by Carl Reiner
When we discussed how time had flown and realized that we were now thirty-seven years old, Judy grimaced and said these exact words, “Thirty-seven is a shitty age—don’t you think?”
I confessed that I had not really thought about it but asked why she thought it was shitty.
“Because it is!” Judy insisted. “Being thirty-eight would be okay—it’s a nice, round number, and it’s just two years from forty—and they do say, ‘life begins at forty.’ I am all for that!” she laughed. “Forty is fine, but thirty-seven is nowhere.”
I reminded her of the song, “I’m Just an In-Between” that she sang to a photo of Clark Gable when professing her unrequited love for him.
“That’s it,” she said with a laugh, “at thirty-seven, I am once again ‘just an in-between!’”
Soon after, I was privileged to be invited to guest on Judy’s CBS series and chatted with her on the “Tea for Two” segment, where Judy interviewed celebrities.
The thrust I chose for my appearance was to make the case that I was not a celebrity. I went on and listed for her the a few reasons why I was not a celebrity and did not feel like one.
“To start, I said, “I am rarely recognized when I go out in public. Women never shower me with kisses, as they do Sinatra and Vic Damone. No one had ever done a caricature of me. Dick Van Dyke, who is a fine caricaturist, confessed that he is unable to do a satisfactory one of me.”
To add fuel to my premise, I told Judy of a cab driver who did not recognize me but boasted about all the celebrities who had sat in the back seat of his cab—among them Eleanor Roosevelt, Jack Carter, Winston Churchill, Buddy Hackett, and Sonny Sparks. Sonny Sparks was a minor celebrity but obviously more well-known to the driver than I was.
The gravely-voiced cab driver, speaking New Yawkese, had asked what I did for a living, and when I said that I was an actor, he asked where he might have seen me. When I told him that I was on The Sid Caesar Show, he asked, “Whut did ya do on it?”
“Have you ever seen the show?” I asked.
“Nevuh miss it—I love it. Whut do ya do on it?”
“Well, do you know the sketches with the phony German professor?”
“The German professor cracks me up,” he said, checking his rearview mirror. “That ain’t you!”
“No, Sid Caesar plays the professor—I’m the guy in the trench coat who interviews him.”
“Don’t ring no bell. That Caesar is great. What else did you do?”
“Did you ever see the take-offs we do on foreign movies?”
“Yeah, I love ’em—that Caesar guy is a riot, the way he talks in them phony foreign languages!”
“Well, I’m the guy Sid is talking to when he talks in those phony languages.”
“You tellin’ me that you can speak them phony languages?”
“Maybe not as well as Sid does, but well enough…”
“Which ones you do?”
“All of them, Italian, German, French…”
“Oh yeah, do French!” he ordered.
For the rest of the ride, even though there was no prospect of the driver hiring me for a job, I auditioned all my phony language skills for him.
When we reached our destination he turned and shouted, “Son of a gun, I know who you are! You’re that Art Carney!”
When I told him that Art Carney worked on The Jackie Gleason Show, and I was Carl Reiner and worked with Sid Caesar, he nodded and said, “Oh, yeah!”
I hoped I had convinced him that I was me, and to let him know that there were no hard feelings, I gave him a huge tip.
He was very appreciative of my largesse, and as I left the cab, he saluted me with the bills in his hand and mumbled, “Thanks, I really appreciate this—and you do crack me up, Mr. Carney!”
I considered that incident a learning experience for both the cab driver and for me. Once again, I learned that I was not a true celebrity, and the driver learned that Art Carney was a generous tipper.
On a second appearance on Judy’s show, I related another story about my dubious status as a celebrity. It dealt with an experience I had while lunching at the Oyster Bar in New York’s Grand Central Station.
I sat alone at the oval bar and was enjoying a plate of Italian lasagna. Yes, lasagna! I was just as surprised then to find that dish on the menu as I assume you are now.
I was halfway through my meal when a middle-aged couple settled in seats directly opposite me. The clothes they wore suggested they were from out of town—had one of them been holding a pitchfork, they could have been the couple who posed for Grant Wood’s painting, American Gothic.
They were scanning their menus when the woman stopped and glanced in my direction. She mumbled something to her husband, which made him lower his menu and look at me. They seemed to be in disagreement, and the more they stared at me, the more certain I became that the woman recognized me and was trying to convince her husband that I was, indeed, “that guy on television.” Finally, they stood up and made their way toward me. I could all but keep from blurting out, “Yes, I am! I’m Carl Reiner.” I restrained myself from taking out my pen and signing their menus. My two shy fans approached, and with their menus in hand and warm smiles on their faces, apologized for disturbing me. I smiled and assured them that they were not disturbing me.
The man uttered the classic line that I had heard many times in my career as a supporting actor: “My wife and I are having a little disagreement, and we made a bet on who is right—and you can settle it for us.”
