for a few more minutes before Heller said, “Okay, Joe, drive!”

  I met with Joe Heller a few times over the course of the years and could never reconcile the sentimental Joe Heller who stared silently at his name on the theater marquee and the me-first gourmand Joe Heller who created the touch-rice rule. Obviously, he reconciled them well enough to have created an impressive body of literary work and a tremendous capacity for making and keeping good friends and an even bigger capacity for ingesting enormous amounts of gourmet Chinese food without ever saying, “I think I ate too much.”