Growing Up Laughing: My Story and the Story of Funny (22 page)

“You must never tell anyone about this,” she warned my brother and me. Then she opened the box.

By now, my brother and I were beginning to think we were about to see a dead baby’s foot or something equally eerie. But in the box was a dagger and sheath, with something on it that could have been construed as blood. Or rust.

“This,” she said, “is the dagger that killed Mussolini.”

My brother and I were so disappointed. A dagger that killed Mussolini was nothing compared to a dead baby’s foot.

That was my last encounter with her, and my family eventually moved to a new neighborhood. But one day after school I stopped by the old building and wandered over to Mrs. Rupert’s apartment.

The plants were still in the window, and the venetian blinds were still drawn. I banged on her door, but no one answered. So I slid my school bus card under the door and went away.

I never saw Mrs. Rupert again. I wonder if she ever found out that her worst fear came true—that I wound up in show business. She’d probably be furious.

“Delusions of grandeur make me feel a lot better about myself.”

Yes, they certainly do.

GUY WALKS INTO A BAR . . .

A drunk goes into a bar, stumbles over a few people, sits down and asks for a whiskey. The bartender tosses him out because he’s too drunk. A few minutes later, the drunk comes back into the bar, knocks over a stool, sits down at the bar and again asks for a whiskey. Again, the bartender tosses him out. A few minutes go by and the drunk comes back, stumbles to the bar, sits down and asks for a whiskey. The bartender picks him up by the scruff of his neck and starts to throw him out. The drunk looks up at him and says, “How many of these bars do you own, anyway?”

•

A guy’s sitting at a bar, and a farmer next to him says, “I’ve got a talking horse and I want to sell him for a thousand dollars.”

“Yeah, sure,” the guy says. “You have a talking horse.”

“You don’t believe me?” the farmer says. “Come around to my barn and I’ll show you.”

So the two men go to the barn and the farmer says to the horse, “Go on tell him.”

The horse says, “I won the Belmont, I won the Preakness and I won the Derby.”

“My God, that’s amazing,” the guy says. “That horse can really talk. Why would you want to sell him?”

“Because,” the farmer says, “he’s a bloody liar.”

Chapter 38
Rose Marie

W
hen I went on the
Donahue
show in 1977, and the host walked into the green room with his shock of white hair and his deep blue eyes—well, let’s say he made an impression. But what he casually said to me as he slid on his suit jacket impressed me even more.

“I’d like to talk about your mother. Is that all right?”

My mother?

No one ever wanted to talk about my mother. Not Johnny Carson or Merv Griffin. Not Mike Douglas or Dinah Shore or Tom Snyder. No one ever asked about Mom. They always had a million questions about my father.

Phil’s show didn’t air in Los Angeles or New York at the time, so I had never seen it. I didn’t even want to go on because it would be a full hour with me as the only guest.
A whole hour?
I thought.
At 9:00
A.M.
? Who’s that interesting for an hour at that time of the morning?

But I was in Chicago promoting the movie of
Thieves,
and my publicist, Kathie Berlin, insisted.

“You don’t know him because he’s not on the coasts,” she said, “but this guy is the hottest thing in the country. You have to go on.”

So I went on. And something happened. It was weird. It was alchemy. A couple drops of white hair and a dash of blue eyes. A tablespoon of Marymount girl, a splash of a smile. And it was done. He asked flirty personal questions. I giggled. It was like a first date. In high school. At the end of the show he held my hand.

“Well, you are just a fabulous guest,” he said. I, of course, never one to demur from expressing myself fully, said, “You are wonderful and kind and you like women and whoever is the woman in your life is very lucky.”

The women sitting in his audience watching us for that full hour knew that whoever that woman in his life might be, she’d better lock him up. That wouldn’t be necessary. He was divorced, raising four boys and unattached.

And he wanted to talk about my mother.

MY MOTHER
was an act unto herself. She was Italian—well, more than that. Sicilian. They’re Italians, of course, just tougher and more suspicious. And don’t ever cross them—they never forget.

