Growing Up Laughing_ My Story and the Story of Funny - Marlo Thomas [55]
The day of the dinner, Lenny and his dad were picking up items for the evening meal when Lenny pulled his father aside.
“Please tell Mom not to push the gefilte fish on Marlo,” he said. “She doesn’t like it. She’s had it a few times, but she didn’t grow up with it like we did.”
Lenny’s father looked at him in disbelief.
“What do you mean she didn’t grow up with it? Danny Thomas isn’t Jewish?”
“No,” Lenny said. “They’re Catholic.”
Mr. Goldberg replied in a hushed tone. “Don’t tell your mother. It will ruin her evening.”
That night, Lenny hired a car and driver to take us out to Brooklyn, and on the way he told me about the conversation. I thought to myself, I have to make it up to his mother for not being a Jew. I’ll eat the damn gefilte fish.
The dinner table was covered with every imaginable food for the holiday. I happily devoured the brisket and potato pancakes—and then, with a deep breath, stuffed in the dreaded fish, smothered with hot horseradish, and washed it down with an enormous glass of water.
Suddenly, Lenny’s mother jumped up from the table, crying, and ran into the next room, slamming the door behind her. Her husband ran after her, but I could hear her through the wall.
“His children will come to my house wearing crosses!” she wailed.
It was a terrible moment. And I had already eaten the damn fish.
Lenny looked at me apologetically. Obviously, his father had tipped off his wife that I was a shiksa. Mrs. Goldberg came back to the table and tried to be gracious. But the elephant was in the room.
On the way home in the car, I vomited up the gefilte fish. (Who says I’m not a great date?) The next day, I called my mother and told her what happened.
“Good girl!” she said.
“Good girl what?!”I responded. “I vomited.”
“It’s the least you could have done for that poor woman.”
They have a club, these women.
...
NOT LONG AFTER THAT, Lenny, who was the head of Screen Gems Television at the time, was having lunch with comedy writer Bernard Slade, and told him the story of “Marlo’s Night at the Family Seder.” Bernie screamed with laughter, and a few weeks later brought Lenny a pilot script for a TV comedy called Bridget Loves Bernie, about a Catholic girl and a Jewish boy who fall in love. In a pivotal scene in the script, Bernie takes Bridget home to his family for dinner, which turns out be disastrous.
Lenny gave me the script to read and there it all was—the gentile girl, the nervous glances at the gefilte fish, even the vomiting. But in the script, Bridget doesn’t wait to get into the car. She jumps up from the table and runs to the bathroom.
Mrs. Goldberg’s line about wearing crosses was there, too. But I asked Lenny to cut it. It would be too hurtful to his mother to use her feelings for a laugh. So Bernie took it out—well, he changed it to “His five children will come to my house, and three of them will be nuns!”
Mrs. Goldberg’s line was better. But it didn’t matter. Screen Gems and Bernie Slade got a show on the air that ran for a season. If only all of my relationships had proven to be so lucrative.
DID YA HEAR THE ONE ABOUT . . .
Short summary of every Jewish holiday:
They tried to kill us, we won, let’s eat.
Chapter 29
The Survivor—Joan Rivers
I’ve read many comedians’ autobiographies, but I have never read a more honest and harrowing account of an uphill climb than the one written by Joan Rivers in her memoir, Enter Talking. It amazed me how, with so many years of early failure and a constant lack of support, even from her family, she was unstoppable. What fuels such passion and perfectionism is that indefinable trait that separates the achiever from the also-ran. Joan has never looked away from the toughest parts of the human condition—even her own. She has the guts to confront them all dead-on, and somehow, miraculously, make them funny.
—M.T.
Marlo: I’ve got to tell you, your book Enter Talking was the most honest and unsettling account