Authors: Jerry Stiller
I quietly locked in two thoughts: (1) we’ll all die; (2) we’ll live. It all depended on what was at the bottom of the hill. I realized there was nothing I could do. So I turned off the ignition, hoping that by some miracle this would stop the car, then just sat back. We kept shooting along. It was
eerie. No sound. I could see the bottom of the hill now. The road intersected with a main highway. There was a traffic light. I figured if we had the green, we’d live. If the light turned red as we hit the intersection and a car was coming across our path, we’d probably be killed. I had enough time to ponder this.
I looked at Anne and started to curse quietly. “Fucking seventy-five-dollar car. I thought it was a bargain.”
I was counting down the seconds to when we would reach the traffic light. A quarter of a mile to go. I could now see moving cars.
“It was all the money we had,” Anne said as she touched my hand.
I turned to look over my shoulder at our cats and our dog.
They’ll all live,
I thought.
Animals don’t die in car crashes.
The speedometer read sixty-five miles an hour as we sailed through the red light. Miraculously, no cars were coming from either direction. As our $75 baby hit the flat straightaway, we started to slow. Now the brakes were working again. I was shaking, my shirt was soaked with perspiration, and I wanted to cry. I looked at Anne. Had this really happened? I knew somebody was watching over us.
When we drove the car into a nearby gas station and described what had happened, the attendant pointed to the four-wheel-drive transmission with its special box, which I never paid any attention to. It was a feature that was meaningless to me. The attendant explained that when engaged manually this four-wheel-drive shift could act as a kind of brake and would slow the car when going downhill. I was unaware until that moment what those gears were for. I’m an actor; what do I know from gears? I thanked him, and we continued on our way.
Safely home from St. Louis, Anne and I started working on our own using stuff we learned. Bob Weiner, a young producer, called. He said we could open in a new cabaret in Chicago doing a revue. “I can guarantee you six months’ work at five hundred bucks a week.” It was a fortune. So on Bob’s recommendation, Oscar Marienthal hired us to open in
Medium Rare
at the Happy Medium on Rush Street right off Delaware. We stopped working on our act.
Medium Rare
was a compilation of the best songs and sketches lifted from the sophisticated Julius Monk and Ben Bagley revues of that era. Oscar, who owned Mr. Kelly’s and The London House, was a gentle, bear-like man, a benign father figure in the tough Chicago nightclub world.
After two weeks of rehearsal, we opened.
Medium Rare
got mixed notices. We thought surely we would close. Following the opening-night performance, Oscar, director Bill Penn, producer Bob Weiner, and the actors gathered in the darkened cabaret. Oscar started reading the reviews. The cast was waiting for the ax to fall.
“I thought it was a good show,” Oscar said, looking around for some agreement.
“Yes,” we all softly agreed.
“They call it my white elephant.” After a long silence, he said, “I’m going to keep the show open. I believe in it and in all of you.”
We were stunned. “What about the million you invested in this place?” Bob Weiner asked.
“It’s only money, kids,” Oscar said with a smile.
The company adjourned to Mammy’s, an all-night restaurant on the corner of Rush and Elm. At 2
A.M.
Mammy’s would still be alive with the likes of Kaye Ballard, Dave Lambert, Jon Hendricks, Annie Ross, Phil Tucker, Norman Wallace, Jack E. Leonard, Sam Levene, Molly Berg, and other players from touring Broadway shows, talking away the night. Entertainers, mob guys, and hookers were all downing 2
A.M.
breakfast, waiting for the sun to rise before finally giving up and going to bed. It was pure Chicago.
Oscar’s belief paid off.
Medium Rare
became a hit. It ran for years. Anne and I looked to save $25,000 in six months.
“Now we have enough money to have a baby,” Anne said to me one night after we’d taken our final bow.
I silently panicked.
“I’m not waiting for the security of a TV series,” she said. “Playing mother to Squeaky, Sniffles, and Crab is like playing New Haven. I want real kids.”
We had never spoken of children before. We were show folk. I suddenly realized that the only people I’d ever cared about other than myself and Anne was the audience. It was a shock to hear Anne’s pronouncement. Suddenly, I was being told that I was to be a father, with all its consuming responsibilities.
