Mr. Television

And at all the funerals of these brightest of stars, Milton was always asked to speak, and he always accepted, and he always opened with the same bit. Let’s say it was Jack Benny’s funeral. Milton would get up at the podium in the chapel, look around solemnly, nod to the family, compose himself, and say, “I never liked Jack Benny.” Then, after the laughter settled, he would softly add, “I loved him.”

Last Monday, April 1, Milton attended one more funeral at Hillside, but this time he didn’t speak, because, of course, it was his. So others spoke for him. Norm Crosby, Jan Murray, Larry Gelbart (the great writer/producer), Red Buttons, and Don Rickles, just a few of his brothers, but, oh, they loved him, too. So did I. You couldn’t know Milton and not love him. I was there. I thought you might like to hear about it. Even now, with so much evil in the world, so many lies, so much cowardice, so much sorrow. Maybe especially now, let’s take a moment away from our shouts of support for Israel, from our cries to our president to stop listening to limp advisors and listen to his heart, from our steely refusal to back down from the filthy job ahead of our blessed soldiers. Yes, especially now. Let me tell you some stories. Let me tell you about Milton Berle.

I met him sixteen years ago at the Hollywood Improv. I had performed, and afterwards Budd Freedman, the owner, introduced me to Milton and his wife, Ruth. They had seen the show and wanted to say hello. Of course, I was thrilled. The three of us sat down for a drink, he said some very flattering things, asked a few questions, and I must’ve grinned for the whole hour. Then he asked for my phone number, said goodnight and left, and I went upstairs to the big, round comics’ table and told my brothers all about it.

He called the next day. Just like that, and I couldn’t have been more surprised if Christy Brinkley had dived through my window and dragged me to the couch. (I was single then. Not that that changed the odds against Christy leaping into my arms, but, like all single men, I clutched tightly to the thought, “Yeah, but it could happen.”)

So now I’m on the phone with Milton Berle. He was having a drink and a cigar at the Friars, and he said he was putting me on a show with him that week at a big benefit in Hollywood. (Note: He didn’t ask, “Would you like to be on a show?” He was putting me on the show, and that was that. As he told me later, “Do your work, pal, so when they call, you’re ready.”)

And he took me there, and he put me on, and Nancy Sinatra was in the audience, and she asked Milton about me, and he said something wonderful, and when she got home she called her dad. And the next day I got another pretty wild phone call–that’s right, you guessed right–and it was then that I learned the meaning of the word “floored,” because when I heard that voice I sat right down, and there was no chair there. The voice said, “Do you have a tuxedo, kid?” And my voice said, “No, sir,” and his voice said, “Rent one,” and the day after that I flew to Las Vegas to open for Frank Sinatra.

The week I spent working with Frank Sinatra is a great story, but that’s for another time. See, coincidentally (or maybe not?), Milton was in Vegas as well, starring in a show with Sid Caesar and Danny Thomas called “The Three Kings Of Comedy.” My first night, Milton called my dressing room and invited me to see his late show. Sid was great, Danny was magnificent, and then Milton came on and blew the room apart at the seams, and it was a beautiful thing to watch. He was 78, and he had the most stunning rhythm and timing I have ever seen to this day. You know him from TV and movies, but if you never saw him work live, you don’t know him. He was the best. He built and built and pummeled us with pleasure. (Bill Cosby is another example of this. Yes, his TV shows and movies and commercials are great, but please, if you get a chance, give yourself a gift and go see him work live. He’s the greatest storyteller our country has ever produced.) But Milton was the best. You don’t know. Comics know. I know.

I went back after the show, and he invited me out with him and Ruth. In this case, “out” meant the coffee shop of the hotel, and we sat there until dawn. We had a drink and a bite, and I’ve never laughed harder, and I got a five hour lesson in every aspect of show business. Acting, singing, writing, joke-telling, who did what and how they did it, Spencer Tracy’s style and craft, Jimmy Stewart, Olivier, everybody. And I came away with two thoughts: that Milton was the most brilliant professional I had ever met; and that every man should, once in his life, have a woman look at him the way Ruth Berle looked at her husband.

