Authors: Jerry Stiller
The first show of the season was Garson Kanin’s
Born Yesterday,
starring Frank Stevens as Harry Brock, the bullying junk-king. My job for that week was to locate props and furniture for the show, and play the role of a barber. I had no lines. I simply had to lather Harry Brock’s face and shave him while another apprentice shined his shoes. In the course of driving a pickup truck to Rockford, Illinois, to locate props and furniture, I created my character. In this small role I saw a chance to create something funny. I modeled my barber after Henry Armetta, a movie comedian. He was Italian-American, with an exaggerated accent, and had one shoulder that that always seemed to droop as he walked.
Since little or no rehearsal was set aside for apprentices, I was told on the night of the opening just to walk on with my mug and shaving cream, and get off. Mr. Stevens had done the play before and was familiar with the routine. That night I made my entrance with a pronounced limp and sporting a black mustache, my shoulder hunched like Henry Armetta.
“Gimme a shave,” Stevens barked, staring at me with disbelief. I mixed the lather till it foamed, and ad-libbed, in broken Neapolitan, “Coming right uppa, Mr. Brocka.”
“Make it snappy,” Stevens urged.
I lathered his face with the shaving cream, and just as he started to speak his lines, the brush “accidentally” fell into his mouth. He looked at me, hate in his eyes, foam spewing from his mouth. The audience snickered. The cast was in shock. Stevens managed to wipe the foam from his mouth and said in a whisper to someone onstage, “Where did
he
come from?”
The audience seemed sympathetic to Mr. Stevens. When the act ended, no one said a word to me. The next morning the producer called
me into his office and asked what I’d had in mind when I was putting shaving soap in Harry Brock’s mouth. I told him that I felt the role of the barber, though small, allowed some leeway to play around. “I guess Mr. Stevens is upset,” I said.
“Yes, he’s upset all right. He wants me to fire you.”
“Well, I’m sorry,” I said, “but that’s the way I see the part.”
He paused, taking note of my seriousness. “Well, I’m going to have to let you go.”
“Why?” I asked. “I’m an actor. The theater is a place where you can try things you wouldn’t do in real life.”
He looked at me for a moment, didn’t say anything, and started to walk away.
“Are you going to fire me for trying to be funny?” I asked as he reached the door.
“No, Jerry, I can’t fire you for that. I’m letting you go because you tore a piece of furniture when you brought it in from Rockford.”
He was right. I
had
ripped a couch. I was given bus fare back to New York and $35. It just so happened that Maryanna Siskind, an actress working in the following week’s show, was also fired. She was a tall, dark-haired girl whose only previous stage experience had been the role of Mary Magdalene in a tour of
The Passion Play
. She was in tears when she too was given her Shady Lane walking papers.
I asked her what she was going to do.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I live in Chicago, but I hate going back home a failure in the theater.”
Her despair made me feel like something of a hero. “Look,” I said, “there are a lot of stock companies in Wisconsin and Illinois.”
“Where?”
“There’s a theater in Williams Bay, Wisconsin. Let’s give it a try.”
Maryanna said okay.
I quickly packed and said good-bye to my Marengo landlady, Mrs. Peterson.
“What happened?” she asked.
“Oh, you’ll hear about it. What do I owe you?”
“Nothing,” she said. She must have guessed how hard up I was. I told her I was hitchhiking and asked her the best way to Williams Bay. She gave me the route.
A few minutes later, Maryanna and I were on the highway with our suitcases, just like Claudette Colbert and Clark Gable in
It Happened One Night,
except that Maryanna was a full eight inches taller than me. Her beautiful face got us some quick rides (just like Claudette Colbert’s legs), and we arrived a few hours later at a church in Williams Bay, where a community theater was rehearsing a production of
Two Blind Mice
. We walked in. The director, a young man named Sam Johanson, was looking for someone to play the lead, the Melvyn Douglas role. When the local people finished auditioning, I approached Johanson and asked if Maryanna and I could read. To my amazement, he handed me a script. Before I finished my first speech, he shouted, “He’s got it! I want him for the Melvyn Douglas part!”
