by Robert Klein
Frieda looked at Benny, rolled her eyes, and said, “Please don’t remind me, dear.”
I helped my mother clear the soup plates, giving us a chance to talk alone. When we were safely inside the kitchen, Frieda let loose: “Yoy ishtunem, I thought I would die,” she said, her right hand over her heart for emphasis. Then she began wringing her hands furiously: “The girl walks in the house, and he asks her if she likes Hitler. Did you ever? He’s crazy, I know this for years now.”
“I don’t know, Ma, she seems none the worse for wear. She actually laughed about it, even said he was cute.”
“Yeah, cute a shegedbeh,” Frieda said, which in Hungarian means “cute, my ass.”
“She’s very understanding, Ma. It’s like this European thing. I don’t know, she’s just more mature than the American girls I know. She’s been through more, taken more risks. You know what I mean? She’s a real woman.”
“Let’s take these plates in, because he’s probably chewing her ear off,” she said. We returned to the foyer with plates of chopped chicken livers and eggs on a bed of lettuce and tomato. Since she was entertaining, Frieda had even used an ice-cream scoop to give the chopped liver an even, well-rounded appearance, and had placed a garnish of parsley on each. Parsley was not an everyday thing in the Klein household.
Benny was in the middle of his “how worried I am about my son wanting to be an actor” routine, which included the “fall back on teaching” theory. His nonstop conversation at least afforded the famished girl a chance to eat. “Oh, Mrs. Klein, this pâté is delicious,” she said. “Oh, ‘pâté,’ ” Benny said, as his pinky went up in a crude, faggy high-society shtick. “Fancy-shmancy name for chopped liver.”
“Which kind of liver, pork liver, or from a cow?” said our guest in earnest.
“Pork liver? Ecch, fuy. Nah, this is chicken livers with chopped egg,” said Benny, eating voraciously, and leaving a nice dollop of liver on his upper lip. “Delicious, oyon feenum,” he said to Frieda. She loved it so when people enjoyed her cooking, most particularly because she did not like to cook. Of course, we knew that praise from Benny was infrequent at best; and for him to acknowledge her culinary accomplishment, or any accomplishment, was one of her little victories in the saga of their marriage. “My wife makes the best chopped liver I ever tasted. It’s not too livery, you know what I mean? You go and have other people’s liver—or in a restaurant—it’s too, I don’t know . . . livery. She puts in just enough egg.”
“Couldn’t that make it too eggy?” I asked.
“Nah, it’s never too eggy.”
“But Pop, if you don’t like the taste of liver, why eat it?” I said.
“Who said I don’t like the taste of liver?”
“You did. You complimented Mother’s liver by saying it’s not too livery. And you only eat filet of sole burned to a crisp because it’s not too fishy. Elizabeth, listen to this, the only fresh vegetable he eats is tomatoes. Can you believe it? He’s never eaten a salad in his life, he thinks lettuce is for cows.” Elizabeth laughed, but it was true. Benny ate only meat and potatoes, disdained any and all greens, and couldn’t figure out why he moved his bowels once every two weeks. Perhaps it was because he had the diet of the average adult puma.
Frieda removed the appetizer plates, including the one lonely lettuce leaf, and I assisted by getting a pitcher of water to refill the glasses. “Please let me help,” Elizabeth said, and again Frieda demurred: “No, darling, you just sit and eat, we’re fine.” Once in the kitchen, Frieda placed a huge amount of her stuffed cabbage on a platter and a good-size pot roast on another, then mashed the fried onions with paprika into the potatoes, which made a lovely orange color punctuated with black polka dots of charred onion. The old standby canned peas, having been poured from the can into a pot, were now poured from the pot into a decorative (for company only) bowl. Some sour pickles and, yes, sauerkraut were placed on a relish dish. The whole thing smelled wonderful.
