Growing Up Laughing

by Marlo Thomas

  When I had my first meeting with Lee, he asked me why I wanted to study with him after having had such success in television.

  “Because I’ve gone a long way on charm and a natural comic ability,” I said. “I want to learn how to work deeper.”

  “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth,” Lee said. I loved him for that. I had heard he was a stern man, even mean, but that’s not the man I met that day. I told him that I really loved comedy and wanted to work on a comedy scene in his class. He said no—no comedy scenes. I wouldn’t understand why until much later. I would learn that the sense of truth that was at the heart of the dramatic work would feed the truth of the comedy.

  My father teased me. “Call me when they have the class on comedy timing,” he said. “I want to attend.”

  BUT I WAS still a bit intimidated by Lee because of his reputation, and I felt that everyone in the class knew the work—but me. I didn’t want to make a fool of myself (look who’s a TV star!), so it took me six months to stop hiding in the back row and come forward.

  When I finally got up to do my first scene in front of the class, Lee’s eyes twinkled.

  “Well, welcome,” he said, and then he announced the scene as he always did. “This scene is from The Gentle People, by Irwin Shaw.” But I was so nervous that his voice sounded like it was coming from a great distance and through a filter. I thought, How unfortunate to lose my hearing the day I do my first scene for Lee Strasberg. Fear does play its tricks.

  With Lee at a black tie gala. While everyone hobnobbed, he hung out with the waiters. He could spot from across the room that they were aspiring actors.

  But once I got that first scary day behind me, I couldn’t wait to do more. And I did three years more. I only wish Lee could have lived to see me portray a schizophrenic in Nobody’s Child. I never would have gotten near playing that kind of part without Lee’s exercises, and the subsequent work I did and continue to do with his primary disciple, the brilliant Sandra Seacat.

  On the set of Nobody’s Child with two of my favorite obsessives: Tom Case (my makeup artist of 40 years) and my acting coach Sandra Seacat (who was emoting).

  Sometimes two obsessives don’t make a right—and it didn’t with me and my guy at the time, Herb Gardner. Herbie was a wonderful playwright, a funny man and a true original. But when it came to work, there was only one way—his. And there was no talking him out of his position.

  Herbie wrote a play for me called Thieves. He even wrapped it in a box tied up with a ribbon and gave it to me for my birthday. What a deeply romantic and loving man he was. But when Herbie and I started to talk about the play, I questioned the ending, which I thought went awry. Herbie became furious. We argued so much about it that I finally said, “Let’s not do this. It’s going to be the play or us. We all won’t survive.”

  So I backed away, and the part was given to Lily Tomlin. Soon after, Lily had a conflict and had to pull out, and Valerie Harper was cast, with Michael Bennett directing.

  The play wasn’t received well in its Boston tryout, and the producers canceled the New York opening. Herbie was heartbroken—three years of work, and it was over. Just like that. Welcome to show business.

  A few nights after the opening, some good friends of Herbie’s flew in to be with him in Boston. I had been on the road promoting Free to Be . . . You and Me and had flown in with Chuck Grodin. We were all at a restaurant after the show—producers Norman Lear and David Picker; Frank Yablans, the head of Paramount who was backing the play; Chuck and me. After a while, Frank came up with the idea that if I stepped into the lead role, and Chuck redirected the play, Paramount would put in some more cash, and maybe we’d all just pull it off. Herbie, Norman and David enthusiastically agreed. Chuck and I were stunned. We had just come to see the show. It felt like a set-up, but what could we do? We both loved Herbie and didn’t want to see his work die in Boston. Only problem was, we’d have just four days in which to do it. The perfect scenario for a pack of obsessives.

  I’ll never forget that opening night. Herbie and Chuck came to my dressing room before the show to give me a pep talk and burst out laughing when they saw the expression on my face. I looked like a trapped rabbit. I wasn’t entirely sure of my lines, and I had no idea where to make my entrances in the complicated, multilevel set. It was the classic actor’s nightmare of being totally unprepared. Only it was really happening.

