Growing Up Laughing_ My Story and the Story of Funny - Marlo Thomas [37]
My mother would sometimes laugh this repressed kind of laugh, but for the most part she was quiet. She liked to say “Shhh” a lot. I remember when I played Carnegie Hall, my mom and dad were sitting about four rows back, dead center, and behind my mom were six or seven college kids who’d seen me on TV and knew my routine. So they’re laughing hysterically at my jokes, and my mother turns around and says, “Shhh!”
So I stop the show and say, “Mom, you don’t shush people at Carnegie Hall!” I mean, how can you not find humor with parents like this?
MY MOTHER CAME FROM SCOTLAND. When she was small, her mom ran off with a younger man, and there were so many kids in her family that my grandfather had to get rid of a few of them. He went door to door with my mother—Anybody want a daughter?—and eventually put my mom on a boat and sent her to America to live with her sister. She was eleven, and went to work in a factory.
So I always sensed a sadness in my mom, and I felt it was my duty to cheer her up or make her laugh. If I could do that, I’d get a great feeling of satisfaction.
But sometimes I went too far. When I was a kid, one of my favorite things to do was go to the supermarket with my mother. I would run away and go up to the manager and say, “I’m lost—could you page my mother?” And he’d get on the loudspeaker and say, “Would Mrs. Catherine Leno please come to the front of the store?” I knew there couldn’t be anything more embarrassing for her, but I was a kid. I thought it was funny.
Even when I started appearing on TV, she’d say to me, “You know, nobody wants somebody who’s funny all the time. If you want, tell a joke, sing a little song, do a little dance.” I’d say, “Mom, I’m not going to sing and dance to get to tell a joke.”
MY DAD HAD a real good sense of humor. He was a salesman who worked himself up to manager of the office, and once a month he would have to give a pep talk to the other salesmen. So he’d write a funny speech and practice it on me. “Hey, you think this is funny? You think the boys in the office will like this?” And I thought, Oh boy, being an insurance salesman has got to be the best job in the world, because you get to tell funny stories!
Dad also told me stories about the early days of selling insurance in Harlem. When he went to work for the insurance company, he asked, “What’s the toughest route?” And people, being very racist in those days, would say, “Harlem. You can’t sell insurance in Harlem.” My dad said, “Well, everybody’s got a family. Everybody wants insurance.” So he sold nickel policies in Harlem.
When he died in the early nineties, I talked about this on The Tonight Show, and I got a letter from a lady in Harlem who said that when she was a little girl, there was a man named Angelo Leno who used to come around to collect on the nickel policy. She said he was the only white person who had ever had dinner in her home.
“Your father would always give me candy,” she wrote, “and my opinion of white people was based on him.” It was such a lovely letter. I called her up, and it was great to learn a little more about my dad from her.
I know that a lot of comics had unhappy childhoods, but I didn’t. I had a wonderful childhood—and a wonderful family.
I NEVER WANTED TO BE A TV personality. I always kept my day job, thinking I would do this comedy thing until I had to get a real job. I’d put the money from my comedy job in one pocket