The Elephant to Hollywood - Michael Caine [92]
It was hard to tear myself away from such an idyllic summer, but I had to pay for it all somehow (and the builders were coming in) and so I headed off for ten weeks in Germany to film The Holcroft Covenant. It turned out to be yet another bad film, although it was good fun at the time, and as soon as it was done I headed back to LA to join Shakira and Natasha who had flown out already as Natasha was due back at school. In LA, the autumn is party season and I had always looked forward to it but, this year, Hollywood had a really special surprise for me: a private party at the Beverly Wilshire thrown by my friend the producer Irwin Allen just for Shakira and me – and all the comedians and their wives. This was a roasting party aimed at me fair and square, and I couldn’t have asked for anything better. Just as I was about to get a little bit sentimental and a little bit regretful about leaving Hollywood, I found myself laughing. I’ve always been a bit of a comedian myself and I’ve often thought that if I was young today I might have been a stand-up comic, so an evening in the company of such comic greats as George Burns, Milton Berle, Bob Newhart, Steve Allen and Red Buttons, to name just some of the line-up, was my idea of heaven.
A funny thing happened on the way to the room. I passed a big poster of Charlie Chaplin with a woman holding a baby. It was an image I had seen a hundred times before but this time Milton Berle stopped me. ‘You see that woman with Charlie?’ he asked. ‘That was my mother.’ I was astonished – I had no idea Milton’s mother had ever been in movies. ‘And the baby?’ Milton went on. He scanned the crowded room ahead of us and pointed to Steve Allen. ‘Steve was the baby.’
Irwin had arranged for everyone to do a ten-minute set but after that it was more or less a free for all. Everyone told their classics. Some of my favourites are Rodney Dangerfield’s. ‘I’ve given up sex for food: I have a mirror over the dining room table’ and Red Buttons joke, ‘My wife said, “Shall we go upstairs for sex?” And I replied: “It’s either one or the other – you choose.”’ Henny Youngman makes me laugh too: ‘I said to my wife, “Where shall we go on holiday this year?” And she said, “I’d like to go somewhere I’ve never been.” So we spent two weeks in the kitchen . . .’ And what about this from Roseanne Barr? ‘My husband says, “I can’t remember the last time we had sex.” And the wife says, “I can – and that’s why you can’t!” And while we’re at it, here’s a favourite one of my own. An eastern potentate introduces his new wife to a friend. ‘Have you met the current sultana?’ It cracks me up every time . . .
I look around today and as far as I’m concerned, there are very few people who could come up to the standards of these great comedians. What I like is self-deprecating clever humour not cruelty: a lot of modern stand-up comedy can be quite sadistic. The greatest comedians are always self-deprecating – Tommy Cooper, for instance, who I think was a genius. I love his line: ‘I slept like a log last night – woke up in the fireplace.’ Or Milton Berle’s: ‘First sign of old age is when you go into a cafe and ask for a three minute egg and they want the money up front.’ These days if I want a laugh I’ll watch sit-coms that are character-based, rather than stand-up. I love Friends and Frasier, for instance, and I loved Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie’s sketch shows, too.