At that pronouncement, the members of the resident company bolted out of their seats, and a fight erupted. They were infuriated by his having cast someone (me) who had just walked in off the street. Maryanna and I just sat there as the mood grew angrier and uglier. Finally Sam Johanson said, “I’m the director here, and I make the decisions. I think this fellow is right for the role, and if you don’t go along with it, I quit.”
I couldn’t believe what was taking place. Here was this man I’d never before met in my life, quitting his position over me.
“Come on, let’s go, we’re leaving,” he said. The three of us strode out of the church. As we hit the street I said, “You’re not quitting on account of us? You know, we’ve just been fired from the Shady Lane. We’re on a roll.”
“No, it’s more than that. I’m the director and I know I’m right. I just can’t let this ride.”
I said, “Well, I guess I’m hitchhiking down to Chicago now. You want to come along?”
“No thanks. But you can try the Lake Zurich Playhouse. It’s on the way.”
“We will,” I said, thanking him. “Can I get your address?” I asked. “I’d like to send you a note.”
“I have no address,” Johanson said. He disappeared up the street. I never saw him again.
Maryanna and I were back on the highway.
“Wow,” I said, laughing. “He really wanted me. A guy quit on account of me and he never saw me before in his life. What do you think of that?”
“I think I’m going back to Chicago,” Maryanna said.
“Come on, let’s try the Lake Zurich Playhouse first.”
She looked at me a little uncertainly, then said yes.
That night we arrived at Lake Zurich. Although we knew no one at the Playhouse, out of the goodness of their Midwestern hearts they fed us and put us up for the night. During the night we were almost eaten by mosquitoes, and I decided that even if I were offered work, I could not survive another night of those little dive bombers. Maryanna was in agreement.
The next morning, when Maryanna and I arrived at the Loop in Chicago, we said good-bye. We had never slept together or even kissed during the brief period we knew one another. We were friends. She may have played Mary Magdalene in
The Passion Play,
but she had no passion for me.
In Chicago I found a room in a baronial brownstone on North Wellington, just off Lake Shore Drive. I had enough in my pocket for two weeks’ rent. I loved the quiet, tree-lined street and living in what felt like a castle. I could easily see myself surviving indefinitely on liverwurst and Wonder bread. The craziness of the previous few days only whetted my appetite for new adventures.
Early the next day, I hustled down to the lakefront to see if they were doing any casting at
Frontiers of Freedom,
a pageant at the Chicago Railroad Fair. The pageant was an extravaganza, pure Americana with live music, choreographed and performed with great precision. It had Columbus discovering America, barges moving up and down the Erie Canal, a race between a horse and a Tom Thumb steam engine, Lincoln signing the Emancipation Proclamation, a Pony Express rider carrying the mail, and a Keystone Kops sequence.
Walking around, I learned that the director of the pageant was Joan Woodruff, who had taught dance at my youthful stomping grounds, the Henry Street Playhouse on New York’s Lower East Side. I located her office and introduced myself. She remembered me and asked what I was doing in Chicago.
“Looking for a job.”
“You were fifteen when I saw you last.”
“Yeah. I took it up. Acting!”
“We don’t pay much around here, Jerry, but where can I reach you?”
My heart jumped. Then out of the blue she asked, “Do you know anything about horses?”
“No. I’m from New York.”
“Well, that’s good, because you’re not afraid of them, are you?”
“No,” I said recklessly. “Of course not.”
“We need somebody to stop the Pony Express horse.”
“Hey, I can do that.”
“Okay, you’re hired. You start tomorrow. You get $55 a week. You also play William Penn, a Keystone Kop, and an Indian, and you drive Tom Thumb.”
“Why are you giving me this job?”
“Because no one is willing to stop the horse. Go out and watch, and let me know how you feel about it.”
I went into the grandstand, reveling in my luck. Soon I would be part of all this.
Three days ago I was out of work,
I thought,
and tomorrow I stop a horse and I’m getting fifty-five bucks a week. I’m making more than my father.
When the Pony Express rider roared across the stage at full speed, the crowd hushed. The rider, a sack stuffed with mail on his back, barely broke stride as he gracefully switched from one horse to another. He sprinted alongside the fresh mount and with one hand reached for the saddle bow, then pulled his body upward, in fetal position. As the new horse picked up speed, the rider thrust his legs downward, just long enough to propel his body skyward. There was a discernible gasp from the spectators as the rider’s legs arced high over the horse and split apart. Only his hands, locked on the pommel, kept him from leaving the planet. Like rubber bands, his arms stretched and pulled him safely back to earth—as beast and man galloped westward to grand applause.
