Authors: Jerry Stiller
The receptionist looked at me in shock and said, “What happened?”
I looked at John’s lifeless body and said, “I think he’s dead.”
She ran into the producer’s office and came running back with the producer.
“What happened?” he asked.
“I think he’s dead,” I said.
At that point Cassavetes jumped up and said, “Do you know how long I’ve been trying to get to see you?”
The producer, his face livid, said, “Get out of here and don’t ever come back again!”
Cassavetes pulled out a flock of 8x10s and threw them in the air.
“Here,” he said. “In case you need me.”
And then we left for Chock Full o’Nuts.
I continued to make rounds constantly.
Word got around that Mike Todd was producing Mexican Hayride with Bobby Clark. I figured that with my musical comedy background I’d be right for Clark’s understudy. Todd’s office on Broadway was there for me to attack. I mustered all my swagger, walked through the room, and approached the woman at the desk.
“I’d like to see Mr. Todd, please.”
“Are you an actor?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“I’m afraid Mr. Todd is out of town, but can I get you a sandwich?”
A sandwich?
“No, thank you,” I said. “I really would like to see Mr. Todd.” I figured they were trying to buy me off when Todd was in the next room. If I took the sandwich I’d never get to see him.
“Well, he’s out of town at the moment. You sure I can’t get you a sandwich.”
“That’s very nice,” I said.
I was totally confused. Rejection could buy you a sandwich?
“Does Mr. Todd always offer sandwiches to actors?” I asked.
“Yes. I’m an actress myself. My name is Belle Flowers.”
“Haven’t I seen you on stage?”
“Yeah,” she said.
“Well, tell Mr. Todd I’ll be back. And thanks.” I didn’t take her up on the sandwich but I walked away with a warm feeling about Mike Todd. I knew this guy understood how tough it was to make rounds, and the gesture of a sandwich made looking for a theater job less painful. Belle Flowers was terrific in her role.
On another day, I decided to visit the Shubert office. I entered the building on West 44th Street. The offices were in the same building as the Shubert Theater. I asked the elevator operator to take me up to see Mr. Shubert. We traveled several floors. The operator opened the door, and I was in the presence of an elegantly coifed woman behind a desk.
“What can I do for you?” she asked.
“I’d like to see Mr. Shubert,” I said.
“Mr. Lee or Mr. Jake?”
“Mr. Lee,” I said without missing a beat.
“Do you have an appointment?”
“No,” I said. “I’m an actor.”
“What’s your name?”
“Jerry Stiller.”
She flipped a switch on the intercom. “Jerry Stiller to see you.”
“Send him in.”
I actually was getting in to see Lee Shubert, the most powerful producer on Broadway. I opened the door. There behind a desk was Lee Shubert. His head was barely visible above the desk.
“Mr. Shubert?”
“Yes?”
“I’m Jerry Stiller.”
“Yes?”
“I’m from Syracuse.”
“Yes.”
“You’re
from Syracuse.”
“Yes.”
“I’m a comedian.”
“Are you working right now?”
“No.”
“When you find work will you call me?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you very much.”
Out on the street I felt the warm glow of success. I couldn’t get over my amazement that I’d actually gotten to meet Lee Shubert.
The Playhouse
Erie, Pennsylvania
March 14, 1951
Dear Mr. Falk:
I hope this letter finds you in fine fettle….
William Liebling, the agent, saw me in the Blackfriars show. He shook my hand and said, “You’re a comedian, all right. You’re going to
be all right.” He said he would certainly keep me in mind if the right thing comes up….
I have been lucky. William Liebling has sent me up for three shows. Two of them I just wasn’t right for,
Billion-Dollar Baby
and
The Gramercy Ghost;
the third show,
Flahooley,
is a new musical by Fred Saidy and Yip Harburg
.
I was sent to see Mr. Saidy, who looked at me and immediately said I was too young. I whipped out some pictures from B.G. [Syracuse production of
The Bourgeois Gentleman],
showing how old I could look under fire. He was very impressed with the pictures, and asked about their history. I told him. He gave me a script and locked me in a room for ten minutes. It was the role of a comic Arab. He had me read, he laughed, then he hollered into the other room, “Hey, Yip, come here and look at this kid.”
