by Robert Klein
The chef was a cordial Cajun with a ponytail wrapped in a colorful bandanna, whose immutable smile revealed a large gold tooth with writing on it that I tried unsuccessfully to read. It could easily be interpreted as impolite to attempt to read something written inside a person’s mouth. He had a French name and that intriguing accent of Americans of this region, at once French and North American, which one can hear nuances of in the accents of Canada and northern New York, not to mention hockey players. Remarkably, all of these northeners lived some fifteen hundred miles to the north of Louisiana, and all of them are part of the historical happenstance of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century continental American history.
As the chef produced one incredible dish after another, like fried Cajun turkey made with sweet peppers and onions, and a gumbo that should be declared illegal, I was transported to hitherto unknown heights of gluttony. I, who had never tasted a shrimp that had not been frozen, who had wondered if tuna fish was actually reeled up from the ocean in a can, along with the mayonnaise and the celery, thought I had eaten the best meal of my life. Just then my host the football coach said, “Hey Robert, y’all ever have squirrel?” “What?” I replied, thinking he had said: Hey Robert, y’all ever have squirrel? “Y’all ever have squirrel?” It’s got to be a euphemism, I thought, probably a delicious, rich chocolate dessert that they call squirrel, like the famous chocolate turtle. Certainly they cannot be talking about those industrious little creatures that inhabit Riverside Park. Who would eat a squirrel?
Whereupon Gold Tooth opened the freezer and removed several plastic bags with frozen bloody carcasses. These did not appear to be delicious chocolate desserts. “Let me think,” I lied. “Wait a minute, no, I don’t believe I ever have. But I’m stuffed, I couldn’t eat another thing. What does it taste like?”
“Like chicken, Robbad. Jes lahk chicken.” Of course I recognized that answer as the all-purpose description for any exotic food that someone tries to talk me into tasting. Frogs legs? Tastes like chicken. Rabbit? Tastes like chicken. Alligator meat? Rattlesnake? A Buick? Tastes like chicken. “Squirrel is delicious, Robbad. It depends, though, how y’all cook it. You gotta make de roux, and de roux gotta be good,” said the chef. “Nobody cook squirrel like I cook squirrel.”
I had little reason to doubt him, as I knew no one who had squirrel in their culinary repertoire. A roux, it seems, is the spicy flour and water base for the sauce, which is like the nitroglycerine of the flavor world. The secret to successful squirrel cooking, the chef revealed, is in a powerful sauce and a very long cooking time. These are required, no doubt, to squelch whatever little waft of rodentia might remain in the thing. For let’s face it. A squirrel is a rat with good public relations.
Chapter Fifteen
L.A. and Me
The city of Los Angeles and I have had an erratic relationship. I’ve had bitter disappointment there, as well as a modicum of triumph over the years. I have never become a full-time resident, though my profession has demanded my presence there frequently, Los Angeles being the obvious locus of the entertainment industry. I have made hundreds of trips and have kept an apartment there.
There are many reasons why I have made this choice which is illogical to a show business career and keeps one out of the loop. First and foremost is my emotional lifetime attachment to New York and its environs in which I was born and raised. All four of my grandparents came to the city from Hungary in 1903, found work, and settled here. It seems perfectly natural to love one’s own soil, though in mobile modern America, it appears that many find it perfectly natural or necessary to leave it as well.
In my case, the decision was abetted by a healthy dose of New York chauvinism, espoused by my New York–based managers at the time, Jack Rollins and Charlie Joffe, and their chief client, Woody Allen. It was as if there were something inherently nobler about staying in gritty New York, with its superior culture, than succumbing to the land of make-believe. These were all stereotypes carried over in part from the well-known virtuous-theater versus decadent-movie debate, and the woeful tales of the literary giants who were eaten up and made irrelevant by the Hollywood studios. Faulkner and Fitzgerald come to mind, as their work was sought fervently only to be changed by a committee of bean counters eager to pander to the audience and the bottom line. Aside from that, there is no doubt that I love the genuine excitement and variety of New York and the changing of the seasons, despite the extra challenge of the high-wire act, which is what it is like to try to earn a living in the major-league entertainment business while living outside of Los Angeles. I have always been wary of the West Coast and have preferred the familiar territory of the East.