“If you really love me, you’ll go along with this,” Anne said. “Doesn’t it mean anything that I care enough about you to want to have kids?”
I could see that my dream of our becoming the Great American comedy team would have to take a backseat to the realization that my life did
not depend solely on getting laughs. Being on stage should not take away from being a dad, I told myself. So I started working to become one.
When Anne became pregnant,
Medium Rare
had been running for three months. There was no doubt in our mind about the night when Amy was conceived.
Five months later, Anne’s large appearance on stage turned each sketch into a pregnancy joke. In one scene she played Medea’s nurse, rocking in a chair, knitting, as she chided Medea about Jason. In another bit, “Poet’s Corner,” she played a ninety-year-old woman who wrote erotic verse. When she got up to recite her poem, the audience, seeing her huge belly, was wiped out before she spoke her first line.
Although we were signed for a year, Oscar reluctantly admitted that he would have to replace us because of the pregnancy. He promised us a gig at his other club, Mr. Kelly’s, as soon as we had an act. Although Stiller and Meara was still a pipe dream at that time, Oscar kept his promise: We were to play Kelly’s for him twice before he passed away.
During the run of
Medium Rare
Anne and I
did
save $25,000, an astronomical figure. Twenty-five grand was more money than my father had earned in his whole life. That was the only measure of wealth I could go by.
Before returning to New York, Anne and I decided to take a vacation and visit our dear friends Charlie and Joanie Robinson, two transplanted New Yorkers now living high up in the Hollywood Hills.
After spending some relaxing time with our friends, we wanted to return home. Anne was now in her seventh month. We left the Robinsons, Anne in full bloom with Amy, and set out in the old Nash, the same car that had almost killed us in West Virginia.
“You’re lucky you don’t drive,” I said to Anne.
“I wish I could drive,” Anne replied. “I feel so helpless just sitting here.”
“Do you want to stop in Vegas?” I asked. “Maybe we can get lucky.”
“What can we lose, a couple of hundred bucks?” I said. “Besides,” I assured her as we headed east into the desert, “I’ve got a system.”
“What is it?” Anne asked.
“It’s simple. We just double our bets after we lose. You have to come out ahead.”
“I don’t believe it,” Anne said.
When we got to Vegas, we checked into a hotel and I proceeded to demonstrate my theory to Anne.
“See, I’ll show you with these matches.” I had bought a box of wooden matches. I gave Anne half a box and I took half a box.
“Who taught you this?” Anne asked.
“Lew Rose, my buddy in the ASTRP. He was a mathematical genius. He said this is foolproof as long as you have money to double up every time you lose. Look,” I said, pulling out a deck of cards.
“You mean we’re going to go downstairs and double our bets every time we lose?” Anne said. “What if we run out of money?” she asked, laughing because I was serious.
“How can we?” I said. “I’ll show you with the match sticks.”
“Those are match sticks, not money,” she said.
“I’ll show you,” I said, clearing a dresser of everything. “You be the House and I’ll be me. We’re playing Black Jack, 21.”
I dealt one hand after another. As I lost, I kept doubling my bets. Anne kept beating me. I kept doubling up until the dresser was full of matches. There was no room and we had to lay matches on the bed, then on the floor. By the time I won I couldn’t figure out how much I’d lost. Anne was in tears laughing.
“You think they’re going to allow you to do that?” she said. “They got guys watching for that. They’ll take us out of here in a box.”
We spent two hours working on my system before we called it quits and decided to go downstairs and just gamble. We lost a thousand bucks at craps and slots but still felt very rich as we left Vegas.
A couple of hours outside of Las Vegas, I noticed steam pouring out of the hood of the car. We were in the desert and the radiator had overheated. Never having been cross-country before, I had no idea that we’d need to carry extra water to cool off the engine. The temperature gauge on the dashboard did not work, a minor failing until now. The car came to a halt. The sun blazing, I lifted the hood, and swirls of steam filled the air. I carefully removed the radiator cap, allowing the radiator to cool. Occasionally a car rolled by asking if we needed help. I refused the offer.
“Just the radiator cooling off,” I said.
Anne, sitting in the car, looked like a lump. “What can we do?” she said.
