It's Not Easy Bein' Me

by Rodney Dangerfield

  Even stars can’t get lucky every night.

  * * *

  The day my wife and I got married—that was a beauty. I gave her the ring and she gave me the finger.

  * * *

  A few years later, I was working at a nightclub called the Queen’s Terrace on Long Island. One night Jackie Gleason walked in. He sat down at a table all by himself and watched the show while he drank a whole fifth of Scotch. Then he got up, gave the waiter a $20 tip, and walked out, straight as an arrow.

  Gleason had quite a reputation as a drinker, and he liked to enjoy himself. He proved that night that he could do both. Jackie had an appetite for other pleasures as well.

  One night I was in Bobby Byron’s room at the Belvedere Hotel with Joe E. Ross. There was a knock on the door.

  Bobby yelled, “Who is it?”

  I heard a voice say, “The Great One.”

  Gleason called himself “The Great One,” and he was worthy of the title.

  Bobby opened the door and did a little business transaction—he sold the Great One some great pot. And away we go…

  I went fox hunting…look what I found.

  Courtesy of the collection of Rodney Dangerfield.

  * * *

  Hey, I gotta be honest with you. I’m not a fabulous lover. My wife and I were in bed on our wedding night and she said, “Well, honey, this is it.” I said, “Honey, that was it.”

  * * *

  I first met Lenny Bruce through his mother, Sally Marr, who was the mistress of ceremonies at the Polish Falcon Club, where I worked as a singing waiter back in 1942. As the years went on, I became friendly with Lenny—we saw each other here and there and hung out. This was years before he had an act, or even knew he was going to have an act. Lenny was the nicest kid in the world, and he idolized Joe Ancis, one of my oldest and dearest friends. I’ll tell you a lot more about Joe later.

  Lenny hit it big in the fifties. One time I was hanging out with him in his room at the American Hotel in New York. He was getting ready to do his act at a club in the Village, but first he had to shoot himself up. Even then—young, smart, and at the top of his game—he had a bad heroin habit.

  It was difficult for me to watch as he held that needle, looking for a good vein in his arm, so I went into the bathroom until he had finished. When he was done, he was a new man. He said, “Tonight I’m going to do the show dressed in white—completely white, everything.”

  After he became the man in white—white pants, white shirt, white jacket, white shoes, white socks, white underwear, far as I can remember—we went down to the club.

  Here are the first words Lenny said that night when he took the stage: “Tonight, here’s how I’m going to open my act. I’m going to pee on you. If a guy tells jokes, you’ll forget him. But if a guy pees on you, you’ll never forget him.”

  A guy in the audience yelled, “Keep it clean. Keep it clean.”

  And Lenny answered him in these exact words: “Fuck you, Jim, you square motherfucker!”

  * * *

  We were poor, too. If I wasn’t born a boy, I would have nothing to play with.

  * * *

  Redd Foxx was another good friend of mine. He was a great comedian, a “natural,” as they say. (I’ve learned over the years that when you get to know the “naturals,” you find that they work very hard at their craft.) Here’s one of my favorite Redd Foxx jokes: “China has over a billion people. Let’s face it—they outfucked us.”

  One time, when I was very tense and had been working at my club nonstop, I needed to get away, so I called around to find out where Redd was performing. He was working in Florida, so I flew down to see him. My first night there, I put so much stuff up my nose that when I went to sleep at eight in the morning, I said to myself, If I wake up, it’s a gift.

  Later, I was doing a TV special for ABC, and I wanted Redd to be in it. He was working in Las Vegas, so we had to fit it into his schedule. In show business, if you’re not working one night, they say you’re “dark” that night, so I said, “Redd, are you dark on Monday night?”

  Redd said, “Rodney, I’m dark every night.”

  In the 1980s, I did three comedy specials for ABC in L.A. We did one of them during the summer, so I rented a house in Malibu.

  My next-door neighbor was Flip Wilson. We would sometimes hang out at night and swap stories. Flip told me a disturbing story from when he was an unknown working in the South.

  Flip had just closed in one city, and a man he’d met at his hotel told him that another guest was driving to the same city Flip was going to next, so Flip asked the guy for a ride.

  The guy said okay, so Flip got in the car and off they went. After they’d been driving for a while, the guy said, “What kind of work do you do?”

  Flip told him, “I’m an entertainer.”

  The guy said, “All niggers are entertainers. What do you do for a living?”

  I first saw Andy Kauffman at a club in New York called Catch a Rising Star. What amazed me was that Andy did two shows each night, each one completely different. For the second show, he’d come out as this obnoxious character, and the audience never knew it was Andy doing both spots.

  I immediately became a huge Andy Kauffman fan and asked him if he’d like to open for me on a couple of dates. He said okay, so we went to work at a theater in San Francisco.

  Andy made life interesting, on and off the stage. Onstage, his thing was to get the audience to hate him. He did an amazing character, a repulsive singer named Tony Clifton, who told vile jokes and said nasty things about women and insulted everybody. And the audience hated him—they’d curse him out and even throw things at him. And that’s exactly what happened on our opening night in San Francisco.

