Growing Up Laughing: My Story and the Story of Funny (4 page)

Jerry:
I guess that’s because the audiences teach you what’s funny about you. One of the things that’s most important to learn as a comedian is to remember whatever you did that made them laugh one night, then replicate it the next night—
exactly
. Whether it’s some look, a hand gesture, a vocal inflection. It’s the audience that shapes all of these things.

Marlo:
Are there things you’ve discovered you shouldn’t do? Do you have any rules you follow?

Jerry:
Well, I do work clean. I don’t like to use curse words because it’s just not my technique. And not using them makes me create better things.

Marlo:
The comics I grew up with used to say, “Anybody can get a laugh using a dirty word.”

Jerry:
Yeah. And I always say, “I don’t want that bullshit in my bullshit.”

Marlo:
You were born in Brooklyn, as were many comedy legends—Jackie Gleason, Jimmy Durante, Buddy Hackett, Mel Brooks, Phil Silvers. Obviously, your brand of comedy is a lot different from the rat-a-tat style of those guys. What’s in you that was in them?

Jerry:
That’s a great question. For lack of a better answer, I’m going to have to say there’s a certain moxie. A sense that I belong up there. You know, you have to be born with that; and I think it’s, in many ways, kind of an ethnic, New Yorkish thing—this whole idea that I should be telling you what I think, and that you should all listen. I feel that connection with those guys.

Marlo:
When George Carlin died, you spoke publicly about your admiration of him.

Jerry:
Yeah, George had this amazing kind of jeweler’s acuity with an idea, the way he would dismantle a concept from so many angles. I learned a lot about precision from watching him. For example, we were talking about the sock thing. Two jokes is okay. But if you can get
eight
jokes out of it, well, now you’re really taking it apart and creating something that can go for a long time. That’s what George would do. To me, that’s a big accomplishment in the writing part of it.

Marlo:
What about women in the comedy business? Did you ever date funny girls?

Jerry:
When I was young, I was very interested in funny girls because it seemed like the ultimate thing: someone of the opposite sex who was also funny. To me, that seemed to be everything you could want.

Marlo:
It would seem to be . . .

Jerry:
But, you know, girls in the comedy business, there’s something about it that’s a little . . . homoerotic. I eventually decided I didn’t want to be in a relationship with someone who thinks being funny is as important as I do. That’s not so good.

Marlo:
Is your wife the laugher in your relationship, or does she make you laugh?

Jerry:
Both—she’s funny and she laughs. But, you know, it’s not like one of us says something funny, and then we look at each other and say, “Are you going to use that? Because I could use that.”

Marlo:
When I told my father I wanted to be an actress, he said to me, “If you wanted to be a performer, I’d really encourage you, but being an actress you need too many people.” He said, “Me, I don’t need anybody. I go out there and all I need is the mike. I don’t wear funny hats. I don’t bring things on the stage. And because I don’t need anybody, I can always do what I love.” As a solo performer, do you feel the same way?

Jerry:
Yes. I remember when I started doing some acting in college—which was the only acting that I had ever done—a director saying to me, “You’re making this part too funny. It’s not really supposed to be funny.” And I remember thinking to myself,
You know, I think if I could get a little less help I might be able to get somewhere in this business
.

Marlo:
Exactly.

Jerry:
And it’s still the same. I don’t know what it is with comedians, but there’s this conflicted thing of misanthropy and philanthropy: You hate people, but you’ll do anything to please them.

Marlo:
Given how tough the comedy business is, would you want your kids to be a part of it?

Jerry:
I don’t think I have a choice. My daughter, who’s eight years old—and who I don’t think really knows what I do—walks around the house with this joke book that’s two inches thick. It’s called
Joke-a-pedia
.

Marlo:
Really?

Jerry:
Yeah, she just carries it around. So maybe there’s something genetic there.

Marlo:
Ya think?

Jerry:
Probably, yeah. A couple of years ago, she said to me, “Dad, I really like making people laugh.”

Marlo:
Oh, how great. And what did you say?

Jerry:
I said, “Yeah, I know the feeling.”

Chapter 5
The Wives

M
y mother, Rosie, was a band singer. So was Dolores Hope, Bob’s wife. Like their husbands, a lot of the comedians’ wives had worked in nightclubs.

The curvaceous Margie Durante had been a cigarette girl at the Copa in New York. Moving among the patrons in her glorious décolletage, she caught Jimmy’s eye.