  When the curtain went up, I was lying in a bed and I could feel my heart pounding. It felt like it was banging through the mattress.

  Oh my God, I thought. I’m going to have a heart attack on stage.

  Al Hirschfeld’s wonderful drawing of the Thieves cast. Richard Mulligan and I share the bed, and behind us are: Irwin Corey (IN GLASSES), Haywood Nelson (WITH LAMP), Sudie Bond (IN HAT), Bill Hickey, with arm draped around David Spielberg, Sammy Smith (DOORMAN), and Pierre Epstein and Ann Wedgeworth (IN THE BALCONIES).

  Herbie and Chuck happily burn the Boston closing notice.

  But I didn’t die—and neither did the play. We were re-reviewed and went on to New York to play for a year.

  One of the sweetest memories I have of that run is of Herbie’s pal, writer Paddy Chayefsky, sneaking into the Broadhurst Theatre on many nights to see the poignant final scene between me and my cabdriver father, Irwin Corey. I could always tell when Paddy was there because I’d see a little slice of light coming from the theatre’s side door. He loved that scene, and it touched me so that he would often drop by just to watch it.

  Then one night, Herbie pulled off another romantic surprise. We were seven months into the Broadway run and it was my birthday. Herbie slipped a flyer into the program that read, “When Ms. Thomas takes her bow and lowers her head, everyone please sing ‘Happy Birthday.’ ”

  And they did. Twelve hundred people burst into the birthday song when I took my bow. I lurched back in shock. The sound was so loud I thought I had been shot. Then I saw Herbie and his two best friends, Bobby Fosse and Paddy, coming down the aisles carrying birthday cakes. And the audience was invited on stage to have cake with us.

  Bobby later said that Herbie had ruined it for all theatre guys ever after. No guy could ever top that gesture for a girlfriend in a show.

  Herbie and Barry Diller: Opening night of Thieves in New York.

  DID YA HEAR THE ONE ABOUT . . .

  The Broadway musical My Fair Lady was being packed up to go out on tour, and the producer went to the theatre to do one last check. He was surprised to see the huge crystal chandelier still hanging in the center of the stage.

  “Why isn’t this packed up?” he asked the stage manager.

  “We thought it would be too much trouble to pack and unpack every time we move theatres,” the stage manager replied, “so we decided to just pick one up in every city.”

  The producer bellowed, “My Fair Lady is the biggest moneymaking Broadway hit of all time! Maybe it’s the pretty music. Maybe it’s the great lyrics. And maybe it’s the friggin’ chandelier. Put it in the truck!”

  Chapter 31

  Fall-Down Funny—George Lopez

  My father used to tell us that when he was a little boy, his family was so poor that he and his eight brothers had to take baths together—and they all took turns being the plug. We always laughed at these stories, but they also gave us a feel for the early lives of the immigrant family my grandparents raised in tough economic times. I think that’s why I felt such a warm connection to George Lopez. Our ancestries are different, but the old country influences are much alike. Born and raised in Los Angeles’s Mission Hills district, George, who is Mexican-American, survived a childhood of poverty and an absent father, and recast those experiences as the warm, beating heart of his stand-up act and hit TV series. It was good to talk to George about how it all began—and to learn one of the most amazing things I’ve ever heard about a basketball.

  —M.T.

  Your stand-up act, your TV show—it’s all a comic reflection on the history of your life, isn�
�t it?

  Yes, it’s like that reality show Cops. A lot of the stories on that show are reenactments of real-life events. That’s what I do in my comedy: I talk about experiences from my life, and try to make them funny.

  My life’s never been easy, but I wouldn’t have changed any of it, because when I do stand-up—and it’s been almost thirty years now—it serves me well. When I’m on stage, I feel like a five-star general, because I’ve made it through all the other ranks.

  You make a lot of jokes about growing up poor.

  Right—and that stuff is still funny to me. Like going to the store and having to put things back that we couldn’t afford. For my family, shopping was like The Price Is Right. We’d go up to the counter and say, “How much is all of this stuff together? Is it more than five dollars?” And the guy would say, “No.” And we’d say, “Okay—we’ll buy it all!”

