by Carl Reiner
“Yes, sir, I am asking you to believe that.”
“Well, you are asking a lot—and don’t ever ask again,” he barked. “Dismissed!”
I saluted the captain, and when returning my salute, he allowed me to see the subtle grin on his lips. I later learned that he too was a newlywed and had listened to my story with an empathetic ear.
Our months at Georgetown and our weekends in New York afforded Estelle and me the opportunity to get to know each other, and the more I discovered about her, the more dear she became to me. I assume it was so with her, because she never said otherwise.
After graduating as French interpreters, the army assigned my buddies and me to Camp Crowder, Missouri, where little or no French is spoken. It was the army’s plan for the French interpreters to go to a signal corps school and become members of a signal battalion. Ours was not to reason why; ours was but to do and learn to type.
Being stationed in Camp Crowder was another fortuitous happenstance for Estelle and me. By arranging for a leave of absence from the war plant where she worked as a three-dimensional draftsman, she was able to stay with me until I was assigned to a unit.
For two whole, wonderful weeks, in Neosho, Missouri, she and I were able to spend our nights together in the tiny front bedroom of a cramped, three-room railroad flat. The bathroom, being in the hall, required the two couples who had rented the back rooms to walk through our room whenever nature called. To insure our privacy, the landlord slung an opaque gauze curtain on one side of our bed. Estelle and I were so happy to be together that this invasive inconvenience, instead of depressing us, amused us.
The sad day finally arrived. Estelle went back to New York to work at the Sperry Rand Corporation. The three-dimensional blueprints she drew were of submarine and airplane parts for neophyte assembly workers who were not equipped to read regular two-dimensional drawings. Estelle, a schooled artist, was, along with a dozen of her coworkers, the first Jewish, African American, or female workers ever to be hired by the famous Rand Corporation. It took Hitler and a world war to get this race-, religion-, and gender-bigoted firm to accept the tenets of our constitution.
For the next year and a half, Estelle and I wrote to each other at least once a day—sometimes twice or thrice—and once, in my case, fifteen times. Yes, and on one particular Monday, Estelle received seventeen of my letters—the fifteen I wrote on that one day and two strays that had not been delivered the previous week. Each of the fifteen letters was at least four pages long. Estelle’s letters to me were always four to six pages. If anyone cares to check the volume of our correspondence, you have but to fly out to L.A., come to my home, and examine the cartons in my bedroom that contain bundles and bundles of our letters. Estelle saved all of mine, and I carried all of hers back from overseas in my bulging duffel bag.
I think I became a writer because of my need to tell Estelle who and what I cared about, what bugged me and what I found funny.
Even though Estelle is gone, I still have that need—so I tell you.
25th Anniversary
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The Game Show Shows
There was a period in my professional life, immediately after my days as a second banana to the great Sid Caesar on Your Show of Shows and before my life-changing experience as a writer-producer of The Dick Van Dyke Show, when I happily accepted invitations to appear on game shows—as either a panelist or host.
I had appeared on the legendary What’s My Line? and the less-legendary I’ve Got a Secret, but I believe the first one I ever guested on as a panelist was titled The Name’s the Same, hosted by Robert Q. Lewis. The show’s premise was simple: by asking a contestant non-direct questions, two other celebrity panelists and I tried to discover what famous person bore the same name as the guest. My fellow panelists were Joan Alexander, a gifted Broadway actress, and Bill Stern, a famous sports broadcaster and newspaper columnist.
On one particular telecast, we were trying to guess the name of a contestant who, we learned after a series of questions, was a “baseball player,” “a center fielder,” and “played for the New York Yankees.”
It was Bill Stern’s turn to either ask the next question or say the name of the famous person. Before Bill could answer, we stopped for a commercial. It was clear to Joan, to me, to the studio audience, and to the entire sports world that the man’s name must be Joe DiMaggio. I looked to Bill Stern, expecting to see a confident, smiling man, but instead, I saw a panicky, sweating man who smiled at me, and without moving his lips, whispered, “What the fuck is his name?”
