Enter Laughing: A Bio-Novel

By Carl Reiner

In this semi-autobiographical, laugh-out-loud novel, Carl Reiner details a young man's frustrations as he works as a machinist's helper and tries to break into show business. Along the bumpy path, the aspiring young actor tries to extricate himself from his overly protective parents— and his two girlfriends— and eventually lands an acting gig with a small theater troupe. Human, funny, and relatable, Enter Laughing is a warm tale of a young man with love in his heart and greasepaint on his face that guarantees to have everyone exit laughing.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Phoenix Books, Inc.
• Release date: Feb 1, 2009
• ISBN: 9781614671183

Carl Reiner

Carl Reiner, a comedian, actor, novelist, and film director, was a creator, writer, and producer of The Dick Van Dyke Show. In 1999, he was awarded the Mark Twain Prize for American humor by the Kennedy Center and inducted into the Television Hall of Fame by the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. He most recently appeared in Ocean's Eleven and Ocean's Twelve. He lives in Beverly Hills, California.

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Copyright © 1958, 2008 Carl Reiner

All rights reserved. Written permission must be secured from the publisher to use or reproduce any part of this book, except brief quotations in critical reviews and articles.

The opinions expressed in this book are those of the author of this book and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher or its affiliates.

eBook International Standard Book Number (ISBN): 978-1-61467-118-3

Original Source: Print Edition 2008 (ISBN: 978-1-59777-621-9)

Library of Congress Cataloging-In-Publication Data Available

Kindle Edition: 1.00 (5/17/2011)

Conversion Services by: Fowler Digital Services

Rendered by: Ray Fowler

Book Design by: Sonia Fiore

Printed in the United States of America

Phoenix Books, Inc. 9465 Wilshire Boulevard, Suite 840 Beverly Hills, CA 90212

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

INTRODUCTION

The young man that you will meet in this book decides to become an actor in the seventeenth year of his life. I too decided to become and actor at the same tender age. The reasons I became an actor have never been clear to me and until they do become clear I shall never attempt to write my autobiography. The young man in this book knows why he is becoming an actor. It was easy for him to find out. I invented him and I told him why.

In other words, David Kokolovitz is a fictitious character. I strongly believe that I am not. All the characters described in this novel are not real. Only their fears, anxieties, hopes and other emotions are—at least I hope that they will seem so to the reader.

Carl Reiner

Fire Island

August 11, 1957

ONE

THE MAN WITH the red-veined sunbursts on his nose and cheeks seemed to be second in charge to Mr. John Marlowe, the noted ham actor and director of the Marlowe School for Performing Drama. He shouted, Next? All right, who's next?

I think I'm next, I said loud enough so that I barely heard it myself.

C'mon now! Who's next? We don't have all day. We gotta set up for tonight's show!

They did not have all day and I had but a few minutes left of my thirty-minute lunch hour, so I took the deep breath that I needed desperately and stammered, "I think…maybe that I'm am…I mean, I am!"

The small crowd of would-be actors that I had hidden behind for most of my lunch hour had thinned to me. I moved forward from the darkened wings of the Sixty-fourth Street Lyric Theater to the old wooden kitchen table that rested in the middle of the empty stage. Mr. John Marlowe sat behind this worn, marred table and lent to it the air of a hand-carved mahogany desk.

The impatient man with the clipboard and the rummy breath leaned toward me and said, Tell your name to Mr. Marlowe.

I gave my name as Er, Con Doleman.

R. Con Doleman? the assistant asked.

No…no, it's Coleman. Don Coleman! That's my name, Don Coleman!

No R? he asked.

No R! I answered. I was tempted to tell him, And there's no Don and no Coleman either. It's spelled D-a-v-i-d K-o-k-o-l-o-v-i-t-z. David Kokolovitz. The name that I had been using ever since I could remember. Don Coleman was a compromise name that I had decided upon last night after many hours of conferring with myself. I felt that Don Coleman was as close as I could come to Ronald Colman (the perfect stage name but unfortunately already spoken for) without losing too much of the sound of my given name. Kokolovitz to Colman was not too big of a jump. Gary Crant was my original choice, but I know that would make for a very confusing mail situation. Both Cary and I would be constantly opening each other's fan letters and checks.

Now I was committed to Don Coleman, and the assistant was saying, Okay, Coleman, let's go.

I was handed a sheaf of limp yellow paper that had absorbed much perspiration from the frightened hands of fellow auditionees and immediately I added my damp contribution. My eyes remained completely out of focus for the three minutes that I was allowed to familiarize myself with the typewritten script.

Read the part of Jeff Heming, Mr. Marlowe said. Our Mr. Larrimore will cue you.

It was hard to believe that a man of ninety years of age (I later discovered Mr. Marlowe was only seventy) could have such a percussive voice.

Mr. Who will do what to me…? I had never been cued before by anyone and I thought my question was a valid one, but it seemed to irk Mr. Marlowe.

