MILTON BERLE XXX: MY NEVER BEFORE PUBLISHED, "ADULTS-ONLY" INTERVIEW WITH THE KING OF TELEVISION

"MR. TELEVISION – XXX! MILTON BERLE, UNCUT”
A Never Before Published Interview with a Legend


By Charles Zigman, July 4, 2009

Milton Berle, Interviewed by Charles Zigman at
The Friar’s Club, Los Angeles, July 22 and 27, 1999.

Ten years ago: July, 1999.

Fresh out of graduate school, I was trying to drum up some freelance writing gigs (some things never change), and the one that fell into place was for a book which was actually entitled Gig: Two friends of mine from Columbia University’s Graduate Film School, Sabin Streeter and John Bowe, and John’s sister, Marisa Bowe, were editing a book for Random House, called Gig: Americans Talk About Their Jobs at the Time of the Millennium. The idea behind the book is that interviewers scattered throughout the country, including me, would interview people from all walks of life – ranchers, teachers, chefs – on the subject of how they felt about their jobs or careers, and to that extent, Gig was a kind of unofficial continuation, or updating, of Studs Terkel’s landmark 1974 tome, Working. No matter what an interview subject did for a living, we, the hired interviewers, were instructed to ask them the same twenty or so questions about their jobs, and Sabin, John, and Marisa had developed the questions in an incredibly scientific way, such that the answers people would give were almost always witty and incisive, no matter whom you talked to. These were interview questions designed to get great answers.

John and Sabin gave me carte-blanche to interview anybody I wanted to – any person from any profession – and that’s exactly what I did. On one summer afternoon, I found myself at the Friar’s Club here in Los Angeles, the social club which Milton Berle founded in 1955 (it closed down in 2007, although the main, NYC-branch still survives), where older entertainers (Berle, George Burns, Steve Allen, Red Buttons) would go to have lunch, play cards and kibbitz (kibbitz = ‘break each other’s balls,' in Yiddish). I was there to interview a family friend, Buddy Arnold, who happened to be head writer for Milton Berle’s “Texaco Star Theater” (1948-1949), television’s very first live variety show, which lasted for 153 episodes, and which premiered during the nascent days of the medium. During my interview with Buddy Arnold, Milton Berle, who had just turned 91 (Berle, of course, would pass away three years later, in 2002), came up to the table where Arnold and I were sitting, and he asked me what we were doing, and I told him about the Gig project. Berle, still feisty even in his ninth decade, became incredulous: “Hey, kid! Why aren't you interviewing me?” I told him that I didn’t think he’d be interested, but he didn’t want to hear it. He proclaimed, “Meet me back here tomorrow afternoon at 2:30 – and bring your tape recorder.” And so I did.

I knew fully well that any interview I would conduct with Milton Berle would not be used in the book – Gig trafficked mostly in people who were unknown. But I just couldn’t turn down the opportunity to interview television’s first great comedy legend, the first man to ever have his own live t.v. variety show. (I let Sabin have a look at the interview. He liked it, but allowed me to keep it, to use on my own.)

I was born in 1966, so Milton Berle’s “Texaco Star Theater” program was before my time. And even though I knew Berle very well from his appearances on other people's t.v. specials in the '70s, I had never seen Berle's own show before, so when "Uncle Miltie" gave me the go-ahead to interview him, I ran out and rented some DVDs of the show, so that I would be familiar with it when I talked to him. This is how I learned that Berle and his program were just as sharp and sophisticated and hilarious as any of the best material from the earliest, "good" years of "Saturday Night Live," of which "Texaco Star Theater" was The Big Progenitor. (When I'm talking about "the good years" of "Saturday Night Live," I'm talking about that program's first five seasons, when it was truly hip, radical, and counter-cultural, and not the subsequent thirty years, during which time the show has, of course, devolved into the dumbed-down, "SNL" incarnation it is today -- yeppers, the producers of "Saturday Night live" have tried to make their unhip show hip by re-naming it with initials, but OMG, that never works.)

This is the first time my interview with Milton Berle has been published anywhere, and what you’ll see, as you’re reading it, is that while Berle was in his early nineties when he spoke with me, and while he had weathered a small stroke two weeks prior to our sit-down, he was still in top form, ready to answer anything that I asked him, or anything that he felt like talking about it. Berle, whom I was warned could be “prickly” to interviewers, was nothing but gracious with me, and he had so much fun answering my scientifically-generated Gig questions, that our interview ultimately became two sessions, spread over two days, and each of these two days totalled about two-and-a-half hours each. (Berle even gifted me with one of his trademark cigars, which he instructed me to smoke with him. A fervent non-smoker, I told him that I’d rather take it home and keep it as a souvenir, but he wouldn’t hear of it: “Nonsense! Smoke this one with me now, and I’ll give you another one to take home.” I smoked Cigar #1 with Berle – how can you refuse an offer to inhale toxic carcinogens with a legend? – and I took the second one home to keep; I wish I could say that I still have Cigar #2, but I do not: Having no real understanding of how to preserve a cigar properly, I stuck in a jar, which I labeled, "Milton Berle’s Cigar,” and over a period of about five years, it disintegrated into dust. All things, it seems, must pass.)

The great thing about this interview, besides the fact that everything coming out of Berle’s mouth was eminently fascinating, is that ninety-nine percent of the material which he divulged to me during our time together has ever been repeated anywhere else – not even in Berle’s 1974 autobiography, co-authored with Haskel Frankel, which is an outstanding read. (I think the only information that my interview and Berle’s book share in common is a story about how Berle’s beloved mother was a security guard at some New York department stores.) In other words, this interview is, I think, a nice complement to Berle’s book.

One word of warning: While Berle often inveighed, in public, about how much disdain he had for comedians who utilized profanity and 'blue material' in their shows, in his private life – with his friends, in interviews, and in the ‘roasts’ in which Berle often took part at his beloved Friar’s Club – his vocabulary, as you’ll see, might even shock Andrew “Dice” Clay. As you’ll see when you read this interview, Berle starts out trying to shock me with some triple-XXX rated anecdotes, and then, as the interview continues, when he figures out that he can’t shock me, and as he ‘gets into it’ more, he switches gears and his comments become more poignant – ultimately, this interview is a great overview of the trials and tribulations of producing early television.

I know, I know: This was too much set-up. But I wanted to place the following interview into perspective. If you’re a fan of Milton Berle, or of legendary comedians, or of great television (and even if you miss your grandparents, or any of those older people who were great storytellers, if you were lucky enough to be able to sit down with them for any length of time), I think you will really appreciate my July 1999 interview with Milton Berle. Here it is:

I turn on my tape recorder, and it begins:

CZ: Mr. Berle, first of all, I appreciate your time. Thank you so much.

MB: What’s your name?

CZ: Chuck.

MB: What? Irving?

CZ: No, it’s “Chuck.”

MB: Chug?

CZ: It’s “Chuck.”

MB: When you interview other people, do they lie to you? Like, if a guy’s gay and he lives with a priest? He wouldn’t tell you?

CZ: I don’t know. I don’t think so.

MB: Do you add up your summation if they’re telling you the truth? You could surmise if they’re lying?

CZ: I don’t know. I just go on what they tell me, I never thought about it. I don’t know why anybody would lie to me – some of the people I interview are just engineers and stuff.

MB: Who did you interview?

CZ: Well, for example, about a week ago I interviewed a big-wig in the porno industry.

MB: When you talk to a porno actress, you should ask her – because I’ve seen a lot of this, but I don’t know how to word it – you should ask her, “When you have sexual intercourse [in a movie], are you an Academy Award-winner, or do you really have an orgasm?” They’re all shouters. They say, “Oh, that’s the largest penis I ever saw.” Now, you know how a woman – how old are you now?

CZ: I’m 25.

MB: You’ve had experiences. I don’t know if… Are you married?

CZ: One of these days…

MB: You know how, when a woman wants to make a man feel good, she – can I use four-letter words?

CZ: Sure.

MB: She flatters the guy who’s balling her. She says, “That’s the greatest fuck I’ve ever had;” “What a beautiful cock, it’s so big.” Don’t tell me they [porn stars] didn’t give blowjobs their whole lives. They’re hookers! They’re classy, or maybe not classy. They pull maybe eight-to-ten tricks a day. You can’t come twenty times! But they make a customer feel good.

CZ: When I came in, you were talking about some of the showgirls you knew in vaudeville. That sounded pretty interesting.

MB: I was in love with a chick for a long time and I was balling her. I was in my late twenties. Her name was Evelyn. [coughs] It was for over a year. We broke up. The following week, I had another chick in the hotel – I was pretty wild in those days. You’re horny, you’re young, you get a hard-on pretty quick, you come pretty quick. So all the sudden, I can’t get Evelyn out of my mind. So I say [to myself], “Fuck her, I’ll find someone else that’ll be just in good in bed as Evelyn.”

So I find a chick – not a hooker – she’s a showgirl in a nightclub. And we got together. This is a few days after I broke up with Evelyn. And I’m in a hotel room and I’m fucking her. The most embarrassing, threatening – not threatening, but horrible – thing happens. She’s on top of me, I’m in and out, balling her, she’s hot, I’m fucking her. We men are pretty good actors before we pop! I accidentally called her ‘Evelyn,’ because that was the woman I had just been with for eight months. So I get a whack in the face. She hit me a shot, a punch in the mouth. I didn’t call her ‘Evelyn’ again. I was so used to [being with] the other one, I couldn’t stop it. That’s not embarrassing, it’s disgusting. And it’s a, well, it’s a put-down to the girl; I was maybe going down on her and I looked up and I said, “Oh, Evelyn this is wonderful.” And she pulled away from me and she said, “You dirty Jew son-of-a-bitch, you prick.” Then I had another experience:

I was a hotel. There was a girl. This was not a gang bang. She gave me a blow job. About twenty minutes before, she said, “Gee I’m thirsty.” I said, “Well, let me send for a drink for you.” She said, “I want some scotch.” I got her a drink. She put in on the dresser next to the bed. Do you want to hear what happened? She took a sip of the scotch, she held it in her mouth – she was getting a little shikker [Yiddish for ‘drunk’]. She put my dick in her mouth. The alcohol went down my dick!

CZ: Ouch.

MB: They took me to the fucking hospital. I pulled her hair. I hit her, not a punch – I smacked her. I said, “Get out, you fucking cunt. Put on your [clothes].” I’m yelling! Remember, there’s no 911 at this time; this is years ago. This is about forty-five, fifty years ago. I had to go to the hospital. Talk about embarrassing moments! Well, that’s no good to print. I don’t want to get dirty. She had liquor in her mouth, my penis in her mouth. Talk about embarrassing moments!

