Transcript
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Speaker: Bullseye with Jesse Thorn is a production of MaximumFun.org and is distributed by NPR. [Music fades out.]
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“Huddle Formation” from the album Thunder, Lightning, Strike by The Go! Team. A fast, upbeat, peppy song. Music plays as Jesse speaks, then fades out.
jesse thorn
It’s Bullseye. I’m Jesse Thorn. Carl Reiner died earlier this summer. He was 98. In a world where the word where the word “legend” can get overused, let’s be clear. Carl Reiner was a legend. He started in comedy during WWII. He performed on stage, on the radio, on TV and movies. He did it all. He was on TV at a time when TV was this weird new thing that nobody was really sure what to do with. All that’s pretty amazing. The important thing is, though, that the stuff that Carl worked on—it’s really funny, still. He created The Dick Van Dyke Show, one of the greatest TV shows of all time. He co-wrote and directed Steve Martin’s The Jerk. And, you know, his best buddy was Mel Brookes—best buddy and collaborator. The two of them hung out together pretty much every day. Carl Reiner kept working right up until the end, too. One of my favorite recent things he did was on the television show Parks and Recreation. He played Ned Jones, the president of Pawnee Seniors United.
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Ned Jones (Parks and Recreation): You know, you remind me of my brother. He had the same name, Leslie. He lost a third of his body in a motor cycle accident—a middle third. But they sutured the hell outta him. He’s—he’s fine, now. Much shorter, but a good looking, young, flat man.
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jesse
When I talked to Carl Reiner, in 2017, he was nice enough to invite us to his home for the interview. The thing that put Carl Reiner on the map was a TV program called Your Show of Shows. It was a 90-minute sketch and variety show. It aired in the early 1950s. Alongside Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca, Reiner was one of the actors. The show had sketches, dance numbers, all done live in front of the cameras, like all television at the time. Here’s a little bit of it, featuring Carl and Sid Caesar.
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Carl Reiner (Your Show of Shows): Your own reporter, Carl Reiner, here at LaGuardia Airport, awaiting the arrival of a planeload of imminent visitors. Among them, the distinguished Viennese authority on the manly art of self-defense. His new book on self-defense has just been published. It’s entitled, You Too Can Be a Winner or Pick on Someone Smaller. Here he is now, Professor Ludwig von Stranglehold! [Triumphant, distinguished music plays.] Carl: Good evening, professor. Ludwig von Stranglehold: Good evening. Carl: Professor, I enjoyed your book tremendously. There was one—professor, there was one chapter that particularly interested me, but I didn’t quite finish it. Would you describe to us what you meant by, “Coordination as a means of self-defense”? Ludwig: [With a German accent.] Ooh! That’s the main thesis of the manly art self-defense. Supposing I’m walking down the street and you’re a fella with a gun. Now, you say, “Stick ‘em up.” Carl: [Enthusiastically.] Stick ‘em up! Ludwig: Now, the minute I hear that—the split second—it’s all in the timing and the coordination. All of the sudden, my left hand goes up here, my right hand goes, I twirl around, down underneath, and I plead! [Desperately.] “Please! Please don’t kill me!” [The audience laughs.] Ludwig: You gotta be loud! You understand?
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jesse
Carl Reiner, welcome to Bullseye. It’s so exciting to have you on the show.
carl reiner
I’m more excited than you are, because I’m selling books! [They laugh.]
jesse
Finally, Carl Reiner, in your 95 years, you get a chance to do some press. [Carl agrees with a laugh.] Your folks were both immigrants and— [Carl confirms several times.] Your father was a clockmaker and your—
carl
A watchmaker. Yeah.
jesse
Watchmaker. Your mother was illiterate, actually.
