I Remember Me

by Carl Reiner

  For the record: Tony Webster (1922–1987), inspired by his winning bout with alcoholism, wrote a moving television play, Call Me Back, that starred Art Carney.

  Besides being a successful writer, Tony was also a loving and successful single father of a loving, successful daughter.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  O.Z. Whitehead Discovers Sex!

  O.Z. Whitehead and I met during World War Two. We were both assigned to an army entertainment unit that was stationed in Hawaii on the island of Oahu.

  O.Z., short for Oothout Zabriskie, was the scion of a long line of Zabriskies. O.Z.’s direct ancestor, whose forename he bore, was General Oothout Zabriskie, who, during our war for independence served under General George Washington. A bronze statue of General Zabriskie on horseback is proudly displayed in a town square in Ithaca, New York.

  My buddy O.Z. stood six feet, four inches tall, weighed about 130 pounds, and sported a head of straight, reddish-blond hair. One might accurately describe him as ungainly, uncoordinated, and scarecrow-skinny. O.Z. began his career as an actor in the Chicago cast of Life with Father. In the play, he portrayed one of the many redheaded children of redheaded parents. The family’s matriarch was portrayed by the world-renowned silent movie star, Lillian Gish.

  In the late thirties, a committee of backward-thinking citizens formed The America First Committee, an organization that, besides harboring an anti-Semitic and pro-Nazi philosophy, somehow attracted famous, well-meaning folk like Charles Lindbergh and Lillian Gish and recruited them to spread the committee’s misguided idea of patriotism. Lillian Gish, in turn, recruited her naive and respectful cast member, O.Z., to join her in making stump speeches, praising The America First Committee for the great work they were doing to “misinform” America about who our nation’s actual enemies were. It took the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor and Germany allying itself with Japan for O.Z., Lillian Gish, and others to realize how misguided and dangerous were the hate-spewing America Firsters.

  On discovering who the real villains were, O.Z. felt compelled to take immediate action. To undo the harm he had done to his beloved country, he hurried to the nearest recruiting center, and despite being too old to be drafted, volunteered to join the army. As anxious as the recruiters were to add able-bodied citizens to their roster, they could not, in good conscience consider a thirty-four-year-old gangly, six-foot-four, 130-pounder to be able-bodied.

  O.Z. would not be daunted and visited a half dozen other recruiting centers in different parts of Chicago. All found him to be unfit for military duty—save for one center, where a reasonable sergeant rejected O.Z.’s list of reasons for fighting the Nazis but fully accepted the five hundred dollars in cash that O.Z. offered him. Had that patriotic sergeant not done what O.Z. paid him to do, I would never have had the pleasure of knowing O.Z.

  As a member of our army entertainment section, O.Z. patiently waited in vain to be cast in one of the shows that toured the Pacific. The highlight of his act consisted of an impersonation of Eddie Cantor, a then-beloved star of Broadway, films, and radio. Cantor stood about five foot four and was a dynamo on stage. With his high tenor voice, he delivered his signature song, “If You Knew Susie Like I Know Susie,” while clapping his hands, rolling his big, brown eyes, and skipping wildly back and forth across the stage.

  None of us had never seen O.Z. do his impression of Cantor until one night in the company’s recreation room, he decided to favor us with a sample of his work. It would be fair to say that he exhibited a combination of childlike charm, exuberance, naiveté and grace, not unlike his modern-day counterpart, Pee Wee Herman.

  The initial reaction to his singing and dancing of the first chorus was jaw-dropping, but by the time he was into his fourth of five choruses, we were all either holding our sides or looking away and begging for him to stop. We were never sure whether we were laughing at him or with him, but it did not much matter. We all laughed so hard that one of us is now writing about that hilarious impression of Eddie Cantor that O.Z. did sixty-seven years ago.