CZ: I want to ask you more about that, but I have to start asking you the serious stuff first. Mr. Berle, what would you say your job title would be, if you had to make one up for yourself?

MB: Making people laugh.

CZ: How did you know you wanted to be a comedian?

MB: At the age of five, I appeared with Charlie Chaplin in silent pictures. That was the first shot. He made me laugh, he made the world laugh – I wanted to be like him.

CZ: Who did you play in the Charlie Chaplin movies?

MB: I played an urchin, a child. Five years old, 1913. The name of the picture was Tillie’s Punctured Romance. And the leading lady for Chaplin was Marie Dressler. And I was an urchin who sold newspapers. I won a “Charlie Chaplin contest” in 1913, because he was the rage. And the prize was a silver loving cup, worth about sixty cents.

CZ: How long do you think you’ll be able to keep performing?

MB: For as long as I can stand on two feet.

CZ: What was your training? Was it observing other vaudeville comedians?

MB: My training started in 1913, watching the greats, the great comedians of that period and that era. I think it was self-training, that’s all I can say. In 1918 – World War One – Irving Berlin was the hero in the music world. And Irving Berlin was the first one to set up a caravan of stars of that era. They traveled around all over the United States to all the camps – Camp Upton, Camp Dix – to all the bases around. And he was the first one to put a caravan together with stars of that era who sang, danced, told jokes. That’s when he wrote, “Oh, How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning.” So I met him for the first time – this is a long, three-part story – when he had this music company called Wattison, Berlin, and Snyder. And I was singing songs at that age in 1916, ’17, and ’18 and I met Irving Berlin personally. And he liked me and that’s the time – I’m repeating now – when he wrote, “Oh, How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning.” So when he played the camps, he took the caravan around. Now, he had an idea: I didn’t know what he wanted to do, but he asked my mother if I could go and perform with him. And my right name [real last name], at the time, was not Berle, but Berlinger. The name Berlinger was, of course, derivative from Berlin, since my father was [of] German ancestry. My mother and father were both born in New York, though.

Anyway, Irving Berlin took me around and he said to my mother, “I want the kid with me.” So in his uniform of khakis during World War I – 1917 and ’18 – he sang, “Oh, How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning.” And I came out and he pointed to the wings and said, “Come here, young man!” And I was a kid, of course. And instead of wearing a khaki uniform like a soldier, I wore my Boy Scout Uniform, because I belonged to the BSA – Boy Scouts of America. And he sang the first chorus of “Oh, How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning.” And he pointed to me and I sang the second chorus.

CZ: Describe a typical day for Milton Berle.

MB: If you’re talking vaudeville, it varied. In one place, you’d do two shows a day, another place three shows a day, another place four shows. Then I was in Atlantic City where I did twelve shows a day at the Steel Pier. When you write it, spell it like this: “S-T-E-A-L” pier. [This is a reference to the fact that Mr. Berle and other vaudeville comedians would sometimes good-naturedly ‘steal’ jokes from each other to use in their own shows.] My mother traveled with me all the time and the typical day was just a lot of work. Every day was work. Every day, I was changing the jokes and the material to try to find myself. Right? I was a youngster, I was a baby. Then, I appeared, in 1920, in a show called, “Floradora.” And if you recall – you won’t recall, but maybe your readers will – the song from “Floradora” was [sings]: “Tell me pretty maiden are there any more at home like you?/ There are a few, kind sir.” Well, they had two versions [of the song] in the show I was in. They had the 1920 version – no, they had the 1910 version and then they had the 1920 version. Then, they had the Future Sextet version and I was in the Future Sextet. And that was my first big so-called Broadway show – ‘off-Broadway,’ by the way, because it was on Central Park West. And I was a chorus boy – a child chorus boy.

CZ: What was a typical day for you specifically in live television?

MB: All the shows we did were live. There was no tape. There was no ‘taking it over.’ In those days, they saw what they got and they got what they saw. And if you made a mistake, that was it, baby! They saw it.

CZ: If one of the performers who was in a show with you made a mistake – in live t.v. – you were able to cover it up, right?

MB: That experience comes from vaudeville, doing live shows to an audience. And ad-libbing and improv-ing and all that. I could say whatever I want. And no four-letter words in those days, never, never. We had signs – which might be interesting – when you played vaudeville in Scranton, Pittsburgh or Crapville, Missouri, I don’t know – there was always a sign backstage. Now get the difference between those days and these days: The sign said, “Anybody Saying ‘Hell’ or ‘Damn’ Will Immediately be Cancelled.” That was terrible. Couldn’t even say the word ‘toilet.’ Couldn’t say ‘pregnant.’ Well, what’s going on today is different: They use every four-letter word you can think of, and they don’t need to.

Anyway, a typical day in a [television] studio: We never had a big studio. We were from Rockefeller Plaza – sixth floor, [stage] 6B. They turned the little radio station into – I helped design the [t.v.] studio. So between that and [being a] jack-of-all trades – or, should I say, a ‘jerk-of-all-trades’ (if they had put a broom up my behind, I would have swept the stage, too) – I was doing everything. Because, actually, the first thing that we started on television was a vaudeville show, which was my experience. So we put that in front of the cameras with different variety acts.

CZ: So when you did “Texaco Star Theater,” which was television’s very first variety show, you were just taking what you had done in vaudeville for years and adapting it to the new medium.

MB: Of course. We had a big job every week [in terms of writing]. What are we coming up with? We had to come up with something new and it was live. And if you made a mistake, [it was] all over. There were so many mishaps during the 153 shows – 153 hours – I did for Texaco. But being that it was a comedy show, it worked better when they [the performers] made bloopers and they couldn’t remember their lines. Or when I couldn’t remember the lines. We told the audience that, and they were in on it.

CZ: So the audience went along with whatever happened.

MB: Florence Desmond, who was British, was the show’s announcer. We’re doing a scene, I’m playing Noel Coward. She accidentally referred to the show not as “Texaco Star Theater,” but as the “Lux Theater” in her announcement. [Lux soap sponsored another show, not Mr. Berle’s show!] I had to dress while Florence was doing the announcement. Instead of saying, “The Texaco Star Theater Presents the Texaco Players,” she said, “Lux Theater Presents.” Where that came from, I don’t know! So [from] backstage I said, “Are you kidding?” The audience heard it! “What do you mean, ‘Lux?’” I said, “It’s Texaco, you dummy!” Then we did a scene together, Florence and I. And the whole scene went to pieces, ‘cause I was playing the piano like Noel Coward. [Mr. Berle now starts singing, a la Noel Coward]: “Mad Dogs and Englishmen go out in the English Rain.” Now, what she made a mistake on, I worked on [turned into a joke] for the next scene – I made it part of the scene. I said lines to her with my mouth closed like, “Yes my darling, you’ll never work with me again.” Then the thing is, I made up puns playing the piano, bouncing off her, off the mistakes she made. I said, “My darling, I’d sing a song for you, but ‘Lux’ is against us.” And every time I said, “Ah, my darling, look into my eyes, what do you see,” she said, “You were up late last night?” And I said, “No more work for you in America. You’re all washed up.” [another reference to Desmond’s Lux faux-pas.]. I punned it and punned it.

It became more hysterical when the audience knew that it was ad-lib and improv. And mistakes, I made into very big laughs. And that’s why the show was good, because it was loose and I never knew what was coming next. We didn’t use cue cards. There was nobody up there telling me what to read. I had to remember. I looked at a little piece of paper: What’s next? This joke, this line, this joke, this line – and I had to remember. No cue cards. And the actors had to remember their lines. Well, some of them forgot them: Charles Coburn forgot his own name! And Edward G. Robinson, he said, “I want to tell you something, are you listening to me?” I said, “You can’t remember the lines, huh? You’re supposed to be tough. You’re not tough. You should be wearing a dress.” That was a funny line, it still is. It was all improv.

And the time with the Pallenberg Bears [a performing bear act]: While I was on, in front of the curtain, doing a monologue, they were setting up the bears for the next sequence. And I heard farts!

CZ: Did the audience hear that?

MB: Sure, the mike was open. On top of that, I said, “Here are the Pallenberg Bears – they’re dying to get on!” Little did I know that the trainer forgot to take them out for their doody before the show. And little did I know that the trainer, who used the whip on the bears – the bears stood on top of each other and did all those poses – was kind of loaded with booze. When we opened up the curtain, there was a mass of manure on the stage. The bears crapped all over the stage!

The next act after the bears was Jack Cole and the Kraft Sisters, in bare feet, doing Indian dances. That was the next act! And the stage was loaded with bear crap! Now, as I went offstage, and I said, “Here they are,” and Jack and the girls did their act, I had to step over each pile. Now the audience is screaming with laughter. They could see the shit, it’s all over the place. I took a long broom and I swept the shit off the stage, as much as I could. Unfortunately, Jack Cole and the Kraft Sisters worked in bare feet and bells, Indian-style. They were sliding all over the stage! Their costumes were turning brown! And they did their finish, where Jack ran in all the way from the back and slid on his knees right to the camera – right in the crap!

CZ: That’s hysterical. Did the people at home see it, too?

MB: Oh, what are you talking about? It was a live show. We capitalized on a mishap. Aww, but the payoff was wonderful. You don’t know! I never heard such language in my life. Cole was a great performer. In fact, he did the choreography – I got him the job for “A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum.” But he was so mad at me. He said, “How could you let this happen?” I said, “It’s not my fault, Jack.” But his outfit, his hands, and it was such a – the odor was the worst! My sister [Mr. Berle’s sister, Rosalind, was costumer on the show] threw him right in the shower and all the girls had to take showers, too. He used – not four-letter words – but he said, “Don’t ever, ever, ever ask me to appear on this show again. I’ve never been so embarrassed in my life.” I said, “Jack, it’s not my fault, not my fault.” He said, “Never again will I appear on your show.” Four weeks later, I get a call from Jack Cole. He said, “We’re available [to be on your show again],” because there was so much talk about his appearance following the bears. He knew it was so popular that he wanted to come back.

CZ: I didn’t know that your sister worked on the show. Did she work on other t.v. shows as well?
MB: She costumed the show. So she worked backstage, making me breakaways and quick changes. She only worked on my show.

I could be so loose with the show because it was a variety show. They don’t have variety shows on today. This is before Ed Sullivan and all that shit. Well, my sister Rosalind made quick-changes. I was standing there balls-naked – bollocks-naked – and my sister was there and everything. She knew she had to make me Velcro breakaway suits, because I didn’t have too much time to change.

You’re talking about the trials and tribulations: In one scene, Red Buttons was in it with me. I was supposed to grab Red’s suit that he was wearing and pull it from the neck down, so that he would only have on [long] red underwear. So by mistake – live, on the air – I grabbed too much of the collar, including the underwear. I tore everything off Red Buttons and he was standing there completely nude in front of the camera, before the whole audience, with his dicky out! So I jumped in front of him and I said, “Here’s the next ‘little’ act – big laugh, right away. But the [studio] audience saw him nude!

