Growing Up Laughing

by Marlo Thomas

  “Remember, we’re all in this alone.”

  That stands in my mind as the greatest singular life lesson she ever gave me.

  “How’s a kid supposed to get any money?” I wailed. And that’s when my mother gave me the idea of starting a little business, which is exactly what I did. I’d perform services around town. I’d walk your dog. I’d take out your garbage. I’d go to the corner store for you. Whatever you wanted me to do. It took a lot of dimes to get to eleven dollars, but I did it. I was very industrious.

  One of my later jobs was to babysit, and I’d often ask my friend Susie to help me. After we put the kids to bed, we’d go through the parents’ drawers together and see their private stuff. We’d find Trojans and sex manuals. But I’d been attracted to sex manuals for a long time before that.

  “I wonder if evolution is like a scientific experiment

  that ran out of grant money.”

  Of all the characters at the D’Elce, Mrs. Rupert was definitely the most mysterious. She was a botanist and the only person in the building who had venetian blinds, so you could never see inside her apartment. She’d only use her front entrance, the story being that someone had once walked in on her. So she kept her refrigerator pushed up against the back door. We never quite knew the details. To all the kids, she was just “the crazy lady.”

  One day, when I was about eight, Mrs. Rupert convinced my mother to let me come over to her apartment to walk her dog. I went over that first night and made a friendship that would last for the next four years.

  After I gained entrance to her inner sanctum, we had a whole ritual. I’d go over after supper, walk her dogs for fifteen cents, then spend the evening with her. We’d listen to the radio and read the New York Times. She always made me look up the words I didn’t understand. After we finished the Times, we would have tea and little petit fours.

  Mrs. Rupert was like a girlfriend, but definitely an unusual one. She told me all sorts of wild stories. She said one of her plants was the same kind the pharaohs had used to silence their servants in Egypt.

  “They’d put a piece of the leaf on the tongue, and it would paralyze the vocal chords,” she said ominously. She once caught me trying to snap off one of the leaves. I guess I wanted to try it myself, or on my kid brother.

  Mrs. Rupert’s and my big weekly ritual was to go shopping together every Saturday. We’d go to Hudson’s, and I’d have to wear a hat and gloves and carry a little girl’s purse. She was teaching me to be a lady because she’d somehow decided I was the kid in the building who had the most potential to rise above my station.

  We’d take the Hamilton bus downtown, and along the way she’d give me all these little pointers:

  A lady never carries parcels if she can help it; and if she does have to carry a parcel, she uses only one arm so that the other arm is free.

  A lady never crosses her legs, except at the ankles, and never sits with her back against the chair—which could encourage slumping.

  And a real lady is able to open her handbag and reach inside and get anything she needs—without looking.

  She even taught me how to blow my nose. We’d go to a little tearoom to have cocoa, and when it was cold outside, our noses would be running. So we’d slip up a side street, go into an empty doorway and blow our noses. Then, self-assured, we’d go into the tearoom and, sure enough, we’d see some poor, sniffling woman at the counter, struggling with the paper napkin holder. And, of course, Mrs. Rupert would give me a little elbow to make sure I noticed that the woman was not composed.

  I just adored her. She was so wonderful and pixilated.

  “Sometimes I feel like a figment of my own imagination.”

  By the time I was twelve, I was very big on magic. After I paid off the debt to my mother, I’d go down to Abbott’s Magic Shop and buy tricks—like the rope that you cut into two, then magically restore. Or the trick where you raise an egg under a silk. I wasn’t very good at sleight of hand, but it was fun.

  Until now, I’d kept my showbiz life totally separate from my friendship with Mrs. Rupert. But one night I couldn’t resist inviting her to see my magic act.

  She flew off the handle.

  “Magic act!” she gasped. “Don’t tell me you’ve been spending your time and money on magic tricks! Don’t you realize that it’s all just an illusion?”

  Then she said something that sounds apocryphal, and I’ve never forgotten it:

  “If you’re not careful, you’re going to end up in show business!”