Mr. Larrimore, my assistant, he articulated slowly, will read the cue lines.

Mr. Larrimore, I deduced, was the fellow with the paint-stained blue serge pants, who carried the clipboard. I never believed his name was Larrimore, just as I was sure he never believed mine was Don Coleman.

Mr. John Marlowe closed his big watery eyes, jutted his assorted chins and jowls forward and said with his cello voice, Please to begin!

Er, Mr. Marlowe, I said, who is this Jeff Heming? I've never read the play before and I don't know—

A good actor needs only to know that he is a good actor. Please to begin!

This piece of advice didn't help me much, but, armed with the knowledge that my name was really David Kokolovitz, that I could go back to being David Kokolovitz, that I was seventeen and a half and an employed delivery boy, I began.

Hands up—all of you! I read this line as I imagined that Humphrey Bogart would. None of the other auditionees had, but I could not imagine why they had not.

Boy, interrupted Mr. Marlowe, don't you heed stage directions?

I beg your pardon, sir?

All right. Mr. Marlowe sighed. Begin again!

I began: Hands up, all of you!

Mr. Coleman— Mr. Marlowe was feigning patience—immediately before the words in your script 'Hands up, all of you!' is a stage direction enclosed in parentheses—please acknowledge it!

I glanced at my script and found the parentheses with the words (Enter laughing). I had seen it before but I did not realize that it was meant for me. My first thought was that a henchman by the name of Laughing was to enter onto the stage with me.

I'm sorry, Mr. Marlowe, but my thumb was covering the words.

Let's hear the laugh, boy!

May I ask one thing, sir? I asked. Why is this Jeff Heming laughing? He's supposed to be holding people up…isn't he?

Jeff Heming is a gentleman, explained Mr. Marlowe, a young, dashing gentleman. He laughs because he's amused by his own daring. He laughs in derision at the cowering victims who fear him. He laughs because it's theatrically arresting. The author knows this and insists upon it…as I do. Is that clear?

Yes, sir! I said. I said, Ha, ha! and continued with Hands up, all of you!

Larrimore, with a strange attempt at some foreign accent, gave me a cue. All right, you blokes. Do what 'e says!

The word blokes suggested to me that the characters in the play were Englishmen. So, sounding as much like Ronald Colman as it is possible for a lad from the Tremont section of the Bronx, I continued, I'll handle this, Red. If ev'ryone does zactly as I say, no one will be hurt!

Try that laugh again, Mr. Coleman. Mr. Marlowe squeezed the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger and searched for a proper direction to give me. "And this time see if you can give it a little more!"

More what? I thought of asking, but I decided that he might think me too much of a novice if I could not take this simple direction. I laughed again for Mr. Marlowe, giving him more of everything. I laughed louder, longer, and more heartily. I hoped that it did not sound as hollow and unconvincing to him as it did to me. How was that? I dared to ask when I had run out of breath.

Louder is not always better, boy!

Shall I try a different kind of laugh?

That will be all, Mr. Coleman. We'll send you a postcard.

As I left the Lyric Theater, I felt that my chances of receiving a postcard from Mr. Marlowe were as slim as my chances of becoming the first non-Protestant President of the United States.

However, that same day, for some mysterious reason, Mr. Marlowe reached down into his wrinkled black mohair trousers and came up with the penny that bought the postcard that carried the word that started my theatrical ball a rolling. God bless Mr. Marlowe…I thought.

TWO

THE HANDWRITTEN postcard, daring me to come once again to the dark, smelly stage of the Sixty-fourth Street Lyric Theater, arrived in the Kokolovitz letter box the day following my audition. I stood before the letter box and read the card at least six or seven times before I stuffed it into my pocket, jumped into the air and smashed headlong into the unopened front door of the apartment building. After my head cleared, I skipped toward the subway station, laughing my Ha-has and muttering in my British-Bronx accent: Hands up— all of you!

On the subway platform, I recovered the postcard from my pocket and examined it thoroughly. First the front side.

Mr. Don Coleman

c/o Kokolovitz

666 E. 176th St.

The Bronx, N.Y.C.

N.Y.

The message side of the card, in perfect Spencerian script, read:

DEAR MR. COLEMAN:

Report backstage at Lyric Theater for rehearsals of Mr. Prim Steps Out Wed. July 13 at 6:00 p.m. Bring photos.

Sincerely,

ANGELA MARLOWE

Angela Marlowe, I was to find out that night, was to be my first leading lady. Here is how I and the producer's daughter stacked up as a team:

DON COLEMAN

Height: 6' 2"

Age: 17 plus

Weight: 144 lbs.

Chest: 33"

ANGELA MARLOWE

Height: 5' 11 1/2"

Age: 45 or 46 plus

Weight: 175 lbs.

Chest: 39"

As I stood on the subway platform, I tried to fix clearly in my mind the many problems that needed my attention almost immediately. How would I go about asking my boss to release me a half hour early from my job? How were my father and mother going to react to my becoming an actor? And finally, where would I get a suitable photo of myself? I ruled out the possibility of offering Mr. Marlowe the faded picture that I had in my wallet—myself carrying my kid brother piggy-back.

