Growing Up Laughing_ My Story and the Story of Funny - Marlo Thomas [67]
I remember an episode of the show in which it was Ann’s birthday, and her dad was taking her out for dinner, just the two of them. In the script, we had the following exchange:
Ann: Daddy, tell the truth. When I was about to be born, were you hoping for a son?
Lou: No. You were, and are, the only child I’ve ever wanted, and I loved you the minute I saw you.
When Lew got to his line, he couldn’t say it without choking up. He tried it again, but still couldn’t get through it. I held his hand under the table and gave it a squeeze. We started again. This time he delivered the line beautifully, and with a glimmer of tears in his eyes. It is a moment with him I will always remember.
Horrors! Dad (Lew Parker) finds Donald’s pants in Ann Marie’s closet. It was the Sixties, and free love was in the streets —but not on TV.
When I went to see Lew in Forum, it was clear he was just where he wanted to be—on stage, with wonderful comic actors, in one of the great guy comedies, having the time of his life.
But it was all cut short one month into the run when, during a performance, he became ill. The diagnosis was as bad as it gets: advanced lung cancer. Lew had been a heavy smoker—I remember him always with his pack of Kents nearby. I visited him in the hospital and asked him what I could do for him. He said he just wanted some good ice cream. So I brought him Baskin-Robbins every day.
Every day wasn’t long enough. I got the call from his wife, Betty, on October 28, the day before his 65th birthday, telling me that he had passed in the night.
She told me that one of the last things he said was that he wanted me to do his eulogy. Of course, I said yes.
Then I panicked. I was very saddened by Lew’s death, and I wasn’t sure I was up to giving his eulogy. I had also never done one before.
I called my father for advice. He had done plenty. The old Catholic beatitude “Visit the sick and bury the dead” was something my father had taken as a personal command.
“I’m terrified to do this,” I told Dad. “It’s such a responsibility to speak on behalf of someone’s life, especially this darling man.”
“You’re not giving a speech about his life,” Dad said. “You’re telling stories about him—the man you knew and worked with and loved. Tell funny stories. That’s what the people who loved him want to remember.”
So that’s what I wrote.
The day of the funeral, I was still apprehensive about giving the eulogy. I was also very emotional and worried that I’d cry. When it was time for me to go to the pulpit, I walked unsteadily past the open casket, trying hard not to look inside. But I caught a glimpse of the hanky, and it hurt my heart to see it.
I collected myself, looked out at the congregation and began to read:
“Lew was my friend . . .”
But it wasn’t my voice. Instead, the sound that came out of me was small and high-pitched. I cleared my throat and started again.
“Lew was my friend . . .”
Again that tiny, high voice. This time I kept going, trying to clear my throat along the way. I delivered my entire speech in that voice, until I got to the funny parts about him, and a few of the little stories my dad had given me. Then, miraculously, I clicked into the rhythm of a storyteller. Lew’s friends laughed, and so did I.
My friend Elaine May was married to a psychiatrist at the time. I told him what had happened with my voice when I was giving the eulogy.
“That was the voice of the five-year-old inside of you, before you knew about death and funerals and eulogies,” he said. “Of course, you would run to that safe place.”
At one point in the eulogy, I had tried to tell the story about that birthday scene Lew and I did on the show, but, like Lew, I got too choked up to tell it. He wasn’t there to squeeze my hand.
But I did tell a few of the stories my father gave me to weave into my comments. He said they would lift some weight off the hearts of the people who were there. And they did.
ONE OF THE STORIES DAD GAVE
ME TO TELL LEW’S FRIENDS
There was a time when George Jessel was the Toastmaster General of the United States. At every