CZ: Did that make news the next day? It must have been controversial to have a guy nude on t.v. like that.

MB: Oh, sure.

CZ: I know that at least one of your brothers was in show business, as well.

MB: My brother, Phil, produced a Three Stooges pilot ["Jerks of All Trades," an unaired pilot the Stooges made for ABC in 1949, never shown at the time, but now available on DVD]. And they wanted to buy it from him just a couple of years ago. They gave him twenty-five thousand for it and they wanted to give him more, because it’s a relic. Phil never fuckin’ worked in his life. He directed it and produced it. I put him with ABC for that show. We got the studio because I hired it for him. It [the show] was a test. He wanted to be – may he rest in peace – me.

CZ: Back to your own, show, though: You supervised every aspect of it.

MB: I did everything. Like I said, if they put a broom up my tushy, I would have swept the floor, too. I wrote the show with Buddy Arnold and Hal Collins. They were the only writers. We couldn’t afford writers. Just Buddy, myself, and Hal. And Buddy wrote the Texaco Song, which you know [sings]: “We are the men of Texaco…” And he did a lot of writing, boy.

And I also was involved in the construction of the set – where this should go, where that should go. We conferred on that. Costumes were a big part of the show. We had a visual show. You see, what they’re showing today, in this era, uh, with Tootsie and all those movies in dress – in drag – I started it. But I started it on television. So there’s nothing I didn’t touch. It was like having a whip. I was all right, but I wasn’t too nice. Wanna be honest? It was because I was fighting the clock. Sometimes – most of the time – we didn’t even finish the run-through and dress rehearsal. The people were coming in to the see the show. We weren’t ready yet. But we had to go on at 8:00. Sometimes, we didn’t even have time for a dress rehearsal.

CZ: Not only were you the first person to have a variety show on national t.v., but I’ve also heard that you were the first person to allow black entertainers on a network show.

MB: There was an agency called The Kudner Agency – I had to get their permission, their OK on who I booked. I had to give ‘em the list of who we were going to have as guests on the show that week – that was my agreement – until it changed after the story I’m about to tell you: So I booked four black – what do you call ‘em now, that new ‘black saying?’ – oh, yeah, ‘African-American’ – tap-dancers, the Step Brothers. They were wonderful. I had worked with them onstage before I ever did the [t.v.] show.

And they were booked. Then, suddenly, I got a call from the Kudner Agency. And they said I couldn’t use the Step Brothers. So I inquired why. They said, “We don’t have to tell you.” I said, “Well, it’s my show. I would like to know why.” They wouldn’t tell me. But in my mind, I knew what the reason was. Now this is late ’48. And I worked with them in vaudeville and I danced with them – great hoofing/tap dancing acrobats. Four wizards. And the Kudner Agency declined me, they said “they are out.”

“You’re cutting out the Step Brothers?” I said. “Why? They’re really wonderful.” I also said, “Look, I’m producing the show, I’m directing the show, I’m the star of the show, I know what’s good. And these performers, the Step Brothers, are tried and true, they’ve done it before. They’ve appeared with me in vaudeville. They’re just wonderful.” They said, “No, no.” Well, I had to put two and two together. I thought, I can play the same game! See, it was all about color. It was ‘the color barrier.’

What I did, on the day of the show, when the Agency said they couldn’t appear – well, let’s just say, I knew what to do! I said to the Step Brothers, “Put on your suits, put on a little pancake make-up, and I want you to be dressed in time for the show. And I want you in the wings. Because I’m going to do the opening monologue and then I’m going to introduce you!” So I said this to them. I didn’t tell the Agency I was going to put them on the show anyway!

It was the agency representing Texaco, and not Texaco itself, that didn’t want the Brothers on the show. So I said to the Brothers, “Put on your make-up and I want you down there at ten minutes-of-eight in the wings, with your make-up on, ready to go on.

Now: We’re through rehearsing, they go their dressing rooms, I put on my suit and my make-up. But I left the room and nobody could find me! Because I left the building, the NBC building. I left word with the man from the Kudner Agency who was backstage, and I also left word with the stage manager. I gave the Agency an ultimatum. I said to them, “If the Step Brothers don’t go on, I will not appear tonight.” Now it’s only twelve minutes before I go on. They’re looking for me, they can’t find me. I was hiding! The point is, I gave ‘em an ultimatum. I said, “If the Step Brothers don’t go on, I will not appear.” I was the star of the show.

They finally found me at about five minutes before eight-o-clock. I came in. They said, “What happened?” The guy from the Agency said, “It’s okay, the Step Brothers can go on.” So I broke the color barrier. The Brothers only did about six minutes. And they were great in starting the show off, after I did my monologue.

CZ: So that kind of cleared the road for you to feature other African-American performers on your show after that.

MB: Oh, yeah, we had Lena Horne after that, and we had a lot of black stars. But the Step Brothers started it all off. The Agency wouldn’t let this poor opening act on! Not “poor” – I mean, this “great” opening act, on. And I fought them on it.

CZ: Were the Step Brothers only on your show once, or did you have them on again?

MB: Oh, I had ‘em again. I had ‘em maybe four or five times after that. With different styles, different dances. I worked with them, I danced with them. They became popular with the public.

CZ: So it was an eight-day-a-week job. If you ever had any significant time not working, what would you do?

MB: I’d be at the racetrack. Or I’d be shooting billiards. Sports. Baseball games. I was very close to the baseball stars. Babe Ruth.

CZ: You had a lot of famous sports figures on your show.

MB: You know that show they have now [“The 100 Greatest Athletes of the Century,” a t.v. special which aired in 1999, at the time I was interviewing Mr. Berle]? I had all the fighters. I had Dempsey. All the big name fighters in those days. Boxers.

CZ: I also know that you had a lot of people who were on your show who never appeared on any other t.v. shows, right? They recognized it as a quality show.

MB: I’ll tell you one person who was never on television, who appeared on the “Texaco Star Theater:” Cole Porter. Never appeared on any other show, only mine. Let me just say something. He was one of the world’s greatest. I booked him.

I also had Jim Thorpe [the football player] on the show – the greatest. His first appearance on television was with yours truly on “The RCA-Whirlpool Series,” in the fifties, [which we taped] on the back of an aircraft carrier. That was another series I did, thirteen specials.

CZ: Elvis was on that special, the aircraft carrier one.

MB: Elvis gave me something and I lost it. [He gave Mr. Berle a tie, as a gift.] My show was Elvis’s first appearance. After that, he went on “Sullivan” and created the big furor about his hips.

CZ: Was it insane when Elvis was on your show? Were there fans and girls around?

MB: No. This is before he was famous. He was just about starting out then. He just had his accompaniment behind him and he was so handsome, so good-looking, so cute. And I did a sketch with him: “I want you to meet my brother, Pelvis,” he said. I was dressed like him, with a guitar, and we were supposed to be brothers. I was awful, but he was singing. But he was doing stand-up with me, which I have on videotape here. That was a taped show at that time, it was the beginning of tape – tape was ’54, this was ’55. This was what they called “live on tape.” It was unedited. There was no ‘stop and go,’ but it was on tape. Elvis was adorable. He had all the girls crazy about him. Colonel Parker [was] his manager – too much! So, uh, what was the next question?

CZ: Where was the aircraft carrier that you did that broadcast from?

MB: It was based in San Diego. We did a show on the deck of the aircraft carrier. I’ll tell you who we had on the show: Harry James’ Band; Joe Williams; Buddy Rich on the drums; a big-band sound. Then Elvis came in with one piece of paper, with his music written on it, on one sheet. Not only that, but Harry James looked at Elvis and he said, “Can I see your orchestration?” Elvis says, “This is it.” One sheet. I looked at Buddy Rich. And Buddy Rich was kind of brash – world’s greatest drummer, but he was listening to Elvis strumming and singing. After the show I said to Buddy Rich, “Watch out for this kid. He’s going to be one of the biggest stars we ever had. His style and his look.”

CZ: Speaking of Buddy Rich, somebody just gave me a CD where Buddy Rich is cussing out his whole band. He didn’t know he was being taped. It’s pretty funny.

MB: He was the greatest.

CZ: The next question they want me to ask you – since I’m asking questions about ‘the workplace’ – is: “Describe your relationship with your boss.” But in television, especially, you were the boss.

MB: I got along very well with me!

CZ: I’m supposed to ask you – “Do you think your boss knows what he’s doing?”

MB: I got along with Milton very well! [laughs] I get along with “Mr. Television” very well. I got along with “Mr. Berle” very well. You can use [write] any one of those!

CZ: How did you get along with your crews in television?

MB: I thought they all did a very excellent job. The writers, the assistant producers, the director, the stagehands – everybody encompassing the whole group. And in those days, we had the beginning of the unions – AFTRA, all those – but the salaries were not as big as the future that came after them – I mean, the latter part. But the employees worked hard and they created a lot of things. And they were very helpful and I’m very thankful to them. They were all very good. Because they knew we had a new medium. And they wanted to make good in the new medium. And I think all of us learned something from each other. All I can say is praise. I got along very well with them.

CZ: Are there behind-the-scenes people – crewmembers from “Texaco Star Theater” who are still around? Anybody that you keep in touch with?

MB: Yup. Name is MacNulty. His sister is nearly my age, ‘cause I went to school with her, and she is Penny Singleton [Penny Singleton played Blondie in the 1940’s series of Columbia Pictures’ feature films based on Chic Young’s comic strip]. I went to school with her. Her right name [real last name] is MacNulty, so her brother’s name is Barney MacNulty. And I still see him, and I’m still pals with him. He’s still living, he’s still fine. And he’s still in the business. He’s in the – I put him in the cue card business. But I didn’t use the cue cards.

CZ: So you never used cue cards at all?

MB: Never. Until, I don’t know, the 1970s or 1980s, I never used cue cards at all. Of course, I made a lot of motion pictures, too. And those are longer parts, and you’ve got to learn them. You can’t wing that. You know, like, “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World” [1963] and “The Oscar [1965].”

CZ: I just watched you in The Loved One [the bizarro-great 1965 MGM feature, based upon an Evelyn Waugh novel about the similarities between L.A.’s movie industry and funeral industry]. You’re hilarious in that.

MB: It’s funny about The Loved One. That was based on the Evelyn Waugh [novel]. I think that picture, if I may comment on it, was ahead of its time.

CZ: I know. Terry Southern, who co-wrote Dr. Strangelove, co-wrote the script for that. It’s in that same weird/dark vein as Southern's Strangelove.