carl
Yes. We—I never found that out until my brother and I were about 13. She’d always said it was—when something was there, well, “Read it to me. I haven’t got my glasses.” And when I—the saddest thing, and it was almost—when I found it, I was like caught in a vortex. I’ve never been that emotional about anything. She was—she—I had found her diploma from school. It said—it’d been signed by doctors and I read, “This one—this child is ready for, you know—to go to work.” It was a kindergarten diploma, which she got when she was six years old. I couldn’t believe it. Because she was able to go to work in the sweatshops. In the flag factory, of all things. And when the Geary Society came to see if there was any child labor, they threw her in a bin—in a cloth bin—threw hundreds of flags on and said, “Don’t move.” She’d tell me those stories. I couldn’t believe it.
jesse
Were you, like, a guy that people said, “You’re funny. You should—you should—I guess, at the time, be on the radio?”
carl
No. I—when I was young, I was always listening to radio shows and I remember there was a guy named Lou Holtz—a comedian who used to tell jokes. And I would retell, to my friends who didn’t listen to it—I would retell the stories and embellish them a little bit. And I think that’s what started me. It’s—that’s what starts anybody. You fall in love with a performer and try to copy them and then you go past that and something occurs to you that’s new, that’s never been done before.
jesse
So, uh… when you went into the service, did you have the idea that you could scam your way into the performing arts section of the military? [Chuckles.]
carl
No! As a matter of fact, I so wanted to, because before I went into the army, I tried to get an Equity card. You know, a—an Actor’s—
jesse
Right. To be in the union.
carl
Yeah, so what I did was I was a second tenor in a touring company of the—of The Merry Widow. I didn’t do it. [Chuckles.] I went into—I went into the signal corps, and I—but I did entertain. I could do impersonations of—and I just entertained at the rec halls and I was on my way—this is an unbelievable story, it’s like a bad movie. It’s like a good bad movie. I was—we have—when you’re going from Washington State, my troop—the 3117th signal battalion—was going to parts unknown. We didn’t know where we were going. And we stopped off in Hawaii, on our way to—we found out later—Iwo Jima. The invasion of Iwo. And while there, I saw a poster for GI Hamlet, with Maurice Evans. I went to see it with my friend, and there onstage was my old friend from the NYA radio workshop, Howie Mars, playing Laertes. I went backstage and said, “Howie! You were great!” He said—without saying thank you, he said, “Do you have an act?” I said, “What?” He said, “We got these touring companies of soldiers going around to the islands entertaining, and you were always funny. Do you have an act?” I said, “Well, I work the—” He says, “Come and audition.” I auditioned for Maurice Evans and Captain Allen Ludden. And they said, “We’d love to have you with us.” I said, “I’m going someplace tomorrow.” [Chuckling.] And I remember—never forgot this—I mean, the Major said, “We can—we can talk about that.” He called the—General Richardson of the Pacific base command and had me traded, like a ballplayer. [Jesse chuckles.]
carl
I was—the next day, I heard my name called in the—in the rec room. “Carl Reiner, please report.” I came there and I was a member of the entertainment section. [Laughing.] I never forgot my act. This was the—this was cute, too. I was doing an act where I came onstage with a doggie blanket and a leash. And I said, “I’m terribly sorry.” I said, “There was gonna be—this Monty the talking dog was gonna perform for you, but he passed away yesterday.” And he said, “he was an extraordinary—he’s the only talking dog that is known. I could tell you what he did.” He says, “I could—I’m also an impersonator.” I didn’t do it anywhere near as—but I was showing—and then I did roleplay impersonation. And after the audience is applauding, I said, “You—well, you should have heard Monty doing this.” And I said, “And he did something I could never even think of doing. With a lot of makeup, he played Roy Roger’s Trigger.” [Jesse laughs.] And I said, “I couldn’t do that.” Anyway, that was my moments in the army. But the army made a comedian out of me.
jesse
That’s—one of the—one of the standard rules of comedy is when you’re starting a comedy act, tell the audience a dog died. [Laughs.]
carl
[Laughing.] Yeah, I know. But they were not—but knew with—you know, I had a leash there. They knew. They knew that I was—yeah.
jesse
[Pulling himself together.] What happened when you got back from the service?
