My Mother Was Nuts

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My Mother Was Nuts Page 8

by Penny Marshall


  But I did another episode of That Girl and then I landed a part on the opening episode of Then Came Bronson, a new series starring Michael Parks as a disillusioned journalist who quits his job at a newspaper and jumps on his motorcycle to find the real meaning of life. It was the first job I got on my own, and it kept me in the business.

  At the audition, the director, Marvin Chomsky, told me the story of the episode: Jim Bronson visits a former girlfriend at a camp she runs for children with special needs. I got it. She had found her life; he was looking for his. Yes, but Marvin asked what I knew about summer camp. My face lit up with confidence.

  “I went to camp for twelve years,” I said. “I love camp. I know everything.”

  “No,” he said. “This is about a camp for disturbed children.”

  I told him about the pyromaniac who had burned down the staff bunk at Geneva.

  “My mother thought it was me,” I said.

  “Why’d she think that?” he asked.

  “She thought highly of me,” I said.

  Excited, I told my brother that the episode was shooting in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. He wanted to know who else was in the episode besides Michael Parks. I told him the biggest names: Jack Klugman, former child actor Mark Lester, and Karen Ericson. Garry told me to introduce myself to Jack and ask if he wanted to be in a new TV series that he and Jerry had in the works.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “The Odd Couple,” he said. “We’re adapting the Neil Simon play. I want him for Oscar.”

  “All right,” I said.

  So I went to Jackson Hole, where I’d never been, and it was a very nice place. There was plenty of down-time between scenes. And Jack and I both liked to sit in the sun. One day the two of us were lying out on chaises beside the lake and I remembered my brother’s request. I’m fearless when it comes to talking to people. I’ll ask anything. So I got Jack’s attention and said, “Would you be interested in doing a TV series based on The Odd Couple?”

  Jack was confused. He had barely noticed me, yet here was this girl pitching him on a TV series.

  “Who are you?” he said.

  “Penny,” I said.

  “Why are you asking me this?” he said.

  “My brother is Garry Marshall, and he is going to do The Odd Couple as a TV series. He wants to know if you’d play Oscar.”

  I’m not sure what either of us said next. It’s not important. What matters is that Jack obviously didn’t say no and as a result went on to costar with Tony Randall in one of TV’s greatest sitcoms. I also learned it never hurts to ask. You never know until you do.

  CHAPTER 15

  The Manson Murders

  Penny celebrating Christmas with a young Tracy in 1966

  Anthony Marshall

  THEY SAY IF YOU remember the ’60s, you weren’t there. (I feel that way about the ’80s.) Because I had a child, I was largely unaffected by the decade’s changes—that is, until 1969. That was the year my mother told Ronny that I knew Charles Manson. For the record, I didn’t. It was also the year she told people that I was going to take LSD and jump off a roof. She was wrong. That was the ’80s.

  In 1969, I moved several times, changing roommates for reasons that aren’t interesting and offering my couch or floor to whatever friends from the Bronx had come out to sample the culture. There were more than a handful of them, like Arlyn Dunetz, who crashed on our floor until she went off with a guy in a van. The next time I heard from her, she’d changed her last name to Phoenix, lived on a commune, and had seven kids, including River, Rain, and Leaf, all of whom she wanted to get into acting—and of course she did.

  My mother, my father, and my grandmother were the last three people I expected to see near the Sunset Strip, yet they arrived midyear, reeling from financial losses and upheavals in the neighborhood. My father had lost his best accounts and much of his income when his friend who was head of the American Medical Association retired and his replacement hired another agency. My mother’s dance school had also declined. The hippies didn’t send their children to learn tap and ballet the way parents had in previous decades.

  My brother said he could help them if they moved to L.A. As unthinkable as it seemed, my mother closed her school and soon arrived with my aging, blind grandmother. She made an entrance, too. At the airport, she jumped on the baggage carousel after missing her luggage and rode it around, yelling at Garry and his wife to get her bags and watch Nanny.

