How I Got to Be Whoever It Is I Am

by Charles Grodin

  Regis is special. What you see is what you get, which is great. Recently, I asked him as a joke to be part of my senior advisory board, and he asked, “Why does it have to be called senior?”

  Regis, Joy, my wife, Elissa, and I have dinner together every couple of months and Regis and I have lunch together around the same number of times. These are memorable occasions for me. I’ve been out in public with household names, but I’ve never seen anything like it is with Regis. It seems as though everyone knows him, and it sure feels like everyone loves him. He stops at a number of tables before he gets to me at a back booth. Everyone greets him, and he greets everyone. There are continuous warm exchanges, and he never hurries to get away.

  Then, when he’s seated with me, he’s recognized by more people. He always points to me and says, “You know who this guy is sitting here? Did you see Midnight Run with Robert De Niro? This is Charles Grodin, the guy with De Niro.” Often the people start to fuss over me. The whole thing is a trip. Not only that, Regis is either funny or interesting and mostly both, and if there’s a problem, usually with my talking about social issues, here’s what happens. Recently, I asked him to join me in a benefit for our veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, some of whom need everything from health care to housing. Regis immediately jumped aboard with me to do a benefit. He suggested we add Marty Short, who was remarkable. We raised a lot of money, and it all went to an organization that helps the veterans in every way—Help U.S.A. That’s Regis. He’s a one-of-a-kind package.

  Maybe the best thing that Regis did for me was introduce me to Jack Paar. For you younger readers who possibly don’t know, Jack Paar is considered the father of the talk show. I met Jack at a New Year’s Day party Regis and Joy gave several years ago, and we immediately became friends. Regis and Joy, Jack and his wife, Miriam, who was as gracious a woman as I’ve ever met, and Elissa and I would regularly go out to dinner at a restaurant in Greenwich called Valbella. Management there would never let us get a check, but after a while we insisted. Of course, we then went there less frequently. That’s a joke. Sometimes we would have dinner at Jack and Miriam’s house, where I met several people who remain my friends today.

  I recently was invited to a golf club to have dinner with some people Jack and Miriam had introduced me to. All the club members know each other. I got there early and went to the bar to have a drink. A woman seated there asked me who I was with. I told her, and she said, mentioning the hostess’s name, “Oh, she wouldn’t want you to be drinking that!” She asked the bartender to bring me something so upscale, even I could tell the difference.

  Jack would hold forth at these dinners at his house where so many of us first met, and I loved it. Once there was a brief pause, and someone started to say something. Jack interrupted and said, “I’m forming my next thought.”

  At another dinner at Jack’s, I was sitting next to Phyllis Diller, then in her eighties. I whispered into her ear, “I’d like to get you alone in a hotel room.” She said, “I’ve had a hip replacement.” I growled into her ear, “I don’t care!”

  About a year after all this, Jack saw a snake in his garage and fired a gun to scare it away. He later told me that snakes don’t have ears, but the shot caused a hearing loss in Jack. He once wrote me a letter saying he felt I was going to ask him to appear on my cable show, which he would do only if Johnny Carson appeared. Of course, I had no intention of imposing on either one of them. Jack had said, “The way to remain a legend is not to appear.” However, he chose to join me and Regis on my five-hundredth show. Regis credits Jack with his concept of host chat, a huge thing to all of Regis’s fans.

  Eventually, Jack’s health began to fail. He had major surgery and someone left a sponge in him, which didn’t help matters. Sometimes being a celebrity is a negative, because people get distracted. Not long after that he suffered a stroke, which took away his ability to speak. Jack—of all people.

  I would regularly visit him at a rehabilitation center and often take Gene Wilder with me. Jack once said that introducing Gene to him was the best thing I had ever done for him. Gene would kiss him on the cheek and hold his hand while I did my latest riffs.

  Jack couldn’t speak, but he could smile, which he often did when Regis and I visited and tried to entertain him. When he passed away, I was given the honor of being the last speaker at the service. Earlier in the day I was on the phone with Ethel Kennedy, who was also a friend of Jack’s. She said, “Jack’s in heaven with Jack and Bobby.” I asked her if I could quote her in my remarks and she said yes.

  When my turn came, I told some humorous stories about Jack and then finished by quoting Mrs. Kennedy. Afterward one of the other speakers, an atheist, said he really liked my speech, “Except for that last part.” There’s always a critic.

  I miss Jack so much as well as Miriam, who is also gone. I doubt there will ever be anyone like him. Regis and I have never stopped talking about Jack and how much we loved him, and how much he did for us by loving us.

  Paul Newman

  I was fortunate enough to know Paul Newman. Years ago, Paul reached out to me to go with him and Christopher Plummer to testify on an issue at the state capital in Hartford. I agreed, even though I wasn’t completely clear on what the issue was. I figured if Paul was bothered about something, it was at least worth my time to listen to him explain it on the drive to the capital. It turned out to be about protecting your movie image from being used at a certain point after you were deceased to promote a commercial product, without your or your survivors’ permission. I was amazed that such a law wasn’t already in place. I testified.