I read it over again. They said it was a good reading, but I was too young.
In the meantime Newell Tarrant of the Erie Playhouse arrived in New York. He had me read The
Gentle People.
I read Jonah and some other characters. He seemed impressed—and here I am in Erie.
Your devoted student,
Jerry
Syracuse, New York
March 20, 1951
Mr. Jerry Stiller
The Playhouse
128 West 7th St.
Erie, Pennsylvania
Dear Jerry:
Thank you very much for your letter telling me about your doings. As you quite rightly say, this business has its ups and downs, and the main thing is to hang on. I feel quite sure that you will come through with something in New York before long. I am dropping Liebling a note about
you. Of course he knows you are ready, but an extra word won’t do any harm.
I should think you would find Erie a pleasant and profitable place for the rest of the season. Tarrant is a wonderful person and an especially good theater man. I am sure your stay in Erie will be mutually beneficial. Please give him my warmest regard.
This must be short and hasty, as I am getting ready for my European trip. I fly to Paris on Thursday.
Cordially,
Sawyer Falk
You learn to act by acting, I thought, and I did just that. I pursued employment in the theater the same way a person would look for work as a sand hog. You apply for the job. I was never insensitive about this. I figured you just kept knocking on doors until you were hired. Then you’d act. I had gotten my first Equity role in 1951 by virtue of a good word put in by Professor Falk. He simply called Paul Crabtree, who was with the Theatre Guild, also an ex-Syracusan.
“Hire him, Paul,” Falk said, and Crabtree cast me for a role in
The Silver Whistle,
which starred Burgess Meredith, touring in summer stock. I played a hobo who perched on a wall. We played Fayetteville, East Rochester, and Watkins Glen in New York state. I got my Equity card. My performance must have been college level, but the older members of the cast liked me. Ruth McDevitt, Ann Ives, Fred Ardath—all wonderful performers—treated me like a son. Working with Meredith was like being part of a fairy tale. I never knew he was acting. His language seemed natural and poetical. As his sidekick, Emmett, I was twenty years too young for the role. Meredith would call me “Emmett” on and off stage, which I considered a compliment. It never occurred to me he might not have known my name. On one occasion he called me aside after doing the play for a week and suggested I read the lines a little faster. “Make it all one thought,” he said. “You’ll get a huge laugh.”
“Are you sure of that?” I asked him in a manner bordering on incredulous, questioning his judgment. He looked at me for a full three seconds.
“Try it tonight,” he said.
It did not occur to me that I was questioning the boss of the show.
I thought he was wrong about the reading of the lines. He didn’t try to intimidate me or tell me that because he was the star. He merely said, “Try it.” That night I said the lines as he suggested, making it one thought. The laugh started in the first row of the house and grew like a huge wave as it rolled to the back of the auditorium. I waited for it to subside so that I could continue. It wouldn’t. It lasted for a full twenty seconds.
Finally, Meredith turned his back to the audience and looked up at me, and said in a full voice over the laugh, “I told you if you said it my way you’d get a big laugh.” He then wiggled his ass, which topped the laugh I got.
My learning experience continued at the Erie Playhouse, a cultural oasis in northwestern Pennsylvania. There I first had the opportunity to work with Henderson Forsythe, and learned for the first time the meaning of trust onstage.
In Irwin Shaw’s
The Gentle People,
Hank Forsythe was playing Jonah and I played Philip. We were two Sheepshead Bay residents who plot to kill a racketeer who is trying to shake us down. Opening night, as we sat in a rowboat in the opening scene, waiting for the curtain to rise, Hank leaned forward and whispered, “Tonight, Jerry, talk to me.”
“What?”
I said. I had no idea what he meant.
“Talk to me,” he repeated.
“Haven’t I?” I asked in shock.
“No, you haven’t.” Hank’s eyes stared straight through me.
My initial reaction was anger. People don’t come to see actors talking, they come to see a performance. Why is he telling me this now?
As the curtain rose I realized in that split second that Hank was right. I had never really spoken to anyone onstage; worse yet, I had never listened. I was always Acting, with a capital A. Had my success in college been a gigantic hoax?