My parents were friends with the Sinatras, especially Mom and Frank’s wife Nancy, who had a lot in common. Rose Marie Cassanitti from Detroit and Nancy Barbato from Hoboken both married skinny, ethnic boys from the neighborhood who wanted careers in show business. Neither of these women had the slightest notion that their husbands would ever become as successful as they did. From where they began, they could never even have imagined it.

But Mom and Nancy adored these men and supported their dreams with all of their hearts. Through the tough times—and as each bore three children—they skimped and saved to make it all work. The Sinatras were Catholics, as we were, and my father was Frankie Jr.’s godfather.

Dad and Frank had a mutual respect for each other’s work. They both played the top nightclub circuit, and frequently followed each other into an engagement, so they saw each other’s shows often over the years. And they had great fun whenever they shared the stage for special celebrations—like the annual anniversary of the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas, which was always a wild, star-studded affair.

Our two families had houses next door to each other in Palm Springs. So when John Kennedy ran for president in 1960—and Frank was going to host him and his entourage at his house in the Springs—he asked my dad if the Bobby Kennedy family could use our house.

“I’ll have to ask Rosie,” Dad said.

Although my father was a typical Lebanese head-of-the-tribe kind of husband, my mother ran the house. It was her joy, her pride, her career. So no decision about the house was ever made without her approval. She said no.

“I don’t want those shanties ruining my house,” she said. (I told you she was tough.)

When I first brought home my very Irish boyfriend, Phil Donahue, that was all I could think about. But Phil understood. His grandmother referred to the Italians as the “Hytalians,” and his mother said they “used the church but didn’t support it.” We both had maternal hills to climb.

My mother loved to sing, as did her mother and three sisters. Together they would perform at church, synagogues, Elks Clubs or any place that would have them. At 19, Mom had a fifteen-minute radio show called
The Sweet Singer of Sweet Songs
. That’s where she met my father—he auditioned as her announcer. She once told me that she had urged the producer to choose him because he had “such sad eyes.”

Soon the show was expanded to half an hour, and retitled
Sweethearts on Parade
. Mom and Dad became sweethearts away from the parade, as well. So when Dad wanted to go to the big city—Chicago—and take his shot at the big-time nightclubs, Mother packed up her things, left Detroit and the radio show behind and followed the love of her life.

But music would always be the other love of her life, and our house was filled with it. From the moment she woke up, music was playing, and it was a big part of the evening whenever she threw a party: Nat Cole or Sammy Cahn would be at the piano, accompanying Frank, Sammy Davis or Sophie Tucker. But no matter who took the stage in our living room, my mother—with the voice of an angel and the guts of a prizefighter—was never afraid to follow any of them. In truth, she relished it.

Mother’s favorite singers were Sinatra and Cole, and their records played nonstop at our house. That is, until Frank left Nancy—then she never played him again. When Nat left Maria, he was gone, too. Sicilians are loyal. Those movies don’t lie.

Mom and Dad outside WMBC, the Detroit radio station where they first met. They had no money, but they sure had style.

If there was an open mike, you can bet Mom would be singing into it. What you see on her face is pure joy.

Mom’s family wasn’t poor like Dad’s. Her father had a small produce company—fruits and vegetables, a couple of trucks—so they never felt the pinch that Dad and his nine siblings felt growing up. Still, her Detroit neighborhood was a bit rough. Sometimes at around 5:00
P.M.
, if my grandmother (the drummer) had forgotten something for the evening meal, she would send her eldest, my mother, to the market to pick it up. In order to get to the store, Mom would have to pass a bar and a pool hall where there were always a lot of boys in leather jackets with slicked back hair hanging around outside. My mother was a pretty little thing and scared of those boys. So she devised a plan to keep herself safe. As she walked by the tough guys, she’d drag her foot behind her as if it was hanging by a thread. And they never bothered her.

When Terre and I were little girls, Mom would do an impersonation of this for us, dragging her foot around our living room floor. We would roll over laughing. It wasn’t until we grew up that we realized it wasn’t a funny story. It was a sad story of a sad time when girls had to limp just to live in peace.

