By Eddy Friedfeld
The late great Larry Gelbart once said
about his friend and colleague, the still great Carl Reiner: “Carl Reiner and my maid have a lot in
common- they both abhor a vacuum.†Having spent time with Mr. Reiner, I can attest that Mr. Gelbart was
spot on.
His
newly released autobiography, I Remember Me, is a very entertaining and wonderful
and inspiring collection of anecdotes. His
third biography, following My Anecdotal Life and How Paul Robeson Saved My Life and Other Mostly
Happy Stories, is a collection of funny and poignant, and extremely well-crafted
stories range from friends and family, including his late wife of 65 years,
Estelle (whose When Harry Met Sally iconic line “I’ll have what she’s having,â€
rated ahead of Humphrey Bogart’s Casablanca close “This is the beginning of a
beautiful friendship,†on the AFI list of all-time great movie lines,), to
famous friends and acquaintances, including Frank Sinatra, Jack Benny, George
Burns, Jerry Lewis, Don Rickles, Ernie Kovacs, Gregory Peck, Julie Andrews, and
Dinah Shore.
A
regular at bi-monthly dinner parties at Sid Caesar’s home in Beverly Hills organized
by producers Fran and Lou Zigman, Reiner read from his new book, extolling
Caesar’s gifts as the best sketch comedy performer that ever lived, and talked
about being creative with Brooks. When
prompted by Estelle Harris (Seinfeld’s Mrs. Costanza), who is as warm and
friendly as her Seinfeld counterpart was tough and overbearing, he said that he
saw himself as the ultimate master of ceremonies: “As child I loved movies so much that when I
saw one I really liked I gave a friend
money to go see it.â€
With
all due respect to the master, he undersold himself. He is an Agent Provocateur of creativity and comedy. He makes everything and everyone he interacts
with smarter, funnier, and better.
He
understands the fundamental
art of storytelling and how to share a stage. An actor, writer, director and producer, he is the consummate partner; a
chronic comedy enabler: From Caesar’s comedic
foil, to Brooks Two Thousand Year Old Man partner, to The Dick Van Dyke Show’s
creative force, to Steve Martin’s early film collaborator, and to anyone whom
he happens to be in a room with at the time, his kinetic energy is
uplifting.
He
enters Caesar’s home with Mel Brooks, his oldest friend, his partner in
creative crime, with whom he has a palpably enviable and inspiring bond. They are the Butch and Sundance Kid of
comedy, both comedic alchemists, creating funny lines, images and situations
literally from the air spinning their golden wit and entertaining and
energizing everyone around them.
Indefatigable, his energy level would
make Seal Team Six tired. There is a
deceptive effortlessness with which he creates. It belies years of training and even more years of passionate pursuit of
craft. He will turn a conversation into a riff or a small
sketch. And for the self-proclaimed
tone-deaf man who once needed an entire orchestra to back him up for a one line
of musical song- and missed it, he is a virtuoso at the music of comedy, and
its innate rhythms and vibrations. He
is a pleasure to watch in action. When
actress Diane Ladd came over to his table during dinner and said, “please don’t
get up,†he responded with dignity and velocity: “I am up. I am just not standing.â€
At 91, he still stands over six feet
tall. Distinguished looking, and a
stylish and dapper dresser, he could easily pass for a retired lawyer or
banker. There is a decided dignity that is
coupled with a mischievous spark in his eyes. He is studying the room, stealthily casing it like a creative cat
burglar, mining it for ideas, talent and potential laughter: He is going figure out how to make you laugh,
you just don’t know it yet. And you are
not just going to laugh- you are going to be an active participant in the
party. His Raison d'être is to bring out the
best in you.
At another dinner party, he produced a
ceramic mug he received from the Off-Broadway show Old Jews telling Jokes. Seeing an opportunity, he turned the mug into
a prop and a tradition; a faux microphone- whomever it was passed to was
required to tell an old joke. From
contemporaries Dick Van Dyke and Monty Hall, to later generations of comedians
and actors, including Renee Taylor and Joe Bologna, Richard Lewis and Roastmaster
General Jeffrey Ross, and guests who never told a joke on stage or for money, each
of whom took the cup, got up and executed a joke with equal fervor and gusto,
encouraged by his spirit.
At one of the dinners, I showed the group a segment of an episode
of NBC’s Producers’ Showcase from 1954 which had a satire of "Meet the Press"
called "Beat the Press." Caesar was in his Professor character the
purported expert on everything, with Reiner playing the earnest reporter
interviewing him about subjects ranging from mountain climbing to the pyramids,
and was being quizzed by real-life journalists Lawrence Spivak, H.V.
Kaltenborn, and Emanuel Freedman.
The
clip prompted a recollection from Reiner that he was on the Jack Paar Show with
Radio Foreign Correspondent H.V. Kaltenborn who talked about meeting Adolph
Hitler during World War II. “Hitler had
such a warm relationship with his dogs, he was so kind to them,†he recalled
Kaltenborn saying.
To
which Reiner interjected: “Do you recall
his relationship with the Jews?†The story got resounding applause from the dinner
party. Reiner said that Paar’s audience
had a similar reaction and that the reporter couldn’t recover from the
resounding applause to make another point.
He
has given me both advice and friendship over the years, graciously sharing
stories and wisdom. Excited that I
introduced my NYU film class to Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid, he said: “It’s the most fun I ever had making a
picture. We spent six months editing
clips from old Film Noir movies finding clips we could use. The name Rigby Reardon (Steve Martin’s
character) came from lines from other movies uttered by Charles Laughton and
Humphrey Bogart.†Showing him original
programs from Your Show of Shows prompted a story about how Bob Hope produced
his first national television special using the Show of Shows cast and crew,
including Reiner.
“I’ve been thinking about it,†he once said to
me. “Fried-feld.
You don’t need both.â€
(Cinema
Retro Contributor Eddy Fried(feld) teaches comedy and film history at Yale and
NYU)
Click here to order Carl Reiner's I Remember Me from Amazon