We returned with the main course unnoticed, due to Benny’s intense and persistent verbal barrage, which, to my horror, had turned once again to World War II. “I say to you they had to know people were being murdered. I say to you: What did they think was happening to all those families who were being loaded onto trucks and taken away? Where were they going, a Ping-Pong match?” My father would often preface an opinionated statement with “I say to you,” to give it more gravitas. True, he could also be found using it in less important contexts, in a kind of pompous pretense of knowledge. For example: “I say to you, that the Birds Eye canned peaches are superior to the Del Monte and got them beat a mile.” But on this occasion Benny was really rolling, and he wasn’t talking about canned fruit. He was engaged in a crusade to win the ethical debate of World War II. Unfortunately, he was debating himself, his would-be opponent being reticent to argue, and entirely sympathetic to his point of view.
“I say to you, the German people were one hundred percent behind him.”
Elizabeth did not immediately respond, but she let out a quiet sigh. “Dad, cut it out. She doesn’t have to answer for Germany, for Chrissakes, she was three years old.”
“No, Robert, don’t be angry. I cannot speak for Germany, but I can speak for myself. Your father has asked honest questions . . . emotional questions.” Elizabeth took Benny’s hands in hers and looked into his eyes, much to his discomfort. “What the Nazis did to millions of people can never be forgiven. It can never be forgotten, though some Germans would like to, I know. Believe me when I say that there are many Germans, particularly the young, who believe this, as I do, Mr. Klein. We Germans—we must do everything to prove we are worthy of redemption in the future. In my heart, there is so much sadness and guilt for what happened . . . never mind that I was a child. There is a collective feeling of guilt, even among the innocent, because one is German. Do you believe me?”
Benny would not relent—he was a man who had something to get off his chest. He had always made these points to an audience of the convinced: relatives and friends 99 percent of whom were Jews. Here he was being given the never-to-be-imagined opportunity to tell it to a German. “It’s not you, it’s not your fault. It’s them,” he said. “There’s plenty of them walking around in Germany—criminals, murderers—they claim they never knew anything about what was going on.”
“This may be true, but please believe me that there are more Germans who are not that way.”
“Eh, what’s the use of talkin’,” my father said with disgust. I had heard this expression all my life, in my father’s disagreements with his wife and children. It was what he said when futile anger and a kind of fatigue came over him and defeated him, and the argument was over.
There was a long silence in the room. A very long silence. Finally, I could hear my mother inhale, about to speak. I put my finger to my lips and silenced her. Then something happened that I still can’t figure out to this day. Benny put his head down and began to sob. I could see a tear under Elizabeth’s eye as well. My mother and I looked at each other, decided not to be embarrassed, put down the platters of food we had been holding all this time, which were heavy in more ways than one, and proceeded to put a comforting hand on the shoulder of our respective mates. Both recovered quickly in the spirit of moving on and not wanting to make a big deal out of it.
My father spoke first to Elizabeth: “I’m sorry, honey, I felt so sad for a minute there. I’m sorry. Let’s eat.”
“I also felt emotional, I can tell you. So do not apologize, Mr. Klein.”
“Call me Benny.”
“You do not need to be sorry, Benny.”
“All right,” I said. “Let the world war be over and let the eating war begin.”
The tears had put a temporary crimp in some appetites, but soon enough, the stuffed cabbage and pot roast were heavily dented, and Elizabeth couldn’t stop raving about the Hungarian potatoes. After a dessert of pastries and coffee, Elizabeth asked my mother to play some more piano. Benny’s spirits wer
e sufficiently improved that he took out his violin and did an assortment of shticks and funny faces that had the patina of many years of performance, though some were improvised. His horrible violin playing by itself was hilarious, and he was a big living room hit, as usual. He directed most of his comedy toward our guest. One could almost say he was flirting with her, and who could blame him? “You know something, honey? You’re a real mensch,” Benny said to Elizabeth. It was one of his highest compliments.
“That is a good thing, no?” she said.
“Are you kiddin’? Of course it’s a good thing.”
Frieda played her last song—“Small Hotel”—followed by the procession to the front door. Elizabeth said, “Thank you so much for your kindness and hospitality, and Benny, thank you for the vigorous conversation. Ach, you are such a talented family. God bless you.”