I smiled, and just as I was about to admit that whoever said I was Carl Reiner was correct, the man spoke. “Sir, I am sorry to bother you, but my wife and I were watching you eat, and she is sure that you are having that Italian lasagna, and I said that you are eating the fried oysters…”
While hiding my disappointment, I graciously informed him that his wife was right: I was having the lasagna. The couple thanked me for settling their dispute and left me with further evidence that the long-standing belief in my status as a non-celebrity was intact.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
Joseph Owens, Guilty until Proven Guilty
Joseph & Lucas at 6
For six days in August of 1965, there was rioting in the streets of Los Angeles in the area called Watts. The Watts Riots were headline news in every newspaper in the country. At that time, working for us as a housekeeper, was a lovely woman, Amanda Owens, a single mother of two and a resident of Watts. As soon as the riots broke out, my wife and I, concerned about the safety of Amanda and her children—six-year-old Joseph and eight-year-old Nancy—invited them to live in our home until their neighborhood quieted down. Amanda was only too happy to accept our offer, and she and her children moved in. Our son Lucas was three at the time, and he and Joseph seemed to get a kick out of each other. The above photo is of them lounging at our pool.
All was going smoothly until one morning, when I put on a clean pair of pants and went to re-pocket the stuff I had taken from my old trousers the night before and placed on a countertop. The small wad of bills I had put there the night before was now a much smaller wad. It originally held eighty or ninety dollars in twenties, tens, and fives, and what it now held was a ten and two fives. I drew the only conclusion I could—someone in the house had “lifted” some of my money.
I was terribly upset, as was my wife, when I told her what I suspected.
I decided that I could not confront Amanda and suggest that one of her kids was a thief. After some amateur sleuthing, I deduced that it was Joseph who did the deed. He was a wanderer, and he loved roaming about the house. I remembered his mother once admonishing him not to “go around touching things!” I decided that for the boy’s sake, his mother must be made aware of her son’s behavior.
I started by saying that we liked having her and her children as our guests, and w
hat I was about to tell her about Joseph was for his sake. I said that all young kids, at one time or another, take things that don’t belong to them, and they have to be told that it is wrong. I told Amanda about the missing money and made a point of saying that I was not looking to get the money back, but I wanted her to let Joseph know that he might someday get into real trouble if he continued to take things that were not his.
I could see Amanda was hurt. She could not believe her son would do such a thing, but said she would talk to him about it.
The following morning, Amanda told me that she had confronted Joseph and asked if he taken any of “Mr. Reiner’s money,” and Joseph swore that he had not. She also asked her daughter if Joseph had taken the money, and Nancy said, “Mama, Joseph is dying to buy candy, and if he had that kind of money, he’d go out and buy some!”
I let the subject drop and told Amanda that I was not upset and had faith that she would help Joseph grow up right.
Amanda and her children lived with us for a little over a week before returning to their apartment in Watts. Amanda worked for us for another six months and then left with her children to go back to their home in Georgia. For a short time after, we kept in touch by letter and post card.
It was many years later, I think in 1970, when Joseph and the memory of his deed resurfaced—and in a most unlikely manner.
I was at home, seated at my office desk and typing away on my Royal portable typewriter. I was in the process of attempting to write a major American novel when I stopped typing and idly stared straight ahead at the closed door of an adjoining room. That door was few feet away, at the end of a very narrow alcove.
I had stared at that tiny alcove many times while searching for an idea or considering how to phrase a thought. However, this time, as I stared down at the two small, molded panels that were on either end of the two-foot-wide alcove, I noticed something different about the panels. Stuck in the edge of the panel furthest from me were two thin, inch-long, metal cylinders. The panel closest to me had no such cylinders.
By Jove, I thought, those metal cylinders are hinges—and there is a small hole in that panel!
With Sherlock Holmes-like acuity, I deduced, That small hole may well have held a screw—a screw that once fit into a knob!
Squatting on the floor of the alcove and digging into the molding with the tips of my ten straining fingers, I succeeded in swinging open a small panel door and in doing so, solving a decade-old crime.
Behind the panel, sitting on two small shelves, was a treasure trove of evidence! Besides the sixty dollars I accused Joseph of taking, the following booty was stashed—booty that I never missed:
Two leather passport cases with Mr./Mrs. Carl Reiner printed on them.
Seven expired passports.
Two broken, strapless wristwatches.
One expandable metal watch strap.
One beige watch strap.
The brass knob that was missing from the panel door.
A “short-snorter” (a wartime souvenir of worthless Japanese currency which we collectors had scotch-taped end to end).
I was pleased to have solved the case of my missing money and sad that I had upset Amanda by accusing her son of being a thief, when he was nothing more than a kid on an adventure. Joseph was an explorer, a collector, a hoarder, and something more—a discoverer, which I most appreciated. It was he who discovered our hidden vault that, in later years, my wife and I used to keep our cherished valuables. A thief had no chance of finding some of the expensive presents I had bought for her—like the very limited-edition gold neck piece designed by the renowned artist, Erte, or the sting of elegant pearls I had gifted my wife for an important birthday, or the heavy, gold charm bracelet that was presented to me by Ralph Edwards on his TV show, This Is Your Life!