Toni Murray, married to Jan, worked on stage as a “Copa Girl.” You could see why—she was a gorgeous redhead.

I once asked Toni if she sang, too.

“I couldn’t even dance,” she said in her usual deadpan delivery.

Toni was what they called in nightclub lingo a “show horse.” Those were the tall girls who just walked across the stage looking luscious, wearing feathered, three-foot headdresses—and not a whole lot else. The dancers were smaller and called “ponies.” I always wanted to be a pony. They looked like they had the most fun. As a kid, I used to love hanging backstage with them in their big dressing room when they were getting into their spangly outfits. They were young, loud and full of life. It was like being in a sorority dorm. With sequins.

But none of the boys’ wives worked after they got married. They all had kids, ran big houses and took care of their husbands. And the latter was a full-time job. For all their brash hilarity and guts on stage, the boys needed a great deal of care. If your emotional equilibrium is so dependent every night on pleasing a group of strangers, you need a lot of salve on your ragged ego when you close the door at the end of the night.

There was a well-known adage that described the two kinds of comics’ wives: “She put him up to it” or “She’ll calm him down.” But whichever one they were, they all had one thing in common. They were their husbands’ greatest audience. They laughed at all their jokes, no matter how many times they had heard them. And whenever their husbands were on stage, they were there, standing in the wings when the show was over, to tell them they had “killed the people.”

Most of the wives knew how to have fun—well, they were clubbers at heart. They loved to get dressed up, have cocktails and champagne and stay out late, laughing and telling jokes. They needed to be a part of the scene they had given up when they got married, and most of them probably liked it a whole lot better than staying back home with the kids. Especially with all those cute ponies swishing their tails around.

They were a lot alike, these women. Most had come from poor neighborhoods and had only high school educations. After dinner at our house, they’d all hang out together in the den talking about their kids and their parties while their husbands sat in the living room telling jokes and sharing on-the-road war stories. (That was the room I always wanted to be in.) One or two of the wives would get a swelled head and become a bit pretentious. I remember Red Buttons was married for a while to a woman who was taking French lessons. Soon after, she started calling Red “Rouge.” Poor Rouge—the boys had a field day with that one.

But most of the wives understood the game. I think that was their bond.

Except for one. The dreaded wicked witch, Sylvia Fine, Danny Kaye’s wife. From the time I was a little kid, I had always heard the women talking about what a “ballbuster” Sylvia was—she didn’t even take his last name. And “poor Danny”—how she humiliated him, spoke for him, wore the pants and all that. I always felt so sorry for Danny Kaye. He was a cute and funny man who, unlike the other guys, was saddled with this terrible wife.

Decades went by, and I hadn’t thought about Danny or Sylvia for what must have been thirty years. Then one night I was at a big dinner event in New York. Danny Kaye was long gone, and I spotted Sylvia from across the room.

Suddenly, this strange feeling came over me. It was like the melting of ice off a very old structure. Seeing Sylvia there made everything I had learned about women in the past decades flash before me:

Women who didn’t play by the house rules were called “man-haters.”

Women who took charge were called “bitches” (while men who took charge were “leaders”).

Women who wanted to have their writing taken seriously used their initials to hide their gender.

I was now looking at a woman who had been far ahead of her time. She was her husband’s manager and writer, both for his nightclub act and many of his movies. She had written some of his most successful songs, which had earned her Oscar and Emmy nominations. She wore the pants all right—if wearing pants meant having talent. That was her crime.

I got up and walked over to where Sylvia was sitting. I had no idea what I was going to say to her. I was even surprised to be walking toward her.

When I got to her table, she looked at me and stood up. I put my arms around her and whispered in her ear.

“I grew up thinking you were the most awful woman,” I said. “But I just realized tonight what a gifted, unusual woman you have always been. And you took a lot of grief for it. So I just wanted to apologize.”

Sylvia hugged me back and smiled. She knew. She’d lived through it and had taken it all. But no one had stopped her from her work. And in the end, it was better than standing in the wings.

In 2005, the American Film Institute nominated the 400 most memorable lines from motion pictures for its “100 Years, 100 Movie Quotes” list. Sylvia’s line from her husband’s film
The Court Jester
was included among the nominees.

“The pellet with the poison’s in the vessel with the pestle, the chalice from the palace has the brew that is true.”

It was the only quote from a Danny Kaye movie to make the nomination list.