In the elevator on the way down, we caught it lucky and were alone, a situation I took full advantage of. I could not wait to put my hands on her, to kiss her, this wonderful girl: a first for me, by the way, kissing in the elevator I had spent so much of my life in.
Later, in the narrow bed, squished delightfully together, we spoke less than usual but were communicating more. The day’s events had made us more thoughtful, more confident, as if something important had been accomplished, a hurdle overcome. It was not the conventional idea of seeking parental approval or bringing home one’s intended to meet the folks. It was more the feeling of a huge object—a glacier comes to mind—being moved a short distance when no one believed it could be done. This was really good stuff. “Good night, Robertzien,” she said. “Good night, my darling mensch,” I said. There was a giggle and a squeeze, and the harpsichord played The Well-Tempered Clavier, and that’s all I remember.
Chapter Thirteen
The Second City
Sometimes in a life and career, there is a conjunction of events and circumstances that couldn’t be better timed. This was the case when I was cast in The Second City, the Chicago-based theater group whose stock in trade was and is the improvised word and movement. By the time I left the company in May 1966, after a tenure of fourteen months, my skills as a performer had blossomed geometrically.
In the fall of 1964, after the first summer of the World’s Fair, I had resumed substitute teaching to pay the rent. Elizabeth had gone back to Germany, planning to return when the fair reopened in the spring; we were busy and content to write to each other. Once again, I received a call from James Burrows, this time asking if I would like to perform in a music and comedy review he was directing. It was being performed on weekends at the Hofbrau House, a restaurant in New Haven, and I would be replacing a Yale undergrad who, Jimmy explained, had suffered a nervous breakdown. After assurances that the young man’s breakdown had not been caused by his participation in this show, I jumped at the chance to participate in anything resembling show business; unlike my gofer job at the fair, this Hofbrau gig paid thirty-five dollars a weekend, plus some excellent sauerbraten and red cabbage. It required a tuxedo, which I did not have, so Jimmy lent me his for the performances, though the sleeves and pants were embarrassingly short.
I stayed at Jimmy’s apartment on the weekends, and I remember listening to a lot of Charles Aznavour and Edith Piaf, whose high-drama approach to singing held some appeal for me then, the post Drama School boy. I also remember that after a while, a Piaf overdose could begin to sound like an eighth-inch drill screaming into a hunk of tempered steel. My favorite Aznavour cut was “I Saw Venice Turn Blue,” which, in his heavily accented English, emerged as “I Saw Veneeese Turn Blue.”
The cast in the review consisted of two guys in tuxes and two girls in gowns, with piano accompaniment, and material that was Julius Monk and the Upstairs at the Downstairs stuff so popular in New York at the time: largely liberal political satire whacking Lyndon Johnson, much of it sung. The pall on political humor following JFK’s murder was lifting, and a president with huge ears and a profound cartoon honker, who had an affinity for receiving important people while he sat on the toilet, was a satirist’s dream.
This show was right in my wheelhouse: jokes with sharp punch lines that required timing, and snappy songs with funny choreographed body movements just this side of dancing. And ooh, those dumplings and red cabbage with schnitzels all around.
After about four weekends, Jimmy announced that an agent from the William Morris Agency would attend our show. Jimmy’s father, Abe, had been a client for over thirty years and wanted them to see what the next Burrows generation was up to. If the agent happened to notice one of the actors, what was the harm in that? I thought of it as a golden opportunity, and I vowed to make an impression. I had never doubted my talent in the year and a half since Yale; I had doubted myself and my ability to self-promote. Of course, I had not had a role significant enough for an agent or producer to be invited to see me. Even if I’d had a decent role, who knew agents or producers to ask?
The Saturday-night show that the agent attended was very well received, with lots of laughs and curtain calls. Jimmy Burrows complimented the cast on such a good show. Afterward, the agent took me aside, and I anticipated the beginning of the road to stardom. Instead of complimenting me, he began raving about the goulash soup and the dumplings. I was terribly disappointed, thinking he hadn’t liked my performance and was making small talk to avoid discussing it. Suddenly, as he looked into my crestfallen face, he broke out laughing. “Just kidding,” he said. “You were good, very good.”