Except for the pearls and the piece by Erte, all of the above items are still stashed there. I have, since then, added to the stash, items such as a half-dozen of my Pop’s hundred-year-old Daguerreotype plates, including the ones he took of my mother nursing my brother, Charlie, and the one of Charlie at two, sitting on a small “toidy.” In Joseph’s hiding place I have also placed my father’s small jeweler’s scale and his handwritten formula of the elements that went into creating the dry-pile battery for his pendulum clock that was geared to run a hundred years without recharging. The clock, for which he received a US patent, ran for over sixty years.
And there is more to this tale.
Fifteen years after Joseph and his family had spent that charged week in our home, I received a phone call from a young man who identified himself as Joseph Owens and said that he was on an army furlough for two weeks. He wondered if he might stop off on his way home, to pay us a short visit, and I told him that we were looking forward to seeing him.
Corporal Joseph Owens turned out to be a handsome young man who exuded confidence. After my asking about how his mother and sister were doing, he quickly segued to the reason for his visit. He had come to apologize for the trouble he had caused and was anxious to tell me that he had not taken my sixty bucks and to show me where he had hidden the bills. He was surprised and genuinely disappointed to learn that I had found his hiding place and the money. He so wanted to confess his sin and show us that he had turned out okay. I was able to say, with all honesty, that having the mother he had and the personality he had as a six-year-old, I was fairly confident that he would turn out as he did.
We had offered him a bite to eat, but all he seemed interested in was exploring the house, as he did years ago, and seeing the hiding place he had once discovered.
He did all of the above and got a special kick out of finding that all the booty he had stashed on those shelves was still there. He laughed when I told him that I had spent his sixty-buck “stash.”
Joseph left happy, and he promised to drop us a card, which he did.
It occurred to me that if ever Joseph Owens wrote his version of “Joseph Owens, Guilty until Proven Guilty,” he might title it. “Carl Reiner, Guilty of Conclusion Jumping.”
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
My Personal Road from Here to There
The year was 1959, and for the important meeting with my representative at the William Morris Agency, I had decided to wear my blue blazer, gray wool slacks, a white shirt, and my regimental tie. My agent, Harry Kalcheim, had set up a meeting with two young writers who had written a pilot script for a situation comedy they thought would be perfect for me. To discuss this possible series and other projects Harry thought would interest me, I had arranged to be at his office a half hour before the young writers were due.
It was a lovely, sunny day when I walked out of the Lombardy Hotel on East Fifty-Sixth Street, so lovely that I decided that a long, brisk, cross-town walk from Fifty-Seventh Street and Park Avenue to my agent’s office at Fifty-Sixth and Broadway was just what I needed to get my blood moving. I had ample time to make the trek, unless something untoward happened, and five minutes into my stroll, the untoward happened: a cloudburst. A billowing mass of vapor obliterated the sun, and a hurricane-style gust of wind whooshed my gray fedora off my head and into the gutter. As I ran to retrieve it, a flash of lightning and a clap of thunder heralded the sheets of water that came down on my head and the heads of other hapless New Yorkers.
I was several blocks from my agent’s office, but I would not allow a rainstorm to keep me from hearing more about starring in a new situation comedy. I leaned into the wind, and for two long blocks, with water pelting my face, I slogged on as I looked for refuge, which, thankfully I found at Saks Fifth Avenue. My hair was drenched and my clothes so laden with water, I looked as if I had jumped into a swimming pool.
As I stood in the store’s lobby and felt the water squishing in the bottom of my wing-tipped shoes, I made a decision that only a man with a healthy assortment of credit cards could make: I’ll go on a sho
pping spree. After toweling off in Mr. Saks’s men’s room, I went and picked out a single-breasted blue suit in a forty-two long and told the salesman that I would only buy the suit if he was able to get the trousers cuffed while I shopped for the rest of my wardrobe. I explained why I was in such a hurry, and luckily the salesman, a former kid actor, sympathized with my dilemma. As soon as he measured my inseam, I was off again, and by the time it took me to buy boxer shorts, a T-shirt, a spread-collared white dress shirt, a new regimental tie, black socks, shoes, and a snappy gray fedora, the accommodating tailor had finished cuffing my slacks.
I looked at my image in a floor-length mirror and saw a much better-dressed man than the one who left the Hotel Lombardy earlier that morning. Wearing my spanking new outfit, I met for the first of two meetings in Harry Kalcheim’s office—two meetings that changed the arc of my career.
At the first meeting, the two eager, young writers, who professed to be fans of my work on Caesar’s Hour and Your Show of Shows, presented me with their pilot script. As soon as they left, I read it and found the premise of the show and their writing to be wanting.
My very smart wife read it and concurred. As she put it down, she said, “Honey, you can do better than this. Why don’t you write one.”
I reminded Estelle that I had never written a situation comedy, and she reminded me that I had never written a novel before writing Enter Laughing.
The five words Estelle uttered, “Why don’t you write one,” were prescient and life-changing!
I have been interviewed many times about writing the pilot for a situation comedy, and I was always pleased to talk about it. Vince Waldron’s The Official Dick Van Dyke Show Book has it all down accurately, but my writing about the fondly remembered details of the show’s genesis still gives me pleasure, so…