TAKE MY WIFE . . .
AND HUSBAND, PLEASE!

If a man speaks in a forest and no woman

can hear him, is he still wrong?

•

My wife and I went back to the hotel where we

spent our wedding night—only this time,

I
stayed in the bathroom and cried.

•

What are three words a woman never wants to hear

when she’s making love? “Honey, I’m home!”

•

I just got back from a pleasure trip.

I took my mother-in-law to the airport.

•

I never knew what real happiness was until I

got married—and by then, it was too late.

•

A Woman’s Prayer:

“Dear Lord, I pray for the wisdom to understand my
husband, the love to forgive him, and the patience for his
moods. Because, Lord, if I pray for strength,
I’ll just beat him to death.”

Chapter 6
Stirring the Sauce with Joy Behar

In a field that is predominantly male, mostly Jewish, with a few Irish thrown in, there is but one Italian, Catholic dame. I’ve been interviewed by Joy Behar on
The View
and on her own show, and I’ve seen her socially, as well. She bubbles with outspokenness and delights in her one-line zingers as much as you do. That’s what makes any outrageous thing she says acceptable. And funny. When you look at Joy, you can almost see the mischievous child in her eyes. As another daughter of an Italian mother, I understand the extended family in which she was brought up. Joy would have fit right in at the dinner table of my grandma, the drummer.

—M.T.

J
oy:
We are very Italian. Calabrese.

Marlo:
My mother was Sicilian.

Joy:
Calabrese, Sicilian—same thing. My uncle Joe used to carry a picture of Mussolini in his wallet. He’d tell us, “Mussolini wassa notta bad. Hitler wassa bad. Mussolini wassa nice.”

Marlo:
Oh, that’s really funny. My father’s nickname for my mother was Mussolini. I’m curious, how does your family react when you take on the Church? I read something you said—that “there are no saints anymore because of modern medication.”

Joy:
Well, that’s true, isn’t it? They were hearing voices, all those saints. They were psychotic. If they’d had a little Prozac, we wouldn’t have had any of these saints. I got in trouble with the Catholic Church for that.

Marlo:
I’ll bet.

Joy:
My aunt Joan called me from Pennsylvania to reprimand me. “How could you say that about the saints?”—you know, as if she’s the guardian of the saints!

Marlo:
You’ve also spoken out against Medicare coverage for Viagra.

Joy:
No, they misinterpreted that. What I said was that birth control doesn’t get any kind of health-care funding, but Viagra does. I said, “It’s the crack-cocaine of the nursing homes.”

Marlo:
That’s great. I love that.

Joy:
Because the old men there are all over everybody. What—are we going to be faking orgasms into our golden years now? How many more years do I have to do that?

Marlo:
I talked with Jerry Seinfeld about why so many comedians come from Brooklyn. You do, too.

Joy:
I don’t think it’s about Brooklyn, per se. I think it’s that many of us came from humble backgrounds and needed a way out. We needed a way to deal with the world and have some kind of power in it. You know, you feel powerless in Brooklyn. You’re not in Manhattan.

Marlo:
Right, right.

Joy:
It’s like growing up a beautiful woman. If you’re a really beautiful woman, you don’t have to develop a sense of humor. That’s why most women comedians are not beauties. Same with guys. If you walk into a room and everybody drops dead from your gorgeousness, why do you need to be funny?

Marlo:
Right. A lot of comics have told me they grew up not liking their looks.

Joy:
Everybody has that story. For me it was kinky, curly hair.

Marlo:
You had hair like that?

Joy:
I still do. My fifth grade teacher called me “Brillo Head.”

Marlo:
Oh, how awful!

Joy:
What a jerk he was.

Marlo:
What did you say back to him?

Joy:
I was in the fifth grade, his name was Mr. Frischer, and all I could come up with was to call him “Mr. Fish Cakes.” That was it—but I
did
answer him back.
I’m
the first one to make a joke about my hair—not
you
.

Marlo:
Your hair doesn’t look like Brillo now.

Joy:
That’s because I didn’t have a hairdresser in the fifth grade.

Marlo:
Do you remember your grandmother and grandfather? Were they from the old country?

Joy:
Yes, they all came from Calabria—which was a really rough ride for them. They came here right after a horrible earthquake. So they were very poor.

Marlo:
Did they live with you? Did you see them a lot?