For a split second, I thought he was putting me on. How could he not know the name of one of the greatest baseball players of all time? I knew that Bill Stern was not a kidder, so I quickly whispered, “Joe DiMaggio,” and not a moment too soon. Our host called on Bill, and Bill, smiling broadly, asked the contestant, “Is your name Joe DiMaggio?”
The audience applauded, as did Joan and I. Bill smiled and graciously acknowledged us all.
There was an explanation, and after the show, Bill felt a need to provide me with it. He thanked me for helping him out and said that he had been sick all week and was still running a fever.
I had always enjoyed listening to Bill Stern’s inspirational stories on his radio show. He would spin a dramatic yarn of someone who had a tragic beginning but by luck and pluck, managed to become a huge success. Ironically, at that time, Bill was the undocumented subject of his own show.
A few months after the show was canceled, I learned that Bill Stern had checked into a rehabilitation center to conquer his longtime addiction to drugs. He developed the addiction after breaking his leg and taking the painkillers that were prescribed for him.
I felt a kind of kinship to Bill—perhaps it was because, on the show, we both sported snazzy toupees.
In 1964, I was asked to host a new CBS game show that I thought had real potential. It was called The Celebrity Game and had a simple premise. Two contestants would try to guess how eight star panelists would advise them about certain domestic problems, such as: “What would you do if you hated your mother-in-law’s expensive but ugly wedding gift?” or “Should you tell your best friend that you saw her husband out with an attractive woman?”
The contestants would win small cash prizes if they guessed what the majority of the celebrities had advised. Each week, among the eight celebrity panelists were some I had known and some I was thrilled to meet. If you are old enough to remember, you will be as impressed as I was with this following roster of performers who, sixty years ago, were among our panelists: Gloria Swanson, Oscar Levant, Basil Rathbone, Sal Mineo, Nancy Sinatra, Eartha Kitt, Betty Hutton, Steve Allen, Edgar Bergen, Martha Raye, Vic Damone, Art Linkletter, Ida Lupino, Joseph Cotten, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Jan Murray, Ann Southern, Steven Boyd, Frankie Avalon, Mel Brooks, George Hamilton, Hedda Hopper, and Ronald Reagan.
Each week, eight of these stars sat in a two-tiered semicircle directly opposite the desk where the contestants and I were anchored.
Of all the celebrities, the one guest on whom I could depend to get big laughs was Zsa Zsa Gabor. She had a genuine gift for saying just the thing that would make the audience and all the celebrities roar, all but Oscar Levant, the brilliant concert pianist, Gershwin interpreter, and world-renowned wit. He would never crack a smile. One time after the entire audience had laughed uncontrollably, I asked him, “Oscar, how, when everyone is doubled over, laughing their heads off, can you just sit there and not laugh?”
“Carl,” he said sadly, “it’s been so many years since I’ve laughed, I’m afraid if I opened my mouth, dust will fly out.”
I remember that line getting one of the biggest responses ever!
Groucho Marx, Eden Marx, Paul Lynde, Shelley Winters, Franie Avalon, Dale Robertson, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Jim Backus, Gisele MacKenzie
And now, if I may, a word or many words abo
ut The Celebrity Game’s most successful alumnus, Ronald Reagan, whom I met for the first time at Tony Curtis’s home. It was in 1960, the year our family migrated to California, and Mr. Reagan was then president of the Screen Actors Guild of America. He was as charming and witty then as he was during his years in the White House and just as fiercely dedicated in helping his very wealthy friends become even wealthier. It was here, when chairing a meeting of actors to discuss the subject of their film residuals, that I had the first intimation of Ronald Reagan’s political philosophy. There were two Guild proposals being discussed about residual pay for actors who worked pre- and post-1968. One plan would have guaranteed that older actors, who were most in need of financial aid, would get it, and the other plan would insure that Mr. Reagan’s former employers, personal friends, and benefactors, General Electric, Twenty Mule Team Borax, and the large studios would legally be able to financially screw all Screen Actors Guild members—all, that is, but its president.