My mother loved to laugh and to get a laugh. And she couldn’t wait to tell you a joke or something she’d done—even if it didn’t flatter her—as long as it would make you laugh. One of my most lasting memories of her was the morning she was to have an operation. We were sitting on her hospital bed, and I was combing her hair because she didn’t want to “look a mess” when she went into the operating room. Then she told me a joke, wanting to know if I thought it was funny. I did.

“Good,” she said “because I want to tell it when I get in there.”

What a family.

DID YA HEAR THE ONE ABOUT . . .

A woman goes to the doctor and says, “Doctor, I have this problem.
I’m passing gas all day long. Just these silent little farts.
In fact, as I’m standing here talking to you, I’ve had three or
four silent, little farts. What do you think?”

The doctor says, “I think you need to have your hearing examined.”

•

Mrs. Cohen’s doctor called her and said, “Mrs. Cohen, your check came back.” Mrs. Cohen answered, “So did my arthritis!”

•

Two guys talking.

One guy says, “Doc, I need to have my eyes examined.”

The other guy says, “I’ll say. You’re in a gas station.”

Chapter 39
The Book on Kathy Griffin

Kathy Griffin is the girl we all knew in school—the sassy, outrageous cut-up who made us laugh and had the teachers tearing their hair out, even as they fought the urge to crack up at her themselves. Awed by her brashness and her impish grin, we wish we could be just as fearless. But no matter how brazen she gets—even when she makes us squirm—we always forgive her, because we’ve known her all our lives. And we admire her insistence on being exactly who she is and saying exactly what she thinks.

—M.T.

Chapter One: Bad Girl

Marlo:
You’re known as a loose cannon. And, according to your own accounts, you’ve been banned from
The View . . .

Kathy:
A lifetime ban.

Marlo:
. . . and barred from
The Tonight Show
. . .

Kathy:
Because Jay and I had a fight.

Marlo:
What’s going on here?

Kathy:
Well, it’s usually a matter of me being inappropriate. Or exposing.

Marlo:
What does that mean—“exposing”?

Kathy:
I am their nightmare. I’m not afraid to say anything. It’s not that I don’t care anymore, it’s just that I’ve already gotten into trouble as much as I can. I know what my boundaries are. I know that if I swear on a show, they’re going to bleep it. When I swore on
Letterman,
they never had me back—and that was ten years ago. But they have Paris Hilton on the show, and she did a sex tape and shows her crotch when she gets out of a car. But because I swore, I was considered offensive.

Marlo:
You mention Paris Hilton a lot. She’s one of the celebrities you’re absolutely brutal about. Then there’s Celine Dion, Whitney Houston and Oprah. Why have you chosen these particular people?

Kathy:
I would say that to be a candidate in my act, you have to be big enough so that people care. These people have unlimited amounts of fame and ego. And take Ryan Seacrest—he admits that he’s famous for nothing!

Marlo:
I see . . .

Kathy:
It’s so funny—some fellow D-List celebrity will come up to me and say, “You know, you better not put me in your act!” And I’ll say, “Don’t worry, you’re not famous enough.” But a household name—like Oprah or Whitney or Paula Abdul—they’re candidates for my act because everybody knows who they are.

Marlo:
But what I’m getting at is, what do these people have in common besides fame? Why would you go after Celine and Paula and Lindsay Lohan, but not someone like, say, Julia Roberts, who’s very famous—not that I think you should go after her . . .

Kathy:
Because they have it all and they’re full of shit.

Look, the main reason I make fun of people is because of the choices they’ve made or the behavior they’ve displayed. Everyone gets that. People literally clapped with glee when they heard that Paris Hilton was going to jail. They look at Paris’s behavior or Lindsay’s behavior and think it’s appalling, because you and I never could have gotten away with that stuff when we were 19 or 20.

Marlo:
You seem especially fascinated with the sex life of big stars. Why is that any of your business—or anybody’s business?

