B000FC0RL0 EBOK (46 page)

It was the beginning of a long friendship.

Some thirty years later, early one morning, the phone rang. It was Henny.

“What are you doing?” he asked. “Come on over. I’m taking a bath.”

“You really want me to?”

“It would be nice,” he said.

“I’ll be there in an hour.”

When I arrived Henny was watching golf on the tube, a phone on the table next to him.

“I got over three hundred cards,” he said. “My daughter Marilyn is helping me answer them.”

He mentions a business associate who hadn’t come to the shiva. The wall was full of pictures of Henny and Sadie. He pointed to one of himself, taken thirty years earlier.

“I think I’m going to send out that one of me. I’m going to Milwaukee tomorrow to do a commercial. I stopped taking jobs when Sadie was so sick …. Do you like golf?” he asked, still watching the tube.

“No, I don’t play it.”

“I don’t know how they do it,” he said.

He picked up the phone. I hadn’t heard it ring. A red light went on and the word “Yes” was out of his mouth before the end of the first ring. When he answered, it was as if he was no longer in mourning. He pretended cheerfulness.

“Friends,” he whispered. He hung up. “How did you get into this business?”

The golf game was no longer of interest. He turned off the TV set. Without waiting for an answer he rolled on. “My brother-in-law gave me a piece of material. I did it on an amateur night. How about you?”

I mentioned being taken to vaudeville by my father.

“No, I mean when did you start?”

“I was in the army.”

“Did you perform in the army?”

“No, at the Henry Street Playhouse, but when I got out of the army I studied acting on the GI Bill.”

Henny seemed bewildered. He thought in headlines. I was giving him a biblical tome.

“How’d you get into this?” he repeated.

“My Italian soap opera,” I said.

He looked at me, puzzled, so I sang “Sorrento” and did my “Buona Sera, Signore, Signorina.” Suddenly I was auditioning for him. He smiled. I didn’t expect him to laugh.

While he was getting dressed, he talked of Danny Kaye. “We started in the Borscht Circuit,” he said. “They’d hire you and tell you you were on vacation. They’d feed you, give you a place to sleep so they wouldn’t have to pay you. Then you did the shows. Something new every couple of nights. Danny became a star. Did one number in a Broadway show that established him.” Henny was talking about
Lady in the Dark
.

“Did you hang out together?” I asked.

“No, he hung out with a different crowd, not with Berle and the other guys.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know,” Henny said. “He was different. He hung out with the Broadway crowd.”

“You mean Kurt Weill, people like that?”

“Yeah,” Henny said.

“Couldn’t you hang out with both crowds?”

“You could if you wanted to. I’d go to Lindy’s when I started out. Walter Winchell would have me sit at his table. Berle was there, Jack E. Leonard, Joe E. Lewis. I told them some jokes. I made them laugh. I sat with them till six in the morning. I wouldn’t leave. I’d come home, Sadie would want to know where I’d been. I tried to explain. She said, ‘Six o’clock!’ I was the funniest. They wouldn’t leave.”

I couldn’t match him with any Anne stories.

We started walking toward the Plaza on Central Park South. People recognized Henny. “Sorry about Sadie, Henny.” He acknowledged them.

We passed some friends who hadn’t shown up during the mourning period.

“We didn’t know there was a shiva,” they said, and walked on.

“Millionaires,” Henny said to me. “Now they’re just spending it till it all runs out. They just have to stay in good health.”

As we were walking, I told Henny that I hated people who don’t drink.

“I don’t drink either,” he said. “I always thought Scotch tasted like medicine.”

Henny said, “Did you know that Waxy Gordon, the gangster, loved my act?” I remembered listening to my father speak of the Jewish Mafia in whispers to my mother. I dreamt about Little Augie, a thug crawling through our bathroom window, trying to kill my father because he’d mentioned Little Augie’s name. It made me fearful. Henny Youngman could walk among these terrible giants free of fear. Why? Because he was funny. You don’t kill people who make you laugh. Creating laughter is an intimate act—it creates instant affection. The ugly toad becomes a handsome prince if he can make you laugh. Henny was the comedian my father wished he could be.

When we reached the Plaza, Henny said, “Come on, let’s go to the Oyster Bar.”

We maneuvered down the halls of the Plaza like two tortoises. Henny pointed to what was once the Persian Room and was now a boutique.