I am painfully aware that as I deride a man who has had an airport, a library, and an aircraft carrier named after him, I may be losing readers—but I probably lost them when they read chapter nineteen, “Do You Know Any Commies?”
I have two more bones to pick with our late, much-beloved president, and I may as well pick them now.
Bone number one has to do with a piece of legislation that Herbert Hoover worked on before he became our thirty-first president. It was in 1927, when Mr. Hoover was the secretary of commerce, that he proposed and helped pass a bill insuring that the airwaves belonged to the people and not the broadcasters. The regulation limited airtime for commercials to three minutes of every hour or ninety seconds for every half-hour. For decades, the writers and producers of radio dramas and comedies had ample time to tell their stories, with minimal interruptions.
After President Reagan was sworn in, one of his first priorities was to thank the heads of the major corporations and the top film studio executives for their energetic efforts and financial support in helping him to get elected. To show his gratitude, President Reagan supported a bill that deregulated the amount of minutes per hour that advertisers could use to sell their products. In a very short time, the networks’ half-hour comedy shows, which had used twenty-six and a half minutes to tell their stories, were now trying to tell a story in twenty-two minutes. Recently it was chopped to twenty minutes.
On most networks, we are now able to now watch strings of commercials that peddle high-fiber cereals, incontinence pads, health insurance, full-figure brassieres, Odor Eater foot pads, an eyelash separator, Hamburger Helper, an erection-enhancing cream, toe fungus lotion, Cheez Whiz in a spray can, a lawyer who handles cases for victims of mesothelioma—all this without having to be interrupted by any kind of entertainment.
If you enjoy watching these commercials more than you do a good comedy or drama, then you are one lucky guy or gal! And you lucky guys and gals can thank President Ronald Reagan for that. He has gifted our country with a healthy chunk of entertainment-free television!
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Gotta Go for a Walk
The bright September day in 1953 when Estelle, our two young children, and I moved from our four-room apartment in the Bronx to a brand-new split-level house in New Rochelle was one of the most exhilarating and exhausting days of my life.
From high noon, when we stepped across the threshold of our new home on Bonnie Meadow Road, we were busy, busy, busy, and we remained busy, busy, busy until a little past midnight, when we became tired, tired, tired. We remained so until two thirty a.m., when we became utterly exhausted, exhausted, exhausted—or, as I might have described it in French, fatigue´, fatigue´, fatigue´ or au bout de ma force, au bout de ma force, au bout de ma force!
We were so full of all the above that we could not open another carton or hang another curtain or stack another cupboard or fill another utensil drawer or hang another painting. Only Madeline Kahn as Lili Von Shtupp in Mel Brooks’s Blazing Saddles singing “I’m Tired” to describe how spent she was after a night of unromantic sex, would come close to describing how bone-weary Estelle and I felt. It was one of the few nights in our then-decade-long marriage that we opted to go to bed without brushing our teeth. We had just laid our heads on our pillows after an inept attempt at a goodnight kiss, when something in me—I believe it was my overly tired funny bone, made me sit up and announce, “Honey, I am going for a walk!”
“A walk? Now?”
“Yes, now!” I said, tossing off my side of our coverlet. “I gotta go.”
“Honeeey,” she whined, “it’s two in the morning!”
“I know, and that’s why I gotta go! I won’t be able to sleep unless I go for a little walk.”
“That’s crazy! You’re dead tired! Just close your eyes, and you’ll fall right off!”
“Honey, don’t try to talk me out of it. I am going for a walk.”
“Caaarlll, you are not actually going to get up, put on your shoes and socks, and go for a walk?”
“I am not putting on shoes or socks, but I am going for a walk!”
And with that, I stood up in bed, stepped on my pillow, and warned, “And don’t try to stop me!”