I sat with them every night like that for the week I was there. And then I went back to L.A. I joined the Friars just to go and sit with him. He always called me over, and that table, oh, folks, that table had some funny people, but Milton was the king, and the stories were great, and the cigars were delicious (even after California made them illegal; you don’t think anyone was going to tell Milton and his brothers they couldn’t smoke at the Friars, do you?) and I loved it. I wasn’t there a lot, a couple of dozen times over the years, I guess, because when I went, it was to see him.

One afternoon, at that wonderful table, he and I were absorbed in a discussion about something or other, and he said he had to pee, and I did, too. So we went off to the bathroom, still dissecting someone’s act, or whatever. As a side note, the bathroom at the Friars has always amazed me, because, believe me, there are products on that long shelf over the sinks that I swear have not been manufactured since the fifties. “Hask For Men.” “Lilac Vegetal.” “Solidified Brilliantine.” Things with Johnny Unitas on them. That bathroom, maybe the Friars itself, is like “Brigadoon.” The whole place just appears out of the mist.

Anyway, we started to pee, still nattering away. And then it hit me. I’m peeing next to Milton Berle. I’m standing at a urinal next to Milton Berle and he’s, well, peeing. Should I look? Because . . . well, how shall I say this? If you don’t know, Milton was always known to be, uh, that is, everyone knows he . . . Okay, at his funeral, Red Buttons (whom Milton always called Aaron, his real name) told a story from the forties. The comics had gathered at Lindy’s, in New York, and everyone was there except Berle. He was between wives at the time, and one of the guys said, “Hey, where’s Berle?” And Red said, “He’s doing a chorus girl at the Essex House.” Another comic said, “What’s the big deal about that?” And Red said, “The girl is at the Mayflower.”

There’s another story, famous at the Friars, from the fifties. Forrest Tucker came by one afternoon to join the fellas in a lunch-slash-drinkathon. (By God, those guys could drink.) Forrest was also infamous in Hollywood for, well, being like Gary Cooper. Anyway, at a certain point (so to speak) one of Tucker’s friends said he bet Forrest was bigger than Milton. And he meant “bet.” Milton held up his hands and said this was idiotic, and he wasn’t going to be part of it. But the gauntlet had been thrown down, and the stakes were high (so to speak) and everyone cajoled Berle into it. Forrest stood up, unzipped and unfurled. (Remember, this was still a men’s club.) There was a brief, silent moment. And then Jack Carter snorted in derision, signaled the waiter for another round and said, “Hell, Milton, we’ve got some drinking to do. Just take out enough to win.”

Ah, but what a life. Maybe you know the facts of the bio. Born in 1908. The greatest of all stage mothers. His first film at five with Chaplin. A dozen more with him. The biggest of the big in Vaudeville, then even bigger on Broadway. Ten thousand dollars a week in the thirties. Huge in radio. Then the “Texaco Star Theater” on television from 1948 to 1953, creating television itself and selling every TV made in America for years. Then many other shows, many movies. Married four times. (He first married Joyce, a gorgeous dancer, then got divorced and married her a second time. And when Red asked him why, he said, “Because she reminded me so much of my first wife.”) After Ruth, as stately as a duchess, passed on, he married Lorna, who said to me at the funeral, “I got the best ten years of him. Believe me.” Wonderful children. As strong as a linebacker ’til 91. Even after two strokes, blind, the sharpest man I’ve ever known. Still giving notes and pitching. Died just shy of 94.

There are portraits at the Friars. Sinatra. Dean Martin. Sammy Davis. Others. There’s a big photo from the forties, a banquet, a roast. Pat O’Brien, Louis B. Mayer, Jack Benny, Danny Kaye, Al Jolson, Bugsy Siegel. All laughing. Milton. He’s got a portrait, too. I’ve been shooting something, and they were nice enough to rearrange things so I could go to the funeral. I’m going to the Friars next week to sit at that table and have a cigar. Now let’s go back to our lives. Let’s think about the big things, and the horrors, and the high morality of our cause, and a little country ten miles at the waist.

By the way, I never looked. We zipped up and washed, and I splashed on a little Bay Rum, and we went back to the table talking. That night I told my wife. “How could you not look?” she said. Not my style, I said. He was the best. You don’t know. Comics know. I know.

Larry Miller is a contributing humorist to The Daily Standard and a writer, actor, and comedian living in Los Angeles.