  They threw so much stuff at Andy, when I came on it looked like I walked into a salad bar.

  The next night, the theater manager was prepared—he put up a net that covered the entire length of the stage to protect Andy from people throwing things. It worked pretty well—only two things got through the net and hit Andy: an apple and a hard-boiled egg.

  I loved it, and Andy loved it. He was behind the net with thousands of people yelling at him, “Get off! You stink! Get off, you bum!”

  Andy, still in character as Tony Clifton, raised his hand to get the audience to be quiet and said, “There are a few of you out there who are ruining it for the rest of us.”

  People said to me, “What are you doing with him as your opening act? You need someone who puts people in a good mood. They hate this guy.”

  I said, “No, he’s different. I like him.”

  My second date with Andy was at the Comedy Store in Los Angeles. Before the show, Andy had the emcee make this announcement: “Ladies and gentlemen, Tony Clifton asks that there be no smoking during his performance.” There was some grumbling—remember this was thirty years ago—but people put out their cigarettes.

  About five minutes later, just as the show was about to start, the announcer once again said, “Ladies and gentlemen, please remember that when Tony Clifton is on, there can be absolutely no smoking during the show.”

  Then he introduced Andy as Tony Clifton—and Tony walked out smoking a cigarette.

  * * *

  You know you’re drunk when you take a leak and your fly isn’t open.

  * * *

  In 1985, HBO offered me a deal to do a show from Dangerfield’s that would introduce new comedians. They told me I could pick the comedians.

  I liked that idea because I’ve always been looking out for new talent. I was always attracted to the edgy comics—like Andy Kauffman and Sam Kinison.

  I did an HBO show every year for six or seven years, and they were a big hit with viewers, and with comics. Most of the young comedians I contacted wanted to be on my shows. Many times, it was their first shot on national television, and it led to bigger things for a number of them. Here are some of the people I introduced on those shows: Jerry Seinfeld, Robert Townsend, Roseanne, Bob Saget, Lo
uie Anderson, Andrew Dice Clay, Carol Liefer, Rita Rudner, Jeff Foxworthy, Tim Allen, and Sam Kinison.

  * * *

  He who laughs last didn’t get the joke in the first place.

  * * *

  About Fifteen years ago I was working at Caesars Palace in Vegas. My opening act was a girl named Pam Madison, who sang and did impersonations of singers. I’d never worked with her, so before our first show, I asked her what her closing number was. The opening act usually does about a half hour, but I wanted to know a little more precisely when I had to be ready to go on. She told me she always closed as Barbra Streisand singing “People.” Okay, fine.

  So, opening night, I’m in my dressing room, just pulling myself together as Pam goes on for the first show at eight. I hear her introduced, I hear the applause, whatever…I stop paying attention. The next thing I know, I hear Pam doing Barbra Streisand singing “People”! I’m confused as hell, so I look at my watch. It’s only eight-twelve! She’d only been on for twelve minutes! So I frantically tie my tie, put my shoes on, and run toward the stage.

  Bob Hope entertained the troops every year. So did my wife.

  Courtesy of Dangerfield’s, New York

  After the show I asked Pam what had happened. She told me, “I saw everyone in that audience looking at me and I panicked. I had to get out of there.”

  She settled down by the next show, and we got along great. One night after the show, Pam introduced me to a friend of hers who was working at a comedy club next door. It was Roseanne Barr, who was an unknown at the time. The three of us sat and talked for a while and I could see that Roseanne was very funny. I also thought, What a voice! She’d be the perfect wife to abuse me.

  Before we parted, I told Roseanne that I was doing one of my HBO comedy shows in a few months and I’d like her to be on it. I told her that I wanted her to do her stand-up act, and that I’d also write some skits that she and I could tape for the show. She said, “Sure, whatever,” but didn’t seem too excited.

  Three months later, I called her and said it was all set—skits were written and I was sending her a copy of the script for her to look over. Roseanne now got real excited and told me, “This is the first time someone told me they were going to do something for me and they actually did it!”

  As you might have guessed, Roseanne was a hit, even though it was a big show—I also had Jerry Seinfeld, Sam Kinison, Robert Townsend, Bob Nelson, and Jeff Altman on that night.

  Roseanne and I stayed friendly. Years later, in the early nineties, we hooked up at the Pritikin Longevity Center in Santa Monica, which was where people used to go to lose weight and get healthy. We spent a week there with Carl Reiner and his wife, Estelle. We all shared the same table for our meals and we had plenty of laughs, but one night Roseanne and I were having such a good time, laughing so hard about the awful—HEALTHY—food they were serving us, that we both flipped and decided to escape for a night. After we finished our dinner at Pritikin, which was not very tasty, we decided to go out and really eat. We both went nuts and ate all the junk we’d been craving all week.

  * * *

  My wife can’t cook at all. I got the only dog that begs for Alka-Seltzer.

  * * *

  I met Mike Tyson a few times, at the clubs and in Vegas, and he was always very nice to me. He’s not as scary as he looks, at least to me. Maybe that’s because I made him smile the first time we met. I looked him in the eye, real concerned, and said, “If anybody bothers you, let me know.”