carl
When I got back—very soon after, I started to—television started to happen. And I went on some television shows. I remember them, too. They don’t—one was called The Fashion Story, with Marilyn Day would sing. I played a fashion photographer, a jokester. And then there was a thing called Maggi McNellis’s Crystal Room. It’s 1945, ’46. That’s very early in television. And then there was The 14th Street Review, where I was the host of that, later on with Jack Lemmon and Max Liebman saw me on that show and invited me to come on the Show of Shows. And that made and started my career.
jesse
I was watching Your Show of Shows on YouTube, earlier today and one of the things that struck me about it was I am so used to watching shows that have an audience have an audience that is just goosed within an inch of its life. [Carl agrees.] You know, they, like, put some amphetamines in the water, they hand out—so that people will flip out. And there’s stuff that—there’s stuff that sits there and you can see Sid Caesar working for his laughs, particularly. I mean, he’s usually at the center of things.
carl
Yeah! And timing for laughs that he didn’t know if he was gonna get! Because he could adlib—once he started getting a laugh, he would adlib something, maybe a gesture or something, and compound the laugh.
jesse
When he adlibbed, did it make it difficult, given that you were doing a live to the air show?
carl
One of the things that was a rule on the show was never laugh if anything happened. The way fake laughter was done on Pearl’s show, they’d turn around and shake their shoulders, make believes they broke themselves up. That was verboten on our show.
jesse
What kind of guy was Sid Caesar like when he wasn’t onstage? He was such a huge performer, like, such a enormous presence.
carl
Yes, he was—he was a dear, dear man. He loved his cast and friends. We went out to dinner every night, after the show. Every—for years and years. Everybody thought [chuckling] he was a—when I did the Van Dyke Show, they thought that Alan Brady was based on Sid. I said, “No, Sid was a pussycat. He was our friend.” He was—he loved to laugh, and he loved all the people around him. He found Mel Brookes, you know, he was sort of a young kid writer. He wasn’t on the staff. Sid brought him in.
jesse
What was it like the first time that you met Mel Brookes?
carl
I’ll never forget it! Because he wasn’t on the show, yet. He was visiting Sid. Used to give Sid jokes, Sid would give him $25, 30 a joke. But I walked in the room my first day, not knowing anybody, and standing up was this guy. I didn’t know who he was. And he was playing a Jewish pirate. [Jesse chuckles.] And I remember him saying, [impersonating Mel Brookes] “You know hard it is to set sail, these days? You know there were—they’re charging for sail cloth? Three dollars and forty cents a yard!” That was the first time I saw him. And the following week, knowing what he could do, I saw a thing called We the People Speak, where somebody said, “I was installing his toilet and I heard Starling say—" That’s crazy. I went to Mel without even asking anything. I said, “Sir, I understand you knew Jesus.” Just that. He says, [impersonating Mel Brookes] “Thin lad, right? He wore—he wore—he wore sandals? He walked around with twelve other guys. Yes. Yeah. They used to come into the store. They never bought anything, but nice boys. I gave them water.” That was the first lines I said to him. And for the next ten years, I questioned him just to lighten the load in the office. At parties. People made special parties, a mug—ten years we did it.
jesse
You’d been—you’ve been best buds with Mel Brookes for 65 years or whatever it is?
carl
19—we met in 1950. Uh, yeah. No! 19… 50, I guess. Yeah.
jesse
At first, did you think, “God, this guy’s exhausting.”
carl
No, no. We have more fun together. And then when he married, and our wives got together, so—and loved each other so much and had so much in common. We became a really close-knit family, you know.
jesse
Is he the funniest guy you ever met?
carl
Single funniest man I ever met in my life, ever! Ever, ever, ever. And I’ve met some funny guys. Including, you know, Steve Martin.
jesse
I kinda—when I interviewed him, kinda couldn’t believe it was real.
carl
Who, Mel?
jesse
Yeah. And I was like, “Man. That’s, like, the funniest guy ever.”
carl
I know, he is.
jesse
“This is probably the funniest person ever.”
carl
I know! And when he does these one man shows, he plays his movie Blazing Saddles and then takes questions and answers. He just kills them. They stand up and cheer.
jesse
We’ll finish up with Carl Reiner after the break. Stay with us. It’s Bullseye, from MaximumFun.org and NPR.
