It certainly wasn’t love at first sight. He was working for a television syndicator and wanted to meet me to discuss cohosting
a morning talk show with the beloved Dana Reeve, Chris’s wife. We met in my agent Jimmy Griffin’s office. Henry sat on a sofa,
Jimmy sat behind his desk, and one of my producers, Clay Dettmer, sat on a chair to my left.
Henry first said the show would air at nine a.m., which was when my close friend Regis Philbin was on with Kathie Lee. Even
though I knew it was out of the question, because I would never compete with a friend, not to mention lose to Regis, I didn’t
interrupt, as Henry had clearly prepared for this meeting, which he proved by pulling an envelope from his jacket pocket and
began to read to me scribbled notes he had written on it.
Surprisingly, they weren’t notes about his ideas for the show, but criticism of me as host of my nighttime cable show. I could
see Jimmy and Clay eyeing me warily, waiting to see if I’d get up and leave—or worse—but I was so taken with Henry’s nerve
that I didn’t interrupt him.
He said he felt my monologues sometimes ran on too long. I didn’t disagree, so I didn’t say anything. He wondered what I was
looking at when I sometimes looked to my right of camera, where someone was standing with a note on a card reminding me of
my next subject. That was something I soon abandoned, so even though I again didn’t disagree, I still didn’t say anything,
because I was marveling that a stranger was giving me all these notes without being asked.
I chose not to do the morning show, but it was an odd beginning to a relationship that was to become so important.
I next ran into Henry at an event for our mutual friend Regis. He approached me with his wife, Peggy, who also became a dear
friend. He knew that I was very close to a legendary broadcaster, and he wanted me to tell my friend that he was welcome to
do anything, anytime, for Court TV, which Henry was then running. I told him my friend had retired and wasn’t interested in
coming back to TV. Peggy then said to Henry, “Why don’t you invite Chuck to do whatever he wants on Court TV?” Henry paused
for a moment and then said, “Sure.” That’s all.
Sometime later I asked to meet with him. His head of daytime programming, Marlene Dann, who had been my wonderful producer
at CNBC, was there with another woman. I told Henry about the interviews I conducted with women who were in prison under the
Rockefeller Drug Laws. The time was getting close to a decision on clemency, so I said I felt it might be useful for me to
interview the women’s children on Court TV and send those interviews to Albany to perhaps help the cause. When I finished
talking, Henry leapt to his feet and basically repeated everything I had just said, except he did it pacing around with great
excitement and waving his arms. I found it odd and strangely charming. When I left, I had a feeling this program was going
to happen, but I heard nothing for a week or so. I called Marlene Dann to ask what was up. She said, “When you left, Henry
turned to me and said, ‘He’s going to cost a lot of money.’”
I called Henry and asked him if money was an issue. He said it was. I said, “How about I do it for nothing?” That was always
my intention anyway. He quickly replied, “It’s a deal.” I interviewed two kids, sent the video to Albany, and it definitely
helped in getting clemency for their mothers.
I began to run into Henry at various events and realized that he was the single funniest person I’d ever met. That was a big
deal for me. We began to chat on the phone, and he would
consistently
say things that I would write down and would ask his permission to use in a play I was writing.
Here’s an example: it’s absolutely true, and no name is changed. A friend of ours had a colonoscopy. Henry went into the recovery
room and told our groggy friend, “Everything’s fine. There’s one slight complication. Doctor Schmeerin can’t find his watch.”
Once Henry called me after he had hernia surgery and said, “I’m not allowed to laugh. That’s why I called you.” Most of his
jokes are on himself and his bad golf game. He told me recently that people call his club wanting to know when he’s playing
so they can have a winning day.
Along with his unending humor, he has also stepped over the line twice with me in recent years. I called him on it both times,
and he more than made up for it in the following weeks. In my experience, that’s not necessarily the norm.
He had Ethel Kennedy call me to host an event at her house. She said, “I hear you’re not only highly respected, but beloved.”
I said, “Can I ask you a question?” She said, “Sure.” I asked, “Who is this
really
?”
