How I Got to Be Whoever It Is I Am
Copyright © 2009 by Charles Grodin
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced,
distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written
permission of the publisher.
Grateful acknowledgment is given to Carson Entertainment for permission to reproduce letters sent to Charles Grodin by Johnny
Carson.
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First eBook Edition: April 2009
ISBN: 978-0-446-55464-0
Contents
My Grandparents and Other Loved Ones
From Thirteen to Eighteen Years Old
A Kiss with Troubling Ramifications
Getting Better and Getting Banned
Simon and Garfunkel and My Politics?
Appearing on Johnny Carson and David Letterman to Show the Real Me?
Memorable Encounters with Icons
A Most Formidable Woman —or Something
The Rockefeller Drug Laws and the Felony Murder Rule
Highly Unusual Experiences That Make Me Not Miss Show Business
Why I’m Getting Increasingly Skeptical
To all of us who are finding life a lot harder than we had in mind
This book is the result of an effort to write about the events that informed my actions and values. It covers the 1940s to
the present. I figure if I try to understand myself better, it may help me better understand others. Well… maybe not, but
it can’t hurt.
M
y first memory of something having a powerful, lasting effect on me came when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on December
7, 1941.
I was a six-year-old growing up in Pittsburgh. I asked my brother, Jack, who was twelve, if the Japanese would be coming to
Pittsburgh. He said, “Yes, they will.” I asked, “Well… they won’t be coming to our house, will they?” He said, “Yes, they
will.” I said, “Well… I’m going down to the basement. They won’t come down there, will they?” He said, “Yes, they will.”
Amazingly, that’s the only tense moment I’ve ever had with my brother. Decades later, he
did
once give me a look when I commented on his orange golf pants.
I met my lifelong friend Herb Caplan when we were four years old. We had moved into a small house with a wall connecting to
another small house, which had a wall connecting to another small house. Herb and I shared a wall. When we were around ten,
we would pound on it to get the other’s attention and yell through it, mostly saying, “I’ll meet you outside in five minutes.”
Amazingly, our parents didn’t complain, or more likely they weren’t home.
Herb always has been and remains today one of my closest friends and one of the wisest. On my birthday, he said, “It’s only
a number,” and if you read the obituaries you easily see what matters is not the number of your years but the state of your
health. Recently, he said to a mutual friend who was complaining about this ache or that pain, “You can
make
yourself old.” In other words, we can choose different ways to see things. Choose happy or at least positive thoughts. That
may seem obvious, but how many of us do that?
Herb and I have had a lot of laughs over the years, but the best one he gave me recently. It’s a true story.
When Herb’s father, Larry Caplan, was in his eighties, Herb would accompany him into the doctor’s examining room. The doctor
once asked his dad, “Mr. Caplan, are you afraid of death?” Mr. Caplan said, “No, but I’d like to know
where
I’m going to die.” When the doctor asked why that was important, Mr. Caplan said, “Then I won’t
go
there.”
My sixth through tenth years coincided with World War II. The headlines in the papers (there was no television then) were
all about the Allied forces and the Axis forces. I knew the Allied forces were us and Great Britain and some other countries,
and the Axis forces, the bad guys, were Germany, Japan, and Italy.
Although it wasn’t really true, I somehow thought our Allied forces were doing great from the beginning. I had no doubt about
the outcome. My inherent optimism that has served me so well through life showed itself very early.
In the years since the war, I’ve only encountered the Japanese in Japanese restaurants. They’re always extraordinarily nice,
although I get a little nervous when they do their hibachi thing and start flipping those knives around, but I would be nervous
if
anyone
started flipping a knife around.
In the forties, the president was always President Roosevelt, the heavyweight champion of the world was Joe Louis, and the
New York Yankees were the baseball champions. Those were the constants.
One day in 1945, when I was ten, I was walking home from Hebrew school and heard a radio on someone’s porch on Mellon Street
where my father’s parents lived (as did Gene Kelly’s family). A voice on the radio said that President Roosevelt had died.
It was my first visceral experience that there were no constants. Everything has an expiration date.
Around the same time, a young friend of mine, Jerome Wesoky, was roller-skating down a hill at the corner of my street and
hit a streetcar that had stopped to pick up passengers. He went under it. The conductor, not knowing, started up and the trolley
went over Jerome, killing him.
