Authors: Jerry Stiller
“Are you kidding?” another one said. “That’s the last thing to do. It’s wood. It’ll get blown away.”
“Where’s Dr. Gross?”
“What can he do?” said someone else. “He’s just like us.”
“But he must know a place to go.”
“What place? Listen to the TV. This never happened around here before.”
Nobody turned to me for manly advice. I just stood and looked. I could hear a whistling, like a far-off wind. Suddenly it started to pour.
“Maybe we should all get under our beds,” one woman said.
“That’s ridiculous,” the advertising lady said. “We’d never fit.”
“Let’s get in my station wagon,” the teacher said. “There’s a state troopers’ station on the highway.”
Everyone agreed, including myself. We piled unceremoniously into the groaning station wagon and headed north. The rain and wind buffeted the car, and its windshield wipers were almost snapped off by the gusts. We peered out the windows, searching for the state-trooper station. Someone spotted it. We stopped and, dripping wet, bolted into the station. A trooper in a neatly ironed shirt sat writing at a desk.
My teacher neighbor, now the spokesperson, said, “Excuse us, we’re from—”
“I know,” the trooper said. “You’re from Dr. Gross’s.”
“Yeah,” she said, “and we heard about the tornado watch, and we—”
“It’s a warning,” he said, “not a watch.”
“Well, it’s coming down heavy. What do we do?”
“Go back to the Manor,” he said. “There’s nothing to worry about.”
The teacher got angry. “Don’t tell us to go back there. It’s a tornado.”
“What do you want me to do?” the trooper asked.
“We can’t go back. Wooden houses aren’t safe. What’s this place made of?”
“Cinder blocks. But you can’t stay here.”
“Then where can we go?” one of the ladies shouted hysterically.
“We could go to the movies,” the ad lady calmly suggested.
“Yes,” the trooper agreed. “The movie house is made of cinder blocks.”
“But what’s playing?” the hysterical one shouted.
“
Blazing Saddles
,” the trooper said.
“That old thing. I saw it,” she screamed.
“So did I,” another yelled. The movie house was vetoed.
“Try the Rhinebeck Inn,” the trooper said. “It’s been there two hundred years. It’s safe.”
Good idea, everyone agreed.
We fought our way back through wind and rain to the station wagon, and drove the five miles to the Inn. The manager, watching the news reports, broke away from the TV long enough to usher us into the dining
room and to say, “I know you’re from Dr. Gross. I can only serve you club soda. That’s Dr. Gross’s standing orders.”
“Fine,” we said.
The table was suddenly filled with bottles of bubbles.
For two hours we told stories and burped. We rejected each other’s excuses to break the fast. When the storm subsided, we drove back to the Manor.
I remained at Dr. Gross’s for three days, fasting fastidiously. On the fourth day Anne called from New York. I had to read for a show. I bade Dr. Gross and his staff good-bye.
A couple of weeks later, true to his word, Dr. Gross phoned to ask if I wanted to see Sugar Hart fight at the Garden.
“I’d love to,” I said.
“We can meet, and Jimmy Jacobs, Hart’s trainer, will take us back to see him before the fight.”
When I arrived at the Garden I was greeted by Gross and Jacobs, and was introduced to the luminaries at ringside. I was thrilled. The crowd anxiously awaited Hart’s appearance.
“Come on, Jerry,” said Jacobs, whom I’d first met at the Y long ago, when he was a national handball champion. “We’ll say hello to Sugar.”
“Does he like to meet people before a fight?” I asked.
“He’s asleep,” Jacobs said.
“What?”
“That’s how relaxed he is. And remember, he came down from a middleweight. Come on, I’ll show you.”
Jacobs led us through the catacombs to Hart’s dressing room. He opened the door a crack. There, lying on the table, sound asleep, was Hart.
“How does he do it?” I asked.
“He’s just completely relaxed,” Jacobs said.
“I guess it’s the fasting,” I said. “It really relaxes you.”
At 10
P.M.
Hart entered the ring, followed by his opponent, Wilfredo Benitez. Sugar looked like a champion. The announcer introduced the fighters and the loudspeakers gave us the national anthem. The referee called the two men together for their final instructions. The bell rang and the bout started. The action was furious. The crowd was on its feet. Just before the end of Round 1, Hart was hit and went down. He was out cold. The referee counted to 8. The bell rang. The Garden was in an uproar.