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jesse
Welcome back to Bullseye. I’m Jesse Thorn. If you’re just joining us, we’re listening back to my 2017 interview with Carl Reiner. Reiner was a pioneer in comedy who performed for American soldiers, during WWII, created The Dick Van Dyke Show, directed classics like The Jerk, and kept working pretty much his entire life. Carl died this summer. He was 98. Let’s get back into the conversation. Your show, The Dick Van Dyke Show, grew out of a pilot that you had written for yourself.
carl
Yes. What happened is after the review format disappeared, I was being offered television situation comedies. A lot of horses and guns were being shot, then, too. And I came and I remember the—I said, “What do I—I would—” I had read some bad shows and my wife said, “Why don’t you write one?” I said—I said, “I don’t know about it.” She says, “Well, you can write.” And I remember exactly when it happened. I talk to myself. I said, “Reiner, what piece of ground do you stand on that nobody else stands on? That’s what you should write.” I said, “Well, I live in New Rochelle with a wife and children. I work in New York as a writer/actor on a show. I’ll write about that! The home life of a writer for television.” And I wrote the thing called Head of the Family. And I—you know, I—you got Barbara Britton to play my wife. Morty Gunty, Sylvia Miles to play Buddy and Sally. We did a pilot. Played it on the air. Didn’t do too well. I was—I was okay. And I said—I had written 13 episodes, in case somebody bought it. I wanted to have a bible for the other writers to know what the show was about. And so, I put it to bed. I said, “That’s it. That’s the best I can do.” And I started to write movies. I wrote a Doris Day movie, The Thrill of It All, and Sheldon Leonard was given my scripts by my agent. We had a mutual agent, Harry Calsharp, and Sheldon called me, and he said, “These are wonderful scripts.” I said, “Sheldon, I don’t wanna fail twice with the same material.” And he said—good impression, by the way—[deeply and with dignity] “You won’t fail! We’ll get a better actor to play you.” And he suggested Dick Van Dyke—maybe the most talented man that ever lived!
jesse
Can I suggest that, from now on, you just note ahead of all impressions that it’s a good impression? Just so folks know. [Carl agrees with a laugh.] If you do any further impressions, make sure to let us know if it’s good or bad. [They laugh.] What were the things that you found yourself writing, for Dick Van Dyke, that you might not have written for yourself, if you were in that part?
carl
Oh! Any kind of musical number. My god, I cherish those musical numbers, because I wrote usually a 44-page show and the music with a show was 23. [Chuckles.] To see Mary and him dance together was one of the pleasures of life.
jesse
Anything else? Was there anything else that was really special about him, as a performer?
carl
He could do anything you asked him to and then improve it. I remember once, we did a thing on sneezes where he got—he was allergic to something. He thought he was allergic to his family. He did about a hundred different kinds of sneezes and I couldn’t believe it. And then he could do two things at once: sneeze and burp or something. I once gave him a problem. I came and I—it was offstage, I said, “I want you to sneeze, burp, fart, and get a buzz—there’s a fly buzzing around you and an itch in your ear. I want you to do them all at once.” [Delighted.] He did them! [They laugh.]
jesse
What about Mary Tyler Moore? You cast Dick Van Dyke as the character that you had played, in the original pilot, at the suggestion of a producer. You went and saw him in a show and said, “This guy’s amazing, of course. This is it.” [Carl agrees several times.] And then you had to bring in people to play the—Dick’s wife.
carl
Yeah. I saw 23 women.
jesse
And did you have—even have an idea of what you wanted?
