I Remember Me

by Carl Reiner

  What we did not know, but what Barbara intuited, was that somehow, even though Estelle’s periods had intermittently stopped and started some months ago, one healthy egg managed to get itself fertilized. Three months later, we were both surprised and happy to discover that the weight that Estelle had started to gain was not due to the long lunches and large dinners we were eating but because she was growing a baby inside of her.

  After her gynecologist suggested we think seriously about bringing the baby to term, pointing out that because of our ages, we might not both be around to see our child go through high school, we opted to take our chances.

  Before Estelle started to show, we decided to let our thirteen-year-old son and our eleven-year-old daughter know that they were going to have a new sibling in their lives. We chose to tell them the news one Saturday morning while we were all seated at the breakfast table. Robbie and Annie always liked games, so we thought it would be fun to play twenty questions and see how many it would take for them to guess our little secret. We started by saying, “Mom and I have a surprise for you two.”

  “Is it something I will like?” Robbie asked.

  “I think so,” we answered.

  “Is it something I will like?” Annie asked.

  “Yes, you will.”

  “Is it something either of us has asked for?” Robbie asked.

  “Yes.”

  This was not a lie. Each, at one time, had asked if we would ever consider having another child. When Robbie was two, he had asked if we would “make an older brother” for him. And Annie, when fed up with Robbie’s teasing, asked us to make “a little sister to play with.”

  To properly appreciate the twenty questions they asked, you should know that, at this time in their lives, Annie was obsessed with the possibility of owning a pony, and Robbie yearned to have a full-sized pool table in our home.

  “Is it something that we can keep inside the house?” Robbie asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Can I also keep it outside or in a shed?” Annie asked.

  “You might.”

  “Will my friends like that we have it?” Rob asked.

  “I think so.”

  “Do any of my friends have one?” Annie asked.

  “Yes!” (One of Annie’s friends owned a pony.)

  “Do one of my friends have one?” Robbie asked excitedly.

  “I am not sure, but I think so.”

  At this, they both jumped out of their seats.

  “A pony, a pony!” Annie yelled.

  “No, a pool table, a pool table! Robbie shouted.

  “No, a pony, a pony!” Annie insisted.

  The two then kept jumping up and down and shouting over and over what they hoped the surprise would be.

  Estelle and I were aware that our “surprise” was going to be a big disappointment, but we had to tell them.

  “Kids, the surprise is that you two are going to have a new brother or sister. Your mom is going to have a baby.”

  We never expected that our children would react as they did. On hearing the news, their blue eyes popped, their jaws dropped, and they started to laugh so hard that they slid off their chairs and onto the floor. They attempted to say something, but their uncontrollable laughter blurred their words. Finally, Annie managed to splutter, “A p-p-pony! M-Mom’s going to have a poneeeeee!”

  “No, a p-pool table!” Rob gurgled. “M-Mom’s going to have a pool table!”

  And with tears streaming down their faces, they lay on the floor writhing and repeating through giggles and guffaws what Momma was going to give birth to.

  Six months later, at the UCLA Hospital, Estelle delivered neither a pool table nor a pony but a six-pound, eleven-ounce baby boy, who we named Lucas Joseph.

  I shall never forget that day and the heart-stopping remark that Estelle and I heard the obstetrician make as he examined our newborn for the first time. He said, “This boy will never walk.”

  Fortunately, the doctor noticed how his remark sobered the infant’s exultant parents, and he quickly added, “I meant that he’ll never walk, because he’ll always be running! This guy’s an athlete! Look at him kick those little legs!”

  As you will see, that doctor proved to be prophetic.

  At the same hospital, three days earlier, Barbara Bain Landau gave birth to Susie, a beautiful baby girl.

  Martin Landau and I had the experience of standing together outside the hospital nursery window and staring proudly at the newest addition to our families. Lying side by side in two plastic containers were one-day-old Lucas and four-day-old Susie.

  Seven and a half months after their first meeting, the two diaper-clad pals were crawling about on the carpeted living-room floor of our house on North Alta Drive. Marty, Barbara, Estelle, and I stood by and watched as the tots crawled from the center of our sunken living room toward the two steps that led up to the foyer. Just as they reached the steps, something unexpected took place—Lucas stood up! All of us saw him standing up, and all were properly amazed. He just stood there and behaved as if it were natural for him to be upright. Susie, who was sitting just below him, reached up, grabbed a handful of his diaper, and pulled him down to where he belonged, sitting on the floor with her. Undaunted, Lucas stood up again and took two unsteady steps before Susie pulled him back down. Neither tot seemed to be upset. They were just playing a new game they had invented: “I stand up, walk a step, and you pull me down!”

  They played the game until Lucas walked too far away for Susie to grab him.

  In thinking about Lucas being an early walker, I realized that another in our family was an early climber. Annie, Lucas’s big sister, besides walking when she was but nine months, climbed to unexpected heights when she was less than a year.

  In our Bronx apartment, when Annie was eleven months old, my wife and I, who were having breakfast, heard her calling us from our bedroom. When we went to check on her, we found her standing atop a dresser. She held out her arms to us and said, “Mommy, down!”