MB: Brilliant. Tony Richardson directed it. That movie was ahead of its time. Remember the scene I did with the dog? Hilarious. But way ahead of its time.

CZ: Have you ever had any dreams about work?

MB: Sure I did. I didn’t always dream about show business. I dreamed about my youth, my family, my mother, my late father, my late brother. My dreams turned into nightmares. Around the corner, dangerous things. Getting into fights when I was younger. And I used to be a boxer. But I’m talkin’ street fights – you know, when someone curses you and uses four-letter words, uses anti-Semitic remarks. And then I’d whack ‘em right away. I wasn’t an angel at all. And I had to learn how to fight, ‘cause – I mean, learn how to protect myself. And my mother, may she rest in peace, was a cop. Did you know that?

CZ: No.

MB: And Ruth Berle – my late wife – was a Captain in the Army in World War II and she taught the girls how to fight dirty. She went overseas and she was a judo champ. So I stayed away from her when she swung or chopped me, which – she never did that, but I’ve seen her do it to women. And, uh, she was very bright. She was a newspaper woman, a press agent, and she was loved by everyone. What was the question again?

CZ: I asked you if you’ve ever had any dreams about work.

MB: What is the most obvious work that I would dream of? Show business!

CZ: Overall, you loved your job in television.

MB: Sure I did. Let me tell you something. I don’t know if this fits or where you want to put it: I liked my job and anything that I did where I made people happy and made people laugh. Right? And I performed, I sang, I danced, whatever you wanted. And the word that I use all the time – and I tell this to the new youth that are coming up – the word is, “dedication.” You have to be dedicated to the work that you want to make a career out of.

CZ: And those are the most successful people, the ones who are dedicated to their jobs.

MB: If you’re not dedicated to your job, then maybe you’d better get out of it!

CZ: If there were any days that you didn’t like your job, what would you do to make it bearable?

MB: How do I word this… I like the opposite sex. To make it bearable, I would have a very sexy day, a day off, so I could forget that maybe the [Kudner] Agency screwed me. But I would relax. I never played cards. I gambled a lot, I was a big gambler. Lost a lot of money. Played the horses. Vegas. I would gamble on a cockroach who’d win. Anything, as long as there was action. See, [there’s] another kind of action when I was not working! And the other action would be the opposite sex – or just say, “sex.” Or: I would – I’m a sports fiend. I would go to a ball game, a football game, whatever was in season. Soccer, we didn’t know. Then, I was a very good pocket billiard player and I had the best teachers from – well, even though you don’t know their names, you put ‘em in there [in this piece]: Ralph Greenleaf, Willie Hobby. You’ll call me back another day and say, “Mr. Berle, how do you spell Willie Hobby?” All the great billiard, three-cushion players, I learned from them. And you’re talking about relaxing when I’m not working.

CZ: What do you think were the main perks about your job?

MB: When you say perks, what do you mean?

CZ: What are some good things about being known, or about being a celebrity?

MB: Well, there’s good and bad. Some things are good and some are bad.

CZ: What was good?

MB: Well, the popularity. The feeling of being seen. Then it came in later years with the paparazzi – it’s pretty bad. They know you so well, or they think they do, that they, like, call you their brother. Or they take advantage, they go overboard.

MB: Everybody thinks they know you.

MB: Well, not only that. It’s very good to be flattered. But then it gets, with all the work that’s around it, of appearing and doing a club date or a benefit or going to somebody’s house and go out to dinner… the popularity’s fine. But now that we have the overflow of paparazzi, it’s murder. You can’t walk along the street. So there’s good and there’s bad. When I say “bad,” I don’t mean bad bad. I mean, it’s too much to think of, so you can’t relax.

CZ: I went to a screening of this new movie a few weeks ago, and the star is a young actress, Liv Tyler. At the party afterwards, the real Liv Tyler was there, but I also noticed a look-alike – an exact Liv Tyler double. I thought that was probably done by her management, to somehow deflect the attention away from the real Liv, so she could relax without being followed by the media.

MB: Oh, sure, sure. They’ve done that. Not with me. Who the fuck wants to look like me? Write it in caps, it’s funnier: WHO WANTS TO LOOK LIKE ME?

CZ: I’m supposed to ask you: “What were some of the hazards of your job?”

MB: Danger of my job?

CZ: Yeah. It could be physical danger, or whatever.

MB: In the earlier days of nightclubs, in Chicago and in New York, the owners of nightclubs were usually “The Boys.” You know what I mean by “The Boys?” But they were always nice to me in the key cities. In New York, Chicago, San Francisco, L.A. But when I got into Pittsburgh, places like that, where they new me, there were supposedly the so-called “tough guys,” which I didn’t like. But I faced them and I talked with them in their talk – in their lingo; with as many words as they used, I used the same kind of words. I was never frightened of them, because, Thank God – not right now, because I’ve [just] had a stroke – in my younger days, from my twenties on, I defied anybody. They could weigh 280 and if I hit them right, or if I “dirty-fighted them” right…

CZ: So you and “the boys” had a mutual respect for each other.

MB: I’ll tell you what happened. They liked me so much, because they felt that I was one of them, not just an actor who put on make-up and lipstick. They all were rooting for me. And they used to come over – even the prize fighters, Rocky Marciano and all the fighters who could handle themselves. And especially the boys – the gangs; Chicago; Capone – they liked me. And they used to come up to me and say, quote, “How are ya, baby, kiss me!” And I said, “I hope that’s not the kiss of death” – that’s all I said. Don’t kiss me again!” Joke! But it really happened.

And I said – inevitably, each one said to me, “How are you today, Milton?” “Fine,” I’d say. And they used to say, “Anybody bodderin’ ya? Not ‘bothering,’ but ‘bodderin.’” And I said no. Because if there was somebody who put a touch on me or touched me, and it got out of hand, all I had to do was to say to them the next day, “Yeah, somebody did the other night. I was having dinner and some guy came over to me, said something very bad in front of my wife and I got into an argument and so and so. And the guy started to threaten me.” “Oh, yeah, what did he look like? Where did this happen? How old do you think the guy was?” And I gave ‘em a description, told ‘em where I thought they could find ‘im, and they took care of ‘im. I don’t know what they did, but they took care of him.

CZ: You don’t have to say the names – but you knew some of the famous “boys,” right? You mentioned Al Capone.

MB: Capone. Yeah, sure. I was a big gambler. I played with Arnold Rothstein. Did you ever hear of him? Well, I was at a hotel in New York, playing [with him] for table stakes. Do you know what table stakes are?

CZ: No.

MB: Seven card stud. A very rich game. And they made as much as they wanted – a hundred, two hundred, three hundred, four hundred, five hundred. A thousand. But when it comes to the last down where you only have three guys left that’ll stay in the pot, it becomes table stakes. And, uh, I used to play in those games. This is – I was young, too. It must be fifty years ago, fifty-five years ago. I was a big gambler, I lost a lot of money, and I’m not proud of it. I gave away a lot of money to charities.

CZ: I know you’ve done more charity performances than any other performer.

MB: In the “Guinness Book of World Records,” I’m told, under my name – in the index – it says, “Milton Berle has done” – which is a record – “the most benefits that any actor, any comedian, ever did.” Appearances for a wedding, a briss, a Catholic benefit. The [religious] denomination meant nothing.

CZ: I sometimes read about other performers who do benefits and they take money for it.

MB: I never took any money for benefits.

CZ: What’s the strangest thing that ever happened to you in your entire career?

MB: This is funny. I made a date, about fifty-five, sixty years ago, with a girl – an actress. Her [act] was [called] 'One-of-Those-Exotic-Names-and-Her-Snakes.’ A snake-charmer. She had trained snakes all around her. We go to her room. This is true. And before you know it, we’re embracing – I want to clean this story up for you. All of the sudden, I said, “Where’s your snakes?” “Oh, they’re in the other room, they’re locked up,” she says. The snake comes right up there on the bed! Isn’t that the strangest? I’m right in the middle of a kiss, and I feel a snake run across my chest, and I got my hat and coat and ran out. It’s funny and it’s true.

CZ: You’ll love this question: I’m supposed to ask this question of everybody I am interview for this book: “What do you think this is job is leading towards or preparing you for?”

MB: Well, after being in this business of show business and making people laugh for eighty-six years, since I was five years old, I’ve tried to make people happy by making them laugh, ‘cause laughter is a great release. I’d like the job to lead me to… [he pauses to reflect] I’ve made them laugh, my audiences for years. Now for the rest of my life that I can breathe, I’d like people to make me happy, too, and I’d like to make me laugh.

CZ: What’s the best thing about being a comedian?

MB: There’s quite a few things. Putting make-up on. Appearing in front of audiences. Making people laugh. That’s my favorite thing. One of the ingratiating things about it, is meeting old friends that I can sit and recollect with, and talk about what happened in the past.

CZ: What’s your least favorite thing?

MB: At ninety-one, it’s getting out of the bed and working – not like I did before. In this era of my ninety-first year and my eighty-sixth year in show business, the least thing I like at this present time is getting out of bed. That’s the truth about getting out of bed. Because I paid my dues. Let me rest now!

Also, I don’t like being invited to dinner by somebody – they don’t have to be in show business – but somebody that doesn’t understand my craft and I don’t understand their craft. What do we have to talk about? We can talk about our relationship with our wives? I’m saying, I like to have somebody who’s on the same wavelength as me, somebody who can talk my lingo and understand me and I can understand them with their lingo. I’m not saying anything about a person being hip. But what’s the most boring thing, is to be invited to a dinner, and to sit at a table at a big hotel with a lot of people who know me, even though I do not know them, and to talk about subject matters that do not interest the both of us. If they want to talk about sports, then I’m going to make an appointment to have dinner with someone who knows about baseball, soccer, football – whatever it is.

CZ: So it’s easier for you to talk to someone who’s in your same field, so you can understand what they’re going through.

MB: Or so they can understand what I went through. Now [Milton points to a prominent L.A. hospital owner who comes and sits at the table with us], he’s a hospital man. He’s very interesting – but I don’t want to know who has the clap or who’s sick! In other words, getting out of your element is not too good. It’s a fuckin’ boring evening. [He indicates me]: You’re a newspaper man, you know all the jokes. You’re twenty or thirty, but you’re very hip. I gotta be in the company of people that I’m comfortable with, people who understand me even though I’m not performing or telling a joke. I don’t have to tell a joke every time. Let’s just have a good conversation! I just lost my good friend, a sports writer for the L.A. Times. Now, in his company, I could talk sports to him. He was so fuckin’ bright. I could talk sports with him, I could talk songs with him. He goes back to 1916 or 1917, so he’d mention a song. He’d say, “Did you write…” or [he’d say], “You know what song I like – ‘So-and-So!’” And he sang it. And he loved life. He was a brilliant fuckin’ writer.