  You let us in on some pretty sobering memories, but you have fun with it.

  Because there’s humor in pain. For instance, I never had a jacket when I was a kid. That’s funny to me because, even now, I have a hundred jackets, and I’ll still leave the house without one. I don’t even think about taking one. I was in Chicago once, it was cold, and I wasn’t wearing a jacket. A homeless guy walked by me and said, “Boy, where’s your jacket?” Or I’ll be golfing and it’ll start to rain—and everyone will have on the right clothes, and I won’t. I am continually unprepared for things, even when I have more than my share. This is a constant thread in my life.

  So, yeah, a lot of my comedy is about not having much, and learning to deal with it. Like waiting for the sun to blow up my basketball because we couldn’t afford a pump. The heat of the sun actually expands the air—so you just put the ball in the sun to get it to fill up. Those recollections can be funny, and at the same time remind you of times when things were more simple. A lot of people can relate to that. I’m sure poor kids everywhere put basketballs on top of their houses.

  Where do you think you got your sense of humor? Were your mom and dad funny?

  I never knew my father, and my mom was more goofy than anything else. In my family nobody was funny without falling. If they fell down, my grandmother would laugh and say, “I wish I had my camera.”

  Someone once wrote that if it wasn’t for your grandmother, you wouldn’t have a career in comedy.

  Yes, and it took me a while to put that together. So much of my comedy comes from her. She was like a tragic clown, my grandma, because her life was so tough, but the ridiculousness of it all made it funny. Like, if I was crying, she’d say, “Why you cryin’?”—not “Why are you crying?” but “Why you cryin’?” I’d say, “Because I fell.” And she’d say, “No you didn’t—that was nothing.” It’s almost like I grew up with this whole idea of opposites. I never got congratulated for things that were good, but only for things that were bad. Like the time my grandmother co-signed on a car for me when I was eighteen. I crashed the car a month after I got it. So there it is, sitting in front of the house—it just got towed there, totally mangled—and my grandmother takes a look at it and says, “Congratulations, I’m so proud of you. I’m even prouder that I co-signed for it.”

  I can see why she made you laugh. Did you make her laugh?

  Oh, sure, I would make her laugh. But I don’t think she understood how difficult this business is. I had a cousin who got his life together and landed a job that had full benefits. I was doing stand-up at the time, and had just started taking off. I got on Arsenio Hall and The Tonight Show, and my grandmother says, “Yeah, but your cousin has full dental and medical.” To her, that was more impressive than me being on TV.

  Were you funny in school?

  I wasn’t like a class clown. The class clown is the guy who grabs a girl’s sweater, puts it on his head and jumps around. I was more of a class commentator. I wasn’t silly, but my words were funny.

  I think a lot of it comes from the fact that I’m an only child, and I was very suppressed. So when I went to school, I felt free for the first time. I had some good friends in the neighborhood, and I would do impressions of their fathers’ accents, or the way people in their families walked. But I wasn’t like that at home. When someone would tell my family that I was funny, they’d say, “George? But he doesn’t even talk!” It was only around my friends that I could be funny.

  Was there ever a time in your life when laughter got you out of a jam?

  Yes. In high school I had to retake an English class because I didn’t get what they called “the requirements,” so I had to write this paper in order to get my diploma and graduate with everyone else. I turned in the paper, but because my penmanship was so bad, the teacher couldn’t read it. So she says, “I want you to read it to me.” And as I’m reading it to her, I’m realizing that it wasn’t a very good paper—so I added things to make it funnier. And that’s how I got out of high school. I don’t know where this ability came from. But I trust it now, because it’s been with me forever.

  What is it about your childhood memories that make them so accessible to an audience?

  I think it’s because it’s real. It’s the same reason that some films hold up. There’s a certain humanity in them, a recollection of things that happened to all of us, regardless of what color we are. So if you can tap into that—if you can tap into the way your grandmother sounded, or the things that she said or the food that she made—you can make that connection with your audience.