  By pulling open each of the dresser’s five drawers, Annie had jury-rigged a stairway and crawled to the top but had not found a way to crawl down.

  Happily, all of our three children inherited the coordination genes from their mother and their athletic uncles, Eddie and Sidney Lebost.

  As for Lucas and Susie, Lucas is happily married to Maud Winchester for twenty-two years, and they have produced two lovely daughters, sixteen-year-old Livia and eleven-year-old Rose. Susie married Roy Finch thirteen years ago, and the Finch-Landau duo created Aria, a darling three-year-old daughter.

  I am also happy to add that the friendship Lucas and Susie began a half century ago, in the UCLA nursery, is still intact.

  Estelle with our newborn Lucas Reiner… “Neither a pony nor a pool table”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Speaking Phony Phrench phor Charlie Chaplin’s Son

  In chapter eleven, “Nose to Nose, Eye to Eye,” I described how I taught the legendary Mel Brooks to speak Phony Phrench, and this morning I awoke with the memory of why, when, where, and how I first learned to speak with my phony French accent and how I came to use it when addressing a huge crowd gathered in a town square in Vevey, Switzerland.

  Here now is that “why, when, where, and how” it all came to pass.

  One summer, when my wife and I were vacationing at our “petite” home in the South of France, we received an unexpected invitation from Christopher Chaplin, the son of the most admired comedy actor in the history of film. Christopher was inviting us to be his guest at their home in Vevey and requesting that I emcee the town’s annual charity event. Naturally, I accepted!

  Estelle and I were welcomed into Christopher Chaplin’s home and stayed with him and his family for the weekend. His family consisted of his wife, their two childr
en, and his mother, Oona O’Neill Chaplin. It was heartening to see what a normal household it was and how much the Chaplin children behaved like regular kids.

  To promote the outdoor rally, I was invited to make an appearance on Vevey’s local television station, which I was happy to do.

  Upon arriving at the studio, I learned that the host would be speaking French, but he would be happy to do my portion of the program in English. I told the producer that I would prefer they conduct the interview in French.

  At last, I thought, a chance to use the skill the army sent me to Georgetown to learn. I would get a chance to show off my excellent French pronunciation of words like “fauteuil et ecureuil,” (armchair and squirrel), and get to toss in clever adages like, “Ca vas sans dire.” (That goes without saying) and “Chacun a son gout” (Each to his own taste), or a mundane J’ai besoin d’une lime a ongle. (I need a nail file.)

  At the studio, a young, French-speaking anchorman introduced me to his television audience by listing my credits. He spoke French too rapidly for me to understand everything he was saying. After struggling to figure out the first questions he put to me, I admitted that he spoke too rapidly for me and suggested that if someone translated his questions into English, I would answer in French.

  It worked, but after a few successful exchanges, the simple questions the anchorman asked that begat simple answers were replaced with complex questions about issues that required me to use words I could not translate into French—not without using a dictionary.

  One such question was, “Monsieur Reiner, quelle est votre avis de La Nouvelle Vague?” (What is your opinion of the New Wave?)

  “La Nouvelle Vague,” I repeated, “je crois que ‘La Nouvelle Vague’ est une developpmente tres interessante—”

  After saying, “I think that the New Wave is a very interesting development,” I found myself struggling to find the French words to say something bullshittingly clever, like: “All new waves in all art forms are noteworthy inasmuch as they tend to reflect the mores of the society they are currently inhabiting.”

  Starting with a few French words, “Toutes Nouvelle blagues dans tous les artes sont,” I translated “noteworthy” into my Phony French, “nuutwerthie,” and continued with, “een soo mooch, zat zey reeeflecttuh, de sociyeeeetyuh zay arre cureenentillee eenhabbiteen.”

  The interviewer and his staff members found my speaking English with this phony French accent to be amusing, and their good-natured laughter encouraged me to use it again when I addressed the throng of citizens in Vevey’s town square.

  I explained, in French, that I intended to host the whole event speaking both French and a new language I had recently mastered, Phony Phrench.

  “My new language,” I continued, “consists of English spoken with an exaggeratedly phony French accent. I will now translate the last sentence I spoke into phony French.

  “The words ‘My new language’ becomes ‘Myyyah nuuha lengwaaajuuh’—and the phrase ‘consists of English words’ becomes ‘cohnseests uf Ingehleeesh wuurrhdsa’—and ‘spoken with an exaggeratedly phony French accent’ becomes ‘spohkeeenn wiz eksahjurraytedillee fohnnnee Frehnchuh ecksssenteh.’”

  I remember little of what I said at Vevey Square, but I do recall getting lots of laughs and receiving Christopher Chaplin’s heartfelt gratitude for helping to raise funds for his charity.

  I just had a fleeting thought about contacting someone at Webster’s Dictionary and offering them the opportunity to publish “The Phirst Phony Phrench Phully Abridged Dictionary.”

  As I say, it was a fleeting thought—and one of the fleetingest I’ve ever had.

