How I Got to Be Whoever It Is I Am (9 page)

I
n the sixties I was hired by Allen Funt to be a writer and director for
Candid Camera
. I’m still not sure exactly why he hired me. I know he had liked me in a Broadway show he had seen, but I had played a nerdy
Wharton Business School graduate, nothing that would suggest I’d be good for
Candid Camera.

A young agent, Owen Laster, who went on to become a major literary agent, set up a meeting with Mr. Funt. I don’t remember
anything that transpired at the meeting. All I know is I was hired and given my own film unit.

There was a slight hitch, though. I had been asked to go to Hollywood to be on a soap opera,
The Young Marrieds
. I had no interest in doing that, having worked for a short time in New York on a soap opera called
Love of Life
, which was the most difficult thing I’d ever done. It really was a challenge to memorize so many lines each day. I felt if
I read the teleprompter it would look like I was reading a teleprompter—not exactly a good career move. I couldn’t get anywhere
near the level of acting I was capable of, because there simply wasn’t enough time to be confident enough with the lines,
so it would be next to impossible to embody the character. I don’t watch soaps or much of anything on television besides news
and sports, but I’m sure there are some actors and actresses on soap operas who, after playing their character for years,
do it a lot better than I did.

I accepted the job on
The Young Marrieds
because I had a six-year-old daughter and bills to pay. I said I’d only do it for six months and was surprised when they
accepted that. It was there I met Ted Knight, who later played Ted Baxter on
The Mary Tyler Moore Show
.

Ted played my boss on
The Young Marrieds
, and it was almost impossible for us to act the soap opera story together as it was a variation of the same scene over and
over, which reduced us both to helpless laughter throughout rehearsal, much to the chagrin of the people in charge. I loved
Ted. Once I was driving down a steep hill in Los Angeles with him and the car’s brakes failed. In order not to go over a cliff,
I crashed the car into a brick wall of a garage. Amazingly, neither one of us was hurt. Ted passed away years later after
refusing chemotherapy for what I assume was incurable cancer.

It was at his house at a gathering after he passed that I met Dabney Coleman. Dabney and I are close to this day, decades
later. I wish I could have spent time with Dabney and Ted together, if even for one night. Sadly, it never happened.

After my six months were up, I headed back to New York and
Candid Camera
and immediately ran into an unforeseen obstacle in the person of an executive who worked under Allen who seemed to openly
resent that I had been hired without her knowledge.

She met with me alone in an office and wanted to hear my ideas. I’d had six months to think about it, so I had about twenty-five
I presented to her. She responded to each with variations of, “I don’t like it. That won’t work. We’ve done something like
that. No. No. No,” and more noes. Then she sat back in her chair and looked at me, I guess to see if I would just leave the
building. She obviously had no idea she was dealing with a thirty-one-year-old who had overcome being impeached at ten.

I said, “I know I can be wrong, but I don’t believe I can be wrong twenty-five times in a row.” It was decided we should go
see Allen Funt,
after
she had expressed her feelings about me to him. Allen had just emerged from a Jacuzzi or a sauna, and he was sitting on a
table wrapped in a towel. He asked me what I thought was my best idea. I told him, and he told me to do it.

The idea was that I was a young aspiring singer from Pittsburgh, and my uncle, played by the late Joey Faye of vaudeville
fame, would tell a professional singing coach that he promised his late sister, my mother, that he would back me in a singing
career, but he wanted a professional’s judgment of my potential.

We paid a coach for the use of his studio, and the coach called about six other coaches, telling them he had to be out of
town and asking if they could come over to hear this young man and give their judgment. I believe we paid each one twenty
dollars. Again, this was the 1960s. We scheduled them about an hour apart so they wouldn’t run into each other.

The studio was rigged with hidden cameras and mikes. The piano player, of course, was with us, and I burst into a completely
sincere but way less than mediocre version of a somewhat operatic piece called “Be My Love,” made famous by Mario Lanza.