In a series of phenomenal coincidences, I was working in Los Angeles during the two major earthquakes of the twentieth century, the riots, the devastating fires in Malibu and Altadena, and the torrential rains of 1976. The earthquakes left a lasting impression on my psyche, as there is no experience in my life to compare them to, except the dream I apparently created while the first one hit in 1971, when I was sleeping in a hillside house on stilts in Laurel Canyon. My dream was fifty subway trains hurtling through the Columbus Circle–Fifty-ninth Street station at the same time. The earthquake of 1994 found me cowering in my bed on the eleventh floor of the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills. I thought I had met my end during the seemingly endless, violent swaying of the building; yet the only discernible damage was a miniature bottle of vodka that fell out of the minibar. To the hotel’s credit, I was not charged.
These events have undoubtedly left a negative residue in my mind about Los Angeles, and have made me a faux pariah among my colleagues at Warner Bros., where I worked for three years on an NBC show called Sisters. Many of them speculated humorously that I had brought these disasters from New York. I am sure many of my California colleagues, besotted by astrology, tarot cards, and the mystical predictions of Nostradamus, believed it, though they never withheld their friendship or collegial spirit. Having been present for these catastrophes, I can attest to the fact that they have been met in Los Angeles with bravery and a community vitality that I have come to admire.
My childhood impression of the place, from television and a Bronx perspective, was that it was paradise defined: sunny, optimistic, prosperous, and beautiful. The television image of sun-drenched people in shirtsleeves at the Rose Bowl, in January no less, made me envious of the proverbial West and the wide open spaces. This feeling, I think, was born of my romance with cowboy heroes in movies from the early days of after-school television, in which kids my age galloped through the sagebrush and mountains on spotted ponies with Ken Maynard and Hoot Gibson, and never wore winter coats. My galloping was done on a horse of pillows on my bed in the sixth-floor apartment on Decatur Avenue, where we largely played indoors during the winter. I was captivated by the sunny backyards of Ozzie and Harriet and George and Gracie, the land of movie stars and movie making and eternal summer. I knew nothing about Horace Greeley, but west was nonetheless my favorite point on the compass. I even preferred the West Side Highway to the East River Drive.
As it turned out, I didn’t get to California until I was twenty-five, ten years before I moved from the west side to the east side of Manhattan. I had recently signed with Jack Rollins, the best manager in the business for a young comedian. Among the performers he had guided were Harry Belafonte, Mike Nichols and Elaine May, Woody Allen, Dick Cavett, Joan Rivers, and Tom Poston. Based on his prestige and his support of me as an exciting new talent, Jack had gotten me a booking, sight unseen, on The Dean Martin Show, which was a stalwart NBC entry in that 1967–68 season. This was the definition of managerial clout. The deal was for three appearances, starting at twenty-five hundred dollars, a thrilling quantum leap in my prospects, as I had not yet appeared on talk shows, much less prime time.
I had developed about an hour of comedy material at the Improvisation Club, about half of which was suitable for television. Rodney Dangerfield had told Jack about me some months before a
nd had arranged an evening at the Improv for Rollins and his partner, Charlie Joffe, to see me in action. A few days before the audition, Rodney was driving his Impala convertible down Seventh Avenue with me sitting next to him. Driving with Rodney was always a hair-raising adventure, his competence behind the wheel being the opposite of his talent as a comedian. His left elbow out the window, he would work the accelerator rhythmically in an on-and-off sequence, thrusting the passenger’s head back and forth like a bobble-head doll. His right hand occasionally on the wheel, he would talk, gesticulate, tug at his collar, and maintain eye contact with the passenger instead of the road. “Know what I mean, man?” he would say in the middle of some riff or other, as if to make sure one was listening. In his fast speech, this was contracted into “Know mean, man?” It was impossible not to listen to Rodney, he was so funny, fascinating, and insistent.
