Rubber Balls and Liquor Page 13

  One of my favorite shows was Hollywood Squares, which in those days was hosted by a guy named Peter Marshall, and featured moderately successful comedians like Paul Lynde, Rose Marie, and Charley Weaver. Also, Charo. It’s hard not to love a program that offered an exciting young talent like Charo an opportunity to demonstrate her many and varied gifts as an entertainer.

  She was particularly adept at rolling her r’s, as I recall.

  It’s good to have something to shoot for, so here I collected these marginal celebrity-types and moderately successful comedians like role models of the entertainment industry. I’d watch and think, That could be me someday.

  Or, Who needs medical school?

  Or, Wally Cox! Wow! To do voices for cartoon animals! Jeepers, it doesn’t get any better than this!

  But then, underneath those hopeful considerations, there would be a darker, more sinister line of thought. I’d think, Boy, how pathetic do you have to be to be on Hollywood Squares?

  Even at twelve or thirteen years old, I was pretty jaded, I guess.

  Okay, so that’s the setup to a Hollywood Squares story I’m determined to share. For my money, there’s nothing like a good Hollywood Squares story to put a real shine to a Hollywood memoir. In George Gobel’s book, readers might remember, there was a rollicking good story about Hollywood Squares and a surplus case of Lemon Pledge that people are still talking about. (What they’re saying, exactly, I couldn’t exactly say.) In her book, the loud-mouthed comedienne Kaye Ballard wrote wistfully about a tragic incident, involving an unintended use of one of the show’s oversized X’s from the prop department. (Also, in a sidelong way, she referenced an unnamed “lover” who came to her “square” when a sudden power “surge” darkened the Hollywood Squares set during a taping, who was believed to be famed song-and-dance-and-windswept-hair man John Davidson.) And who can forget the stirring account from Orson Welles about the time the show’s producers asked him ever-so-carefully if he’d mind occupying one of the ground-floor squares, in consideration of the few extra pounds of winter weight he appeared to be carrying?

  Without further ado, then, my Hollywood Squares story …

  Oh, wait. I forgot. There’s just one more ado. Sorry. There’s a Henry Winkler anecdote I need to fold into this thing, as a kind of setup, because I plan to come back to it later, as a kind of punch line. I’ll begin the anecdote by stating the obvious: Henry Winkler is one of the nicest guys in the entertainment industry. I know this because Henry Winkler told me so himself, in no uncertain terms. He said, “Gilbert, you won’t find a nicer guy than me in this town.”

  Then he said, “I don’t know how I could put this in terms that are any more certain.”

  Regrettably, Henry Winkler said this in the small town of Hoot Owl, Oklahoma, where we were performing in a dinner theater production of Man of La Mancha, so I don’t know that he was saying all that much. Indeed, the town of Hoot Owl was so small, it couldn’t even support a dinner theater. It was more like an appetizer theater, and the portions were not very filling.

  To Henry Winkler’s credit, though, he said these nice things in the sincere, soft-spoken voice he uses on talk shows, and not in the loud, over-the-top, Fonzie voice that made him famous. Have you ever heard this man talk, in real life? He sounds like he’s on antidepressants. When you compare it to how he talks in fake life, as Arthur Fonzarelli, the contrast is startling. And, unsettling.

  In all seriousness, or at least in some, Henry Winkler did actually come up to me to introduce himself and say nice things at a comedy awards show. He did speak slowly and softly, like a bad therapist. I don’t think we were in Hoot Owl, but I could be wrong. He sought me out backstage, and he took my right hand in both of his in an overly enthusiastic two-fisted greeting that was meant to connote warmth and genuine good feeling.

  He said, “Gilbert, what a pleasure it is to watch you onstage.” He said this as if he really, really meant it. More than that, he said it as though he had just watched Christ Himself perform a hilarious five-minute set—from the cross, no less. (Talk about a tough room!) Henry Winkler’s famous, prime-time eyes opened up, and his famous, prime-time smile widened, and he went on and on about how I was one of the most amazing comedians he had ever seen. I believe he used the phrase “legendary brilliance,” although here again I could be wrong. He could have used the phrase “not half-bad for a filthy, godforsaken Jew,” but you can certainly understand how I might confuse the one for the other.

