by Carl Reiner
Ordinarily, the “equipment” we flew on was a twin-engine Beechcraft, but it seemed that the Beechcraft and our regular pilot were both ailing and unavailable. We were assured that the replacement pilot and plane, a single-engine Cessna, were quite capable of getting us safely to the Wilmot Airport in Eureka. The small plane could uncomfortably accommodate four passengers. The least uncomfortable seat was the one next to the pilot. We, being gallant “guys,” insisted that the “doll,” Eva Marie Saint, sit in the cockpit. Brian Keith and I sat on a benchlike middle seat, and Norman Jewison, the narrowest of us, volunteered to sit behind us on the little fold-down jump seat, under which I stowed a shoe box containing a present I had bought for my six-year-old son, Lucas—a pair of cowboy boots that needed to be exchanged for the right size and the right color.
From a nervous passenger’s point of view, it was a rotten night for flying, but our pilot did not seem at all concerned that it was drizzling and the wind socks on the landing strip were plump and flapping in the breeze and that a fog appeared to be rolling in. We macho guys all made jaunty comments about enjoying the adventure of taking off and flying in bad weather, and I wondered if I was the only one who was lying. Probably. Brian Keith, a very fine actor, an excellent drinker, and a rock steady man’s man, seemed to be his cool, confident self—as was Norman Jewison, a happy-go-lucky Canadian, inured to pain and freezing winters—and Eva Marie Saint, whose composure and strength are built into her name. All seemed totally at ease, which had a calming effect on me.
I was not happy to hear that the flying time in our single-engine Cessna would be a bit longer than with the Beechcraft. In spite of the wind and rain, we were cleared for takeoff and our pilot—whose name I didn’t hear though it sounded like Poncho or Ponchus, so I thought of him as Pontius pilot—Pontius pushed the throttle forward, and we started down the bumpy runway. As the plane picked up speed, the windshield was splattered with giant raindrops. What was a light drizzle had suddenly turned into a heavy downpour. The single-engine plane shuddered as it took off and immediately started swaying drunkenly from side to side, bouncing and bumping as it struggled to climb higher. The cabin became eerily silent. The pilot was concentrating hard on steadying the vibrating plane, and none of us dared distract him with questions. “If it keeps bouncing like this, might the wings fall off?” is one I wanted to ask but held my tongue as did my fellow passengers. After what seemed like hours but was in reality about ten minutes, I found it necessary to break the silence.
“Uh, sir,” I asked, mustering a matter-of-fact tone, “what was that string of red lights we just passed—at eye level? I don’t remember seeing those red lights on any of our previous flights.”
“Oh, they were there,” the pilot assured me, “but you were probably flying a couple of thousand feet above them.”
“What are they?” all of us asked.
“Santa Rosa airport’s warning lights,” Pontius advised us calmly, “keeps low-flying planes from crashing into structures lower than five hundred feet.”
“Why aren’t we up a couple of thousand feet?” I asked.
“Been trying to, but the winds and rain are sort of holding us down,” he said. “Might have to stay at this altitude all the way to Eureka. You do have to get there tonight, don’t you?”
Brian, Norman, and I agreed that we did. I did so with less enthusiasm.
“If you’re nervous about the bumps and bounces,” he said, “I could put her down.”
Again, each of the macho men, not wanting to appear like spineless wimps, agreed that we push on.
“Hey, fellers, this is a little too bumpy-bouncy for me,” Eva said calmly but firmly, “why don’t we just land in Santa Rosa and rent a car?”