  I later had contact with Paul when I was working on my book If I Only Knew Then… learning from Our Mistakes. Paul was the only contributor out of eighty-two people who said he hadn’t learned anythingfrom his mistakes, but he took comfort in knowing they were the same mistakes—not new ones. I can only assume I didn’t know Paul well enough, because I never saw him make anymistakes.

  I last saw him about a year and a half before he died, when he and his wife, Joanne Woodward, asked me to be a part of a fund-raiser for the Westport Country Playhouse. It was to be an evening of love poems. I consider reading poetry aloud not one of my callings—which is an understatement—but I agreed to do it, because it was Paul and Joanne who asked.

  About an hour before we were to begin, Paul quietly asked me to remind him to blow his nose before we went on. When we were called to the stage, I said, “Paul, blow your nose.” He did. Philip Seymour Hoffman observed all this, and I told him, “That’s why they got me.”

  If it was a worthy cause, you didn’t have to get Paul Newman, because he was already there.

  Jack and Bob

  My older brother, Jack, is extraordinary. Being more sensible than I, he became a CPA and an attorney. He has always been my biggest supporter. He knows I was elected president of my fifth-grade class, and then was impeached. At the age of seventy-nine he chose to tell me for the first time that he was elected president of his fourth-grade class. I asked, “Were you impeached?” He softly said, “No.”

  For someone whose father died at the age of fifty-two, I consider myself remarkably fortunate that my doctor, at this writing, anyway, has been unable to find anything physically wrong with me. He says, “I don’t know what you’re doing, but maybe we all should do it.”

  My brother, unfortunately, has been besieged by one illness after another. Jack has always been interested in singing. He has gone to retirement homes at Christmas to lead the people there in singing carols.

  A couple of years ago, I sent him a big songbook that has most of the standards in it. I also send a keyboard player to his house a couple of times a week, so Jack can sing to accompaniment. He really enjoys that.

  About eight years ago, I became friends with a man about my brother’s age, Bob Ellis. Bob doesn’t sing, but he is as goodwilled as any person I’ve ever met. Recently I gave Bob the same songbook that I’d sent my brother. And now Bob, who
lives in New York, and Jack, who lives outside of Pittsburgh, take turns calling each other every day and singing about six songs together on the phone. In between they share anecdotes, and a great time is had by all.

  I’ve produced in the movies, on Broadway and off- Broadway, and in television, but this by far is the most gratifying show I’ve ever produced.

  Singing may not cure all ills, but it certainly moves us in the right direction. If someone in your family or your friends or maybe even you are down, it might be a good idea to get them singing to lift their spirits. I plan to do it myself.

  Since I wrote the above, my friend Bob has passed away. I first met Bob Ellis when he came over to me after a benefit I did at the YMHA in New York City for the children of Bedford Hills Women’s Correctional Facility in Bedford, New York. He introduced himself and said he’d like to produce a similar benefit in his area of Armonk, New York. He did.

  Bob and I quickly became close friends. I soon learned he had multiple myeloma, an incurable blood disease.

  Bob suggested we start a foundation. He wanted me to be the president, because he felt I knew of people in situations not widely known who needed a hand. We called the foundation Lend a Hand.

  Through Jayne Begelson at the New York City Bar, I learned of two teen boys with cystic fibrosis. The average life span of people with cystic fibrosis is in the thirties, although some people have lived longer. Right now, there is no cure.

  The boys were foster children of a couple in Pennsylvania with three children of their own. Bob arranged for the family, Jane Begelson, her sister, the family social worker, and her husband to join us on a fishing boat he chartered, since we learned one of the boys loved to fish.

  We had a great time. Unfortunately Bob couldn’t join us. He was in the hospital with pneumonia.

  Later I arranged for the family to come to my house, and Bob came with one of his sons, a doctor. It was a magnificent day.

  There was a famous band in the forties called the Tex Beneke Orchestra. Sometimes when I’d be hosting an event, I would introduce Bob—who was actually a semiretired real estate man—as Boppin Bob Ellis, formerly with the Tex Beneke Orchestra. Bob would stand up in the audience and wave. The audience applauded, and after the event some people would come over to him and ask if he still sang. Bob would say, “I hum a little.”

  I started to bring Bob onstage with me. Sometimes when I was talking I’d look at him as though I had no idea who he was or what he was doing there. He’d just look back at me with a pleasant expression.

  In the fall of 2008, I hosted the annual Children’s Cancer & Blood Foundation fund-raiser at the Plaza Hotel in New York City. Bob was to appear with me in a comic routine—no lines yet, but Bob would be playing the Plaza. He died five days before the event.

  Since Bob would often join me at various events, he was at one where a photograph was taken of Eli Wallach, Jack Klugman, and me. I’m in the middle with my arms around Eli and Jack. Bob is on the side almost as if he’s superimposed on the photograph, like Woody Allen in Zelig. I took the picture of Bob’s face and had a card made that read “WANTED” on the top, Bob’s face under it, and then the charges against him, “Seen taking funds from a church collection basket and crossing state lines for immoral purposes with a goat,” and below that, “$$REWARD$$.”