Hart, odds on to win, was dragged to his corner and revived by his handlers in time for Round 2. Seconds later he went down again, this time for good. The crowd was stunned. Jacobs was stunned. Dr. Gross was bewildered.
I didn’t dare say, That fasting, it really relaxes you.
In 1980 I was playing an Italian American man married to an Ozark woman in Albert Innaurato’s
Passione
, the next to last play produced at the Morosco before that historic theater was demolished by the wrecking ball. After a preview, I took a nap. When I awoke, I was unable to move my back. Somehow I managed to go onstage and perform, but the problem persisted, and it eventually led me to the offices of Dr. Milton Reder. I’d first heard of his wizardry when, at the YMCA, a handball player of my own vintage volunteered at the end of a game that he knew I had a bad back.
When the game ended, my partner said, “Go see Dr. Reder. Five visits and you’re cured.”
My back
was
hurting me, so I took the advice and visited Dr. Reder’s Park Avenue office. A matronly receptionist spoke into a phone, and in seconds Dr. Reder himself, a jovial Santa Claus-like man, greeted me.
“Jerry Stiller,” he said warmly as his eyes brightened. “Come with me.” He was like a friendly uncle welcoming a long-lost nephew.
He led me past the waiting room, filled with patients chatting or reading, many of whom I recognized as celebrities. What they all had in common were two prongs protruding from their noses, making them look like a school of walruses.
“Did you notice who some of those people were?” Dr. Reder said as we entered his inner sanctum.
“Yes,” I said. “Yul Brynner, Virginia Graham. But it was hard to recognize them with those things sticking out of their noses. What are they?”
“Would you like something to eat?” the doctor said. “I’m sending out.”
“No thanks,” I said.
“I’m going to the Friars tonight with Goodman Ace. Are you free?” he said as his fingers twirled a steel prong wrapped with a thin layer of absorbent cotton in a bottle of some solution.
“You write those commercials?” he said. “You and your wife? Who writes them?”
“Anne, mostly,” I said.
“She’s terrific. I like her.” He quoted one of our United Van Lines punch lines.
I was flattered.
“Now, this doesn’t hurt,” the doctor said, preparing to insert what looked like a bandillero into my proboscis.
“Wait a minute,” I interjected. “Before you start, can you tell me what we’re doing?”
“If I told you, you wouldn’t understand.” His hands were now moving toward my nose.
“Please,” I said. “I’d like to know.”
“Did you see those people out there?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Well, they’ve all got bad backs. Look,” Dr. Reder said, pointing to a crest on the wall. “That’s from the Prince of Morocco. He wanted to fly me over in his plane. I wouldn’t go.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“My people, the people I take care of here, they need me. Trust me,” he said, moving once more to insert the prong.
“First tell me what these things do,” I begged.
He pointed toward two prongs crisscrossed like a coat of arms on the wall. “I invented this procedure. You really want to know?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Okay, I’ll make it simple. This is the ganglia,” he said, pointing to a spot on his forehead. “We block the ganglia with one of these,” he said, indicating the prong in his hand, “and that cuts off the nerves to the back. You do this for forty-five minutes and your back doesn’t ache.”
It seemed so simple and immediately made sense. That was all the cajoling I needed.
“Okay, be my guest,” I said.
Seconds later I was rhinocerized. It was painless. The two cotton-swathed prongs in my nasal passages imparted a soothing feeling.
“Now just sit. You got a book?” the doctor said, leading me back to the waiting room. “You know Virginia Graham, don’t you,” he said, smiling down on her.
“Virginia,” I said, “it’s you.”
“Yes,” the good-natured
Girl Talk
TV hostess said. She pointed to the prongs. “I’m writing a book,” she said. “I’m calling it
Up Your Nose
.”
“Does this stuff work?” I asked her.
“Who knows? Ever since Harry died”—her husband, Harry—“I’ve had this back. When I leave here it feels great. They say five treatments. Listen, I’ve seen everybody sitting in here, and it’s twenty-five bucks. You can’t beat it. The place is never empty.”
“Twenty-five bucks whoever you are? For anybody?” I said.
“Anybody,” Virginia said.
At this moment a bent and hobbling man and his equally bent wife entered. Dr. Reder again emerged and escorted them back into his office. Seconds later, he returned. “You know who that is?” he said. “One of the richest men in the world and his wife. He owns hotels … supertankers … When he was a kid he bought an abandoned boat on the Mississippi River and floated it.”