  I was incensed. I felt like my dignity was eroded. “I’m not coming back!” I shouted. And I left.

  Mrs. Rupert tried to win me back after that. One day, my brother and I were out in the backyard, and she peeped through one of her windows and said, “If you come tonight, I’ll show you something very interesting.” I was still pissed off, but I was curious.

  So my brother and I went to her apartment later that evening. She took us into her dining room, which was tiny and had a table draped in a laced tablecloth, and a chandelier that was dark and gloomy, with a big silk hanging over it. She brought out a great big chest wrapped in chamois. After removing the fabric, she opened the box to reveal another box inside. Then she took out the smaller box.

  “You must never tell anyone about this,” she warned my brother and me. Then she opened the box.

  By now, my brother and I were beginning to think we were about to see a dead baby’s foot or something equally eerie. But in the box was a dagger and sheath, with something on it that could have been construed as blood. Or rust.

  “This,” she said, “is the dagger that killed Mussolini.”

  My brother and I were so disappointed. A dagger that killed Mussolini was nothing compared to a dead baby’s foot.

  That was my last encounter with her, and my family eventually moved to a new neighborhood. But one day after school I stopped by the old building and wandered over to Mrs. Rupert’s apartment.

  The plants were still in the window, and the venetian blinds were still drawn. I banged on her door, but no one answered. So I slid my school bus card under the door and went away.

  I never saw Mrs. Rupert again. I wonder if she ever found out that her worst fear came true—that I wound up in show business. She’d probably be furious.

  “Delusions of grandeur make me feel a lot better about myself.”

  Yes, they certainly do.

  GUY WALKS INTO A BAR . . .

  A drunk goes into a bar, stumbles over a few people, sits down and asks for a whiskey. The bartender tosses him out because he’s too drunk. A few minutes later, the drunk comes back into the bar, knocks over a stool, sits down at the bar and again asks for a whiskey. Again, the bartender tosses him out. A few minutes go by and the drunk comes back, stumbles to the bar, sits down and asks for a whiskey. The bartender picks him up by the scruff of his neck and starts to throw him out. The drunk looks up at him and says, “How many of these bars do you own, anyway?”

  •

  A guy’s sitting at a bar, and a farmer next to him says, “I’ve got a talking horse and I want to sell him for a thousand dollars.”

  “Yeah, sure,” the guy says. “You have a talking horse.”

  “You don’t believe me?” the farmer says. “Come around to my barn and I’ll show you.”

  So the two men go to the barn and the farmer says to the horse, “Go on tell him.”

  The horse says, “I won the Belmont, I won the Preakness and I won the Derby.”

  “My God, that’s amazing,” the guy says. “That horse can really talk. Why would you want to sell him?”

  “Because,” the farmer says, “he’s a bloody liar.”

  Chapter 38

  Rose Marie

  When I went on the Donahue show in 1977, and the host walked into the green room with his shock of white hair and his deep blue eyes—well, let’s say he made an impression. But what he casually said to me as he slid on his suit jacket impressed me even more.

&n
bsp; “I’d like to talk about your mother. Is that all right?”

  My mother?

  No one ever wanted to talk about my mother. Not Johnny Carson or Merv Griffin. Not Mike Douglas or Dinah Shore or Tom Snyder. No one ever asked about Mom. They always had a million questions about my father.

  Phil’s show didn’t air in Los Angeles or New York at the time, so I had never seen it. I didn’t even want to go on because it would be a full hour with me as the only guest. A whole hour? I thought. At 9:00 A.M.? Who’s that interesting for an hour at that time of the morning?

  But I was in Chicago promoting the movie of Thieves, and my publicist, Kathie Berlin, insisted.

  “You don’t know him because he’s not on the coasts,” she said, “but this guy is the hottest thing in the country. You have to go on.”

  So I went on. And something happened. It was weird. It was alchemy. A couple drops of white hair and a dash of blue eyes. A tablespoon of Marymount girl, a splash of a smile. And it was done. He asked flirty personal questions. I giggled. It was like a first date. In high school. At the end of the show he held my hand.