  For the last few months that I was stationed in Oahu, I spent most of my free hours palling around with O.Z. Whitehead and Lieutenant Leon Kirchner. Leon, who had recently been transferred to our outfit, was a brilliant pianist and composer who, as a composer, had already received multiple awards for his modern compositions.

  In the following chapter, I describe how this musical genius risked a court-martial rather than obey his commanding officer’s order to write incidental music for a production of Dracula.

  In 1948, a year after my discharge from the army, I received a note from O.Z. informing me that he had recently moved to Manhattan and would love to have lunch with me. He was most anxious to meet Estelle, whose praises I had sung often and loudly during our days in Hawaii. Estelle was equally interested in meeting the man I described to her as being “kind, sweet, ungainly, and strange.” However, I did not expect him to demonstrate how strange he was.

  Estelle and I were seated in the Algonquin Lounge when we spied a happy, grinning O.Z. all but running across the lobby toward us. Before I could say, “O.Z., say hello to Estelle!” a breathless O. Z. screamed out, “Carl, Carl! I had sex yesterday afternoon for the first time in my life—and I loved it! I just loved it! So many people told me that the first time I do it, I won’t like it, but I loved it! It felt sooooo good! I can’t wait to do it again!”

  He then went on to tell me—and everyone in the hotel lobby—that it was not his idea to have his first sexual experience, but his friend’s, an actress he was visiting. She was the one who suggested that they “do it.”

  When O.Z. was a teenager, this well-known stage actress had played his mother in Life with Father, and he said that yesterday, while visiting her, she had asked him if he was still a virgin. When he admitted that he was, she told him that she would “have to do something about that.”

  He described how she escorted him into her bedroom, helped him remove his clothes, and then went about teaching him to do things that made him “smile all over!”

  I daresay that decades ago, the witty members of the famed Algonquin Round Table, who were noted for their original and memorable exchanges, never uttered lines more original or memorable than O.Z.’s “I had sex yesterday afternoon for the first time in my life, and I loved it! I just loved it. It felt sooooo good that I can’t wait to do it again!”

  One last note about Oothout Zabriskie Whitehead: in John Ford’s classic 1940 film version of John Steinbeck’s novel, The Grapes of Wrath, O.Z. was cast as Tom Joad, the driver of the dilapidated truck that transports the Joad family through the drought-stricken dust bowl to California.

  O.Z. looked so beaten and lifeless in the film that it inspired Hitler’s Nazi propagandists to publish photos of the emaciated, ashen-faced O.Z. and cite him as an example of the decadence in America and how the United States government sucks the life out of its citizens and condemns them to an existence of hellish poverty.

  O.Z. was pleased and proud to have played that role in our war effort.

  O.Z. Whitehead in “The Grapes of Wrath”

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Count Dracula Encounters Lieutenant Kirchner

  Leon Kirchner was, at this time, a young, brilliantly talented composer of serious music who had recently been awarded the Rome Prize for composition—one of a myriad of prestigious awards he would receive in his lifetime. Our commanding officer, as I noted earlier, was Captain Allen Ludden.

  Nearing the end of the war, Captain Ludden decided that a production of the play Dracula that had been adapted from the film and had enjoyed a successful run on Broadway would be something that our servicemen would enjoy seeing. One of the members of our acting troupe was perfect for the leading role. He was tall, dark, and looked like a vampire—and his name was Ken Tanner. I just happily surprised myself by recalling Ken Tanner’s name. At my present age, I am happy whe
n I remember to take my vitamins and put in my prescribed eye drops.

  The rehearsals and the building of the sets for Dracula were progressing well. The set designer for the entertainment section was the talented Fred Fox, the same Fred Fox who was hired by Max Liebman after the war to design sets for Your Show of Shows—just another example of the surprising accuracy of clichés like “It’s a small world.”