CZ: I know you want to go have dinner, Mr. Berle, so I’ll try to finish the questions as quickly as I can.

MB: Get it over with, you schmuck!

CZ: What was the worst moment in your career?

MB: You don’t want to put any sadness or death in here [in this piece], do you?
The most sad moment I ever had was when I lost my mother. Okay. When that happens, that’s the human thing. But it’s really true. Because she was my right arm, my advisor, my biggest plugger. And she loved me so much. And I adored her. She was a great woman. And when she passed on, that was my saddest moment.

CZ: Your mother guided you through your career.

MB: She used to laugh in the audience at the questions. Not at the fuckin’ jokes, at the questions – “Hahahahahaha.” And then I said, “Which joke are you workin’ on, lady?” You know, that kind of shit. And then I’d hear another laugh a little later from the other side of the theater. I said, “Did that lady move?” They never knew it was my mother!

CZ: If you could pick the greatest moment in your career, what would it be?

MB: There are two great moments that I can think of: When I was on the cover of Time and Newsweek the same week, at the beginning of my television career, is one.
But the greatest moment I ever had – or the most thrilling moment I ever had – was just last year [1998]. New Orleans, at the Mardi Gras. I was the King of Mardi Gras and my wife, Lorna, was there. And it was a big thrill!

CZ: What kind of a personality type is best to do what you do?

MB: I think that that’s a very rough question!

CZ: What quality do you have that’s made you successful?

MB: I think it’s very hammy if I tell you, and it’ll look hammy written, even though it’s very essential. Let me put in very personal terms: As low as your comedy can get, like Chaplin, right? Or pies in the face, or slipping on the piano… [The telephone on the table rings, and Mr. Berle kibbitzes with the person on the other end for a few moments.]

What did you ask me? What attributes [have made me successful]? Quite a few. My energy. My performance. It’s hammy to say this, but no matter how funny somebody is, or no matter how hard somebody tries to be or is funny, a certain thing has to go with it, and I saw to it – and my mother was the one to advise me on it – that there has to be a likeability about the person, and a rooting interest from the audience or from somebody who’s watching you. And, most of all, you have to have a certain amount of charm, even though you’re the lowest comedian in the world. And you have to have what you call (now, you’re talking about me; but I’m talking about ‘the third-person’) you have to have, from an audience – I’m talking show business now – if the audience is not rooting for you in the predicament you’re in, in a comedic way or a dramatic way, then you can’t beat them. You have to have a certain charm. And one thing that I have, that I’m proud to say I have, is that, well… people might say about me that “even though he was a stand-up comedian and also a great actor and he played a character, he had what they call charm” -- as well as all the elements I just told you. “And he also had one thing more that everybody should have if they want to be entertainers: And that is humility.” Which is far in distance from my character of being brash and flippant and ad-lib and a wise guy and doing the put-downs. Right? But, the most important thing is: I don’t care how low the comedian is. Even with the lowest thing he does visually, he’s got to have charm. I don’t care if the charm is this small. A certain amount of charm where the audience can look at a man is important – I’m giving you a whole thing here now – and it’s called “rooting interest.” If you haven’t got that – if you haven’t got a beginning, middle, and end to your act, then you’re really in trouble.

I told you… Did I tell you what Harold Lloyd said to me? I asked him, when he was doing Safety Last and all those pictures – remember him? Wonderful guy. Great comedian. I said, “Harold, where would you like to eat? I’ll meet you for lunch.” He said, “Oh, good, I like salami, I like pastrami and all that shit.” So we go to lunch and I said, “Harold, look, I’m just new in the business.” He said, “What do you want to know, Milton?” I said, “What are the elements you need to make a good comedy act, or to make a good play or a good motion picture or a good short? What are the most important elements?” “Well,” he said, “there are three: You need an opening, a middle, and an end.” He said, “I work in three stages.” And he told me what those stages were, and I ate it up and I remembered it – it was his formula. He said, “It isn’t a formula. It just came from my mind and maybe, now, it is now publicized as a formula.” He says, “Number One, get your hero up a tree. Number Two, throw Rocks at Him. Number Three, try to get him out.” Now you got an audience rooting, either way. That goes for every good motion picture, every good drama. Death of a Salesman: The guy’s in trouble. Then he gets to a point where they’re throwin’ rocks at him and now they try to ‘get him out of the tree’ and, all of the sudden, he dies and all that stuff. It has a triple ending, quadruple ending. Harold Lloyd told me that. What was the question you asked me?

CZ: Oh… I asked, What was the quality you have that you think has made you the most successful?

MB: Well, I tell ya. As brash as I was, with the flippancy, and with being a smart-ass, and with my put-downs, I started that seventy years ago. Which is all right. Fine. But that flippancy – they never had too much [before me]. Now, a lot of people didn’t like it at first, they had to get used to it, the way I worked. But that was my style, right?

And that’s the name of the game: Style. It’s like I said to Rich Little one night at a party here [at the Friar’s Club]: He was wonderful. He did all of his impressions, and he killed ‘em, and they stood up and cheered. And right in front of the audience, I had the chutzpah and nerve to say this – but I meant it, honestly, for his own good, I meant it for his future – I said, “Gee, Rich, you were wonderful tonight. Wasn’t he, ladies and gentlemen?” They said, “Yeah!”

I says to Rich Little, “There’s only one unfortunate thing I’ve got to tell you. Your impressions of these different stars and people are fantastic! There’s only one problem you have: When you find out who you are, you’re going to be terribly disappointed. In other words, he was doing every imitation – [his] Jimmy Stewart [impression], brilliant – but I took him off to the side, and I said, “Hey, you do your impressions very well. But you want to do something bigger than your impressions, don’t you? You want to be in motion pictures, you want to be in a Broadway Show? Drop them [the impressions]! Try to find your own style.” In other words, I said to him, “Ask yourself: ‘Who am I,’ ‘What am I doing here,’ and ‘Why?’ ‘Who are you?’”

Jack Benny knew who he was. Even though he was acting and he said [at this point, Berle goes into a letter-perfect, rambling Jack Benny imitation, replete with hand on his chin:] “Well, you see, you know, I… I don’t know how to tell you this, I really shouldn’t, you see, you know” – he always said talked like that! I’m not doing a Benny impression for an audition with you, but I’m giving you an example [because] you’re talking about me.

CZ: So you were the first comedian to be flippant? The first ever?

MB: No, I think… When I came around, in my earlier days, in my teens, I must have seen other people that were flippant. We had a guy [early vaudeville comedian] named Jack Osterman who was flippant, wise, ad-lib. Very funny. A few guys like him were around in the early teens and the twenties. And I watched them. I kept my eyes and ears open and I wanted to be like them, or to be part of them, and I put them on a pedestal, right? And no doubt, it rubbed off on me and it gave me my style of flippancy, or what you might call “insulting,” at the time. But I’m not an insult comedian the way [Don] Rickles is. He’s my pupil. He went to the “Berle School.” That sounds very hammy, but you ask me honest questions, I’m gonna tell you honest answers. So they had to get used to my style. [Mr. Berle gives a sample ‘insult joke’]: “Oh… your face belongs on a bottle. A laxative bottle.” A put- down, right? And they laughed, right? Yeah. They had to get used to it. So I had been in the business for so long, they accepted it. I think that’s the difference. Is that the answer to your question? It’s been twelve hours since you asked me the question!

CZ: So the bottom line is that the people who get remembered in show business, are the ones who have the most distinctive styles.

MB: Well, right. Remember what I told you: The name of the game is – the three questions every successful comedian has to ask himself are: ‘Who am I?’ ‘What am I doing here?’ and ‘Why?’” Three stages. Now, Jack Benny – if you knew Jack Benny, he smoked cigars and he said, “Hey, listen, Milton, I don’t like football games.” He talked about everything except his own work. But I knew when he worked, I could see him. I studied him, and he had a certain way, a style. If you haven’t got style and you’re interested in being a comedian, you should look in the mirror and think, “What kind of jokes will work for me?” If you’re obese, rotund jokes’ll work for you. Jack E. Leonard – remember Jack E. Leonard? ‘Fat Leonard?’ He used to come out with a panama hat and he danced and he’d take off his hat and take a bow. Bald-headed from here on up. His opening line was, “What’d you expect, feathers?” Right? Now he worked on his own “look,” on what he looked like.

Now, Jack Benny was a very handsome man. He didn’t always wear glasses. And when he spoke, he spoke [Berle speaks in Benny’s voice for a moment] like this. I wasn’t handsome, but I had a style. Today, style is the thing. What makes you tick? What do they like about you the most? They liked Jack because he had charm. At Hillcrest [Country Club], we were playing a [tennis] foursome, Jack, George Burns, another gentleman, and myself. So I’m talkin’ to Jack, and I said, “Jack, I found out what makes it work for you.” And he said, “What?” And I said, “Number One: You’re charming, you’re easy going, and you don’t perspire.” That’s number one! And the other thing I told him was, I said, “Unlike me – which I hope I can control later on when I get as old as you are – you’re a genius in what you’re doing, and I’ll tell you why.” And he said to me, “Why?” And I said, “Because you’re not afraid of silence.”

You got guys today on television, even doing commercials or promos. Now they got to get it in for the twenty or thirty seconds, and they talk so fast. How can you plant a joke if you rush your set-up? Right? [joke]: “Guy is drowning. And a woman comes up, runs over to where the water starts and she says, ‘Oy Vey’… Whatever that means!!” Right? Now those kind of jokes are hip – or not hip – if they heard it. Now, there are no new jokes. Nothing that’s new is old, nothing that’s old is new. Everything’s been done before by different people in different styles.

CZ: It’s like people say with movies – there are only seven or eight stories and they keep getting told over and over again.

MB: That’s bullshit. They’re formulas. Don’t you stay “stories.” Formulas. How to get the laugh, how to go to the laugh, how to set it up – that’s the formula. Do you put the punch line on the end, or do you put it in the middle and ruin the punch line at the end? Or is it too long before the lead-in, before you get to the punch line? I’ve written quite a few books on this shit and if you want to print it, you can pay me some money. Where’s my fuckin’ money for this?

In my book, Milton Berle’s Private Joke File, there’s chapters in there about what to say. This is for guys who want to read the book. No show people. I get more laymen reading that book. They use it to spike their speeches. What’s his name, the Governor of California?

CZ: Gray Davis.

MB: Yeah, Gray Davis. I knew his name was a color. Anyway, on his desk – he told me personally – he has the Milton Berle joke book, a book I wrote, and all of the jokes are in there alphabetically, jokes about garages, weddings, you name it. Gray Davis has got my book on his desk for similes, if he ever wants to spike a speech. If he’s doing a speech about something clever, you know, he wants to put in one of my jokes, like: “He got married in a garage and he couldn’t back out.” I’ve got garage jokes in there! Now he’d take that one-liner to spike his speech.