  Oh, he was fairly gushing, my new friend and admirer Henry Winkler. In fact, I was a little worried about all this gushing. I thought if he wasn’t careful with his gushing he might get a touch of semen on the lapel of my sports jacket, that’s how much the Fonz was gushing. He was a regular geyser, this one.

  Okay, so that’s the Henry Winkler backstory to set up my Hollywood Squares front story—and now, finally, I’m all out of ado’s.

  Cut to a whole bunch of years later, and Hollywood Squares was back on the air. It turns out that it’s one of those shows that just won’t go away, like the news, and this time around Whoopi Goldberg was one of the producers. She was also in the center square, which is a place of extreme honor on the Hollywood Squares set. It’s like being the headliner, only not so much. You’re still sitting in a box, answering stupid questions, and fooling yourself into thinking it’s a good gig, only you’re doing it from a position of prominence. As a career move, it falls somewhere between earning an Academy Award for Ghost and playing Dulcinea in that appetizer theater production of Man of La Mancha.

  Well, it turns out there is a God and—who would have thought?—He sometimes listens to awkward Jewish boys from Brooklyn who question the wisdom of appearing on afternoon game shows. I know this because at some point Whoopi called and asked if I’d appear on the show. To be accurate, Whoopi didn’t make the call herself. She had one of her people do it. My people were busy when the call came in, so I answered it myself. I said, “Sure, I’ll appear on Hollywood Squares. What the hell.”

  (Beneath the category of “Be Careful What You Wish For” moments that find us over the course of a lifetime, there is a subcategory known as “Be Careful What You Disdain,” and if you look closely you can find a listing for me under “Hollywood Squares: Gottfried, Gilbert; childhood hostility toward…”)

  So I talked to Whoopi’s people, and soon after that my people talked to her people, and soon after that I flew out to California to tape a week’s worth of shows, and I can only assume it went reasonably well because from time to time afterward the producers would ask me back. I became a real favorite. At least, I became a real favorite of mine. I particularly enjoyed watching myself on that show, and I guess the folks at home did as well, because Whoopi’s people kept asking me back.

  After one of my first appearances on the show, Whoopi got a phone call to complain about my material. The call was from Hollywood legend Marlon Brando. At first, Whoopi didn’t believe it was Hollywood legend Marlon Brando on the other end of the line, but then he did his best Marlon Brando impression and she was convinced. He could be very convincing that way, I’m told. Anyway, it seemed that Hollywood legend Marlon Brando was upset about a joke I’d told earlier that week. The joke, like all jokes on Hollywood Squares, came in response to a question.

  The question: “What animal has the largest eyes in the world?”

  My answer: “Marlon Brando at a buffet.”

  It was an easy, throwaway line, aimed at an easy, hard-to-miss target, and it must have hit its mark because Hollywood legend Marlon Brando was on the phone to Whoopi Goldberg right after the program aired. He was not amused, Whoopi could tell. In fact, he was offended and angered. He said, “Am I going to be the running joke on your show?”

  Of course, he said this in his cartoonish Godfather voice, which meant it came out sounding like a hoarse-whisperer with a mouthful of marbles. Whoopi never told me what she said in response, but I like to imagine that she said, “Running? You? Come on, Marlon. It’d b
e more like a lumbering joke. Or maybe a slowly-getting-up-out-of-your-chair joke, but running is out of the question.” What was she supposed to say? The man was tipping the scales at over five hundred pounds. Blinking his eyes could have given him a heart attack.

  I heard about the phone call from another one of the producers, and it made me think. What I thought was this: Hmmm … that seems like a good idea. Thanks for the suggestion, Hollywood legend Marlon Brando.

  And so, from that moment on, I made it a special point to make Marlon Brando into a running joke on Hollywood Squares.

  Some examples …

  The question: “The largest boom in recorded history came from Krakatoa. What was Krakatoa?”