  I blew it up to the size of an actual wanted poster, gave it to Bob, and hung another one in my study right where I look at a wall. It was always fun to see. After Bob died, it took on a new meaning because it read “WANTED” above Bob’s face and was a constant reminder of how much I miss him. I had to take it down, because I don’t believe it’s helpful for me always to look at photos of beloved deceased friends, particularly if it says “WANTED” above their face.

  I see people not as Republicans or Democrats, liberals or conservatives, but as those who care about others and those who don’t. Bob Ellis cared. He was a wonderful role model, he loved to laugh, and he always seemed to be concerned about the other person, even if he didn’t know you.

  Can we still call people saints?

  Elie Wiesel

  I recently spent some time with the Nobel Peace Prize–winner Elie Wiesel. He is the foremost chronicler of the Holocaust, having been in the death camps as a teenager, where he lost his father, mother, and baby sister.

  He vividly recounts his experience in his book Night. We made plans to meet again, so I felt obligated to read this book. I’m not lacking in imagination, and I’ve never felt the need to read books on the Holocaust, having come from an Orthodox Jewish family that had to flee Europe because of the persecution of the Jews.

  The book was everything I expected, which means it put me in a kind of dark mood I rarely experience. It is hard to imagine that you could be taken from your home to be killed for no reason other than you were Jewish, but of course that’s what happened as much of the world stood idly by. Reading the book forced me to confront something I’ve been avoiding my whole life, the role of President Roosevelt in all of this.

  Here’s what Newsweek’s senior editor Jonathan Alter had to say about that in his recent book about President Roose-velt, The Defining Moment:

  FDR was not entirely negligent. In the face of an isolationist Congress and polls showing that more than 80 percent of the American public were opposed to easing immigration quotas, he raised the specter of the Nazi threat early, and sponsored international conferences on refugees. But Roosevelt did not bring the activist spirit of the Hundred Days to rescuing the Jews. It was never a priority. His 1944 War Refugee Board came years too late. And he made the mistake of listening to military advisors who said that bombing the rail and communication lines to the Nazi concentration camps in Hungary was impractical.

  Jonathan Alter goes on to say: “Although bombing the camps themselves would have killed more prisoners, hitting the railheads—while unlikely to save many Jews—was worth a try.”

  The refugee ship St. Louis was turned away from the southern coast of the United States in 1939 under great congressional pressure. FDR thought that the refugees would be resettled in other countries, but most ended up dying in the Holocaust.

  Eighty percent of the American public didn’t want immigrants, even if they were going to be killed! I don’t know how much of the public at that time grasped that reality, but the president and Congress?!

  Are so many of us inhumane? What other conclusion can you draw? Most of us simply don’t have any serious concern about others in the world who are being mistreated or even killed today! Is this a failure of human nature or of the media to better bring us face-to-face with what none of us want to look at?

  Mark Twain said, “Moral Cowardice… is the commanding feature of the make-up of 9,999 men in the 10,000,” and the experience of much of the world proves him right.

  In accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, Elie Weisel said, “We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere.”

  That remains true today. When you see inhumanity, speak out!

  One of the many things I admire about President (formerly General) Eisenhower is that he made a significant effort to have as many GIs as possible see the corpses stacked like cords of wood in the concentration camps. It seems like it’s just human nature that if something isn’t right in front of us, we don’t think about it. I try as hard as I can not to be that kind of person. I believe I have to try harder.

  When my wife and I later had dinner with Elie Wiesel and his wife, Marion, I told him about our felony murder rule. I told him about a boy who was serving a life sentence with no chance of parole for a crime committed when he was home asleep in his bed, because he had lent his car to his roommate. Elie Wiesel, who has seen every kind of horror, stared at me for a moment, speechless. He then said, with astonishment, “In America?!”

  My Family

  For as long as I can remember I’ve been reading about people who resign from their
positions in different professions and say, “I’m resigning because I want to spend more time with my family.” In most cases none of that is true. They’re not resigning. They’re being fired and are given the courtesy to allow them to say they’re resigning, and in most cases they really don’t want to spend more time with their families.

  My case is different. As I’ve said, I left the movies years ago because I really did want to spend more time with my family. My son had turned six and was going to enter first grade. I didn’t think it would be the best idea for him to continue to travel with my wife and me all over the country.

  Something had to give, so I resigned from the movies so I could spend more time with my family. I began my cable show in the New York area. I always loved to spend time with my family, but as years went by, my son got active in sports. My wife was getting book after book published. She was constantly being asked to write books. I’ve written a lot of books that have been published, but no one ever asked me to write one, so while I wanted to spend more time with my family, my family didn’t really want to spend more time with me. Oh, they love me, but spend more time with me—I don’t think so.

  So the next time I hear some person who’s resigning say he wants to spend more time with his family, someone should ask his family if they want to spend more time with him. Never assume anything.

  My wife and son went on a trip recently. They, of course, invited me to join them, but they know me well enough to know I’d choose to stay home.

  While they were away, I did something I’m not allowed to do when they’re here, which is throw an empty water bottle across the room into a small wicker basket. Even then, I only did it in my study, not in the room in which I’m forbidden to do it. Their will is strong.