All day long the coaches were stunned, surreptitiously glancing at the piano player and Joey Faye, both of whom acted as though
something reasonably acceptable was coming out of me.

A middle-aged heavyset male coach just stared at me as I sang, stunned. When I finished, I said, “I did this song for a group
of Shriners in Pittsburgh and got a standing ovation! Of course, I didn’t do it as well as I just did it now.” The coach said,
“I wonder what the hell
that
sounded like?”

One woman coach said to me indignantly, “I manage a baritone whom the
New York Times
has called one of the ten finest singers in this country, and
this man cannot make a living
!” I looked at her a moment and asked, “Does he have my range?”

Their outrage was hilarious. I went back to my office feeling great. The phone rang, and it was my agent. He said, “Congratulations!”
I thought, “Wow, good news travels fast,” but I soon realized he was being facetious. He then said, “You’re fired.” “I’m fired?”
He said, “You set a record.
Candid Camera
is
known
for firing people, but nobody ever got fired on the first day.”

Evidently, a couple of coaches had already threatened lawsuits, and Allen Funt was very upset with me. I went to see him and
asked him to look at the footage to see how funny it was, even though we couldn’t show the segment. He did and rehired me.

I did some good work after that. Once we took over a sightseeing bus in New York, and Joey Faye described the sights of what
we called the Garage and Warehouse Tour. The bus drove up and down streets filled only with garages and warehouses, and Joey
would say things like, “Trucks come here every day and load up with supplies that are taken to stores around the city.” The
camera was on the passengers, who were growing more and more agitated. Suddenly, an English fellow called out, “Where’s the
Empire State Building?! Where’s the U.N.?” and Joey said, “The Garage and Warehouse Tour is our most popular tour.”

Another time we took over a New York restaurant called Voisin. Every time someone would take a sip of water, I would rush
over and fill their glass. If there were any crumbs on the table, I would swoop in and sweep them off. Then I’d go back and
listen with my headset to their comments, which began with, “Boy, they have some service here,” and then changed to, “This
is starting to get on my nerves.” Ironically, when we announced we were from
Candid Camera
, no one would sign a release, because at every table we had miked, people were with someone they weren’t supposed to be with.

After a short time Allen asked me to go out to Kennedy Airport and put up a fake men’s room door. I told him I didn’t think
it would lead to comedy when people came off a plane wanting to use a bathroom and then couldn’t. That shoot was a disaster,
and I was notified at the airport that a call had come in from the
Candid Camera
office saying I was fired again. I chose not to go see Allen and remind him I had been against the idea in the first place.

Years later, after I had directed an Emmy-winning television special, my agent got a call from
Candid Camera
asking if I’d be interested in directing a special they were doing, but I declined. The lesson was, don’t ever accept a job
from someone who has already fired you twice.

T
he first Broadway show I acted in was a standing room only hit in the early ’60s called
Tchin-Tchin
. It starred Anthony Quinn and the great English actress Margaret Leighton. I played the supporting part of Margaret Leighton’s
son. The play had only three speaking roles.

I got excellent reviews but wasn’t offered another Broadway show for about two years. Part of the reason was that I played
an unusual character—a mama’s boy—and I evidently did it well enough that people thought I
was
a mama’s-boy type. My take-home pay in the play was $107 a week. I had a wife and baby, and since the play was such a big
hit and I had gotten rave reviews, I asked the production supervisor if he would ask the general manager if I might have a
slight raise.

When I didn’t hear anything for about a month I assumed the answer was no, but the production supervisor said, “He didn’t
say no.” I said, “Really?” He said, “He didn’t say no. He just laughed.”

Years later, when I became known and the general manager became a producer, he sent me a play to be in. I chose not to read
it. What goes around does come around.

