My Mother Was Nuts (12 page)

For all of her complaining, she enjoyed L.A. One night she saw a preview of
Easy Rider
at the Directors Guild and sat next to a woman she recognized from Alexander’s. Then she got into a conversation with a man who mistook her for Jean Stapleton. When he told her that Jean was very funny, my mother replied, “Well, I’m funny, too. Would you like to give me a job?”

As I recall, we were supposed to go shopping the next day, but I showed up late after getting a callback for a commercial. When I walked in, she was typing a letter to Ronny—she was still always typing. I read over her shoulder and saw she was catching my sister up on the latest events, including my love life. “She’s still sleeping with the guy from William Morris,” she wrote. “He’s among a few others, but I can’t say anything. Did I tell you she goes to his beach house in Malibu? I’m sure the neighbors tell his wife, but Pen doesn’t care.”

“Ma!” I exclaimed. “Why are you telling Ronny all about my personal life?”

“What?” she said, perplexed. “It’s true, isn’t it?”

Penny and Rob Reiner in 1973
Marshall personal collection

W
HEN ROB REINER
and I were children, we lived across the street from each other in the Bronx. We never met because the Grand Concourse was a busy street and we were too young to cross it. One time I saw his father, Carl, in the tiny grocery store in our building. Then one of the stars on
Your Show of Shows,
he was the most famous person in our neighborhood. He was also known for giving out the best Halloween candy.

In 1963, my brother and Jerry Belson worked for Carl as staff writers on
The Dick Van Dyke Show,
and I knew about Rob from hanging out with comedy people. The name Reiner stood out in Hollywood. There was one degree of separation between us for so many years that when we finally met, it felt like destiny was completing a circle that had been drawn years earlier.

It was a summer night, and I left Just in Time’s acting class. I crossed Santa Monica Boulevard and walked into Barney’s Beanery, a late-night bar and restaurant popular with actors, writers, and musicians. I spotted some people from The Committee at a table, and Rob was among them. Someone invited me to sit down, and Rob and I immediately looked at each other.

“So you’re Garry’s sister,” he said.

“So you’re Carl’s kid,” I replied, not missing a beat.

Rob and I were instant friends. I hung out at the house on King’s Road he shared with what seemed like half of The Committee: Chris Ross, Carl Gottlieb, Larry Hankin, and John Brent. They were all creative—and nuts! John, who had made the comedy album
How to Speak Hip
with Del Close, kept an array of pills in a large flashlight. Every so often he dumped them out on the coffee table and said, “Let’s see, two of these are equal to one Nembutal.”

I liked Rob because he wore pajamas and didn’t do drugs. He had already gone through his wild period and now focused on his work. He wanted to write and direct. His closest friends included his high school buddies Albert Brooks and Richard Dreyfuss and his writing partner, Phil Mishkin. They cranked out TV and movie scripts, as well as a play,
The Howie Rubin Story,
which won an L.A. Drama Critics Circle Award in 1970.

They were funny. Together, they would trade stories and twist them until they had spun them into comedy gold. I remember laughing one night as they recalled how they got out of the Vietnam draft. Albert had a bad shoulder and he did a whole bit on how that would have been bad for the war effort. Ricky Dreyfuss was a conscientious objector. Rob had a letter from his doctor saying he wasn’t fit for military service, and then when he filled out his draft papers he checked every possible box on the page, including the one that indicated that he was a homosexual—which earned him a warning from the draft board that he would never act or write in Hollywood.

We would have dinner with Rob’s family, including his younger siblings, Annie and Lucas. These were warm occasions that Carl livened up with games. I remember him once handing out kazoos for all of us to play. He would call everyone a genius when of course he was the only real genius at the table. One night, as Rob and I walked across the old railroad tracks in Hollywood, he made a surprising confession.

“You’re the first Jewish girl that I’ve liked,” he said.

I looked at him like he was missing the obvious.

“That’s because I’m not Jewish,” I said.

Then, all of a sudden, our relationship was put on hold. Rob had a nervous breakdown. He moved back in with his parents and dropped out of sight. I thought it was because I’d told him that I’d liked him, too. It might have been too much for him to handle. As time went on, though, I understood this wasn’t about me. Although he had written for
The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour
and
The Smothers Brothers,
and his play had won an award, none of that was enough. He was under extraordinary pressure to succeed and make a name for himself, separate from his father, and I thought perhaps he had buckled under the weight of his own expectations.

I stayed in contact with him as best I could. I got updates from Carl Gottlieb and spoke fairly often with Rob’s parents. They were mystified. He couldn’t work. At first he felt too much of everything, and then he went through a phase where he felt nothing. Literally. If he hit his arm against a tree, he didn’t have any pain. He didn’t have any sensation whatsoever.

Then, a few months later, I checked in with his father and things had improved. “He shaved today!” Carl said. It was the breakthrough all of us had been hoping for. From that point on, Rob improved slowly but steadily. Soon we were hanging out again. He would call and ask if I wanted to get something to eat or go to a movie and I always made myself available.

I was now living in a one-bedroom, ground-floor apartment on Palm, just off Sunset Boulevard. Barry Levinson, who was then writing comedy with Craig T. Nelson, had helped me move. I decorated the walls with jigsaw puzzles that I glued together after completing them. Jerry Belson came over one day and warned that that was a sign of sickness, not art. I disagreed. I thought it was a sign that I didn’t have enough money to afford anything else.