Kathy:
I think it’s because our real sex lives are so imperfect, that when you hear these celebrity couples say they have sex once a day, you’re like, “Oh, bullshit! You can’t have sex once a day!” And I love it when celebrities go on talk shows after they’ve been dating a month, and say, “This person is
the
one!” And you’re just thinking,
Uh-huh. Tick-tock, tick-tock . . .

Marlo:
Yeah, that is funny.

Kathy:
Right. And it’s funny to everybody because the typical American viewer sees through this stuff so much more than the celebrities realize. Hollywood celebrity is so full of crap.

Marlo:
But you’re getting pretty big yourself. Are you going to have to change your shtick now?

Kathy:
I have no worry about this at all. Two days ago I was at the airport and someone said, “Here’s your ticket, Ms.
Gifford
.” So just when I start to think I’m getting a little big for my britches, the world bitch-slaps me back into my place very, very quickly.

Marlo:
Does that make you feel bad?

Kathy:
Absolutely not. It’s the thing that amuses me most about Hollywood—that it’s never enough, you’re never famous enough. To me, that’s a bottomless pit of funny.

Chapter Two: The
Seinfeld
Incident

Marlo:
What was that whole
Seinfeld
thing about?

Kathy:
I had a guest role on
Seinfeld
and I was a nervous wreck, because it was the number one show on TV, and those four people had become such giant stars. Their characters were national treasures, Jerry in particular. So when I went to the studio, I was really nervous. I mean, I’d never been to a set like that before—you know, where every piece of scenery is famous. Like the diner set. Or the apartment. You walk in and you want to steal a pillow, you know?

Marlo:
That’s so funny.

Kathy:
So I’m taking pictures of myself holding a teapot from the diner set, right? Jerry was doing the warm-up for

the audience—which by the way, I think is a very smart thing to do. I’m shocked at how many TV comedians don’t do that.

Marlo:
Yeah, my dad used to do it, too. It’s great for the audience. So you’re on the set . . .

Kathy:
I’m on the set, and everyone is being very formal. Not that friendly. Even Jerry wasn’t being friendly, so it was tough. I remember thinking,
Man, I’ve got to be on every second. I could get canned at any moment
. And, you know, Larry David is . . . I mean, I love him and all, but that first day, man, that was a tough room.

Marlo:
So what happened?

Kathy:
Well, I was so shaken by Jerry’s behavior that after I taped the episode, I talked about it on my first HBO special. And, basically, the essence of my story was: Jerry Seinfeld is kind of a schmuck.

Marlo:
Oops.

Kathy:
Yup. And sure enough, he sees it.

Marlo:
Oh, God.

Kathy:
But here’s the thing: He thought I was a riot! He even sent me this funny letter that I have framed in my office.

Marlo:
Incredible. He’s got such a great sense of humor.

Kathy:
Right. So, next, they write a new episode where my character comes back and turns into a comedian who makes her living making fun of Jerry.

Marlo:
Oh, that’s great.

Kathy:
Yeah, I know. So I have to say that was sort of an important moment for me. For once in my career—for one second, maybe—I had captured what my dad had: the ability to give someone the business—or as my parents would call it, “giving them guff ”—and they actually took it in the spirit in which it was intended. Jerry didn’t ban me from NBC or anything. He actually thought I was funny, and wrote a whole new episode about it. It was kind of amazing.
He’s
amazing.

Chapter Three: The Pipeline

Marlo:
You said you captured a bit of what your dad had. Tell me about that.

Kathy:
My dad passed away two years ago, but he was hysterically funny. And he had the unique ability to be funny on cue. He was a natural wit. Very, very dry and sarcastic, and he never censored himself. That’s where I get that particular . . .
affliction
. He had a little bit of what I call “the Don Rickles license to kill.” But he was truly so likeable that he could get away with anything.

Marlo:
Do you have a specific memory?

Kathy:
Yeah. My dad was a pretty good fix-it guy, and he was always helping his buddies redo their bathrooms or rec rooms. One of these friends, Mr. Gillian, redid his rec room himself, and invited my father over one Sunday after church to take a look. My dad and I walk in—I was little and my father was holding my hand. And all the Gillians are there, watching, and Mr. Gillian says, “So, Johnny, what do you think?” And my dad looks around the room, takes this perfectly timed beat and says, “What a shit box!”

