Authors: Jerry Stiller
The curtain rose on a painted backdrop depicting a home in a Polish shtetl. The first act centered around the impending arrival of a Hasidic rabbi who was bringing the forlorn people news that would change their lives. The stage suddenly became alive with actors and actresses in colorful costumes. I could see beards that had been hurriedly glued on—the actors were obviously doubling in parts. They delivered most of their lines out front, setting up the plot. I cringed and wanted to leave. The man who sold me the ticket grabbed my arm. He must have guessed what I was thinking and shook his head as if to say, “stick around.” I now sat straight up in my seat and pretended to be intensely interested.
The play progressed, and every few minutes there would come a knock at a door onstage, heralding another character’s entrance. The audience was waiting for Schwartz to appear and so, at every knock, would begin to applaud wildly—but it would only be another bit player announcing that Mr. Schwartz was on his way. This happened again and again. I too fell into the trap, clapping for the wrong actor each time, and each time my benefactor looked at me soulfully, his eyes telling me it was not Schwartz. His look seemed to imply that I might as well be a Gentile.
At one point he turned to me and whispered:
“Fer shtaite Yiddish?”
(Do you understand Yiddish?) I replied meekly,
“A bisselle,”
—a little.
I knew I had just signed on as his pupil. He started filling me in so I could understand the plot.
“Soon,” he said, “you’ll see Schwartz.”
At the next knock a huge man with great presence and a dark beard strode on stage. Just as my hands came together the man stopped me.
“Schwartz?” I muttered.
“No, no mein kint.”
He referred to me as his child and he grabbed my arms.
Suddenly the lights dimmed. A knock. All eyes turned upstage. We heard wind, thunder, lightning. The door flew open, but mysteriously, there was no one there. Where was Schwartz? As the moment was about to pass, the door slammed shut and a small mole-like figure scurried from the wings across the stage unobtrusively.
“Ich hat bikimin”
(I have come), the man whispers. The curtain falls. The old man turns to me and says with a smile, “That’s Schwartz.”
Years later I was asked to read for Maurice Schwartz, who was about to do an English-language version of Molière’s
The Miser
. I was up for a small role. The audition began and I read with the stage manager. In the middle of the reading the phone rang. Schwartz asked the stage manager, Terry Becker, to answer the phone.
“But I’m reading with an actor,” Terry said.
“He can read both parts himself,” Schwartz said, as I stood in quiet amazement.
“I can’t read a scene between two people by myself, Mr. Schwartz,” I said.
“Yes, you can. I can tell,” he said. I read both parts and didn’t get either one but I did meet the great Maurice Schwartz.
But theater was less important to me than girls. Adolescence was starting to kick in.
In the Cellar Club on Pitt Street the smell of Pall Malls made us feel like big guys. This was the place where a girl’s lipstick on a cigarette butt meant make-out. Fifteen was an age where you tried to go all the way. Pall Malls—the longer, taller cigarette—were a weapon of seduction. When she saw you light up, she’d know this was no foolin’ around. Man, who knew
what
she might do once you got her to puff one of those bombolinos. If she wasn’t supposed to be smoking in the first place, then what else might she be willing to do?
The scene would always play out something like this: A guy and a girl are sitting on the couch. He reaches for a butt in his shirt pocket. With
one hand he lights up, closing the matchbook with his thumb and forefinger. (How many times has he rehearsed that one?) He takes a drag and inhales. The smoke’s coming out of his nose now, like some kind of dragon. She takes a puff as he casually ambles over to the hi-fi and drops a 45 of Glenn Miller onto the turntable. “Wanna dance?” It’s “Moonlight Serenade,” a slow Lindy.
She can kind of go with this. He’s not comin’ on too fast. She likes this. Just enough to get her in the right frame of everything. She can’t come off as being easy. He’s a good dancer, nothing too fancy, just doing steps. Now he spins her into a twirl. She’s a little shy, but goes with it. He’s playing it cool. Now she’s smiling. When the record ends, she’s in his arms. He goes into a dip. Nobody dips when you Lindy.
Suddenly the Cellar Club empties. I take the hint, because I know they’re gonna be doing it soon on a damp couch.