carl
No! I just know I needed—I had no idea. That’s—I said to Sheldon, “I don’t know what I’m looking for.” He said, [deeply] “You’ll know when you find them.” And one day, a girl comes in and she didn’t wanna come in—Mary Tyler Moore. Of course, she had failed at two auditions that day, but in through the door came a woman with beautiful hair, sparkling eyes, a smile that could kill, and beautiful legs. And I knew it! I gave her a page to read and I said, “Read this.” She read the first line. I sold it. And I described that I heard a ping in her voice, and I made my hand into the claw that usually picks up candy in an arcade and I went across the room. She thought I was gonna accost her. I grabbed the top of her head. I said, “Come with me, young lady.” Walked her down the hall to Sheldon, dropped her and said, “I found her. You said I would.” And that was how I found Mary.
jesse
When I watch The Dick Van Dyke Show, I feel like—I mean, look, Dick Van Dyke is a very handsome man in his own right. But I—it seems no fair that someone as good looking as Mary Tyler Moore should be funny. [Carl chuckles.] Like, that doesn’t seem appropriate? [Carl affirms.] You know what I mean?
carl
She didn’t know she could be funny. The very first few shows, she told me she wasn’t a comedian. And one of the first shows, I had written something where I said she cries—funny cry. You know, not a—a comical. She says, “How do you cry comically? Show me.” And the only time I ever showed her—I showed her, she did it. That was the end of showing her anything. She was—she was kinesthetic. She knew—she knew. Dancers are that way. She’s a great dancer. Really great dancer. Everything came to her naturally.
jesse
You must have—I mean, it must have been a big deal to protect the show in a world where—I mean, this is always true, but there weren’t a lot of choices, at the time. There was a lot of dumb television on, at the time. And I’m not gonna insult anyone in particular, but like, you were making a show that was for everybody, but that also was specifically not dumb. On purpose.
carl
[Laughs.] Well—well, I’m not—I—you know, what it is? I wrote about myself and I said, “I’m not that different than everybody else. I got a wife and kids and I shop; I do my yard.” I said, “Write about that and you’ll be writing about everybody.” So, that’s exactly what the rule of thumb—when any writers came, I said, “Don’t invent anything, tell me—anything happened in your life with your wives, your kids, we’ll write about that.” And that’s what we wrote about for the most part. Every once in a while, I went crazy and wrote, like—I wanted to do a takeoff of Twilight Zone, so I wrote a crazy one to kind of—5200 pounds of walnuts. “The Walnut Show” it was called.
jesse
Yeah, it’s—there’s a—there’s an absolutely amazing scene in that Twilight Zone takeoff on The Dick Van Dyke show where they’ve sort of been—Dick Van Dyke is going through this thing where he’s trying to figure out if he’s been gaslighted, basically, by walnuts. And he comes home to try and find his wife and he can’t find his wife and he’s going insane and he opens his closet and this river of walnuts pours out.
carl
500 pounds of—that—we had to give walnuts away to the audience. [Jesse laughs.] Uh, yeah, that was—that was a labor of love, that show. Because, when I came up with that show, Sheldon Leonard wasn’t sure it was gonna work and she said, “You do it. I have no idea. Doesn’t sound—” Anyway, at the end, he wrote to the paper. He says, “I could be wrong.” He said, “That’s one of the best shows he’s done.” It was based on The Body Snatchers, but I couldn’t use big body snatchers, so I made the big—the big—you know, zucchinis, whatever they were, into little walnuts.
jesse
Well, I’m gonna—I love that your idea for this, like, pretty grounded, sweet, domestic sitcom was, like, “Oh yeah, and then we’re also gonna do an insane dream episode about walnuts.”
carl
Yeah, I loved the fact that Barry (Mary?) had an eye in the back of her head so she could always see him. When he walked away, she parted her hair and says, “I—don’t do that!” You know, and she— [They chuckle.] I wrote all these little things that—they tickled me.
jesse
She comes out on that river of walnuts. [Carl affirms several times.] Out of the—out of the closet, with—you know, with, like, her—with, like, her cheek in the heel of her hand, like, batting her eyes. Face down as though she’d just slid into second base.
carl
Only a—only a talented, graceful dancer could come down those— [Jesse laughs and agrees.] I’m not kidding! It’s—she was that! Oh, it was so sad, her leaving so early.