  Nanny went into an old folks’ home in Hollywood while my mother moved into a place on Laurel Avenue. My father, who stayed in New York to close the apartment and tie up loose ends at work, arrived a few weeks later. He was not given a warm welcome.

  “I’d kill myself,” my mother told us, “but I can’t find my suicide jar.”

  Garry covered their $155-a-month rent. My mother handled the rest of their finances, keeping track of every penny and putting my father on a strict allowance. One month she refused to give him $100 for his car insurance because he still owed her $50 for repairs from the month before. “If I give him money,” she told me, “I’ll never get it back.” She talked about applying for work at one of the local department stores. Garry also tried to set her up at a talent agency, but she proved too difficult. She thought everyone was a moron.

  My father went to Garry’s office nearly every day as if he worked there. I think he used the phone. I’m sure he wanted to get away from my mother. He wasn’t used to spending time with her. Garry said he could work for Compass, but the management company shut down before that happened. All their actors went with Pat McQueeney, and Herbie Molina took the writers. The only one without a place to go was my father, and it annoyed the hell out of my mother. “I’m not his slave, Pen,” she said. “He doesn’t even look for a job.”

  I spent a lot of time with my mother. If I was free, I met her for breakfast or lunch, and when she couldn’t get ahold of me, or when I didn’t call as planned, she left a message on my service asking where I was. She needed someone to tell about the minutia in her life, and that was me. She told me what she made for dinner, how much money the managers of her building had in their saving accounts (compared to her and my father, who had nothing), and even whether she was having “loose movements” that day or nothing at all.

  “It’s this unpredictable, hectic life I lead,” she said one day with a sigh. “If only I had my suicide jar.”

  She babysat for Garry’s children, and told me how Gary’s wife, Barbara, slipped her cash—but never in front of my father. It was her mad money, she said, and it kept her in cheap dresses and visits to the hairdresser. She also helped take care of Tracy, who was now five and spent summers with me. She was better off with Mickey, who was remarried and had the more stable home.

  Look, my mothering skills didn’t suddenly materialize between June and August. If Tracy woke up early, I sent her to the corner store to pick up breakfast—a Fudgsicle for her and cigarettes for me. My mother hadn’t been June Cleaver, and I wasn’t Mrs. Brady.

  My grandmother grew harder to manage. We once picked her up for a doctor’s appointment and she got in the front of the car, except she stepped on the seat and sat on top of the head rest, not realizing her head was pressing against the roof. My mother grabbed her ankles and yanked her down until she was properly seated.

  At least my mother’s sense of humor remained intact. She needed it. Once, after buying my grandmother a bright, new housecoat, she came back to find Nanny had cut off the sleeves, made pockets, and sewn them onto four other dresses. At one time she would’ve railed about the waste of money. Now, she laughed. “The gray background with pink and green flowers on her yellow, blue, and white checked dresses looks stunning,” she told me.

  For all of her complaining, she enjoyed L.A. One night she saw a preview of Easy Rider at the Directors Guild and sat next to a woman she recognized from Alexander’s. Then she got into a conversation with a man who mistook her for Jean Stapleton. When he told her that Je
an was very funny, my mother replied, “Well, I’m funny, too. Would you like to give me a job?”

  As I recall, we were supposed to go shopping the next day, but I showed up late after getting a callback for a commercial. When I walked in, she was typing a letter to Ronny—she was still always typing. I read over her shoulder and saw she was catching my sister up on the latest events, including my love life. “She’s still sleeping with the guy from William Morris,” she wrote. “He’s among a few others, but I can’t say anything. Did I tell you she goes to his beach house in Malibu? I’m sure the neighbors tell his wife, but Pen doesn’t care.”

  “Ma!” I exclaimed. “Why are you telling Ronny all about my personal life?”

  “What?” she said, perplexed. “It’s true, isn’t it?”