Without a moment’s hesitation, we all spoke up. “Fine with me, Eva.” “If that’s what you want.” “If you’re uncomfortable…”
On hearing our response, the pilot banked the plane sharply, made a U-turn and nosed the “equipment” toward the Santa Rosa airport. None of us were prepared for that kamikaze maneuver, and we found ourselves suddenly lying on our right sides. Accompanying the passenger’s grunts and groans were the frightening sounds of a door flying open, a sudden rush of air, and a whooshing noise. It sounded as though something slid along the floor and bumped against the flapping door. The most disturbing sound of all was the “Oh shit!” that escaped from Norman Jewison a split second after hearing the sliding-whooshing sound. All this activity happened directly behind my seat. Trying to be heard above the sound of the motor and the rushing air, I screamed, “Norman are you all right?” Getting no response, I twisted my head and body around as far as my seat belt would allow and saw—no Norman! I heard the sound of the small cargo door flapping against the fuselage as I reached behind me and swung my arm back and forth, trying to touch Norman, all the while, screaming, “Norman, are you there? Say something!”
I will not vouch for the accuracy of all the dialogue in this scene, but I do remember announcing these words to my terrified friends: “I think we lost Norman!” I had good reason to believe that Norman had slid out of the plane, because all of the evidence supported this—The sliding, whooshing sound, the open cargo door flapping against the fuselage, and his not answering when I screamed his name. I continued to call his name as I loosened my belt and got into a position to see what the hell had happened—and what I saw sent a chill through me. Norman was not in his jump seat—the seat had sprung back up. My fear that Norman had fallen out of the plane was half-justified. Half of Norman was hanging outside the plane facedown and his bottom half was stretched out on the floor. His right hand was reaching for and vainly grabbing at the handle of the swinging cargo door. I held onto his belt as he continued being assaulted by a driving rain, a gale force wind, and the wash from the propeller. The elements were doing all they could to frustrate him but our dogged, rain-soaked director, leaning out dangerously far, finally managed to catch the door handle. With minimum help from me, he shimmied his way back into the plane and pulled the door shut. He grimaced, and said, “Lost your kid’s boots, sorry.”
When the pilot had made his unannounced, fighter-pilot maneuver, the rubber bands that had been securing the cargo door snapped, the door flew open, and the sliding-whooshing sound I thought was Norman going to his death was made by the box of boots sliding along the floor and out the door.
I told Norman Jewison then, and I have told him many times since, that I would rather have lost fifty pair of boots than have lost the indispensable services of the director of The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming—the one and only movie on which I was given what appeared to be top billing.
14
The Deadly Friendly Game
After living through Norman Jewison’s out-of-plane, out-of-body experience, we all endured another eight hours of terror being chauffeured to Fort Bragg by Brian Keith, one of the Macho Men, who never figured out which knobs controlled the radio, the air-conditioner, the horn, or the defogger. He steered the rented Buick in a heavy downpour, through cotton-candy fog, over tortuous mountain roads. To avoid veering off a cliff, he drove at six miles an hour while straddling the white line in the center of the two-lane road. I stared intently at that white line for most of the trip and when we finally arrived at our motel, I felt like a hypnotized chicken. All of us were tired, grungy, and bedraggled. We had arrived on time and ready to shoot—but the company wasn’t. The insistent rain had made it impossible to shoot the scheduled exterior scenes that day or the next or the next. We had risked our lives for nothing!
Recalling the day of our traumatic plane and car rides and our arrival at Fort Bragg, triggered a memory of an extraordinary gathering that took place in my motel suite on a dark, rainy afternoon.
Present in the cramped living room of my motel suite were many of the film’s actors, among them, Jonathan Winters, Alan Arkin, Theodore Bickel, Michael J. Pollard, Paul Ford, Cliff Norton, Richard Schall, and three of the Cessna Four, Eva Marie Saint, Bria
n Keith and myself. Norman Jewison was off somewhere cursing and worrying, the only thing a director can do when horrible weather screws up his shooting schedule.
Hearing complaints about how little there is to do on rainy days in a small, quaint town whose one movie theater is only open at night, I thought it would be nice to invite the bored cast members to my room to discuss antidotes to boredom, nibble Chee-tos and whatever else room service could provide, and perhaps, play a game or two. When someone said, “How about we play charades?” someone countered with “How about fuck charades?” and everyone agreed it was a lousy idea, including me, who suggested it.