“I’m one of the only comedians who played that room.”

Anne and I did, too, but I didn’t say that.

“Hey, would you please tie my shoe? The laces slip out.”

Henny was huge and by now had trouble bending. I was having trouble myself, so I could identify.

He put his foot out and I tied the knot.

“Now the other one. Thanks,” Henny said. We sat down and ordered.

“Are you having a party this year?” Henny was always a big draw at our New Year’s Eve parties. When I mentioned Henny was coming everyone wanted to be there.

We learned how to throw a great party from the fabulous bashes thrown by Milton Goldman, the legendary agent. Although we weren’t his clients, Milton always seemed to remember us, inviting us to a Sir Laurence Olivier party, a birthday celebration for Maureen Stapleton, or an opening for Rex Harrison. Milton, the perfect gentleman, was also the master of introductions even at our parties. Milton would grab my arm.

“Jerry, this is Ethel Merman. Ethel, this is Jerry Stiller.”

She said, “I know, Milton. We did the Boy Scout Jamboree together.”

Of course, everyone knew Ethel Merman but Milton took no chances.

“Jerry just finished doing
Passione
on Broadway. He was wonderful. How long did it run, Jerry?”

“Two weeks, Milton.”

“You were wonderful, Jerry. Ethel, come with me. I want you to meet Ernie Borgnine.”

“I was married to him, Milton … for six weeks.”

When Henny Youngman arrived, the attention turned to the King of the One-Liners. He held court the entire evening.

Some months later, I was asleep at our house in Nantucket when Henny called.

“He doesn’t use me in his jokes anymore. Is he jealous of me?” I listened to Henny painfully describe how he was still waiting for Berle to invite him to dinner. “We’ve known each other sixty years. William Morrow is coming out with my book in October,” he said. “It’s from the vault.”

I was still half asleep. What was he talking about? What vault? I never interrupted him, fearing I’d sound stupid. Sometimes he’d start the
straight line to a joke in the middle of a sentence. I’d never know he was telling a joke until he was racing toward the punch line.

“You’re not asleep, are you?”

“No, no,” I reassured him.

“It’s from the vault.”

“What?”

“The jokes,” he said. Was this the secret cache he’d been stashing, hoarded material he’d never used? The key to teaching how to tell the perfect joke. Almost like establishing a master race of comedians. And now in this latest book, was he giving the secret away to everyone? I could hear the mortality in his voice.

“I’m eighty-five years old, what do I have to hide? I’m giving it away. They’re doing a show about Berle on Broadway. If he can have one, so can I. Look, I got a story too. You’re a writer. You can do it.”

Suddenly I was elevated to Henny’s biographer. For half a second I looked back at my life and wondered how at sixty-four I was connected to the lives of Milton Berle and Henny Youngman, a generation older than me.

He said, “Look, I need something for my book. Something that would get people interested. This is a book that kids could use who want to be comedians.”

“You mean you want me to write a preface?”

“Yeah, could you do that?”

“I think I know what you mean,” I said.

“I love you, good-bye.” Click.

I descended the attic stairs wondering what I was doing in Nantucket—“Goyville,” as Henny called it—listening to Henny doing King Lear, railing against Milton Berle. Suddenly I was associating—actually or by proxy—with some of the world’s best comedians, people who as a kid I dreamt about knowing.

I sat down to write in Henny’s voice about why Henny was opening the vault. An hour and a half later it was finished. It was in longhand. I read it to Anne. She approved. I called Henny and asked him where to send it.

“Read it to me,” he said. There was urgency in his voice. When I finished there was silence. “That’s beautiful,” he said. “I wanna show it to someone. Send it to me right away.”

“Where?” I said. I myself was excited.

“Fax it to the Friars, I can pick it up.”

I didn’t want to fax it for fear that someone at the Friars might read it. I wanted it to be thought of as Henny’s.

“Look, I’ll mail it to you.”

What am I doing in another comedian’s life?
I wondered.