Mr. Schwartz, who ran the grocery store at the corner, stood between the crane lifting the streetcar off Jerome and us kids
who went to see what was going on. Thankfully, he made us turn our backs. Again I learned there are no constants. At ten,
that was abundantly clear.
Oddly enough, or maybe not so oddly, right around that time I was impeached as president by the teacher of my fifth-grade
class. She said it was because I talked incessantly. I find that hard to believe, but that’s what she said, so it’s probably
true. I mean, why would someone make that up about a ten-year-old president? Besides, I’m perfectly capable of talking incessantly
now, so I’m not a good witness for myself.
That was the first time I was removed, fired, kicked out—whatever you want to call it. Not that much later I got kicked out
of Hebrew school for asking, I have to assume too many times, what the Hebrew words we were being asked to read on the blackboard
meant. I honestly can’t imagine I was rude, but looking back, I’d say my persistence in asking was considered rude by the
rabbi. I always saw persistence simply as persistence, especially if it’s done with respect, which I promise you is always
how I persist. At least, that’s
my
perception.
Getting kicked out of Hebrew school turned out to be a most fortunate experience, as it resulted in me studying with the father
of my best friend, Raymond Kaplan. Rabbi Morris Kaplan was the only teacher I encountered in grammar school, high school,
college, or acting class of whom I can say, “Now, that’s a teacher!” At least, the only one I’d give an A.
Rabbi Kaplan wove spellbinding tales from the Old Testament. I remember walking down the street alone with him when I was
about eleven. It was 1946. I asked him if we can dream when we die. He said, kindly, “No, sonny boy.” That hit hard.
Years later, when I visited him in Los Angeles where he had become the head of the league of rabbis, I told him I had married
a gentile girl. He put his head in his hands and sobbed. When he regained his composure, he said, “Children of parents who
are Jewish and another religion become the biggest anti-Semites.”
My daughter, Marion, considers herself Jewish even though the tradition is that a child takes the mother’s religion. Marion
also has as big a heart as anyone I’ve ever known. If a loved one is dying, I can’t handle being there, which I see as a major
flaw. I come only if asked. Marion, without being asked, crawls into bed beside the person.
So I had been impeached as president at ten and kicked out of Hebrew school at eleven. By the time I reached high school and
our economics teacher, Mr. Kennedy, kicked me out of class, I was used to being kicked out. Again, it was for the same rap,
asking too many questions or the same question too many times. I got high grades, and I always assumed that if I didn’t understand
something, some of the other kids wouldn’t, either, but wouldn’t say anything, so I jumped into the breach and was again kicked
out. I learned early on that if there was a breach that needed jumping into and no one jumped, I would.
Unbeknownst to me, of course, all this being kicked out at a young age actually had a highly beneficial effect, because by
the time I got into show business and was kicked out—fired—or threatened to be kicked out, I was used to it, so it lessened
the blow. As time went by, without realizing it, I was developing a thick skin regarding criticisms I didn’t agree with, so
I was able to handle rejection, from what I’ve observed, better than most, who are often overwhelmed by it.
A
joyous part of my life in the 1940s was summertime in Chicago, where my grandparents, my cousins, and my aunt Ethel and uncle
Bob lived.
I had occasion to speak of my grandfather, who was a Talmudic scholar, many years later when Ellis Island opened its new computer
center. One of the other speakers was Irving Berlin’s granddaughter. She said when her grandfather came to this country he
was so impressed he wrote “Blue Skies.” Joel Grey then got up and, accompanied by a piano player, sang “Blue Skies.”
When my turn came to speak, I said, “When my grandfather came here, he wrote ‘Green Skies,’ but it never really clicked with
the public.” The audience laughed, but my son told me the man behind him sneeringly said, “This guy—
always
with the jokes!”
Spending over a decade of summers as a kid with my grandparents, aunt and uncle, and cousins was a treat. My bumpy moments
with them came years later. Once my aunt Ethel looked up at me and really started to bawl me out about something. Oddly, I
was amused, because I couldn’t figure out what it was about. My cousin Fred recently told me my aunt was confronting me because
of a hard time I had given some television host she liked. If that’s true, my aunt would be one of the millions who didn’t
know I was joking with the hosts. At least the hosts knew.