How I Got to Be Whoever It Is I Am (12 page)

We made no changes. Next, I was called in to meet with the head of program practices for CBS, or what would be more popularly
known as the censor. His name was William Tankersly. We spoke at length, and he and to their great credit CBS decided to let
the special run exactly as we had presented it with no changes at all.

The Alberto-Culver Company became the sponsor by simply paying for air costs, as I recall $180,000. They also had the late
actor Robert Ryan come on before the special,
Songs of America
, began, to say the network felt that Simon and Garfunkel had earned the right to express their opinion.

On the broadcast, the American public heard “Bridge Over Troubled Water” for the first time. It was played over a shot of
the train carrying Robert Kennedy’s body across the country as people on train platforms stood in silence, saluting or weeping.
After that we went to our first commercial break, and one million people switched to another channel.

The special did not get a good rating. The
Washington Post
ran an editorial expressing amazement that the special even got on the air. The Nixon White House requested a copy of it,
and my agent suggested I pursue work in some other aspect of show business.

However, the special became a CBS entry in the worldwide Montreux Television Festival, and forty years later the Paley Center
for Media, formerly known in New York as the Museum of Television and Radio, is hoping to honor the special, Paul, and Art.

Beginning with that special, I’ve always been identified with being on the left. The truth is I don’t have any politics and
actually have more positions that would be considered conservative than liberal.

When I had my cable show, I often spoke about the homeless and people in dire need, or those I felt were being treated unfairly.
I also was on television during the impeachment of President Clinton, which I was strongly against, but then it turned out
most on the right agreed with me. Recently, I was contacted by a group that wanted me to join them in trying to impeach President
Bush. I had no interest in that, either.

People tend to make snap judgments, because they don’t have the time or intellectual energy to look further. Once I spoke
at an event where one of the other speakers was the late William F. Buckley, Jr. I said I don’t measure people by right or
left or liberal or conservative but by those who care about others and those who don’t. Mr. Buckley let me know he appreciated
what I had to say, even though some of his positions, in my opinion, obviously lacked compassion. May he rest in peace, his
positions were heartfelt, but that doesn’t make him, if you’ll pardon the expression,
right
.

I believe everyone should work for a living, but those who are truly unable should not be abandoned by the government. I think
we should have much greater punishment for bullies.

I do
not
think drugs should be legalized, and I believe we should have stronger protection and punishment for drinking and driving.
I’m against the estate tax. Frankly, I see myself as a compassionate conservative—whatever that or any label means. I have
a friend who always identifies himself as a Reagan Republican, but he can’t tell me what that means. I don’t know, either.
The two R’s work nicely, though, just as the two C’s in compassionate and conservative do.

I am willing to give up certain rights to privacy for more security. On other questions I respond specifically given the circumstances
of our times, and I’m not even remotely uncomfortable in saying, “I don’t know.” That’s why I say I have no politics, unless
you want to say paying a lot of attention to people in dire need is a political position instead of a human one.

Years ago I became good friends with a New York Mets pitcher who at this writing is part of the New York Yankee broadcasting
team, Al Leiter. Recently, a reporter wrote me and said he was doing a story about Al, who may or may not run for political
office, and Al suggested he talk to me. The reporter wrote in his letter that Al had told him, “Even though Chuck and I are
on opposite ends of the political spectrum, we’re friends.”

I called Al and asked him what made him think we were on opposite ends of the political spectrum? Al then asked me a series
of questions. One was, “How do you feel about all this f this and f that?” He seemed surprised that I was as much against
it as he was. He then asked me a number of other political questions and was startled to learn that our opinions were almost
identical. Al knew that for years I was hanging out with a very famous liberal, so he assumed I was one, too. I told him my
friend and I were always in a constant debate.

You really don’t know who anyone is or what they feel unless you ask them specific questions or live with them.