Those were tough times. I spent three days on a Jack in the Box commercial shoot, playing a pregnant woman whose husband stops for a burger on the way to the hospital. George Furth, who was collaborating with Stephen Sondheim on the play
Company,
was my husband. I expected to make enough from the commercial to pay my rent for several months. But the ad was pulled at the last minute. Apparently you weren’t supposed to show a pregnant woman detouring from the hospital. I guess someone at the FCC feared that thousands of babies would be born in the drive-through line.

I was also in an episode of
Love, American Style,
playing opposite actor Mike Farrell in a segment titled “Love and the Pickup.” The script described my part as the “homely girl at a bar.” Was I? Apparently. After I saw myself, I cried for three days. Reading those parts could send you to a psychiatrist for years. (Note to future scriptwriters: Don’t describe girls as ugly, fat, or homely. You can tell the director quietly, in private. But it’s not nice.)

Then I hit a new low point when someone tried to break into my apartment. It was late at night, and I was in bed. I had the window open a crack because it was hot. I had just put my book down and turned off the light when the lamp on my nightstand fell over with a crash. Startled, I noticed a large hand reaching through the Levolor windows next to me, searching for something to grab onto. I leapt out of bed and screamed.

My neighbor, Jesse Pearson, the actor who had played Conrad Birdie in
Bye Bye Birdie,
raced over from next door as soon as he heard my frightened scream. From behind the door where I was hiding, I pointed toward the window. Jesse yanked up the blinds and standing there was a guy holding his shoes in his hand. He looked as startled as we were.

“Don’t get upset,” he said, waving his hands. “I’m a cop.”

The real police came quickly and took him away. Morgan Upton from The Committee stayed with me the rest of the night, and Rob, who I hadn’t been able to reach, took over the next day. Our relationship
progressed without incident until Tracy visited. Before I could even introduce them, Rob blurted, “That’s all I need is a kid.” His comment surprised me. He was thinking ahead. We hadn’t even slept together yet, though it wasn’t from a lack of interest on my part. Whenever we got to my door Rob either had a headache or a sore throat or an upset stomach. I thought I made him sick.

One night in December I decided to save him from any future ailments. After seeing Robert Redford’s new movie
Downhill Racer,
Rob brought me back home and walked me to the front door. I told him that I wanted to give back his Nichols and May records as well as all the other albums that I’d borrowed from him. He didn’t understand. I explained that I was breaking up with him. I felt like we had to move on—for his sake and mine.

“No, I want to come in,” he said. “I really want to.”

“Do you feel okay?” I said. “You aren’t nauseous? No sore throat?”

He shook his head and followed me inside. The next morning, Rob made it clear that our relationship had moved to a more serious place.

“I just want to tell you that I’m going to fart in front of you,” he said.

“All right,” I said.

And we were together from then on.

Penny and Rob cutting the cake at their 1971 backyard Hollywood wedding
Marshall personal collection

B
EING WITH ROB
meant being with his friends, especially Albert. They were like Rob’s father and Mel Brooks: best friends who made each other even funnier. I would go to Rob’s house up in Benedict Canyon with my little suitcase and Albert would listen to us, waiting for the right moment before asking if we wanted to get something to eat at the deli in the Beverly Wilshire Hotel.

When Rob and I finally moved in together, it was without Albert. I didn’t want him listening anymore. Our place was a funky cottage in Laurel Canyon. We had a tree growing through the second bedroom and some artistic crap the previous residents had done on the ceiling. We also had two cats, Howie Rubin and Rhoda Kleinman, both named after the lead characters in Rob’s play. Friends were reluctant to come over since our narrow street didn’t have parking and anyone who did visit got a ticket.

My father couldn’t understand our relationship. “So what do you say to people—‘We live together’?” he asked.

Soon the point was moot. We told people that we were going to get married. We looked at dates in November and December. Then we put our plans on hold indefinitely. Although it might have looked
like there was a problem, the reason was actually good news, Rob was cast as Archie Bunker’s liberal son-in-law Michael Stivic on
All in the Family
. I had also gone up for the part of Archie and Edith’s daughter Gloria, but the show’s executive producer, Norman Lear, chose Sally Struthers. She looked more like Carroll O’Connor’s daughter, while I looked more like Jean Stapleton’s. I thought it was for the best. Working together would have killed us.

Rob never thought
All in the Family
would continue past the initial thirteen episodes CBS ordered. It seemed like he might be right, too. The show’s January 12, 1971, premiere finished behind the competition on ABC and NBC, and ratings remained sluggish the following weeks. Rob wasn’t concerned whether it was a hit or not. His real goal was to write and direct, not act.

We set April 10 as our wedding date. It was the first break in Rob’s schedule. The ceremony took place in his parents’ Beverly Hills backyard. The 150 guests included our parents and siblings, as well as Neil Simon, Norman Lear, Bud Yorkin, and Marilyn and Alan Bergman. It was different than my first backyard wedding. Rob wore a leather suit and blue suede shoes, and I walked down the aisle in a blue dress that made me look like Robin Hood’s Maid Marian.