by Carl Reiner
It was clear that President Truman’s home stood out from the rest of the houses on the street, in that his was set back at least twenty or thirty feet deeper that the others, and the front lawn was greener and neatly mowed.
We were told by our publicist that Mr. Truman was not well and did not feel up to hosting us for a visit, but he would greet us at the front window for a very limited time. As we made our way up the path to the house, we saw him standing at the window, clad in pajamas. As we approached, the former president opened the window, smiled, and welcomed us. We told him how thrilled we were to meet him and, at someone’s suggestion, we four Hollywood visitors launched into an a cappella rendition of the song, “I’m Just Wild about Harry.” We sang a full chorus at the top of our lungs, and when finished, we waved to the president, who smiled warmly, closed the window, turned, and walked away.
I was happily shocked to discover that a photo of that event magically surfaced and was presented to us … which I proudly present to you.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Barry Lebost Chats with My Badly Toupeed Albert Einstein
My hairline had started to recede when I was in my first Broadway show, Call Me Mister. The first hairpiece I bought was a small strip of hairy lace that successfully replaced the hairs that once defined my widow’s peak. Each year, the lacy hairpieces became fuller and fuller until, by the end of my days on Your Show of Shows and Caesar’s Hour, I had a full-blown toupee sitting atop my head. I am proud to say that the toupees I had made for me were the least-detectable ones in all of show business. I may sound as if I am blowing my own horn or blowing a horn that nobody wants to hear blown, but I will blow it nonetheless.
I have known many actors who wore what they thought were natural-looking, undetectable toupees, and back then, the biggest joke about undetectable toupees was that there was no such thing. To illustrate with a joke of that period:
A man walks up to another man, stares at his forehead for a while, then says, “Sir, I hope this isn’t impolite, but are you wearing a toupee?”
“I am!”
“Really? You know, you can’t tell!”
In my time, I have had many people act surprised when I told them that I was wearing a toupee—and I told everyone. On The Tonight Show, I chatted with Johnny about why I had decided to wear or not to wear my hairpiece when I came on his show. I told him I wore it whenever I felt like appearing younger and handsomer than I was.
I cannot tell you how many letters I received from viewers asking me where they could get a hairpiece like mine, one that “looks so natural.” Actually, I can tell you how many letters I received from viewers—it was at least a dozen. I informed these viewers that to insure your toupee doesn’t make you look like you’re wearing a dead animal on your head, have your toupee maker use one-third the hair he usually does, keep the hairpiece fresh by wearing it only for very special occasions, and then decide that your talent is not enhanced by wearing false hair.
What I finally decided was that it is a lot easier to live life with the hair that grows from your scalp, however sparse it may be.
It was fifty years ago that I handed out that piece of solicited advice—but if one has the inclination and the money, there are a myriad of hair-replacement centers and qualified physicians who will accommodate your need to look even handsomer than you are.
The last time I donned a hairpiece was in the film Ocean’s Thirteen, where Saul Bloom, the character I essayed so adequately, wore a white wig—not to look younger or handsomer but to hide my character’s identity.
I actually supplied the white hairpiece, which, many years earlier, I received as a gift from a Cleveland wigmaker who professed to be a fan of my work on television. He wrote to say that he would be grateful if, in return for the two wigs, I would honor him with a “personally autographed” photo of myself—a pretty lopsided trade, wouldn’t you say? I never dreamed I would ever use those hairpieces but happenstance intervened, and I ended up using both of them. One, as I said, in the big-budget Ocean’s films, shot in Vegas and the hills of Rome, the other, in a no-budget film, shot in my home in the Hills of Beverly.
Barry Lebost, whose name is borne in the chapter title, is my late wife’s nephew and my children’s first cousin. Sixty years ago, my brother-in-law, Eddie Lebost, and his wife, Sylvia, flew to Maine and adopted Barry when he was a few days old.
They had no idea that this cute little bundle they brought home to their Bronx apartment would someday accomplish the following:
At age six: Test the explosive potential of a Fourth of July cherry bomb by tossing it into a bathtub filled with water.