Now, before saying my first line, I looked into Hank’s eyes. I knew at that instant he was there to help me. I had never been told this before. From the opening curtain to the play’s end, I had no memory of time. But I did know something wonderful had taken place. The evening sped by. The next day the Erie newspaper review said I was an actor who would someday be heard from.
Late in the 1980s, my son Ben and I were driving back to New York City from Cincinnati, where Ben had finished filming
Fresh Horses
with
Molly Ringwald. On a whim, I said, “Ben, let’s go back by way of Erie, Pennsylvania.” I knew we’d have to detour a couple of hundred miles, but I wanted to share with him some of my early theater experiences at the Erie Playhouse.
It was a foggy Saturday night as we cruised off the interstate into downtown Erie. I could see the town had changed. Lots of malls. I looked for the Playhouse. It was gone. The bar where Hank Forsythe had taught me how to drink boilermakers (another learning experience), the police station, the Playhouse—all missing in action. Something I loved had been stolen.
“Gone, all gone,” I kept muttering. Ben just kept driving. I was talking to myself.
“Wait, there was a peninsula,” I said. “They can’t take away a peninsula.” It was an elbow of land downtown that jutted into Lake Erie, and on that peninsula I had learned my lines. I could talk to myself there and no one would interrupt.
“There was a seafood restaurant where you could get a fish dinner for a buck,” I said to Ben. “This is it—we’re coming to it!”
The street narrowed. It jutted right into Lake Erie. I could smell the lake air. I could see ships all lit up.
Cars were now crawling along behind us and ahead of us. It was midnight. Teenagers in tight jeans and tank tops rode atop the roofs of their Saturday-night chariots. Some sat cross-legged on the hoods, while others lay flat on their backs as if sunning themselves on a private beach to the blare of heavy-metal music.
“Are you hungry, Ben?”
“Sure.”
We pulled out of line, parked, and went in.
It was like entering a nautical museum. The walls had paintings of old sailing ships and lighthouses. The waitress seated us, then lit an imitation oil lamp. Pad and pencil in hand, she asked if we would like anything to drink.
“A Diet Coke,” Ben said.
As she started to write, she looked at me and said, “Are you …”
“Yeah,” I admitted, figuring she recognized me from television. I no longer felt like a dinosaur. If nothing else, fame saves you from extinction.
“Morey Amsterdam! What are you doing in Erie?”
“I’m Jerry Stiller,” I said, correcting her. “I spent two seasons at the Playhouse in the fifties. This is my son,” I said.
“He looks like you. Are you in theater too?” she asked.
“Yeah,” Ben said, expressing proper humility.
“What street was the theater on? Was it Sixth Street?” I asked.
“Seventh Street,” she said. “It’s gone.”
“Did you ever go there?”
“Lots of times. We loved it.”
I never asked if she remembered seeing me in anything.
When we finished I paid the check and left a nice tip.
“Tell Mary Tyler Moore hello,” the waitress said, smiling. She still hadn’t got it straight that I wasn’t Morey Amsterdam from
The Dick Van Dyke Show
.
“I will,” I said. “I’ll tell her you asked about her.”
Ben and I took one last look at the cars circling in the peninsula, then left Erie for New York.
It must have been somewhere around Thanksgiving of 1951 that I heard someone at the Cromwell Drugstore, an aspiring-actors’ hangout at Radio City, mention that Frank Corsaro was directing the national company of
Peter Pan
and was looking for pirates who could sing and dance. I had seen Jean Arthur and Boris Karloff do the Leonard Bernstein version on Broadway.
“They’re looking for someone short,” Howie Dayton, an aspiring actor who was short, said.
“Where’s the audition?”
“The Majestic.”
I arrived at the theater just as the casting call was over. I asked the stage manager, Morty Halpern, if the show had been completely cast. “I don’t have an appointment, but I’m funny,” I said.
He smiled. “Do you sing?”
“Kinda.”
“Can you dance?”
“A little.”
“Well, you’ve got to do both,” he said.
“Let me audition. I won’t disappoint you.”
Halpern seemed sympathetic. “Okay, wait here,” he said, walking out onto the stage.
“Can you see one more person?” he asked into the darkened seats.
“We’re all set in the casting,” a voice answered from the back of the theater.