Marlo:
Oh, no.

Kathy:
The Gillians laughed, Dad laughed and I giggled and thought, “Oh, my dad is the funniest person in the whole world!” It didn’t even occur to me as a little kid that he was using a curse word.

Marlo:
Right.

Kathy:
Nobody in the room cried. Nobody got offended. Nobody said, “How dare you!” Everybody just knew he was kidding. Of course, when my mother found out later, she said to my father, “You said
what
?!”

Marlo:
So this is where your style of humor came from.

Kathy:
Yes, it’s a very direct pipeline from my mom and dad.

Marlo:
Your mom is funny, too?

Kathy:
She’s funny, but she doesn’t really know it. My dad was like a comedian, my mom was more of a
character
. Okay, here’s an example: For my whole life, my mother has told me I’m not likeable.

Marlo:
No—really?

Kathy:
Really. And the way it comes out of her mouth is hysterical. She’s not saying it to be a horrible person; she’s just saying it like a director says when he’s giving you a good note. Like “You’re doing really well—we just need you to play the character a little bit more
likeable
.” It’s like my mom is actually directing me in life.

Chapter Four: The Town Crier

Marlo:
Were there a lot of kids in your family?

Kathy:
Yeah, I’m the youngest of five kids.

Marlo:
And you were the one who entertained everybody, right?

Kathy:
Not really. Growing up, I was more like . . . Do you know that book
The Alcoholic Family
? It lists all the roles family members take on—like, one person is “The Peacemaker.” Another is “The Mouse.” Another is “The Clown.”

Marlo:
And you were the clown?

Kathy:
No—I think I was the mouse, because I was more interested in getting people to hear whatever outrageous thing was happening, or whatever I thought was the truth. That’s what I do in my act today. So in our family, I’d say everybody was probably wittier that me. I was more like the town crier.

Marlo:
When did you first get the idea that you could make people laugh? Were you the class cut-up?

Kathy:
I was definitely the class cut-up—but it was the classic survivor story. I was this little, spindly, freckly, pale kid with kinky bozo hair. Completely picked on. Never in a popular group or anything.

Marlo:
So getting laughs made you popular.

Kathy:
It never made me popular—but it made me not get picked on anymore. I remember the specific tipping point. I was nine or ten, and the mean girls’ clique was really coming down hard on me, one girl in particular. So I made this clever joke about her, and sort of packed the joke with facts—like she’d gotten a bad score on a test, or something. And I did it in front of her girlfriends.

Marlo:
And?

Kathy:
And she backed off. That was kind of a big moment for me, you know? I wasn’t making them laugh to be popular. I just thought,
Well, if I can keep them distracted by laughing at my jokes, then maybe they won’t be so focused on kicking my ass after school.

Chapter Five: Griffin vs. Kidman

Marlo:
Your whole act is built around being on the celebrity D-List, and you really are the queen of self-deprecation. When did that start?

Kathy:
That’s something from my parents, too, and I think it’s kind of an Irish-Catholic thing. There’s this kind of philosophy they all have—a strong edict about keeping everyone in their place. My mom still uses the expression “Don’t get so high and mighty.”

Marlo:
Right.

Kathy:
Or, “Look at herself—she thinks she’s the queen of England!” That’s the attitude I grew up around, and I just felt it was funny. I could never understand these households where the parents would say things that were, like, supportive. I thought it was hilarious when kids would say, “My parents tell me I can grow up to be whatever I want to be!” I’d just roll off my chair laughing. I’d think,
Well, they’re kidding with you! You can’t be whatever you want to be! You have to be what they tell you your limitations are!

Marlo:
That’s very funny.

Kathy:
You know, when I was in high school, I used to tease my mom. I’d say to her, “Why didn’t you guys ever tell me that I could grow up to be a ballerina?” She’d say, “Because you have piano legs.” I just sort of laughed and said, “Oh, I guess you’re right.”