Growing Up Laughing_ My Story and the Story of Funny - Marlo Thomas [24]
I remember one night my mother and father were bickering about something at the dinner table. The words flew back and forth, things escalated, and Dad angrily got up and left the table.
We all watched wide-eyed as my father stormed across the marble floor of our entry hall to the bottom of the long, winding staircase. Placing his hand on the carved oak banister, with the Viennese chandelier hanging overhead, he turned in fury to us and bellowed:
“Rose Marie, I cannot live like this!”
Then he doubled over in laughter. We all did. As angry as he was, he suddenly saw himself—a man standing in his opulent Beverly Hills stairwell announcing he couldn’t live like this anymore. It took about a second for him to recognize the absurdity of it.
Where did he get this ability to instantly see the funny? Certainly not from his stern father, my scary Lebanese grandpa. My grandparents were very poor. They had ten kids—nine boys and a girl—and little else. And as in all of the immigrant families in their neighborhood, my grandmother was cook, laundress and nanny for the entire family. But after giving birth to her fifth son, my father, she became too ill to care for him, so for a while he lived with Grandma’s brother, Tony, and his wife, Julia. They couldn’t have children of their own, so for them this was a true blessing.
Uncle Tony was what the family called “a real card.” He saw the humor in just about everything. My father once told me that he was so funny, he was barred from family funerals. (Years later, Uncle Tony would be personified as Uncle Tonoose on Dad’s TV show, Make Room for Daddy.)
Dad and Aunt Julia, his “second mom.”
Uncle Tony—the real Uncle Tonoose.
Uncle Tony and Aunt Julia not only gave my father a roof over his head and a lot of love and warmth, Uncle Tony also gave Dad the gift of laughter—a flair for the comedic in everything he did, including his parenting.
Dad’s sense of drama, he must have picked up on his own. When I was in high school, I was supposed to be home at midnight on date nights. And my father was strict. When he said midnight, that meant 12:00 A.M., not 12:05. When we were teenagers, most of our dates took us to the movies. Afterward, we’d all go to Webb’s, a drive-in restaurant on Linden and Wilshire, for a hamburger and fries. Everyone else was carefree, but I was constantly looking at the clock. The car radio was always tuned to our favorite show, which at midnight played “Goodnight, Sweetheart.” That was a song I really didn’t want to hear when I was still at Webb’s, because that would mean I was past my curfew.
One night, we were all munching burgers, laughing and having a grand old teenage time. My date was so cute—tall, blond, all-American. He’d been voted Best Looking Boy at Beverly Hills High, and his name was all-American, too—Johnnie Anderson.
Suddenly the first strains of “Goodnight, Sweetheart” began to play on the radio.
“Oh, my God!” I screeched. “I’ve gotta go!”
Johnnie and I raced up to my house on the corner of Elm and Elevado. It was now 12:15, and my father was standing out in our driveway, wearing a black coat and a black hat—with a big black cigar in his mouth and a shotgun in his hand. Oh, the drama. We used to call him “Orson” (as in Welles) because he reveled in the dramatic.
Johnnie Anderson was a real WASP. He wasn’t used to the histrionics of Middle Eastern fathers. We got out of the car. Orson just stood there, shotgun in hand.
“Young man, what time were you supposed to bring my daughter home?” Orson asked.
“Midnight, sir,” Johnnie said quietly, terrified.
“And what time is it, young man?”
“12:15, sir.”
“Well, then you’re late, aren’t you?” Orson said.
You could barely hear Johnnie’s “yes” as he ran back to his car and drove off.
I was furious. “God, Daddy, how embarrassing,” I said. “No one will ever ask me out if you keep acting like this.”
“Wow, I really scared him,” Dad said, then he burst out