“I’ll just try to start it up and get some water in the next town,” I said, acting totally in charge. This car was my tank, I thought. Nothing could hurt it. One half hour later the car started and we moved.
“I’m going to take it slow,” I said. We saw a sign that read
IMLAY
,
NEVADA
. When we got to Imlay it was dark and the car, steaming again, stopped at the railroad station which, coincidentally, was also a hotel—an overnight stopover on the Santa Fe Railway for workers who had to catch forty winks before getting the next day’s assignment.
The car would not start and I knew there were serious problems that would have to wait until the following day. Anne was exhausted.
“Where are we going to stay?” she asked.
“Right here, I guess, until I get the car fixed.”
“You really love this car,” she said.
“What can I tell you, the gauge wasn’t registering.”
We checked into the hotel. The man at the desk said, “This is a railroad hotel. There’s only one room available. It’s not too comfortable,” he said, looking at Anne’s stomach, “but it’s all we got.”
“We’ll take it,” I said.
“Twenty-five bucks,” he said.
I gave him the money. We hauled our bodies and the bags upstairs to the room, which had a double bed, a table, and a small lamp.
“Where’s the door?” Anne said. I looked. There was no door. I went down the hall. None of the rooms had doors.
This was a stopover for railroad men. They all knew each other. Kind of a communal barracks. Too tired to think, we both lay our heads down and slept. During the night, the Santa Fe trains would stop and conductors, engineers, firemen, and other personnel would go noisily into the rooms along the hall as Anne and I slept fitfully until morning. We had the car towed to Winnemucca, a few miles down the road, where a bona fide gas station repairman looked at the damage. The owner looked at me quizzically, then said, “You guys better get settled in a motel. You need a new gasket and we’re going to have to send for it. You blew right through your housing.”
“How long to get the parts?” I asked.
“Could be three days,” he said.
“You’re kidding,” Anne said.
“That’s how long it’ll take, unless you want to leave the car,” he said.
Leave the Nash? Never. I loved that car. “We’ll wait,” I said.
Anne and I got a room at a motel in what appeared to be a small desert metropolis a few miles away, and unpacked our bags. The next day I went to the station to check. The gasket had not arrived. I sat and talked with
the owner and his two men. They asked what we did. I told them we were actors.
“Have we ever seen you in anything?” they asked.
“Probably not,” I said. “We’ve been in Chicago, in Central Park in New York.” They were fascinated by my little droplets of showbiz information. After a while I said, “Would you call me if the gasket arrives?”
“Sure,” they said.
The next day I arrived again, hitchhiking the three miles from the motel. “Has it come yet?”
“Nope,” they said.
“Where is it coming from?” I asked.
“Elko,” they said.
“Where’s that?” I asked.
“A couple of miles,” they said.
“Why is it taking so long?” I asked.
“It’s coming by mail,” they said.
“By mail?” I said. “Why didn’t somebody pick it up?”
“We didn’t think you wanted it that way,” the man said. “Anyway, we liked talking to you.”
I couldn’t believe my ears. “I’ll go pick it up,” I said.
“You want to?”
“Sure,” I said. “How do I get there?”
“There’s a bus you can take on the highway.”
I picked up the gasket, brought it back, and gave it to the gas station guys. It took about an hour to replace. It was a cutout piece of thickened cardboard that fit between the metallic housings. When the job was finished the radiator was filled again and we headed east. The Nash sputtered again, not quite as bad, and we just made it to Laramie, Wyoming. There we picked up a used Dodge and kissed the Nash good-bye.
The Dodge, although it could never compare to my beloved Nash, did its job and got us home safely. We arrived at our 80th Street apartment, opened the door, and were welcomed home by finding the place ransacked. Everything had been dumped into the yard. Birth certificates, insurance policies, memorabilia, all lying in a pile of wet, sopping rubble. Our unemployment books were the only things that were undamaged. Welcome home.
As fatherhood stared me in the face, I could feel responsibility creeping
into my life. I understood the meaning of the term “breadwinner.” Now I knew what my father must’ve gone through. For the first time I
had
to get a job. I had given someone life. I was now responsible for that someone. I was watching the twenty-five grand disappearing and knew I needed an acting job.