Something really unexpected happened after the opening night performance of
Tchin-Tchin
. I was with Julie and two of our closest friends, a couple we had met in acting class. The woman said to me at one point,
“You’ve been talking about yourself for twenty minutes.” It
was
opening night of my first Broadway show, and talking about it for twenty minutes in my mind doesn’t exactly qualify as a
federal offense.

My friendship with that woman came to a mutual end that evening. It later ended with my male friend as well when they got
married. I believe if I hadn’t made it to Broadway, as they hadn’t, we’d still be friends.

In the second Broadway show I did, I became close friends with another actor, who was considerably older than I was. That
friendship came to an end when he saw an ad for
The Heartbreak Kid
in the paper. I had chosen to not even mention to him that I had starred in a movie, properly guessing it would end that
friendship.

Something very uncharacteristic of me happened when I was a commentator for
60 Minutes II
. At the end of my first year, I told the head man, Jeff Fager, who now runs
60 Minutes
, that I wanted to replace my producer. I also said I would only do this if he could be sure she would be placed elsewhere
at CBS. He said that could be done and then asked me why I wanted to replace the woman he had suggested to me. I said I wanted
a producer who wasn’t also a second editor.

Jeff, as well as being a terrific guy, is also obviously an excellent editor and an all-around brilliant producer who’s on
fire with his work. He’s won more awards than I can count. Once Jeff signs off on a piece, you don’t want further editorial
notes. No one should have more than one editor.

I remember more than a few times after Jeff had signed off on a piece, my producer continued to give me further editorial
notes, even after I asked her not to. I said, “You expect me to go back to Jeff? Thanks, but no thanks.” Producing is a full-time
job, and one she did very well, and that’s what I needed.

Two other events caused me to want to make a change. Once I brought in my résumé for her to read so she could see I wasn’t
exactly someone who’d gone from being a movie actor to a commentator on
60 Minutes II
. It listed five years at CNBC and MSNBC doing commentary, not to mention producing and directing television specials that
either won an Emmy or were nominated. I’d been deeply involved with those scripts and in charge of the editing after the filming
was completed. When we completed
Heaven Can Wait
, Warren Beatty asked me to be involved with the editing. (I didn’t put that on the résumé. It wouldn’t have mattered to her
anyway.)

I’d also written movies, produced, written, and directed plays in New York, and written several books, not to mention writing
pieces for the
New York Times
and several magazines. I had produced and directed a Simon and Garfunkel special for CBS when she was working there as a
receptionist. As she looked at my résumé, she openly rolled her eyes, making no effort to conceal her disdain. Not a good
idea.

The clincher came when I asked her to show Jeff a piece I had done without a special effect and asked her to ask him if he
felt we needed it. Jeff called and asked if
I
felt we needed the special effect. I asked, “How was it shown to you?” He said, “
With
the special effect.” Neither he nor I felt we needed it, but the producer went against what I thought was my clear request
and showed it to Jeff that way because she wanted it. That sealed it for me. She is a very nice woman, but she was way out
of line. I believe she could read this now and still not get it.

The second year, Jeff suggested a nice young fella he had worked with to be my producer, and the exact same thing happened,
with continued editorial suggestions after Jeff had signed off on a piece. At one point, this young man said to me, “I feel
as though you’re standing on my neck.” Even though I told him several times, he just couldn’t grasp that once Jeff signed
off on these two-minute pieces, that was sufficient for me.

If you’re the on-camera person, it’s just not in your interest to know your producers would like you to use their words, not
yours. Not to be overly redundant, but it’s a distraction.

I went to this fella’s wedding, and when he introduced me to his mother I have never been greeted more coldly, a perfect example
of someone acting on hearing one side of a story. Of course, it was understandable. It is so difficult for a parent to be
cordial to someone who has caused their kid upset, no matter what the bigger picture might clarify.

By the start of my third season, Jeff and I agreed that the young woman who had been more than capably serving as my associate
producer would be perfect as my producer. She was content with producing and didn’t editorialize after the pieces were okayed
by Jeff, and she
was
perfect.