My job was to stop the first horse and walk it into the stable. Simple enough. “Don’t be afraid,” the stable man told me. “Just grab the reins and lead him back. Only, when it rains he sometimes slips and falls on the train tracks. When he does that, get out of the way. Just hang onto those reins.”
How do I do both? I asked myself. But I nodded yes.
At the first show I went from being an American Indian to William Penn, complete with powdered white wig and buckled shoes. The quick change came close to disaster. No one had given me a belt for my William
Penn pants. The wig did not fit. I ran onstage discovering Pennsylvania while pulling up my pants. The audience applauded as, taking wide, wide steps, I exited. It took a long time for me to get offstage.
I then changed into my cowboy outfit, ready to stop the horse. The rider, whom I’d never met or rehearsed with, came galloping down the asphalt pavement. I jogged far enough behind the animal so as not to frighten him. As the rider switched, I grabbed the horse’s reins.
“Come on, horse,” I said. “Come with me.”
The horse stood motionless.
“Please,” I said, half-begging. “Please come with me.”
The horse finally obeyed. I could hear the audience cheering the Pony Express guy right on cue as he rode off on Horse No. 2.
At the next performance the horse—my horse—slipped on the pavement. It had rained between shows. He landed squarely on his side. The sound of him hitting the pavement was frightening. He got up by himself. I never let go of the reins, although I was only inches away from becoming a steak sandwich … rare.
The finale of the pageant depicted the glories of America at the turn of the last century. It was a colorful montage of the period. The stage was filled with automobiles, riverboats, horses, actors, singers, dancers, alive with the sounds of boat whistles, band music, fireworks, and a performance by an actor named Richard Lee in the Keystone Kops sketch that stole the show.
Physically, Richard Lee was a man of extraordinarily large proportions. He seemed like someone you’d meet in the pages of a Hemingway novel. He had gray curly hair and muttonchop whiskers that curled below his chin as if they were about to shake hands. He immediately made me feel at home, asking, “How did you get started, Jerry?” as if I were a big-time actor.
I said, “I’ve just graduated college, and I want to become a comedian.” Richard didn’t laugh at me or put me down.
“Listen,” he said, “we’ll rehearse together. We’ll have some fun. You saw the Keystone Kops scene with me and the other guy. You just do what he did—arrest me and take me into custody.”
The Keystone Kops scene in the finale of the pageant starts on a peaceful Sunday afternoon. Ladies in bustles, gentlemen wearing dusters and spats. An air of civility exists until Richard, half-potted, wearing an orange blazer, goggles, an aviator cap, and driving a backfiring Stutz
Bearcat that’s billowing smoke, breaks the tranquillity. Keystone Kops fly out of the woodwork to restore order. Resisting arrest, Lee is hilarious. His comedy was the size of Greek tragedy. I wondered if I could match him.
Just before the show, Richard, as if to boost my spirits, remarked, “You know, I’m not an actor, Jerry.”
“What are you?”
“I fooled around a little in the Navy,” he said.
I tried to play it cool. This guy was funny and he had never taken a lesson in his life. What good was I, I asked myself, if I couldn’t be funnier than him? What the hell was I doing? Stopping a horse, I told myself.
I changed from my cowboy outfit to my Kop outfit for my entrance in the Keystone scene. In this buffoonery I try to take charge and restore order. Richard, spotting me, beckons me with his finger. I’m half his height but I naively obey. He bounces me off his stomach like a Ping-Pong ball. I fly high in the air, landing on my bum. He laughs uproariously, as does the crowd. I then proceed to chase and apprehend him, escorting him by the seat of the pants to the paddy wagon. As I open its door, he grabs
me
by the bottom and tosses me into the wagon. The audience is in stitches. As a coup de grace he leaps onto the rear running board, signaling the paddy driver to drive off. As the driver hits the accelerator and the wagon bolts, Richard fakes teetering backward, then lunges at the last possible moment, miraculously grabbing at two vertical poles attached to the running board. He lifts his leg like Nijinsky doing an arabesque as the wagon pulls away. He smiles genially as the audience applauds.