I decided that I would burn each bridge as it was built. At this moment I had the problem of entering the subway car without getting myself or my Spanish-omelet sandwiches smashed. Six out of every six workdays, my mother dutifully packed a lunch into a brown paper bag, which she in turn placed into another brown paper bag, which she then finally pushed into a white paper bag. The white paper bags were originally bakery bags that my mother collected for this express use. I had told her that I felt less self-conscious about carrying a lunch wrapped in white paper. In a brown bag, it could only be lunch that I was carrying, but in a white paper bag, I reasoned, it could conceivably be something more sophisticated. It might possibly be tennis sneakers for the tennis finals at college, or it could be a sports shirt that I was returning to one of the larger department stores. I knew that I could never fool my immediate neighbors, unless there are sports shirts and tennis sneakers that smell like a fried Spanish omelet on a seeded roll. My mother, without knowing too much about the laws of conduction, figured that three paper bags would keep the egg sandwich hot three times as long as one. They did. Inventive as she was, though, she never discovered how to isolate the raw apple from the heat of the sandwich. Each lunch hour I enjoyed a fairly warm Spanish omelet on a damp roll and a slightly steamed raw apple.

As I stood there protecting my lunch from the passengers that fell into the subway car at the 161st Street station, I thought of something that I should have thought about when I first read the postcard inviting me to become an actor. How would Mr. Marlowe, Miss Marlowe, Mr. Larrimore and all the members of the cast of Mr. Prim Steps Out react to their new leading man making his rehearsal debut wearing a very soiled and frayed suede lumber jacket, brown, unpressed corduroy pants (that needed a washing two weeks ago) and scuffed moccasins flecked with machine oil? When I had first read the message on the card, I had not realized that July 13 had arrived the same day as the card. Had I realized it, I would have run up the stairs to our third-floor apartment and changed into my nicely pressed blue serge suit. My lucky suit! The one with the wide shoulders and the shiny seat. The one I had worn yesterday to the audition. The one my oldest brother had worn to his high-school graduation. The one I wore to my high-school graduation. The one I wore when I was jilted by Joyce Caruso at the graduation dance. (The only time it wasn't lucky, I could not blame my ill luck on the suit. It had done well to get me the date with Joyce Caruso.)

Joyce Caruso! I had not thought about Joyce since the weeks of mourning that I allowed myself after the graduation incident. In a sense, Joyce was almost completely responsible for my sticking my toe into theatrical waters. She could not know this and I would never let her know how important her role in my success was. I probably would never see her again to tell her that if it were not for her and Crazy Bernie Shulberg, I probably would never have applied for the audition at the Marlowe School of Performing Drama. I clutched my omelet sandwich a little too hard as I thought back now to the sad night.

Joyce Caruso had come in second to Helen Hubbell in the race for the most popular and prettiest coed in the graduation class of '37. I and the other fellows that had admired Joyce from afar (I was probably the afar-est of her silent admirers) felt that the gang that voted Helen in were either blind, stupid or anarchists. Had Joyce been chosen the Queen of Roosevelt High School, I probably would not have gotten to escort her to the dance, so I was not too upset about her being cheated out of the title that was rightfully hers. It was the legal privilege of our class president, Crazy Bernie Shulberg, to invite the Queen to be his prom partner. That left the rest of the male population of the school free to try to win the hand of Joyce Caruso, B.B.B. (Big Boosumed Blonde). Joyce did not know that she had been given this honorary degree until the night of the dance. Actually, she had heard something about the B.B.B. but she did not know what the letters stood for until I, taken by a fit of gallantry, told her.

In Biology 2, Joyce sat in a seat immediately behind me and I did not get much of an opportunity to examine her beauty, but it did give me the opportunity to slip her the carefully written letter that won me her hand for the dance. The letter was an inspiration that I composed two months before I could get up the nerve to deliver it. One week before the dance, Crazy Bernie proved that he was correctly named. He broke off the steady relationship he had had with Joyce Caruso to invite Helen Hubbell to the prom. This happily left Joyce available to receive invitations from the pack and a letter from an admirer who up until then had been nothing more to her than a back-of-the-head-and-nape-of-the-neck acquaintance. The day following Crazy Bernie's decision to dump Joyce for Helen I brought the letter that had been eight weeks in the writing and I placed it on Joyce's desk for her to read during the class in biology. I wore the suit this day and had visited a barber the day before. I wanted her to see my nape at its absolute best when she looked up after reading the letter. As she sat down at her seat, I was barely able to keep myself from spinning around and snatching the letter away from her. I heard the envelope being torn open and I tried to read along from memory what she was reading:

June 20, 1937

MY VERY DEAR MISS CARUSO,

This letter is to introduce to you the most charming young man whose head and neck you are no doubt familiar with. I want first to apologize for the many times