His name was Bernie Sohn (most William Morris agents seemed to be named Bernie then). He had signed Alan Arkin and Barbara Harris out of The Second City a few years earlier, and they were becoming stars. He explained that the producers were coming to New York to find actors for their company, which at that time operated exclusively in Chicago and occasionally on tour. He thought I’d be perfect for them. So did I. I had seen them perform on The David Susskind Show: Alan, Barbara, Severn Darden, Andrew Duncan, Mina Kolb, and Anthony Holland. I’d also seen an article about them in Life magazine. They were sometimes political, always cutting-edge on the culture, with an emphasis on improvising initially, the set material they performed onstage. And they were funny. Oh, they were smart funny. Members of the troupe were already being snatched up by the movies and television. Mike Nichols, Elaine May, and Shelley Berman, who emerged from a precursor of The Second City called the Compass, were being deservedly hailed as comedy geniuses.
While I desperately wanted a career in show business, I did not much care for what I perceived to be the gaudy, hyped, mindless side of it. I wanted a hipper, more enlightened approach, if I had my druthers. At that point in time, I had no druthers and would have been fortunate to be booked as a costumed mascot at a supermarket opening, dressed as an onion roll. The Second City represented to me a kind of thoughtful show business with brains, and the maximum application of imagination. I was a bit radicalized politically then as well, though not as much as a few of my Trotskyite friends. I wanted, if possible, to do interesting and meaningful work, to be more than a song-and-dance man. There was some youthful, idealized, have-your-cake-and-eat-it arrogance in all of this; but if you don’t reach for the moon when you’re twenty-two, when will you? In any case, if I could have planned it out for myself on paper, The Second City would have been my first choice for my first significant theatrical job: a superb training ground in which to learn, flower, be discovered, and, not incidentally, go on to become a star.
Sometime in February 1965, I arrived in the large conference room at William Morris, where about thirty-five actors were gathered to vie for the four jobs pending. Bernie Sahlins and Sheldon Patinkin, the owner-producer and director, respectively, ran the audition. The participants suggested subjects for improvisation to two actors, who would come up with something on the spot. Thus, we found ourselves working with a total stranger in front of an audience composed of our desperate competition, with every incentive not to laugh and with, therefore, a pronounced tendency to put forth th
e most ball-busting ideas for improvisations that they could conceive.
Though I was improvising with a stranger, it was my good fortune that my stranger was an original: a brilliant, enigmatic comedic actor named Fred Willard. He didn’t look like a comedian, with his matinee-idol good looks and fit physique. There was, at first blush, a wholesome, straight quality about him. He looked ready to play ball at a moment’s notice, like a guy who had never smoked a joint in his life. We introduced ourselves to the group and to each other and proceeded to perform a scene based on their suggestion about a folksinger auditioning for a club owner. First I was the singer and Fred was the proprietor. He suggested weird prerequisites for my getting the job, like wearing gray and singing songs about cow punching and roping hogs. I played a middle-class boy who tries to convince the boss that despite his protected upbringing and college degree, his music of pain, suffering, and deprivation, and his denim work shirt, are totally authentic. I mimed an air guitar and wailed blues and Kingston Trio riffs about hopping freight trains and working on chain gangs, a theme I would return to in my first album, Child of the Fifties, with the song “Middle Class Educated Blues.” We switched roles, and I became a hustling New York nightclub owner to Fred’s cowboy singer: a study in contrasts, a culture clash. He was cornpone and horse manure, and I was a progressive Jewish folk-song fan. “Woody Guthrie and me was like brothers. He sang at my kid’s bar mitzvah, for Chrissakes,” I said. The avaricious little bastards watching us were laughing in spite of themselves. I could hardly keep from cracking up at times myself, looking at Fred’s earnest face and listening to his deceptive mid-America delivery.