Growing Up Laughing_ My Story and the Story of Funny - Marlo Thomas [0]
Laughing
My Story and the Story of Funny
Marlo Thomas
* * *
WITH GUEST APPEARANCES BY
Alan Alda • Joy Behar • Sid Caesar • Stephen Colbert
Billy Crystal • Tina Fey • Larry Gelbart • Whoopi Goldberg
Kathy Griffin • Jay Leno • George Lopez • Elaine May
Conan O’Brien • Don Rickles • Joan Rivers • Chris Rock
Jerry Seinfeld • Jon Stewart • Ben & Jerry Stiller
Lily Tomlin • Robin Williams • Steven Wright
* * *
For Terre and Tony,
who lived it all with me
in the house on Elm
Contents
The Set-up: A Prologue
Chapter 1 - Celebrations
Chapter 2 - A Kid at the Studio
Chapter 3 - The Boys
Chapter 4 - Socks and Moxie—Jerry Seinfeld
Chapter 5 - The Wives
Chapter 6 - Stirring the Sauce with Joy Behar
Chapter 7 - Hotels
Chapter 8 - Comedy Begins at Home—Billy Crystal
Chapter 9 - On the Road
Chapter 10 - The First Laugh—Robin Williams
Chapter 11 - The Funny Barber
Chapter 12 - He Said/He Said—Ben & Jerry Stiller
Chapter 13 - aka Orson
Chapter 14 - Testifying with Chris Rock
Chapter 15 - Beverly Hills, My Neighborhood
Chapter 16 - My Dad
Chapter 17 - Harry and the Parakeet
Chapter 18 - Angelo’s Boy—Jay Leno
Chapter 19 - Miss Independence
Chapter 20 - My Big Brown Eyes
Chapter 21 - Killing and Dying—Alan Alda
Chapter 22 - Comedians in Their Dressing Rooms
Chapter 23 - A Phone Call with Mr. Warmth—Don Rickles
Chapter 24 - The Two Dannys
Chapter 25 - Turn-ons with Conan O’Brien
Chapter 26 - The Bow
Chapter 27 - Twenty Questions for Stephen Colbert
Chapter 28 - Dinner at the Goldbergs
Chapter 29 - The Survivor—Joan Rivers
Chapter 30 - Obsession
Chapter 31 - Fall-Down Funny—George Lopez
Chapter 32 - Tony’s Pilot
Chapter 33 - Oh, Donald
Chapter 34 - Lew Parker
Chapter 35 - The Comedian’s Comedian
Chapter 36 - Growing Up Free
Chapter 37 - One-Girl Show—Lily Tomlin
Chapter 38 - Rose Marie
Chapter 39 - The Book on Kathy Griffin
Chapter 40 - Capra, Orson (the Other One), and Me
Chapter 41 - The Wright Stuff—Steven Wright
Chapter 42 - Growing a Feminist
Chapter 43 - The Joke on Me
Chapter 44 - The Making of a Wisenheimer—Tina Fey
Chapter 45 - The Reluctant Interview: An Improv
Chapter 46 - The Storyteller—Whoopi Goldberg
Chapter 47 - Against the Odds
Chapter 48 - Legends of Comedy
Chapter 49 - The Elm House
Chapter 50 - Mother and Marge
Chapter 51 - The Only Jew in the Neighborhood—Jon Stewart
Chapter 52 - St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by the Author
Credits and Permissions
Copyright
The Set-up
A Prologue
Sometimes in the wee hours of the morning I’d hear that funny sound of an audiotape being rewound. Running backwards it sounded like a Swedish movie. I’d get out of bed and go into Dad’s study. And there he’d be—listening, taking notes, going over his act from his last engagement and getting it ready for the next.
“You hear that, Mugs?” he’d say. “That’s a big laugh, but the one after it is weak. See, they’re tired. You have to pace the laughs. I’m gonna put a song in here. Then I’ll come back with the Whoopee routine.”
He had an ear for the rhythm, the music of the comedy.
“You can never lie to the audience,” he’d tell me. “They’ll follow you down any yellow brick road as long as you don’t lie to them. Once you go off that road, you’ve lost them.”
My father’s respect for the audience was his compass. When he hunched over the tape recorder like that, he was shaping the act for them—not for himself, not for the critics. And when I went to Las Vegas and saw the act working the way I had watched him put it together, it was exciting. I felt like a co-conspirator, a rooting section, a student—not only of his, but of all of the funny guys he hung out with and with whom I grew up.
I was a lucky kid to have a seat at the table (often our dinner table) with those comic warriors who had the audacity to stand up in a room full of strangers with the conviction that they could bring them all together in laughter. The stories of those times have been humming in my head all of my life, and I decided