After a particularly vigorous gesture with his steering hand, the car swerved, narrowly missing a horse and buggy, the kind that have no business on Seventh Avenue. There was an impertinent exchange with the silk-hatted driver, whom he called a fucking idiot, and then “Danger” (which was my personal nickname for Rodney) spotted the Stage Delicatessen on the right. He spontaneously decided that Jack should meet me here and now, before he saw me perform. Rodney was often spontaneous. He screeched and lurched to a halt, practically sending me through the windshield in front of the famous establishment, which in 1967 was still a mecca for celebrities and a favorite late-night hangout for Jack Rollins and his friends and associates.
Rodney double-parked in front. Taught my whole life not to intrude or be pushy, and having little chutzpah in these matters, I was reluctant to disturb the important stranger while he ate. To my protestations of “Are you sure it’s all right?” Rodney would say only, “Yeah, yeah, don’t worry about it, know mean, man?”
I thought of pragmatic things, like the space between my teeth and my abundant eyebrows, which were connected above the bridge of my nose.
I straightened my tie and pushed into place my windswept hair.
Inside, there were bright lights and noise and that wonderful smell of fatty cooked meat and pickles. I surveyed the celebrities who were there, and the abundance of eight-by-ten glossies on the wall of those who weren’t. Rodney beelined for the proper table, filled with performers and managers who lit up at the sight of him: a sure sign that he was getting hot in the business. It was a scene right out of Broadway Danny Rose, the movie that Woody Allen made years later, in which Jack Rollins played himself, a manager sitting with a table full of showbiz guys in a delicatessen.
Rodney greeted the group with a joke, of course. “I’ll tell ya. You don’t know who to believe. Last week I told my psychiatrist I got suicidal tendencies. He told me from now on I got to pay in advance.” After a big laugh, Rodney presented me to a gaunt, lanky man with billowing bags under his eyes: “Here’s that kid I told you about who’s the next dimension.” While I stood awkwardly over Mr. Rollins, his party, and their pastrami sandwiches, he looked up at me with a kindly smile over his half-glasses. “Hello, lad,” he said, arching his upper body back. This arched back was a posture I was to know well. Jack is a heavy cigar smoker and, being a considerate man as well, he had developed a habit in conversation of keeping both his cigar and his mouth at a maximum distance from the person he was addressing, so as not to offend. If he stood and conversed with an in-your-face talker, it precipitated a kind of ballet, with Jack arching farther and farther back until he looked like he could pass under a limbo bar.
Standing over him that night, I was cognizant of this retreating movement and sensed that I should give him plenty of space. “A good face for motion pictures,” he said. I felt foolish. “I look forward to seeing you at the Improv, lad.” Two things were certain: I had not said one word besides “hello” and “thank you,” and no one had ever called me “lad” before.
Rodney apparently felt obligated to deliver an exit line: “I got no beginning, no finish, and I’m weak in the middle.” He got a big laugh, and we returned to his convertible just in time for him to talk a cop out of a ticket for double parking. He fed the police officer some excellent jokes in that no respect-everyman style, and it won the day. “I just had to go inside for a minute, know mean, man?” Cops loved Rodney.
The next day, much to my surprise, I was telephoned by five of my William Morris agents, all of whom were excited about coming to see me: an expression of enthusiasm I had not seen from them in the ten months since my return from Chicago. The senior agent, Lee Stevens, who would run the agency in future years, cautioned me about signing with a manager. He gave no reasons, but he was big-time, powerful, and intimidating, so I appreciated his interest and promised not to commit to anything without first consulting him. He then presented a wonderful plum: He was bringing down the producer of The Merv Griffin Show, Bob Murphy, and his staff to see me. They would come, not coincidentally, on the same night as Rollins. Why William Morris would not want two top people like Rollins and Joffe to join my team was a mystery to me, since it was clear that I never contemplated dropping my agents. The agency business had changed. Agents mostly booked jobs for their 10 percent, but for the most part they no longer formed and guided careers. That task was now the province of the manager, who typically got a 15 percent commission. Maybe Morris didn’t want to deal with a difficult third party. I never knew.