I don’t know what possessed me to suggest another game, but I did.
“Hey,” I announced, “I know a game we can play that I bet you haven’t played for a long time. I think it’s the kind of a game that, if we play seriously, could be very exciting and something we’ll all remember fondly.”
Here now is how I introduced the playing of ring around the rosy to the cast of The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming.
“All right, gang,” I said, “raise your hands if you don’t know how to play ring around the rosy.”
Some raised their hands, some raised their eyebrows, some laughed, and some did all three.
“When was the last time any of you played a really serious game of ring around the rosy?” was my next question.
All admitted that they had not played it since they were children, and some recalled playing it with their own children.
“But you have never played it with adults,” I pointed out, “and I guarantee that if you do, you will find it a hundred times more satisfying than it ever was. So do I have any players for a serious game of ring around the rosy?”
And what a gemütlich group they were! I believe Eva Marie Saint and Theodore Bikel were the first to volunteer and were closely followed by Alan Arkin, Cliff Norton, Jonathan Winters, et al. To make room for our game, I moved all the chairs and tables aside and without being instructed all the players joined hands and formed an almost perfect circle. I believe one or two of them laughed. I was upset by their attitude, but I chose not to admonish them at this time. I stepped between two of those gigglers, took their hands and joined the group.
“Now, does anyone not know the lyrics to the song?” Jonathan Winters said he was sure he remembered them all but had a question.
“After ‘Ashes, ashes,’ some little kids sang ‘aw faw dow’ instead of ‘all fall down.’ Which is preferred?”
“Either is acceptable, but I think the latter, ‘all fall down’ suits our group better. Okay, gang,” I said, masking my excitement, “we’ll do a practice round, at half speed, and we will circle to the right!”
“It’s not going to be easy to fall down at half speed,” Alan Arkin advised. “Should we just indicate falling down?”
“Right, Alan,” I agreed, “we won’t fall on this rehearsal. Ready? Ring around the…”
We had barely sung the first line when someone, I think it was Alan Arkin, started to laugh.
“Hold it, hold it!” I said, controlling my anger “I didn’t think I had to spell it out, but for this game to be fun, we have to play it seriously. If you don’t think you can be serious, then you can all leave and we’ll forget about it. Is that what you want? I think you’ll be missing out on something special. What’ll it be?”
Reluctantly, they all agreed to give it a go.
“Very well, we are understood,” I said, hopefully, “let’s try again. Ring … around … the … rohh-sy … a pocket full of pohhsy…”
The group went through the mock rehearsal and waited for my critique.
“Well, well,” I started, feigning disappointment, “that first attempt at playing the game was shoddy, which is what I anticipated but what I find unforgivable is the fact that half of the actors, who think of themselves as disciplined professionals, either suppressed giggles or laughed openly—and this, after I warned you of the consequences. I guess playing a serious game of ring around the rosy with you people is just not possible. Why don’t you all go back to your suites and bore yourselves to sleep.”
I started to open the motel door but turned back to deliver my parting thrust, which I delivered sincerely and with passion. “In case some of you’ve forgotten the origin of this song, let me refresh your memory. In the fifteenth century, the bubonic plague decimated half the population in the world and this charming little ditty, which was sung and performed by innocent English schoolchildren, described what happened to a victim after being infected with the plague. Little red spots would appear on the skin—ring around the rosy—followed by death and flowers—pocket full of posies—and finally, the cremation of the ashen-faced corpse—ashes, ashes, all fall down! I guess”—I sighed resignedly—“you have all forgotten why it should be sung and played seriously but if you can’t be serious…”
“We can, we can!” “We’ll be serious!” “Give us another chance!”