  “Well, you are just a fabulous guest,” he said. I, of course, never one to demur from expressing myself fully, said, “You are wonderful and kind and you like women and whoever is the woman in your life is very lucky.”

  The women sitting in his audience watching us for that full hour knew that whoever that woman in his life might be, she’d better lock him up. That wouldn’t be necessary. He was divorced, raising four boys and unattached.

  And he wanted to talk about my mother.

  MY MOTHER was an act unto herself. She was Italian—well, more than that. Sicilian. They’re Italians, of course, just tougher and more suspicious. And don’t ever cross them—they never forget.

  My parents were friends with the Sinatras, especially Mom and Frank’s wife Nancy, who had a lot in common. Rose Marie Cassanitti from Detroit and Nancy Barbato from Hoboken both married skinny, ethnic boys from the neighborhood who wanted careers in show business. Neither of these women had the slightest notion that their husbands would ever become as successful as they did. From where they began, they could never even have imagined it.

  But Mom and Nancy adored these men and supported their dreams with all of their hearts. Through the tough times—and as each bore three children—they skimped and saved to make it all work. The Sinatras were Catholics, as we were, and my father was Frankie Jr.’s godfather.

  Dad and Frank had a mutual respect for each other’s work. They both played the top nightclub circuit, and frequently followed each other into an engagement, so they saw each other’s shows often over the years. And they had great fun whenever they shared the stage for special celebrations—like the annual anniversary of the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas, which was always a wild, star-studded affair.

  Our two families had houses next door to each other in Palm Springs. So when John Kennedy ran for president in 1960—and Frank was going to host him and his entourage at his house in the Springs—he asked my dad if the Bobby Kennedy family could use our house.

  “I’ll have to ask Rosie,” Dad said.

  Although my father was a typical Lebanese head-of-the-tribe kind of husband, my mother ran the house. It was her joy, her pride, her career. So no decision about the house was ever made without her approval. She said no.

  “I don’t want those shanties ruining my house,” she said. (I told you she was tough.)

  When I first brought home my very Irish boyfriend, Phil Donahue, that was all I could think about. But Phil understood. His grandmother referred to the Italians as the “Hytalians,” and his mother said they “used the church but didn’t support it.” We both had maternal hills to climb.

  My mother loved to sing, as did her mother and three sisters. Together they would perform at church, synagogues, Elks Clubs or any place that would have them. At 19, Mom had a fifteen-minute radio show called The Sweet Singer of Sweet Songs. That’s where she met my father—he auditioned as her announcer. She once told me that she had urged the producer to choose him because he had “such sad eyes.”

  Soon the show was expanded to half an hour, and retitled Sweethearts on Parade. Mom and Dad became sweethearts away from the parade, as well. So when Dad wanted to go to the big city—Chicago—and take his shot at the big-time nightclubs, Mother packed up her things, left Detroit and the radio show behind and followed the love of her life.

  But music would always be the other love of her life, and our house was filled with it. From the moment she woke up, music was playing, and it was a big part of the evening whenever she threw a party: Nat Cole or Sammy Cahn would be at the piano, accompanying Frank, Sammy Davis or Sophie Tucker. But no matter who took the stage in our living room, my mother—with the voice of an angel and the guts of a prizefighter—was never afraid to follow any of them. In truth, she relished it.

  Mother’s favorite singers were Sinatra and Cole, and their records played nonstop at our house. That is, until Frank left Nancy—then she never played him again. When Nat left Maria, he was gone, too. Sicilians are loyal. Those movies don’t lie.

  Mom and Dad outside WMBC, the Detroit radio station where they first met. They had no money, but they sure had style.

  If there was an open mike, you can bet Mom would be singing into it. What you see on her face is pure joy.