  About a week or so before Dracula was to be performed for members of our Armed Forces, Leon Kirchner groused to O.Z. and me about an impossible request he had received that morning. Captain Ludden had asked him to write some background music for the production, and Leon explained that a serious composer did not write music to be used as background for scenes in plays or films, but wrote music to be heard in concert halls or salons.

  Leon’s explanation for not accepting the assignment turned into a discussion, which quickly became a heated argument. It was then that the captain reminded Leon that he was his superior officer, and Leon countered that he would not write incidental music unless he was ordered to—and the captain obliged. He ordered Leon to write incidental music!

  Leon knew he had a choice: he could write “the damned music” and stay in Special Service or refuse and be re-assigned to the infantry.

  In record time, Leon handed in a finished score for Dracula—the work containing hundreds of scribbled notes designating which instruments played which parts. Surprisingly, Leon seemed to be in a good mood and suggested that he and I hang around when the copyists transcribed his master score for the musicians. He seemed proud to have done something that he hated doing, and I soon learned why he was smiling so broadly.

  Through the barracks’ open transom-like windows, we heard a few of the music copyists discuss Leon’s orchestration:

  “What the fuck is this, a joke?!”

  “If it’s a joke, it ain’t funny!”

  “If he thinks it’s funny, he’s got a warped sense of humor.”

  “What the hell is this shit he doodled for a time signature?”

  One of the better-educated copyists started to laugh.

  “Those are not doodles. You know what the son of a bitch did—instead of putting in 2/4 or 4/4 for the time, he gave us an algebraic equation to decipher.”

  “Who the hell remembers how to do algebra?”

  Fortunately, one did and went about translating the algebraic equation into numbers. Because Leon’s music was modern and complicated, so were his time signs. Few or none of the copyists had ever before noted or played a selection in 5/7 or 2/5 time.

  I accompanied Leon to the opening performance of Dracula, and Leon, who had groused about being bullied into doing something he had promised himself he would never do, was, for some reason, in a rather upbeat mood.

  Leon, who could not do anything musically that was not at least interesting, had managed to add a good deal of excitement to many of the scenes. Particularly effective was the music Leon had composed for the end of an act, when a drooling Dracula approaches the heroine, Lucy, who is reclining on a couch. Leon had orchestrated the violin section to play sustained, discordant high notes when Dracula puts his lips to Lucy’s white neck. The instant the vampire bites, the violins hit a tremulous crescendo as a soprano voice screams a hair-raising high note. So blood-curdling was the high-noted scream that every member of the audience, including me, literally jumped out of our seats. Leon had hired an operatic soprano to sit in the string section and deliver a nerve-shattering high F above high C, confident that it would get the reaction that it did. I daresay that, in the history of American theater, no soprano has ever had a shorter, more well-paying role or received a greater audience reaction for her effort.

  In later years, Leon never wrote anything that he was not inspired to write. In his life, he composed a great deal of highly lauded compositions, works that were premiered and performed in all of the world’s great concert halls.

  Estelle and I were thrilled to have attended a number of his premieres, including two memorable ones with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, when Maestro Dimitri Mitropulous conducted.

  Many of Leon’s close friends were successful composers who sometimes wrote scores for important films. Leon never felt that there was anything demeaning about their writing music for worthwhile films and being paid handsomely for it, but he never considered that they were writing serious music. I remember Leon saying something to this effect: If one writes music for a film to help make a scene happier or scarier or more exciting or romantic, then you cannot be writing serious music. You are writing music to enhance what someone else has created. You are not allowing yourself to express what is in your head and heart.

  Those words are not Leon’s, but I believe the thought is. Leon was, among other things, a scholar. He was a voracious reader of books on history, art, politics, science, as well as novels, and was, I recall, a fan of the writings, the mind, and the man who is Stephen Hawking.

  Leon Kirchner was, for some reason, always curious about the amount of money certain performers earned. I remember him asking me how much Sid Caesar made and if he was paid more or less money than Jackie Gleason.