I will never forget being a part of this group of dedicated, mature actors circling about as we sang a sober and dignified rendition of ring around the rosy. We sang it not once but four times, circling first to the right and then to the left and each time falling down. The final rendition was the most difficult because by that time none of us could hold back the laughter that started building when we first agreed to be serious about acting silly.
15
Type Me a Broadway Play
There is an open wound in my psyche, a critic-inflicted or perhaps self-inflicted wound that has defied the healing laws of nature and time. By having the last printed word on the subject, I am confident that the old wound will close, and I will live happily ever after. We’ll see.
* * *
If you were attending theater in New Haven, Boston or New York in 1967, there is a possibility that you might have seen Something Different, the one and only play I ever wrote for the legitimate theater. Of all the experiences I’ve had in show business, the writing and directing of Something Different was by far the most memorable. In terms of excitement, terror, joy, sadness, anger, frustration, elation, and depression, nothing even comes close. I daresay that no Broadway play has ever had a more bizarre conception. It was a play born not out of any deep desire to write but out of sheer boredom, and not even mine. It was my secretary’s, a young lady named Linda Duugles (yes, two u’s), who had worked for me during the last year of the Dick Van Dyke Show and then in preproduction for The Comic. The film was slated to start as soon as our star, Dick Van Dyke, became available, which was estimated to be in two months. Aaron Ruben, my co-writer and co-producer, went back to his executive producer’s office for The Andy Griffith Show, leaving me to mind the store.
When Aaron and I were writing and rewriting the screenplay, Linda was happily typing and retyping right along with us. It was about three weeks after we had handed in our final draft that Linda said the magic words that started my odyssey.
“Do you have anything for me to type?”
“Not right now.” I said.
“Maybe you can find something,” she sighed, “I’m so bored.”
She said it so wistfully that, to accommodate her need to type, I sat down at my typewriter and started clacking away. (In days or yore, typewriters not only clacked but rang bells). In took me no more than a couple of minutes to mock up something that looked like the beginning of a play. Thoughtfully, I left a fair amount of x’ed-out sentences and typpiographicialll errors for her to correct and retype.
I pulled the page out of my typewriter and dropped it on Linda’s desk.
“Stop what you’re doing,” I barked, “I need two clean copies! Now!”
I hurried back to my desk, and while rolling a blank page into my Smith-Corona, I head Linda typing and giggling.
“This is so funny,” she said, returning the retyped page, “what is this?”
“A play! You said you wanted something to type, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” she said, laughi
ng, “but I didn’t expect to type a play.”
That is precisely how it started, as a joke. I was going to type up a few more pages and give Linda what, in grade school, we called busywork, but later that morning, after hearing Linda laugh as she typed three more pages of my fake play, I realized that I was also onto something; exactly what, I wasn’t sure, but I did know it was something different. I was curious to find out where it would go. After Linda left for the day, I stayed on to complete Scene One of Something Different. After reading it over I realized that I was writing an absurdist comedy, parodying the absurd dramas that were filling theaters on both sides of the Atlantic. I had seen productions of Becket’s Waiting for Godot, Ionesco’s, The Rhinoceros, Duerrenmatt’s The Visit, Pinter’s The Birthday Party, and Albee’s Tiny Alice and had been alternately impressed, amused, entertained, and, at times, utterly confused.
By putting in full days of writing and retyping, we managed to complete a three-act play in less than six weeks. My wise agent, Mike Zimring, thought it good enough to send to Alex Cohen, an esteemed Broadway producer, who two nights later phoned me at home and said to me what no writer expects to hear except from a friend who is playing a cruel joke.
“In twenty-five years of reading and producing plays, I have never read a funnier comedy—and neither has my wife, Hildy. I’d like to get it on in September. Are you available to direct it in September?”
Wow! This genius of a producer who, at the age of twenty-one, mounted his first hit, Edward Chodorov’s Kind Lady, had asked me to come to New York to direct my play. It was just too good to be true! And it was.…