For me, and I’m sure for most everyone to have someone in your life who is not only a tremendous human being, a wonderful
father, and also consistently hilarious is like a dream.
Oh, yeah. Henry read an earlier draft of this book and told my editor, “This can’t be the final draft, because I’m not in
it.”
Now, he deservedly is.
I
remember first appearing on Regis’s show in Los Angeles in the seventies. The movie
Heaven Can Wait
had come out. Regis said there was talk of my getting an Academy Award nomination and asked if I was going to do anything
to promote that idea. I said, “Other than the blimp, no.”
The movie received eleven nominations. I wasn’t nominated. Maybe the blimp wasn’t a bad idea. I’ve never really been able
to get behind the whole award thing, although I’ve never turned one down. I mean, you could have an elderly man competing
against a teenager for Best Actor. Maybe if everyone played the same part I could buy it, but, of course, there are drawbacks
to that concept.
Through the years I continued to appear with Regis and a number of different cohosts. Kathie Lee and I had and have a warm
relationship, as I do with Kelly. Somewhere along the way, I became friends with Regis and Joy, who by the way
is
a joy. The degree of interest she has in what I say is deep and sincere, and in that way she reminds me of Peter Falk. She
is Regis’s protector in every way you can imagine. “Don’t have that dessert,” and just love—lots of love.
Regis is special. What you see is what you get, which is great. Recently, I asked him as a joke to be part of my senior advisory
board, and he asked, “Why does it have to be called senior?”
Regis, Joy, my wife, Elissa, and I have dinner together every couple of months and Regis and I have lunch together around
the same number of times. These are memorable occasions for me. I’ve been out in public with household names, but I’ve never
seen anything like it is with Regis. It seems as though everyone knows him, and it sure feels like everyone loves him. He
stops at a number of tables before he gets to me at a back booth. Everyone greets him, and he greets everyone. There are continuous
warm exchanges, and he never hurries to get away.
Then, when he’s seated with me, he’s recognized by more people. He always points to me and says, “You know who this guy is
sitting here? Did you see
Midnight Run
with Robert De Niro? This is Charles Grodin, the guy with De Niro.” Often the people start to fuss over me. The whole thing
is a trip. Not only that, Regis is either funny or interesting and mostly both, and if there’s a problem, usually with my
talking about social issues, here’s what happens. Recently, I asked him to join me in a benefit for our veterans returning
from Iraq and Afghanistan, some of whom need everything from health care to housing. Regis immediately jumped aboard with
me to do a benefit. He suggested we add Marty Short, who was remarkable. We raised a lot of money, and it all went to an organization
that helps the veterans in every way—Help U.S.A. That’s Regis. He’s a one-of-a-kind package.
Maybe the best thing that Regis did for me was introduce me to Jack Paar. For you younger readers who possibly don’t know,
Jack Paar is considered the father of the talk show. I met Jack at a New Year’s Day party Regis and Joy gave several years
ago, and we immediately became friends. Regis and Joy, Jack and his wife, Miriam, who was as gracious a woman as I’ve ever
met, and Elissa and I would regularly go out to dinner at a restaurant in Greenwich called Valbella. Management there would
never let us get a check, but after a while we insisted. Of course, we then went there less frequently. That’s a joke. Sometimes
we would have dinner at Jack and Miriam’s house, where I met several people who remain my friends today.
I recently was invited to a golf club to have dinner with some people Jack and Miriam had introduced me to. All the club members
know each other. I got there early and went to the bar to have a drink. A woman seated there asked me who I was with. I told
her, and she said, mentioning the hostess’s name, “Oh, she wouldn’t want you to be drinking
that
!” She asked the bartender to bring me something so upscale, even
I
could tell the difference.
Jack would hold forth at these dinners at his house where so many of us first met, and I loved it. Once there was a brief
pause, and someone started to say something. Jack interrupted and said, “I’m forming my next thought.”
At another dinner at Jack’s, I was sitting next to Phyllis Diller, then in her eighties. I whispered into her ear, “I’d like
to get you alone in a hotel room.” She said, “I’ve had a hip replacement.” I growled into her ear, “I don’t care!”
