He Made Me Laugh

He Made Me Laugh

He was not 2,000 years old, but only 98. He did not invent the cure for cancer or climate warming. He did not lead the nation through a devastating war. He did not make any big feature award-winning films or wright Top-40 songs. He did not run for or hold any grand public offices. He did father one of the great movie-makers and TV sitcom stars of our age in Rob Reiner, but I’m sure that as proud as he was of all his three children, he would leave those accolades to them and not claim credit. But Carl Reiner did make all of us laugh. When asked what he wanted his legacy to be, what he wanted people to say about him after he died, he said, “He made a difference, he made me laugh”. The older I get, the more I find that that epithet covers two thirds of what everyone should wish for themselves. I would only add, “he was a good person.” Anyone can make a difference because it is just a matter of degree and a measure of impact. The secret to that impact in terms of being worthy of remembering is that it be a good impact. But there is no good or bad in laughter, all laughter is good because, by definition, it represents a lightening of the soul.

I was first exposed to Carl Reiner like most Baby Boomers with his award-winning Sitcom, The Dick Van Dyke Show, which he both produced and wrote as well as playing the egotistical TV host Alan Brady. The show starred Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore. It was interesting that they named the show after Van Dyke in 1961 because it was before he reached his real fame in Bye Bye Birdie and Mary Poppins. Van Dyke and Moore were the quintessential 1960’s suburban couple (supposedly modeled after the Reiner household) living in New Rochelle in Westchester County with Rob (Van Dyke) commuting into Manhattan to write a TV variety show with his sidekicks Rose Marie and Morey Amsterdam. Meanwhile, Laura (Moore) was home being the dutiful and pert suburban housewife raising son Ritchie and trying to keep her hubby out of trouble. This was the beginning of the show within the show concept and it was almost like a testing ground for new age comedy because the three writers were, indeed, comedy writers, pooling their creative energies by day and living their comedic existence at home in the new American frontier of suburbia by night. They even threw in a little classic physical comedy ala The Three Stooges with Van Dyke doing pratfalls over the living room ottoman. Ottomans would never be the same to us Baby Boomers.

While Van Dyke went on to great Disney stardom and remains to this day the Dean of 1960’s wholesome family comedy, Mary Tyler Moore went on to get her own sitcom that graduated her into, what else, The Mary Tyler Moore Show where she, as a single, presumably straight, working woman in Minneapolis took us into the 1970’s with Ed Asner (Lou Grant), Valerie Harper (Rhoda) and Gavin MacLeod (The Love Boat). Meanwhile, with Mary was showing us the wholesome Midwest, young Rob Reiner was playing Meathead to Carroll O’Connor’s and Jean Stapleton’s All in the Family. While much of the credit for the genius of the iconic and earthy New York outer-borough comedy came from Norman Lear, Rob Reiner earned his comedy writing chops in the early days of the show as well and that acorn hadn’t fallen very far from the Carl Reiner tree.

In the background of all of this on-air TV comedy there was Carl Reiner riffing it up at Hollywood parties with his pal Mel Brooks and coming up with the ubiquitous skit of The 2000 Year Old Man. They actually conceived of it in the 1950’s and then more formally performed it in the 1960’s, only to make a record and a minor animated piece of it in the 1970’s. Rarely has such an organic trajectory had more impact on the humor and mindset of a generation. “Let ‘em All Go To Hell Except Cave 76” is almost a war-cry to my generation and who among us has not used or been exposed to the “Onamonapoetica of Shhhhh………ShhhhhOwwwww……Showah!”

If I was writing the history of comedy in the Twentieth Century, this is where I might diverge for a few chapters to cover the great Mel Brooks, who can claim comedic immortality for Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, Spaceballs, Putney Swope, High Anxiety, Get Smart, History of The World: Part I and, of course, The Producers. I am tempted to say, “they just don’t make them like that anymore”, but the truth would really have to be that because they made them like that, we have a rich and bountiful array of comedy selections in our lives starting with the all-important breeding-ground of Saturday Night Live.

I should not be so ethnocentric as to ignore the great comedy produced outside the U.S. Cultural differences probably preclude me from understanding, much less appreciating the comedy of places like Japan and Korea, but I do know that British comedy is every bit as good as its American brother with Benny Hill, Monty Python, Mr. Bean, Hello Vicar, The Office and Fleabag. I’m sure the rest of Italy produces some worthwhile comedy as well (Kim actually co-starred with Daryl Hannah in an Italian Christmas comedy called Ole! fifteen years ago), but I’m pretty sure that as the Beck’s Beer commercial used to declare, the Germans don’t do comedy…..the do BEER!

But this story is about Carl Reiner and how much I find humor and comedy to be such an important part of life. It would be easy, I suppose, to say that comedy is so important because life is so harsh that you have to laugh in order not to cry, but I don’t care for that sentiment. It feels too draconian. I know life is hard for many and then they die, as the T-shirt states, but I must be blessed and privileged enough to not find it so very much so. But I do feel that comedy is a critical part of life and it may be the sauce that makes life worth living to a certain extent. I’m afraid I just cannot take things so seriously every day that I can’t find humor in most situations. I think I know the line which should not be crossed and I am not suggesting that everything is always a joke or funny, it’s not. But 90+% of life is just mundane enough to allow us to make fun of ourselves. That to me is the key to all good comedy. If you can not take yourself too seriously, you can likely be a good comedian. And I don’t mean Steve Martin, make a fortune, comedian, I just mean someone who values injecting humor into everyday life. Bringing a smile to someone’s face is always a worthwhile act.

So, when Carl Reiner hoped that we might all say that he made a difference and he made me laugh, I can do one better. Carl Reiner made an immense difference to several generations of Americans that were trying to grapple with the complexities of post-war and pre-millennial America. His son Rob took up the baton and carried into a few more generations. So, yes, he made a difference, a big difference and he didn’t just make me laugh, he still makes me laugh and will forever make me laugh. Thank you, Carl.