jesse
I mean, I imagine that one of the most difficult things about being 95 years old is that people die before you do.
carl
I know. Yesterday, somebody died that I was surprised. Yeah, I check the—I wrote that thing to… it’s on HBO Now, “If I’m not in the obits, I’ll have breakfast.” And I read the obits every morning to see if anybody’s younger, I’ll—lately, I’m the oldest one of the—they’re going too early. In their 80s, 90s.
jesse
When Mel Brookes comes over, what do the two of you talk about?
carl
Uuh, how many steps Vanna White will take before she—before they cut back to Pat Sajak.
jesse
[Laughs.] You got money on that or—?
carl
No, no. We just say it’s usually—it’s usually six or seven. Rarely eight, but never nine.
jesse
I would’ve pegged the two of you for Jeopardy guys, more than Wheel of Fortune guys.
carl
We watch both! For, you watch—first we watch Jeopardy and try to guess along with them. And then we watch all the good talk shows, you know, like Trevor Noah. He’s wonderful. And of course, John Oliver is wonderful. And Samantha Bee is brilliant. She is brilliant.
jesse
You’re a regular on Conan, these days.
carl
Conan—well, I did one or two with him, yeah. [Chuckles.] Yeah, I was—he’s a wonderful guy. Too tall for this world, though. [Jesse laughs.] He’s so tall.
jesse
You’re pretty tall for a comedian, yourself.
carl
Oh, I used to be taller. You know, you lose an inch every decade after 60. I used to be 6’1”. I’m about 5’8” now. [Jesse laughs.] I’m like 5’9” maybe.
jesse
[Amused.] You’re nooot.
carl
Yes! I think so!
jesse
You’re a big man!
carl
You do lose an inch every decade after 60.
jesse
Carl Reiner, thank you so much for being on Bullseye. It was really awesome to get to talk to you.
carl
I really enjoyed myself. I’d like to continue, but if you have to go someplace, I’ll go upstairs. [Jesse laughs.]
jesse
Carl Reiner, from 2017. I was really grateful to Carl for letting me and the Bullseye team into his home to record that interview. Afterwards, he took us upstairs to show us pictures. And, honestly, it was one of the greatest highlights of my career. He’ll be well remembered as an artist and as a man.
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Electronic, thumpy music.
jesse
That’s the end of another episode of Bullseye. Bullseye is produced out of the homes of me and the staff of Maximum Fun, in and around greater Los Angeles, California. You might have heard my children making noise upstairs. Jesus, our associate producer, recently went out on his first Pokémon walk in a long time. He caught two shiny Grimers and a monster called a Qwilfish. [Chuckling.] Jesus was also kind enough to share some excess Pokémon with my children, who are what I would call Pokémon-aged. The show is produced by speaking into microphones. Our producer is Kevin Ferguson. Jesus Ambrosio and Jordan Kauwling are our associate producers. We get help from Casey O’Brien. Our interstitial music is by Dan Wally, also known as DJW. Our theme song is by The Go! Team. Our thanks to them and their label, Memphis Industries, for letting us use it. I don’t know if you know this, but bands can’t tour right now. So, it’s a perfect time to support The Go! Team by hitting up Bandcamp or wherever you like to buy music and buying one of their awesome, awesome records. You can also keep up with our show on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Just search for Bullseye with Jesse Thorn and I think that’s about it. Just remember: all great radio hosts have a signature sign off.
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Speaker: Bullseye with Jesse Thorn is a production of MaximumFun.org and is distributed by NPR. [Music fades out.]
About the show
Bullseye is a celebration of the best of arts and culture in public radio form. Host Jesse Thorn sifts the wheat from the chaff to bring you in-depth interviews with the most revered and revolutionary minds in our culture.
Bullseye has been featured in Time, The New York Times, GQ and McSweeney’s, which called it “the kind of show people listen to in a more perfect world.” Since April 2013, the show has been distributed by NPR.
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