  “Who is more powerful?” is how he put it. It seemed that Leon, like too many people, equate money with power.

  Leon truly admired Sid Caesar’s ability and told him so when I invited him and his good friend and fellow composer, Lukas Foss, to meet Sid. At that meeting in Sid’s rehearsal hall, Sid, who had heard Leon Kirchner’s work and knew of his vaunted place in the music world, did something that I was surprised he would do. He dared to make fun of Kirchner’s music. Sid sat down at the rehearsal-hall Steinway and proceeded to satirize a Kirchner-like modern composition. Sid played that piano much like he spoke foreign languages—in double talk. With his fingers flying all over the keyboard, Sid “double-talked” his impression of a virtuoso playing a discordant modern work. He started by pounding the keys wildly, then tinkling them, then running a few glissandos, sweeping his knuckles up and down the keyboard and then raising his leg and striking the keys with the heel of his shoe—sort of a satiric “foot note” to his performance.

  All eyes were on Leon as Sid started his recital, and all those eyes had tears in them when he finished. Leon Kirchner, besides being a serious composer, was serious appreciator of good comedians—Zero Mostel and Jack Gilford being two of his other favorites.

  One day, while visiting us in our Bronx apartment, he told Estelle and me of the offer he had received from RKO Studios, asking him to score their film of Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead. Alex North, a friend and fellow composer, had been offered the job but was unavailable, so he recommended Kirchner. Leon, who could have used the money, had no interest in scoring the film but told me that he was going to meet with the producers just to find out how large a sum of money he was not going to be earning.

  The following day, Leon asked the producer what was the most he had ever paid a composer to score a film, and when the producer told him, Leon asked if he was willing to pay five times that amount. When the man turned him down, Leon countered with, “In that case, my price for not doing your film is ten times what you originally offered, and that is final!”

  One very fond memory I have is of our two-year-old son, Lucas, sitting on the living-room floor of our Bronx apartment and paying rapt attention to Leon, who was sitting next to him and plunking out a tune on Lucas’s tiny, red toy piano.

  And now, an inevitable and sad addendum.

  O.Z., Leon, and I, as I have said, were all members of an army entertainment unit that once boasted scores of talented performers. Last week, Stan Harper, one of the “scores,” with whom I toured in Shoot the Works, called to inform me that another of our alumni, the brilliant lyricist, Hal David has passed. There remain now but four:

  Stan Harper: Acknowledged as world’s foremost harmonica virtuoso.

&n
bsp; Guido Salmaggi: Operatic tenor, ninety-eight and still singing.

  Ray Olivere: Eminent portraitist. Latest commission: Bernard Baruch.

  Me: Author of I Remember Me.

  Given the above statistics, it behooves me to type as fast as I can.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  My Minor Involvement with Major Stars

  One of these stars was Hedy Lamarr who, in her day, was considered to be the world’s most beautiful woman. Miss Lamarr, who insisted I call her Hedy, had been invited to appear on a game show, the name of which escapes me. Hedy and I were two of three panelists who sat directly across from the host, who I believe was the talented and ubiquitous Bill Cullen.

  Hedy was seated beside me as we all listened to our host give us instructions about the game. From the corner of my 20/20-visioned right eye, I saw Hedy reach into her purse and lift a cigarette from a pack. In those days, the big tobacco companies’ ads assured us that cigarette smoking was not only a pleasant way to relax but a healthy one.

  I kept my eyes on the host, as my above-average coordination allowed me to see Hedy put the cigarette to her lips. As I answered Bill’s questions, I suavely took a pack of matches from my pocket, lit one, and without looking at Hedy, offered her a light.

  Hedy, instead of thanking me, looked at the lit match I held beneath her chin and asked sweetly, “Carl, what are you trying to do—light my lozenge?”

  What Hedy had put to her lips was not a cigarette but a peppermint Life Saver.

  The audience’s faces were red from laughter, and mine was that color from embarrassment.