I then stepped over her head, made a left turn, walked three short paces, down the length of our king-sized bed, made another left, walked four paces across the foot of the bed, turned left, took three paces to my pillow, stepped on it, stepped over Estelle’s head again, and continued my stroll around atop our bed until she stopped laughing, which was after my eighth or ninth go-around.
No doubt about it: a good laugh can be relaxing. For the next few hours, Estelle and I slept like babes—until our babes, who slept like four- and six-year-olds, came into our room to ask if breakfast was ready.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Father Walsh: Jesuit
Private Reiner: Non-Jesuit
This morning when I checked my calendar, I noticed that on the twenty-fourth of this month, I am scheduled to speak at the Paley Center, where I am the subject of a symposium sponsored by Georgetown University.
My stay at Georgetown University in 1943 immediately conjured up two memories. One I have shamelessly described as being “the most theatrically triumphant day of my career,” and the other is my memory of Father Edmund A. Walsh, the dean of the School of Foreign Service, with whom, on the day following my “triumphant day,” I had a brief, heart-stopping encounter.
On the next few pages, I plan to chronicle some of the dramatic events that occurred during the eleven months I spent at Georgetown University.
When I, and three hundred other members of Company E, marched onto the two-century-old Catholic campus, we had no idea what the army had in store for us. We all were duly impressed by the architectural magnificence of the buildings and the beautifully kept grounds. Our group, a specialized training unit, was led into an imposing nineteenth-century structure, where we would meet in Gaston Hall to hear lectures delivered by lay and Jesuit instructors. It was on Christmas Day, in this hallowed hall, that I stood at the very same lectern used by our distinguished professors and delivered what I have earlier described as “the most theatrically triumphant day of my young career.” But more about that later.
The army had ordered that I, and three hundred other anxious soldiers, be housed in the university’s dormitories, fed in their dining halls, and educated in their classrooms.
The small dormitory room to which I was assigned accommodated two bunk beds, four footlockers, and three total strangers, whose names, I learned, were Charley Straight, John O. Benson, and Phil Wool.
Of the three strangers, John O. Benson was the strangest and most memorable. He was chubby and so soft-spoken that we had to strain to hear his stories, but it was well worth straining to hear him describe his job as a “vat man” at the Hellman’s mayonnaise factory. One evening, before lights out, John O., with no visible
emotion, related the following.
“I loved my job at the Hellman factory,” he began. “I sat on a high ladder and looked into a giant vat where they mixed the mayonnaise, and when I saw any impurities, like big blobs of something that shouldn’t be in the vat, I scooped it out with my long-handled, aluminum shovel and plopped the impurity in a waste barrel. The job took a lot of concentration. I could never look away or let my mind wander. I worked for Hellman for almost a year and never had no problems—until this one day when I see something lumpy floating in the mayo, something that had no business being there—it was near the back of the vat. So I go up a rung on the ladder and reach for the lump—but my foot slipped and my spoon started to fall.
“I made a grab for it and missed, and both me and my spoon fell right in the vat of mayonnaise. I can’t swim, but I can do the dog paddle, but it’s hard to dog paddle in mayonnaise. I yelled for help, but no one came. I went under once, but I dog paddled my way up. If my supervisor had not come by to check the vat and seen me drowning, I wouldn’t be here to tell you this story. My supervisor got a pole and pulled me out. Boy, was I was full of mayonnaise! I had mayonnaise everywhere, in my eyes, in my ears, up my nose, under my collar, in my pockets, in my shoes, in my socks—there was no place on me without mayonnaise in it. I always loved mayonnaise, but after almost drowning in it, I lost my taste for it. Now, when I order a BLT, I say ‘hold the mayo!’”
John O. and I slept on the top bunks, and Charley Straight the company bugler, slept below me. I originally had a bottom bunk, but I made the switch after the first morning, when Charley climbed down to play Reveille and stepped on my face.