At age fourteen: Experiments with illegal substances.
At age eighteen: Grow up to resemble Elvis Presley.
At age twenty-three: Use an electric fan to demonstrate to close relatives a plan to harness wind as a viable source of energy, and convince those close relatives, cousin George and Uncle Carl, to invest fifty thousand dollars to finance construction of a giant wind turbine.
At age thirty: In 1979, construct and install the Lebost Wind Turbine on the roof of a New York University building to demonstrate how wind power can heat water tanks and illuminate light bulbs.
Barry Lebost astride the Lebost Wind Turbine
You may well ask what all the above, while interesting, has to do with wigs and toupees, and I hasten to respond. This Barry Lebost fellow has recently written a book, which is titled The Universal Properties of Acceleration (Did Einstein Look the Wrong Way?).
In the book, the author presents a cognitive analysis of gravity and how it affects the environment and why it is the principal architect of the universe and why acceleration and gravity can be, and are, misinterpreted. A new theory called ACRET states that the surfaces of the planets are invisibly accelerating toward outer space and demonstrates how Albert Einstein’s Principle of Equivalence guides observers “to look the wrong way.”
But more on that later. We return now to how and why my old Cleveland-bred wig came out of retirement.
In addition to writing The Universal Properties of Acceleration, Barry also wrote an imagined conversation he and Einstein had about gravity and equivalence and arranged to have the conversation between Einstein and himself filmed. Barry would play himself and, having heard the credible German accent I used in Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid when playing Field Marshal Wilfred Von Kluck, he wisely offered me the role of Einstein. It was an offer I could not refuse, but I did hesitate when I saw the wig he expected me to wear. From a shop that sold Halloween costumes, he had purchased a wig that looked like a floor mop.
Luckily for Barry, I fell asleep that night guiltily mulling over my indecision. At six thirty, my overactive “muller” awoke me, and I remembered the two white wigs that my fan, the Cleveland toupee-maker had sent me—and wondered if one of them might help me to become Einstein.
I retrieved the wigs from a hall closet and successfully distressed one of them to match old Herr Einstein’s natural dishevelment. From the second wig, I snipped off a sideburn and fashioned it into a scraggly mustache.
That afternoon, a crew arrived and managed to transform the corner of my living room into a corner of Professor Einstein’s office.
With shelves of handsomely bound books as a backdrop, Barry Lebost and the ghost of Einstein engaged in a spirited and enlightening discussion on gravity. A small sample of it follows:
BARRY LEBOST
“Mr. Einstein, I believe I have found something that you have always been looking for: the proof that gravity and inertia are the same, not approximate, not equivalent, but exactly the same.”
ALBERT EINSTEIN
“I always knew that inertia and gravity were exactly the same, but I could not prove the “exactness.” True exactness would mean that the surface of the planet is exactly the same as an accelerating spaces
hip. It was my original concept because the feeling and sensation a person would have while accelerating at the speed of gravity inside a space vehicle would be exactly the same as the feeling a person would have while standing upon the surface of our planet. But logically, this does not appear to work, because it would also mean that the surface of the planets were accelerating upwards into space…just like the floor of the spaceship…the diameter of the Earth would be getting larger faster and faster. I had to give up this idea of exactness and go with my second choice, which I called Equivalence. Equivalence allowed me to stick with inertia, but just a numerical equivalence of it.”
BARRY LEBOST
“Dr. Einstein, a hundred years after you devised the principle of equivalence, I found the proof for exactness. Your first choice had been right. You did not have to settle for equivalence to make space-time curved exactness was essentially perfect all along.”
The conversation goes on, and Barry makes the point that Einstein’s original theories of the universe both expanding and accelerating, which Einstein doubted and amended, were proven to be correct after all.
I am aware that the imagined discourse between Einstein and my nephew-in-law may be of limited interest to many of you. I, however, am utterly fascinated by it—but by no means do I understand it.