I looked out at Children’s Beach. It was a beautiful sunny day. I asked myself, Was this the way you thought this day would be spent? I told Anne I was going out for a short bike ride. I took a copy of
The Strife of the Spirit
by Rabbi Steinsaltz with me. At the Jetties Beach I soaked up sun while I highlighted in yellow passages by this brilliant scholar who put me in touch with Jewish ideas that until now had eluded me. I remembered Henny’s parody of the song “What Kind of Fool Am I”: “What kind of Jew am I that never went to
shul
….” I sat at a wooden table overlooking a windy, sunny beach. Kids were flying kites, I was reading Steinsaltz. I biked home and took a nap.

Over the next few days Henny called three times. “I love the piece. I’ve shown it to a few people. They think it’s great. Can I use it in the book?”

“Of course,” I said.

“How much do you want?”

“Nothing. I wrote it for you.”

“That’s very generous.”

I reminded him how he had picked us up outside the Woodstock Playhouse and had us over to his house the entire day. His unending delivery of jokes was a command performance. He spent the entire day telling us his life. He was so open. Then he drove us back.

“The piece is yours, Henny.”

“By the way, the Friars are honoring Berle. Can I do it?”

“Do what?”

“Your story about me. I can switch it, make it about Berle. Do you mind if I read it at the Friars’ Roast?” He did.

Henny’s comedy was never out of season. But, Henny never knew he was a star. He’d do his act over the phone to people who were in a sickbed. He brought the priceless gift of laughter to everyone. Is it possible that God himself needed a laugh, and Henny said, “Take my life, please”?

I
n the early 1990s my manager of over twenty-five years called to tell me I was cast in an ABC pilot called
Civil Wars
, which was about tales of divorce. (Bob Chartoff, our first manager, was now living in India we had heard.) A few weeks later our manager called to say that although my performance was “spectacular,” the show was too heavy and had been cut and replaced by a story about an Elvis impersonator embroiled in a divorce.

Thanks to Amy’s persistence and her connection to the New Group, Sam Schact cast me opposite Amy in Neil Simon’s
I Oughta Be in Pictures
. Amy was pure in the role of Libby. Aside from her splendid notices, she won my heart. She came through.

The show was followed by a long dry spell with no work, after which I received offers for jobs that seemed stupid. I felt as though our manager was cutting the cord. “You’re too old, grandpa.”

I wondered if I’d made a mistake becoming an actor. Did all the
Sullivan
shows, the Broadway plays, the films, and the commercials add up to nothing? Was I in some “old” pool in a Hollywood casting computer? It took a while for it to hit me: What had happened to other people of advancing age was now happening to me. What should I do? I could wait for a call saying, “You’re playing Willy Loman in Denver.” I should be so lucky.

Most of all I worried about how this downturn would affect Anne and me. When you’re young you bounce back—the world is still out there for you. But now it seemed as though our future was uncertain.

In desperation, Anne and I, now in our sixties, decided to work together once again. The reunion came as a result of an offer to play Trump Plaza in Atlantic City. Lee Salomon, the agent who had booked Sinatra and many others, had been urging us to do this for some time. Anne and I hadn’t done our act in more than fifteen years, but as we watched our careers disappearing, we had little choice. Thanks to Lee’s persistence, we agreed to headline with Leslie Uggams. Lee said, “Don’t worry, they’ll love you.” Maybe he was just schmoozing us, but Lee was great at it.

The night before we opened in Atlantic City, Anne and I were frantically brushing up our act in any comedy club on Theater Row that would have us. People were paying their checks as we were announced as a surprise act. It was like being back in the Bon Soir. It was a nightmare.

The next night in Atlantic City was like a homecoming. The audience stood up when we came on, shook our hands, and did the same when we finished. We were elated; we were back in the limelight. Lee Salomon had saved our lives. Oddly enough our manager didn’t make any of the performances. That hurt me. Who keeps your career alive if not your manager? We wanted him to see us in front of a live audience, to see that we weren’t a couple of museum pieces. We knew we still had it. That night in Atlantic City we learned once again that acting was all about believing in yourself.

A few days later, we sadly decided to drop our manager. Though we had been close for so long, it was up to us to cut the cord.

I first met Michael Hartig, an agent, at a birthday party in 1989. June Havoc invited Anne and me to her home in Connecticut. Michael was a close friend of June’s. While I was eating at the barbecue, Michael came by and praised my work in
Seize the Day
. He described scenes I had almost forgotten. I knew I was being wooed. I knew he handled Helen Gallagher, Mercedes McCambridge, and Tyne Daly, a Tony winner. These were all phenomenal performers.