  CHAPTER 16

  I Made Him Sick

  Penny and Rob Reiner in 1973

  Marshall personal collection

  WHEN ROB REINER and I were children, we lived across the street from each other in the Bronx. We never met because the Grand Concourse was a busy street and we were too young to cross it. One time I saw his father, Carl, in the tiny grocery store in our building. Then one of the stars on Your Show of Shows, he was the most famous person in our neighborhood. He was also known for giving out the best Halloween candy.

  In 1963, my brother and Jerry Belson worked for Carl as staff writers on The Dick Van Dyke Show, and I knew about Rob from hanging out with comedy people. The name Reiner stood out in Hollywood. There was one degree of separation between us for so many years that when we finally met, it felt like destiny was completing a circle that had been drawn years earlier.

  It was a summer night, and I left Just in Time’s acting class. I crossed Santa Monica Boulevard and walked into Barney’s Beanery, a late-night bar and restaurant popular with actors, writers, and musicians. I spotted some people from The Committee at a table, and Rob was among them. Someone invited me to sit down, and Rob and I immediately looked at each other.

  “So you’re Garry’s sister,” he said.

  “So you’re Carl’s kid,” I replied, not missing a beat.

  Rob and I were instant friends. I hung out at the house on King’s Road he shared with what seemed like half of The Committee: Chris Ross, Carl Gottlieb, Larry Hankin, and John Brent. They were all creative—and nuts! John, who had made the comedy album How to Speak Hip with Del Close, kept an array of pills in a large flashlight. Every so often he dumped them out on the coffee table and said, “Let’s see, two of these are equal to one Nembutal.”

  I liked Rob because he wore pajamas and didn’t do drugs. He had already gone through his wild period and now focused on his work. He wanted to write and direct. His closest friends included his high school buddies Albert Brooks and Richard Dreyfuss and his writing partner, Phil Mishkin. They cranked out TV and movie scripts, as well as a play, The Howie Rubin Story, which won an L.A. Drama Critics Circle Award in 1970.

  They were funny. Together, they would trade stories and twist them until they had spun them into comedy gold. I remember laughing one night as they recalled how they got out of the Vietnam draft. Albert had a bad shoulder and he did a whole bit on how that would have been bad for the war effort. Ricky Dreyfuss was a conscientious objector. Rob had a letter from his doctor saying he wasn’t fit for military service, and then when he filled out his draft papers he checked every possible box on the page, including the one that indicated that he was a homosexual—which earned him a warning from the draft board that he would never act or write in Hollywood.

  We would have dinner with Rob’s family, including his younger siblings, Annie and Lucas. These were warm occasions that Carl livened up with games. I remember him once handing out kazoos for all of us to play. He would call everyone a genius when of course he was the only real genius at the table. One night, as Rob and I walked across the old railroad tracks in Hollywood, he made a surprising confession.

  “You’re the first Jewish girl that I’ve liked,” he said.

  I looked at him like he was missing the obvious.

  “That’s because I’m not Jewish,” I said.

  Then, all of a sudden, our relationship was put on hold. Rob had a nervous breakdown. He moved back in with his parents and dropped out of sight. I thought it was because I’d told him that I’d liked him, too. It might have been too much for him to handle. As time went on, though, I understood this wasn’t about me. Although he had written for The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour and The Smothers Brothers, and his play had won an award, none of that was enough. He was under extraordinary pressure to succeed and make a name for himself, separate from his father, and I thought perhaps he had buckled under the weight of his own expectations.

  I stayed in contact with him as best I could. I got updates from Carl Gottlieb and spoke fairly often with Rob’s parents. They were mystified. He couldn’t work. At first he felt too much of everything, and then he went through a phase where he felt nothing. Literally. If he hit his arm against a tree, he didn’t have any pain. He didn’t have any sensation whatsoever.

  Then, a few months later, I checked in with his father and things had improved. “He shaved today!” Carl said. It was the breakthrough all of us had been hoping for. From that point on, Rob improved slowly but steadily. Soon we were hanging out again. He would call and ask if I wanted to get something to eat or go to a movie and I always made myself available.