I just realized how far afield I have gone, just to give closure to the history of my life as a toupee wearer.
Since writing those last words, I have become privy to a most exciting development in the life of innovator and inventor Barry Lebost. He and his wife, Alice, spent an evening with me and his cousin Annie, my daughter, where we learned of his new invention, a mosquito-trapping device that is designed to reduce generations of mosquitoes in localized areas. In May of 2012, the US Patent Office issued him a patent for this device, which effectively targets gestating mosquitoes that are about to lay their eggs. This very, very inexpensive device made of cotton mesh, in effect, eliminates the potential of millions of mosquitoes to be born (in subsequent generations).
According to figures from 2008, WHO, the World Health Organization, estimated that there were 250 million malaria cases including 855,000 deaths. Africa accounts for 90 percent of the world’s cases. Before 2008, WHO guessed that there were 500,000 cases and 1 million deaths.
The product Barry Lebost created, Evarcha, is designed to wipe out these generations of potential disease-carrying mosquitoes in localized areas in the most economical fashion possible—and most importantly, without using poisons, insecticides, or gases.
Barry Lebost is my kind of guy!
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Major Maurice Evans Cannot Play a Butler!
One of my happy experiences in what we in show business call show business was my meeting and working with Steve Martin. At this juncture in Steve’s career, he was a tremendously successful stand-up comedian, having toured the country and performed at venues that held as many as forty thousand screaming fans. Steve is a most gifted and civilized human being. I daresay that I’ve had the good fortune to work with quite a few performers who were almost as gifted and civilized. I consider myself to be one lucky, talented director.
I felt that way when I was hired to direct The Jerk. I have been told that discerning critics and moviegoers consider The Jerk, written by Steve, Carl Gottleib, and Michael Elias, to be one of the funniest comedies ever made. I cannot disagree.
During the filming of The Jerk, because Steve and I rode to work together and discussed what would be shot that day, one of my favorite gags was conceived and born. Steve came up with an idea that tickled me so that, as soon as we arrived on the set, we rehearsed it and shoehorned it into the schedule.
To remind those of you who saw the film, and inform those who didn’t, Steve, playing Navin Johnson, a naive farm boy going out into the big world, is being given an important piece of information by his daddy.
“Son,” his daddy says, showing him a can of shoe polish, “this here is Shinola, and that,” he says, pointing to a pile of manure, “is shit!”
When challenged, an unsure Navin makes his old man proud when he demonstrates that he can distinguish shit from Shinola.
It occurs to me that some of our younger readers may never have heard the phrase, “You don’t know shit from Shinola!” Well, now that you have, please feel free to use it whenever some wrong-thinking people need enlightening—like some right-wingers who argue that our country and its citizens would be better off if we got rid of or privatized Social Security and Medicare.
Back to Maurice Evans and The Jerk. In the film, there was a role of an elegant English butler who tends to the needs of a newly rich farm boy who lacks all social graces. Our casting agent excitedly called to say he had the perfect actor to play the butler. I blanched when he told me that the actor was Maurice Evans—the distinguished English stage star who, during the war, was Major Maurice Evans, my commanding officer. It was Major Evans who had arranged for me to be transferred from the Signal Corps to his Army Entertainment Unit in Hawaii. How dare I ask this great man to play a lowly butler?
I flashed on a sketch Sid Caesar and I had done on Your Show of Shows, where a great Broadway star, played by Sid, drinks himself into oblivion and, after years in the gutter, is given a last chance to return to Broadway in the role of a butler. It is a bit part, and he has but one line: “Dinner is served!” His three failed attempts were: “Dinner is severed!” “Dinner is ser-ver-ved!” “Dinner is Sever-ied!”
Maurice Evans’s agent informed me that there were many actors he could recommend, but Mr. Evans requested that he submit him and said he was certain I would want him. I explained to the agent why I was reluctant to offer him a role so beneath his stature. However, upon hearing that Maurice Evans wanted the job to keep his guild membership and his eligibility for the medical benefits our union provided, I acquiesced.