Minutes later, the husband and wife were seated next to us, pronged.
“We’re going to the Friars tonight; want to join us?” Reder again asked me.
“No, thanks. I’m sorry. I’ve got to write a commercial.”
“He’s got a great wife, Virginia,” Reder said to Virginia Graham, with a nod toward me.
“I know,” Virginia Graham said. “Anne’s been on my show.”
The forty-five minutes—
my
forty-five minutes—sped by. Dr. Reder’s introductions, asides, and jokes seemed to be part of the cure. A camaraderie developed between us, a bonding. People hated to leave. Miraculously, after forty-five minutes, everyone seemed able to stand up almost pain-free. This was true healing, I said to myself—the physician who healed through laughter and the heart.
“Come back the day after tomorrow,” Reder said jovially as I reluctantly hit the street, ready once again to take on New York. The wealthy couple’s chauffeured limo awaited them. I turned around to see them entering their car. They were no longer bent. My spirits soared.
I returned a few more times, then told myself I really didn’t need the treatment anymore. My back was cured.
Some time later I read scorching headlines in the newspapers saying that Dr. Milton Reder was accused of using a diluted cocaine solution to treat patients. All I know is that for twenty-five bucks it was forty-five of
the most delightfully pain-free minutes I’ve ever spent in the company of some terrific people.
Following our Blue Nun success, Anne and I got into commercials in a big way. It began when we were hired by the J. Walter Thompson ad agency to do a very brief daily radio program as a vehicle for advertising. John Davis, an agency executive, suggested we call it “Take 5 with Stiller and Meara.”
“You’ll have an office, a budget, writers, and you’ll shoot ten two-minute sketches per week without an audience,” he said.
We jumped at the idea. We would be producing. Wow.
We turned out 360 sketches, which are now in storage. At the time, they were shown after the Sermonette at 2
A.M
. or in Korea for the Armed Forces and wherever else.
For two years we had an office on West 57th Street just across from Carnegie Hall and Chock Full o’Nuts, courtesy of J. Walter Thompson. The office gave us the discipline necessary to come up with material. It allowed us to work in the city where our kids were attending school. When “Take 5” ended we decided to keep the office. Now we were paying rent. When you pay rent you produce. It’s magic.
During that time we wrote commercials for clients such as the Amalgamated Bank, Lanier, Nikon, United Van Lines, and Food Emporium. The office was our workplace for over fifteen years.
The front office, a combination kitchen and reception area, seemed cluttered. The walls, full of Clio Awards, plaques, theatrical posters, and framed album covers, resembled a French general’s chest, bedecked with every medal ever created. Our show-business background was splattered there for all to see.
The phone would ring. Our secretary, Arnie Duncan, would pick it up. Sometimes it would be my sister Maxine calling before arriving at our office.
“I’m coming over. Is that okay, Jerry?”
“Where are you?”
“I’m in Coney Island.”
“Okay,” I’d say, “come on over.”
My younger sister Maxine would be coming to our office to pick up some spending money. The time it took for her to get there gave me an hour to decide whether I could deal with her that particular day. It’s her
state of mind that would concern me. She’s been living at an adult home but would come to our office periodically.
I never understood how Maxine arrived in the world. On one level it seemed that with all the fighting between Willie and Bella, there was still some love left after all. At forty-four my mother had given birth again.
I was seventeen when Maxine was born. Years later, when my mother was in the hospital, dying, she instructed me not to bring Maxine into the hospital room. (At the time, Maxine was living with Anne and me on Cornelia Street in the Village.)
My mother said, “I don’t want her to see me this way.”
So Maxine and Anne would stand on the street, and Anne would point up to my mother’s hospital room and my mother would wave to Maxine from the window. Maxine was nine when my mother died. From that moment on, she became part of Anne’s and my life.
Maxine’s early years were filled with the aroma of showbiz, things that must’ve lodged in her mind as part reality and part fantasy. I would take her with me to rehearsal of
Diary of a Scoundrel
. She got to meet Roddy McDowall and Margaret Hamilton, whom she recognized as the Wicked Witch in
The Wizard of Oz
. On another occasion, Uta Hagen and Herbert Berghof, whose extended family included their students, invited us all to their home during the Christmas holidays. Under the tree were gifts for all, including Maxine.