  My answer: “Japan’s first Mexican restaurant. And do you know who was eating there? Marlon Brando.”

  The question: “The alien grows bigger and bigger as it consumes everything in its path. Steve McQueen stars in it. What’s the film?”

  My answer: “The Marlon Brando Story.”

  To which Whoopi weighed in to defend her legendary friend. She got all up in my grille and said in her funny, street-smart way, “Leave Marlon alone.”

  To which I weighed in to defend myself. I got right back up in her grille and said in my own funny, street-smart way, “I was gonna say, ‘The Dustin Hoffman Story,’ but then I remembered he doesn’t weigh seven thousand pounds.”

  Oh, I could go on and on. And, much to the dismay of Hollywood legend Marlon Brando, I did.

  My very favorite Hollywood Squares joke? Well, I thought you’d never ask …

  The question: “In a woman’s magazine, which television show did women say accurately portrays the single girl, Sex and the City or Ally McBeal?”

  “Okay, I know this one,” I started in.

  “Why?” came the response, from Whoopi and the others, who knew at some point to question my authority.

  “Because,” I explained, “I go clothes shopping with Calista Flockhart, and every time she puts on a new outfit she goes, ‘Does this dress make my spinal cord look big?’”

  (Oh, I guess I should mention here that I also specialized in Calista Flockhart jokes, but that’s for another book.)

  (Also, with the way I treated Harrison Ford in a previous chapter, I can’t imagine the Ford-Flockharts will be giving this book as a Christmas gift this year—or any other year, for that matter—so if you happen to receive this book from Harrison or Calista by mistake, please be kind enough to exchange it for something more flattering to the lovely couple.)

  It was during Whoopi’s run as one of the show’s producers that I found myself in the middle of one of the great comic moments in game show history. Understand, the phrase one of the great comic moments in game show history is somewhat loaded, because I believe there was just this one moment. Personally, I don’t count the time that accountant from Des Moines and his farm-fed wife dressed up as two steaming piles of shit on Let’s Make a Deal, because that’s physical humor, and I don’t believe you can equate a pratfall or a steaming pile of shit with subtle wordplay or witty banter or legendary brilliance.

  I’ll admit, it’s disingenuous to suggest that I was in the middle of this great comic moment, because here again, I was off to the side. Let’s be clear: Whoopi was in the middle, in the center square. That’s where all the action was on that show—which, after all, was her show. Me, I was in the upper-right corner of the famous Hollywood Squares board, which I remember thinking at the time was a pretty good metaphor for my career, working in the margins of a marginal game show. I used to think that if the Hollywood Squares producers believed they could have added another row of squares, and assigned me to my rightful spot even farther from the action without somehow altering the rules of the universally beloved childhood game of tic-tac-toe, it would have more accurately reflected my role.

  So there I was, not quite front and center but rather tucked into the corner, as far away from the action as possible, when the poor contestant had no choice but to throw the question to me. The way the show works, for those of you who have been too busy or too full of yourselves these past few decades to watch afternoon television, is there are nine so-called celebrities, seated in nine different spots on a giant tic-tac-toe board.

  (For those of you who are just too stupid to know the rules of tic-tac-toe, you should probably think about reading a book with a few less words in it.)

  Back to the game: there are two contestants, representing an X and an O—just like the game itself!—and they take turns asking the celebrities all these different questions. They don’t actually come right out and ask the questions themselves; there’s a Peter Marshall–like game show host who does it for them. Some of the questions are no-brainers, and some of them are graduate school level—that is, if there was a graduate school for obscure bits of useless information. The celebrity usually makes a lame joke, which is very often prepared for them by the show’s writers, and then offers a best guess for an answer. Then it’s up to the contestant to decide if he or she agrees with the celebrity, and if they get it right they put their X or their O in the square. If they get it wrong, the opponent puts their mark in the square. The first contestant to collect three squares in a row is the winner, and gets a motorboat or a wall of E-ZBrick paneling for their family room or a sun-soaked, fun-filled dream vacation for two to Branson, Missouri, or some other fabulous prize chosen especially for them.