About a year after all this, Jack saw a snake in his garage and fired a gun to scare it away. He later told me that snakes
don’t have ears, but the shot caused a hearing loss in Jack. He once wrote me a letter saying he felt I was going to ask him
to appear on my cable show, which he would do only if Johnny Carson appeared. Of course, I had no intention of imposing on
either one of them. Jack had said, “The way to remain a legend is not to appear.” However, he chose to join me and Regis on
my five-hundredth show. Regis credits Jack with his concept of host chat, a huge thing to all of Regis’s fans.
Eventually, Jack’s health began to fail. He had major surgery and someone left a sponge in him, which didn’t help matters.
Sometimes being a celebrity is a negative, because people get distracted. Not long after that he suffered a stroke, which
took away his ability to speak. Jack—of all people.
I would regularly visit him at a rehabilitation center and often take Gene Wilder with me. Jack once said that introducing
Gene to him was the best thing I had ever done for him. Gene would kiss him on the cheek and hold his hand while I did my
latest riffs.
Jack couldn’t speak, but he could smile, which he often did when Regis and I visited and tried to entertain him. When he passed
away, I was given the honor of being the last speaker at the service. Earlier in the day I was on the phone with Ethel Kennedy,
who was also a friend of Jack’s. She said, “Jack’s in heaven with Jack and Bobby.” I asked her if I could quote her in my
remarks and she said yes.
When my turn came, I told some humorous stories about Jack and then finished by quoting Mrs. Kennedy. Afterward one of the
other speakers, an atheist, said he really liked my speech, “Except for that last part.” There’s
always
a critic.
I miss Jack so much as well as Miriam, who is also gone. I doubt there will ever be anyone like him. Regis and I have never
stopped talking about Jack and how much we loved him, and how much he did for us by loving us.
I
was fortunate enough to know Paul Newman. Years ago, Paul reached out to me to go with him and Christopher Plummer to testify
on an issue at the state capital in Hartford. I agreed, even though I wasn’t completely clear on what the issue was. I figured
if Paul was bothered about something, it was at least worth my time to listen to him explain it on the drive to the capital.
It turned out to be about protecting your movie image from being used at a certain point after you were deceased to promote
a commercial product, without your or your survivors’ permission. I was amazed that such a law wasn’t already in place. I
testified.
I later had contact with Paul when I was working on my book
If I Only Knew Then… learning from Our Mistakes
. Paul was the only contributor out of eighty-two people who said he hadn’t learned
anything
from his mistakes, but he took comfort in knowing they were the same mistakes—not new ones. I can only assume I didn’t know
Paul well enough, because I never saw him make
any
mistakes.
I last saw him about a year and a half before he died, when he and his wife, Joanne Woodward, asked me to be a part of a fund-raiser
for the Westport Country Playhouse. It was to be an evening of love poems. I consider reading poetry aloud not one of my callings—which
is an understatement—but I agreed to do it, because it was Paul and Joanne who asked.
About an hour before we were to begin, Paul quietly asked me to remind him to blow his nose before we went on. When we were
called to the stage, I said, “Paul, blow your nose.” He did. Philip Seymour Hoffman observed all this, and I told him, “That’s
why they got me.”
If it was a worthy cause, you didn’t have to get Paul Newman, because he was already there.
M
y older brother, Jack, is extraordinary. Being more sensible than I, he became a CPA and an attorney. He has always been my
biggest supporter. He knows I was elected president of my fifth-grade class, and then was impeached. At the age of seventy-nine
he chose to tell me for the first time that
he
was elected president of his fourth-grade class. I asked, “Were you impeached?” He softly said, “No.”
For someone whose father died at the age of fifty-two, I consider myself remarkably fortunate that my doctor, at this writing,
anyway, has been unable to find anything physically wrong with me. He says, “I don’t know what you’re doing, but maybe we
all should do it.”
My brother, unfortunately, has been besieged by one illness after another. Jack has always been interested in singing. He
has gone to retirement homes at Christmas to lead the people there in singing carols.