The day Major Maurice Evans arrived on the set, I stopped all work, requested the full attention of the actors, grips, electricians, craft services, and studio personnel, and made them aware of how honored we were that Major Maurice Evans had joined us that day. I informed them that he was my commanding officer during the war, in charge of a company that produced dozens of shows that entertained our troops in the Pacific. I also announced that Major Evans was the first actor in modern times to have produced and starred in a five-hour, uncut version of Shakespeare’s Hamlet—a performance I had the privilege of seeing on Broadway. It was gratifying to hear the healthy response the major received from the crew.
Great actor that he was, Major Evans was as dedicated essaying the role of Steve Martin’s butler as he was performing Hamlet.
During the course of the production, Major Evans bade me to call him Maurice, but I could not bring myself to address my former commanding officer as anything but sir or Major Evans—the army had trained me too well.
Some thirty years ago, at his memorial service, I had the opportunity to salute Major Evans one last time.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Albert Brooks Channeled Harry Houdini
I purchased and read Albert Brooks’s first novel, 2030, The Real Story of What Happens to America and agree with the critics who lauded it. I, among millions of others, know of Albert Brooks’s many extraordinary talents, but thanks to my son, Rob, who was Albert’s friend and teenaged schoolmate, I was privileged to be present when he exhibited a talent we had no idea he possessed.
Since then, I have seen Albert Brooks perform on many television shows, including Johnny Carson’s. Many years ago, on the week I filled in for Johnny as the show’s host, Albert was booked as one of my guests. He arrived that night dressed as a white-faced, Marcel Marceau-type street mime, but instead of doing what mimes do, walking against the wind or attempting to escape from a glass box, this white-faced clown proceeded to behave like a nightclub comic and rattled off a string of mildly funny one-liners. The studi
o audience did not quite get what he was doing, but the band did. We all laughed hard and long enough for the audience to figure out what Albert was doing and joined the party.
When he was just sixteen, the talent he displayed in our living room and the reaction he provoked was of such a nature that I not only remember it to this day but say without equivocation that in my life, there are but a handful of times that I ever laughed as hard. I say that knowing you are aware I have spent many an hour with the other hilariously funny Brooks—the great Mel.
To set the scene: in our living room full of friends, Robbie announced that his buddy, Albert, was going to demonstrate his art as a Harry Houdini-like escape artist.
Albert then requested that I take my handkerchief and fold it so it formed a triangle and then fold it twice more and use it to tie his wrists together. I did so and placed the folded hanky over his wrists, but before I could start making a knot, Albert said, “That’s perfect! Now that my wrists are securely tied, would you stuff a Kleenex into each one of my nostrils!”
With the hanky draped loosely over his wrists, I placed tissues in Albert’s nostrils. Immediately his breathing became labored, and through his tightly clenched teeth, he mumbled almost incoherently, “You see I can’t breathe, and my wrists are securely tied. I am going behind the drapes and free myself in five seconds.”
It sounded like: “Ysee, cnna bre—n m’rits r’scooly ty. ‘m gona git hine de drays n freem fsecns.”
And with that, Albert ducked behind the drapes, and for a good five minutes, not seconds, he moaned and gasped for air, all the while thrashing about violently behind the drapes. The more he moaned and sounded like a man suffocating, the more Estelle and all of our guests roared. I started to lose it when I heard him begging between the gasps and groans that people not help him. I actually left the room because I was laughing so hard, I feared I would damage myself. I peeked into the room a couple of times, hoping he would free himself and make it safe to return. Finally, he fell to the ground and lay face up, gasping for air— the hanky still lying limply over his wrists while he begged for someone to untie him. I obliged by lifting the hanky from his wrists, and as soon as I did, he rubbed his wrists as if he were trying to get circulation back into them. Still gasping for air, he begged me to remove the tissue from his nostrils, and as soon as I plucked them from his nose, he noisily started sucking air into his lungs and thanking me for saving his life.