  I do, however, have a permanent memory of the Chaplins’ lovely but unusual garden. I still have the photo I took of Estelle standing between a bronze statue of Chaplin as the Tramp, and a twenty-foot-high, shiny silver fork that some witty sculptor had stuck into their lawn.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Tony Webster Pays His Debt with “God Almighty”

  I met Tony Webster when Max Leibman, the producer of the television series Your Show of Shows added him to the staff of brilliant writers who wrote sketches for likes of Sid Caesar, Imogene Coca, Howard Morris, and me. What set Tony apart from our group of New Yorkers was that he was born in the Midwest and was the sole Christian in the room. He rarely smiled, but his quietly delivered acerbic comments would get lots of smiles from us and a goodly share of laughs.

  I recall one sketch the writers were working on that was one of the strongest of the season. In it, Sid and I played brothers who were born in Hell’s Kitchen and grew up in poverty. Sid became a mob boss, and I, whose bills he paid to send though law school, became a crusading district attorney. He was proud of me and particularly of my achievement as “a good speller,” often requesting that I spell the word “magnanimous” for him. In the last scene, Sid, the mobster, was gunned down on the steps of the courthouse, in front of his wife. The mobster’s dying request, as he lay bleeding, was that I spell “magnanimous” for him one last time. After tearfully choking out the letters, M-A-G-N-A-N-I-M-O-U-S, the sketch needed a funny final line for the wife, Imogene Coca, to say.

  The writers had spent most of the afternoon trying to come up with that elusive tag line. Dozens of funny attempts flew back and forth, but none was deemed worthy. It was Tony Webster who came up with those final words—the ones, all agreed, Coca should say.

  After hearing me spell “magnanimous,” the mobster dies, and his distraught wife, with tears in her eyes, cries out, “We have got to do something about slum clearance!”

  The line was greeted by silence. The live audience who viewed the show at the theater that night waited until the lights were fading on the scene before breaking into laughter—and applause.

  After Your Show of Shows ended its run, Tony and I went our separate ways, and not until I was producing The Dick Van Dyke Show did Tony pop back into my life. He paid a visit to my office at Desilu-Cahuenga, and I was so happy to see him. He had been writing episodic television, and I hoped that he might like to write an episode for The Dick Van Dyke Show, but he said that he had just come by to “visit and vent.” And vent he did. He complained about most television shows being “shitty” and that he had no more interest in writing for it. He seemed to be at odds with himself and the world and just wanted to complain about having nothing to do. I told him that he had no right to complain about having nothing to do. I said actors can complain because they have to wait until someone offers them a job, but a writer who has a typewriter or a pencil and a pad cannot grouse about having nothing to do. With that, I grabbed a note pad and scribbled, “Carl Reiner, IOU One Play!” and asked Tony to sign it, which he did. I tossed his IOU into a desk drawer and told him that when he hands me his new play, I would tear it up.

  Tony returned a couple of months later, threw his play on my desk, and barked, “Tear up that damned IOU.”

  The play he had written was entitled God Almighty, and I thought it brilliant. Tony had once described himself as a “fallen Catholic,” and his play dealt with man’s confused feelings about life and his attempt to understand the Supreme Being.

  I attended a staging of the play in Los Angeles, where it was well received by critics and audiences. There was one scene in his play that contained some of the most insightful and humorous discussions man has ever had with his Maker.

  His bare stage was lit to suggest that we were in some heavenly limbo where a “Man” who has passed on is meeting his Maker for the first time. The archangels, Michael and Gabriel, are present when God asks Man, “Who are you?” And when Man tells God, “I am Man!”, God shakes His head and says, “I do not know you!” to which Man replies, “You must know me, for it was You who made me!”

  A puzzled God shakes His head and says that He had no memory of ever making Man. After Man insists that he was told that he was made in God’s i
mage, God racks His memory but cannot remember making Man.

  “I remember making ants,” God recalls. “I was really impressed at how much weight those little creatures could carry—many, many times their own.”

  God did remember creating flowers, and how much He liked their array of colors and their fragrances. He then reiterated having absolutely no recollection of creating Man, and after looking at Man curiously for a long moment, God asks, “All right, Man—show Me what you do!”

  With that, Man launches into a classic soft-shoe routine. Man takes the stage and demonstrates, with ultimate grace and fluidity, all the iconic steps that the likes of Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly might have used.

  At the end of the dance, God pauses, gazes at Man for a long moment, and then asks, “Can you teach me to do that?”

  The simple question that God asked of Man is the reason I had to write about Tony Webster.

  The scene fades with Man teaching a choreographically challenged God how to dance a soft-shoe.

  Tony’s choosing the soft-shoe was sheer brilliance. The essence of the soft-shoe embodies that which is sweet and loving in humans. It has grace, charm, and good humor, is calming, and the only dance where, when you are watching, you feel that all is right, not only with the person who is dancing, but with the entire world.

  Have I gone too far? Maybe. But if I did go too far, who will it hurt?

  At the end of Tony Webster’s God Almighty, a defeated, forlorn God finds Himself standing alone on stage and realizes that after countless thousands of years, wars, disease, greed, murder, rape, poverty, and pestilence still exist. As He contemplates this, the spotlight starts to dim. The Almighty then slowly raises His arms, looks heavenward, and as the light fades, we are left with an image of God looking for God to help Him.