I even wrote for Harry Truman. I mean, when I say ‘wrote,’ I spiked their speeches. They sent me their speeches. Now do you know who’s a great after-dinner speaker? Before dinner, I don’t know how good, but after dinner he’s great: Arnold Schwarzenegger. I wrote for him before I turned him over to [another writer] because it was too much for me. [Berle now does a Schwarzenegger imitation, complete with the Austrian accent]: “Milton, vould you help me out? I need some funny lines!” Well, coming from him, right? So I spiked [his speeches]. You know what ‘spiking’ means?

CZ: You punch up other peoples’ speeches.

MB: Yeah, I used to punch up screenplays with Billy Wilder privately, too.

CZ: Didn’t you do some punching up on the screenplay for Some Like It Hot?

MB: Well, thank you very much! You can thank me for the biggest laugh they got in the picture, when they’re on that boat [the final line in the film]: Joe E. Brown says, “We’re going to get married.” Jack Lemmon says, “I can’t marry you, I can’t.” He says, “Oh, yes you can.” Jack says, “I’m a man.” Joe E. Brown says, “Nobody’s perfect.” I never heard such a laugh in a fucking theater in my life. Nobody’s perfect. Two words. It’s a wonderful picture. The last line. And they – Jesus, they worked on that picture for four months and then I was with them, down in Ensenada when they were doing it. And then I said, “I got it.” And I gave them that last line: “Nobody’s perfect.”

It’s just like It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. I wrote two of the biggest laughs in that picture, do you know what they were? Did you see Mad World?

CZ: That’s one of my favorite movies.

MB: Well, when Jimmy Durante’s dying at the beginning of the picture – we’re all on the cliff there asking him, ‘where’s the money?’ And he dies. And I said to [director] Stanley Kramer, “Stanley, see if you can get a bucket, and see if you can put a bucket at the edge of the cliff where Durante’s kicking. See that when he kicks, he kicks the bucket and you pan down all the way. So he [literally] kicks the bucket! His character dies! A [visual] pun!

And in the last part of the picture, where each one of us are being chased – and this is all done on teeter-boards with doubles, the doubles did it. Boom, boom, boom, they make the cut and they flew there. I said to Stanley, “I got an idea. It’s just a statement, but I think it would be clever.” “What is it, Milton, what is it?” he asked me. I said, “When Eddie Anderson [African-American character actor in Mad, Mad World, most remembered for playing Rochester on “The Jack Benny Program”] bounces on the trampoline and he goes up in the air and he goes out of the [frame], I said, ‘Why don’t you have him land on the lap of an Abraham Lincoln statue?’ Is that a political statement! Black guy! That got applause from the audiences at the time, and it wasn’t just a laugh. It was like – it’s so clever that the black man is with the man who freed the slaves!

CZ: Well, it seems like it was perfect timing for you to have come up with a political joke like that, because Mad, Mad World was 1963 – that’s right during the Civil Rights Movement.

MB: Sure! This was the sixties.

CZ: If you had to live your life over again and you weren’t a comedian, what else would you have done? When you were a kid, did you ever want to do anything else besides make people laugh?

MB: No way. Quick answer!

CZ: How do you think your personality has helped you in your job and how do you think it’s held you back?

MB: I think my personality – my style, my way of living – helped me. It didn’t hold me back. And I’ll tell you why. Not that you asked. Not that you’re going to print it. And not that it’s a novelty, because there are so many people like me. I never smoked a cigarette. [Mr. Berle says this while he’s holding a giant cigar in his hand!] I always took care of my health. I don’t know what beer tastes like. I never had hard liquor. And, uh, those are very great elements. And I always tried to get my rest no matter what I did, with the kind of work that I did. Was that the answer to your question?

CZ: How would you have described your job to your family and friends? How interested would they be? You know, what would you say if somebody asked, “What did you do today?”

MB: I’m very talkative. Here’s proof. They’d ask me, “What’d you do today?” I’d tell them. Outright, no lies. If they asked me, did I work hard today and I didn’t, I would say, “Not too hard today, I’m taking it easy.” I always tell the truth.

CZ: Has your job made you a better person or a worse person?

MB: Bad and good. Good and bad. Well, I was very, very tough – and I knew it – on myself during my early, early days in everything that I did theatrically. Especially vaudeville. And especially every show that I was in, every place that I appeared. And especially television. I was very hard on myself. In television, I worked sixteen hours a day. I was very tough on myself. Why? They called me a pain in the ass. The responsibilities that I had in the early days of television, where I did 153 hours of live television for the Texaco show, as I told you, were great. All in all, they counted the hours I did in live television – it comes to 436 hours. I think that’s a record. I was very hard on myself. And to this day, I’m still very tough on myself. And as tough as I’ve always been on myself, I was always equally tough with my stage hands and performers and even with the lights and microphones and everything. I learned from that. But in some ways, I didn’t learn… I mean, I learned how to be nice after a certain length of time, but I was very tough to work with because… I hate the word ‘perfectionist.’ You know why? ‘cause you take the blame for everything. Whoever is the head of the show takes the blame. But I’ve always been very hard on myself, very hard, very tough. Are we through?

WE CONTINUE THE INTERVIEW FIVE DAYS LATER:


CZ: What did you do in your leisure time, when you weren’t working?

MB: I played tennis until I was in my seventies. Killed the fuckin’ net. I was playin’ when I was seventy-five, tennis. I’m now ninety-one, [so that’s] sixteen years ago.

CZ: Now you spend a lot of time here at the Friar’s Club.

MB: George Burns used to come to the Club. Every day of his life, he had a scotch and soda with a beer chaser – two or three of them – lunch time, dinner time. He smoked twenty, twenty-five cigars a day. Bad cigars, cheap cigars. He didn’t pay for them. They were yennims [Yiddish for ‘free promotional giveaway’]. He always smoked a cigar and they [cigar companies] supplied him. Once, he said, “How old are you, Milt?” I said, “Oh, eighty-six, eighty-seven.” He said, “Get me a glass of water, kid.” Great sense of humor!

Burns was a cooze hound. I’ll give you another one, you won’t believe it : So was his pal, Jack Benny! I’ll tell ya something. Who was Benny’s girl on the road (Because his wife, Mary, was a bitch): Her name was Giselle MacKenzie. She traveled with Benny when he did his concerts. That was his girl.

CZ: What was the most dangerous thing that ever happened to you onstage? I know you wanted me to ask you that one.

MB: I was playing a place [a vaudeville house] called the RKO-Jefferson. You from the East?

CZ: No, I’m from L.A.

MB: I was doing four shows a day. I had a bit: I was sitting down and, all the sudden, there was a song that I wrote with someone, “Let a Smile Be Your Umbrella.” [He starts singing]: “Let a smile be your umbrella, on a rainy, rainy day.” And purposely, I had a plan – that the trumpet player, in the pit, would play a sour note. And I looked down, and he kept playing another sour note, another, and I said, “Stop it,” I said to the leader in the pit. “Where’s that sour note coming from? Oh, it’s you. Stay right where are you are.” I walked off the stage, I grabbed a two-by-four and I stepped over the footlights and I went like this [to swing at him] and I fell. Fell in the pit. I cut my leg. My mother was in the audience. And I’m down there [in the pit] and the orchestra leader says to me, as I’m laying there bloody, “Should I play an introduction?” You don’t get that? [The orchestra leader thought that Mr. Berle’s falling was part of the act.]

Well, they brought me backstage, my mother’s back there, she says, “send for a doctor.” The fuckin’ manager of the theater, after the first show, said to me in the dressing room, “Are you all right?” No, he didn’t say that. He said, “Where’s that young fella, where’s Milton?” My mother says, “I’m Mrs. Berle, what do you want?” And I’m layin’ there. He said, “You were wonderful. You were very funny. That bit that you did when you fell in the pit…” That manager was a fuckin’ asshole. He thought – he says – he didn’t know it was an accident, he thought it was terrific. He said, “We wanna keep that bit in the show.” My mother said, “You asshole, that wasn’t on purpose. He slipped.” And she really whacked him. See, my mother – this is very interesting: My mother was a cop. She was a policewoman. She was the first or second policewoman in the NYPD. And she was also a store detective – Wanamaker’s, Gimbel’s, Saks – and she also took care of the family. Six flight walk-up in Harlem. Three brothers and my sister Rosalyn. We’re all crammed in there. And I was the breadwinner, because they didn’t work. They went to school. And my father had a bad heart. And in those days, we had to walk six flights in the tenement building to get to the apartment. Unlike today, they made my father stay in bed. They don’t do they today. Today, if you have a heart attack, you have open-heart surgery, they make you walk. It’s walking, today.

If you want to ask me what was the most humorous thing that ever happened: My mother took care of the kids, she was traveling with me, looking for jobs. Did you ever hear of Buster Brown Shoes? I was the Buster Brown Boy. 1913. [Berle’s five-year-old face, to this day, is the little boy’s face on every box of Buster Brown Shoes.] My mother was a stage mother. She took me around to modeling jobs. And I was in silent pictures. Did I tell you that? Chaplin. Fairbanks. Pickford. When I was five.

I’m about fourteen, I’m back in New York. I said, “Mama, you’re doing too much.” My mother is holding down three jobs – private detective, she’s in the NYPD, and she’s a store detective – Gimbel’s, Wanamaker’s Saks, picking up shoplifters. She was strong. Not strong physically, but… did you ever hear of Ju-Jitsu? My mother – I didn’t know this, but in 1911, 1914, she was the Ju-Jitsu champ! She could fly over your head!

CZ: When you were a kid, did you know that your mother was special, that other mothers weren’t like her? Did you realize, at the time, that she was doing more than other mothers?

MB: She did more for me than the other boys [for Milton’s brothers]. They all slept together, three in the same bed. Not me. I had to have a special bed in a special room because I was the breadwinner. So I had said to my mother, I said, “Mama, I love you, but you’re working too hard. You’re holding down three jobs. Get out of one of the jobs.” About a week later she said to me, “I took your advice. I was at Saks and I told the head guy on the floor that I couldn’t handle it anymore, and they said they didn’t want to lose me. So I said, “What did they do, Mama?” She said, “They gave me an easier job.” I said, “How is it easier?” She said, “They put me in the piano department [to watch the shoplifters].” My mother said one of the funniest lines [about this experience] and she didn’t mean to be funny: She said, ” Who’s gonna steal a piano?” Well, that’s the funniest line I’ve ever heard. And it’s so natural! She didn’t mean it as a joke. But that’s where they put her.

CZ: Did you get your sense of humor from your mother?