At sixteen I had a high-school sweetheart, the first girl I was serious about. She was definitely not one of the girls from the Cellar Club. I remember saying good-night on the stoop of her house. I kissed her softly on the lips, as if contact with them would betray the passion she had excited in me. I felt this restraint would win her love. Her body would arch against the door, awaiting a move on my part. I’d purse my lips and swear to myself that if she never put out, I could love her anyway. The good-nights left me satisfied that I had not violated her purity and that one day she would marry me.
My interest in theater was growing, and I decided that I would be an actor. I was proud of the fact that, unlike most kids my age who had not yet made a life choice, I had.
I broke the news of my secret ambition to my sweetheart during a performance of the Ice Capades at the Center Theater in Rockefeller Center. We were high up in the balcony. I felt the glamour of show business would somehow rub off. The ice skaters were marvelous athletes who thrilled the audience.
At intermission I made the momentous announcement. I’d deliberately led my sweetheart to the candy concession and bought some Goobers. And, like a munificent millionaire, I had put some of them in her hand.
“I’m going to do that someday,” I said.
“Do what? Skate?”
Suddenly I realized I had picked the wrong setting. This was an ice
show, not a stage play. Making this announcement at a Broadway show would have been more appropriate, but I couldn’t afford the ticket.
“I’ve decided … I’m going to be … an actor,” I said a bit hesitantly.
She gave a disbelieving laugh, then fell silent. I was desperate. I wasn’t kidding.
“I do these impressions,” I said in a low voice as people moved about us, talking away. “I have the information,” I said, doing Peter Lorre.
She stared at me, puzzled.
“I also do Jimmy Durante,” I said. “‘Ya gotta start off each day with a song, inka dinka doo,’ I got a million of them,” I said, waiting for her to respond.
A bell sounded the end of intermission. I wanted her to say something like, “That was wonderful. I think you’re great.” I would then have said, “With you behind me, I can go to the top.” But this wasn’t turning out like an MGM movie.
“The second act is about to begin,” an usher said. We headed back to our seats, which now seemed even farther from the ice than before. We watched the second act of the ice show in complete silence. I had proposed marriage and she didn’t know it. I still pursued her.
Two years later, while I was stationed in Italy, I received a letter from her saying she could no longer write as she was seeing another boy. He worked in the post office, and they planned to get married. I guess being an actor could not compete with delivering the mail. But could he do Peter Lorre?
While still in high school I signed up to participate in amateur night at the Educational Alliance. I wanted to show my mother I had talent.
The auditorium had folding chairs placed in rows and a microphone on a stand. The emcee was the Alliance social director. “Who knows, we may find a future star here tonight,” he announced.
I asked my mother to sit up front and I went backstage, awaiting my turn. I vaguely thought of what I would do. A surge of confidence filled me as I waited, fearless, for my name to be called. I had no script, no plans, no music. I would just get up and take the microphone and entertain. Dreams of Eddie Cantor making people laugh floated through my head. Just talking to the audience would make them love me. Maybe, I thought, I’ll do my Jimmy Durante and Peter Lorre impersonations.
I heard my name, ran out on the stage, grabbed the mike, and started
talking. I don’t remember a word I said except that I paced in front of everybody saying, “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen” and whatever else came into my mind. I expected laughter to burst upon me, crushing me with its deafening roar.
Nothing.
Then the people out in front started talking to one another, ignoring me.
I started to do my imitation of Jimmy Durante singing “Inka-dinka-doo.” No one cared. I looked out into the audience for my mother. She seemed mystified, bewildered. I turned away. The emcee came out and asked me if I was finished.
“Yes,” I said.
My mother was walking toward the staircase. Very fast. I chased after her.
When I caught up, I said, “How was I?”
“You stunk,” she said, continuing down the stairs.
I couldn’t believe she would say something like that. I was her kid. How could she say that to me? I wanted to be great for her, but I had only disappointed and shamed her.
What had gone wrong?