O
f course, my first benefactor was Eleni Kiamos, my classmate at Uta Hagen’s who as I’ve said introduced me to a woman friend
who put me in a lead in a off-off-Broadway show, which led to my getting an agent. Eleni then introduced me to Lee Strasberg,
then to a casting director, which led to my starting to work in television. It’s only all these years later that I realize
how much Eleni did for me when I was beginning, when you really need a benefactor. I always adored her without fully grasping
how many doors she opened for me.

Then, of course, there’s Gene Wilder, who put Renée Taylor in touch with me, which led to my meeting Elaine May. I always
considered Gene a major benefactor of mine.

I first met Elaine May at Gene Wilder’s apartment. She walked over to me and said, “Gene says wonderful things about you.”
In a misguided effort to amuse, I said, “Boy, you’re really coming on.” She looked at me as though she had no idea what was
happening. When she left, I gave her my coat, because I thought she’d be cold outside. Talk about a confusing encounter.

In a later meeting, Renée Taylor and Joe Bologna asked me if I would mind if Elaine May came to see
Lovers and Other Strangers
, which I directed when it was previewing on Broadway. I said, “I’d love to hear anything she says.” All I remember about
that meeting is Elaine prefacing every observation with something like, “I’m sure Chuck has already thought of this.”

A couple of years later I was directing Renée and Joe in a piece they had written for Public Broadcasting. It was a scene
with a couple in bed. Halfway through rehearsal I said to Joe, “You should be directing this (Joe was a director), and I should
be playing your part.” Joe said, “Well, we based the character on you.”

I climbed into bed. Joe took my seat in the director’s chair. Elaine May saw the piece and told me she was being asked to
direct movies, and she was going to put me in the next one that came along that was right for me. That was
The Heartbreak Kid
, which a lot of major stars wanted to do, but she said she wanted Charles Grodin. Most people in show business had never
heard of me at that time.

Elaine then persuaded Warren Beatty to put me in
Heaven Can Wait.
I then did
Ishtar
with her. I believe that movie may be too hip for a lot of rooms. People familiar with the nightclub circuit might be very
surprised by who’s onstage at times. I got excellent reviews in
Ishtar
, and that had something to do with my being cast in
Midnight Run.

I’ve known Elaine May for over forty years, and since that first meeting I’ve never had one uncomfortable moment with her.
As I’ve said, she’s always been my biggest supporter in show business. She was once quoted as saying about herself, “I’m not
warm, but I’m polite.” Around me she’s warm as well as polite. As a director, she never criticizes. She’ll suggest something
else.

Of course, I love Elaine May.

Once, in the 1960s, I was delivering a handwritten script (which is how I still write) to Studio Duplicating, a typing service
on West Forty-fourth Street in Manhattan. I can still hear George, the nice man who always answered the phone, “Hello, Studio.”

One day when I delivered my latest longhand script to be typed, he said for reasons still not entirely clear to me, “Do you
know Herb Gardner?” I later learned that Herb Gardner delivered his scripts printed in longhand. I, at least, wrote in what
is known as script. There were probably other reasons why George asked, “Do you know Herb Gardner?” He was prescient, because
circumstances or fate got Herb Gardner and me to meet about a year later, and I’ve never had a closer friend than Herb.

Before I met Herb, I had heard him on the great Jean Shepherd’s radio show. Herb presented himself as the PR man for the Atlantic
Ocean. “We’re deeper. We have more fish.”

My first interaction with him came when Elaine May told him to get me for a role in his play
The Goodbye People
, which they were going to do in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. My girlfriend at the time was going to be in it, and I would
be there anyway.

I told him I didn’t know how to play a character who says whole sentences while he’s sleeping. Looking back, I’m amazed he
didn’t persist, because as I later discovered he was known to be endlessly persevering. I didn’t do the play, but we instantly
became friends. The brilliant Bob Dishy played the part, and he pulled it off beautifully.

Herb taught me so much by what many saw as his “odd behavior” and I saw as artistic courage in action. In many ways he became
a role model to me, and I know to many others—not only by what he wrote, but by who he was.