MB: No, but I got my drive from my mother. She wanted to be an actress. And in those days – in the [early] 1900s, in 1895, 1896 – it was terrible for a young girl to be an actress. So being that she couldn’t do it, she put all of her energy into me. Because I won a Chaplin contest [Berle won a contest to appear in a Charlie Chaplin movie], I was the Buster Brown Boy, and I was making faces and telling jokes. I was making faces in the mirror at home. [At this point in the interview, Berle starts mugging, and makes some hilarious faces!] So my Uncle says to my mother – who was his sister – he says, “Sarah, get the kid away from the damn mirror. He’ll turn out to be an idiot!”

Well, about six years later, my uncle is still living with us. And I was earning money then. Silent pictures, and I was a boy model. And she says to him, “This is the young little boy that you said was going to be an idiot.” She said to my uncle, “You’re the idiot.” My mother let me do what I want to do. [Milton makes funny crying sounds.] All that shit. Making faces. She says to him, “Leave him alone, let him do what he wants.” She [took me to] an agency that was booking kids. She said, “Make faces for the man.” They laughed. The agent said, “He’s funny. I don’t know what he’s doing, but it’s funny.” My mother was a stage mother. She made Gypsy’s mother [Gypsy Rose Lee’s mother] look like Esther Schwartz. She fought for me.

CZ: So your mother pushed you into show business, because she wanted to be in it herself?

MB: Sure. Because she wanted to, but her parents wouldn’t support her [desire to be in show business]. She turned all that particular energy into me and watched out for me. She was a heavyweight.

CZ: What about your dad? You mentioned him only very briefly.

MB: Well, he was sick. He worked at [names the founder of a chain of still-operating housepaint stores. [The founder] was a Jew-hating cocksucker.

CZ: That’s funny that you say _____ was anti-Semitic, because I’ve heard that [a famous car-paint store magnate] was anti-Semitic, too. I guess that, back in the day, anybody who had anything to do with paint was anti-Semitic!

MB: You want to hear about some anti-Semites? First we’ll go back: Walter Brennan. Then we’ll go back to a guy I put in the hospital for four months. [Note: Berle was only thirteen years old, a child performer on vaudeville, when the event he is about to describe, happened]: I was working in Brooklyn. We had a star who was just one of the great performers with his own style, Frank Fay. He did “Harvey” on Broadway. Funny man, but biggest Jew-hater I ever met in my life. When he got drunk, he called me, “Kike, Jew-prick.” I was working with him Brooklyn. I was on fourth. He was closing, because he was the star. I was on fourth and he was on seventh. I had heard about him, but I had never seen him. So I finished my spot in the matinee – we did two shows, matinee and evening. And I change my clothes. And I’m watching him from the wings. And he couldn’t see me, because I was way behind the curtain. And there was a stage manager calling the shots. As Fay comes off – he did about twenty minutes, which was long in Vaudeville days – he’s very sharp, very hip. He was only a hit in big towns, he was too chic for small towns. This fellow, he never told jokes, he told stories. A monologist. Very believable, very honest. He comes off to take bows, I’m standing backstage behind the stage manager – this is after the first show – and he says to the stage manager, “I don’t want that little kike Jew bastard standing in the wings watching me.” How old was I? Thirteen. This happened in 1922. This is 1999. And I felt awful. And I went back to my mother and I told her what Frankie Fay said to me, that he said Jew-bastard and Kike. My mother tried to calm me down. She said, “Are you sure he said Kike? Maybe he said ‘tyke’ – meaning, a little kid.

She said, “I’ll tell you what to do. You go back tonight and stand in the wings again. Then you’ll know if he says something derogatory, if he does it again.” He comes off raging and I was standing in the back behind the stage manager, and he said to the stage manager, “I told you this afternoon to keep that little Jew-bastard off the stage.” I went backstage further, where the cyclorama is. You know what a cyclorama is? It’s a backdrop. I went behind the cyclorama and I took a stage brace that holds a piece of scenery up – you know how big that is [it’s a large piece of lead]. As he passed me to go to his dressing room – I took no shit and I couldn’t stand that anti-Semitic business – I weaved and I went [makes a motion like he’s whacking Fay with the stage brace]. Like a javelin thrower! I whacked him in the face and I opened him from his lips down to here, down to here, down to here [all over]. And I put him in the Brooklyn hospital for four months. I was only thirteen.

CZ: Did Frank Fay learn his lesson?

MB: No. They’re all the same. Anyway, Fay was so funny with his dry humor. After that, he appeared in “Harvey” in the forties or fifties on the stage. And Jimmy Stewart did the same role on the screen. And Fay got into a tiff again in 1932. Some guy sued him because Fay hit him and called him a Kike. But the guy [a vaudeville entertainer named George Green] sued him. In those days, fifty thousand dollars, which is what the guy sued Fay for, was like millions. But Fay’s lawyer, two days before, called up Fay at his home in New York and said, “Look. Your trial is tomorrow. But I want you in here today in my office, because I want to speak to you, about the do’s and don’t’s for the jury. When you’re asked questions I only want you to give three answers: ‘Yes,’ ‘No,’ and ‘to the best of my recollection.’”

Next day, the trial: The Judge says, “George Green defendant, Frank Fay [plaintiff].” Fay’s on the stands, he sits in the chair. The Judge said, “Your name is?” He said, “Frank Fay.” Judge said, “What’s your occupation.” Fay said, “I’m the world’s greatest comedian!” Fay came back to the table, his lawyer said, “When they asked you what your profession is, why did you say, “I’m the world’s greatest comedian?’” He said, “I was under oath, wasn’t I?” It was funnier then. I heard that he said it, because I wasn’t sitting there [in the courtroom], at the time. He had to say he was the world’s greatest comedian because he was under oath! He said some funny things, but he was a Jew- hater. [A famous late-night talk show host who hosted his popular show from 1963 to 1992] was not too nice to Jews, either.

Note: At this point in the interview, I’m introduced to a friend of Mr. Berle’s whose nickname, like mine, is Chuck, and Berle jokes, ‘two chucks don’t make a chock.’ Chuck #2 has come to inform Mr. Berle that the actor Eric Roberts, and Roberts’ friend, the cauliflower-nosed character actor Joe Vitirelli (“Jelly” from Analyze This; Vitirelli passed away in 2004) will be up to visit him in a few minutes. Young actors come up to greet Berle at the Friar’s club nearly every day.

CZ: That’s nice, Mr. Berle. Eric Roberts is coming up to visit you.

MB: Eric Roberts. Good actor. Nice guy. So I asked him, off the record, why did your sister Julia marry that ugly guy [Lyle Lovett]? Was he a good lay? Was he hung? [Was it] the schlong? He must have had a big cock! He must have been a good lay or something. When you see a beautiful woman with a plain guy, I don’t know – but it happens sometimes in our business. Anyway, did you see that picture, Analyze This? I loved it. [At this point, Eric Roberts enters the room with Joe Vitirelli. Eric greets Milton with a smilingly-offered propitiative: “This must be the Milton Berle Room!” ] After Roberts and Vitirelli leave, the interview continues:

CZ: I just read a biography of Bob Hope, where the author talked about how you used to steal jokes from Hope, and from other comedians.

MB: It’s true. They called me “The Thief of Bad-Gags.” The question has always come up, “Is it true that you stole jokes, Milton? I would tell the truth. In those days [in vaudeville], I couldn’t afford writers. If I saw Bob Hope or Jack Benny, and they had a good joke [in their own vaudeville shows], I couldn’t afford to pay for material then. I was young, I was sixteen or something. And I saw the heavyweights at that time. I would give them… See, Walter Winchell named me “The Thief of Bad-Gags.” It was a pun on The Thief of Baghdad, or a play on words. So it stuck with me so much, it became so popular that I was supposed to be stealing other peoples’ jokes. It tagged me with a characterization… or [with] a realism.

It’s worked for me for my whole career, because I always say, “That’s a funny joke, I wish I would have said that!” And the other guy always says, “Don’t worry, Milton, you will.” You follow me? Because I was “The Thief of Bad Gags.” But it was Winchell who started it. So I’m talking about truth. It was truth, but there was humor to it. Well, in those days I had to steal jokes, I couldn’t afford writers. If I heard a good joke from Burns or Benny I would take it and use it. Now the funny thing is, the new regime of kids who are in the kids in the comedy clubs, they take from each other.

CZ: I know, from my personal experience, that screenwriters get material stolen, too!

MB: Now, I don’t know if you know this, but… What’s his name? [Berle mentions the name of a fast-talking movie/t.v. star whose initial popularity came on a sitcom, when he played a transplanted space alien, in the late ‘70s.] Now [this guy] is the most disliked, hated – this is off the record; I don’t care if you use it, but you shouldn’t quote me saying it – by young comedians that are starting now at the comedy clubs, because he goes and he’s got a good memory, and he’ll hear a line, and it’ll come up some time when you think he’s doing ‘improv,’ and he says it. But it’s not his line. Now. Example: Well, I’ll go back to Al Jolson and all those people who were really heavyweights in their day. Oh… nobody knows this, you won’t interview anybody who knew Jolson, but Jolson was a big star, the biggest. The greatest star was Jolson, it’s been proven. But when he was in a Broadway show, “Mambo” or any of those shows, this is in the early twenties – he had scouts – “schleppers” – that he sent over to a small time Loew’s theater to see a comic and then come back and tell Jolson, and Jolson had it in his own show that night. Then the comic got a letter from Jolson’s lawyer saying, “You’re doing material from Jolson’s show and if you don’t take it out, you’re going to be sued.” And it was the comedian’s joke, in the first place! But Jolson was so big, they accepted anything from Jolson. He had scouts going around copying jokes from vaudeville comedians. And he would do it and send them a letter. But… you should [interview] someone who knew Al Jolson, or somebody who knew his tactics…. He would steal the jokes.

Now I wrote a parody [song] called “Sammy Made the Pants Too Long.” I was in the Borscht circuit [Jewish vaudeville circuit] – I wrote it in 1930. The real song that it was based on, was called, “Lord, You Made the Night Too Long.” But I made it “Sammy Made the Pants Too Long.” And that helped every young Borscht comedian that are now big names to start their careers. They stole from me. Now, [this young comedian] – he’s got a wonderful memory, he’ll see an actor in a comedy club and do his whole act and they all dislike him, they hate him. But when he’s on the stage, he’s so flippant and fast – he’s got a good memory – and whenever the time comes, he’ll come up with a joke that he heard another comic do. He plays it impromptu, ad-lib, and the audience thinks that he ad-libbed it. Well, that’s not new, because a lot of us have ‘prepared ad-libs.’ I mean, I wrote books on what not to say to a heckler, how to put down a heckler. And [these books] are now standard after forty-five years. [Milton offers a sample joke to say to an annoying heckler in the audience]: “That’s a lovely suit. Who shines it for you?” Or: “A guy who said to his wife, “Tonight, you’re really going to get it, sex-wise,” and she says, “who’s coming over?” Now, he [the young comedian] could hear that joke and he has a photographic mind and a good fast mind, and it would come out like it’s an ad-lib because he would do it. You never saw me live on a stage, Chuck?

