But Carl Reiner was a lot more to me than just my straight man and partner on the 2000 Year Old Man. He was my best friend in the world, and I loved him. We spent many years and had many great times together.
He also went on to become a wonderful movie director. When I asked him what prompted him to direct, he said that he’d written a movie that wasn’t directed to his liking. When two actors have a scene together and one hits the joke, you don’t cut to the guy who’s said the joke. It was cut up so badly that he said, “I’m going to have to protect my movies by directing my own!”
And that’s when he directed his first movie: Enter Laughing. Many iconic comedy classics followed, like The Jerk, Where’s Poppa?, and All of Me. Whatever Carl turned his hand to was always top-drawer.
I’ve worked with many great people in my life, but there will never be another Carl Reiner.
Chapter 6
Johnny Carson and The Tonight Show
Getting back to 1960, my only income was from the 2000 Year Old Man record and a couple of TV appearances. One of those appearances was actually historic. I was on the very first Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson on October 1, 1962, along with Groucho Marx, Joan Crawford, Rudy Vallee, and Tony Bennett. It was the first appearance in a long association with Johnny Carson that really helped me to become a famous comedy name.
In the various decades since I appeared on that night, I tried unsuccessfully to find that very first Carson show. I’ve been told that it was either lost somewhere or got taped over. Maybe at that time, nobody expected the show to be as important and memorable as it later became? So perhaps, as they used to often do on live TV at the time, they reused the tape and something else was taped over it? Another explanation was a suggestion from a studio engineer who told me that he thought the first show was in black and white, and after that all the others were in color. So maybe they just discarded that one episode because of the black-and-white issue? Who knows? I really never got a definitive explanation for it being missing, however it seems someone in the control room or maybe even the audience had an audio copy of the show, so at least I was able to listen to it again.
Johnny Carson was a great audience for me. He loved my comic inventions, and sometimes would literally fall off his desk chair while laughing uncontrollably. I once told Johnny that I collected wines and had a wonderful wine cellar, which led him to suggest one of the funniest things I ever did on his show—a wine-tasting bit.
Singing up a storm on the October 1, 1962, debut of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.
I was blindfolded, and Johnny poured me a glass of wine. I tasted it and said, “No doubt about it. This is one of the greatest red wines ever made. It’s unmistakably Chateau Lafite-Rothschild 1961.”
He said, “I’m sorry, no.”
I said, “Of course. How stupid of me! It’s the other Rothschild classic—Chateau Mouton.”
He said, “No.”
I said, “I can’t believe it. Wait a minute…” I took another sip and said, “Ahh! I’ve got it. It’s the great 1955 Chateau Latour.”
He said, “No.”
I struggled for a while and then asked, “…Is it a white wine?”
The studio audience burst into an enormous laugh.
Johnny, holding back his own laughter, said, “No, I’m sorry. It’s not a white wine.”
I took another sip and said, “What’s the matter with me! How could I not know it? It’s beer! It’s a Budweiser beer!”
The audience erupted again, and Johnny nearly collapsed. He managed to say, “No, no. It’s not beer.”
I said, “My taste has gone crazy! What’s wrong with me? Wait! I know—it’s not even a liquid, it’s a solid! It’s Chiclets, right?”
The audience exploded and Johnny hit the floor. He couldn’t get control of himself for five minutes. It was so funny that even I broke up.
The Johnny Carson Show was one of the best venues for me, not only for selling my movies but just for flat out enjoying the company of the great Johnny Carson.
* * *
—
I was kind of scraping the bottom of the barrel, earnings-wise, when I got an offer from Jerry Lewis to work on a new screenplay with him. It was called The Ladies Man and was all about the janitor of a hotel for young ladies in Hollywood.
Working with Jerry was both wonderful and terrible. He was really gifted and funny as hell. That was the wonderful part. The terrible part was writing with him. He was not easy to work with and quite often we’d get into a terrible spat. Finally, it became impossible, so eventually either I quit, or he fired me—I’m not sure which.
He sent me the final draft of the screenplay, which he had finished writing with Bill Richmond, who was a great drummer and, for a drummer, a pretty damn good writer. It contained only two scenes that I had originally written for Jerry. One was dusting a butterfly case, and when he opens the case all the butterflies fly away. The other was going through a car wash in a convertible, and absentmindedly hitting the button that opens the top. Both were funny and worked, but not enough for me to want my name on the script.
So I submitted my draft of what I did with Jerry and the final draft with just my two contributions to the Writers Guild. Normally, the job of the Writers Guild is to make sure you got credit on the screen, but in this case, I wanted them to keep my name off the screen. I told them I didn’t feel that I had enough input on the final to have my name on the screenplay. It was a tough fight but finally they agreed, so I got no credit for that movie. Which was fine by me. Despite this, through the years I stayed in touch with Jerry as a friend and we’d occasionally get together and have some wonderful laughs.
Chapter 7
The Chinese Gourmet Society
So there I was, once again still basically not employed. The William Morris office got me a couple of TV specials to help me pay the rent. One of them was writing The Victor Borge Show. So funny, so talented. That was a great experience.
It was a difficult period of my life, but good friends and good food will get you through the roughest times. One of my good friends then was Irving “Speed” Vogel, whom I first met on Fire Island. He was a wonderful guy. Speed ran a textile factory and then quit everything to be a direct metal sculptor. He produced wonderful pieces.