Herb died in 2003. He had been in the process of dying for several years, no doubt because of his lifelong habit of always
having a cigarette in his mouth or at least in his hand. One of my biggest regrets in life is that I not only didn’t say anything
to him about smoking, I apparently didn’t even notice sufficiently. There was so much about him that would keep you from noticing
the cigarette. He was as compelling a personality as I’ve ever met. He wrote
A Thousand Clowns
when he was in his twenties. If you choose to read it, you won’t be sorry.

A good example of Herb’s integrity came during a period when he was getting many offers to turn
A Thousand Clowns
into a television series. He really could have used the money but he declined, saying, “Because I wouldn’t be able to oversee
the quality of each segment.”

I worked with Herb in 1974. His play
Thieves
had opened in New Haven and Boston and gotten bad reviews. Marlo Thomas called me in California where I was making movies
and asked if I would come to Boston to take a look at it. She was considering going in and replacing the lead actress. I flew
to Boston and watched the play, with Marlo sitting next to me taking a quick look at me every minute or so to see my reaction.
Herb and Marlo and I met afterward and I said, “I don’t know how good I can make it, but I can make it better than this.”
That was enough for Marlo to step into the leading role.

One evening after a performance, Herb and I sat in the back of the theater and two women walked up the aisle, saw us, and
snickered in disdain. “They’re trying to fix it!” The producers left the play, as well as the director. I became the director
and the producer along with my friend from all those years ago in summer stock, Richard Scanga, who actually had experience
as a producer, which I didn’t have. I began to work with Herb on the script. I asked him to cut certain passages I felt didn’t
work, and he refused even though the play hadn’t gotten good notices. Herb simply said, “I’d rather close it than cut those
sentences.” Instead of that attitude alienating me, it intrigued me. He did agree with me on enough changes that the play
opened in New York, and despite getting mixed notices, it became the longest-running play in New York that season. The run,
of course, had a lot to do with Marlo’s ability to draw a crowd.

Among the many things that Herb did for me over the years was to suggest me for
Same Time, Next Year.
He also gave me the idea for my play
The Price of Fame
. He introduced me to many people I probably never would have met. I became friends with Paddy Chayefsky, Jules Feiffer, Shel
Silverstein, Dick Schaap, Jule Styne, Jimmy Breslin, Elaine Stritch, and Bob Fosse.

One night at a gathering at Herb’s apartment, Bob Fosse started to tease me about my plan to open on Broadway in a two-character
play,
Same Time, Next Year
. He said, “With two characters they’re going to have to love everything you do. They’re going to have to love the way you
sit, the way you stand, the way you walk.” That was Fosse’s sense of fun, which frankly I enjoyed.

Herb stepped in to stop him from talking to me that way, but then I said to Fosse, “Well, in the movie of [and I named a movie
he directed], you had lots and lots of people, and
that
wasn’t successful.” Although we traded insults, Bob Fosse and I really liked each other. I once took a very glamorous movie
star who was
only
a friend of mine to a party at his apartment. He took one look at her and was immediately smitten and made his move. Then
feeling guilty—believing she was my girlfriend—he went to another room and gave me a CD of the original score of
Evita
before it opened on Broadway. He and my movie star pal shared great times together.

Later in my relationship with Herb, he and his wife, Barbara, took me aside and told me they felt I was dominating their dinner
parties too much, which is definitely a flaw of mine. Instead of retorting by saying, “Well,
you
… ,” I accepted their valid criticism, simply because I agreed with them. If somebody’s not on, I will jump in and take over,
in hindsight even in
my
opinion inappropriately.

On the other hand, at some gatherings after that when there would be a lull, people would look at me, but I
didn’t
jump in. Over the years I listened to other criticisms from Herb, some of which I didn’t agree with, but I chose not to rebut
him because I knew he was coming from a place of genuine love for me. Here’s an example of what I mean. It’s a quote that
he gave me for my first book,
It Would Be So Nice If You Weren’t Here.