Despite my disastrous amateur night appearance, my interest in show business didn’t flag. I was on my way home from Seward Park High School when I passed the Henry Street Playhouse on Grand Street. A friend, Nat Adler, had told me he was acting there. On this warm spring day I decided to walk in. I entered the lobby carrying my books and could hear a piano playing inside the theater. Nobody stopped me so I opened the door and ambled in. The theater was empty. The stage was bathed in a blue light and someone was playing “Night and Day.”
I stood for a moment. Suddenly the music and the blue lights enveloped my senses. I felt a sereneness I had never experienced before. It was like I had been transported into a land that was trouble-free. I sat down and listened. When the man stopped playing I quietly walked up the steps of the stage and said to another man with a paintbrush and overalls, “How do I get a chance to act?” I was speaking to Richard Brown, the scenic designer and technical director of the theater. He looked at me very sympathetically.
“Why don’t you see Mrs. Lane,” he said “She’s upstairs.”
And that’s how, at age fifteen, I met Esther Porter Lane, a beautiful
woman who made me aware for the first time how beautiful theater was. This was to be the most fateful moment of my life.
“Come back next week. We’re doing
Many Moons
by James Thurber. You can play the king.”
“My friend Nathan Adler told me about this place,” I said.
“Nat is playing the wizard,” she said.
Esther Lane was an assistant to Hallie Flanagan Davis, one of the founders of the Federal Theater. Mrs. Lane was from Maine. What possessed her to come to Manhattan’s Lower East Side and work with disadvantaged people I’ll never know. It must have been that brand of social consciousness that was aflame in those days. It was the Eleanor Roosevelt thing, helping the people who needed it most. I always thought of Esther Lane as a Protestant woman who loved the poor of all faiths.
My first laugh as an actor came when as the King in
Many Moons
: I pulled the bell cord and it accidentally fell to the floor. A big laugh. I liked that. I did nothing and people laughed. It took away the hurt of the amateur night. Next I played Hsei Ping Kwei in
Lady Precious Stream
.
Esther directed a show that included music by Earl Robinson, who later wrote “The House I Live In.” The show was a living newspaper called
It’s Up to You
that was about winning World War Two. I sang and acted. Joan Woodruff did the choreography.
One day Esther got us free tickets to see Uta Hagen, José Ferrer, and Paul Robeson in
Othello
. I’ll never forget sitting in the fifth row. How wonderful. Now I really wanted to act. She introduced me to her husband, David, an Army Air Force officer who came in on furlough. Both of them got me started in theater.
B
y the spring of 1944, the United States had landed troops in Africa and Sicily. D-Day was still two months away, but it was clear that we were going to invade Europe somewhere across the English Channel. We kept hearing Gabriel Heatter declare on the radio, “There’s good news tonight.” The Russians were holding on, though their casualties were enormous. Rommel was on the run in Africa, and the Fifth Army was winning in Italy. But in the Pacific there were Guadalcanal, Kwajalein, Guam. If it were to happen, we assumed, we would have to lose at least 100,000 men in the invasion of Japan.
Four of my older cousins were now in the service. Leo, the biker, enlisted the day after Pearl Harbor, at age seventeen. He rose to the rank of staff sergeant and landed in the second wave at Omaha Beach on D-Day. He would later be awarded the Bronze Star, the Combat Infantryman’s Badge, and the Presidential Citation. He was wounded twice, the second time in the Battle of the Bulge.
One afternoon I came home from Seward Park High with a form from the U.S. Army Specialized Training Reserve program. I needed my parents’ signatures to join. I had already passed the special high school armed services test. I would be seventeen on June 8, 1944. I could join the Army Reserves, and the government would send me to an Ivy League college. I’d learn Japanese, become an officer, perhaps an interpreter, ready for when we invaded Japan. Landing in Japan seemed a very remote possibility to me, but my mother and father were appalled.
“We’re not signing.” It was the first time I’d ever seen them in agreement
about anything. They looked at me in disbelief as I held the paper in my hand. “Sign it,” I said.
My father sat at the edge of the bed. He had just come home from work.
“Talk to him,” my mother said, tears in her eyes. “You can’t join the army,” she said. “You’re sixteen years old. The war is on. Do you know what that means? They want you to join up and they’ll send you overseas.”
“They can’t. I’m seventeen years old.”