  * * *

  I live in a bad neighborhood. Last week they raffled off a police car, with two cops still in it.

  * * *

  I once had a press agent named Lee Solters, who thought he was a big shot. He’d been Frank Sinatra’s publicist for thirty years, so maybe he was. Anyway, I noticed that whenever I talked to him on the phone the conversation always ended the same way. After a few minutes he would say, “I gotta hang up. I got a call coming in from overseas.” The first few times I believed him. Then I realized that this was his way of ending the conversation…and to make himself look like a big shot. After that, I would end our conversations by saying, “I gotta hang up. I got a local call coming in.”

  * * *

  What good is being the best if it brings out the worst in you?—LADYBUGS, 1992

  * * *

  In L.A., about fifteen years ago, I ran into a guy named Ron Jeremy, a porn star who grew up in New York. He was a smart guy, funny, and I took a liking to him. Even put him in one of my HBO skits. One day he said, “You know, Rodney, I really want to move back to New York. The people in L.A. are too crazy.”

  Now, Ron Jeremy first became famous for a movie in which he said to a girl, “How about a blow job?” and she blew him off by saying, “Why don’t you give yourself a blow job?” He said, “Not a bad idea,” and went down on himself.

  It was a wild thing, and people talked about it. That’s how he became famous.

  That’s why I broke up when he said he wanted to move to New York—a guy who makes a living going down on himself thinks people in L.A. are too crazy.

  * * *

  Last week, I went to a discount massage parlor—it was self-service.

  * * *

  Speaking of big movie stars, I first met Dustin Hoffman at my club back in the early seventies. He was about to play Lenny Bruce in Bob Fosse’s movie and he wanted to get the feel of a nightclub and of doing stand-up. So he came over to Dangerfield’s and hung out for a week—although I told him, “You can’t learn to do stand-up in a week. You have to walk the boards for twenty years.”

  One night Joe Ancis, who was Lenny’s longtime friend and mentor, dropped by to say hello. In the course of our conversation, Dustin said to Joe, “Do you think I’ll make a good Lenny Bruce?”

  Joe said, “No.”

  Dustin wasn’t exactly thrilled to hear that, but I told him, “Don’t worry about it. Very few people ever saw Lenny work, so no one will know the difference. Whatever you do, they’ll figure that’s Lenny.”

  Dustin went on to win an Oscar nomination for Lenny.

  One of the most talented guys I ever saw was Sam Kinison. I first met him in the early eighties when I was working in a place called the Arena, a theater-in-the-round in Houston. After the show, a few of us went to a local comedy club.

  The show was Sam and two other young comics. He was young, raw, but had something wild that I liked. After the show, I asked the club manager, “Can I meet the guy who went on second?”

  They brought Sam over to our table, and we talked for about fifteen minutes. He told me he was struggling with his act, but I told him, “You’ll be fine. You’re great.”

  Sam had a crazy background—he’d been a preacher and came from a family of preachers. So there was plenty of anger and turmoil in him, which came out brilliantly onstage. Hilarious—but full of obscenities and rough talk about sex and drugs and religion. Sam didn’t hold back. He was raw, and honest, and very funny.

  Here’s Sam Kinison giving me a lecture on how to handle women.

  Courtesy of the collection of Rodney Dangerfield.

  I met him again a few years later in New York at Catch a Rising Star. After we said our hellos, Sam said, “Rodney, I finally got it, man!”

  So I stayed for his act, and he was right. He really did have something. His material was still wild, but his delivery was now mature. He was sensational. Sam, who’d been divorced three times, said he wasn’t going to get married again—“I don’t have to give away everything I own every five years!”

  After that show, I said to him, “Jeez, you’re great, man. I’m doing an HBO show. I’ll put you on it, okay?”

  He said, “No. That format’s no good for me. I can’t do just six or eight minutes like that. I need more time. I can’t cook until I’m out there at least ten minutes.”

  I said, “You’re wrong, man. You can cook as soon as you walk onstage. Just go right into it.”

  “I don’t know…” he said.


  Sam went back to California, and two weeks later I got a phone call. It was Sam, and he was very excited. “Rodney,” he said, “I’m cookin’ right away now! Can I still get on your show?”

  I said, “You got it.”

  So he came out to New York and did my show, and he was hilarious. That’s when he did his now-famous Ethiopia joke. The papers were full of stories about a horrible famine in Ethiopia, so Sam said: “Hey, I’ve figured out why you people are starving—you live in a fuckin’ desert! See this? This is sand. NOTHING WILL GROW HERE!”

  After that show aired, Sam started packing places that seat four or five hundred people. He used to say that that HBO show was “the six minutes that changed my life.”

  About a year later, I said to Sam, “I’m doing another special. Kill ’em on this one and you’ll be playing two-thousand seaters.”

  But I was wrong.

  He did the show and killed ’em again. The next time I saw Sam he was headlining at the Universal Amphitheater in Los Angeles. Six thousand seats—packed—and everyone yelling, “Sam! Sam! Sam!”

  Sam once told some writer that “Rodney is like a god to me.” That touched me deeply…but he probably said it because he thought I’d saved his life, not his career. Let me explain.