  I was now living in a one-bedroom, ground-floor apartment on Palm, just off Sunset Boulevard. Barry Levinson, who was then writing comedy with Craig T. Nelson, had helped me move. I decorated the walls with jigsaw puzzles that I glued together after completing them. Jerry Belson came over one day and warned that that was a sign of sickness, not art. I disagreed. I thought it was a sign that I didn’t have enough money to afford anything else.

  Those were tough times. I spent three days on a Jack in the Box commercial shoot, playing a pregnant woman whose husband stops for a burger on the way to the hospital. George Furth, who was collaborating with Stephen Sondheim on the play Company, was my husband. I expected to make enough from the commercial to pay my rent for several months. But the ad was pulled at the last minute. Apparently you weren’t supposed to show a pregnant woman detouring from the hospital. I guess someone at the FCC feared that thousands of babies would be born in the drive-through line.

  I was also in an episode of Love, American Style, playing opposite actor Mike Farrell in a segment titled “Love and the Pickup.” The script described my part as the “homely girl at a bar.” Was I? Apparently. After I saw myself, I cried for three days. Reading those parts could send you to a psychiatrist for years. (Note to future scriptwriters: Don’t describe girls as ugly, fat, or homely. You can tell the director quietly, in private. But it’s not nice.)

  Then I hit a new low point when someone tried to break into my apartment. It was late at night, and I was in bed. I had the window open a crack because it was hot. I had just put my book down and turned off the light when the lamp on my nightstand fell over with a crash. Startled, I noticed a large hand reaching through the Levolor windows next to me, searching for something to grab onto. I leapt out of bed and screamed.

  My neighbor, Jesse Pearson, the actor who had played Conrad Birdie in Bye Bye Birdie, raced over from next door as soon as he heard my frightened scream. From behind the door where I was hiding, I pointed toward the window. Jesse yanked up the blinds and standing there was a guy holding his shoes in his hand. He looked as startled as we were.

  “Don’t get upset,” he said, waving his hands. “I’m a cop.”

  The real police came quickly and took him away. Morgan Upton from The Committee stayed with me the rest of the night, and Rob, who I hadn’t been able to reach, took over the next day. Our relationship progressed without incident until Tracy visited. Before I could even introduce them, Rob blurted, “That’s all I need is a kid.” His comment surprised me. He was thinking ahead. We hadn’t even slept together yet, though it wasn’t from
a lack of interest on my part. Whenever we got to my door Rob either had a headache or a sore throat or an upset stomach. I thought I made him sick.

  One night in December I decided to save him from any future ailments. After seeing Robert Redford’s new movie Downhill Racer, Rob brought me back home and walked me to the front door. I told him that I wanted to give back his Nichols and May records as well as all the other albums that I’d borrowed from him. He didn’t understand. I explained that I was breaking up with him. I felt like we had to move on—for his sake and mine.

  “No, I want to come in,” he said. “I really want to.”

  “Do you feel okay?” I said. “You aren’t nauseous? No sore throat?”

  He shook his head and followed me inside. The next morning, Rob made it clear that our relationship had moved to a more serious place.

  “I just want to tell you that I’m going to fart in front of you,” he said.

  “All right,” I said.

  And we were together from then on.

  CHAPTER 17

  All in the Family

  Penny and Rob cutting the cake at their 1971 backyard Hollywood wedding

  Marshall personal collection

  BEING WITH ROB meant being with his friends, especially Albert. They were like Rob’s father and Mel Brooks: best friends who made each other even funnier. I would go to Rob’s house up in Benedict Canyon with my little suitcase and Albert would listen to us, waiting for the right moment before asking if we wanted to get something to eat at the deli in the Beverly Wilshire Hotel.

  When Rob and I finally moved in together, it was without Albert. I didn’t want him listening anymore. Our place was a funky cottage in Laurel Canyon. We had a tree growing through the second bedroom and some artistic crap the previous residents had done on the ceiling. We also had two cats, Howie Rubin and Rhoda Kleinman, both named after the lead characters in Rob’s play. Friends were reluctant to come over since our narrow street didn’t have parking and anyone who did visit got a ticket.

 

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