By Joan Garvin
Ball players lose their legs, singers lose their voices, but Carl Reiner proved to the Foothill College Celebrity Forum audience, March 16, that comedians just use aging to add new and funnier material.
“I am getting older. I’m going to speak at random … going to wander around physically and mentally,” Reiner said as he designated an audience member to keep track for him.
Noting the prominent celebrities featured over the 30 years of the lecture series, such as Walter Cronkite, Gregory Peck, Mikhail Gorbachev, Reiner said his family wondered, “Where do you fit in with these people?”
Reiner’s topic was, “My life. That’s the only subject they can’t have the depth on that I do.”
“I’m very successful,” he said, then spent a laugh-filled evening crediting that to luck.
“If not for FDR and my brother, Charlie, I would still be working as a machinist. Charlie saw a notice about free drama classes, sponsored by the NRA and it all happened.
“Last Saturday night, I was master of ceremonies for the Director’s Guild awards. I never prepare … I count on something spontaneous to trigger the speech.
“By dinner time, nothing has occurred to me … Time to get up, go to men’s room, fix tux and tie.”
As he adjusted his tie, Reiner wondered how many people can tie their own tie? It became his theme for the evening. He went on stage and stated his newly- found premise: actors who become directors can; lifetime directors cannot.
“I tested it on the winners. It worked and got big applause. It was garbage!”
Reiner traced his legendary ability to doublespeak, used with such comedic effect on Sid Caesar’s “Show of Shows,” to a summer Shakespeare Repertory experience.
The Shakespeare Company performed three shows. The company got to Apalaca, Ga., prepared for “Taming of the Shrew,” but the theater wanted “Hamlet.”
In Act IV, he had the speech, “O Gertrude, when sorrows come …” He saw the first four rows filled with the drama society following word for word.
“I lost it, so I started spouting garbage, but booming, poetic, action-filled. It was a disaster for me; but the audience broke out in applause … they had never seen such emotion.”
Through another series of amusing coincidences, Reiner spent most of World War II in the Special Services, although he started as a radio operator in the Army Air Force. While Reiner toured the Pacific acting, his signal battalion fought on Iwo Jima.
“One of the most thrilling things that ever happened to me,” Reiner said occurred on V.J. Day. He entertained the 3117 Signal Battalion, his buddies, who were alive and well.
His successful routine with Mel Brooks, “The 2000 Year Old Man,” was a takeoff on the 1950s TV show, “We the People Speak.” The two of them built on it for relaxation for 10 years until they made the records and another classic was born.
After variety shows had run their course, Reiner was out of work. He criticized the early sitcoms until Estelle, his wife of 57 years, suggested that he could do better.
His story of a comedy writer, his work and family became the long-running Dick Van Dyke show.
The most memorable event in his life was last year’s award at the Kennedy Center. It was not the recognition, but that his brother, Charlie, dying of cancer, was able to be there and Reiner was able to tell him publicly, “I wouldn’t be here without you.”