Joy:
I grew up in a tenement in Brooklyn, one of those apartment buildings with fire escapes. My mother and father and I were on the fifth floor; my grandmother and her children were on the third floor, as was my aunt, her husband and mother-in-law—who was a witch. So I’d just go up and down in the building, and do shtick for them all day long.

Marlo:
So you were the funny one. Were your mom and dad funny, too?

Joy:
My father had a little bit of a streak . . .

Marlo:
And your mother?

Joy:
I think if you talk to a lot of women comics, you’ll find that they had mothers who were sort of depressed.

Marlo:
Oh, really.

Joy:
Yeah, a little depressed. And because they were not actualized, they could have used some medication. “Hello. A little Zoloft for the ladies?” That generation was stuck at home. And my mother was not a housewife. She couldn’t afford to be because she was married to a gambler.

Marlo:
Wow.

Joy:
So she had to work—she was long-suffering, the poor thing. And so I found that my escape from all of that was to make fun of everything. I got a lot of material just watching my mother and trying to make her laugh.

I think I had some kind of a funny gene, even as a little ten-year-old kid. I have recollections of how I was always performing. We’d go to wakes, and when we’d come home, I would make fun of everybody who was at the wake. And I liked acting crazy—like Jerry Lewis. Just being a little whack-job. My aunts and uncles on my mother’s side were like a built-in audience. Then I’d go up to Springfield, Massachusetts, where we had other relatives. I would just kill in these places as a kid.

Marlo:
That’s a riot. You’d just kill . . . at
ten
!

Joy:
They were like sitting ducks for me, you know? The problem—and this is an interesting point, I think—the problem was that I got so much attention and response from my family, that when I went into the real world of show business—where people don’t know or care about you—I wasn’t getting that kind of reaction. So I thought I wasn’t good enough. The truth of it was, I had to win them over just like I had done as a child. I mean, I
worked
at it.

Marlo:
Right, of course. You knew the room.

Joy:
I knew the room. It’s just that when I got a bigger room, I had to start from scratch in a way, and it took me a while.

Marlo:
Were you funny in school?

Joy:
I was always funny in school. I would get myself out of jams by being funny.

Marlo:
Were you like you are on
The View,
with a strong point of view and not afraid to speak up?

Joy:
Yes, I think I was always like that. And I really do credit my family for that. They never, ever told me to shut up.

Marlo:
You started late as a stand-up, right?

Joy:
Yeah, I was about thirty-eight.

Marlo:
What were you doing up until then?

Joy:
I was a high school English teacher.

Marlo:
You must have been very funny as a teacher.

Joy:
I was in some classes—if they were bright. If they weren’t, I couldn’t do it. I had to be strict.

Marlo:
What other kind of jobs did you have?

Joy:
I worked in a mental hospital—which prepared me for
The View
. I worked at an employment service. I did a lot of different little jobs, and then got a job at
Good Morning America
as a receptionist.

Marlo:
How was that?

Joy:
Good. Then I was fired.

Marlo:
You’re kidding.

Joy:
Well, you know what they do in television. If the ratings go down, they fire the receptionist.

Marlo:
That’s smart. “It’s her fault!” At some point, you made a turn and your humor became more political.

Joy:
Yeah, I’m kind of like Bill Maher in that way. I call myself a “fundit.”

Marlo:
I love that term. And the fundits are taken seriously.

Joy:
Well, yeah, because they have a lot to say about issues, especially during elections. Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert.

Marlo:
I’ve talked to both of them. They’re great. They have bowling-ball balls, these guys.

Joy:
I know.

Marlo:
But so do you.

Joy:
I know I do. We’re all fundits. You know, I ran into Joe Biden one time, and he told me that he’s more scared to go on Jon Stewart than on
Meet the Press
.

Marlo:
Really? Why?

Joy:
Because he knows Stewart’ll get him.

Marlo:
And he doesn’t know how to manipulate that.

Joy:
Right—it’s harder.

Marlo:
And because comedians don’t have to be polite, there are no rules.

Joy:
Yes, and there’s an audience there.

Marlo:
And if there’s an audience there, the comedian will go for the laugh.

Joy:
That’s right, and they’ll get the laugh at their guest’s expense, if you let them.

Marlo:
Right.

Joy:
And remember, fundits are citizens.

Marlo:
Of course.

Joy:
Citizens with a big, big mouth.

Marlo:
That’s great, Joy. That’s just great.

Joy:
You’re a good audience, Marlo.

Marlo:
There’s a good reason.