  Mom’s family wasn’t poor like Dad’s. Her father had a small produce company—fruits and vegetables, a couple of trucks—so they never felt the pinch that Dad and his nine siblings felt growing up. Still, her Detroit neighborhood was a bit rough. Sometimes at around 5:00 P.M., if my grandmother (the drummer) had forgotten something for the evening meal, she would send her eldest, my mother, to the market to pick it up. In order to get to the store, Mom would have to pass a bar and a pool hall where there were always a lot of boys in leather jackets with slicked back hair hanging around outside. My mother was a pretty little thing and scared of those boys. So she devised a plan to keep herself safe. As she walked by the tough guys, she’d drag her foot behind her as if it was hanging by a thread. And they never bothered her.

  When Terre and I were little girls, Mom would do an impersonation of this for us, dragging her foot around our living room floor. We would roll over laughing. It wasn’t until we grew up that we realized it wasn’t a funny story. It was a sad story of a sad time when girls had to limp just to live in peace.

  My mother loved to laugh and to get a laugh. And she couldn’t wait to tell you a joke or something she’d done—even if it didn’t flatter her—as long as it would make you laugh. One of my most lasting memories of her was the morning she was to have an operation. We were sitting on her hospital bed, and I was combing her hair because she didn’t want to “look a mess” when she went into the operating room. Then she told me a joke, wanting to know if I thought it was funny. I did.

  “Good,” she said “because I want to tell it when I get in there.”

  What a family.

  DID YA HEAR THE ONE ABOUT . . .

  A woman goes to the doctor and says, “Doctor, I have this problem.

  I’m passing gas all day long. Just these silent little farts.

  In fact, as I’m standing here talking to you, I’ve had three or

  four silent, little farts. What do you think?”

  The doctor says, “I think you need to have your hearing examined.”

  •

  Mrs. Cohen’s doctor called her and said, “Mrs. Cohen, your check came back.” Mrs. Cohen answered, “So did my arthritis!”

  •

  Two guys talking.

  One guy says, “Doc, I need to have my eyes examined.”

  The other guy says, “I’ll say. You’re in a gas station.”

  Chapter 39

  The Book on Kathy Griffin

  Kathy Griffin is the girl we all knew in school—the sassy, outrageous cut-up who made us laugh and had the teachers tearing their hair out, even as they fought the urge to crac
k up at her themselves. Awed by her brashness and her impish grin, we wish we could be just as fearless. But no matter how brazen she gets—even when she makes us squirm—we always forgive her, because we’ve known her all our lives. And we admire her insistence on being exactly who she is and saying exactly what she thinks.

  —M.T.

  Chapter One: Bad Girl

  Marlo: You’re known as a loose cannon. And, according to your own accounts, you’ve been banned from The View . . .

  Kathy: A lifetime ban.

  Marlo:. . . and barred from The Tonight Show . . .

  Kathy: Because Jay and I had a fight.

  Marlo: What’s going on here?

  Kathy: Well, it’s usually a matter of me being inappropriate. Or exposing.

  Marlo: What does that mean—“exposing”?

  Kathy: I am their nightmare. I’m not afraid to say anything. It’s not that I don’t care anymore, it’s just that I’ve already gotten into trouble as much as I can. I know what my boundaries are. I know that if I swear on a show, they’re going to bleep it. When I swore on Letterman, they never had me back—and that was ten years ago. But they have Paris Hilton on the show, and she did a sex tape and shows her crotch when she gets out of a car. But because I swore, I was considered offensive.

  Marlo: You mention Paris Hilton a lot. She’s one of the celebrities you’re absolutely brutal about. Then there’s Celine Dion, Whitney Houston and Oprah. Why have you chosen these particular people?

  Kathy: I would say that to be a candidate in my act, you have to be big enough so that people care. These people have unlimited amounts of fame and ego. And take Ryan Seacrest—he admits that he’s famous for nothing!

  Marlo: I see . . .

  Kathy: It’s so funny—some fellow D-List celebrity will come up to me and say, “You know, you better not put me in your act!” And I’ll say, “Don’t worry, you’re not famous enough.” But a household name—like Oprah or Whitney or Paula Abdul—they’re candidates for my act because everybody knows who they are.