CZ: Well, just here at the Friar’s Club, at a few roasts.

MB: I can say something [tell a joke], but I gotta be honest and play it real, like I just thought of it. Right? Like I own it. But I didn’t just think of that, it’s way in back of my head. This is hammy, but I defy anyone to get up on stage and ad-lib with me, because I’ll bury them. Why? Because I’ve got all the jokes in my mind, I know every one-liner. I do it with a style. When I tell a line, I tell it with honesty, because I’m also an actor. And the greatest story is when I was doing a picture called, It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. Did you see it? Spencer Tracy, it was one of his last pictures before Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner – he was very sick at the time. And we’re sitting back, waiting for our shot in the picture, on the sound stage. Some kid comes over, he’s sixteen. We’re talking sports, he didn’t talk about show business, not Spence. He said the greatest line I’ve ever heard. This kid came over – a tall, skinny kid came over – and interrupted us. He says, “Mr. Tracy,” and Tracy looked up. He said, “Mr. Tracy, you’re a great actor.” Then the kid had the nerve and the chutzpah to ask Tracy, “What does it take to be a good actor, like you? A total heavyweight star?” Tracy looked at him and said, “Young man, acting is the easiest thing in the world. Just don’t get caught doing it.” Now you can tell – you’re hip – you can tell if somebody’s overacting, ‘cause the camera’s in there. [You have to be] natural. Now, that’s how I tell jokes. When I tell jokes, I don’t tell ‘em like jokes, I tell ‘em like incidents that happened. Less is better than more; that’s the best thing I ever heard.

One thing that a comedian can’t be afraid of, is silence. Now you hear guys going out, and they think they have to talk fast. And they talk so fast, you don’t understand [what they’re saying].

CZ: Do they talk quickly like that because they’re nervous?

MB: No.

CZ: I read an interview with Jack Lemmon: He was on a set. Billy Wilder said to him, “Do less, Jack, do even less.” And then Lemmon said, “I’m not doing anything” and Wilder said, “Perfect.”
MB: I know! I was there [on the set]! Some Like it Hot, with Marilyn. Less is more. Like the other night, I did five minutes. But less is more. Meaning, if you do less, maybe they’ll want more. Don’t stay on too long. Jan Murray – wonderful comedian, he did a whole resume on me the other night at the party [Berle’s 91st Birthday party happened two weeks prior, at the Friar’s Club, and he endured one of the establishment’s traditionally-bawdy “roasts.”] Murray went on way too long, for about twenty minutes. You should do six good minutes, and have a beginning, middle, and end. Less is more. Less can be more. Can be.

CZ: I met you once before, Mr. Berle, and I mentioned to you that I think that comedians sometimes make the best serious, dramatic actors. I mentioned that I had seen you in a serious role, in a t.v. movie from the ‘70s called Family Business. You played the patriarch of a Jewish family and you were great. Talk about less-is-more: You really underplayed it and it was a very powerful performance.

MB: That was less instead of more. It was a cameo. But I played it right. I played a character. Anyway, ask me whatever you want, like, “Mr. Berle, I heard you were a good friend of Groucho Marx.”

CZ: Well, I love Groucho, but I want to ask you a question about Woody Allen. What was it like working with Woody on Broadway Danny Rose [1984]? You played yourself in that movie.

MB: That was the most unthrilling experience I ever had. Because I had a very big part in that picture and when I saw the picture, I was totally embarrassed. Because I had Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau with me, over here to see the show – the preview. [Before the movie started] I said, “Jesus, Woody was terrific to me. He gave me so much to do.” I had no idea that he mostly cut me out of it.

CZ: In the finished film, you’re in only one or two scenes and we never get to hear your voice. It’s Woody, narrating in voiceover, during your scenes.

MB: With Woody Allen, he’ll never tell you what he writes. He will never let you see the script. And he won’t let you see the edit. But I got a letter from him after I did the show, the picture: “How wonderful you are in it, you’re going to love it, Milton.” He’s full of fucking shit. I mean that. I was too strong in the picture and he cut me way down, so I only did narration, voiceover. [Note: In the completed film, Berle has a small part with no dialogue, not even any voiceover.]

CZ: Why is that? Because he wants to be the only funny guy in the film?

MB: Only him. He only thinks of himself. Except when he’s not in the picture, when he’s directing Lady of Spain, or whatever the fuck it is. [Berle is referring to The Purple Rose of Cairo.] He won’t show anyone the work. In fact, I got a call – I was in New York for the picture. I’ll tell you how much he paid me – two hundred thousand, just for that fucking little picture. Now listen. Every day from California I’m asking him for the script. [His people say,] “Don’t worry, we’ll have it for you. Woody’s not through writing it.” A million fucking excuses. Finally, I got the script four days before I arrived in New York, sent to me airmail, or whatever – Federal Express. I’m on the plane reading the script and I say, “Hey, this is pretty good. I have a fairly big part. Woody was very nice about it.”

Four days later, I’m staying in the hotel, I get a call from the A.D. – the assistant director: “Tomorrow morning, we’re going to pick you up at 8:30, we’ll send a make-up man at seven.” Get a load of this. I never saw the [final] script, I never got it. It’s all right to do improv, because I can do that very easily from being in show business. We went to 53rd Street and Broadway and they take me around the block and I’ve got my topcoat on with my hat like this, with a cigar in my hand. And they’ve got the whole set up, with extras there and everything. I said, “Where’s Woody?” They said, “Oh, he’s behind the camera over there, looking at shots.” So he comes over to me and he says, “Hello, Milton, how are ya?” I said, “I don’t know what to say because I didn’t get a script.” So the whole thing, where he meets me on the corner, he tells me about the interview he has…

CZ: In the scene you’re in, it’s just Woody’s voiceover, right? We don’t even hear your voice at all in the scene.

MB: No, no. Yeah, after he cut the picture. Just a minute. Let me finish. I’m standing on the corner smoking a cigar and there’s people passing. Now, he had extras passing. And each one said – they said didn’t know I was making a picture – “Hello, Uncle Miltie! Hello, Mr. Berle! Can I have your autograph?” “Can you wait a minute,” I said, “We’re shooting a picture.” “Oh, I’m sorry, we didn’t know.” Then [the A.D. says], “Will the extras leave the set, please?” And then in comes Woody. He says [in character, as Danny Rose]: “Mr. Berle, I don’t think you remember me.” Now, I had to ad-lib. First I had to ask him what his [character’s] name was, ‘cause it wasn’t in the script! And now we’re in a two-shot – the camera’s here, this sort of an angle. I said, “I remember you. You are…” He says, “Danny Rose, don’t you remember me? The agent?” I said, “Yeah.” Now, we’re throwin’ lines around. “I can’t forget your face,” I said. And he said, “Oh, thank you.” I said, “Hey, you look fine, you been working?” Now I’m starting to ad-lib. “Oh, here and there,” he said. Now, don’t forget, [Woody’s character was] an actor [before he became an agent]. Now here, I go, “Oh, I thought you were down in the Village doing [your stand-up act or] whatever – Beekman Street or someplace.” And he answers back: “No, I gave that up.” Now, we’re ad-libbing with each other, so real, so honest, no rehearsal – which is good. Could have been better, but… So he bought it. And I’m saying, “Uh, how are you doing?” And he said, “Oh, the same grind.” I say, “I like you, you’re a very nice kid. What can I do for you.” He says, “Well, I don’t know how to ask you.” All ad-lib. “You were going to ask me to do a benefit?” I said. “Well, will you be around next week Thursday?” This is the date he makes for me.

I didn’t see the cutting of [the film]. I had a big part in it and Woody cut me out except for two scenes. I go to the preview of the movie at the Writer’s Guild Theater on Doheny, and I bring Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau with me. We watched the fucking picture. I go like this: I start sliding down in my seat to get out of sight. I don’t want the audience to see me. It was so embarrassing. So Walter is very funny he says, “I saw the fuckin’ picture just now. Where are you? You in Newark?” And Jack Lemmon says, “Well, what fuckin’ picture were you in?” They only showed the opening scene, the rest was Woody’s voiceover and the [Macy’s Thanksgiving Day] Parade. They cut the shit out of my part. Why? I found out why. Why do you think? Turn off the tape recorder and I’ll tell you: [Berle, satisfied that the tape recorder is off, whispers: “‘cause Woody doesn’t like any other comedian except for him in the picture.”] Okay, turn it back on!

Sid Caesar did languages. He used to do it, he still does it. It’s the only six-and-a-half minutes he’s got. Now I’m ashamed of him. He was after me. “Your Show of Shows” was a wonderful show. It was built very nice. Because they had more money than we did. And more experience. After my years of slaving over hot klieg lights – no wonder my fuckin’ eyes are bad. We had bad lights. After all the work I’ve done and riding a unicycle and boxing with Jack Dempsey and doing all that shit live. For me, to end up in the golden years of life. [after a beat:] Did you know, when you get a stroke it comes from the head and goes to a certain part?

CZ: When I started talking to you the other day, Mr. Berle, you were telling me a story about this snake-charmer girl. I had a feeling you were cleaning the story up a little bit for me. Can you tell me the full version? Please!

MB: Ok. [smiles, happy to tell it]: We’re makin’ love in the bed. And I said, “Where are your snakes?” She said, “In the other room, locked up.” Bullshit. So I’m going down on her, with her legs up there. Fuckin’ snake comes up on the bed, nearly bites me in the ass. Isn’t that the strangest? They were trained like a railroad train. But that’s not [even] the truth, because the snake – it went up my ass! I shit in my fuckin’ pants. I didn’t have any pants, how could I shit in my pants?

CZ: If you had to live your life all over again, what would you do?

MB: I’d be a cocksucker!

CZ: Well, thank you very much, Mr. Berle. I’m done. You can go eat now.

MB: You’re a very good interviewer. Of course, that’s because you have the fucking questions in front of you!

CZ: It was nice of you to let me interview you.

MB: If I find out you were playing this tape for your friends, I’ll break your fucking glasses. And then I’ll kick you in the balls!



Copyright 2009 by Charles L. Zigman, All Rights Reserved.
May not be re-printed without the express permission of the author.
chuckzigmanisthebest@gmail.com

CHARLES ZIGMAN is a screenwriter/journalist and author. His new book

about the legendary French movie icon, Jean Gabin,

WORLD'S COOLEST MOVIE STAR

is available now at Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com,

or go to www.jeangabinbook.com

to learn more.