  And it’s not just things from my past. I have a daughter who’s twelve, and she’s hilarious. She eats fruit roll-ups but won’t eat a tortilla. I tell her, “Tortillas were my roll-ups—roll-ups with butter and salt!” Or she’ll toss something next to the trash can instead of throwing it away, and I’ll say to her, “Listen, my goal as a parent is to teach you to actually throw something in the trash.” And she’ll look at me and say, “Good luck with that.” Or I’ll say, “If you don’t do good in class, you won’t pass.” And she’ll say, “Why do you always have to be so negative?”

  That’s exactly like my grandmother. My daughter is so sharp—sharper than I was at her age. It’s really kind of fun to see. I think that being funny is definitely in your genetic makeup, in your blood.

  Time magazine once called you one of the most influential Hispanics in America. That’s pretty impressive.

  Yeah, pretty good for a kid who couldn’t talk.

  Chapter 32

  Tony’s Pilot

  I picked up the phone. It was Tony calling from L.A. His voice was filled with concern.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “It’s Dad,” he said.

  “What?! What’s wrong?”

  Tony explained that he and Paul (Paul Witt, his producing partner), were about to shoot a pilot for a new comedy show they had developed called The Practice. It was about an irascible neighborhood doctor, the last of a dying breed, who did house calls and took a personal interest in his patients and their families. Dad had read it and thought it would be perfect for him.

  “Great,” I said.

  “Not great,” Tony said. “NBC doesn’t want him.”

  I was floored. My father had been a star on television for decades. The idea of a network turning him down seemed unthinkable.

  “Why not?” I asked.

  Tony sighed. I could hear the pain.

  “Because they think he’s too polished,” he said. “They think of him as a performer. You know, the shiny black hair, the pressed tuxedo. They want a Spencer Tracy kind of guy—a rumpled, disgruntled, ashes-on-his-shirt type. They’re talking about Art Carney.”

  “Wow,” I said. “Well, if he really wants the part, he should make a test.”

  “A test?! Dad? He’s not going to do that.”

  “But he has no choice if the network doesn’t think he can do it. He has to show them.”

  Tony was in a tough spot. He and Paul were successful TV-movie producers with a decent track record (they’d go on to produce Soap, Benson, Empty Nest and
Golden Girls, with their partner Susan Harris)—but they did not have that kind of clout yet. And without it, it is very difficult to get a network to cast who they don’t want to cast. As a producer and (more important) as a son, Tony was stuck.

  We knew what we had to do—we had to get Dad to make a test. So we strategized. Tony would call Dad and tell him the problem. (That would be hard enough.) Then after Dad had a chance to digest it, I’d call him with the hope of a solution.

  Tony did his part. Then, after a little pacing, I made my call. I told Dad that I’d heard about the situation with the network. He was furious and devastated.

  “Well,” I said as carefully as I could, “why don’t you test for it?”

  I knew what was coming.

  “Test?!” he bellowed. “I’ve been on television most of my life. What the hell do I have to prove to anybody?”

  “Look, Pop. Marlon Brando tested for The Godfather. These people don’t have any imagination. They saw what you did last and that’s all they think you can do. Do you really believe you can play this part?”

  “I know I can,” Dad said.

  “Then let’s make a test and show them.”

  I convinced Dad to come to New York so I could produce it. I couldn’t go to L.A. because I was still on Broadway in Thieves. Then I asked Chuck Grodin to direct the test. In addition to Thieves, Chuck had directed me in my TV special Acts of Love and Other Comedies, and I knew he’d be perfect to direct my father. He was funny, sensitive, patient.

  As Dad traveled to New York, Tony, Chuck and I got to work. We chose three scenes that would show different sides of the character—one in his office with a patient, one with his children (he was a widower), and one with a love interest. We talked Dad into dyeing his hair white and making it curly. Chuck put together a supporting cast and rehearsed them with care, as if the show were actually going into production. ABC, which was my network at the time, gave me a soundstage for the shoot, and we hired a crew. Everything was set.