BOSTON — When I was younger I spent a lot of time at my
grandparents’ house crashed out on the living room floor in front
of a colossal mahogany cabinet that moonlighted as a television
set. My game was simple: Fake a sleep so deep my grandparents
wouldn’t dream of pushing me off to bed in the guest room. It was a
delicate balance, and sometimes when bedtime snuck up on me I had
to collapse pretty quickly. There were a few years there when my
poor Nana and Papa were probably convinced I was narcoleptic.
So why the ruse? I’ll admit that it was at least partially
because I was convinced the guest room was haunted. (It makes
little sense. A 1970s ranch, the house would have had to have been
haunted by the spirit of a contractor or wood floor buffer.) But
mostly I wanted to sneak in a few hours of the late night cable
television we didn’t have at my house. And on those nights when I
pulled it off there was nothing I loved more than the Rodney
Dangerfield comedy specials that replayed endlessly in the wee
hours. So I’d play possum on that hard floor until my grandmother
threw a blanket over me and turned the light out. Then I’d wait out
the hours staring at the ceiling while they watched television in
their own room, waiting for the snores before carefully turning on
that mammoth old television. The sound of its tubes warming up
seemed as loud as a jet plane.
Often I’d get caught anyway. Rodney would start with the one
liners: “I was an ugly kid. I worked in a pet store. People kept
asking how big I get.” I’d bite my cheeks to try and stifle the
giggles. “A homeless guy came up to me on the street, said he
hadn’t eaten in four days. I told him, ‘Man, I wish I had your
willpower.’” Belly laugh: Busted. Off to the haunted bed chamber.
On weekends I didn’t get caught, I was introduced, with the rest of
America, to the talent of young comedians Dangerfield was
constantly discovering on the road and giving a leg-up with their
careers. Jerry Seinfeld, Sam Kinison, Tim Allen, Robert Townsend,
Rita Rudner, Roseanne Barr, Bob Saget, Andrew Dice Clay. Before any
of them were major players, they were working the 2 a.m. shift on
HBO.
Now, as a regular patron at several comedy clubs, I recognize
the show for what it was: All brilliance, all the time, with Rodney
as king. His sort of timing and comedic genius is not commonplace.
When his autobiography, It’s Not Easy Bein’ Me (Harper
Entertainment, 288 pages, $25.95) came out this summer, I was too
busy reading up on the junior senator from Massachusetts to pick it
up. (The question of which of these two men is the bigger joker is
open to debate, but at least Dangerfield is consistently funny.) In
the wake of Dangerfield’s death last week at age 82, I read the
book in a single sitting as my own personal homage to the man.
DANGERFIELD WAS NO overnight success. Born Jacob Cohen, to a
deadbeat dad he saw two hours a year and a mother who never showed
him an ounce of affection, Dangerfield was drawn to show business
for obvious psychological reasons. His whole childhood, Dangerfield
never got a single Christmas or birthday present, never got “a
kiss, a hug or a compliment.” He writes: “Let me hear the laughs,
the applause. I’ll take love any way I can get it.” He spent the
1940s toiling as a comic/singing waiter in the dives across the
country, under the name Jack Roy. At age 28 he felt he had taken
his comedy career as far as he could and he began a new life as an
aluminum siding salesman. His comedy dreams gnawed at his heart,
but he wanted to be the sort of stable parent to his two children
he never had. “I later learned that it wasn’t show business that
was crazy — it was me,” he writes. And so, at age 42, against the
advice of nearly everyone he knew, Dangerfield attempted a
comeback, under a new, now-famous stage name. When no one wanted to
book an “over the hill” comic, Dangerfield worked for free to prove
his worth. Slowly he began to build a fan base, but he refused to
relinquish the sales job until he made a good living at comedy. So
by day he’d work as Jacob Cohen, and at night he’d be on The Ed
Sullivan Show.
In time, success did come. He did the “Really Big Show” dozens
of times, The Tonight Show more than 70 times, starred in
a bunch of movies, opened his own successful New York City comedy
club, and toured the world many times over. In his book,
Dangerfield dishes on the craziness of it all with a series of
no-holds-barred, often ridiculously hilarious vignettes about the
stars he’s rubbed shoulders with: Elvis, Lenny Bruce, Tony Bennett,
Bill Gates, Oliver Stone, Johnny Carson, John Belushi, basically
the entire cast of Caddyshack among them. But he never
lost sight of those years living everyman life as a salesman. “Even
today, if I check into a hotel and the bellman picks up my
suitcase, I feel awkward,” Dangerfield writes. “I feel like I
should be taking the bags. I’ve been broke most of my life. For
years I was picking up the phone and acting surprised. The check
came back? Oh!’” No sugar coating here. When he writes of his bouts
with depression, Dangerfield is candid as all get-out. “Like most
people in that situation, I tried to self-medicate, which is New
Age talk for, ‘I got loaded.’ I used to drink. A lot. Too
much.”
For those saddened by Dangerfield’s death, the introduction to
It’s Not Easy Bein’ Me, written scant months before his
death, offers some humorous consolation. Pointing out that
statistics say that only one out of a hundred men in their 80s make
it to their 90s, Dangerfield cracks: “With odd like that, I’m
writing fast.” But by the end, he connects with the bigger fears we
all have to face eventually. “It’s hard for me to accept that soon
my life will be over,” he writes. “No more Super Bowls. No more
Chinese food. No more sex.” Later he continues: “I can even accept
getting old, but dying? Man, that’s a tough one to accept. Life’s a
short trip. You’ll find out. You were seventeen yesterday. You’ll
be fifty tomorrow.”
Well, with men like Rodney Dangerfield, the trip is always going
to be too short. All we can say is, Godspeed, Mr. Funnyman. Here’s
hoping you can finally get some respect out there in the
otherworldly beyond.