  Got it?

  Good—except there’s one wrinkle. (Curses! There’s always a wrinkle!) If a player needs a square to make three in a row, he must answer the question directly in order to do so. What that means is you can’t just sit back and hope the other guy screws up, like you have for the rest of the game. You actually have to do something to win the fabulous prize.

  Joining me on the show that week were big stars and not-so-big stars and stars who were only big in their own minds. There was Whoopi, in her usual spot in the center square. There was Jason Alexander, from Seinfeld. There was Little Richard. There were Penn & Teller, sharing the same square, which always struck me as a little bit gay and insulting, to have to fit into such a tight space and share such a narrow cone of spotlight with someone else, even if you were partners in a comedy-magic duo. There were two actresses from the sitcom Dharma & Greg, neither of which played Dharma or Greg. And there were two other comics, Judy Gold and Bruce Vilanch. And then there was me, in the upper-right-hand corner of the board. Not exactly the most star-studded group of celebrities to ever grace a Hollywood soundstage, but we were all variously happy to be there.

  Well, it came to pass that my colleagues were no help at all to the two contestants on the show that day. It also came to pass that I found myself in a situation where I could use a phrase like it came to pass and have it sound like I was writing a bad detective novel. Me and my celebrity pals were playing for a guy named David, a police officer from Los Angeles, in the X spot, and a woman named Valerie, a librarian from Texas, who (oddly) introduced herself as a wedding and funeral singer, in the O spot. The contestants went back and forth, deep into the game. They went all the way through our tic-tac-toe board until they had no choice but to look to me, because by that point I was the only schmuck left on the board, which was now set up in such a way that I couldn’t help David make a run of three X’s or Valerie make a run of three O’s. All I could do was help one of them earn the final square—which according to the rules of the game show would have been just enough to win.

  The question: “Playgirl magazine’s clinical sexologist says, ‘I think we should be able to talk about sex the way we talk about’… what?”

  My answer: “Soft-boiled eggs, because they both take under three minutes.”

  This wasn’t a particularly funny answer, I’ll admit, but I went with my gut. The audience laughed anyway, because I’ve learned that television game show audiences will laugh at almost anything, except here their howls of laughter only made me feel cheap and unworthy, so I followed up my first response with anothe
r. I said, “I know this one, because I posed for Playgirl. You don’t actually see anything, because my thumb was in the way.”

  This time, it felt to me as if the laughter was deserved.

  Finally, I gave my answer: “Food.”

  David, the cop, disagreed with me, but I tried not to take it personally.

  I was right, of course.

  (I usually was.)

  And he was wrong.

  (They usually were, when they disagreed with me.)

  Penn Jillette took the opportunity to tell David the cop what he thought of his game-playing skills—and, relatedly, his decision to disagree with a great thinker and well-known sexology expert like Gilbert Gottfried.

  He shouted, “You fool!”

  Then, the studio audience howled with studio audience laughter, which apparently is what studio audiences do when an oversized magician yells at one of the contestants onstage.

  (You had to be there, I guess.)

  Then, Valerie the singing librarian called on me to help her with the next question. Who the hell else was she supposed to call on? All of the other squares were completed. Technically, all of the other celebrity panelists were off the clock. We could have sent them out for coffee, but I needed them to hang around and laugh at my jokes.

  The question: “In a poll, 94 percent of Hungarians, compared to only 46 percent of Americans, said doing this was necessary in order to feel fulfilled. Doing what?”

  I thought, Who comes up with these questions? And, Could they make this game any more convoluted or complicated?

  My answer: “Seeing Wayne Newton, live.”

  Again, not the funniest answer in the history of American comedy, or even in the history of Hungarian comedy, but you’d never know it from the howling fits of laughter that burst from the studio audience—a good deal of which had not been prerecorded.

  My real answer: “Having a child.”

  Valerie, a woman who actually made a chunk of her living singing at funerals, disagreed—a fool move that was right up there with trying to get booked at a graveside gig.