* * *
It was March 1967, and I was working on Apple Tree, the musical directed by Mike Nichols. I loved meeting Mike, whose work I so admired, especially since I had recently completed my Second City stint. He, of course, was one of the pioneers of that whole scene. For my audition, I had stood on the bare Broadway stage, looking out at the house: Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick, the composer and lyricist; Stuart Ostrow, the producer; Jerry Adler, the stage manager; and Mike Nichols. There was a piano accompanist onstage to whom I gave my music. Mike and I made some small talk about people we knew mutually from Second City, like Sheldon Patinkin, Paul Sills, and Bernie Sahlins. I sang “Almost Like Being in Love,” from Brigadoon. The instant I stopped singing, I yelled, “Thank you! Leave your picture and résumé, we’ll get back to you.” It was brazen, but it made everyone laugh, and the singing got “very good” and “nice job.”
Mike came down the aisle to the stage and gave me several pages of script. “Go across the street to the Edison Hotel coffee shop and look this over. Come back in twenty minutes, and you’ll read for us, okay?”
Now I really got nervous, because I sensed that the part was mine to lose. I returned at the appointed time, taking deep breaths to hide my trembling. Apple Tree was composed of three one-act musicals. I read the part of Mr. Fallible from Jules Feiffer’s Passionella, a play about a poor female chimney sweep who gets her wish and becomes a movie star. Barbara Harris was set for the part. Then I read a scene with a young production assistant where Mr. Fallible, Passionella’s boss, rebukes her. After the first reading, Mike asked me to think of Jules Feiffer’s drawings, to be more whimsical, less caustic. I tried again with a little cartoonish flourish, to his obvious pleasure: He had directed, and I had understood and responded. I left the theater with a ton of hope and got the part the next day.
A few weeks later, I found myself at a New York rehearsal hall, with gorgeous women in tights and gorgeous men in tights. I wore pants and fell madly in love with the adorable star of the show, Barbara Harris. My overwhelming memory of that first rehearsal is Jerry Bock at the piano with Sheldon Harnick, singing the songs for everyone, in what they call a “zitzprobe” in opera. With the composers performing it themselves, it was quite personal and touching. Sheldon had a wonderful singing style for a lyricist, if you know what I mean.
After four weeks, the company went to the Shubert Theater in Boston for our out-of-town tryout. While Mike Nichols and the stars stayed at the Ritz-Carlton, we lesser mortals resided at the Avery Hotel, surely one of the most depressing dumps in God’s creation. There should have been a sign
at the front desk, right under the American Express sign: SUICIDES WELCOME. From my dismal tenth-story view of the alley, I could swear I saw a target on the pavement below.
Despite the lowlife digs, it was a heady time, Broadway show and all, but the company was small, and my lovely female colleagues were all attached. I felt some loneliness in a strange city. The Avery was located around the corner from the “combat zone,” the honky-tonk block or two of cheap bars and strip joints, where sailors and their tarts strolled amid the shore patrol, with their pistols and bright white spats right out of an MGM navy musical. My neighbor at the hotel worked as an exotic dancer in a joint around the corner. She invited me to see her work, and I invited her to see mine. Her name was Lisa DeLure, though I fancy that that was a stage name. She was about thirty, blond, a tiny bit weathered with some pockmarks hidden by makeup, and a deep tobacco voice. Though she was Caucasian, she had the faint accent of a black woman, the kind that certain white athletes acquire, having spent so much time around their black colleagues’ culture and sound. She would often make conversation with me when we encountered each other around the hotel. She might come in at two in the morning, catch me reading the paper, and sit down to discuss current events. She was reasonably well informed, but her points were laced with expletives: “those fuckin’ Chinese Reds” and “that dickhead Johnson.” She was crude and slutty, and I wanted her desperately, but to my mind she thought of me like a sweet kid brother.
One night I contrived to be in the lobby when she returned, and I told her I couldn’t sleep. She invited me up to her room to get a sleeping pill, and there was her roommate, Yolande, a gorgeous but unconcious five-foot-eleven black woman, stretched out on the bed. From the punctures in her arm, I had a fair guess as to what was causing her slumber.
